Latest Articles
-
Presidential candidates may forgo shooting small animals to impress voters this year
This presidential election, for the first time in decades, will not feature candidates for the highest office in the land donning hunting gear and going out with guns to shoot small animals fleeing in terror. The contrast to the 2004 election, in which both candidates made a publicity stunt out of killing for votes, is stark.
In September of that year, The Arizona Republic published in September a strong op-ed by former White House speechwriter Matthew Scully, who excoriated both presidential candidates for killing innocent creatures while trolling for votes. Scully, a true-red Republican who loathes cruelty to animals, wrote:
-
What we don’t know (but think we do) about oil prices might hurt us
Predicting the future is hard. It's so difficult that even teams of analysts using fancy models get results like this:
This isn't back-of-the-envelope stuff. This is the U.S. Energy Information Administration's official prediction for oil prices, circa 2007. According to the "high price" scenario, oil may reach $100 per barrel some time around 2030. But wait: oil was at $127 last week. So, not only was the EIA projection wrong -- it was wildly and completely wrong.
Okay, everyone makes mistakes, even energy analysts. In 2008, the EIA cleaned up its act and produced this forecast:
-
An alternative to global industrial agriculture
At the conclusion to an article on the global food crisis, Walden Bello discusses an idea put forward by an international farmer's group, Via Campesina:
-
-
RNC ‘Victory Chair’ talks about McCain’s climate agenda
Grist recently caught a few minutes with Carly Fiorina, the “Victory Chair” of the Republican National Committee. (Quite the title, eh? Apparently it means she’s “the primary advocate for John McCain and the Republican Party” at the RNC.) Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a former executive at both AT&T and Lucent Technologies, is […]
-
Owls are wimps
“Old growth had nothing to do with it. [The spotted owl]’s not dying because of the loggers, but because it’s a wimp!” — Bill Pickell, retired manager for the Washington Contract Loggers Association
-
The climate crisis cannot be solved without cost-benefit analysis
Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown law professor, has written an essay arguing against the embrace of cost-benefit analysis by environmentalists. She suggests that environmentalists enjoy nature in a very concrete and reverential manner that cannot be captured by economic analysis. I think this is a fairly substantial misinterpretation of the use of cost-benefit analysis. Heinzerling makes […]
-
Saudis/OPEC don’t control the price of oil any more
With Bush going to Saudi Arabia to beg -- again -- for lower prices, the media is gaga over a confrontation that has about as much significance as a Rocky Balboa fight.
Even the venerable NYT just published an article, "Bush Rebuffed on Oil Plea in Saudi Arabia," that opens, "With the price of oil hitting record highs, President Bush used a private visit with King Abdullah to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudis to increase oil production and was rejected yet again."
Unlike the 1970s and 1980s and even much of the 1990s, neither OPEC nor the Saudis any longer control the price of oil.
If any country had a million barrels a day of (sellable) spare oil capacity, they could make more than $100 million a day selling it, even if that much new oil dropped prices 20%, which it probably wouldn't.
Who would sit on that kind of money? Yes, the Saudis are selling over 8 million barrels a day, so they don't really need the money. But if they have any significant excess capacity, it is sour or high-sulfur crude (see the other experts on the full CNBC interview here). Such crude is not currently in demand: "Many refineries are not set up to process such crude because it is more difficult and expensive to refine into products."
-
‘Science’: nitrogen as important as carbon in climate change
Speaking of the troubles associated with industrial agriculture and its fertilizer regime, check this out: The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the […]
-
Snippets from the news
• Bush admin bars drilling near Alaska’s Lake Teshekpuk in exchange for OK to drill elsewhere. • Australian kangaroos may be culled after all. • Obesity contributes to global warming. • Climate change will lead to barbarization. • Illinois requires green cleaners in schools.
