• This was a good post from Tomas Pueyo on the benefits of SO2 stratospheric injection for ameliorating greenhouse gas temperature rise. See also Professor David Keith’s Group and their work at Harvard, including:

Weisenstein, D. K. and Visioni, D. and Franke, H. and Niemeier, U. and Vattioni, S. and Chiodo, G. and Peter, T. and Keith, D. W. An interactive stratospheric aerosol model intercomparison of solar geoengineering by stratospheric injection of SO2 or accumulation-mode sulfuric acid aerosols. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2022, Vol 22 #5:2955-2973

• Katelyn Jetelina and Kristen Panthagani do another excellent job explaining why the Florida Heath Department has yet again put politics ahead of science in the handling of Florida’s school measles outbreak, and in doing so Ladapo has put the health of the citizens that his office is charged with protecting at risk.  Read about it in their Your Local Epidemiologist blog post.

• Jeremy Faust remarks in his Inside Medicine blog on how much air exchange can affect Covid-19 transmission (as expected, it makes a big difference).

• Heather does a nice job laying out the Russian connections with the House’s absurdist Biden bribery investigation (just one more in a series of Republican show investigations) see her latest Letters from an American.

• Matt Yglesias explains why DJT’s proposed tariffs are inefficient, will raise prices and are bad for consumers – in effect a highly regressive tax.

“Most studies indicate that the price of Trump’s tariffs have been primarily born by American consumers (American Action Forum, Cato Institute, Tax Foundation)…So it’s really worth saying that whatever you make of industrial policy, what Trump is suggesting is not a remotely strategic approach to national economic development. If anything, Trump’s entire trade agenda — not only these tariffs, but things like his 2020 effort to score a giant sale of soybeans to China — is geared around de-industrializing the United States and turning us into a primary commodity exporter…The right’s intellectual trajectory on these topics is somewhat alarming. Everyone in DC understands that Trump did not come up with this policy proposal based on any kind of detailed study of the issue. Unless it benefits him personally, Trump just pulls ideas out of his ass because he likes the vibe.”

• Matt Yglesias presents a what I think is a good case for bipartisan Nuclear Regulatory Commission Reform in order to reduce the cost (and increase the presence) of nuclear electricity sources in the U.S.

• Tomas Pueyo writes an extensively researched article on nuclear power here; it’s worth reading.

• An excellent essay by David French on why there is a legitimate case for disqualification based on the 14th amendment appears in the NYT here. An excerpt:

• Krugman on the current state of things, writing in the NYT:

“You may have heard about the good economic news. Labor force participation — the share of adults in today’s work force — is actually slightly higher than the Congressional Budget Office predicted before the pandemic. Measures of underlying inflation have fallen more or less back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target even though unemployment is near a 50-year low. Adjusted for inflation, most workers’ wages have gone up.

For some reason I’ve heard less about the crime news, but it’s also remarkably good. F.B.I. data shows that violent crime has subsided: It’s already back to 2019 levels and appears to be falling further. Homicides probably aren’t quite back to 2019 levels, but they’re plummeting.

None of this undoes the Covid death toll or the serious learning loss suffered by millions of students. But overall both our economy and our society are in far better shape at this point than most people would have predicted in the early days of the pandemic — or than most Americans are willing to admit.

For if America’s resilience in the face of the pandemic shock has been remarkable, so has the pessimism of the public.”

• From Bill Gates’ end-of-year Gates Notes newsletter:

“My favorite innovation story, though, starts with one of my favorite statistics: Since 2000, the world has cut in half the number of children who die before the age of five.

How did we do it? One key reason was innovation. Scientists came up with new ways to make vaccines that were faster and cheaper but just as safe. They developed new delivery mechanisms that worked in the world’s most remote places, which made it possible to reach more kids. And they created new vaccines that protect children from deadly diseases like rotavirus.”