Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Beachfront property and sunk costs

While we were grad students at UNC-Chapel Hill, we visited my wife’s uncle and his family on the Outer Banks. He built fishing boats, and lhey lived in a modest house in Buxton, near Hatteras lighthouse. Hatteras lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in the US. In 1999, Hatteras lighthouse was moved from its original location […]

EPA is Turning a Blind Eye to Some of the Most Toxic Chemicals it Produces

“Advanced recycling” is a toxic scam — now the EPA is turning a blind eye to some of the most toxic chemicals it produces – Environment Defense Fund, EDF Health What’s new: Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew a proposed rule covering 18 new chemicals, which would have paused industry efforts to turn toxic […]

The future of the American southwest

Years ago, I was invited to give a talk at Arizona State University in Tempe. My host told me to fly in early in the day, so he could take me walking in the desert. I’d never seen anything like it: mostly cactus and rocks. Seemed like Middle Earth. Since then, we’ve vacationed in Arizona […]

EV proliferation

Teslas are pretty popular here in Rhode Island. While that appears virtuous, it’s important to recall that 95% of Rhode Island electricity comes from natural gas, so those Teslas are running on fossil fuel. EVs are proliferating all over the planet: “Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Car News China reports that in the first half […]

Some good news

In the past six months, the Trump Administration, acting through Elon Musk’s DOGE, cut more than 10% of the staff at the National Weather Service. But it looks like TACO doesn’t just apply to tariffs: “The National Weather Service has received permission to hire 450 meteorologists, hydrologists and radar technicians just months after being hit […]

Why Plastics Recycling May Not Work

One reason recycling may not work for plastics is much of plastic molding uses virgin resin. Reusing plastics may not flow or work as well. We really need to look closely at our recycling effort to determine whether plastics can be reused. It may make better sense to destroy the material after one use if […]

The art of the fake deal

Trump has trumpeted his EU fossil fuel deal to sell $250bn worth of US oil, natural gas and nuclear technologies for each of the next three years. Like all things Trump, it’s all bluster. “Analysts were puzzled by a target that would involve decisions by shareholder-owned companies in a continent also trying to decarbonise its […]

Depleting our environmental trust fund

Climate change is already doing a lot of harm. One of the harms is the drying of land masses. The people who live on these land masses depend on fresh water not only to drink but to grow crops for food. As surface water disappears, humanity is dipping into the corpus of its geological endowment, […]