Academia
Sea-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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CONTINUE READINGThe Public Trust Doctrine: A Prophet Without Honor
Michael C. Blumm and R.D. Guthrie of Lewis & Clark Law School have an interesting new paper soon to appear in the U.C. Davis Law Review, pointing out that the public trust doctrine has assumed enormous significance in the jurisprudence of several countries around the world, including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Uganda, Kenya, South …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Expanding Number of Environmental Law Teachers
In a previous posting, I remarked on the increase in the number of publications in environmental law. I thought it would be useful to look at the number of law professors in the field. This was not a rigorous social science survey, so the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Some caveats …
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