Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Via David Hardy:
Synopsis: The use of lead hunting ammunition apparently kills a small number of eagles annually while wind turbines kill large numbers of birds of many types. Public officials who are concerned about bird deaths by lead poisoning tend not to be concerned about bird deaths by wind turbine.
Much as Islam trumps sexual orientation in identity politics, so crony-capitalist green energy schemes trump the welfare of wild animal populations in eco politics.
Here are the basics. There are 59 national parks operated by the National Park Service. 17 are owned both on the surface and subsurface by the Feds with 42 having split ownership with private subsurface ownership of mineral rights. 12 parks currently have oil/natural gas drilling already occurring on them, or more than one fourth of the 42 split rights parks.
The National Park Service has been ordered to review the rules as to what is necessary to drill for oil and gas within a park, or in certain circumstances next to a park, if the subterranean horizontal section includes NPS administered park lands.
There’s a lot of confusion about what exactly has changed. Right now it’s only a rule review.
Sarah Hoyt: Hereditary monarchy, feudalism, and a vicious cycle of crazy….coming soon to a country near you?
Why Danusha Goska left the Left. Years of observing, and being subjected to, unpleasant and just-plain-nuts behavior.
There has been much discussion lately about the increased suicide rate and addictive behavior among white working-class men. Here’s a collection of comments to a Huffington Post article on that topic. (via The Arts Mechanical.)
In her ‘why I left the Left’ post, Danusha described the prevalence of hate, rather than a true desire to make things better, among today’s ‘progressives.’ That hate is very much on display in the Huffington Post comments.
The past of the future apocalypse: Stuart Schneiderman reviews some predictions of doom from back in 1970.
Amid some pretty stiff competition news-wise this week, these two linked stories were particularly infuriating mostly because the matter received relatively little attention, in comparison to coverage of the protest itself. But such is the towering hypocrisy of these times. The establishment national news media continues to conduct itself in the manner that, sadly, we have come to expect of them. Mostly, they cover stories like this with a pillow, until they stop moving.
But the sheer gall of a protest encampment called to protest potential-possible- maybe environmental damage caused by construction of a pipeline … which then actually does damage to the local environment by the sheer quantity of stuff abandoned over the past six months, and the possibility of seepage of human waste into the nearby river. Well, really one might have very good reason for doubting the sincerity of those protesters with regard to protecting the environment in the first place.
Forbes ran an article with the headline “Solar employs more people in US electricity generation than oil, coal, and gas combined” and goes on to say “It’s a welcome statistic for those seeking to refute Donald Trump’s assertion that green energy projects are bad news for the American economy.”
Unmentioned in this article is the point that energy production is not done for the purpose of energy production; it is done for the purpose of energy use…and production modes which are more expensive tend to cost jobs downstream. If an excessive emphasis on solar and wind cause electricity prices to rise significantly, the negative impact will fall on those who work in manufacturing and other fields that are energy-intensive.
To take an extreme case, one could easily create millions and millions of jobs in energy generation by requiring that all electricity be generated by human beings turning cranks connected to generators. It is silly to look at job-creation as a good thing in isolation, without considering factors other than the number of people hired. The Forbes article also neglects to mention the point that in most technologies, and certainly in electricity generation, the construction phase of a plant generally requires a lot more labor than does the ongoing operation of that plant.
An even lower depth of mediocrity is reached in this International Monetary Fund article: Counting the cost of energy subsidies. This study considers traffic congestion and vehicle accidents as ‘externalities’ from fossil fuel usage. In reality, of course, the replacement of all gasoline-and-diesel-powered vehicles with electric vehicles recharged from solar/wind…or even their replacement by unicorn-powered vehicles requiring no other energy source whatsoever…would by itself have no effect whatsoever on traffic congestion and vehicle accidents. And while the elimination of automobiles and trucks completely would certainly eliminate traffic congestion, it would also lead to delays in travel which would greatly exceed the magnitude of the congestion-caused delays.
Putting lots of math in a study is not a substitute for common sense.