Articles by David Roberts

Decoupling Katrina and climate change

Based on his (and his colleagues') research, here's what Roger Pielke Jr. thinks:

1. Anthropogenic climate change is real.
2. Greenhouse gas reductions make good policy sense.
3. But there is no evidence that energy policies focused on climate change can be an effective tool of disaster mitigation.
4. There is currently no evidence that allows us to attribute to human-caused climate change any part of the decades-long trend of a rising toll of disasters, a record which is dominated by floods and storms.
5. More people are beginning to conduct research in this area and perhaps future research results will tell a different story, but 1-4 above are what can be said today and supported by scientific research.
6. Given the state of the literature, this should not be a controversial conclusion.
7. There are better justifications for GHG reductions than disasters, and there are far better options available to policy makers than energy policies to make a material difference in future impacts of climate and weather extremes.

The reception he's gotten for this line of thinking from climate scientists has been, shall we say, less than enthusiastic.

How do Canadians feel about fueling America’s empire?

Something I've wondered about for a while: Canada is our No. 1 source of oil imports. And Canadian tar-sands are often cited by energy optimists as a virtually unlimited source of future oil.

But, um, has anyone asked Canada about this? Or rather, asked Canadians, as opposed to the Canadian government? 'Cause it seems like a pretty raw deal for them. Extracting tar-sands oil is horrifically destructive to the environment and the workers involved. And because of NAFTA, Canada is stuck exporting most of it to us, meaning they're fueling our dreams of empire at the possible expense of their own future energy security. Furthermore, in times of energy scarcity, being a fruitful source of oil immediately contiguous to the world's largest consumer of oil -- and also its most powerful, hyper-militarized country -- might prove to be a little, ahem, awkward.

Anyhoo, Oil Drum has a thread going about all this, playing off this Canadian think-tank report (PDF), which raises all the above concerns. Lots of interesting stuff.

From clubbin’ to clubbing

Hey, I'm not really sure why we stopped blurbing these in Gristmill. Maybe we'll start again. But regardless: A new Grist List is up, sure to amaze and amuse. Check it out.

Makower on the service sector

I was going to try to say something smart about this great Joel Makower post on the environmental footprint of the service sector, but it's obvious now I'm never going to have time, and hell, it's Friday, so I'm just going to poach a chunk and tell you to go read the rest: