Environmental Economics

Classic

I took some time off and visited family in Kentucky last week. It was raining when we were packing up on Sunday so I moved the car into the garage to tie everything up on top. The angle isn't the best, but do you notice anything odd about this picture?

Right on, we couldn't get out of the garage. I had to take down the bags, pull the car out and tie them back up there. 

This sort of thing happens to me almost daily. 

Knock Knock. Who's there? To. To who. To WHOM!

Reading the Green pages at Yahoo! news, I just found this funny:

Couldn't drag me away

Under the Dome:

Apparently the U.S. House can agree on this much: wild horses.

The House on Monday unanimously passed the Corolla Wild Horses Protection Act. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a Farmville Republican, provides for a new public-private management plan for the horses that run wild on the Outer Banks. The plan will not cost any additional taxpayer money.

Under the current plan, the maximum number of horses allowed in the herd is 60. The bill requires a new management plan that allows between 110 and 130 horses — the number scientists say is needed to maintain the herd's genetic viability. It also allows for the periodic introduction of mares from Shackleford Banks — which like the Corolla herd are Colonial Spanish Mustangs.

Colonial Spanish Mustangs — designated as the State horse — date to the arrival of Spanish explorers on the Banks in the 16th century. They currently roam thousands of acres of public and private land on the Currituck County coast.

Here is the link to H.R. 126. Apparently, the U.S. Congress is allowing private foundations to do what they would like on public land. You can make your donation here.

Those horses are cool. When peak oil hits I'm using my last drop of gas to get to Currituck. I'll be the one known as "Conquistador" who rides a Spanish pony named La Reina (Queen) adapting to the realities of historical, linear sea level rise in the Mad Max wasteland of the coastal plain of North Carolina. 

Because schools in Kentucky suck...

Ohio State's president told a university committee in December that Notre Dame wasn't invited to join the Big Ten because they're not good partners, and joked that Catholics can't be trusted.

The recording of Gordon Gee speaking to Ohio State's Athletic Council also captures him saying the Notre Dame priests who run the university are holy on Sunday and "holy hell" the rest of the week.

Gee spoke about conference expansion in the recording obtained by The Associated Press. He says Notre Dame "wanted to have its cake and eat it, too."

Gee, who has a history of verbal gaffes, also questioned the academic integrity of schools in the Southeastern Conference and the University of Louisville. He said Big Ten presidents would never agree to admit Louisville or Kentucky.

via espn.go.com

My boss has an oral surgeon on retainer to remove the foot that frequently lodges in his mouth (but he's still a good boss...why the awkward silence?).

Funny, but Appstate doesn't have a PhD program

Alex Tabbarok:

From EJMR:

I have a new paper that I consider my best work. For a variety of reasons, the marginal return professionally for this paper is very small for me. But I think it has an excellent shot a top
journal, I would estimate 1/3 at the AER (I have published there before). So I am offering it for sale. Here are the details:

1. This paper is not yet posted on my website. It has not been circulated and I have not yet presented it.

2. The paper is applied micro although I will sell it to anyone.

3. Email bids to econpubforsale@hotmail.com. Use a fake account and make sure to send no revealing information.

4. Your bid is for an AER or QJE. If it ends in Restud, you pay 65%. If it ends in the Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Public Economics, or EJ, you pay 35%. Other journals are negotiable. You can choose the submission path as long as it starts with one of the top journals.

5. I will contact the winning bid (or highest real bid) to arrange an in person meeting in Philly at the meetings. We will never leave a paper trail.

6. Half of payment is due with a revise and resubmit. I will also make the needed changes. The final half is due with final acceptance.

7. Spare me any discussion of the ethics here. I am dead serious and I will not be commenting further on this thread.

The whole thing could be a troll or an experiment but let’s assume it’s real. An AER could easily be worth 50k, especially for someone early in their career but that’s for one you wrote yourself. An AER written by someone else has a significantly lower expected value since, if revealed, it may end your career. Moreover, suppose the buyer, as unlikely as it seems, takes advantage of the big push and makes it big on their own. Is the buyer not then vulnerable to blackmail from the seller who already has signaled their ethics? I can see this appealing, however, to the scion of some dictator who could afford to pay well over 50k and also afford to make the seller pay if the secret is revealed. Caveat emptor and also caveat venditor. True, there are not many econ PhDs among the dictator set but there are a few and sadly this kind of thing does have precedents.

P.S. I did like the discounting by journal, a nice, accurate touch.

This is an interesting proposal and the comments at the original are funny. But now I'm sucked into the cesspool that is Economics Job Market Rumors:

Ouch. There are also references to "Appalachian Backwoods State" and "Appalachian Podunk State." Double ouch! Apparently, Appalachian State University is used as a euphemism for whatever word describes a soul sucking place where students from top 20 (50) schools go to die a horrible death.

Only Professor Biddle might think the benefit exceeds the cost*

The professor is the only human being who has ever lived in intimate contact with that rare and remarkable bird:

The California condor’s slow 20-year climb back from the brink of extinction has long been a fragile not-quite-success story in the conservation world. So when the news came on Friday that developers of a wind-energy project near the Mojave Desert would not face criminal charges if the blades killed a single condor, environmental groups expressed grave concern. ...

It has been 46 years since the condor — a bald, black carrion-eater that can fly nearly three miles high on wings that span up to 10 feet — was declared endangered. In that time, the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service has almost never waived criminal penalties for the “taking,” or killing, of a condor. ...

The Alta East project is designed to generate 153 megawatts of electric power, bringing the overall capacity developed or managed by Terra-Gen closer to 1,500 megawatts of wind power. ...

There are 234 condors living in the wild mountains of central California. ...

via www.nytimes.com

If one megawatt can power 1000 homes then 153 megawatts can power a small city, 153,000 homes, and reduce CO2 emissions by about 90,000 (~153*.225*2600 tons per MW) tons per year. If the social cost of carbon is $25 per ton then the annual value of the wind power in terms of climate change is about $2.25 million. 

My read of the article says that the risk to the condors is small, the wind farm is on the edge of their range, so if the risk to one condor is 1% (a WAG, but see this), not allowing the wind farm to be cited would place an implicit value on a condor of $2.25+ billion. 

Am I getting these numbers about right? I'm sure that the answer to that question is no, so where am I going wrong? [note: the above "analysis" has been edited in response to comments]

*You can watch it here: http://www.tvland.com/episodes/16388/beverly-hillbillies-the-bird-watchers. In 1966 the California Condor was five years away from being place on the endangered species list. 

 

How to handle invasive species?

I've written before about the solution to the invasive species problem--find/create value for the invader, then let human nature take over and the tragedy of the commons will eradicate the unwanted visitors. Or, you could just rely on completely insane people...

What would you do if you came across the longest Burmese python ever recorded in the state of Florida?

Ummmm..shit myself and call my mommy?

A Miami man had to answer that question recently and he decided to catch and kill it.

Like there was an alternative?  It's not like he couldn't just stay in his car and drive awa...what?  He could have?  The snake hadn't reared and blocked the path of all traffic?

Turns out, it was the longest Burmese python ever captured in Florida; it measured 18 feet, 8 inches.

Just for a frame of reference, if you stretch out an 18' 8" snake it would be the same size as...who am I kidding, who would be stupid enough to stretch out an 18 foot snake? 

The python was a 128-pound female that was not carrying eggs, according to University of Florida scientists who examined the snake.

Well of course she wasn't carrying any eggs, she doesn't have any arms.

The previous record length for a Burmese python captured in the wild in Florida was 17 feet, 7 inches.

Since the python is Burmese, will she be covered under the new immigration reform legislation?

On May 11th, Jason Leon was riding late at night in a rural area of southeast Miami-Dade County when he and his passenger spotted the python. About 3 feet of the snake was sticking out of the roadside brush.

Passenger: "Keep driving Jason.  Just keep driving.  You're not thinking about stopping are you?  Keep going! You're stopping?  You're stopping. Well, I'm just going to sit here.  Don't even think about calling me for for help if you start to pull that thing out of the brush and it wraps around your leg."

Leon stopped his car, grabbed the snake behind its head and started dragging it out of the brush. When the snake began to wrap itself around his leg, he called for assistance from others...

Passenger: "Really?"

...and then used a knife to kill the snake.

Rambo.

via miami.cbslocal.com

Are you high?

Some economics of jetties (i.e., terminal groins) in North Carolina:

A 2010 jetties study from the legislature found the cost of building jetties from $3.5 million and $10 million, and that up to another $2 million would be spent every year for maintenance that included replacing sand washed away from the backside of the structures. The study, however, also found that over 30 years the economic benefits of the protective structures ranged from $27 million at Ocean Isle to over $320 million at Bald Head Island.

via hamptonroads.com

Ignoring the obvious questions behind the benefit numbers ... discounting the annual costs at 3% over 30 years, taking random numbers from a uniform distribution of the variable costs and benefits, then the average net present value of a jetty is about $200 million. 

Ok, not ignoring the obvious questions about the benefits ... $320 million at Bald Head Island? That is about $3.2 million in benefits for each resident household over 30 years. That number seems unrealistically high. Discounting at 3% over 30 years, it is about a $165,000 annual household benefit. 

My Google search didn't find anything about the study except this summary: http://dcm2.enr.state.nc.us/CRC/tgs/finalrecs.pdf. 

Picture of the Day: Redefining POOR or IRONIC?

Saw this on my way home yesterday and got a chuckle (at a stop light in case you think I was violating Ohio's driving laws by taking a picture with a handheld device while moving).  The bumper sticker reads "TOO POOR TO BE A REPUBLICAN."  The car is a Lexus CT200H which U.S. News ranks in the Upscale Small Car category, and starts at $32,050.  In defense of the drive...it is a hybrid and Kelley Blue Book says you can get a 2011 (first model year) starting around $25,000.

And I blacked out the license plate just because it made me feel like a real journalist.

No wonder I got the f@$% out of North Carolina

What the @#$%, Ohio? You swear more than Illinois? More than New Jersey?

 More than New freakin’ York?!

That’s the finding of the Seattle-based Marchex Institute, and if you don’t like it, you probably shouldn’t tell researchers where to stick it. They already think the Buckeye State has the tact of a drunken fool.

The institute, the research arm of mobile-advertising firm Marchex, studied more than 600,000 phone calls placed in the last year from consumers to businesses, among them car dealerships and cable companies. The company analyzes calls for its clients, and sometimes it has a little fun with the results. This time, it used voice-recognition software that was uncanny at picking up the curse words that you apparently love and that we can’t print here.

Ohio won! Or maybe it lost? Its residents swore more than any other state: In every 150 conversations or so, an Ohioan let loose with language that would make your grandma wag her finger.

“I was surprised by the results,” said John Busby, senior vice president of the Marchex Institute. He’s a transplanted Midwesterner whose siblings attended Ohio colleges.

He expected potty mouths to come from the East Coast, but those $#@%s were no match for Ohio’s tongues of fury. Maryland and New Jersey were the runners-up, followed by Louisiana and Illinois.

via www.dispatch.com

Of my 43 years, I have lived 38 of them is states #1 (13 years) and #2 (25 years).