Michael Boydston’s Recent Comments

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  WaPo needs to correct their article

  It says: "The new report estimates that 20 to 30 of the world's species 'are likely to be at high risk of irreversible extinction if global average temperature' rises between 2.4 and 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit."  Should be "20 to 30 percent," presumably (compare the BBC story, which says one-third).   On As expected, the news is mostly bad, and then worse, and then worse still posted 2 years, 7 months ago 23 Responses

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  More on the ruffed grouse

  From Aldo Leopold:

  The physics of beauty is one department of natural science still in the Dark Ages. Not even the manipulators of bent space have tried to solve its equations. Everybody knows, for example, that the autumn landscape in the north woods is the land, plus a red maple, plus a ruffed grouse.

  In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead. An enormous amount of some kind of motive power has been lost.

  On The film opens nationwide Friday posted 2 years, 11 months ago 16 Responses

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  straw men

  Dave, a small correction.  You didn't say it was a "practical" loser at first, you said it was a "political" loser. JS was right: environment was missing from your original post.

  There's no reason, of course, that you can't expand your catalogue on second thought to include practical loser, environmental loser, whatever.  In fact, I think you should, because your original post wlacked substance.  You set up a straw man: those who are opposed to all immigrants, be they legal or illegal, many or few.  The flip side would be those who think there should be no restrictions on immigration whatever.  Is that your view?

  The most sensible analysis I have heard came from Jared Diamond.  He said (I'm paraphrasing from what I remember) that immigration and related population growth in the U.S. had major environmental impacts.  He also said that the flow of migrants into the U.S. will continue, regardless of measures to stop it, as long as the tremendous economic disparity between their homelands and the U.S. continues.On Immigration posted 3 years, 5 months ago 13 Responses

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  anti-nostalgia

  Ah, Wired.  I subscribed for several years in the 1990s, after picking up a used copy of this odd oversized magazine with William Gibson on the cover.  And, I confess, I dug a whole bunch of the techno-futurist stuff.  What I didn't dig -- what made me cancel my subscription -- was a puff piece on Julian Simon, Mr. Everything is Fungible and Human Ingenuity Can Solve Any Problem Humans Create.  Blecch.  (I should have realized earlier that the people who put the magazine together did not value nature when I read in one of those first issues an ode to the joy of driving a Humvee across the Nevada desert.)  The Simon piece was the one that inspired Bjorn Lomborg to write The Skeptical Environmentalist.  GIGO, you might say.

  None of which is too relevant to the current issue, except to say that the annoying things David noticed have been a part of Wired for many a moon. Nonetheless, it's good to see Wired paying attention to our climate problems. Their first global warming cover story is much more likely to change minds than is, say, Sierra's 32nd take on the subject.  On New Wired green issue goes a little overboard posted 3 years, 6 months ago 7 Responses

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  fight the real enemy

  Well said, Callisto. Recognizing additional heroes like Lois Gibbs -- expanding the pantheon -- is a great idea.  But the article spends most of its time fomenting infighting among people who should be allies.  For Kringle and Taylor, environmentalists can't even oppose Wise Use and the Sagebrush Rebellion without being damned as feckless urban elitists.  Until the first couple of sentences in the very last paragraph, it seemed like the authors oppose the idea of national parks and wilderness altogether.  They imply (with a skill that the Blue Ribbon Coalition only wishes it had) that the protection of wildlife and wilderness tramples on the rights of everyday hardworking Americans who are struggling to get by.  

  And they criticize "the slavish devotion to an unattainable wilderness ideal."  I'm not sure what they mean by this.  I don't see many environmentalists out there working to recreate a human-free world that never existed.  Instead, I see people working in service of the not-so-unattainable ideal that a few areas should be as free from mechanized development as we can possibly make them.  Here, for example, is the recent handiwork of a coalition of wilderness crusaders:

  The Department of Interior's Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) has issued a stay halting a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decision allowing construction of a new road within the Congressionally-designated Mount Tipton Wilderness area. The road construction was requested by two California residents wishing to develop a 60-acre inholding (private land completely surrounded by federal or other non-private land) within the middle of the Wilderness into an upscale, private horse ranch. The IBLA's decision means that no construction will occur on the proposed road until the appeal is resolved on the merits.

  (From a CBD press release.)  (By the way, the would-be developers bought the inholding after the area was designated a wilderness.)  On Environmentalism's elitist tinge has roots in the movement's history posted 3 years, 8 months ago 17 Responses