Decline of the Empire

Effective Altruism?

Poor Dylan Matthews.

Dylan spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity ... and came away ... worried.

We've got great stuff today. Dylan's article is an Idiot's Guide To Flatland.

And Dylan, you should be worried. 

There are some remarkable insights in Dylan's article, but then there is the usual stumbling around in the dark. I shall point out both, but Dylan got more right than he knows about.

California Farmers Fight Drought By Using More Water

Perhaps you think the human condition could not be more absurd. If you think it could not be worse, I offer you the NPR story The Twisty Logic Of The Drought: Grow Thirsty Crops To Dig Deeper Wells.

Here's the audio and a transcript (emphasis added). I'll say a few things at the end.

 

Is Robert Reich Insane?

The title question occurred to me as I watched the video below.

 

Reich believes the Fed should not raise interest rates because keeping rates at the zero-bound is creating jobs and propping up wages. And in so far as inflation is non-existent, there is no reason to raise rates.

Wildlife Versus Humans

At The New Yorker you will find a story called Who Would Kill A Giraffe?

Well, Sabrina Corgatellli would, and did (Facebook).

You've probably heard about Cecil the Lion, but you didn't know about this anonymous giraffe.

U.S. Emissions Update — LOL!

Clearly the study I reported on in yesterday's post makes climate activists nervous. So Climate Central's Bobby Magill sought out Harvard's Robert N. Stavins for comment. 

Robert N. Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard University’s Environmental Economics Program, said that it is well known that the Great Recession contributed to a fall in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in addition to utilities switching from burning coal to natural gas.

Stavins said that if the study’s methods prove to be rigorous, its results would be “interesting, but not revolutionary.”

“The fact that emissions fell because of decreased economic activity is not particularly informative for public policy purposes, unless of course one thinks that retarding economic growth is a sensible climate policy,” Stavins said.

LOL!

Having your head up your ass is a prerequisite for being allowed to teach at Harvard.

Climate Central's Magill finishes strong.

But that’s exactly what the study’s authors want the public to consider.

“In places like the U.S. and Europe and developed parts of the world, we need to be critically thinking about whether we should grow our consumption indefinitely,” Davis said.

“We have to question this idea about growing consumption being the goal of society.”

Good luck with that 

What Caused An Emissions Decline In The United States?

A recent paper which appeared in the journal Nature Communications has not gotten nearly the attention it deserves. This is not surprising in so far as the conclusions of those who wrote it are not compatible with human expansion on this planet. The paper is called Drivers of the US CO2 emissions 1997–2013, and one of the co-authors was quoted in a Climate News Network story as follows:

If we don’t understand the factors that led to this emissions reduction, we won’t know how to effectively reduce emissions in the future.

That statement is touchingly naive, but is undoubtedly an accurate assessment of the situation. On the other hand, what if no one wants to talk about the most important factors behind the emissions decline in the United States?

I will examine the Nature Communications paper below, but first let's look at the recent carbon dioxide emissions decline in the United States. I'll also look at the bullshit politicians and mainstream journalists come up with to explain that decline.

CO2 emissions fell dramatically after the economic meltdown in 2008. Emissions bottomed out in 2012. There were small increases 2013 and 2014.

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