Author Archives: CarmenWhitson

Quote of the Day: Congressmen and Crackpots

by CarmenWhitson Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Jon Chait, responding to Paul Ryan’s list of favorite books about economics and democracy—which notably fails to include his former favorite book, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:

It seems the lesson Ryan has drawn from the harmful publicity surrounding his Rand fixation is not that he shouldn’t associate himself publicly with crackpot authors but merely that he should find different crackpot authors.

Here is Chait’s description of Jude Wanniski’s most famous book, which earns a place on Ryan’s list.

The Way the World Works is a novel argument that the entire history of the world can be explained by changes of tax rates. The fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Nazis — Wanniski attempts to explain it all as a result of taxes. It is a work of genuine derangement on the same intellectual level as the sorts of unpublishable hand-scrawled diatribes that I used to scan through when I sorted the mail as a magazine intern.

But…but…but—look! Michael Moore!

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Quote of the Day: Congressmen and Crackpots

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Wildfires Cause Nearly a Fifth of Manmade Carbon Emissions

by CarmenWhitson Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Wildfires are raging around the western United States: As of yesterday, more than 10,000 firefighters were battling 20 fires in Oregon and California. Another fire in Washington state recently grew to cover more than 8,000 acres. While the immediate consequences of the blazes are obvious—scorched earth, destroyed homes, millions of dollars in damages—the longer-term consequences for the climate have, until now, been poorly understood.

In a study published at the end of July in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University engineer, says the burning of biomass like trees, plants, and grass—either by accident or deliberately (often to create room for agriculture)—creates 18 percent of all human-caused carbon emissions. Worse yet, that pollution kills people: Around the world, Jacobson writes, biomass burning may account for 5-10 percent of all air pollution deaths worldwide, or about 250,000 people annually.

Lightning strikes and lava flows can burn down forests just as effectively as campfires, cigarettes, and slash and burn agriculture. But worldwide, Jacobson notes, the proportion of wildfires that are caused by nature could be as low as 3.6 percent. The rest are started by humans.

Possibly the worst news of all: Wildfires are part of a vicious circle. Emissions from fires cause climate change, which leads to drier conditions—which make it easier for humans and nature to start fires and for those fires to spread.

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Wildfires Cause Nearly a Fifth of Manmade Carbon Emissions

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