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Category Archive for 'Resources'

Leave No Trace

Here is an example of the plea by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, along with the support of various hiking and conservation organizations, for people to practice a “Leave No Trace” ethic when wandering in the New York State Forest Preserve (a designated “wilderness” area: I am extremely sympathetic to the LNT ethic and […]

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Suppose you were really, really, really, really freaked out that "we" were going to run out of some really important material like clay for cat litter. Well, important for some people. Suppose that you convened a panel of concerned citizens and you had but one opportunity to select the best way to ensure the continued […]

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Crudely Speaking

My best estimate is that fully one-third of the lower continental United States is utterly inhospitable and virtually uninhabitable. The fact that man has managed to scratch out a living on some really tough land and has even managed to build places like Las Vegas and Phoenix in the middle of hostile deserts is a […]

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George Stigler, I think, once quipped, "If you never missed a flight in your life, you've spent too much time in an airport." While there is much wisdom in this observation, I would recommend not taking it too seriously. We like to get to airports early so that we do not miss our flights. There […]

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The Ultimate Resource

A former student sends me the link to this amazing video. Julian Simon (as close to an intellectual hero as I have) called people the Ultimate Resource. Here is an example of why. Keep this in mind when you hear people worrying about 1.4 billion Chinese getting richer than us, or trying to convince you […]

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Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone. Two quick thoughts for the start of the year: We’ve managed to explore only about 5% of the oceans in our entire human history to this point. This means that 95% of the oceans remain unexplored. We’ve managed to explore about only 8 miles down into the surface of the Earth. […]

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Superman is Smiling

Oh no! There’s only 4,200 cubic kilometers of Krypton left in the entirety of Earth’s atmosphere. If humans keep using Krypton at current rates … oops … scratch that.

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Grave Water

If water cannot be priced right in the “free-market capitalist” United States, then there is little hope that it is going to be priced right around the rest of the world. If you wish to be worried about an environmental problem, making good use of the world’s fresh water supplies is top of the list […]

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Cooler Heads Prevailing

Did I say cooler? Here’s Jeff Sachs as the world approaches 7 billion people: The world population continues its rapid ascent … unless the world population stabilizes during the 21st century, the consequences for humanity could be grim … A rising population puts enormous pressures on a planet already plunging into environmental catastrophe. Sachs himself […]

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In 2010, the total amount of installed solar capacity in the United States was 956 Megawatts. That sounds like a lot. But by my estimates, a typical US household requires a flow of 1.24 kilowatts. (The EIA reports average household energy use per year to be 10,896 kilowatt-hours (that’s a stock measure that we need […]

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