Who’s Saving Now?

Posted by jfleck on 10 March 2008, 8:52 pm

A confession: I’m one of those people who delights as the gas price numbers at the Kwik-E-Mart around the corner from my house tick up higher and higher. I know, I know, I’m a bad person. There are folks for whom that price really hurts, who don’t have the disposable cash to buy 30-year old Frank Zappa albums when the mood strikes them.

My thinking is that price increase will surely in some sense rationalize our consumption. If we don’t have the gumption to actually tax for the externalities, maybe the price runup will have a similar effect. Sadly, not so much, as Erica Myers pointed out last week:

Despite a recent spike in domestic gas and electricity prices, demand for energy has barely moved. In fact, the more that 100% increase in oil prices in recent years may actually be leading to an increase in carbon emissions.

Paul Wolfowitz Tries to Skip Out on Breakfast Tab

Posted by jfleck on 10 March 2008, 8:44 pm

Apropos of nothing:

(The signature is not clearly and distinctly “Wolfowitz” but, then, few people’s signatures are clear and distinct. The first part is obviously “P. Wolfo…” and the end looks like a “z”, Which leaves us to fill in the “wit”.)

The Ethanol Problem, Episode CXVII

Posted by jfleck on 10 March 2008, 8:39 pm

In which Simon Donner expands on the way ethanol production kills the ocean:

The new US Energy Policy calls for 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by the year 2022. Of that, 15 billion can be produced from corn starch. Our study found meeting those would cause a 10-34% increase in nitrogen loading to the Gulf of Mexico.

Ugly

Posted by jfleck on 10 March 2008, 8:13 pm

In three months, I made $6.68 from Google AdSense ads. Not enough to compensate for the way it made Inkstain look butt-ugly. It’s gone.

I Cried

Posted by jfleck on 9 March 2008, 12:23 pm

There’s a pair of well-used, dusty old hiking boots and two tattered bouquets where the Paseo del Nordest Bike Trail crosses Commanche Rd. midway between home and my work. I didn’t know Roy Sekreta, who died there Monday night. But I stopped and cried after I rode past the little shrine today. There’s something so beautiful about the childlike freedom of being out on a bike. But when a bike and a car end up in the same place at the same time….

Daybook

Posted by jfleck on 8 March 2008, 8:34 pm

reading:The Nature of Economies, by Jane Jacobs
listening: Bongo Fury
word of the day: fuggy – stuff or smelly
paper of the day: lead in the North Pacific – Ice cores from the Yukon record rising lead levels resulting from the industrialization of Asia

Stuff I Helped Write Elsewhere

Posted by jfleck on 7 March 2008, 9:23 am

The global cooling mole.

Spring in Switzerland

Posted by jfleck on 7 March 2008, 9:16 am

This Rutishauser and colleagues have been tracking the blooming of flowers in Switzerland (can you think of a more delightful job as a scientist?). In a paper just published in GRL, they concluded that 2007 was a remarkable spring:

Anomalously high temperatures led to a very early onset of plant phenological spring phases, including 98 record early observations out of a possible total of 302 (32%) for selected phases in Switzerland.

To me, one of the most revealing conversations I’ve had with a scientist was a discussion about the variables that govern the timing of plants leafing out, and flowering, and dropping their leaves. We were walking in the woods, and he explained how relatively poorly studied the question of timing is. It’s the sort of data that, comprehensively collected, would be incredibly useful for climate change studies. But the comprehensive collection of such “phenology” data is still in its infancy.

For more on the importance of this issue and the efforts to collect better data: US National Phenology Network.

(Thanks to Garrulus for the picture.)