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Monthly Archives: June 2009

Call Me Skeptical

By | | Follow up
109 Comments

D4P wants me to state my position on global climate change. I haven’t done so because normally I take positions only on subject about which I have a lot of expertise. t g rightly guesses that I focus on the political question rather than the scientific one.

But if I have to take a position, I would say I am still skeptical about climate change. I am skeptical about any policy position that depends so heavily on computer models. I’ve spent years analyzing computer models and I know they are most often used as black boxes to confuse and dismay the public. Climate is a complex if not a chaotic system that is not amenable to modeling.

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P. J. O’Rourke on Cars

By | | Book reviews, News commentary, Transportation
21 Comments

P. J. O’Rourke has a new book, Driving Like Crazy, and an article in the Wall Street Journal lamenting that the magic of the automobile “was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste, and busybodies.” Because his grandfather was once a car dealer, some readers will consign him to a part of the “vast automobile conspiracy.”

The Antiplanner, however, doesn’t believe that “Americans fell out of love with the automobile.” Except for the fact that people like something because it is less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives, most Americans never were in love with the automobile — though certainly some were and still are. For most trips, cars are still less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives, so they are likely to remain the dominant form of American transportation for a long time.

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Six Billion Pounds? Not Likely and Not Worth It

By | | Transportation
18 Comments

When President Obama announced his vision for high-speed rail, he claimed it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 billion pounds a year. The first clue that this number is pretty insignificant is the fact that it is expressed in pounds, instead of the usual metric tons. Six billion pounds is 2.72 million metric tons, which is less than five one-hundredths of a percent of the 6 trillion tons of CO2 the U.S. produced in 2007.

Even if it were significant, it is almost certainly a wild exaggeration. According to page 3 of the Federal Railroad Administration’s strategic plan, the source is a 2006 report by the Center for Air Policy and Center for Neighborhood Technologies.

At the risk of making an * ahem * ad hominem attack, this source is not exactly objective. Without documentation or attribution, the very first paragraph of the report claims that high-speed rail “can reduce congestion on roads and at airports, is cost effective and convenient, improves mobility and has environmental benefits.” That doesn’t sound very fair and balanced to me.

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Houston Densifying Faster Than Portland

By | | Regional planning
46 Comments

The Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Wendell Cox, presents these data (20 KB PDF) on changes in urban density between 2000 and 2007. The density of the Portland urban area grew by 12.4 percent. Meanwhile, the density of the Houston urban area grew by 14.3 percent.

Other relatively unplanned urban areas also had rapid density growth: Riverside-San Bernardino (the least-planned communities in southern California) by 19.5 percent; Atlanta by 17.7 percent; Austin by 16.6 percent; and Las Vegas by 15.6 percent.

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Cox cautions that “These data relate to the urban footprints (land areas) as determined by the US Bureau of the Census in 2000. No adjustment has been made for geographical expansion of urban areas since that time. Thus, the 2007 density figures do not indicate urban area densities in 2007, but rather the density of the 2000 boundaries in 2007.”