The Unbroken Window

In this week’s dose of fatuity, we are alerted to the Union of Concerned Scientists voting a winner of the political cartoon of the year. Classy! You know the world has gone mad when “Scientists” are using verbal attacks rather than using science to attack critics. But that’s about all they’ve got. It’s certainly all [...]

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Here is an absolutely spot on piece from Tyler Cowen: But I am unhappy when that broom is used to sweep some very important underlying issues under the carpet.  The insistence on a sensible middle position, while true, is very often a cloak for partisan reframing of the issue itself and a somewhat Orwellian forgetting [...]

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Here is a treat from Tim Harford’s book, Adapt: The first major worker strike in Soviet history took place in 1989 when 250,000 coal miners walked away from their jobs. Part of the protest was about grotesquely dangerous conditions: the death rate for Soviet miners was 15 to 20 TIMES higher than it was for their [...]

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(1) Sierra Club to promote “peaceful civil disobedience.” That’s beyond oxymoron. If they promote steps to prevent legitimate business to operate, it ain’t peaceful. If you got past the title of the press release, you probably should have stopped once you read this nonsense (i.e. go check out the science on this stuff, dear bastions [...]

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Without comment, else it might be my last. (1) Climate change is going to so devastate Rochester that it will as intolerable as living in … Richmond, VA. Go see the movie. (2) Handed out at a nearby Catholic parish, remember that we used to pass a basket around a second time during mass to [...]

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Serious people are proposing that the Federal government establish … a Federal Department of Cities. We’re doomed. Like, that’s a great idea. After all, local urban planners have failed to revive their cities after a century of “Local Departments of Cities” have operated. And believe me, spend some time in your city’s library and read [...]

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This exciting event may be coming to your campus too: Recycle-Mania.Here are my favorite parts:  there will be a Ban the Bottle Panel hosted by Dining’s Team Green … Also throughout the competition, EcoReps will be on the lookout for students, faculty, and staff to be caught “green handed”! You can get caught and win [...]

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One of my early New Year’s Resolutions was to stop reading the U of R sustainability blog. But that task is made more difficult when my university actively promotes it. In fact, every so often in the morning email that the University sends to faculty and staff, which includes things like celebrating our Nobel Prize [...]

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Matt Ridley does a little bit more investigating on something I’ve been yawping about for a long time now: climate models are no better than macro-econometric models, and furthermore, there is absolutely NO consensus on what the magnitude (or possibly even the sign) of climate feedbacks is: How can there be such disagreement about climate [...]

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It is a veritable religious belief that people look at “pollution” and identify its existence as “bad.” Never mind me lecturing you on the economics of pollution – which would start with a study of property rights and how weak or non-existence property rights are the only way “pollution” can even exist in the first [...]

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