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Environment BLOG |
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PRI Doesn’t ‘Deny’ Global Warming
By: Sebastian Wisniewski
10.26.2007
The Pacific Research Institute argues that the science behind global warming is uncertain, but the negative impacts of alarmist policies on individuals are all too real.
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Environmentalists on a Diet
By: Sebastian Wisniewski
10.24.2007
Studies suggest that changing your diet may significantly help the environment. Vegetarians and especially vegans boast lower 'greenhouse-gas' emissions. Not per car, or house, or factory, but per person.
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Poisons and prisons.
By: Josh Trevino
10.21.2007
Has environmental regulation led to lower crime? That's the thesis advanced by Jessica Wolpaw Reyes of Amherst College, and featured in today's NYT. (You can find Dr Reyes's original scholarly piece here.) The argument is that leaded gasoline systematically poisoned the minds (and hence the moral capacity) of America's youth: when regulatory action took the lead out of gasoline, average intelligence went up, and crime went down.
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Al Gore and the Nobel Peace Prize.
By: Josh Trevino
10.12.2007
The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC is bizarre at best: whatever one's views of their work and their cause, it is difficult in the extreme to make the case that they have somehow advanced peace per se. (Much more appropriate would have been the underrecognized John Garang.) This isn't the first time the Nobel committee has gone off the rails, of course -- remember the endorsement of anticapitalist greenie Wangari Muta Maathai? -- but it does lend credence to the idea that the award is now merely a tactical expression of political sympathies, rather than a meaningful honor for men of peace.
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Nobel and Nine Errors
By: K. Lloyd Billingsley
10.12.2007
The news that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize is worthy of attention for many reasons, principally that the former vice-president is not known for achieving peace among warring nations or factions. Neither is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with whom Al shares the prize. The news obscured another story about Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary.
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Pacific PolicyCast: Hysteria's History
By: Joshua S. Treviño
10.9.2007
Pacific Research Institute's Josh Treviño interviews Dr Amy Kaleita, PRI Environmental Studies Fellow and Assistant Professor of Agricultural Engineering at Iowa State University, about her new study, entitled "Hysteria's History."
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Pacific Policycast: Hysteria's History
By: Josh Trevino
10.6.2007
The Pacific Research Institute is pleased to announce the release of a new Pacific Policycast. In it, I speak with Dr Amy Kaleita, PRI Environmental Studies Fellow and Assistant Professor of Agricultural Engineering at Iowa State University, about her new study, entitled "Hysteria's History." The study is an incisive look at the misuse of science in the name of media-driven frenzies, including climate change, within living memory -- and it is a subject that Dr. Kaleita is well-placed to speak on. The main Pacific Policycast page, where the episode resides, is here. Finally, you may download "Hysteria's History" here.
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Priorities, priorities.
By: Josh Trevino
9.12.2007
The Russians have a new bomb, and it's a whopper: a thermobaric device with the putative power of a small nuclear weapon. One might assume this is an unusable weapon, but given the Russians' record in Chechnya, we shouldn't assume that mere scruples would prevent its use. This not to say the Putin-era Russian state has no scruples -- they're merely environmental scruples! As the UK Telegraph story on the device reports: "Despite its destructive qualities, the bomb is environmentally friendly, Gen [Alexander] Rushkin said." Well, there you go: it may vaporize several city blocks, but the environment will be fine. Thus, our era.
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Parrots and small liberties.
By: Josh Trevino
6.6.2007
Anyone who's ever walked through the city park near the Ferry Building (itself mere minutes from the PRI SF offices) has seen the San Franciscans merrily feeding and admiring the flocks of parrots who grace the city. Made famous by the documentary, "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," the parrots are now an attraction unto themselves, and deservedly so: they are intelligent, engaging, and sociable animals. Now, however, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is enforcing an end to the feeding of the parrots, apparently on the grounds that the feeding over-domesticates the birds. The proper responses are: 1) so what? and 2) is this a good use of the city's time and energy? The answer to the latter is an emphatic "no." Any urban environment has its population of adapted animals, from pigeons to rats to the famous San Francisco sea lions; and the parrots are no different. Given that their native habitat is apparently Ecuador, the idea that they ought to be preserved in their natural, "wild" state in the city of San Francisco(!) is absurd. Their world is already radically altered from what it once was. Let people feed the parrots if they wish. It's not just an issue of a petty freedom: they are our guests and neighbors -- and more to the point, there's no good reason not to.
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Wrestling with climate change at NASA
By: K. Lloyd Billingsley
6.1.2007
"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of the Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had, and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change." Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, said that on National Public Radio's May 31 "Morning Edition" program. NASA's Jim Hansen did not like his boss's statement.
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Environment
