His West Virginia farm upbringing came in handy as he challenged Mongol porters to contests shooting wild game. Other times, he went hungry. Once, in China, dinner was a bowl of stewed camel paws.One more time, just for the record. Stewed. Camel. Paws.
- The total precipitation that falls on the world in one year is about one meter of rain, the height of a golden retriever.
- The total amount of rain that has fallen on the world since the industrial revolution began is about 200 meters, the height of Hoover Dam.
- The amount of rain that has fallen on the world since the time of Moses is enough to fill up all the oceans.
- The amount of rain that has fallen on the world since the Ice Age ended is enough to fill up all the oceans four times.
- The amount of rain that has fallen on the world since the dinosaurs died is enough to fill up all the oceans 20,000 times—or the entire volume of the earth three times.
- The amount of rain that has fallen on the world since coal formed is enough to fill up the earth 15 times.
- The amount of rain that has fallen on the world since oxygen formed is enough to fill the earth 100 times.
The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we’re gazing into the energy future, not because it’s unimportant, but because it’s beyond our power to control.Uh, okay, I don't need a Prius after all. In fact, I don't matter. In fact, who is I?
BP is incredibly unpopular -- one recent poll had it at 6% (no typo) approval rating, while OJ Simpson never got below 11%.The diary is a keeper, about the Dems' new "Go Big Or Go Home" Congressional strategy for a blowout energy bill. Too bad we had to lose the Gulf to win the climate.
Most scientists know and acknowledge these uncertainties, and reason as follows. We're in an unprecedented situation, with regard to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the rate at which it is rising. Because this is unprecedented, we are not sure what is going to happen. But global warming is very likely, and reasonably probable outcomes could be fatal. Ignoring it would be like Russian roulette. Want to play? I do not.
To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction. This is the turn that “SuperFreakonomics” takes, even as its authors repeatedly extoll their hard-headedness. All of which goes to show that, while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us. ♦
So what you're suggesting is that they remove every selling point of the book and make it, uh... correct and well-written?Guess I should visit DeLong more often. (Don't give me any more of that Kolko stuff, anon.)
Last week, the Optimum Population Trust published a paper it had commissioned from the London School of Economics estimating the effect on carbon emissions of providing birth control to women who want to use it, but currently lack access. It found that spending on birth control is six times as effective, as a means of reducing carbon emissions, as spending on renewable energy....Hopefully, since America is politically incapable of addressing this issue, someone else will be able to pick it up. The Europeans, perhaps. Or maybe the Chinese.But worth reading the whole short piece from The Economist.
John McCain introduced her as "one of America's greatest energy experts," CNBC's Maria Bartiromo said "I think the biggest value she brings to the ticket is her expertise in energy," and Haley Barbour called her a "bonafide energy expert." Palin's petro-knowledge has become a given on the right.What's the source of this deep knowledge? It doesn't come from Palin's multi-school odyssey from which she eventually earned a BS in communications. It doesn't come from her experience rattling off scores as a sportscaster. It doesn't come from overseeing ice rink construction in Wasilla. Nope, her energy expertise comes from being appointed to an oil and gas commission, a job she quit after less than a year.Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Chairwoman Sarah Palin said Friday she is resigning amid frustration that she is being forced to keep silent about ethics allegations against Republican Party of Alaska chairman Randy Ruedrich. ... Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed both Ruedrich and Palin to the state commission last spring.That's it. That's freakin' it.
Just one more point about Sarah Palin's op-ed in this morning's Washington Post: Derek Thompson and others have pointed out to me that the piece does not contain the words pollution, emissions, carbon, or global warming. As Derek says, this is a bit like an op-ed on health care that doesn't contain the words spending, costs, coverage, or medicine, or a high-school paper on Catcher in the Rye that doesn't contain the words, um, Catcher in the Rye.
I find this absence sickening. Deciding how to deal with climate change is an uncertain and complicated process. It requires weighing costs in the present against benefits a hundred years in the future. It requires weighing costs in the U.S. against benefits in places like India and Bangladesh. It requires weighing concrete GDP against the moral emphemera of the world's floral and animal diversity. And it requires sacrificing today to ward off uncertain and unquantifiable future risks. This tremendous empirical uncertainty demands reflection and humility.
And then you have Sarah Palin show up, blathering about how we're "destroying America's economy" while we're "literally" sitting on mountains of oil and drill baby drill and blah blah blah. Sickening.
In a triumph for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed sweeping legislation Friday that calls for the nation's first limits on pollution linked to global warming and aims to usher in a new era of cleaner, yet more costly energy.
...Friday's vote on the measure is expected to be close, but multiple sources on both sides of the aisle say they're confident that the bill will pass — with some Republican votes — following a deal between House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson.
...The measure, which is likely to have a tough go in the Senate, is a linchpin of Obama's first-year agenda. A victory would give the White House momentum going into a vote on health care later this summer.
