What’s it like to be climate scientist Michael Mann? Think bounty (not the good kind)
Renowned climate scientist Michael Mann was at UCLA and the Emmett Center today to give a talk promoting his soon-to-be-released book, "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines." Mann, who has been called "one of the most vilified men in the highly vilified field of climate science," created the famed "hockey stick" long-term temperature graph and was a central figure in the 2009 email hacking scandal. He has withstood personal attack...
CONTINUE READINGThe PM2.5 Risk: Even Greater Than We Thought
The more we find out about ultra-fine particles called PM2.5, the more dangerous to health they seem to be. E&E News reports: The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center study, published in tomorrow's Archives of Internal Medicine, found a "strong association" between exposure to fine-particle pollution and strokes. The study was funded in part by U.S. EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. . . . Researchers suggested there is a strong link ...
CONTINUE READINGNinth Circuit Dumps U.S. Forest Service’s Sierra Plan, Bureaucratic-Speak
The U.S. Court of Appeals recently issued a major decision invalidating the U.S. Forest Service's 2004 Plan directing the USFS's management of the 11 national forests (totaling 11.5 million acres) in the Sierra Nevada range. A divided Ninth Circuit panel found that the environmental impact statement accompanying the Bush Administration plan--which loosened logging and grazing restrictions previously imposed in the waning days of the Clinton Administration--violated t...
CONTINUE READINGChina Vice-President Xi Jinping in America: some thoughts on US-China environmental collaboration
Some sobering developments confront us on the climate and environment front as Vice-President (and future head of China) Xi Jinping prepares to visit the United States this week. Despite an unprecedented push to reduce pollution and develop cleaner energy sources, China’s emissions of greenhouse gases and traditional pollutants have continued to soar. Chinese annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) surpassed the US in 2007. In 2010, they were 20% greater. By 201...
CONTINUE READINGWhy the Right Has Run Out of Ideas
Thomas Friedman's column laments that the Republican Party is no longer offering solutions to pressing national problems. It's also common to see similar laments about current conservative thinkers in contrast to an earlier generation like Milton Friedman. It seems to me that much of the problem is that most of the tools that can actually be used to address policy issues are no longer considered acceptable by many Republicans and conservatives. If you have no tools ...
CONTINUE READINGSvitlana Kravchenko
We are saddened by news of the death yesterday of Svitlana Kravchenko, the director of the LLM Program in Environmental and Natural Resources Law.at the University of Oregon Law School and wife of John Bonine, a distinguished environmental scholar. She was the author of 12 books and numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. Among her books was HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE ENVIRONMENT: CASES, LAW and POLICY (with John Bonine) (Carolina Academic Press, 2008), which was the...
CONTINUE READINGSenator Santorum and the Environmental Chalice of Evil
Here is what Santorum said yesterday (from Politico): “You hear all the time, the left: ‘Oh, the conservatives are the anti-science party.’ No we’re not. We’re the truth party,” the former Pennsylvania senator said at a campaign event in Oklahoma City. “Because the left is always looking for a way to control you. They’re always trying to make you feel guilty so you’ll give them power so they can lord it over you. They do it on the environment all the ...
CONTINUE READINGMaryland representative thinks law clinics should only represent the indigent
Maryland representative Patrick McDonough apparently believes that Maryland law clinics should be restricted to representing only the indigent. He just introduced a bill, HB 751, that attempts to legislate just that: Except for pro bono litigation on behalf of an indigent individual, a law clinic affiliated with a law school at a constituent institution of the University System of Maryland may not initiate or participate in litigation. (I grew up in Maryland, so I tak...
CONTINUE READINGInsurance Salesmen Should Be Selling The Public On Climate Change
As Dan's post described, the insurance industry has a major, profit-driven stake in stopping climate change. So given the high risks for these private companies as the Earth bakes, why aren't they the public face of the need to stop climate change, instead of controversial figures like Al Gore, environmental leaders, and scientists? Wouldn't the public be more likely to take climate change risks and impacts more seriously if they could clearly see the economic consequenc...
CONTINUE READINGHow “Moneyball” Can Make A Great Downtown
Michael Lewis's Moneyball was more than a book about how the small-market Oakland Athletics employed unconventional, statistics-based methods to beat bigger-money teams in the game of baseball. The genius of the book -- and I'm probably biased here as a lifelong Oakland A's fan -- was its ability to expose human beings' flawed sense of perception. When trying to observe trends, such as how well a batter hits with runners in scoring position, the human brain tends to priv...
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