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Showing posts from June, 2017

Trash Arguments from Lukewarmer Oren Cass

For those just tuning in, let's have a quick recap. Here's the argument in favor of strong climate policy: Unchecked climate change looks bad, potentially very bad, therefore we should cut the greenhouse gas emissions which cause it. In his " lukewarmer " manifesto articles, Oren Cass disputes the "potentially very bad" clause of the argument, asserting that there is no scientific consensus behind predictions of extreme devastation from climate change, and that continued economic growth would allow us to buy our way out of any problems we might have. In my response , I argued this was improperly conflating predictions about possibilities with ones about what is most probable . It is true that the IPCC summary of what is most likely to happen does not generally track with the most alarming predictions (though as Michael Mann — an actual climate scientist, unlike either of us — points out , Cass rather understates the actual level of alarm in the IPCC a

What Happens to the Electoral College under an Expanded House?

Awhile ago I idly speculated that the size of the House of Representatives should be increased. From back in 1913 when the size of the House was fixed at its current 435 seats, the number of people represented by each member has increased from a bit over 210,000 to over 700,000 today. Insofar as each member is supposed to be in contact with his or her constituents, that's rather straining the point of the body. So suppose we fixed the size of the House based on a desired district size of 150,000 people (incidentally over twice the size of the average constituency in the UK Parliament). The way House seats are currently apportioned is a real pain in the neck because first you have to dole out one seat to every state, and then the rest according to a complicated population-based formula — necessary because a few tiny states like Wyoming have less than 1/435th of the population. But if we select 150,000 as the desired district size, we can simply divide each state's populati