Academia
In Memoriam: David Getches
We are very sorry to report the death of David Getches, who was the Raphael J. Moses Professor of Natural Resources Law at the University of Colorado School of Law. His fields were water law, public land law, environmental law, and Indian law. Professor Getches several books on water law and one on Indiana law. …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Law and “The Law of the Horse”
“The Law of the Horse” is the title of the (perhaps apocryphal) treatise on the same subject. The point of the reference is that “there’s no there there,” as Gertrude Stein might have said: the law of the horse would simply be a compendium of contract cases that happened to involve horses, tort cases that …
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CONTINUE READINGSea-Level Rise Rockets Ahead Due to Climate Change
Here’s a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: An international research team has shown that the rate of sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years and has shown a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature …
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CONTINUE READINGA Note to Environmental Scholars
…and to all scholars, really. You are not an explorer. Now that the academic year is over and I’m finally getting the time to write, I’ve been looking through scholarly abstracts. In literally dozens of them, the author says that he or she is “exploring” a particular issue or topic. What’s wrong with that? It serves …
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CONTINUE READINGNational Academies Press makes reports available for free
Early this month, the National Academies Press, which publishes National Research Council reports like this recent one on America’s Climate Choices, announced that it will make all pdf versions of its publications available for free downloads. Anyone who does research on environmental science or policy (among other topics) should be happy to hear this news. …
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CONTINUE READINGA Friendly Note to Richard Muller
Richard Muller is a Berkeley physicist who has expressed skepticism over the integrity of some climate science. For example, he suggested that the famous hockey stick might be a distortion because the only sources with temperature readings that go back far enough in time might be located near heat sources. Not surprisingly, climate deniers and their political …
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CONTINUE READINGHighlights from a Property Exam
It’s springtime, so a professor’s fancy turns to — grading exams. Well, not fancy, but it is part of the job — perhaps the most boring. That’s why I’m so grateful to those students who inject levity into the task — whether they intended to do so or not. Students are writing quickly, so sometimes …
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CONTINUE READINGMay 23rd Sacramento Lunchtime Panel on Meeting California’s Renewable Energy Goals
For Legal Planet readers who will be in the Sacramento area next Monday, UCLA and UC Berkeley Schools of Law will be hosting a free lunchtime panel on policies to help California meet its renewable energy goals. The keynote speaker will be Ken Alex, Governor Brown’s Senior Advisor and Director of the Office of Planning …
CONTINUE READINGGood news, bad news on understanding climate science: WaPo and Los Alamitos ed boards
You can’t get to good climate policy if policymakers don’t believe (or don’t profess to believe) that there’s a problem to fix. With this truism in mind, it’s kind of a “two roads diverged in the woods” morning for understanding climate science and policy. First we have the editorial board of the Washington Post, not …
CONTINUE READINGNew Legal Planet iPhone/iPad app provides easy mobile access to blog
I know many of you wake up daily wondering whether there might ever be a way to bring Legal Planet directly to your iPhone or iPad, with features such as push notifications, easy scanning and scrolling of recent content, designation of unread and previously-read posts, saving of favorites, and easy emailing of posts to friends …
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