I’ve added a new goober over in the far right rail called “recommended reading.” The idea came from my old pal Chuck Taylor, who’s involved in an interesting experiment up in Seattle called “Crosscut“. More on that later (I had an interesting visit with Chuck, and I’m intrigued by what they’re attempting), but the easy …
I’ve been looking for a standard food price index comparable to the “barrel of oil” or the “gallon of gasoline” we’ve all come to know and love and, more importantly, intuitively grasp. The idea here is a number that’s standardized, readily available and easy to grasp. The Economist has its Food Price Index, but WTF …
Back in the late ’80s, Lissa and I were camped along the lower Colorado River somewhere near Blythe. It was winter, but it’s always warm there. Out in the middle of the river, on an island, we watched an enormous bird, just sitting. The bird book and binoculars suggested a great blue heron. Our old …
When I was coming of age, I spent six great years in the Pacific Northwest, and I’ve always held a romantic fondness as a result. I’ve not been back in a long time, so Lissa and I are off for 10 days to Seattle and the islands to the north. They’ve got oceans and boats …
overbanking on the Rio Grande
For those of you who insist that of course every right thinking person agrees that the need to adapt to climate change shares equal importance with greenhouse gas reductions, Roger Pielke Jr. has another example worthy of your attention. The quote is from ClimateWire: Environmental and humanitarian activist groups plan to formally ask the World …
Drought in northern India has led to a ban on hair dye: At least 11 farmers have died from swallowing the hair dye in a drought-hit region of Uttar Pradesh state in the past three months, said Rajiv Agarwal, a senior state official. Two-thirds of India’s 1.1 billion people depend on agriculture, and most have …
Rich Sweeney goes beyond my casual “go read it” reference to the Economist article on renewables in Germany and actually explains its implications: Like a lot of things, economies of scale are more complex than the renewables lobby would have you believe (Joseph Romm makes the scale argument a lot, and recently Daniel Weiss made …
Via Michael Tobis, a Financial Times story about growing export restrictions in response to global food shortages: On Monday, India scrapped tariffs on edible oil and maize and banned exports of all rice except the high-value basmati variety, while Vietnam, the world’s third biggest rice exporter, said it would cut rice exports by 11 per …
Fun with illusions: Thomas explained the difference between science and the sort of pseudoscience frequently debunked by the group this way: Science, he said, looks at all of the available evidence and tries to come up with some sort of overarching explanation that explains it all. Scientists call them “theories,” but when they use the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Lake Monster Edition’ »