Ideology, Climate Change, and the War on Optimism

Some may feel that optimism undermines the spirit of political activism and thus makes people less open to “structural change”. This is not an unreasonable proposition: if optimism is based on positive experiences, why would anyone want to hobble a system that has improved the quality of life for so most of humanity?

The Ups and Downs of Public Opinion about Protecting the Environment (Detecting a Pattern)

What I find surprising is the sharp rise in public concern about the environment during the pre-Covid Trump administration, despite the administration’s anti-environmental rhetoric, aggressive deregulation and cost-cutting measures.  Apparently, the administration’s top-down messaging was unable to override the inclination of Americans to care more about nature when bread-and-butters worries subside. 

How Obvious Persuasive Intent Backfires: The Case of Climate Change...er, um, "Climate Crisis"

“News organizations increasingly use the terms “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” to convey the urgency of climate change; yet, little is known about how this terminology affects news audiences...[The results of our study] showed no effect of terminology on climate change engagement; however, “climate emergency” reduced perceived news credibility and newsworthiness compared to “climate change.” …No interactions with political ideology were found.” - Feldman & Hart (2021) Upping the ante? The effects of “emergency” and “crisis” framing in climate change news.

Grandiosity, Thy Name is Trump

Grandiosity refers to a sense of specialness and self-importance that might lead you to:

  • boast about real or exaggerated accomplishments

  • consider yourself more talented or intelligent than others

  • dismiss or try to one-up the achievements of others

  • believe you’re above rules or ordinary limits

  • fail to recognize that your actions could harm others

  • lash out in anger when someone criticizes you or points out a flaw in your plans

— from “What is Grandiosity?”, PsychCentral

How to Survive and Thrive in a Warmer World, Part II: A Slight Detour

AI Overviews are a wonderful tool but shouldn’t be considered the final word on a topic or query. They are, however, a good place to begin an exploration.

With that in mind, I’ll start subsequent Survive and Thrive posts with an AI Overview on the topic under consideration and then proceed to whatever more I’ve found out in my own explorations.

Trump and the State of Democracy across the World

“A sanity-preserving maxim among observers of Mr Trump is to pay attention not to what he says but to what he does. Better yet, pay attention not to what he says or does but to what the courts allow him to do. By this standard, Mr Trump’s first-month frenzy is likely to fall well short of a constitutional crisis. (The Economist, Donald Trump is a reckless president, but not yet a lawless one. February 22, 2025)

The Politics and Policy of Rent Control: An Update

This post is an update to a post on rent control I wrote in 2022. It was inspired by a Zoom conversation I had some weeks ago. We were talking about rent control and I mentioned there was plenty of research showing that rent control often does more harm than good. My comment triggered a quick response, “yeah, that’s what conservatives say”. (For the record, I’m not a conservative).

Moral Judgment as Perception of Harm.

Gray and Pruitt maintain that perception of harm is central to all moral judgments. Or as they put it, “harmless wrongs do not exist”. They also argue that “moral disagreement across politics is in part grounded in different assumptions of vulnerability”. For example…

Changes in Total Global Emissions Since 2000 and 2010

The last four posts focused on countries with the highest CO2 emissions as a percent of global CO2 emissions: total emissions per country, per capita emissions, changes in emissions since 2000, and the decoupling of emissions from economic growth. This post will look at global trends in CO2 emissions since 2000 and 2010.

Per capita CO2 emissions of countries with the highest emissions in the world

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR)  is a joint project of the European Commission Joint Research Centre and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency which estimates emissions of all greenhouse gases (GHGs), air pollutants and aerosols. The latest EDGAR report is a treasure trove  of greenhouse gas emissions data…

Countries with the Highest CO2 Emissions: Percent of Global Total

This series of posts will focus on countries with the highest CO2 emissions: China, the U.S., India, Russia, Japan, Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Canada, and South Korea. First, the percent of total global CO2 emissions for each country

Why Test Scores Matter

Why does this matter? Because longitudinal studies have found that students who performed worse in PISA at age 15 are less likely to attain higher levels of education by the age of 25, and are more likely to be out of the labor market entirely, ie, not in education, employment or training. For many, a lifetime of economic hardship and reliance on public services follows.

Closing the Gap: Cross-Country Comparison of Student Math and Reading Skills: Second Generation Immigrants vs Non-Immigrants

Part of this performance gap can be explained by socio-economic and language factors, e.g., poverty and lack of fluency in the language used on the tests. I imagine age at immigration matters as well: a person who immigrates as a teenager will likely find school harder in their new country than someone who arrived as a baby. Following this logic, I’d expect second-generation immigrants - born in a country to at least one foreign-born parent - would have little difficulty adapting to a country’s education system and so their PISA scores would reflect this.

Student Performance in Reading, Math and Science: US Trends from 2000-2022

Per the above chart, American 15-year olds have been reading at roughly the same level (on average) as they were 20 years ago. Surprisingly, their reading performance held up rather well during the pandemic years, despite the challenges of extended school closures, remote learning and the high absenteeism.