Articles by David Roberts

Wave power

There has been a flurry of stories about wave power recently, and I keep meaning to blog about some of them. Luckily, Jamais Cascio has provided a nice entrée, via discussion of a new report from the Electric Power Research Institute. Conclusion: wave power may yet sneak past wind and solar as the most promising renewable energy source.

Verdopolis

Earth Pledge is a very cool organization -- they sponsor the Farm to Table initiative on local, organic food, the Greening Gotham project pushing green roofs, and Verdopolis, a project bringing together cultural, political, and business types to discuss and plan for the "future green city."

Verdopolis is throwing a massive bash in New York City, which kicked off yesterday -- here's the agenda. We've got someone there who will be sending us some coverage, and I'll point to coverage elsewhere as I see it. Yesterday was mostly composed of a fashion show, which you can read about on Treehugger. It sounds, frankly, disappointing, and the pictures verge on gross. Apparently the big-name fashion designers who contributed still think, even at an event explicitly devoted to demonstrating the opposite, that greens are frumpy hippies.

Anyway, I'm much more interested in the green building, green healthcare, and green energy portions of the event taking place today and tomorrow. Updates to come.

Politicized science at U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Speaking of Chris Mooney, he draws my attention to something that is sure to be hitting the news in a big way tomorrow: The Union of Concerned Scientists, in their words, "distributed a 42-question survey to more than 1,400 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists, ecologists, botanists and other science professionals working in Ecological Services field offices across the country to obtain their perceptions of scientific integrity within the USFWS, as well as political interference, resources and morale." Despite explicit word from USFWS administrators that they were not permitted to answer, 30 percent of the scientists did.

Many reported political interference, unwillingness to properly use the Endangered Species Act, intimidation, and a lack of proper resources. You can read a summary and find links to the full questions and answers here .

Mooney has more on a particularly hated and feared administrator, Julie MacDonald.

Expect to see more about this in coming days.

The actual for-reals last Crichton post

Readers are well aware that I was not impressed by Crichton's book or his footnotes. In the Boston Globe, Chris Mooney draws attention to another group of unimpressed folks: the very scientists Crichton cites.