Articles by David Roberts

Hayward’s chestnuts

I don't view climate change as a partisan issue, and I've been pleased to see it slowly shake free from that calicified status. It's too important to simply serve as ammunition in the ongoing partisan wars. But perhaps not everyone shares that perspective.

I've exchanged emails with Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute and he seems like a straight shooter. But he comes close to going off the rails in his big climate-change story in the Weekly Standard.

It begins with a survey of the rising profile of global warming, a growing list of bipartisan activists, and a description of the many increasingly confident, hair-raising climate-change stories in the mainstream media.

Out of this he somehow conjures "a sense of political desperation among climate change alarmists, as the world slowly turns against them." Hm? If this is down, then I been down so long it feels like up to me.

To his credit, he isn't stoking the denialist fires on the right. He acknowledges:

Dilbert takes on foreign oil

I've tried a few times to argue that "foreign oil" is a bit of a red herring. The problem is oil, full stop.

Today my argument finds support from, of all places, Dilbert.

(hat tip: Corey)

Update [2006-2-19 17:12:48 by David Roberts]: Hm, the folks over at Oil Drum take a rather dim view of this comic. Just a couple of comments:

• It seems like a common sentiment that if there were enough Dilberts buying hybrids to actually reduce U.S. oil demand, the price of oil would fall, foreign despots would get less money, and Dilbert would be vindicated. But the basic oil story is one of leveling-off-and-declining supply, coupled with inexorably rising demand. Billions of people in China and India are having their standard of living rapidly raised. Moderate reductions in U.S. demand seem woefully insufficient to offset this rising tide of demand. Rising oil prices seem inevitable absent a truly historic -- and truly unlikely -- commitment by the U.S. to radically curtail its demand, and possibly even then. So to the extent that oil money funds terrorists, it seems likely terrorists will have ample funding for the foreseeable future. In that, Dogbert is correct.
• My own view is that the "foreign oil" motivation articulated by Dilbert is rather naive, for the simple reason -- voiced by Dogbert -- that we can't pick and choose where we get oil, or who ultimately gets our oil money. If you participate in the world oil economy, you participate in the world oil economy; you don't get to do it daintily, or in some targeted way that's in line with your values. But there are good reasons to reduce U.S. oil use, period. Aside from all the environmental benefits, we would reduce our vulnerability to geopolitical manipulation and arguably provide an enormous stimulus to the economy. I attributed both halves of my view to the cartoon, but re-reading it, I suppose I may have been projecting the latter half. Scott Adams (the author) may simply be arguing that it's pointless to reduce oil use at all (and not just for Dilbert's stated reasons). That would indeed be monumentally stupid.
• Yes I'm droning on and on about a cartoon, but it's Sunday evening and the kids are napping. What else am I gonna do?

Bush and Crichton again

Apparently Chris Mooney's pleas have not been in vain: The New York Times finally picked up on the fact that Bush met with journalist novelist Michael Crichton -- whereupon they, according to Fred Barnes, "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement" about the vast liberal conspiracy that is global warming.

I highly doubt the story will get very far. The Republican establishment has mastered some sort of occult PR judo whereby they cast so many outrages at the public, so fast, that none of them can actually stick or pick up any momentum. Misbegotten wars, national security leaks, torture, domestic spying, Congressional corruption, consulting an author of fiction for advice on global warming ... who can keep getting mad? Who can focus?

Bush’s plan could take up to 50 years, and for what?

Jeebus.

Read this Washington Post story on Bush's program to re-start efforts to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.

Bush is requesting $250 million this year to kick off research on a new method of reprocessing nuclear waste, one that would allegedly reduce the total amount of waste and make it difficult for terrorists to extract weapons-grade plutonium from it.

At best, under the administration's highly optimistic scenario, the technology could be ready to go by 2025. But scientific and industry experts doubt it:

Steven Kraft, senior director of used fuel management for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry policy group, voiced doubts: "This is a matter of developing future technologies, and those technologies are 50 to 60 years away."

When even industry shills won't endorse your projections, well ...

And if it does take that long?

Meanwhile, the government will be spending billions of dollars developing a fuel that probably will be too expensive to buy in the foreseeable future, except with a government subsidy.

Experts also doubt that the product will be resistant to proliferation: