Environmental Economics

I find it somewhat ironic that our oil reserves outlasted the "Peak Oilers'" blog

Geez, now who are we going to use as strawmen in the Peak Oil debate?

The Oil Drum (TOD) was an internet energy phenomenon that ran for over eight years from April 2005 to September 2013. The site was founded by Prof. Goose (also known as Professor Kyle Saunders of Colorado State University) and Heading Out (also known as Professor Dave Summers formerly of the University of Missouri).

...

In the course of 2013, a decision was made to archive The Oil Drum and the main purpose of this Last Post is to provide some direction to new and future readers of the vast content it contains. The main contributors are listed below along with links to where their writings can be now be found. If you are looking for content there are two main options. The first is to look for author specific content where clicking on the live hyper linked name of the contributor will take you to a page giving access to all the content produced by that author. The second option is to use the Advanced Search facility at the top left of this page. Simply enter a few key words and this will return a page of the most relevant articles.

via www.theoildrum.com

He who has never published the scam article, cast the first stone

Retraction Watch:

What do porn star Ron Jeremy, Max Weber and Michael Jackson have in common?  Very little — except the three names appear in the list of references for a recent hoax paper by a group of Serbian academics who, fed up with the poor state of their country’s research output, scammed a Romanian magazine by publishing a completely fabricated article.

The paper is replete with transparent gimmicks — obvious, that is, had anyone at the publication been paying attention — including a reference to the scholarship of Jackson, Weber, Jeremy and citations to new studies by Bernoulli and Laplace, both dead more than 180 years (Weber died in 1920). They also throw in references to the “Journal of Modern Illogical Studies,” which to the best of our knowledge does not and never has existed (although perhaps it should), and to a researcher named, dubiously, “A.S. Hole.” And, we hasten to add, the noted Kazakh polymath B. Sagdiyev, otherwise known as Borat.

The paper, “Evaluation of transformative hermeneutic heuristics for processing random data,” by Dragan Djuric, Boris Delibasic and Stevica Radisic, appeared in the magazine Metalurgia International, according to the website In Serbia, which reported on the story. The authors, from the University of Belgrade and the Health Center ‘Stari Grad’, appear on the manuscript in false wigs and mustaches.

I've always wanted to slip in "cromulent." As in, "consider the following cromulent results." I'm probably waiting until my next to last paper.

Spot the mistake

This should be an easy one for anyone who doesn't spend 100% of their time thinking about environmental economics:

Moses first made national headlines when LSU coach Les Miles, Ohio State's Nick Saban and everyone else in between offered him a scholarship as an eighth-grader, when he registered a 4.46-second 40-yard dash and 34-inch vertical leap at LSU's football camp

via sports.yahoo.com

PhD Comics: Should you ask a question during seminar?

I wish the "not really I just want to show off" arrow led to "no, don't ask your question, everyone knows you are just showing off."

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1632

They forgot bacon

It might seem that the range of scents humans can detect is infinite, but scientists have managed to sort them all into 10 basic categories, ranging from peppermint to pungent.

The classifications are meant to be the olfactory equivalent of the five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (savory).

To come up with the 10 scents, neuroscientists turned to a 30-year-old database that contained profiles of 144 odors. Each odor was assessed by human subjects, who were given a list of 146 words and asked to rate how well each word described the odor. The researchers wanted to see if they could look for patterns in those responses that would help them group the odors.

Using statistics, they analyzed how the 146 words were used and how they were related to one another. Some words were almost always used together, such as fruity and honey. Others were rarely or never paired, such as fecal and minty.

By the end of the analysis, the researchers came up with a total of 10 distinct groups of words that tended to be used together.

...

The result was a list of 10 key odor categories: fragrant, woody/resinous, minty/peppermint, sweet, chemical, popcorn, lemon, fruity (non-citrus), pungent and decayed.

via www.dispatch.com

Seriously?  Popcorn gets its own category (well-deserved) but bacon doesn't?  Att he very least, bacon needs to go into a 'cooking meat' category.  I'm really not sure where bacon fits into this list. 

I'm a "green" member of the WEAI!

From the inbox:

Dear Dr. Whitehead:

Thank you for reviewing ECIN-[redacted] for Economic Inquiry.

The Western Economic Association International would like to thank you for your contribution to our journal. To acknowledge your promptness in returning your report, WEAI is offering you a free one-year green membership.

Membership benefits include one-year on-line subscriptions to Contemporary Economic Policy and Economic Inquiry, as well as substantially lower fees for participation in Association activities.

If you would like to take advantage of this offer please submit your request online ...

We greatly appreciate the time and energy you have given to your role as a referee.  The journals depend on your services to maintain their high quality.

Little do they know, I print out all of my downloaded articles, load them up in my car, drive around all day and throw them away at the landfill instead of recycling.

An individual transferable quota experiment in the Gulf of Mexico headboat fishery

This is truly exciting:

NOAA Fisheries has issued an exempted fishing permit (EFP) to the Gulf of Mexico Headboat Cooperative (Cooperative).  The Cooperative consists of headboat owners/captains.  The Cooperative intends to evaluate the efficiency of an allocation-based management system, using a limited number of headboats in a two-year pilot study.  

This study, to be conducted in the Gulf of Mexico, is intended to assess whether such a system can better achieve conservation goals established in the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico; evaluate the effectiveness of a more timely electronic data reporting system; and evaluate the potential social and economic benefits of an alternative management strategy for the headboat segment of the recreational fishing sector within the Gulf reef fish fishery.

via sero.nmfs.noaa.gov

Buy our book! ; - )

Here are a couple of excerpts ($ link):

The book’s introduction does a good job of describing both the historical and current issues and problems in this area of economic research. The literature review presented in the introduction is helpful in putting content to the problem at hand. The 19 papers presented in the book are subdivided in five sections, with the first section discussing theoretical and modeling issues and the mathematical and statistical tools needed to address the many empirical problems that arise in combining SP and RP data. The remaining sections focus on specific empirical problems, identified in the theory section, applied to many different research areas from travel cost models, demand for coastal management and beach erosion, to risk of exposure to pesticides. I was impressed with the scope of the empirical research, as it addresses and confronts many of the problems in applied research in this field. ...

The editors are to be commended for the structure, organization, and consistency across papers to the general research theme of the book. All economists should read at least the first section on modeling and measurement, but for environmental economists this book is a must for both research and teaching. A good read.

Shouldn't it be spelled "stoopid"?

http://www.seattlepi.com/comics-and-games/fun/Mark_Trail/2013-09-19/

Is Mark getting up out of his chair to punch Johnny Walker for calling wildlife stupid? I can't wait until tomorrow. Pow!

This strip is a great example of scarcity and opportunity cost. Just draw this picture in class and student discussion will take care of the rest of the 50 minute class session:

And as willwheels, if that is his real name, points out:

... every sentence in Mark Trail this week has ended with an exclamation point.

Quote of the day

John Boehner:

“Do you want to risk the full faith and credit of the U.S. government over Obamacare? That’s a very tough argument to make.”

via www.nytimes.com