Articles by David Roberts
David Roberts was a staff writer for Grist. You can follow him on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing.
All Articles
-
California failin’
The Wall Street Journal has a lengthy and quite depressing story about California's long and futile attempt to reduce oil use in its transportation sector. I say skip it. Life's too short to be depressed!
-
Talking point: Global warming and economic growth
Many people in positions of power -- and not just global warming skeptics -- believe the following two things:
- Economic growth is an engine driven by fossil fuels. Remove all restrictions on fossil fuel use, growth surges. Restrict fossil fuel use, growth slows.
- "Doing something about global warming" means restricting or capping carbon dioxide emissions, which means restricting fossil fuel use.
The inevitable conclusion is that the only way to fight global warming is to slow down and possibly cripple the economy. Thus you get calls for "certainty" about exactly how much damage global warming will do, so it can be weighed against the damage of mitigating global warming.
This picture of the situation is grossly distorted. Here's why, in a nutshell:
-
Power recycling
John draws my attention to this piece in the Toronto Star about power recycling (combined heat and power, or CHP). In turn, that reminded me of the long post I wrote about power recycling a while back. It's a good one, if I do say so myself, and nobody else did, so I have to.
