I just finished reading Tim Harford's book, "The Undercover Economist" and can heartily recommend it to anyone who has even the slightest interest in how all sorts of markets work from coffee shops, supermarkets, to sulfur and carbon emissions markets all the way through national economic policy surrounding globalization and free-trade. The subtitle reads "Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, Why the Poor Are Poor--And Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!" As the Economist magazine quotes inside the front cover, it's really "A playful guide to the economics of everyday life." The whole book is a witty and quick 250 page read. I would even go so far as to say that it is probably the best, most witty and readable articulation of fundamental economics principles that I have come across. And while I enjoyed Steven Levitt's Freakonomics book, this one was much better at articulating and detailing fundamental principles. Now many folks might be put off by that description, but trust me, the whole work is an engaging read with stories and anecdotes that relate the principles in the process, quite unlike any boring textbook on the subjects. Here is ...

For all you climate change skeptics, check out this time-lapse video of the Columbia glacier near Valdez Alaska from National Geographic (click through for full res version.) From the Nat Geo page: This remarkable image sequence captures a series of massive calving events at Columbia Glacier near Valdez, Alaska. Composed of 436 frames taken between May and September of 2007, it shows the glacier rapidly retreating by about half a mile (1.6 kilometers), a volume loss of some 0.4 cubic miles (1.67 cubic kilometers) of ice or 400 billion gallons (1.5 trillion liters) of water. The time-lapse was taken as part of the ongoing Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), an ambitious project to capture global warming-induced glacial retreat in the act. Beginning in December 2006, photographer James Balog and his colleagues set up 26 solar-powered cameras at glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, the Alps, and the Rocky Mountains. Each unit will take a photograph every daylight hour until fall 2009. In 2008, Balog's team began to return to each of the camera sites to collect images. In the end, they will have more than 300,000 images to analyze and stitch together to produce more dramatic videos like this one. This kind of multiyear effort, says Balog, ...

It's been a while since I've posted on this topic, and in the meantime, a few more juicy tidbits have emerged that I thought warranted attention.The general trend of recent news and data around the melting of the polar ice caps is not a good one. In fact, the recent data shows that the thinning and melting of the western Arctic sea ice in particular is progressing more than 3 times faster than even the most pessimistic of climate models projected. According to William Chapman, et. al. at the University of Illinois, this melting is progressing so swiftly now, that:Today [August 9, 2007], the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area broke the record for the lowest ice area in recorded history. The new record came a full month before the historic summer minimum typically occurs. There is still a month or more of melt likely this year. It is therefore almost certain that the previous 2005 record will be annihilated by the final 2007 annual minima closer to the end of this summer.This new data, along with other similar results has led NASA's notable head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, to conclude that the prevalent ...

New Scientist just published great online article debunking the 26 most common climate change myths and misconceptions. The article is very well written and includes links to all of the primary data sources. Better yet, it is very well-targeted, hitting many of the most common responses I have received personally from friends and colleagues over the past year of office-cooler debate on the topic almost verbatim. My personal top hits include the following myths: ...

Marika Holland, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder has published a study comparing the actual decline in the extent of Arctic sea ice with the climate change models. There is an undeniable trend of decline in the actual sea ice melting that is even more drastic than the most pessimistic computer models of the global environment. In fact, this latest data shows the melting ice is about 30 years ahead of schedule.This figure illustrates the extent to which Arctic sea ice is melting faster than projected by computer models. The dotted line represents the average rate of melting indicated by computer models, with the blue area indicating the spread among the different models (shown as plus/minus one standard deviation). The red line shows the actual rate of Arctic ice loss based on observations. The observations have been particularly accurate since 1979 because of new satellite technology. (Illustration by Steve Deyo, ©UCAR, based on research by NSIDC and NCAR. News media terms of use*)For those of you new to the global warming debate, the extent of polar ice coverage is critical to keeping temperatures low, because the ice is more reflective than the Earth or ocean ...

I've been meaning to post an update on climate change for some time now, as I have refrained from opining since I saw Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" several months ago. At that time, I posted a story, "A Convenient Supposition" which called out that from the data available and collated at the time (and presented in the film) there was still a big difference between correlation and causality. Moreover, there was a long way between correlations in CO2 levels and global temperature fluctuations and the claim that one CAUSED the other. In fact, there was some considerable evidence that over the past few million years that it was the temperature changes that preceded the CO2 concentration changes, offering a strong indication that the chain of causation was reversed from what alarmists might otherwise prefer in their supporting data.But since that time, additional evidence has been collected by Hansen and others that, to my mind, irrefutably demonstrates and validates the hypothesis that the industrial development and emission of greenhouse gases has contributed substantially to global temperature increases.For a more detailed look at the most recent data compilations and analysis, check out the original scientific draft report ...

I couldn't escape the grand political irony exposed in this recent story entitled "New Crops Needed to Avoid Famines" from the BBC on climate change. The basic thesis is that the expected increases in global temperature will shift the regions amenable to fertile crop production northward. Worse yet, in the absence of any replacement crops, or the adoption of massive farming infrastructure in the newly fertile regions, broad famines will ensue. The shift has reportedly already begun with rice yields in Asia declining 10% per degree of average annual temperature increase.Then it struck me. The cornerstone of political support for the Republican party lies in America's breadbasket, the Red States. The following map from the BBC article says it all. One would think think that such a clear and present threat to their core constituency would get a little more attention. But sadly, the Republican platform is currently opposed to both efforts at mitigating global warming AND genetic engineering which could develop more climate-proof crops. It is almost as if they are trying to guarantee the economic ruin of their constituency (and the rest of the US with them) within a couple of generations. ...

From Yahoo:The Census Bureau projects that America's population will hit 300 million at 7:46 a.m. EDT Tuesday. The projection is based on estimates for births, deaths and net immigration that add up to one new American every 11 seconds.The estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are included in official population estimates, though many demographers believe they are undercounted. The population reached its last milestone, 200 million, in 1967. That translates into a 50 percent increase in 39 years.During the same period, the number of households nearly doubled, the number motor vehicles more than doubled and the miles driven in those vehicles nearly tripled. The average household size has shrunk from 3.3 people to 2.6 people, and the share of households with only one person has jumped from less than 16 percent to about 27 percent."The natural resource base that is required to support each person keeps rising," Replogle said. "We're heating and cooling more space, and the housing units are more spread out than ever before."The U.S. is the third largest country in the world, behind China and India. The U.S. is the fastest growing of the industrialized nations, adding about 2.8 million people a ...

What does this sequence say about our country?

It turns out that there is actually a silver lining in this ongoing Global Warming evolution. In a recent study published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the likely impacts of climate change on the Northeastern states was dressed up in a fine bit of well-meaning glossed-up marketing literature.They did a nice job of articulating likely temperature and seasonal changes complete with graphics that showed Massachusetts temperatures becoming more and more "North Carolina-like" over the next few decades. As if this were a problem.From my perspective, ever since my grad school days at MIT, I've held out the hope of some day returning to live in the Boston area. It's a great town full of bookstores and great schools with fantastic research programs. But my southern California-raised wife has maintained a justifiably dubious attitude when confronted with the prospect of chipping the ice off of the car's door lock while standing in a freezing rain. In her world, snow and ice is something you drive to Lake Tahoe to see so that you can then return to proper civilization when the weekend hijinks are exhausted.So all I need to do now is bide my ...