Common Resources

Deep and Shallow Uncertainty in Messaging Climate Change

This post draws on a recent RFF discussion paper by RFF Senior Fellow Roger Cooke, where he explores these topics in greater detail. Cooke is the Chauncey Starr Chair in Risk Analysis at RFF and lead author for Risk and Uncertainty in the recently released IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Present State of the Uncertainty Narrative In […]

Research Questions for the Midterm CAFE Review: Will the Footprint-Based CAFE Standard Work as Expected?

This is the third in a series of blog posts by RFF’s transportation team that addresses some of the key research questions for the midterm CAFE review. The first two blog posts in this series introduced the midterm review of the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards and discussed unresolved issues for this review about […]

Making Flood Insurance Affordable

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) found itself floundering in debt after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, sparking a legislative push to overhaul it. The result was a risk-based pricing plan under the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, signed by the president last July after passing with wide bipartisan support. But recently, questions about […]

How Much Do Weather-related Disasters Cost?

Climate scientists predict many weather-related extreme events may be changing in frequency or intensity as the climate warms, or their location, timing, and duration may be changing. The public also perceives a trend toward more extreme events which they pin on climate change: a 2012 poll of U.S. residents by researchers at Yale found that, […]

Pipeline Safety and Keystone XL

The Premier of Alberta is in town promoting the Keystone XL pipeline. She fielded questions at the Brookings Institution, and regarding a question referring to last month’s spill in Arkansas said “these are very isolated incidents, and they don’t happen as often as people might suggest that they could.” There are plenty of data on pipeline spills which […]

Scientists Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison for “Optimizing” Uncertainty of L’Aquila Earthquake

A truism in risk management is that every disaster was predicted by someone, sometime, somehow. The 6 April 2009 earthquake that devastated the Italian city of L’Aquila was “predicted” (actually retrodicted: evidence was adduced post hoc) by anomalous toad behavior 70 km away. An earthquake in the Abruzzo region was also predicted by heretic scientist […]