The water-policy debate in California, more often than not, ignores the fact that the lion’s share of water (hmm, that doesn’t really make sense, but…) goes to agriculture, and in particular to crops such as rice and cotton that really shouldn’t be grown in an arid state.
This is a good move, though the acreage is [...]
I doubt that you’ve missed the flap about Chapter 5 of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s latest book, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (pause for breath). If you have, it’s the “global cooling” chapter, and it’s something of a mess.
There’s plenty to read on the subject, but [...]
The tubes are abuzz with comment on Levitt & Dubner’s new book Superfreakonomics and its material on climate change. The consensus: at best, lazy and misleading; at worst, dishonest.
Start with Krugman:
Superfreakonomics on climate, part 1
OK, I’m working my way through the climate chapter — and the first five pages, by themselves, are enough to discredit [...]
Thanks to Michael J Smith for pointing us to James Hansen’s fine takedown of Waxman-Markey. I’m not going to quote much of it here; it’s fairly brief, and nicely written. Please click through and read it.
A side note: economists will tell you that, economically speaking, a cap-and-trade system has identical economic incentives to a carbon [...]
Thomas Friedman is Right!
I just wanted to see if my computer could type those words. His assessment of the Waxman-Markey bill looks right on the money to me. It’s worth reading.
—Dean Baker
It is, actually. I know how Baker feels; I’ve done the same myself ( though I had to look back four years to find [...]
Steve Benen:
Deniers
National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson explained his rationale yesterday for denying evidence of global warming.
I just spent a few days in the Sierra in May during freezing cold temperatures and snow; a week ago it was quite cool and raining in New York; each time I have passed through Phoenix this spring it seemed [...]
Now this is pretty cool (and a little depressing for some of us). Neil Freeman has a nifty set of subway maps, all at the same scale, of a bunch of major cities. The contrast is striking.
Here’s Paris:
Tokyo:
and BART, (San Francisco) Bay Area Rapid Transit:
The Bay Area does have a smattering of other rail systems—SF [...]
OK, this can hardly be surprising. But still…
Matthew Yglesias: Public Deeply Ignorant About Cap and Trade
Via Dave Weigel, an unusually useful poll from Rasmussen Reports:
One of the arguments commonly invoked against global warming “alarmism” is that the models have a significant degree of uncertainty.
But that uncertainty cuts both ways.
Fiona Harvey: Ice loss sparks new climate change fears
Evidence of ice loss from both poles this week has sparked fresh fears that global warming is progressing faster than scientists had predicted.
Arctic [...]
Jeff Masters.
Wunder Blog
According to a 2007 Newsweek poll, 42% of Americans believe that “there is a lot of disagreement among climate scientists about whether human activities are a major cause” of global warming”. I posed the same question to members of the wunderground community on Monday, and even higher 56% of them thought so. However, [...]
Phillip Longman on trains. Here’s a taste, but go read it all.
Back on Tracks
… By all rights, America’s dilapidated rail lines ought to be a prime candidate for some of that spending. All over the country there are opportunities like the I-81/Crescent Corridor deal, in which relatively modest amounts of capital could unclog massive [...]
Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives, study finds
The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor [...]
From the Guardian. If the find pans out (or whatever the oil-prospecting term is), the political and economic implications are profound. Per capita, that’s a lot of oil.
20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league
Friends and foes have called Cuba many things – a progressive beacon, a quixotic underdog, an oppressive tyranny — [...]
George Monbiot, in a nice piece on airships, points out a neat solution to the problem of hydrogen fuel storage:
Traveling Light
Even when burning fossil fuels, the total climate-changing impact of an airship, according to researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, is 80-90% smaller than that of ordinary aircraft. But the airship [...]
Over at Econbrowser, lots of interesting graphs, speculation and interpretations regarding recent oil production declines.
Saudi oil production cuts
More speculation about Saudi Arabia
Cantarell fading quickly
James Hamilton argues against CAFE and in favor of a gasoline tax.
CAFE standards are based on the premise that auto manufacturers and consumers are making inappropriate decisions about the kind of vehicles that get produced. The clearest way to motivate this from an economic perspective would be to suggest that there are costs to using [...]
George Monbiot suggests that “The trade in carbon offsets is an excuse for business as usual”:
The problem is this. If runaway climate change is not to trigger the irreversible melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets and drive hundreds of millions of people from their homes, the global temperature rise must be [...]
George Monbiot points out problems with Paul Crutzen’s proposal to mitigate global warming by injecting tons of sulphur into the stratosphere.
No Quick Fix:
Challenging a Nobel laureate over a matter of science is not something you do lightly. I have hesitated and backed off, read and re-read his paper, but now I believe I can [...]
Econbrowser: Questions remain about Saudi oil:
It’s also interesting to note that these drops in Saudi production have coincided with a huge increase in Saudi drilling efforts. The graph below, taken from the Oil Drum, shows estimates of Saudi production from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (green line) and International Energy Agency (purple) along [...]
Gar W. Lipow:
“Mommy, where do carbon offsets come from?”
“Well, you see honey, when a major polluter and a consultant love money very much they express that love together in a very special way. And nine months later the consultant produces an extremely long piece of paper.”