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We need better ways to measure well-being

For a moment, let's ignore the political context of this NYT article (about how incumbents are having difficulty capitalizing on the "strong economy" in this fall's U.S. election). As ur-blogger Matthew Yglesias points out, there's something seriously amiss with reporting that describes the economy thus ...

... the economy has not looked so good in a long time. ... the Dow Jones industrial average has finally returned to its glory days of the late 1990's, setting records almost daily ... glowing economic statistics ...

... and so on, all with the subtext, "Hey, we're doing great!" -- all while burying the followng down in the bowels of paragraph 30:

A new series

We've all encountered them, shuffling across the cultural landscape like desiccated zombies: arguments about climate change that have been bludgeoned with a thousand rebuttals, but keep lurching to life, attacking again and again. Each time they appear, the search begins again for the same rebuttals, the same citations and resources. In the face of this kind of undead onslaught, even Buffy might lose her perk.

Coby Beck wants to help. Over the course of 2006, he's written a series of posts called "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic." He wanted to ...

... provide a layman's guide to defending against the assorted specious attacks that are out there, both by pointing out the basic logical fallacies they are based on and providing some appropriate reference material to avoid the typical "is too, is not" exchanges these things frequently devolve into.

Mission accomplished, as they say, almost 60 carefully argued posts and hundreds of citations later.

I'm very happy to report that Coby has agreed to join us here at Gristmill, and happier yet to report that he'll be bringing his series with him. Each entry will be updated, improved, or polished as necessary and then published on Gristmill, one per day.

Survival of the Ritziest

Threatened frogs get cushy new habitat at a Panamanian hotel Hundreds of frogs and toads can be found in an unusual habitat in Panama — Rooms 28 and 29 of the Hotel Campestre in the town of El Valle de Anton. An international crew of biologists, environmentalists, and zoo employees relocated the critters to save […]

Pace: the Final Frontier

Engineers hope to harvest human energy Scientists and engineers are looking to make use of human-powered energy. Don’t worry, they don’t want to hook you up to electrodes; the means of capturing the energy may be as unobtrusive as a matrix of pressure pads under sidewalks and floors. “When we walk along a pavement, eight […]

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic

A new series gives you the ammunition No matter how many times they are bludgeoned with informed rebuttals, the same skeptical arguments about climate change keep lurching back to life like zombies. It can get tiresome searching for the same counterarguments over and over again. A new series on Gristmill aims to put all those […]

Eco-friendly Fire

British arms manufacturer producing green weapons One of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers, British Aerospace, is investing heavily in eco-friendly weapons. Soldiers and civilians may now be blown up by a recyclable explosive, hit by a reduced-toxin rocket, or bombed by a fuel-efficient fighter jet. Biodegradable land mines and their victims both turn into compost […]

Fast food goes organic and natural

The succulent wares of Whole Foods’ enormous flagship store in Austin are always tempting, but especially so during a harried lunch hour. Everything in the vast prepared-food section looks irresistible. The salad bar features a mountain of fresh, organic toppings. Pricing is mostly by weight, so one can escape with a cup of splendid, coconutty […]

Cleared up once and for all

The answer depends on the exact question you're asking. Here is my view of the scientific consensus on a range of questions:

1) Did global warming cause Katrina? Or Rita? Or any single storm?

As far as I know, there exists not a single peer-reviewed article that connects global warming with the increased ferocity of any single storm. The commonly used dice analogy provides a good explanation of why the case is so hard to make. Assume the weather is determined by rolling a six-sided die, with a six corresponding to a massive hurricane. Now assume that by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, we've loaded the die to make six come up twice as frequently.

Now, we roll the die once, and it comes up six. Did it come up six because it was loaded? After all, a normal die has a 16% chance of coming up six, so it's absolutely possible that the die would have come up six even without the loading.

So the answer to this question is "maybe, maybe not, we just don't know," and I think it's likely to stay that way.

New scientific advance could help whales

This advance could nullify one of the primary excuses (I mean arguments) that nations use to continue whaling under the auspices of "scientific research." But of course, it won't do anything about the argument that whales are just like any other animal we eat, and therefore can be hunted like any other, which it seems more and more environmentalists accept.

Phoenix, Arizona

On Friday, it will be in Arizona. The Arizona Corporation Commission is set to vote on a proposed rule to increase the state's renewable energy standard to 15% by 2025, with 30% to come from distributed energy resources like rooftop solar.