Category Archives: Environment

Gaius Publius: They Knew – Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago

Exxon knew as early as 1977 that earth’s climate was being seriously disrupted, and would continue to be disrupted, by carbon dioxide emissions. Yet in the 1980s they pivoted to financing an aggressive climate denial effort .

Read more...

Cereals, Appropriability, and Hierarchy

Conventional theory suggests that hierarchy and state institutions emerged due to increased productivity following the Neolithic transition to farming. This column argues that these social developments were a result of an increase in the ability of both robbers and the emergent elite to appropriate crops. Hierarchy and state institutions developed, therefore, only in regions where appropriable cereal crops had sufficient productivity advantage over non-appropriable roots and tubers.

Read more...

Why Did Oil Prices Just Jump By 27 Percent in 3 Days?

Oil prices have posted their strongest rally in years, jumping an astounding 27 percent in the last three trading days of August.

While much of the recent price movement defies reason and is enormously magnified by speculative movements by traders to take and cover their bets on oil, still, there were a series of rumors, events, and fresh data that helped contribute to the spike.

Read more...

Judges Nixing Keystone XL South Cases Had Tar Sands-Related Oil Investments

Lambert here: As ever, the scandal is what’s legal. Ka-ching. By Steve Horn, a Madison, WI-based Research Fellow for DeSmogBlog and a freelance investigative journalist. He previously was a reporter and researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy. Originally published at DeSmogBlog. On August 4, the U.S. Appeals Court for the 10th Circuit shot […]

Read more...