Weekend Reads 3/10/18

The GOP's Tax-Cut Narrative Is Already Unraveling

In sum, the GOP tax cut is raising wages (except it isn’t); it’s good for stocks (except the market has been a nauseous mess all year); and it’s poised to grow the economy—so much so that the Fed is determined to choke off inflation and discourage more business investment, which will hurt economic growth.

Wanna limit global warming to 1.5°C? Get cracking

Given that our options for limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius already require hey-maybe-the-glass-is-actually-full optimism, it should come as no surprise that 1.5-degree scenarios involve herculean transformations of our behavior. Global emissions would have to peak within the next few years and then drop like a rock—reaching zero around the 2060s. At our current rate of emissions, we would probably emit the maximum allowable total of greenhouse gas in less than a decade.

'HAMMER' Time? Spacecraft Could Nuke Dangerous Asteroid to Defend Earth

Each HAMMER spacecraft would weigh about 8.8 tons (8 metric tons). If an asteroid threat is detected early enough, a fleet of the vehicles could be dispatched to collide, nuke-free, with the space rock, changing its trajectory enough to spare Earth from an impact.

Holy crap: The 'godly' side of Donald Trump

Decency, honesty, charity, humility: Who cares if the president does not manifest these things in what he says or does? Never mind the Lord's commandments, like the ones forbidding idolatry, bearing false witness and moving on thy neighbor's wife like a bitch.

The authors instead plump up the virtuous side of the ledger. Trump works hard at being rich. He doesn't drink or smoke, and he admires Norman Vincent Peale.