Time for snake cotton

 

On June 27th, after noticing a bit of snake cotton at Schroeter Neighborhood Park, I wended my way over to a sump a mile or two away at the edge of Great Hills Park where I’d seen a whole colony of the stuff in 2020. Sure enough, I found a whole colony of it again. I don’t know if this is Froelichia floridana or Froelichia gracilis, both of which botanist Bill Carr says occur in Travis County. I do know that the latter of those two species grows across much of the United States. I also know that the nighttime-looking sky in the top photograph comes from using close flash and a tiny aperture.

 

 

 

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In a commentary 10 months ago I discussed an editorial by physicist Steven E. Koonin about climate change, and I linked to information about his excellent book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why it Matters.

Last week Dr. Koonin had an editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled “The White House Tells the Truth About Climate Change.” Its sub-head was “A report reveals that global temperature changes barely affects economic growth.” Here are the editorial’s first and last paragraph:

The journalist Michael Kinsley famously noted that “a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.” By that standard, the White House committed a doozy in March when it released a paper on climate change’s effect on the U.S. economy. Its findings undermine any claims of an ongoing climate crisis or imminent catastrophe.

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The report’s authors should be commended for honestly delivering likely unwelcome messages, even if they didn’t make a show of it. The rest of the Biden administration and its climate-activist allies should moderate their apocalyptic rhetoric and cancel the climate crisis accordingly. Exaggerating the magnitude, urgency and certainty of the climate threat encourages ill-considered policies that could be more disruptive and expensive than any change in the climate itself.

 

You can read the full editorial, which includes data to back up that conclusion.

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman