To avert the slight chance that climate change will cause the collapse of human civilization? Is this potential catastrophe so fearsome that it precludes a normal cost/benefit analysis? Two Ivy league economists are dueling over this question, which Ronald Baily examines at Reason Magazine. It’s not hard to see which side Baily comes down on,…Continue Reading…
In the unofficial climate change anxiety index, you won’t find archaeology ranked very high. That’s understandable. If the worst scenarios come to pass, the world will be in a heap of trouble and people are going to worry about saving themselves, not the remains of ancient civilizations. But in the meantime, archaeologists are sounding the…Continue Reading…
No one knows more about the history and ecology of fire than Stephen Pyne. “Australia,” he writes today, “is a fire continent: it is built to burn. To this general combustibility its southeast corner adds a pattern of seasonal winds, associated with cold fronts, that draft scorching, unstable air from the interior across whatever flame…Continue Reading…
Long before American Idol, a bunch of grubby-looking cave dwellers probably belted out a few tunes around the campfire, and it may have sounded like this.
Several years ago, when Australia was baking from an extended drought and its agricultural economy was near collapse, Australians partly blamed global warming and soon booted their conservative Prime Minister (who advised everyone to pray for rain) out of office. Now, in the wake of southern Australia’s catastrophic fires, which has leveled whole villages and…Continue Reading…
Ever wonder who roamed downtown San Diego 500,000 years ago?
Is there any difference between professional deep-sea treasure hunters and raggedy-ass grave-robbing pot-hunters? The recent discovery of a booty-laden British warship buried 330 feet below the English Channel begs the question. In 1744, the HMS Victory, bearing 100 brass canons, and a crew of 1150, sank in a violent storm. Its fate has been one…Continue Reading…
So declares a community in the Denver metro region, against an old varmint. As reported in the Denver Post, Greenwood Village’s City Council approved limited shooting of coyotes in public areas of the city, including parks, greenbelts and watersheds. What, schoolyards and the village square are off limits?
Residents in Boulder, Colorado got spanked by their sheriff this weekend, for their chuckle-headed behavior during a January 7 fire that forced the evacuation of 25,000 people. At a community meeting, the lawman chastised homeowners who filled pickup trucks with numerous personal items and left them parked in front of their driveways until they had…Continue Reading…
Some American Indian leaders and academics seem to think that President Obama’s inaugural address advocated the disbanding of American Indian tribes, or at least the elimination of ethnic identities . Here’s the offending passage: “We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of the Earth; and because we have tasted the…Continue Reading…