Articles by David Roberts

A visual guide to global pollution

New Scientist has a nifty piece running.  Eighteen months of satellite data was aggregated to show a pictorial representation of concentrations of nitrogen dioxide around the globe -- i.e., pollution.  Things aren't looking too good for the American Northeast, bits of Europe, or China.

The flu?

Following up on Shalini's post below:  Where the $#%! was the environment last night?  I actually think Bob Schieffer did a decent job overall, but he found time to ask about gay marriage, strong women, and ... the flu?  Listen, I love marriage, and gay people, and strong women, and I don't like the flu, and I don't want strong married gay women in this country coughing and sniffling, but those are relatively peripheral issues, are they not, compared to mercury in our fish? Soot in our air? Shortages in our water supply?  Oil and gas execs swarming over our public land like ants on a discarded Krispy Kreme?

Kerry wisely ignored the flu question and addressed health care squarely.  Bush unwisely ignored jobs questions and talked about education -- several times.  And Bob Scheiffer unaccountably ignored one policy area about which majorities in this country consistently express concern, over which the executive branch has considerable control: the environment.  A full debate transcript is here.

Wince

As everyone likely knows by now, freshly-minted Nobel Prize Winner Wangari Maathai recently -- just a day after winning the prize -- claimed before a news conference that AIDS was "created by a scientist for biological warfare" to kill blacks. "Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial; others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that," she proclaimed.

Fact check yo’self before you wreck yo’self

Speaking of that question in the second debate, Environment2004 has got a withering piece up demolishing Bush's response, line by line. Half-way through you'll feel almost sorry for the guy, getting pounded like this.  But then you'll go back to feeling sorry for the environment.