Has wind power REALLY saved the UK £104 billion?

In a word, no.

Article by Kit Knightly.

Excerpts:

I’m sure it seems the height of egotism to quote myself perpetually, but I’m going to do it anyway:

“The Science” is a self-sustaining industry of academics who need jobs and owe favours.

An ongoing quid pro quo relationship between the researchers – who want honors and knighthoods and tenure and book deals and research grants and to be the popular talking head explaining complex ideas to the multitudes on television – and the corporations, governments and “charitable foundations” who have all of those things in their gift.

This system doesn’t produce research intended to be read, it creates headlines for celebrities to tweet, links for “journalists” to embed, sources for other researchers to cite.

An illusion of solid substantiation that comes apart the moment you actually read the words, examine the methodology or analyse the data.

Self-reporting surveys, manipulated data, “modelling studies” that spit-out pre-ordained results. Affiliated-authors paid by the state or corporate interests to provide “evidence” that supports highly profitable or politically convenient assumptions.

…Interlacing layers of nothing designed to create the impression of something.

This pro-mask “study” is why you should NEVER “Trust the Science”

So, is the claim true? It doesn’t matter. That is entirely beside the point. The paper has already done its job by generating headlines like this, [. . .]

This study is just a single tile in mosaic of bullshit. It helps create an image and sell a story.

In this case, the hope is that enough dodgy studies in conflict with observable reality will override people’s awareness that their energy bills are getting bigger and their bank balances smaller.

Good luck with that.

3 Things Christians Must Do to Rebuild Culture

Touchstone talk by Jonathan Pageau. Video here (prompted at the right place).

From the video description:

I explore how our modern world—built on endless disruption and self-expression—has reached its breaking point. We’re witnessing the collapse of a culture that forgot its source, but that’s also at the beginnings of renewal. From art and architecture to worship and storytelling, I share how Christians can remember, celebrate, and create once again—recovering beauty, meaning, and participation in the divine order. This is a moment of opportunity: to rediscover Christ as the pattern of reality and rebuild culture on that foundation.

Why Banks Needed World War I to Survive

And why they still need crises to continue to survive: It’s due to the fractional reserve system, which allows banks to lend more money than they have. It incentivises them to go just a little beyond what is prudent. If enough of them do (as is inevitable), the system will collapse – UNLESS the the bad loans and unredeemable securities are dumped onto someone else. That someone was the banks governments and thus, ultimately, the tax payers.

Why didn’t the governments refuse to accept this white elephant? Because they were in the midst of a crisis where they desperately needed the banks. What a convenient coincidence for the banks. Interestingly, it happens during every major crisis.

22-minute video here. (Sources in the first, pinned comment underneath the video.)

Research Continues to Undermine Unusual, Catastrophic Nature of Present Climate Change

Article by H. Sterling Burnett.

Excerpts:

It is on the third testable claim or tenet of the theory of human-caused climate change, that the climate changes we are presently experiencing or soon will be experiencing are catastrophic or represent an existential threat to humanity, where the theory is weakest and the consensus completely breaks down. Most of the claims of disaster are based on inadequate, not fit for purpose, computer models. Their projections are regularly provably false, yet the so-called consensus community clings to them with undying faith, in a fashion not like science but a religion.

What the research does prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, is that there is still much unknown about the causes and consequences of the present iteration of climate change, the debate is still open. In addition, what the papers that I write about strongly indicate is that there is no firm evidence that present climate change has been harmful to humans, human societies, or the environment, and may have even produced net beneficial effects. What they also suggest is that the present climate change is not historically unusual, meaning it’s hard to identify a human fingerprint against the background changes nature has made throughout history.