Articles by David Roberts

Doofus bashing

There was some delectable doofus-bashing while I was away by the folks at ScienceBlogs. First, in preparation for his debate on NPR's Science Friday, Chris Mooney allowed his readers the opportunity to savage the Dean of Doofus, Tom Bethell. They mangle Bethell's climate change denialism here, his evolution denialism here, and his science policy fruitcakism here. A little like shooting fish in a barrel, but damn, those fish aren't getting up again.

While you're over there, observe Tim Lambert take his cudgel to Tom Harris, a global warming denialist (and ex-tobacco shill) that's been getting a lot of attention in the rightosphere lately: whomp 1, whomp 2.

I'm a little ambivalent about the ultimate value of debunking paid shills. Of course they're stupid -- they're paid to be stupid. And bashing them probably just gives them more attention than they deserve. But as the above links show, there's something undeniably satisfying about seeing stupidity decisively and witheringly demolished.

Back

I'm back. (You noticed I was gone, right?) I've just returned from a most relaxing long-weekend stint at the Once in a Blue Moon Farm, a little organic farm/orchard on Orcas Island. We went for a wedding, but a group of about eight of us decided to stretch it into a mini-vacation in the farm's guest house.

I'll spare you the poetic rhapsodizing about watching my older son ride a small horse, feed chickens, and get nuzzled by llamas. But it was nice. As a bona fide city boy, he doesn't get much exposure to Nature, but he took right to it. It reignited our little dream of buying a B&B in the country somewhere. Matter of fact, there was a nice one on sale on Orcas, for the low low price of $1.5 million. Ahem.

Anyway, if you're in the area, Orcas is a delight -- not too touristy, small-town homey, but kind of funky too. And Blue Moon gets Gristmill's Official Travel Recommendation.

Energy security and global warming: different

Speaking of "energy security," I give you Reuters:

World leaders must not allow concern for energy security to distract them from taking promised action on global warming, top world scientists said on Wednesday.

Climate change solutions agreed at the G8 summit in Scotland a year ago risked being pushed off the agenda at next month's G8 summit in Russia by worries about security of energy supply, they said.

Credit where credit is due

Good for Bush:

President Bush plans to designate an island chain spanning nearly 1,400 miles of the Pacific northwest of Hawaii as a national monument today, creating the largest protected marine reserve in the world, according to sources familiar with the plan.

Establishing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a strictly protected marine reserve, which Bush is slated to announce this afternoon, could prove to be the administration's most enduring environmental legacy. The roughly 100-mile-wide area encompasses a string of uninhabited islands that support more than 7,000 marine species, at least a fourth of which are found nowhere else on Earth.