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Money: not everything

A little while ago, AEI got widely pilloried for offering scientists $10,000 for a critical assessment of the policy-relevant portions of the IPCC report. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech just paid Robert Kennedy Jr. $20,000 for an hour-long speech criticizing President Bush’s environmental record. Point being, there’s lots of money sloshing around, and while funding sources are […]

Come on Goreacle, the digital public wants you

According to Tim Schaller over at Tapped, the total number of signatories at DraftGore.com jumped from 39,300 to 44,470 in the 72 hours following the Oscars — a 13.5 percent increase! It’s up 1,000 more since Schaller blogged it this morning. Though I’m not sure if signatory No. 45,452, a Mr. Motha Fuka, counts as […]

Funny

Starts with an Al

David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, says what’s on everyone’s mind.

Apply already

You may or may not be aware that Grist is looking to hire a D.C.-based political reporter. Here’s a capsule summary: Grist.org seeks an enterprising, sharp-witted, D.C.-based reporter to write feature stories and contribute frequent blog posts, tracking and breaking news about environmental and energy-related goings-on inside the Beltway. The full job description is here. […]

Action-packed!

It’s a huge week for global warming in Congress. Over at dKos, Cunctator brings you the full schedule.

Sigh

Back when I first read Stewart Brand’s "Environmental Heresies," I wrote about it admiringly and, in retrospect, somewhat naively. Of the nuclear debate, I said that there’s an array of great arguments against nuclear power, and one real argument in its favor: There’s no other way to cut our CO2 emissions fast enough. That argument, […]

CSI: My Apiary

U.S. honeybees disappearing from hives, not even leaving a note Don’t let the pharmaceutical giants get wind of this: U.S. honeybees are suffering from “colony collapse disorder.” Beekeepers in 24 states say their pollinating pals are simply disappearing, with losses of 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast and, in some cases, more than […]

It’s not a moral health club

One of the subtlest and most dangerous flaws haunting environmental analysis is the tendency to view the world as some sort of moral health club. The world is not a series of tests; it is an imperfect place we do our imperfect best to make better.

Bjørn Lomborg, for example, loves to point out you can save more lives per dollar by funding clean water or mosquito netting than by fighting global warming. Economists and statisticians deal with the hard choices -- for other people anyway. I notice Lomborg never suggests that people would be better off donating money to UNICEF than buying copies of his books, or paying his speaking fees. I've never heard of a study comparing the benefits of funding economics departments at universities to mosquito nets; maybe we could get by with one-third of the economists, and use 66 percent of the money we currently spend on various types of economics to help save the lives of poor people.

Same as it ever was

A right-wing think tank called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has been selling this gimmicky horseshit to the blogs and mainstream media. It’s everywhere; Drudge picked it up, and a friend of mine saw it on the local news here in Seattle just last night. Jim Henley nails it so perfectly I just have […]