Michael Giberson Nate Silver runs some numbers on public Huffington Post information to get an idea on how much the posts of unpaid bloggers on the site are worth to the company in gross advertising revenue: “Do the multiplication, and you find … the median blog post, with several hundred views, was worth only $3 …
Nate Silver’s Valentine to Huffington Post Bloggers… Read More »
Michael Giberson The new U.S. gas triumphalists say the gas resource supply picture has changed, shale gas has saved us from importing lots of expensive LNG, we’ve got tons and tons of gas now and for years to come, and public policy ideas based on the idea of diminishing supplies of ever more costly gas …
Can We Count on Cheap Natural Gas for Decades to Come? Read More »
Michael Giberson We know that several Texas generators were unprepared for the possibility of severe cold on February 2, and now comes word that at least one retail electric provider was similarly unprepared for the possibility of price increases. ERCOT real-time power prices jumped to about $3000/MWh for most of the emergency period that morning. …
Good News and Bad News from Price-spike Induced Failure of Retail Power Company in Texas Read More »
Michael Giberson A collection of news and commentary on the February 2 rolling blackouts on the ERCOT grid in Texas. KVUE: After blackouts, PUC member seeks authority to fire ERCOT CEO WFAA: Public Utility Commission grills ERCOT top exec on rolling blackouts Associated Press: Railroad Commission questions industry performance WFAA: Quest for cheap fuel led …
Roundup of News and Commentary on the Texas Rolling Blackouts Read More »
Michael Giberson Two recent papers by George Mason University economists* appear to conflict on the question of whether competition in the legal arena should be expected to yield more efficient laws. I say “appear to conflict” because I have only just glanced through both papers and they both appear rich, dense, and worthy of careful …
Gmu Economists Conflict on Hayek and the Discovery of Efficient Laws, I Think Read More »
Michael Giberson Several days ago we discussed Jonathan Haidt’s research on libertarianism (see post). In his New York Times column, John Tierney discusses Haidt’s work on political bias among social psychologists: Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting. … It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, …
Haidt on Political Bias Among Social Psychologists Read More »
Michael Giberson President Obama’s budget request will call on Congress to pass legislation offering consumers a rebate of as much as $7,500 for purchasing electric vehicles. The rebate plan is part of a three-part proposal outlined by the Department of Energy Tuesday that will be included in Obama’s budget request, slated to be released Monday. …
What About Electric Bikes? and Regular Bikes? and Can I Get a Pony? Read More »
Michael Giberson Last week the sharply colder temperatures wreaked havoc on many power generators in Texas, leading to emergency conditions and rolling blackouts on the ERCOT power system. In my preliminary reaction to the developments, I said: No doubt coal and gas-fueled generators across the state are reexamining their readiness for extreme coal weather. I …
More Cold for Texas and a Test of My Conjecture on Preparedness Read More »
Michael Giberson During part of the electric power emergency in the ERCOT region of Texas last week, the ERCOT system imported power from Mexico to reduce the extent of the blackouts needed to keep the ERCOT grid operating. The interconnections between ERCOT/Texas and Mexico are relatively recent. The summary of the March 2009 meeting of …
Michael Giberson Scott Sumner wrote, “On or about December 1978, the world’s ideology changed,”explaining that “this quotation from Joan Robinson did not seem insane in 1977”: Before the last Korean war in 1950, the North was home to most of the country’s heavy industry. As late as 1975, its income per head still exceeded the …
Copyright © 2022 Knowledge Problem Archive