Backseat driving

Ta-Nehisi Coates - politics from an African-American angle.

The G Spot - women's political issues. I've looked for analysis that isn't simplistic application of feminist theory (Duke Lacrosse scandal) or even more simplistic counter-reaction. This is it.

Ezra Klein - good political instincts from this youngster. Usually.

While McCain's climate proposal seems fairly mainstream, if not as good as Obama's, there's been little discussion of his India and China proposals. Here's the text:

....If we are going to establish meaningful environmental protocols, then they must include the two nations that have the potential to pollute the air faster, and in greater annual volume, than any nation ever in history....At the same time, we will continue in good faith to negotiate with China and other nations to enact the standards and controls that are in the interest of every nation — whatever their stage of economic development....Pressing on blindly with uncontrolled carbon emissions is in no one’s interest, especially China’s. And the rest of the world stands ready to help.

So the question is what standards are in the interest of developing nations that McCain acknowledges have little responsibility for the current buildup of greenhouse gases. The good news is that McCain doesn't expressly take the usual hard line position that India and China have to freeze and cut their emissions "equally" with the developed world, despite having per-capita emissions that are one-tenth to one-third of the US emission level. That argument isn't intended to create better regulation - it's intended to kill any possible deal.

On the other hand, McCain doesn't expressly rule out that position. Nor does he take what I'd consider an equitable position - an equal, per capita emission allocation to nations regulating either annual emissions or total contributions to greenhouse gases. Any position by McCain that developing nations should be restricted to lower per-capita emissions than the US isn't going to do well internationally, but whether he'll fight conservatives he point out growing total emissions from developing countries isn't clear. It's vague.

UPDATE: Having scanned Obama's proposal, it's better in general than McCain but no more specific about India and China.

Labels: climate change, climate solutions, John McCain

No, it's not that the Apollo moon landings were fake - everyone knows that.*

My conspiracy theory is that many or most of the space scientists who say they support NASA's manned space exploration are lying through their teeth. I don't think anyone can adeptly play the game of getting NASA money for an unmanned project you're working on, while simultaneously dissing the stupid and politically powerful manned program. I think the scientists are playing politics.

The moon landings did good science, although that wasn't the main reason for them. Since then, the manned program has been a huge disaster, and Obama to his credit has started pushing away at it. I say leave it to private industry.

Meanwhile, not much has surfaced about the mysterious resignation of the NASA's science chief, although it likely had something to do with political infighting over Mars funding. A great comment here seems to indicate some inside knowledge.

And we're less than two weeks from when Phoenix lands on Mars. Here's hoping it doesn't crater....


*Mom will kill me when she reads that - she wrote software for the Mercury and Gemini missions.

Labels: Barack Obama, NASA, space

The media reports I've seen have made little attempt to explain exactly why Burma's dictators are restricting large numbers of foreign aid workers from entering the country to help with the ongoing disaster. I did volunteer work in eastern Burma in the early 1990s, in an area controlled by the ethnic minority Karen people who rebelled against the dictatorship. The ethnic aspect can help explain how the dictatorship is acting.

The worst-hit area in Burma is the Irrawaddy Delta, which is also has large numbers of the Karen minority. That area had a Karen-led insurrection from the 1940s through the 1960s, with a brief flare-up in the late 1980s. The dictators want no contact between these villagers and the outside world, both for what the villagers could tell the world and for the opportunity given to local people to think they have any rights or expectations.

An additional explanation that I've seen almost nothing about is superstition. There seemed to me to be a fair amount of belief even among educated Burmese that inauspicious events have a semi-supernatural cause. It wouldn't be surprising to see this in Burma about Cyclone Nargis; we saw the same nonsense here in the States over Katrina. A look at the map makes Burma seem like a conscious target of the cyclone, just as the dictatorship is holding a sham referendum to legitimize its rule. I'd expect them to minimize the cyclone's importance, and above all to do nothing to delay the referendum on the basis that it is "inauspicious."

Brutal, superstitious, and ignorant is no way to run a country. Something we've found out recently here at home.

Labels: Burma, superstition

Jeff in Alaska alerted me to this article in the Anchorage Daily News, with a great lede:

The state Legislature is looking to hire a few good polar bear scientists. The conclusions have already been agreed upon -- researchers just have to fill in the science part.

A $2 million program funded with little debate by the Legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an "academic based" conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears' survival.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects scientific expression as well as political expression. One of the fundamental rules of free expression is that the government cannot discriminate based on viewpoint. It can't say that science grants are only available to scientists registered as Republicans, for example.

Similarly, for the Alaskan government to offer funding only to those who disagree with the scientific viewpoint that human-caused warming is real, seems to be a straightforward viewpoint discrimination case, one made even worse by the political implications of climate science. If the funding goes through (unclear whether the governor will strike it) and a pro-consensus scientist denied a share of it, that person would have a great case, I think.

I can think of an unusual legal defense strategy though. It's perfectly legal to discriminate against crackpot theories, like the idea that evolution isn't real or that people aren't causing warming, because those theories lack scientific validity and the discrimination doesn't pick one scientific view over another. Alaska could make the converse argument - it isn't discriminating against some scientific viewpoints about climate but all scientific viewpoints, and a "nonsense only" funding screen is acceptable. The state might hesitate to make this argument, though.

I plan to send this post along to climate law and First Amendment bloggers to see what they think.

Labels: Alaska, climate change, environmental law, law

I think the moronic creationist pseudo-documentary, Expelled, tells us the anti-science framing crowd can be wrong even when they're right.

The science framers, mostly Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet, want to spin the discussion of science (in a good way, supposedly) to appeal the most to the target audience. The anti-framers, people like PZ Myers and Greg Laden, say science shouldn't be spun, a cacophony of voices is just fine, and strident opposition to stupidity is effective. The debate plays out repeatedly at the scienceblogs.com websites.

As of today, Expelled has made $6.6 million, and will certainly be the fifth highest-grossing political documentary in history. The pro-framers have said the anti-framers should shut up about the movie, and argued that constantly talking about it has made it successful. The anti-framers claim the movie isn't successful.

The anti-framers are wrong on two counts. First, the movie's clearly successful by any non-ridiculous standards. Second, one of the framing concepts is that people will not accept any fact that contradicts their mental model of the world, and the anti-framers' refusal to acknowledge the movie's commercial success is itself a proof of this framing concept.

Despite all this, I throw in with the anti-framers in general. I think science is or at least should be more like a cacophony of opinions being tested out, and science communication should reflect that. And strident opposition to creationist nonsense can be refreshing. But the anti-framers need to acknowledge the evidence wherever it goes, and not acknowledging it here is ridiculous.

One tangential point I haven't seen raised: when to see Expelled. I don't think there's much point in seeing it, but if people do want to, they shouldn't go until after it's been in the theater where they're thinking of going for over two weeks. Expelled's producers get a much bigger cut of ticket revenues in the first two weeks, so waiting reduces the amount they take in.

Labels: evolution, framing science, science

Nice writeup of the bet status and the purpose of climate betting here. The Chronicle is the weekly newspaper in Bill Gray's hometown, Fort Collins.

And just in time to screw up a ten-year bet designed to test the difference between anthropic warming and natural variability is a prediction issued today that a naturally variable cooling cycle will be so strong in the next ten years that it will temporarily mask the anthropic warming signal. Unlike Gray's assertion, this is a scientifically-based prediction, but it's just a single one. I'd like to see what the rest of the scientific community thinks of it.

UPDATES: When I talked to the reporter, he referred to the bet offer as an "old school" way of settling differences. I liked that description, and was sorry it didn't get into the article.

As to my increased respect for skeptics who put their money where their mouths are, that respect is for them as persons. It doesn't make their theories any better.

I should clarify that despite this new prediction of masked temps, I'm not backing off from the bet terms with Gray. I will modify future bet offers if this prediction solidifies into the consensus position, but backing out of the current negotiation wouldn't be old school.

Labels: climate betting, climate change

(Idea first discussed here and here). Here are the two quotes from the updated version of Last Child in the Woods, from a discussion of legal reform to reduce liability concerns that keep kids away from nature:

While we wait for legal reform, environmental attorney Brian Schmidt has an idea that just might help....To liberate natural play, he suggests creation of what he calls a "Leave No Child Inside Legal Defense Fund," a foundation that would pay the legal costs of select institutions and individuals who encourage children to go outdoors but are then hit with frivolous lawsuits. Volunteer lawyers for the Defense Fund would focus on the most frivolous, high-profile claims, or those claims that would establish the worst precedents. He suspects that the outdoor industries would be interested in funding such an organization. 'Obviously, regardless of how successful this idea could become, it will never cover all the costs of defending against frivolous lawsuits,' he adds. 'Still it could help, and just the fact that a defendant knew it was possible to recover costs might make the defendant less likely to settle.' It would also send a public message that natural play is still valued.

(page 243)

Also in the chapter "100 Actions We Can Take":

67. ....Create a Leave No Child Inside legal defense fund that would, using pro bono attorneys, help families and organizations fight egregious lawsuits that restrict children's play in nature and bring media attention to the issues.

(page 377)

To reinforce something I wrote earlier, I think it would be simplest for the legal fund to simply review completed legal cases where defendants didn't cave in, select the best ones, and reimburse all or part of their legal costs. This would be relatively easy for pro-bono attorneys to handle. More complicated would be actually doing the litigation, as only a few attorneys or law firms have the resources to devote sufficient pro-bono time to run the suit. Maybe this would be possible at some point, though.

Another issue would be what types of defendants should be eligible. While one might argue against making wealthy liability insurance companies eligible for the rewards, I think we should reward them too for doing the right thing, and they likely represent the biggest number of cases. My suggestion would be to have the funds directed at three target groups in decreasing priority: nonprofits that get kids outside, for-profit businesses that do the same, and last the liability insurers that defend either of the first two groups.

My other suggestion is that insurers only get compensated if they attest that they won't raise insurance rates against the insuree that was hit with the frivolous suit.

Labels: law, Leave No Child Inside, Louv

Info here (via Grist). As the website says:

Cap and dividend is a simple, market-based way to reduce CO₂ emissions without reducing household income. It caps fossil fuel supplies, makes polluters pay, and returns the revenue to everyone equally.

It is modeled after the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays equal dividends from the proceeds of state oil leases.

They would cap carbon emissions, auction off carbon permits and redistribute the auction money to citizens. Cap and trade will make carbon intensive products and services more expensive, but the dividend means that low-carbon users would come out ahead.

Having lived in Alaska myself, I can attest to the Permanent Fund's political popularity. No politician can touch it, and giving the money back to the citizens would more than address the denialists and their newfound concern for a consumption tax that affects the poor more than the rich. I think the left can be as simplistic as the right when it comes to consumption taxes - there are ways to keep them from being regressive.

The one problem with this idea is that if you don't use the auction proceeds to help control future emissions, which is what Obama wants to do with funding renewable energy research, then you have to set stricter standards to make up for the lost investment. But if it makes the whole thing more politically palatable, that's fine with me.

Labels: climate change, climate solutions

Not only am I agreeing with the Volokhs, I'm agreeing with David Bernstein of all people there: there's something very screwed up about how Texas is physically seizing and temporarily shipping to foster care all the hundreds of non-infant children from the polygamist compound, with no individualized determination of risk to each child before seizing the child.

The rule of law exists for a reason.

Labels: law, reasonable libertarianism

I received a very polite email today from Bill Gray, saying he just learned of my bet "offer" (actually it's his offer that I accepted, but close enough) and is interested in making the bet, for charity. He's traveling but will get back to me with potential terms before mid-May.

I'm kind of surprised, but assuming he offers reasonable terms, then a climate crisis charity is going to have a decent chunk of money coming their way. And as for Dr. Gray, betting is a helpful way to distinguish skeptics from the sleaziest denialists, so good for him (assuming the bet happens).

I think that some denialists seized on my bet with David Evans as if it were some kind of victory that a skeptic was actually willing to put his money where his mouth was. I hope we can avoid a similar problem here by challenging other denialists to make this same bet. For folks on our side, betting against the position that temperatures would actually fall should be pretty attractive to people who support the mainstream consensus.

Labels: climate betting, climate change, climate communication

This is pretty cool - two years ago, Richard Louv wrote the book, The Last Child in the Woods, about how children are increasingly denied unstructured access to nature. Last year, I wrote a post about how the fears of frivolous lawsuits that restrict children's access could be reduced through a "Leave No Child Inside Legal Defense Fund," something that pays the legal defense costs of institutions and individuals who brought children outdoors and then were hit with frivolous lawsuits.

Richard Louv has contacted me about the idea, and now it's in the second edition of his book, right on page 243 (appropriately credited). Still not a reality, but it's one step closer to being something real.

Best part of it was what I originally wrote, "I'll just toss this idea out into the Googleable universe" to see if anything happens, and it did.

So I'll just toss the idea out into the Googleable universe that I should be paid millions to blog my random thoughts here....

Labels: law, Leave No Child Inside, Louv

I think I'd disagree somewhat with Tamino as to whether the graph above showing a non-correlation between CO2 and temperature over the last ten years constitutes perjury. He's right that it's misleading in the broader sense that it conceals the long-term correlation between CO2 and temperature in Tamino's graph below:

I doubt it's misleading enough to be perjury, but I'd welcome any idiot opponent who actually used it in a climate change case. I'd rather win the case than convict the opposing side's expert for perjury, and you could use the first graph to support the truth.

You're allowed to treat the opposing side's witnesses as adversarial and ask them leading questions with yes-or-no answers. Before I ever showed the second graph, I'd ask these questions:

Well, you clearly consider this a powerful piece of evidence, right? (Yes)

The lack of correlation means to you that CO2 increases didn't change temperature, right? (Yes)

[Several more questions re-enforcing the importance of the noncorrelation]

Now, there is the 2000-2002 series in your graph which does appear to show a correlation between CO2 and temperature, but I assume that's unimportant because the longer, ten-year period doesn't show a correlation, yes? (Yes)

So despite this short-term difference from your conclusion, you are certain it's appropriate to draw your conclusion from the long-term implications of your time series, right? (Yes)

I want to make sure though - you're not biasing your answers but simply giving the objective conclusion that results from the data, right? (Yes)

And had the data shown a tight match between CO2 and temperature, your conclusion that you would be telling us about this data would be different from what you've told us today, right? [Here the witness might argue that correlation doesn't prove causation - refuse to let the witness talk about that, just about whether the conclusion of a non-correlation would've changed.]

So we've established the non-correlation over the longer 10-year term of the data is important, and a correlation would've opened us to a different possibility. Now say the next 10 years continues to show no correlation - doesn't that strengthen your conclusion? (Yes)

And no correlation for the next 100 years, even more so? (Yes)

And a few short stretches during that century with a correlation doesn't matter given the long-term proof, yes? (Yes)

And then, you thank the witness, and when allowed, introduce the second graph above from 1850-present showing the long-term correlation (don't let the witness discuss it, though, it's yours to talk about).

All this is a long-winded way of saying that if the other side uses a piece-of-garbage data to support their opinion, we can use the importance they attach to it by saying whoever has the best data on this issue wins, and then show our hand.

Labels: climate change, climate communication

I just found out today that the previously-reliable Yahoo email spam filter has gone crazy and snagged lots of emails it should've let through. It even filtered out an email I sent from myself to myself.

If you're like me and hadn't bothered to check the spam folder before, now is the time to start. Hopefully it'll get sensible again before too long - this virtually eliminates the value of a spam filter.

Labels: annoyances

I'm outsourcing this post to Dean Baker. Summary: refineries are the choke point in gasoline production, so they can easily raise prices if the gas tax is lifted. No one else will get the benefit.

UPDATE: I think this is a corollary of a discussion at Gristmill a while back, to the effect that a modest tax on oil imports wouldn't really raise prices and reduce consumption but rather would claw back some profits from overseas producers. In that case, the environmental value isn't so much in the existence of the tax but in what could be done with it.

Labels: economics, John McCain, peak oil

Bill Gray went a step beyond his usual denialist statements last month at the Heartland Institute "conference" on climate change:

“We should begin to see cooling coming on,” Gray said. “I’m willing to make a big financial bet on it. In 10 years, I expect the globe to be somewhat cooler than it is now, because this ocean effect will dominate over the human-induced CO₂ effect and I believe the solar effect and the land-use effect. I think this is likely bigger.”

(audio clip at the link above.)

In late 2005, Gray had refused to bet me among other people, so this was an interesting development. (Also interesting that in 2005, Gray was saying cooling would happen between 2010 in 2013, and now he moves the goalposts further down the field.)

I decided to make it more interesting, and placed the following ad last Friday on page 6 of The Collegian, the student newspaper at Colorado State University where Gray is apparently still active:

An Open Letter to Dr. Bill Gray,
Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University

Dear Dr. Bill Gray:

You deny that Earth will continue warming. Two years ago, you told me that you weren’t interested in betting over whether you’re right. Now you’ve said

“We should begin to see cooling coming on……. I’m willing to make a big financial bet on it. In 10 years, I expect the globe to be somewhat cooler than it is now .”

That’s wonderful – Dr. Gray, I gladly accept your offer to bet over global warming.

I suggest we each donate $5,000 to the Longbets.org charity to bet over whether temperatures will rise or fall in ten years. When the time’s up, Longbets will give all of our money to the winner’s designated charity, even if neither of us is around to see who’s won.

You could designate our $10,000 plus interest to go to CSU. If I win, our combined money will go to an appropriate “climate crisis” charity.

I will contact you within the next two weeks to finalize our agreement, and you can also reach me at : schmidtb98@yahoo.com, or http://www.backseatdriving.blogspot.com.

When so many climate skeptics have refused to bet over their beliefs (among them James Inhofe, Marc Morano, Bob Carter, Tim Ball, Chris Monckton, and the list goes on), it’s refreshing that you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is.

Thank you again for making this offer.

Sincerely,
Brian Schmidt

Unfortunately, The Collegian doesn't put the print ads on its website, but anyone who can get the paper copy will find the ad on page 6 from April 11, 2008 (or I can email whoever wants the pdf of that page of the paper).

So we'll see if Gray is really willing to make his "large financial bet," and I'll certainly consider different ways to bet if that interests him.

Betting, by the way, is my response to the great "should we respond to denialists or ignore them" debate. The most strongly consensus-contradicting denialist claim becomes all the more reason the denialist should take my money away from me. The fact that all the loudest denialists aren't interested in doing so is an effective tool to contradict them (I hope).

Placing this print ad also has one other potential benefit - denialist editors on wikipedia are censoring biographical articles about Gray and others that mention their refusal to bet, because the documentation of the bets are on blogs, which Wikipedia frowns on. This stuff is now in print, both against Gray and the whole string of others that I mentioned. Maybe it'll finally get reported in wiki.

(Hat tip to Winnebago for letting me know about Gray's offer.)

Labels: Bill Gray, climate betting, climate change, climate communication

I don't think my former candidate John Edwards has done very well politically since he's dropped out. I'll bet he's kicking himself for quitting before Super Tuesday. He likely quit to avoid getting drubbed and to hold on to a lot of money given to him that would otherwise be spent in the runup to Super Tuesday, but even a bad showing then could have netted him 50 delegates and significant bargaining power.

As for the whole thing about Obama blowing a potential endorsement from Edwards - I'd score that a minus for Obama and a plus for Hillary on the personal diplomacy front, but also as a minus for Edwards. He should have enough direct knowledge of both candidates to know which one is better, regardless of how well they suck up to him in a personal interview. And it's ridiculous to think that Obama is supposed to privately retract his public assertion that his own health care plan is universal.

Still, Edwards did a good job in moving the Democratic campaign in the right direction. I'm curious what he'll do next. I think he's basically had his shot at the presidency unless and until he gets some new governmental experience.

UPDATE: And while I'm handing out discredits to Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Chris Dodd gets one for his terrible "mortgage relief" bill. As Daniel Gross points out, the majority of the money goes to tax breaks for homebuilding speculators who counted on an unending bubble. The $7,000 tax credit for foreclosure purchasers is almost as bad in my opinion as a foreclosure accelerant. The mortgage holders are even less likely to work deals with current homeowners when they know that people buying foreclosures have an extra $7,000 to work with. Some of those buyers might even be speculators, completing the cycle of stupidity.

Labels: John Edwards, politics

Last year I did a series of posts on whether climate polluters could be found legally liable for damage to hurricane victims (here's the last post with the summary of the others). Basically I thought that it would be hard to show liability with the current understanding of the science that limits our ability to tie climate change to particular harm, even for class action suits for a large class of victims.

A conversation I had recently helped me rethink one aspect of this, though. To some (controversial) extent, legal liability for medical monitoring is part of current tort law in the United States. An example: a company negligently exposes a community to low levels of a carcinogen. While the court may not conclude that any community member will necessarily incur cancer as a result, the community members could recover the costs of increased medical monitoring they will need to try and detect cancers as early as possible.

The same reasoning should apply to climate change, and it avoids much of the problem of tying pollution to a particular injury. If an inland community now has to monitor hurricanes because the increased intensity and sea level rise means they crossed the threshold from not-too-vulnerable, and become vulnerable-enough-to-be-worried, the US legal system might assign the liability to the people that caused it.

Prevention of damages could also be an assigned cost. If sea level rise means your property is now in a 100-year flood plain and you need insurance, that could also be a recoverable cost. Tracing causation for this should be particularly easy.

One interesting aspect of this is how it fits into the current adaptation-versus-mitigation debate. While I tend to strongly favor a mix that emphasizes mitigation, the legal approach I've described would fund adaptation.

The crucial thing to me though is the one thing I've missed in spotty following of this debate: who do the adaptationists think should pay for the costs? Here, making the polluters pay for the costs of adaptation through tort liability will by itself help promote mitigation, making fossil fuels more expensive in relation to non-polluting alternatives. That's all the better, so long as no one gets confused into thinking this even approaches a substitute for a regulatory solution. It's only a single tool in the toolkit.

Labels: causation, climate change, law

I'm reading a fair amount of chatter in the legal blogosphere over John Yoo's recently-released legal memo from March 14, 2002 that started the government's infatuation with torture. This post suggests he didn't have the authority to issue the memo that was accepted as the final word over military interrogations. Elsewhere I've read that Yoo issued the memo the day after his supervisor, Jay Bybee (no angel either), had left office. Now people are debating whether Yoo should be removed from his office as a tenured law professor at UC Berkeley.

To be fair I haven't read his memo, but I've read about it. What it reminds me of is my one time where I felt my legal work was entering some sticky ethical ground on a very much smaller scale - a client involved in a larger matter wanted to know if it had the legal authority to do something I considered unethical. The way I handled it was to exhaustively research and document all the ways things could go badly for my client if they took that approach. The law wouldn't allow me to say "no you can't," but there was room in the law to make the approach look unattractive.

Yoo seems to have taken the opposite approach. He wanted to see how far he could push it in terms of what colorable arguments could justify the worst possible torture. A "colorable" argument in legal terms means anything short of frivolous - an argument that is almost but not 100% certainly wrong is "colorable". Then he uses whatever possible tricks to "publish" his view within the government. It's all an academic exercise, I suppose. Maybe that would make him a good teacher in some people's minds, but this is no thought experiment, and he doesn't deserve to be rewarded.

Labels: ethics, law

I'm travelling and won't be blogging until sometime next week. I may have a development on the climate betting front by then, and will be sure to post when that happens.

Meanwhile, I recommend taking a look at James' post on the Intrade prediction market for a near-record temperature in 2008. From James' analysis, it sounds like the 20% odds are high. I think it would be interesting though to calculate the odds if temperature changes were random instead of forced, and that would indicate something about this market's belief in global warming.

Also on betting, I agree with William that a climate change bet where all the money goes to the same charity no matter who wins isn't much of a bet. However, a bet where the money goes to different charities depending on who wins is a different matter, especially if the charities work to cross purposes, like a climate-crisis charity versus a right-wing denialist think tank.

UPDATE: fixed the mistake in the post title - I knew what I meant to say!

Labels: climate betting, climate change

My very-informative reaction to The World Without Us: ehh. My apologies to Juniper Pearl if she's still coming around here, but I feel the same way about this book as I did with Malcolm Gladwell's Blink - a decent magazine article has been overstretched to book length.

I've always thought it would be kind of cool to watch nature reconquer our civilized spaces, and there's a fun animation showing this at the book's website, but after a while the fascination with the idea fades away. And the book uses that idea mostly to show how badly we've screwed up the planet, which I guess is okay but depressing.

The book isn't bad. The part about the Korean Demilitarized Zone was interesting, as well as the potential danger from microparticles of plastic to ocean life. I think he's got a bit of a Jared Diamond problem though of covering too many subject areas to be completely accurate, without Diamond's high ratio of interesting ideas that makes up for occasional errors.

Worth skimming, I think, but I can't tell people to rush out to get it.

Labels: environment, reviews