This is the fourth presidential election cycle that I’ve worked as a tech policy analyst and it’s easily been my least busy. Normally, a presidential candidate would suggest a crazy…
By Will Rinehart | November 11, 2024
Every fall since 2020 I have been teaching energy economics in Northwestern University’s Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES) program. I team teach with my friend Mark Witte, and my…
By Lynne Kiesling | November 7, 2024
Economist Deirdre McCloskey opens The Narrative of Economic Expertise with an observation that blew me away when I read it as an undergraduate: It is pretty clear that an economist, like a…
By Will Rinehart | November 4, 2024
As president, Bill Clinton had failures, both personal and professional, but one thing he got right during his time in office was the Framework for Global Electronic Commerce. Released in July…
By Will Rinehart | October 28, 2024
In the Financial Times over the weekend, John Burn-Murdoch discussed how projections of global population keep decreasing: Burn-Murdoch concludes: [T]hese estimates are extremely fuzzy and based on frameworks that were true in the…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | October 28, 2024
26 years ago, Virginia Postrel published The Future and Its Enemies, which I still consider one of the most insightful books of our time. The book’s subtitle, The Growing Conflict Over Creativity,…
By Lynne Kiesling | October 24, 2024
Today, The Washington Post has published a lengthy analysis titled, “The real reason billion-dollar disasters like Hurricane Helene are growing more common.”1 The article, by the Post’s Harry Stevens, is brilliantly…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | October 24, 2024
U.S. climate policies, designed to yield a utopia of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by, say, 2050, are preposterous. The costs are massive. Consumer resistance is such that important components of the policy agenda are…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 23, 2024
The July 17, 1916, edition of The Asheville Citizen could have easily been reprinted late last month and maintained its relevance: “Asheville today is absolutely isolated from the outside world, is a city…
By Will Rinehart | October 21, 2024
A new paper is just out claiming that climate change is increasing the damage associated with U.S. hurricanes: “US hurricane damage, normalized for changes of inflation, population, and wealth, increases approximately 1%…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | October 21, 2024
In 2024 it can be difficult to sort wheat from chaff in the peer-reviewed literature. There has always been better and worse science — that goes with the territory —…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | October 15, 2024
The future of the clean energy transition is cloudy. It’s well-known that there are disagreements—wide disagreements—between Republicans and Democrats about our energy future. But less well-known is the bedrock of…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | Ruy Teixeira | October 10, 2024
In the aftermath of many high profile extreme weather events we see headlines like the following: For those who closely follow climate science and the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | October 8, 2024
In their book, Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway argue that scientists “know bad science when they see it”: “It’s science that is obviously fraudulent — when data have…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | October 3, 2024
Every so often, I come across a policy analysis that is so quantitatively robust and crystal clear in its presentation, that it clarifies how I think. Today is one of…
By Roger Pielke Jr. | October 1, 2024