Articles by David Roberts

Kevin Drum blows it by repeating the conventional wisdom

Kevin Drum, whose judgment and writing I very much admire, has made a rare lapse.

He points to this Washington Post editorial from Patrick Moore -- deceptively described only as a "co-founder of Greenpeace" -- and sighs that although he struggled with the decision, he's come to the conclusion that aside from nuclear power, "there aren't any other realistic alternatives for replacing coal-fired facilities."

Rather than repeat myself, I'll just reprint two comments I left on Kevin's site (slightly edited), in reverse order.

On Patrick Moore:

Patrick Moore did not just now "change his mind" about nuclear. He's been advocating for it for years.

And describing him only as "one of the founders of Greenpeace" is extraordinarily misleading. He's a notorious crank and industry shill.

And on nuclear power:

An environmentalism about human survival

Let's do a thought experiment.

About 251 million years ago, there was an enormous extinction event. No one knows why for sure, but one theory is ... global warming. 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates were wiped out. Left behind? Mostly fungus.

If animals, plants, and ecosystems have value in and of themselves, we must view the Permian-Triassic extinction event as an almost unfathomable tragedy, far worse than anything human history has witnessed. It ought to make us tremble, shake faith in a benevolent deity.

But it doesn't. We don't view it as a tragedy that dwarfs any human violence, starvation, or disease, not really. Some might say it is, but I'll venture nobody on the planet feels it to be such.

It's just something that happened. Indeed, though it was the worst, it was but one of seven major extinction events -- including the one we're living through now, the fastest.

Ethanol dreams and ethanol realities

Christopher Cook has a piece in the American Prospect identifying my central concern about the ethanol boom.

To wit, here are the sustainability advocates:

An array of ideas are afloat to encourage a more sustainable biofuels expansion: a diversified renewable energy policy that, rather than expanding corn crops, promotes more wind power and cellulosic energy from switchgrass and crop residues (which may favor localized, small-scale production); a federal version of Minnesota's model, creating targeted incentives for farmer co-ops; and increased research spending by the USDA and Department of Energy to develop smaller-scale biofuels processing plants.

Sounds great, huh?

Here's the reality:

Taking on the latest argument from climate do-nothings

OK, I lied, there are two things I wanted to mention from the Revkin interview.

Revkin says this:

When will we begin to apply the hedging behavior that we do routinely in our life like buying fire insurance? You don't buy fire insurance because you know your house is going to burn down. But we do it routinely and our banks require us to do it. When are we going to realize that we need to apply this to other parts of our life?

But then later, says this:

I've written a bit about the economics. The Energy Department cherry-picked the information that allowed President Bush to abandon his campaign pledge to regulate CO2 from power plants. And EPA and others protested this and were ignored. There has been an inadequate focus on the quality of the economic analyses and forecasts. They are highly suspect and have far more wiggle room and error than any climate model.

I would suggest that the first comment attacks a bit of a straw man -- at least in terms of state-of-the-art arguments from climate do-nothings -- and the second one shows why.