France has just clocked up a record trade deficit for the first six months of this year: 11.193 billion euros. This now adds the French to the eurozone BoP sick room along with Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal. Of course oil imports form an important part of the picture, but that doesn’t make [...]

Hi everyone. Yes, it is true: I am back from vacation, and I have been stalking the comments section for a few days now, but I am trying very hard *not* to post regularly since I still have some outstanding work I want to finish before I get too sucked in. On the other hand [...]

This National Geographic article givsx you much more depth and info than the newspaper articles.
Brenda Ekwurzel is a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. She said the West Siberian Lowland indeed falls within a hot spot but added that whether thawing peatlands will accelerate global warming remains an open question.
Ekwurzel [...]

Kevin Drum writes about our oil peak problem, which isn’t as potentially grave and significant as our greenhouse gas problem, but beats any other contender.
Oil production will almost certainly surpass 84 million barrels per day as new fields come online in the future, but demand is going to increase right along with it. Thus, unless [...]

This is a few days old, I was too dismayed to bear posting about it. But it has gotten remarkbly little attention.
The world’s largest frozen peat bog is melting, which could speed the rate of global warming, New Scientist reports.
The huge expanse of western Siberia is thawing for the first time since its formation, 11,000 [...]

A while back I asked about EU policies toward China. There’s now a section on the Europa server devoted to just that question.
“There will soon be more people living in the city of Bombay than on the continent of Australia. … Bombay is the future of urban civilisation on the planet. God help us.” (p. [...]

Opening my McKinseyQuarterly Newsletter today, I find an interesting link to the McKinsey Global Institute’s latest contribution (free, but registration required) to the question whether Globalization is actually civilizing, destructive, or feeble - as Wharton’s Mauro Guillen put it in this paper with reference to Albert Hirschman’s analysis of the shifting social value attributed to [...]

I suppose it is only a matter of time until Google Earth will be banned both for its addictive potential and its contribution to a sharp decline in desktop productivity. But given that much of Europe - and afoe - is on holiday these days, I thought I present you, our gentle readers, with the [...]

Here’s my take on the IRA peace announcement, written for Slate yesterday.
The smartest thing I have to say involves pointing out how wrong I’ve been about a few things in the past.

Read more… or Read more right here… »
[...]

This Slate article on what the IRA statement means by our own Scott MacMillan is quite excellent.