The Washington Post published Chris Mooney’s reply to George Will’s recent climate columns. I’ll cherrypick my favorite bit, but encourage you to read the whole thing: Consider a few of Will’s claims from his Feb. 15 column, “Dark Green Doomsayers”: In a long paragraph quoting press sources from the 1970s, Will suggested that widespread scientific …
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Between the university economics class I’m taking and the various stuff people are actually trying to pay me to do, I’ve been too busy to pay proper writerly attention here to a number of important events and discussions. Let me just dump a few things quickly, and let you click through to read what smarter …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Cleaning Out the In Box’ »
I almost crashed the bike this morning, distracted as I zoomed on the bike trail beneath Interstate 25 near the north end of Albuquerque. The bridge abutments are prime swallow turf, and I was looking to see if any have returned from their southern sojourn. I almost took a header into the trailside railing, and …
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Win Quigley on why it wasn’t really a black swan: [E]very morning my wife and I spend a half hour to an hour reading the newspaper before we walk our dogs. Every morning for many months, up until the real estate market collapse, Bonnie would read the real estate ads and ask the same questions: …
From today’s newspaper, a look at decision-making in the face of uncertainty on the Colorado River: Trying to follow the science of climate change and the Colorado River, it would be easy to throw up your hands. Very smart scientists (Hoerling among them) have come up with very different answers about how climate change might …
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From Larry Calloway: I asked Wallace Stegner if he could define the history of the West, expecting a Frontier Thesis answer consistent with his Wilderness Letter and “the geography of hope.” He leaned forward as cool as his heavy drift of snowy hair and said: “One big real estate deal.”
From today’s business section (adwalled): “There is no bigger risk that can impact you long term in our business than climate change,” Sterba, chief executive officer of PNM, told the Journal in an interview.
Tom Yulsman ventures back into the political dangerous terrain left by another Al Gore exaggeration on climate change: In an interview with the Guardian yesterday, the Nobel prize winner said business leaders are realizing that action is required on climate change because they are “seeing the writing on every wall they look at. They’re seeing …
It’s not that we haven’t done The Right Thing. It’s that there is no Right Thing. The problems are fundamental: The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it. And when Wal-Mart, and the local Maytag dealer, and the law …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Clay Shirky on Why Newspapers are Just Fucked’ »
Climate scientists, apparently, are a dour, grumpy bunch, while economists have the cheerful demeanor of a plucky role model heading enthusiastically into the future.* This, at least, is the impression left by Jean-Marie Macabrey’s account** of last week’s Cophenhagen climate fest: At the congress, it seemed that all the scientists had to share with their …
Continue reading ‘The Difference Between Climate Scientists and Economists’ »