I’ve worked with my friend Stephen Decanio, an economics professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara, for many years. He’s an economist who, like me, has a deep skepticism about the computer models used to analyze the economics of climate change. He’s also a keen observer of the
Read moreImagine a company where the CEO says “We’ll never raise prices, borrow money, or increase our expenses under any circumstances, nor will we act to expand existing or create new markets when we have a competitive advantage in doing so”. You’d think that CEO was loony. But this
Read moreOne commonly expressed belief among those who deny climate change is that the scientists are “in it for the money”. Texas governor Rick Perry stated this point of view bluntly (but inarticulately) on Aug. 17, 2011: “I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think
Read moreWhile I don’t agree with all the details, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein has taken a decent first crack at the question of who’s responsible for the increase in the national debt these past few years. As I pointed out last August, it’s incumbent on people
Read moreMichael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations did a useful analysis last fall of the jobs the US could expect from drastically reducing oversight and expanding oil and gas drilling, both on and offshore. There are a few important insights from this work, the main one being that advocates
Read moreThe NY Times had an article Monday 16 January 2012 discussing how new technologies are challenging the role of traditional journals in science. Having free and open access to scientific results is one way to accelerate technological change . The old model of closed Journals for which people and institutions pay
Read moreClimate progress today once again summarizes the reasons why the alleged tradeoff between economic growth and environmental protection is really a false choice. This is a story that cannot be told enough times, given how plausible and pervasive people mistakenly think this tradeoff is. Here’s the beginning few paragraphs
Read moreBack on Dec 23rd, 2011, Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOM wrote about their top ten green stories of 2011 (as measured by number of clicks) and my post giving “Four reasons why cloud computing is efficient” was #3, which ain’t bad. The original post was published on July 24, 2011.
Read moreClimate progress points to a wonderful video showing the difference between climate and weather. Watch:
Read moreClimate Progress reports on Al Gore’s recent work promoting the use of video games to educate the public about climate science. This is yet another example of how information technology can be a game changer, and we’re only at the beginning of learning how to use it for
Read moreI chatted with Steve Lohr of the NY Times yesterday about the implications of the last six decades of progress in computing efficiency, and his blog today reflects our conversation nicely. He also talked about my new book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, which will
Read moreLast Halloween (October 31, 2011) I gave a talk on the long-term trends in the efficiency of computing at Stanford, and I’m finally getting around to posting the link. On a related note, the trends I talk about in the Stanford talk were listed as #5 in the
Read moreThe EPA today announced stricter rules on mercury emissions from power plants, which is an important development for those interested in greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because many of the older coal plants have no pollution controls and have social costs much higher than the value of the electricity they
Read moreMy book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, will be released on February 15, 2012. In Chapter 6, I discuss the power of mobile information and communication technology, and I reproduce that section below. The Power of Mobile ICT The performance of electronic computers has shown
Read moreSteve Lohr wrote a great article for the NY Times today titled “The Internet Gets Physical”, where he explores what he thinks is the next big thing (and I think he’s right). The article states: “…the protean Internet technologies of computing and communications are rapidly spreading beyond the lucrative
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