toilets, zippers, and cylinder locks. They were then asked to write detailed, step-by-step explanations of how the devices work, and to rate their understanding again. Apparently, the effort revealed to the students their own ignorance, because their self-assessments dropped

illusion of explanatory depth,

People believe that they know way more than they actually do

He simply says that there’s lots of carbon buried in the permafrost and, as the ice melts, the carbon is released as methane, which is 86 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (on a short- to mid-term basis). That is true.

One set of satellite data was updated, it falls in line with the rest, and warming is happening roughly on the schedule models predicted (which, as Mann notes, is plenty fast enough).

So that’s one close call and one error, which together constitute, by my rough calculation, about a fiftieth of the factual claims in WW’s piece. The rest, as far as I know, stands.

set of propositions that animated the project from the start: that the public does not appreciate the scale of climate risk; that this is in part because we have not spent enough time contemplating the scarier half of the distribution curve of possibilities, especially its brutal long tail, or the risks beyond sea-level rise; that there is journalistic and public-interest value in spreading the news from the scientific community, no matter how unnerving it may be; and that, when it comes to the challenge of climate change, public complacency is a far, far bigger problem than widespread fatalism — that many, many more people are not scared enough than are already “too scared.” In fact, I don’t even understand what “too scared” would mean. The science says climate change threatens nearly every aspect of human life on this planet, and that inaction will hasten the problems. In that context, I don’t think it’s a slur to call an article, or its writer, alarmist. I’ll accept that characterization. We should be alarmed.

But no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough

There have been some real gains in middle-class jobs by giving tax incentives to multinationals to set up headquarters here, but those can go quite quickly if somebody gives a better incentive somewhere else. This is the situation at the peak, when Panama has absorbed tons of capital from Venezuela's collapse, and just finished going through a gigantic real-estate boom. Things are starting to go downhill now - and of course, that means going back to the status quo which is considerably more precarious to the original one before the boom. Basically, there were beneficiaries, but in the end, everything "inneficient" (read: not owned by multinationals or national champions) got axed. In conclusion, the world is being enslaved by multinationals and whoever benefits is at their mercy.

It is hard to imagine, 173 years later, a leading Western newspaper discussing globalization without a mere mention of its ecological implications. Are humans better off in the short term pillaging every last acre of rainforest and sapping every last drip of oil from under the earth rather than living more modestly and sustainably? YES. Is that ordained avariciousness hurtling us towards ecological catastrophe? This newspaper is not qualified to say, and shouldn't stake claims to anything but its unapologetic defence of the dismal science. Critical thinkers should halt abruptly the comforting lullaby that prompts (apparently) the likes of Larry Ellison to say "I used to think, now I read the Economist". They should look up from their chequebooks long enough to see the impact of the ecological warfare that this newspaper has championed for generations. We must improve globalization, but not before we rebalance capitalism. Natural capital MUST be taken into the equation for our species (and particularly those in fragile economies) to have a chance of flourishing beyond the quarterly reports, annual bonuses and election cycles that keep us chained to our myopic greed.

I am really surprised the economist allowed such a generic article in favour of free trade to be published.

But there is a world of difference between improving globalisation and reversing it.

The annual cost to American consumers of switching to non-Chinese tyres after Barack Obama slapped on anti-dumping tariffs in 2009 was around $1.1 billion, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. That amounts to over $900,000 for each of the 1,200 jobs that were “saved”

Perhaps a fifth of the 6m or so net job losses in American manufacturing between 1999 and 2011 stemmed from Chinese competition; many of those who lost jobs did not find new ones.

Our findings suggest the usefulness of MBSR as an intervention for a broad range of chronic disorders and problems. In fact, the consistent and relatively strong level of effect sizes across very different types of sample indicates that mindfulness training might enhance general features of coping with distress and disability in everyday life, as well as under more extraordinary conditions of serious disorder or stress.

improvements were consistently seen across a spectrum of standardized mental health measures including psychological dimensions of quality of life scales, depression, anxiety, coping style and other affective dimensions of disability. Likewise, similar benefits were also found for health parameters of physical well-being, such as medical symptoms, sensory pain, physical impairment, and functional quality-of-life estimates, although measures of physically oriented measures were less frequently assessed in the studies as a whole.

a recent randomized study of depressives in remission found one-year relapse rates of major depressive episodes to be halved when conventional treatment was supplemented by a mindfulness program [3]. Another investigation of mindfulness training among anxiety and mood disorder patients showed pre- to postintervention improvements in mental health outcomes with an effect size of 0.7 [10].