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
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AEI and AR/4
Climate scientist Andrew Dessler has started a blog (join ... usss ...).
Today he brings word that the American Enterprise Institute -- a right-wing think tank famous for housing warmongers -- is offering $10,000 (PDF) to anyone who can write a cogent critique of the coming Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC (or as everyone cool calls it, AR/4).
Dessler seems to think that the amount of the award and the recipients of the offer indicate a seriousness of purpose on AEI's part, but ... color me skeptical. The IPCC is going to be a huge media event. Everyone will be talking about it, at least for a week or two. 'Wingers will need something they can point to and say, "oh, look, that's been refuted." They won't particularly know or care whether the alleged refutation is valid. They just need it to exist. They just need a URL. That's what AEI appears to be purchasing with their $10K.
But we'll see.
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Checklist liberalism
It's slightly off topic for this blog, but what with all the environmentalist exhortations to "form coalitions" and whatnot, I thought it would be a public service to link to Mark Schmitt's typically wise words on the subject of "checklist liberalism."
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Some Portland skepticism
In re: the post below on Kristof's obsession with Portland, David Appell writes to say that the main claim -- that Portland has reached pre-1990 GHG levels -- is probably false anyway. The Portland Office of Sustainable Development apparently all but admitted as much.
See "Portland's Compliance with Kyoto: The Birth of an Urban Myth" (Word doc) for details.
