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Boaty McBoatface is back to study a remote glacier with apocalyptic potential.

by zB7bB4yB6a Posted on May 1, 2018

The EPA administrator has racked up more than 40 scandals and 10 federal investigations since he took office last February. Nonetheless, Scott Pruitt was smiling when he walked in to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Thursday.

Prior to the hearing, the New York Times reported that Pruitt had a plan to deal with tough questions: Blame his staff instead.

He stuck to it. When New York Democratic Representative Paul Tonko confronted him about raises given to two aides without White House approval, Pruitt said, “I was not aware of the amount, nor was I aware of the bypassing, or the PPO process not being respected.”

And Pruitt’s $43,000 soundproof phone booth? Again, not his fault. As Pruitt told California Democratic Representative Antonio Cárdenas: “I was not involved in the approval of the $43,000, and if I had known about it, Congressman, I would have refused it.”

“That seems a bit odd,” Cárdenas commented. “If something happened in my office, especially to the degree of $43,000, I know about it before, during, and after.”

Democratic Representative from New Mexico Ben Ray Luján pointed out that Pruitt was repeatedly blaming others during the hearing. “Yes or no: Are you responsible for the many, many scandals plaguing the EPA?” he asked.

Pruitt dodged the question: “I’ve responded to many of those questions here today with facts and information.” When Luján pressed him futher, Pruitt replied, “That’s not a yes or no answer, congressman.”

Well … it wasn’t a “no.”

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Boaty McBoatface is back to study a remote glacier with apocalyptic potential.

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Reality Begins to Set in on Obamacare—For Both Sides

by zB7bB4yB6a Posted on February 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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Reality is setting in:

For seven years, few issues have animated conservative voters as much as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But with President Barack Obama out of office, the debate over “Obamacare” is becoming less about “Obama” and more about “care” — greatly complicating the issue for Republican lawmakers.

….As liberals overwhelm congressional town hall-style meetings and deluge the Capitol phone system with pleas to protect the health law, there is no similar clamor for dismantling it, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment. From deeply conservative districts in the South and the West to the more moderate parts of the Northeast, Republicans in Congress say there is significantly less intensity among opponents of the law than when Mr. Obama was in office.

Intensity is the key word here, since actual opinions about Obamacare don’t seem to have changed more than a eyelash over the past seven years:

But the intensity of opinion has changed. With Obama out of office, the Republican base doesn’t care as much. Hating Obamacare was mostly just a way of hating Obama. Likewise, the Democratic base cares more. They spent the past seven years griping about how weak Obamacare was—no public option, too friendly to insurance companies, subsidies too low, blah blah blah—under the apparent assumption that it didn’t matter that practically no one was passionately defending the law. With Trump in office, Democrats have finally figured out that it matters, and congressional phones are now ringing off the hook.

So reality has set in for everyone. The Republican rank-and-file has finally figured out they never really cared all that much about taxing the rich an extra three points to provide health care for everyone. The Democratic rank-and-file has finally figured out that Obamacare is a pretty good program and it’s worth fighting for.

But did we really have to elect Donald Trump to figure this out?

Link: 

Reality Begins to Set in on Obamacare—For Both Sides

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Younger Brits just had their future decided for them

by zB7bB4yB6a Posted on June 24, 2016

Brexed out

Younger Brits just had their future decided for them

By on Jun 24, 2016Share

Hours into a post-Brexit universe, it’s impossible to know the full scale of repercussions from Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union.  Some of the “leave” voters have already said they regret their choice, while global markets are panicking. Maybe younger adults should be panicking even more.

Britons voted to exit 52–48 percent, but according to a YouGov poll conducted just before the vote, a majority of voters under age 50 preferred to remain in the EU. Voters who grew up in a globalized world had the least interest in withdrawing from it.

Yet younger voters were outmatched by their elders, who usually turn out in higher numbers. In the U.K. general election in 2015, the youngest Britons, 18 to 24, were half as likely to vote as the oldest age group.

The Brexit vote leaves a younger generation to grapple with the future an older generation picked for them — and if you believe many environmentalists and climate leaders, that future could be a lot dimmer. Outgoing U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, among others, warned that Brexit would not be good news in the long run for climate action and the new global Paris agreement. And the potential leaders of a post-EU Britain might not take climate change seriously given that many of the conservatives who most actively campaigned for Brexit tend to deny science and have a loose relationship with facts.

Just as there’s a generational divide on Brexit, there’s one on climate change, too. Younger people would like the world to act to cut emissions, while older voters are generally less supportive of action, if they even believe climate change is occurring at all. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find recent data breaking down U.K. climate views by age, but that’s the trend for the United States).

The Brexit vote will change the shape of European and global politics for years to come. It’s kind of like how the path we choose today on climate change — business-as-usual or steep emissions cuts — will bake in what kind of world we live in for centuries.

Plenty of British millennials certainly feel the weight of the decision, pointing out on Twitter that they’ve been “screwed.”

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Younger Brits just had their future decided for them

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Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Kal Penn Set to Appear at the White House’s First Student Film Festival

by zB7bB4yB6a Posted on February 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the White House East Room is set to host its inaugural Student Film Festival. The winning entries, which include stop-motion animation and special-effects-peppered fare, were selected from over 2,000 submissions. The White House announced the contest for American students, grades K-12, last November, and put out a call for short films (three-minute max.) that demonstrate how technology is used in schools today and how it might change education in the future.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to make an appearance at the White House Student Film Festival—as are the following celebrities:

Bill Nye (the Science Guy), who has been on a pro-science, anti-creationism/denialism warpath lately. “I fight this fight out of patriotism,” Nye told me last year. “Nye has been instrumental in helping advance some of the president’s key initiatives to make sure we can out-educate, out-innovate, and out-compete the world,” an Obama administration official said.

Kal Penn, the 36-year-old actor who served stints as associate director for the Office of Public Engagement in the Obama administration and delivered this speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. He was at the White House Science Fair last year. He also wants to help sell you on Obamacare.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, another friend of the Obama White House and science luminary.

Conan O’Brien, though unlike the previous three, he is not set to appear in person. He’ll be sending a video address.

The film fest will also include a sneak peek at the Fox series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (the successor to the show that made Carl Sagan famous), which will be hosted by deGrasse Tyson and executive-produced by Family Guy‘s Seth MacFarlane and Ann Druyan, Sagan’s widow.

Click here to check out some of the White House honorable mentions in the festival. Here’s one, titled “A Day In The Life of a Tech Nerd”:

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Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Kal Penn Set to Appear at the White House’s First Student Film Festival

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Seashore solar comes to Japan

by zB7bB4yB6a Posted on January 25, 2014

Seashore solar comes to Japan

By

SMA

Japan has been thinking creatively about electricity since the Fukushima meltdown nearly three years ago.

Dozens of nuclear power plants remain in the “off” mode while leaders and citizens tussle over whether nuclear power can ever be safe. That has left the gas-and-oil-poor country heavily dependent on expensive fossil fuel imports. So it has been turning to cleaner alternatives, using subsidies to help get tens of thousands of renewable energy projects off the ground. We told you recently that offshore wind turbines are being built near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, part of an effort to turn the contaminated region into a hub for clean energy.

And now, for another Japanese endeavor into safe, low-carbon energy, look again to the sea. Smithsonian Magazine reports:

[In November,] Japan flipped the switch on its largest solar power plant to date, built offshore on reclaimed land jutting into the cerulean waters of Kagoshima Bay. The Kyocera Corporation’s Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar Power Plant is as potent as it is picturesque, generating enough electricity to power roughly 22,000 homes.

Other densely populated countries, notably in Asia, are also beginning to look seaward. In Singapore, the Norwegian energy consultancy firm DNV recently debuted a solar island concept called SUNdy, which links 4,200 solar panels into a stadium-size hexagonal array that floats on the ocean’s surface.

Projects like these could help crowded coastal countries and metropolises install expansive solar arrays. Not much good for boating or wildlife, though.


Source
Is Japan’s Offshore Solar Power Plant the Future of Renewable Energy?, Smithsonian Magazine

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Seashore solar comes to Japan

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