Obviously, I need to read this book.

Is it possible to call someone an incompetent hack any more politely and subtly than this?

This sounds promising: "Don't look now, but cap-and-trade is coming to the United States—and there's nothing the Senate can do about it. Earlier today, California, New Mexico, and three Canadian provinces—Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia—unveiled a plan to set up a carbon-trading system for greenhouse gases by January 2012." (Therefore I predict that the Republicans in Congress will try to find a way to squish it.)

As full-throated a "yay!" as possible, under the circumstances.

Let us hope so: "For a long time, coal was the cheapest energy source because the industry was allowed to offload so many of its hidden costs onto the public—asthma-causing air pollution, shoddy safety regulations, coal debris dumped in Appalachian streams... But as the government starts regulating these side effects more closely, it will become clear that coal isn't actually all that cheap. Meanwhile, natural gas prices are falling and prices for renewables are tumbling. Fewer and fewer utilities want to keep plunking money down on coal."

"The paper considers nonparametric specification tests of quantile curves for a general class of nonstationary processes. Using Bahadur representation and Gaussian approximation results for nonstationary time series, simultaneous confidence bands and integrated squared difference tests are proposed to test various parametric forms of the quantile curves with asymptotically correct type I error rates. A wild bootstrap procedure is implemented to alleviate the problem of slow convergence of the asymptotic results. In particular, our results can be used to test the trends of extremes of climate variables, an important problem in understanding climate change. Our methodology is applied to the analysis of the maximum speed of tropical cyclone winds. It was found that an inhomogeneous upward trend for cyclone wind speeds is pronounced at high quantile values. However, there is no trend in the mean lifetime-maximum wind speed."

" we need to take a new tack, moving away from reliance on centralized, top-down approaches—the treaties and accords that have proved disappointingly ineffective thus far—and towards a more flexible, multi-level approach. Based in the principles of adaptive governance—which are designed to produce programs that adapt quickly and easily to new information and experimental results—such an approach would encourage diversity and innovation in the search for solutions, while at the same time pointedly recasting the problem as one in which every culture and community around the world has an inherent interest."

"Edwards argues that all our knowledge about climate change comes from three kinds of computer models: simulation models of weather and climate; reanalysis models, which recreate climate history from historical weather data; and data models, used to combine and adjust measurements from many different sources. Meteorology creates knowledge through an infrastructure (weather stations and other data platforms) that covers the whole world, making global data. This infrastructure generates information so vast in quantity and so diverse in quality and form that it can be understood only by computer analysis—making data global. Edwards describes the science behind the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that over the years data and models have converged to create a stable, reliable, and trustworthy basis for establishing the reality of global warming."

Uncle Paul explains the economics of climate change policy.

"Maybe we can outsmart global warming with gumption and can-do and thousands of tiny robots!" says me.
"Maybe all we need is a simple technological solution, like installing blinds on the sky or an off switch for the sun," says Giblets.

Not peer reviewed, so one entertains the gravest suspicions.

How the Arctic got its ice.

"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." --- I would like to say that this is unfair to science fiction, but that would involve some special pleading...

Now this is what I call an epic take-down.

This would make a fine novel, but I'd prefer not to live through it. (Which is Wimberley's point.)

"On a non-insane level, the idea of trying to build machines that suck CO2 out of the air and then somehow store it is pretty clearly worth researching. That said, trees already do this quite well and our tree-planting technology is fine. Rather than wait around for the hypothetical “artificial trees” of the future why not just plant more trees? ... Which comes around to the overarching point that the term “geoengineering” often obscures more than it reveals. There’s a world of difference between offering financial incentives for people to build high-albedo roofs and building a miles-long hose to pump sulfur into the upper atmosphere. Do I get to be a bold contrarian thinker if I propose that surface parking lots should have more tree cover? Somehow it seems I don’t. But it makes much more sense to focus on practical deployments of proven technology (trees, white paint) than on trying to dream up the most fantastical possible solution."

"the Gamburtsev mountains are probably older than 34 million years and were the main centre for ice-sheet growth. Moreover, the landscape has most probably been preserved beneath the present ice sheet for around 14 million years." The Lovecraft jokes are growing less funny all the time.

Errr, surely the big glaring hole in this is that he never addresses why _manned_ space-flight would better serve the (laudable) goal of saving the planet than robots. (Extra negative bonus points for space-based solar power, which isn't inconceivable but presents vast, vast technical obstacles.)

Good profile of Steven Chu in, of all places, Rolling Stone.

Lowering global GDP by 5% can be achieved by eliminating countries which have over 40% of the world's population. Now, if one wanted to follow this particular line of madness to its end, you'd have to include the cost to richer countries of trade disruption (e.g., we might have to pay more for tea and commodity software without India, more for t-shirts without Bangladesh, more for coffee without Malawi) --- but the point is clear.

Conversely, the demand for Pan Am flights to the moon is much smaller than _very reasonable_ people have expected. This suggests an interesting question for retrospective studies of futurology: what's the variance? Quite conceivably, futurology is right _on average_, but with such a huge spread as to be unusable...

Kevin Drum on the basics of cap-and-trade

It is very sad to see one of the great scientists of our age saying, in effect, "I want to believe" and "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you!"

Obviously, Brumm is acting as a propaganda agent for the Mole People.

The phrase you are looking for is "the politics of resentment." Thank you.

"The point of environmental management isn't to denounce sin, it's to get prices right."

Bruce S. in fine form. Interviewer, maybe not so much. "An educated citizen is not a friction-free technocratic philistine myrmidon with an ISO rating. Those guys exist, don't get me wrong, but they bear the relationship to education that the Ron Paul c

Andrew Leonard has a much more positive reaction to Michael Pollan than I do.

Michael Pollan piece that makes me want to scream at him even when I agree with him on specific points. Gaaaaaarrrrrgh.

Opinions you should have (mostly; not about food).

"Major changes in Miocene terrestrial ecosystems, such as the expansion of grasslands and radiations among terrestrial herbivores such as horses, can be linked to these marked fluctuations in CO2"

Nth in the annual series. Worth reading, but skipping the other posters will cost you little.

"even when I have a notional openness to what he’s trying to say, the guy basically comes off like a used-car salesman"

On the compatibility of continued long-distance tourism with greatly-reduced CO2 emissions, and the broader point that there's immense room between "things continuing just as they are" and "economic collapse of modern civilization".

Energy != fossil fuels

" it is still a useful exercise to determine just how many whales would have to be harvested to supply the modern world with oil."

On the need for public goods to complement private economization on fossil fuels

"Dude! We put 20 million years' worth of accumulated carbon into the sky in just two centuries, and you think everything'll work like normal?" (not an actual quote)

"The problem of actually changing the world for the better is not going to be finessed with clever "online argumentation" software. To pull off that trick you have to get your hands dirty capturing, and wielding, political power."

Most of this is given over to a joyful demolition of an almost unbelievably bad piece on Cuba by a "permaculture activist"; not the kind of environmentalism I want, thank you (or the kind of socialism, either, come to that).

This is no more a "plain tale" than I am the raja of Kashmir. It would be a good thing to understand all the ways in which the reader's mind is being played with here. The ending is not for the squeamish.