A nice piece, Global Smarming, by Ian Williams in The Guardian, on some of the jockeying on the issue of climate change. It contrasts the actions of British Petroleum with those of Exxon Mobil. BP in 1997 decided to lower its carbon emissions below the 1990 level by 2010. It achieved the goal in 3 […]
Read more...Here we’ve had a few months of favorable oil prices, and as a result, oil has taken a back burner to other stories. It’s beginning to come to the fore, mainly in not-positive ways. We have two items today, one a very good post on Econbrowser, “Saudi Oil Production Cuts,” and what they might say […]
Read more...Roland Piquepaille has a very good post on his Technology Trends blog, “Creating energy from wasted heat.” Although much of the news about climate change has been grim (both the severity of the situation and the lack of political willingness, at least in the US, to even admit there is a problem), it is important […]
Read more...Barry Ritzhold of the Big Picture has had a run of posts lately on topics near and dear to my heart. He has written before on the subject of prediction markets, and his latest comment, on a particularly wrongheaded story in the New York Times, makes some important observations about markets in general. This topic […]
Read more...A reader comment on Angry Bear on the climate change and environmental degradation was sufficiently articulate and well argued to be featured as a separate post. The writer Stormy makes a number of important points: 1. The IPCC Report is actually conservative; it doesn’t touch the issue of species die-off, already occurring at alarming levels […]
Read more...This comment, “Climate is Changing. Now What?” by Marcelo Riensi on Global Economy Matters, discusses the types of actions available to deal with global warming: reducing emissions via conservation and improved energy efficiency; managing the costs and disruption as efficiently as possible; and finding replacement sources of energy: [T]he IPCC report can be summarized thus: […]
Read more...Below is a comment, On Climate Change and Good Sense,” from Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times on the UK’s Stern Report, which estimated the economic costs of global warming. The report has been criticized for using too low a discount rate, which would have the effect of making the financial impact look larger. Brittan […]
Read more...A good post by Aapo Markkanen at Global Economy Matters on the effect of global warming on migration and how that might interact with demographics. And he also points out that migration can exacerbate existing conflicts: The UN-backed panel on climate change released its latest report on climate change last Friday… [T]here wasn’t much that […]
Read more...Well, that isn’t exactly what he says, but close. Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ chief economics editor, in his February 6 commentary, “In spite of sceptics, it is worth reducing climate risk,” says that economists are the big skeptics about global warming, and the possible consequences are too dire for them to continue to take […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal’s editors have weighed in with their objections to the first of four reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued last week. And predictably, they dispute the work of 2000 scientists from 113 countries by claiming the “full scientific report” due out in May undercuts the “short policy report” issued […]
Read more...We have to admit to being a little slow on the uptake from time to time. We reported on the FT’s February 2 editorial, which commented on the publication of the first of four reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Media watch item: still no editorial yet on this topic in the New […]
Read more...The attack on the UN’s Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, which issued its dire first of four reports on February 2 (see today’s earlier post for details) began even before the report was issued. We found this story in the Guardian, thanks to Brad DeLong’s blog, Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Scientists and economists have […]
Read more...As you doubtless know by now, on February 2, the UN issued the first of four reports due out this year by the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change. The paper, six years in the making, draws on the work of over 2000 highly respected climate scientists from 113 countries. And the conclusions are pretty unambiguous: […]
Read more...This informative commentary in today’s Financial Times, by Jerome Guillet, an investment banker specializing in the energy sector, makes the observation that the energy projects that get built are the ones that are cheapest to get financed, but in the end, are often not the cheapest to operate. Utilities, which can obtain government guaranteed financing, […]
Read more...This story hasn’t gotten much coverage in the US, but Australia, which has never had abundant water, has gone through a prolonged drought which appears to be becoming semi-permanent. This is particularly problematic, not simply in terms of quality of living, but also because Australia is a major agricultural exporter (wheat and cattle), and a […]
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