The Unbroken Window

Let’s imagine a truly horrific scenario for what a warming planet might do to the United States (these are unrealistic). Imagine that a rapidly warming planet so destroys our natural industries that they lose 50% of their value. In other words, let’s imagine that agriculture, forestry, farming, fishing, hunting, wood-product and paper-product manufacturing, and all [...]

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If only it was $11,500 we were talking about. At the same time as our university installed the Solar-Dok, it broke ground on a new student dormitory. This time the stakes are a little bit higher – the dorm is slated to cost $17 million. How is this relevant, don’t we need to build dorms to [...]

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I’ve seen it asserted many times that humans are not disposed to taking care of the environment because we are not fine tuned to deal with prevention. Environmental protection is about preventing bad things from happening in the future, and we are consumed with instant gratification and easy fixes to our problems. Maybe. Maybe not. [...]

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Organic farming is not good for the environment. Even if one assumes that yields on organic farms are identical to the yields achieved on conventional farms, organic farms have a distinct biological disadvantage when compared to others – they need to get fertilizer from organic sources. The organic code rejects fixing nitrogen from the air [...]

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Our fair college sends all of us an e-mail everyday that includes news and notes about our college – from the profound (our faculty working on cancer cures) to the mundane (parking information). We are sent about 5 or 6 bullet points with links every day. About every week or two one of those links [...]

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I am sure you’ll soon hear some debate about the pending Supreme Court hearing of a 9th Circuit (yes THAT 9th circuit) decision to consider rainwater runoff from forest service roads a pollutant to be regulated under the Clean Water Act and not by the states. Look, I do not want to get into whether [...]

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But the discovery in August of the well-preserved thigh bone in Siberia has increased the chances of a successful cloning. Global warming has thawed ground in eastern Russia that is usually almost permanently frozen, leading to the discoveries of a number of frozen mammoths, the report said. Of course, this raises other concerns – what [...]

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Another honest mistake I am sure. Some background from the original “hide the decline” from Steve McIntyre here Despite relatively little centennial variability, Briffa’s reconstruction had a noticeable decline in the late 20th century, despite warmer temperatures. In these early articles [e.g. Briffa 1998], the decline was not hidden. For most analysts, the seemingly unavoidable question [...]

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After reading this, I just saw this in the news. I’m sure it is all just made up, falsification by the oil companies. Actually, now that I think about it, would that be comforting to find out? Here are some treats: the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what [...]

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John Hinderaker shares a story: Today was the first in what promises to be a series of meetings involving the EPA, community leaders, local officials and representatives of the refineries. It tended to confirm the concerns I expressed about the illegitimacy of the environmental justice agenda. The meeting began with Al Armendariz, Administrator for EPA’s [...]

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