Superfreakonomics and global warming

I’m a little slow getting to this, but it seems that the new book by Levitt and Dubner has a chapter on global warming (you can see an excerpt here). As usual, I leave most of the arguments to the experts (see here, here, and here for example). Instead, I’ll look at one of the responses [...]

Global Warming

Hmm, it seems there is more out about global warming and the data still says the Earth is getting warmer. First, via here, a study finds the same basic ‘hockey stick’ graph using different methods. Being a math guy, I love this:
The sheer amount of computation, however, is daunting, involving heavy matrix algebra. Initial values [...]

Mercury and cocaine

Here are a couple of interesting bits:
When government scientists went looking for mercury contamination in fish in 291 streams around the nation, they found it in every fish they tested, the Interior Department said, even in isolated rural waterways.
and:
A study by Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and colleagues has found that about [...]

Bottled or Tap

There’s a long article in today’s Boston Globe Magazine that looks at  the increasing trend of people using tap water instead of bottled. It asks whether tap water is safe and asks some good questions with good suggestions, but ultimately I find it to be misleading. The best suggestion is to read your community’s report on [...]

Jacoby and Global Warming

Jeff Jacoby has another article downplaying/denying global warming which seems to be almost wholly based on this article in the Wall Street Journal.
I’m not a scientist in this field, so I’m going to farm out a lot of the rebuttals:

Much of the denialist information is based on a book by Ian Plimer, which is discussed here.
Some [...]

Tierney, Pielke, and Lomborg and Global Warming

John Tierney (really, why is he still with the NY Times) has another article downplaying global warming. He pretends to be in some sort of center in the global warming debate: global warming is real and caused by humans, but it’s not that big a deal and it’s better to fix things after than to [...]

Sunstein and Cost-Benefit Analysis

This bit by Brainiac reminded me that I am deepy uneasy about Cass Sunstein directing the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). There’s a progressive paper detailing some of the problems here, but I only needed to look at his article here to say why I have a problem with [...]

Sargent Camp to close

It seems that Boston University is going to close down Sargent Camp (now officially the Sargent Center for Outdoor Education). The reason I care is that I grew up next to Sargent Camp (our property in Peterborough, NH abutted it–officially there were a river and flood plains between them, but ignore that). I skiied there [...]

Freight Trains

I read this article on freight trains:
In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get [...]

Organic or Not

The Boston Globe had an article on organic food yesterday. It would have been nice if they had looked at all the issues to decide if buying organic makes sense, but all they looked at was pesticides in the food and nutrition. What about:

Taste: many people claim that organic food tastes better. Does this seem to [...]

Plastic and the Environment

The Boston Globe magazine has an interesting article about how plastic compares to other materials in terms of the environment. It notes that plastic, even though it’s made from oil, uses less oil than many alternatives because it’s so much lighter and is a good insulator (it’s also much better at many jobs such as [...]

World News 9/26/08

Just because our economy may be on its way to a meltdown, doesn’t mean I can’t talk about stuff happening in other parts of the world.

The first could be an even worse problem. It seems that CO2 levels are increasing faster than expected. Developing countries now account for half of the CO2 released, which means [...]

Palin: Boston Tea Party and Civil Rights Movement Were Jokes

Governor Palin didn’t exactly say that, but she implied it. You see the Boston Tea Party and much of the Civil Rights Movement were organized by community organizers and Palin implied they do nothing of importance. The Boston Globe has an article about what are community organizers think. You’ll remember this line:
Palin likened her former [...]

Vegetarians Rule

I really shouldn’t because this is an important problem, but sometimes you just must:
When an ecosystem has too much nitrogen, the first response is that life blossoms. More fish, more plants, more everything. But this quickly becomes a kind of nitrogen cancer. Waters cloud and are overrun with foul-smelling algae blooms that can cause toxic [...]

Next: Companies Decide?

In some ways I’m a bit confused about this:
The Bush administration is proposing to let federal agencies decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants, according to a draft of planned rule changes obtained by The Associated Press.
The proposed regulations, which do not require the approval [...]

Rush Loves the Commies?

Via here, it sounds like Rush Limbaugh does like the Chinese government more than the US government:
So we here in America, the most prosperous, the most advanced, the freest, greatest potential, the most amazing collection of human beings in the history of collections of human beings, we are getting rid of our SUVs and pickup [...]

Cost of Global Warming

Paul Krugman has a post about the cost of global warming as a response to this articleby Bjorn Lomborg. He talks about the cost of uncertainty, linking to this paperby Martin Weitzman and a summary here. Here’s the idea:
It helps that Weitzman has a compelling story to tell: Climate change is fundamentally a problem about uncertainty. [...]

More on the Bat Die-Off

I had a post back in May about a bat die-off. At that time, there was little information on why they were dying. An article in today’s Boston Globe says there is growing consensus that it’s due to a fungus:
Researchers now think that a fuzzy white fungus found on thousands of dead and dying bats [...]

Car Pools in the Boston Area

The Boston Globe magazine has an article about car pooling. It wonders why so few people car pool, provides a couple answers, and then looks at some solutions that might increase the numbers. First it’s noted that the number of people who car pool is down:

In 1980 20% of drivers car pooled, it was down to [...]

Bush: Please Ignore the EPA

I can see why the Bush administration refused to open the email from the EPA. Here are a couple of its statements:

 

Technology is readily available to achieve significant reductions in light-duty vehicle GHG emissions between now and 2020 (and beyond);
The benefits of these new standards far outweigh their costs;
Owners of vehicles complying with the new [...]