Must Read

• Peter Gleick, Everything Senator Ted Cruz said about climate change in this NPR interview was wrong.
• Justin Gillis (NYT), Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change
• Coral Davenport (NYT), Nations Reach Landmark Climate Accord in Paris

Should Read

• Seth Itzkan and Karl Thidemann, Dispatch From COP21: The Convenient Truth About Soil
• Suzanne Goldenberg, Bernie Sanders Calls for a Carbon Tax
• Zahra Hirji, Massachusetts Mulls an Economy-Wide Price on Carbon [Ed.:  related reading]
• Debra Parkhurst, Selectmen Support Bedford [MA] Energy Task Force Initiative
• U.S. Dept. of Energy, Community Choice Aggregation

Climate Change

• Brad DeLong, Lots to Worry About in Climate Change
• Caitlin Werrell and Francesco Femia, Let’s Not Say Climate Change Causes War. But Let’s Also Not Ignore the Real Security Risks
• Andrew McGill, What Makes People Who Really Care About Climate Change Different?

Science and Mathematics

• Chad Orzel, Physics Demands Many Kinds Of Literacy
• Mark Transtrum et al, Sloppiness and emergent theories in physics, biology, and beyond
• Glenn Selby, Pancaking the Telescope: Seeking a New Generation of Light-Based Sensing Systems
• Andrew Gelman, 1 cool trick for defining conditional probability

Food for Thought

• Cathy O’Neil, Housekeys
• Jim Moore, Catch a drone for cash
• Washington’s Blog, Top NSA Whistleblower: “Every Time There Is a Terrorist Attack, What We Really Need to Do Is Demand that They CUT the Budgets of All the Intelligence Agencies”  [Ed.:  No, I don’t think this is a good idea but I do think it’s worth talking up in the context of cutting funding for schools and penalizing teachers if students score poorly on standardized tests.]

Trump and His Followers

• Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Empowering the Ugliness
• Kevin Drum, Republican Voters Like What Donald Trump Is Selling
• Deepinder Mayell, My run-in with hate speech at a Minnesota Vikings game
• Matt Taibbi, It’s Too Late to Turn Off Trump
• driftglass, Conservatism’s Greatest Victory

Immigration Reform

• No Mas Meurtes, Faith-Based Principles for Immigration Reform

Politics

• Robert Pear (NYT), Marco Rubio Quietly Undermines Affordable Care Act
• John Cole, Alan Grayson Was Right
• Mike the Mad Biologist, Guns and the Politics of Ammosexual Rage
• Molly Ball, Lanny Davis’s Caribbean Adventure
• Daniel Larison, Syria and the 2016 Race
• Hillary Clinton (NYT), How I’d Rein In Wall Street
• Anne Gearan and Mike DeBonis, For Clinton, one glaring holdout among female Democratic senators
• Nik DeCosta-Klipa, Bernie Sanders’ New Hampshire favorability is ‘almost unheard of’ in new poll
• Sean McElwee, Why Voting Matters: Large Disparities in Turnout Benefit the Donor Class

Work

• Elizabeth Payne, Ottawa researcher to students: Don’t be scientists due to ‘dismal outlook’
• Dalek Relaxation Tape  [Ed.:  Not having watched Dr. Who in about 40 years, I had to be reminded of what Daleks are.]

Ending on a Positive Note

The COP21 outcome seems pretty damn good – I’m genuinely encouraged – but here are a few others:

• Gideon Lewis-Kraus (NYT), 100 Miles, 10 Days, Three Countries and a Lot of Cheese
• Lee Vorderer, Applications Now Underway for New VA Housing at Bedford Green
• Amanda Nagy, Top of Her Game [Ed.:  My Differential Equations prof back when I took the class thirty years ago.]