- The Year in Climate Chaos shows just how messed up 2024 was, and how much worse 2025 will get.
- Related(?): “Some Economics of Global Warming” — a view from 1992.
- “By 1900, 23 of the 25 largest U.S. cities, and 85 percent of all cities, used primarily lead service lines. Many local building codes also mandated that service lines must use lead pipes for construction.”
- Listen to the last episode (of 12) on The Power Broker… maybe after you’ve listened to the first 11?
- “It turns out that cryptocurrencies do have a very concrete use case. They are a technology that has latched on to, and then helped build, a culture that celebrates greed and speculation as virtues just as it embraces volatility.” In 2025 with Trump, I think we’re going to see a lot of “innovating” that will take cash from many, which will lead to (a) a worse reputation for some (all?) crypto, (b) calls for regulation, and (c) a lot of learning, gained at great cost.
- The average Dutch man was 165cm around 1870. The average height for both men and women rose by 15-18cm in the next 120 odd years (to 183 and 169cm, respectively), due to better nutrition, hygiene, social care and natural selection (tall men make tall babies?). Here’s more on nutrition. Fun fact: South Korean men are also about 20cm taller than 100 years ago.
- Listen to this update on academic fraud, and pay-to-publish [garbage] “open access” journals.
- Listen to Adam Grant on achieving greatness.
- A look at renewable energy from centuries ago, when Brits consumed 2% of what they do these days.
- Global temperatures are now 1.9C higher than the pre-Industrial age, which is around 25 years ahead of
scheduleour worst (and second-to-worst) fears. (They were +0.9C in 2015 and some sources claim they are now only getting over +1.0C, but there are disagreements over whether higher temps are “normal” or an “anomaly”.) - Listen to Alain Bertaud on fixing sick cities.