Author Archives: Jeff Howard

Trump Wants to Turn the Skies Black With Coal

by Jeff Howard Posted on March 22, 2017

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is gonna bring back the coal:

President Trump is poised in the coming days to announce his plans to dismantle the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy….In an announcement that could come as soon as Thursday or as late as next month, according to people familiar with the White House’s planning, Mr. Trump will order EPA chief Scott Pruitt to withdraw and rewrite a set of Obama-era regulations known as the Clean Power Plan, according to a draft document obtained by The New York Times.

….At a campaign-style rally on Monday in the coal-mining state of Kentucky, Mr. Trump told a cheering audience that he is preparing an executive action that would “save our wonderful coal miners from continuing to be put out of work.”

This is part of Trump’s plan to repeal all of Obama’s “stupid” climate change policies. “We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Trump’s budget director told reporters. No more funding for climate change science; no more worrying about carbon emissions; no more auto mileage standards; and lots and lots of beautiful, black coal.

Except for one thing:

This is from Lazard’s most recent energy analysis. Coal just isn’t competitive anymore. Oh, existing plants will keep going for a while, and maybe Trump’s executive orders—if they ever go into effect—will keep them in operation longer than otherwise. But there’s nothing on the horizon that’s likely to reduce the cost of coal, whereas wind and solar continue to drop every year. Gas is also likely to stay cheap for a long time thanks to fracking.

None of this is a secret. Everyone knows that Trump isn’t going to save any coal jobs, but the coal miners like to hear him say that he will. Based on previous reporting, I gather that even they know it’s mostly blather, but they still appreciate it. They give Trump an A for effort.

Back in the early part of last year, there was a mini-upwelling of comments from liberals suggesting that Trump might actually be better from a progressive point of view than more conventional conservatives like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. That was never true, and climate change is an example of why. Cruz or Rubio would have both tried to get rid of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, but I don’t think they would have literally tried to defund every bit of research into climate change or just flatly deny that carbon even mattered. They’re too conventional. But with Trump there’s always the danger that a combination of his signature ignorance and his rabid vengefulness will motivate him to go nuts. That’s what’s happening here. On the bright side, maybe his well-known incompetence will also keep him from being effective. But then again, maybe not.

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Trump Wants to Turn the Skies Black With Coal

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What Andrew Breitbart Taught Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager About Dodging Scandals

by Jeff Howard Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2011, several years before Corey Lewandowski became the controversial campaign manager of Donald Trump’s presidential bid, he moderated a panel featuring Andrew Breitbart, the late conservative provocateur and media bigwig, and he posed an earnest question: Why do politicos, faced with their own wrongdoing, so often shamelessly deny the allegations and get away with it?

That exchange now seems particularly relevant, with the Trump campaign and Lewandowski juggling controversies and crises and often responding by challenging reality. Recently, Lewandowski came under fire for manhandling Michelle Fields, a reporter working for the eponymous news organization that Breitbart founded. Lewandowski’s aggressive behavior again became a campaign issue a week later when footage circulated that appeared to show him at a Trump rally roughly grabbing a protestor by the shirt collar. In both episodes, the Trump campaign’s response was to deny that Lewandowski had committed the acts in question and to counterattack—a move that is in sync with Breitbart’s answer to Lewandowski’s question five years ago.

That question came during an Americans for Prosperity-sponsored panel in New Hampshire on September 17, 2011, held about six months prior to Breitbart’s sudden death at the age of 43. Lewandowski, who was the East Coast regional director for the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, asked Breitbart, “Why do you think politicians involved in scandals insist on repeating the same old pattern of denying any wrongdoing—promising to clear their names—when the entire time they know what they’ve been accused of, and why don’t they just stop, and stop the further embarrassment?”

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What Andrew Breitbart Taught Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager About Dodging Scandals

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Unredacted Court Docs Reveal Yahoo’s Name and Other Top-Secret Stuff

by Jeff Howard Posted on September 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yahoo has just released 1,500 pages of previously classified documents relating to its legal challenge to the government’s warrantless wiretapping program. Yahoo lost the case in 2008 and was ordered to cooperate with National Security Agency or face a $250,000 fine for every day that it withheld its customers’ data. The ruling in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was released to the public only in heavily redacted form, became a legal precedent for the warrantless wiretapping program that was later revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Today, based on a successful appeal by Yahoo, a slightly less redacted version of that court ruling finally became public.

Below, I’ve posted the more lightly redacted version released today as well as the redacted version of the ruling released in 2008. A side-by-side reading of the two documents may offer some insight into how the government has sought to cover up the true nature of its surveillance activities, or it might just be an example of how little has changed.

The new version of the ruling is notable for what it doesn’t disclose: Key evidence presented by the government. A block of text that had previously been removed from the ruling still does not fully explain why warrantless searches are necessary to thwart terrorists:

Scanning the 1,500 pages of newly unsealed documents will take a while. Here are few examples of new information contained in the partially unredacted ruling:

The name of the plaintiff (Yahoo) and its law firm
A footnote defining the term “surveillance” to mean “acquisitions of foreign intelligence information.” But part of the definition of the term still remains redacted.
The date when the government moved to force Yahoo to comply with the order (November 21, 2007)
A mention of “linking procedures” (defined as “procedures that link redacted targets.”) as a one of the safeguards against unreasonable searches

You can help us out by pointing out any other interesting tidbits in the comments; we’ll note additional highlights here if we find anything worth noting.

The slightly less redacted ruling released today:

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width: 630,
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sidebar: false,
text: false,
pdf: false,
container: “#DV-viewer-1301184-11-yahoo702-fisc-merits-opinion-1”
);

The original redacted court ruling:

DV.load(“//www.documentcloud.org/documents/1300547-fiscr082208-2.js”,
width: 630,
height: 800,
sidebar: false,
text: false,
pdf: false,
container: “#DV-viewer-1300547-fiscr082208-2”
);

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Unredacted Court Docs Reveal Yahoo’s Name and Other Top-Secret Stuff

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The Himalaya shows off how fast it can melt, too

by Jeff Howard Posted on May 21, 2014

The Himalaya shows off how fast it can melt, too

By

Adarsh Thakure

Last week, we got the news that the West Antarctic ice sheet is ditching us. Then, on Sunday, another fresh study told us that Greenland is also melting away rather fast. And now glaciology brings us a new report, on what’s going on at the so-called “third pole” (so called because it has more snow and ice than anywhere outside of the polar regions): the Himalaya mountain range. Seemingly unwilling to get left behind, it’s been shedding its icy stocks, too.

The report, from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICMOD), found that Nepal’s glaciers lost 24 percent of their volume between 1977 and 2010. It did also find that the number of glaciers increased by 11 percent over that period, but it turns out even that’s not good news! It attributes the increase to the fact that the big glaciers tend to break into smaller ones once they become weak.

While the big concern surrounding the melting of the true poles is what it means for sea-level rise, the impact of the Himalayan thaw will stay a bit more local — but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. It translates into things like wiping out villages through glacial lake outbursts, and making for a less reliable water supply for drinking, agriculture, and power. “The third pole region is home to some of the people most vulnerable to these changes in the world,” ICMOD says.

And, just to top it all off, “The rate of warming in the Third Pole region is significantly higher than the global average, and the rate is higher at altitude.”

So, which of the poles is going to win this twisted race? All bets are on: It looks like all three are gunning for the finish.

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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The Himalaya shows off how fast it can melt, too

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Chart of the Day: Being Poor Is Bad for Your Health

by Jeff Howard Posted on January 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Hypoglycemia is an ever-present threat among diabetics who are being treated with insulin injections. Generally speaking, it’s caused by inadequate nutrition leading to dangerously low blood sugar, and it can usually be fixed by simply eating enough. But what if you’re poor, and at the end of the month you don’t have enough money left to buy adequate food? Adrianna McIntyre passes along this devastatingly simple chart that shows exactly what happens:

Take a look at the top three lines. Among those with high incomes, the risk of hypoglycemia is about the same all month long. But the red line shows the incidence of hypoglycemia among the poor. It goes down at the beginning of the month, when money is available for food, rises a bit in the middle of the month, and then jumps dramatically in the final week when money is tight. As a check to make sure that tight budgets really are at fault, the authors ran the same test on the incidence of appendicitis, which should be unrelated to income. It was.

McIntyre uses this as an object lesson: although policy wonks tend to focus a lot of attention on insurance and health care financing, there are plenty of other things that affect health. What’s more, solutions aren’t simple:

These findings also illustrate the difficulty in finding policy solutions to address health disparities. The authors note that food pantries and soup kitchens already ramp up staffing and resources toward the end of the month. We could explore different ways to distribute existing benefits, but that may have other negative impacts (ie: making it harder to pay rent or bills at the beginning of the month).

Nothing is ever easy.

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Chart of the Day: Being Poor Is Bad for Your Health

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Chart of the Day: We Are Deliberately Destroying Our Medical Future

by Jeff Howard Posted on December 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over at Pacific Standard—a pretty good magazine that you should check out—Michael White shows us what’s happened to the National Insitutes of Health ever since 1998, when Congress decided on a bipartisan basis to double its research budget over five years. The budget was indeed doubled, but when the five years was up its funding was immediately put back on its old path. Then, when the recession hit, it was cut even further:

The tighter competition for funding has put the squeeze on younger scientists with fledgling labs; the proportion of young scientists with NIH grants is half of what was in 1998, while the proportion of funded scientists over 65 has doubled. Because scientific training typically takes over 10 years, students who decided to enter graduate school in the boom days of the mid-Aughts are now entering a job market that looks nothing like what they expected.

Keith Humphreys adds more:

On the ground in my daily work in both a university medical school and a public hospital, it’s a rare month that some bright young person doesn’t tell me they are quitting science because it’s too hard to get funded. These are usually not reversible decisions. Even a well-trained young physician who leaves research for 5 years to treat patients full-time is very hard to tempt back into science if the funding picture improves (and is even harder to bring back up to speed on the cutting-edge scientific questions and methods of the day).

….A decade or two from now, when an antibiotic resistant bacteria or new strain of bird flu is ravaging humanity, that generation will no longer be around to lead the scientific charge on humanity’s behalf. That’s why we constantly need a new stream of young people committing to health science careers. That seed corn is currently being consumed at an alarming rate, and if we don’t act immediately to rectify the situation we will suffer for many years to come from the loss of a generation of health researchers.

Because NIH grants typically last a long time—five to ten years or more—budget reductions have an oversized effect on new research proposals. When funding goes down thanks to austerity-obsessed politicians, existing grants have to keep getting funded, which means that virtually no new money opens up for new projects. And this is coming at the same time that the drug pipeline is slowing down, antibiotic-resistant superbugs are surging, and we’re still struggling to figure out how make use of the genomic revolution.

We are insane.

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Chart of the Day: We Are Deliberately Destroying Our Medical Future

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Dot Earth Blog: Performing Global Warming

by Jeff Howard Posted on October 31, 2013

green4us

The Cannabis Grow Bible – Greg Green

The definitive guide to growing marijuana just got better! Greg Green’s original Cannabis Grow Bible set a new standard for handbooks on cannabis horticulture and established Green as the leading authority in the field. Green’s comprehensive and professionally presented work on how to cultivate superior cannabis struck a chord with beginner, amateur and prof […]

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Sentinels of Terra – A Codex: Space Marines Supplement – Games Workshop

The Imperial Fists have defended the Imperium since the days of the Great Crusade. They stood with the Emperor at the Siege of Terra, and have continued his life’s work in the centuries since. They are indefatigable defenders of Mankind, and the foremost guardians of Terra itself. About this book: Sentinels of Terra is a supplement to Codex: Space Marines Th […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of German shepherds and as t […]

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Cesar’s Way – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

“I rehabilitate dogs. I train people.” —Cesar Millan There are at least 68 million dogs in America, and their owners lavish billions of dollars on them every year. So why do so many pampered pets have problems? In this definitive and accessible guide, Cesar Millan—star of National Geographic Channel’s hit show Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan —reveals what do […]

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Cat Sense – John Bradshaw

Cats have been popular household pets for thousands of years, and their numbers only continue to rise. Today there are three cats for every dog on the planet, and yet cats remain more mysterious, even to their most adoring owners. In Cat Sense , renowned anthrozoologist John Bradshaw takes us further into the mind of the domestic cat than ever before, using […]

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Codex: Space Marines (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

The Space Marines are the chosen warriors of the Emperor, and the greatest fighting force of the Imperium. Each Space Marine is a genetically enhanced super soldier, easily a match for a dozen lesser men, armed with some of the deadliest weapons in the galaxy and encased in formidable power armour. This codex explores the formations and Chapters of the Space […]

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Warlords of the Dark Millennium: Huron Blackheart – Games Workshop

The Lord of the Red Corsairs renegade Space Marines and Master of the Maelstrom, Huron Blackheart is pitilessly foes that has plagued the Imperium for centuries. Blackheart has long been a thorn in the side of the Ultima Segmentum, leading his raiding fleets against Imperial worlds in a campaign of blood and death. About This Series: The galaxy burns w […]

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Sentinels of Terra – A Codex: Space Marines Supplement (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

The Imperial Fists have defended the Imperium since the days of the Great Crusade. They stood with the Emperor at the Siege of Terra, and have continued his life’s work in the centuries since. They are indefatigable defenders of Mankind, and the foremost guardians of Terra itself. About this book: Sentinels of Terra is a supplement to Codex: Space Marines Th […]

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Trident K9 Warriors – Michael Ritland & Gary Brozek

As Seen on “60 Minutes”! As a Navy SEAL during a combat deployment in Iraq, Mike Ritland saw a military working dog in action and instantly knew he’d found his true calling. Ritland started his own company training and supplying dogs for the SEAL teams, U.S. Government, and Department of Defense. He knew that fewer than 1 percent of […]

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Farsight Enclaves – A Codex: Tau Empire Supplement – Games Workshop

Commander Farsight was once hailed by every Tau caste as a genius warrior-leader without compare. As his career blazed a bloody path across the Damocles Gulf and back again, O’Shovah split away from the Tau Empire, doggedly pursuing the Orks that had killed so many of his Fire caste comrades. It was the first overt sign of a rebellion that was to change the […]

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Dot Earth Blog: Performing Global Warming

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U.S. government paid $17 billion for weather-withered crops last year

by Jeff Howard Posted on August 28, 2013

U.S. government paid $17 billion for weather-withered crops last year

By

Thomas

Drought-ravaged corn.

Desiccated corn and sun-scorched soybeans have been in high supply lately — and we’re paying through the nose for them.

The federal government forked out a record-breaking $17.3 billion last year to compensate farmers for weather-related crop losses — more than four times the annual average over the last decade.

The losses were mostly caused by droughts, high temperatures, and hot winds — the sizzling harbingers of a climate in rapid flux.

NRDCClick to embiggen

Could some of these costs have been avoided? The Natural Resources Defense Council says yes. In a new issue paper [PDF], NRDC analyst Claire O’Connor argues that these taxpayer-reimbursed, climate-related losses could have been largely avoided if farmers used tried-and-true conservation-oriented strategies. But she points out that the Federal Crop Insurance Program provides little incentive to farmers to employ techniques that save water and soil.

“By ignoring how on-farm management affects farmers’ ability to withstand weather events like the recent droughts and floods, the FCIP has become a crutch on which farmers will increasingly be forced to lean while taxpayers pick up the ever-growing bill,” O’Connor wrote in the report. From an introduction to the paper on NRDC’s website:

Rather than incentivizing farmers to adopt risk-mitigating farming practices, FCIP premiums are set using a formula that ignores how important healthy, regenerative farming practices — like conservation tillage, cover cropping and improved irrigation scheduling — are to farmers’ risk management as they increasingly face the threats of drought, floods and other extreme weather events.

Methods like no-till farming not only help soil retain moisture, but also limit erosion, improve soil health and increase a field’s capacity to grow high-yield crops. Such methods offer farmers short-term protections against each season’s catastrophic weather events, promote fertile fields into the future and benefit the environment.

O’Connor suggests that the FCIP offer lower premiums to farmers who reduce their risks by investing in soil- and water-conservation strategies — strategies that could help buffer their crops from the ever-worsening vagaries of climate change.

NRDCClick to embiggen.

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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U.S. government paid $17 billion for weather-withered crops last year

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Message to Republicans: Don’t Mess With Texas Women on Abortion

by Jeff Howard Posted on June 25, 2013

Mother Jones

Texas Democrats launched a 13-hour filibuster in the state Senate on Tuesday to block a GOP-backed bill that would dramatically limit abortion access in the Lone Star State. The bill bans abortions after 20 weeks gestation, even in cases of rape and incest, and creates strict new building codes for abortion clinics that threaten to shut down nearly all of the state’s providers.

The bill passed through the House on Monday despite a 12-hour delay by Democrats and a citizens’ filibuster that brought hundreds of protesters to the State Capitol in Austin. “I saw the future of Texas last night, and it is not apathetic,” Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, told The Huffington Post. “It is ready for a change.”

State Sen. Glenn Hegar (R-Katy) introduced Senate Bill 5 in a special 30-day session that Texas Governor Rick Perry called, in which only a simple majority is needed to send the bill to the floor instead of the usual two-thirds majority. Today is the last day of the session, so filibustering past midnight will kill the legislation, unless Perry decides to call another session. The bill caps abortion access at 20 weeks, even though the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade allows abortions up until the point that a fetus can live outside the womb (which is usually considered to be 24 weeks gestation). A dozen other states have already passed laws banning abortion after 20 weeks, but the laws have been struck down as unconstitutional in Arizona and Idaho.

The bill also requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. Finally, the bill requires clinics to comply with building codes designed for out-patient surgery centers found in hospitals, a provision that the bill’s opponents say would force most of the state’s remaining abortion providers to close. Only five of the state’s 42 clinics are expected to be able to comply with the new standards—in a state of 26 million people where women already travel an average of 43 miles to get an abortion. Texas clinics have already taken a heavy financial hit in the last two years, as legislators slashed state funds and refused federal Medicaid money in an attempt to shut down Planned Parenthood providers.

Last Thursday, more than 700 protesters, many of them women who had traveled from other parts of Texas, showed up to protest the bill and waited in line to testify for hours. When the chairman tried to end the public testimony, this happened:

State Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) is leading Tuesday’s filibuster (in pink sneakers) and is expected to hold the floor and speak—without bathroom breaks—until the Senate adjourns at midnight. This isn’t her first rodeo: In 2011, Davis temporarily stalled a plan from Governor Perry that would have slashed $5.4 billion from public schools, turning her into something of an overnight celebrity. That filibuster, however, was only a little over an hour. According to the Texas Observer, Texas Democrats knew that the abortion bill would pass through the House, but they delayed it Sunday night so that Democrats in the Senate would have time to launch a filibuster.

Senate rules require a 24-hour waiting period before the Senate can debate the bill. So House Democrats hoped to delay SB 5 long enough to give Senate Democrats a chance to filibuster the bill

“There’s an assault on women in this state and this legislation is a prime example of that,” the Senate’s Democratic leader, Kirk Watson (D-Austin) told The Star-Telegram. “It’s important that a woman like Davis who’s the mother of two daughters will be the one standing. We will all be there providing assistance and help.”

The protesters plan to continue to camp out in the capitol building throughout the filibuster.

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Message to Republicans: Don’t Mess With Texas Women on Abortion

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Some Questions For and About Edward Snowden

by Jeff Howard Posted on June 13, 2013

Mother Jones

Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that a number of people are pushing back against Glenn Greenwald’s insistence that the PRISM program allows “direct access” to servers from Google, Microsoft and other tech companies. I’m glad to hear that, because it raises some questions that deserve answers.

As regular readers know, the “direct access” claim puzzled me from the start. Even with my modest technical background, I understood immediately that it didn’t make sense. Sure enough, the Washington Post walked back the claim a bit the next day, the New York Times walked it back further the day after that, and even the Guardian has now finally agreed that it’s wrong—though they buried the admission in the 18th paragraph of a story published a week after the original report.

There are various reasons this is important. The number one reason, obviously, is that we need to understand what’s really happening. There’s a huge difference between (a) Google giving NSA unfettered access to all of its user data whenever NSA feels like looking at something, and (b) Google agreeing to set up a secure method of transferring data that NSA has obtained a court order for. It’s night and day.

But there’s another reason: I want to know how far I can trust Edward Snowden. He’s supposed to be a technical guru of some sort, but apparently he didn’t understand this. Or, if he did, he didn’t bother clearing it up for either Glenn Greenwald or Bart Gellman, who both went with the “direct access” phrase in their initial stories. If it’s the former, I wonder just how much he actually knows about NSA’s capabilities. If it’s the latter, I wonder about his motivations.

I’d also like to know just what PRISM is. Is it really an NSA codeword for a data collection program? Or is it merely the name of the unclassified software they use to provide access and project management capabilities for the data they already collect? Does Snowden know? If not, why not?

Snowden has made several other dubious statements, including the suggestion that he could order a wiretap on anyone he wanted, and that he had access to any CIA station. Put this all together, and I think it’s reasonable to ask just how much we can trust what Snowden is saying. He’s done a public service by shining the spotlight on NSA’s activities, but that doesn’t mean he gets a pass on tough questioning. I’d like to hear some answers about this stuff.

UPDATE: Several commenters have pointed out that NSA’s own PowerPoint presentation claims that PRISM provides data “directly from the servers” of Microsoft etc. That’s true, and it’s precisely the problem: Greenwald and Gellman apparently read that and simply passed it along without understanding what it implied. That can lead you badly astray, as it seems to have done here.

This is not a pedantic point. It’s absolutely critical. “Direct access” implies that NSA can just root around in Google’s servers whenever they want. That’s big news. Conversely, a story about how companies transfer information to NSA after they get a court order is a complete nothing. Who cares what technical means are used to transfer data to NSA? What we care about is what kind of information NSA is getting, and nothing in the PRISM story has given us any insight into that.

If Snowden really has the technical chops he claims to have, he should have cleared this up. But Greenwald and Gellman apparently didn’t ask about it, and Snowden apparently didn’t volunteer anything. (I say “apparently” because I don’t know for sure who said what to whom.) This suggests either that Snowden didn’t know what this phrase meant or else chose not to explain it properly. Either one raises some red flags.

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Some Questions For and About Edward Snowden

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