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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Desalination
One of the things that got left out of my recent interview with the water experts was a question about desalination. A reader just emailed to ask about it, so I thought I'd share:
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Now that’s a flex-fuel
An Iowa judge has denied unemployment benefits to a man who claimed discrimination after being fired from an ethanol plant for drinking "automobile fuel" produced by the company.
(via OD)
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Inhofe media critic turns attention to TV
Sweet Jeebus, he's at it again.
Yesterday I mentioned that Tom Brokaw is hosting the Discovery Channel's special, "Global Warming: What You Need to Know." This has enraged the hack factory that is the Senate Committee on Environment under the hacktastic proprietorship of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Clowntown).
Apparently unbowed by the outcry that greeted his previous missive, committee spokeshack Marc Morano has issued another blast:
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Newsweek greens
Newsweek -- no doubt still irritated about getting burned by Time on the green front -- devotes its cover this week to the "greening of America." Most of the cover story is a recitation of facts and trends familiar to Grist readers. I was happy to see some skepticism sneak into the cheerleading:... these are thrilling times, the beginning of a technological and social revolution that could vault our society into a post-post-industrial future. ... On the other hand, we may just be kidding ourselves. Can bicycles and switch grass really offset the effects -- in pollution, resource depletion and habitat destruction -- of a billion Chinese lining up to buy cars for the first time? ... It's nice that Jane Cremisi ... washes and reuses her aluminum foil and patronizes ecofriendly hotels .... But you cannot save the world with anecdotes. Is the relevant statistic that sales of hybrid cars doubled last year to 200,000 -- or that they were outsold by SUVs by a ratio of 23-1?
Unfortunately, that is the sum total of the skepticism in the piece, and it more or less goes unanswered. Still, it's a nice, optimistic read.
Far, far more annoying is the sidebar about Bush's record on environmental issues, which reads like a parody of the widely loathed he-said, she-said style of journalism. Have a look at this:
