The cost of getting rid of Coal

As I covered in a previous entry, coal plants are being retired quickly and before the time they should normally have.  The Demise of Coal

This early retirement system is of course an application of the broken window fallacy where we instead of using the coal plants for as long as possible until they are indeed “broken” we keep breaking them ourselves by forcing the cost of coal plants to ““necessarily skyrocket” and to artificially game the markets in other words to excel those sources of power which the president likes.  This form of cronyism is going to have a huge impact on American’s especially those who are poor or in the middle class.  In other words, everyone is going to pay for the policies enacted by our current president.

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Missing Heat is found!

H/T:  Elmer from M4GW

In Breaking News today, Trenberth’s missing heat has been found.

Many may recall that Dr. Kevin Trenberth said this in one of the Climategate emails:

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

But now we can all rest easy, the world is going to roast and we are all going to die, because the heat has been found and is it hot hot hot!

Copper Wars and the case for sensible regulation

The era of the Robber Barons is a fascinating time when the rich would cheat, steal, sabotage and even murder people in order to get rich.  The accounts from this era are sketchy and although the dynamics of the town of Butte in particular are rather interesting, the town itself gives a great look into what life is like without regulation and what regulation can do when applied properly.

But without going into a great detail on the robber baron angle, there are many great places to read about the politics and the fortunes being made in the town which was the king of copper in the US for a time I highly recommend this book for this endeavor if one is interested:

CB, Glasscock, “War of the Copper Kings”, copublished by Montana Historical Society Press and Riverbend Publishing. http://montanahistoricalsociety.org/pub/press/warcopperkings.asp