When Can We Attribute Extreme Events to Climate Change?
Moscow suffered from a severe heat wave in the summer of 2010, with temperatures reaching 101 degrees and an average temperature 14 degrees higher than normal for July. What are the odds that the heat wave was due to climate change? RealClimate presents the results of an analysis that was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The analysis indicates that there was an 80% probability that climate change caused the heat wave. A previo...
CONTINUE READING(What Remains Of) The Conservative Mind Melts Down
Once upon a time, George Will had a reputation as the thinking person's conservative. No more. He's not only a climate denier, but a couple of weeks ago he smeared Elizabeth Warren with a kind of red-baiting that I haven't seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now he's at it again, sort of. And what says speaks volumes about what remains of the conservative mind. His October 28 column has him in right-wing enforcer mode, attacking Mitt Romney for being an u...
CONTINUE READINGHow Plaintiffs Can Win More Takings Cases: A Proposal for California
I've never been particularly sympathetic to regulatory takings claims; like many on the left of center, I'm wary of expanding a constitutional doctrine with the potential to severely injure good land-use planning and reconstitute Lochnerism. That said, it's hard to look at the reports of many takings cases without getting a strong sense that a lot of property owners are, to use a technical term, getting screwed. One might find a good example in Landgate v. Califo...
CONTINUE READINGNew Voices in Environmental Law
This blog features some work by some junior scholars and some established ones. One thing that we've tried to do, from time to time, is to direct attention to new electronic sources on environmental law. In that spirit, here some blogs and twitter feeds featuring junior scholars that we think are worth a look: Matt Festa and Ken Stahl: The Land Use Profs blog Brigham Daniels, Blake Hudson, Dave Owen, Lincoln Davies, Hannah Wiseman: The Environmental Law Profs bl...
CONTINUE READINGUCLA Emmett Study Says Cool Roofs are Way Cool (and Bring Lots of Environmental Benefits)
UCLA Law's Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment released a new report today called Bright Roofs, Big City: Keeping L.A. Cool Through an Aggressive Cool Roof Program. The report is the second Anthony Pritzker Environmental Law and Policy Brief issued by the Center. Cara Horowitz, the author of the report, used a dataset of Los Angeles rooftops and estimated energy savings the city could achieve simply by using roofing surfaces that "reflect ... more o...
CONTINUE READINGAssessing the California Environmental Quality Act at 40
On Friday, November 4th, the U.C. Davis School of Law's California Environmental Law & Policy Center will host an important conference: "CEQA at 40: A Look Back, and Ahead." This year marks the 40th anniversary of California's influential environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Modeled on and inspired by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), CEQA over the past four decades has evolved into a far more powerful environmental assess...
CONTINUE READINGPeet’s Coffee Thinks You’re Stupid
...or at least not very important. Following up on my posts concerning Peet's membership on the California Chamber of Commerce's board of directors (here and here; Eric follows up with a left hook here), another one of our intrepid readers e-mailed Peet's to get an explanation. Here's what the reader got back: Peet's is one of more than 15,000 member companies (including many other coffee companies and retailers) of the California Chamber of Commerce. As a Califo...
CONTINUE READINGThe Credibility of Climate Science
Climate denialists contend that climate science is either the result of a conspiracy of some kind or of groupthink plus institutional incentives to support alarmist predictions. The conspiracy theory makes even less sense than most conspiracy theories, because there would have to be hundreds, perhaps thousands of people involved, scattered across the world at numerous institutions. The other theory is less ridiculous, but it doesn't hold up. New research can go...
CONTINUE READINGTime to Put Nino Out to Pasture
Intellectual history often presents its students with shocks, most prominently: how is it that people seemed to reject an idea that in retrospect was brilliant or useful? Conversely, how is it that people believed that intellectual mediocrities were learned savants? Justice Scalia's latest statement on Supreme Court doctrine suggests that he will be a fit subject for the latter topic: Justice Antonin Scalia predicted Monday that the Supreme Court’s decision in Kel...
CONTINUE READINGIf Cost-Benefit Analysis is Good, Is More Cost-Benefit Analysis Always Better?
Of course, not everyone agrees that CBA is good in the first place. It remains anathema to many environmentalists. My own view is that it can be a useful tool so long as its limitations are clearly understood. But just because something is good doesn't mean that more is better. My grandmother's view was that if a recipe called for two eggs and one tablespoon of butter, four eggs and two tablespoons would produce an even tastier result -- a theory that did not alwa...
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