David Friedman Makes My List

James Delingpole, a blogger I had on my list for some time, threw in the towel not long ago. Not so much quitting, but signing on with a different web site. Since he didn't give directions on where to find his new spot, I took him off my sidebar's blog list. Now who or what to replace him with?

I decided to add David Friedman's blog, Ideas. Not explicitly libertarian. He seems more an impartial observer of current events. What moved me the most is his recent posts on global warming/ climate change, and he seems to be a believer (note the small case b).

Note his believer credentials in his post of July 5, 2009:

"...But my best guess, from watching the debate, is that the first half of the argument is correct, that global climate is warming and that human action is at least an important part of the cause."

But he's certainly not a Believer. In a later post he acknowledges the apparent recent stall in the earth's temperature rise. To paraphrase his comment, assuming man is causing warming, more powerful other forces must be holding that warming back. That's along the line of what I wrote here some time ago: That man's impact on the weather and climate, if any, is insignificant compared to the larger forces of nature.

He also put's the "97% of scientists agree..." claim under scrutiny in his post of February 26, A Climate Falsehood You Can Check Yourself. 

He closes by writing, "Would anybody now like to claim that lumping levels 1, 2, and 3 together and only reporting the sum was not a deliberate attempt to mislead?". Much as I wrote here before, you might even add my name to the list if you make that group large enough.

He also did some looking into facts being strewn around about second hand smoke. In Blowing Second Hand Smoke, he found no solid research to back up the claim that tens or hundreds of thousands supposedly die from second hand smoke each year.

All in all an interesting blog. If I have one complaint to make it's that, as an academic, he writes as an academic. That makes it work for me to read sometimes, and perhaps quite difficult for others. Shame, as much of what he writes should be read by all.