Add up the savings (ad gated): And refrigerator coils. All that dust that collects on them drives up your electric bill by making the fridge less efficient. “How many of you have cleaned your refrigerator coils?” asks Angela Sylvestre, a volunteer helping with the energy-saving project. Every hand in the room goes up, accompanied by …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Kids are Great Edition’ »
From the Economist: Coal’s share in global energy will continue to climb because of its relative cheapness and abundance, especially in the two largest coal-producing/consuming countries, the US and China. In the US, more coal-fired than gas-fired power plants will come on stream in the next two years. Globally, demand for coal will rise by …
Continue reading ‘Why I Am Skeptical About Successful Greenhouse Gas Reduction Measures’ »
Andy Dessler does a terrific job in this piece of explaining CO2 basics: So we know that adding carbon dioxide is going to warm the planet. This leads us to the real question: How much warming are we going to get? Carbon dioxide by itself will only provide somewhere around 1 degree C warming over …
Stuff I wrote over at the work blog on an intriguing effort to control greenhouse emissions in New Mexico via the state’s Environmental Improvement Board. Basically, the argument is that the EIB already has the legal authority to do it, and no additional legislation is needed. Interesting approach.
Drier Climate on the Way for Southwest (ad gated): Climate change is increasing the chances of severe and persistent drought in the Southwest, according to a new report from a panel of federal scientists. “It’s going to get drier,” said Richard Seager, a climate researcher at Columbia University in New York. That means diminished water …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Water in the Desert Edition’ »
Does this apply to today? Why, or why not? When an economy is expanding and things are going well, it becomes easier to think in terms of spending resources to deal with problems. Times of recession or of slow growth and slowly rising living standards with reduced public resources result in downgrading the significance of …
A bit of dystopian fiction from my young friend Kelsey, with a loving nod to our disappearing past: “But those were on paper once, you can’t be that sure” “It also isn’t one of those papers.” “What? But that means it’s…okay, you’re right, it’s old. But how old?” “Dunno”, you say, “dates missing. But it …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Zombie Fiction Edition’ »
ht Nora
Two decades ago, while a young reporter for the Pasadena Star-News, I convincingly debunked the official claim that a million people show up in person to see the Rose Parade. It took about five minutes of simple arithmetic to show that it was impossible*, and my colleagues and I then attempted to estimate the real …
Sooner or later the neo-Malthusians – those who grasp the fundamental difficulty posed by exponential population growth in collision with a fixed resource base – will turn out to be right. The problem is that, thus far, they have repeatedly turned out to be wrong. Today’s example comes (via Tyler Cowen) from a piece by …