Lynne Kiesling Charles Platt, a former senior writer for Wired magazine, is doing a guest blogging stint at Boing Boing right now. Yesterday he wrote an extremely interesting post about his experience as a Wal-Mart employee. His motivation started with Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed, and the extent to which it “didn’t ring true” to …
Lynne Kiesling Today several items have floated across my radar screen contending that renewables are cheaper than nuclear power. Here, for example, is a snippet of a talk from Eric Schmidt of Google on the topic. I can see the possibility, given the innovations in renewables, incorporating the savings in foregone wires construction (although that …
Any Good Analyses Comparing Renewable and Nuclear Costs? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling One of my father’s default tag lines was “sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.” I use this phrase frequently when discussing hedging future price changes — if prices move in the direction you anticipated, you earn a profit, if they move in the opposite direction, you earn a loss. …
Fuel Hedging: Sometimes You Get the Bear, Sometimes the Bear Gets You Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In the post-election show of sleeve-rolling-up meeting between Barack Obama and John McCain, their main rhetoric revolved around how they could work together to “fix up the economy”. At the time I wrote about how that language rankled me (and Russ Roberts), because the economy is not a closed-system project, and politicians who …
“Fixing” the Economy: How Do You “Fix” an Ecosystem? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Bruce Schneier is one of the most thoughtful, knowledgeable security experts in the world, and he’s been constructively critical of the TSA’s airport policies and procedures for quite some time (so have I, but I have nothing like his expertise or his street cred). You may have seen Jeffrey Goldberg’s November 2008 Atlantic …
Airport Kabuki: Bruce Schneier on “Security Theater” Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Yesterday David Zetland had a post on how bad a job his water utility does of pricing water to optimize use in the face of drought. I recommend it to you, because water is even more abominably, inefficiently priced than electricity … and that’s saying something! … I don’t care about $5/month surcharges. …
Lynne Kiesling The U.S. Climate Action Partnership group issued its blueprint for climate policy earlier this week, to lots of comments. This excellent Environmental Capital post summarizes the discussion that’s taken place this week. I wonder if that fact that it has upset almost all commentators means that it’s a pretty reasonable compromise; I will …
Lynne Kiesling The Department of Energy has published a new, very user-friendly introduction to smart grid technologies, benefits, and policies (pdf). I have some quibbles with some of the details, but if you are a newcomer to smart grid (say, for example, if you have heard that this is a primary objective of the incoming …
Lynne Kiesling Eric Morris, guest-blogging at Freakonomics, has two guest posts (one) and (two) on road congestion pricing. Congestion pricing is a much-discussed topic here at KP, and the two Morris posts are excellent discussions of the benefits of congestion pricing. In his first post he explains how variable tolling can generate the optimal level …
Eric Morris: Why You’ll Love Paying for Roads That You Don’t Pay for Now Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Nick Gillespie’s review in Reason makes me even more eager to read Steven Johnson’s new book, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. The main protagonist of this work is Joseph Priestley, one of the foundational chemists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries: …
The History of Air: Nick Gillespie on Joseph Priestley Read More »
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