February 08, 2023

We Must Demand A Demonstration Project Of A Mainly Renewables-Based Electrical Grid

February 08, 2023/ Francis Menton

Could anybody possibly be stupid enough to believe the line that wind and solar generators can provide reliable electricity to consumers that is cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels?
It takes hardly any thought about the matter to realize that wind and solar don’t work when it is calm and dark, as it often is, and particularly so in the winter, when it is also generally cold. Thus a wind/solar electricity system needs full backup, or alternatively storage — things that add to and multiply costs.
Surely, our political leaders and top energy gurus are fully aware of these things, and would not try to mislead the public about the cost of electricity from a predominantly wind/solar system.
If you think that, you must have missed the State of the Union Address yesterday.

February 06, 2023

Candidate For The Craziest State Supreme Court: North Carolina

February 06, 2023/ Francis Menton

If you ever wonder what kind of rulings we might get if the progressive Democrats some day achieve full control of the U.S. Supreme Court, you can try looking to some of the state Supreme Courts that come under Democrat control.
One of my favorites is the Supreme Court of North Carolina.
North Carolina is a purple state, and generally tending more to red than blue. But the justices of its state Supreme Court are elected. In 2016, in a nominally “non-partisan” election, the Democrats took control of the Court by a narrow 4-3 majority. Meanwhile both houses of the state legislature have been controlled by Republicans since 2011. The Governor has been a Democrat since 2016.

February 04, 2023

February 04, 2023/ Francis Menton

Here in New York, both State and City, we have supposedly committed ourselves by law to ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets that are somehow going to “save the planet.”
The targets for a few years out are completely impossible to achieve, and have been adopted without any meaningful consideration of whether the technology to meet them even exists short of leaving large numbers of people without heat or electricity.
Sooner or later we will run at full speed into the green energy wall, but exactly when and how that will occur remains undetermined.
Maybe the first crunch will come via New York City’s Local Law 97.

February 01, 2023

February 01, 2023/ Francis Menton

It was only six days ago, on January 26, when I wrote a post containing a list of proposals for Christopher Rufo and the other new trustees of New College of Florida to take back control of the institution from the insane left.
In an uncanny development, as if they having been reading the Manhattan Contrarian blog, Rufo and his fellow trustees, along with Governor Ron DeSantis, have already implemented the first proposal, and are well along on implementing the second.
How about all you other red states? Why can’t you do the same things?

January 30, 2023

January 30, 2023/ Francis Menton

The headline and the cartoon come today from Dr. Benny Peiser’s New Zero Watch newsletter. (If you don’t subscribe to this newsletter, you should. Go to this link to sign up. As with MC, there is no charge.)
This latest newsletter contains a roundup of articles from just the last couple of days reporting on the ongoing disaster of the Net Zero fantasy. In this post, I’ll just cover some of the highlights.
But first, can somebody please let President Biden in on this news, or at least some of it?
Even as the impossible dream of a wind/solar-powered economy collapses everywhere it is tried, the U.S. federal government blindly pushes forward with hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to subsidize wind and solar generation and battery storage.

January 26, 2023

January 26, 2023/ Francis Menton

Over the past several years, Republicans have very gradually acquired some backbone in pushing back against progressive idiocy.
But a glaring example of failure to push back remains in the state university systems, very much including those of the red states. In essentially all of those states, Republican governors and legislatures have allowed the very worst of Marxist and racist monoculture to fester and metastasize not only without opposition, but with ever-increasing taxpayer funding.
Well, count on Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida to be the one to finally step up and do something about it. On January 6, DeSantis announced the appointment of six new trustees to the board of a unit of the Florida state university system called New College of Florida.
Are the new trustees going to be able to make significant changes in a short period of time?