Author name: Lynne Kiesling

OPEC’s Production Cut + Oil Price Decline = Kp Laughter

Lynne Kiesling Seriously, I laughed on Friday when I read the headlines and articles about how OPEC cut its production targets, and yet world oil prices fell. Why did I laugh? Largely because it’s a combination of factors that illustrates that market outcomes are consequences of the interplay of supply and demand. So much of …

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A Roundup of Sensible Financial Bailout Commentary

Lynne Kiesling I did not link to or comment on Jacob Weisberg’s “The End of Libertarianism” Slate column last week, both because I thought it unprofessionally, factually incorrect, and because I have a strong rule about avoiding troll-feeding. But sometimes even druck and mire bring valuable results. A few folks have written thoughtful, informative, valuable …

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Electricity History: Edison and the Light Bulb

Lynne Kiesling Tuesday was the 129th anniversary of Edison’s invention of the incandescent light bulb, and Wired commemorated it with this very nice article. It tells the narrative well, from Humphrey Davy to arc lighting, with Edison using his telegraph profits to fund his research, to spending 14 months developing a light bulb that lasted …

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Informing Consumers About Energy Efficiency: Viral Communication

Lynne Kiesling Informing individuals about the resource use and environmental consequences of their energy consumption can be surprisingly difficult. Do you ever read the little flyers that your utility or your energy retailer puts in your bill? Nope, I don’t either. But in general we’re pretty clueless about our energy consumption, because we do not …

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Some Good, and Not So Good, Water Policy Discussions

Lynne Kiesling David Zetland, call your office! Here are a couple of thought-provoking water articles I’ve recently read: 1. Peter Gleick on water policy in Wired: 8 proposals, and not a single one says a single thing about improving price signals to discipline water use! How can he claim to have any kind of serious, …

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Green or Not?

Lynne Kiesling Which is greener using a life-cycle analysis: walking to my nearby standard supermarket and buying standardly-commercial produce and meat, or driving the 5.4 miles (10.8 miles round trip) to Green Grocer and buying organic, locally-sourced produce and meat? I suspect it’s the former. BUT (a) such a calculation ignores any quality differential between …

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