Michael Giberson Paul Walker at Anti-Dismal sees the economic content in the recent Wall Street Journal article on football, helmets, and head injuries. Here’s a piece of the story: Why do football players wear helmets in the first place? And more important, could the helmets be part of the problem? “Some people have advocated for …
Michael Giberson Ed Yong, at Not exactly rocket science, describes recent research into, uh, I guess you could describe it as the socioeconomic life of bacteria: Bacteria may not strike you as expert co-operators but at high concentrations, they pull together to build microscopic ‘cities’ called biofilms, where millions of individuals live among a slimy …
Michael Giberson Reuter’s reports remarks of Daniel Yergin made in Singapore: “Oil prices today do not reflect the world’s supply and demand fundamentals. Instead, prices are reflective of the weak dollar and expectations of a strong economic recovery,” Yergin told reporters on the sidelines of a conference. Changing value of the dollar aside, isn’t all …
Yergin: Oil Prices Not Driven by Supply and Demand… Read More »
Michael Giberson Thinking about wishful thinking (see previous post), I am reminded of a minor error in George Stigler and Claire Friedland’s classic article, “What Can Regulators Regulate? The Case of Electricity.” As part of their introduction, they write: And if wishes were horses, one would buy stock in a harness factory. I believe they …
If Wishes Were Horses, then What Should Venture Capitalists Do? Read More »
Michael Giberson Earth2tech offers “3 Questions for 3 Energy Storage Experts.” The three questions: Why is energy storage so essential to the new energy economy? What is the most important use or implementation of energy storage? Which energy storage innovation do you most believe in? Not exactly hard-hitting, investigative journalist-type questions, but useful in inspiring …
Michael Giberson Infused by the $3.4 billion in federal grants handed out last week, utilities will ramp up production and installation of digital smart meters by more than 19 percent, with 250 million predicted to be rolled out by 2015, according to a new report out today from Pike Research. (GreenBeat) So the smart meter …
Michael Giberson A pair of posts at Master Resource (part I, part II) explore the degree to which variable wind power leads to lower efficiency and increased air emissions when natural gas generators are used to provide energy balancing and back-up reserves (and except when and where sufficient hydropower is available, natural gas generation usually …
Reduced Air Emissions Due to Wind Power: Not As Much As You Might Think Read More »
Michael Giberson Al Roth, at Market Design, points out an inadvertently amusing column from The Guardian a few weeks back, “Our speechless outrage demands a new language of the common good.” The writer, Madeleine Bunting, asserts that economists of a certain sort (namely, Friedrich Hayek and his associates at Chicago in the 50s) came to …
Michael Giberson From the “too good not to share” category: “The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of Good Songs,” from the pop culture scrutineers at Overthinking It. A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list. …
You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Or, Why Oil Production Declines with Rock and Roll Read More »
Michael Giberson Many companies offer retail electric power contracts in the competitive retail portions of Texas, but for a long time the contracts have been kind of, you know, boring: either fixed rate or variable, if fixed then for 1 or 2 years. Renewable content offerings provided a little color, ranging up to 100 percent. …
New Meters Enabling New Rate Designs by Competitive Power Suppliers in Texas Read More »
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