stuff I wrote elsewhere
sustainability jumps the shark: sustainable nuclear weapons edition
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
Godwin’s Law and the Climate Debate
Between David Roberts and James Hansen, I think we’re well past invoking Godwin’s law, but a friend sent along a new example this morning of climate change-Nazi rhetoric that I found particularly, um, amusing: One of the great ironies of 2007 was Al Gore’s sharing the Nobel Peace Prize. I argue below that Gore’s climate …
Radioactive Nookie Ban
El Nino and the Economy
Via David Appell, a fascinating paper about El Nino and the U.S. economy: While ENSO may briefly influence the performance of particular sectors of the economy in particular regions, as documented by the previous literature, such locally-important effects vanish into the noise surrounding macroeconomic trends in an economy as large and complex as that of …
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Quagga Mussel Edition
Beware the quagga mussel.
Writing About Lee’s Ferry
Lee’s Ferry, on the Colorado Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Sitting at home working on a chilly Saturday, this photo from a trip in 2005 reminds me that I’d rather be at Lee’s Ferry than sitting home writing about it. But it’s a pretty interesting place, so writing about Lee’s Ferry is a good close second. …
Those Baffling Oil Prices
Oil prices have dropped a bit of late. Spot prices for crude are down ten bucks from their peak two weeks ago. One reason? The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, according to This Week in Petroleum: Still another factor behind the recent decline in oil prices is a lessening of geopolitical tensions. Following the release …
On Voluntary Conservation
From North Carolina, word that residents are not really all that altruistic and require some sort of pricing structure to help them understand that they’re in a frickin’ drought: Less than two months ago, Gov. Mike Easley urged all North Carolina communities to reduce water consumption by 50 percent. After showing marked declines in the …
Powell party, 1871
I recently discovered the USGS’s wonderful photo archive, which (among many other things) has a huge collection of the photography from the second John Wesley Powell survey of the Grand Canyon. Powell quote of the day: Many droughts will occur. Many seasons in a long series will be fruitless.
Is India’s Monsoon Declining?
From K. V. Ramesh and P. Goswami last week in Geophysical Research Letters, evidence that India’s monsoon, bringer of the rains to feed the farmers who feed the residents of one of the world’s largest nations, may be in decline: We show here, based on an analysis of daily gridded observed rainfall data for the …