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Latest Musing Bats and Brokers Looking for clues to explain Tuesday's market gyrations? Observe a bloodsucking mammal The renewed  volatility in our tightly coupled financial system calls to mind a piece I wrote for TIME in 2000 during another period of extreme market upheaval. Here it is:   Quick! The market is crashing, and you are overextended, so where do you turn for help: a) y... continue Books Fire & Flood Buy from Amazon Deep Past Buy from Amazon more info Articles by Category endangered animals rapid climate change global deforestation fragging Books The Ragged Edge of the World Winds of Change Buy from Amazon more info Afterword to the softbound edition. The Octopus and the Orangutan more info The Future In Plain Sight more info The Parrot's Lament more info Silent Partners more info Affluence and Discontent more info The Alms Race more info Apes, Men, & Language more info

SO MUCH FOR THE PAUSE Friday November 15, 2013 That didn’t take long. Recall that just a few weeks ago climate change deniers were crowing about the "missing" global warming because the latest draft IPCC report on the state of the climate noted that in the years since 1997 the rate of warming seemed to have dropped. Part of the answer -- ignored by the denier crowd -- was that trends had been distored by the super El Nino of 1998. Now it seems that even with that skew there was no pause in warming. From the climate modelers’ go-to site, realclimate.org, comes news of a study of global temperatures that argues that between 1997 and 2012 the world warmed at twice the rate reported in the latest draft IPCC report. According to Stefan Rahmstorf at RealClimate, the findings weren’t used by the IPCC because the researchers, Kevin Cowtan and Robert Way, responsibly waited until their report was published by the Royal Meteorological Society before going public. Basically, the scientists found that there were big gaps in temperature data from the Arctic (which has undergone extraordinary warming) because of the paucity of weather stations, and they figured out how to fill in those gaps using satellite data. Once adjusted, the global trend rose from 0.05 degrees C per decade to 0.12 degrees C per decade, which is in line with previous warming. Presto! No more pause. No doubt the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and the hundreds of other media outlets that made a big deal out of  the “missing” global warming will now issue retractions and updates. contact Eugene Linden

Short Take QUICK AND EASY RECIPE TO BAKE AN INSTANT SOCIALIST     INGREDIENTS:   One cup Libertarian hi-tech entrepreneur   All the hi-tech company’s cash   One cup Silicon Valley Bank   Cooking Instructions:   Combine company cash and entrepreneur with Silicon Valley Bank and bake with low heat during the weekend after the bank collapsed.   Remove entrepreneur from oven Monday morning. If properly cooked, entrepreneur’s first words will be “government bailout.”         read more

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