Articles by David Roberts

We get letters

From reader MF:

Thanks for your newsletter. It would be funny, if it weren't so serious, that [Sen. Richard] Pombo's name, with the addition of just an 'i' after the P, becomes Piombo, which is Italian for Lead. There's a town on the otherwise idyllic coast of Tuscany called Piombino which has mined and shipped lead and other metals since Etruscan times and I can tell you that driving through it - which is all one would ever want to do unless you are one of the poor devils who has to live there - is one of the few depressing things in that region! So I think you should 'accidentally on purpose' refer to him as Mr Piombo in future!

Hmm...

Wait, THE Steve Johnson?

Today's nomination of Steve Johnson to head the U.S. EPA has been met with a resounding "Uh... who?" Nobody seems to know much about the guy, other than the fact that he's a scientist and has been with the agency for 24 years. ENS's story seems as substantial as any I've seen yet.

And, in a sign of grim things to come, Judith Lewis has this ominous tidbit.

Deathy deatherstein

The other problem with all this hooey is that [The Reapers] look at the bunch of suits we got in San Francisco and Washington DC and say, "This is the movement." It's like the blind tourist who touches the elephant's ass and decides the elephant is rather like stale doughnut.

That is one of many priceless lines from "Is Environmentalism Dead, Or Are You Just Stupid?" by Mike Roselle. If the title alone doesn't make it obvious: You should read it.

A cautionary note

I have been hard on climate-change skeptics on this blog, as I think is entirely appropriate -- most of them have a political ax to grind, and if they want to grind it they should just grind it, without distorting science in the process.

But.

Those of us who would like to see a broad shift toward sustainability should also be wary of trying to use climate science as a magic wand to get what we want. While the basic fact of anthropogenic climate change is fairly well established, there remains considerable uncertainty about the how much's and the when's and the why's. I don't doubt that CO2 plays a big part, but I must confess I'm a bit suspicious of the notion that simply modulating this one variable gives us reliable control over something as extraordinarily complex as climate. I suspect as time goes on the real story will turn out to be much more complicated.

On that note, I would (with some reservations) recommend this post by Philip Stott. I disagree with Stott about a lot of most things, but his cautionary note about the difficulty of separating science from the predilections and preoccupations of the current cultural zeitgeist is well taken.

(Via Jon Christensen)