Author Archives: Peggy Mason

Floridians who missed voter registration deadline because of Hurricane Michael are out of luck

by Peggy Mason Posted on October 11, 2018

Hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle Wednesday afternoon. The third strongest storm to ever hit the United States, it brought 155 mph winds, heavy rainfall, and towering storm surges. While Floridians in Michael’s path were searching for refuge from the storm’s imminent fury, thousands of would-be voters missed the state’s October 9 voter-registration deadline.

In response, a coalition of civil rights groups including the Advancement Project, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the American Civil Liberties Union has filed an injunction in federal court against the state. Florida officials refused to further extend the registration deadline, despite issuing mass evacuations and closing down offices in preparation for Hurricane Michael. There have also been mounting complaints about “a mess” in the online registration system — with glitches that could have disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters. The lawsuit calls for the voter-registration deadline to be extended by at least one week statewide.

“Our lawsuit is about protecting the right to vote for people impacted by Hurricane Michael in a moment where state officials have been unresponsive and unwilling to do the right things,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told Grist. “It is unreasonable to expect that anyone in Florida will have an opportunity to register and vote when you’re in the storm’s path.”

Considering Florida has a long-standing history of razor-close elections, as well as the high stakes of November’s upcoming election — where climate-related issues like toxic algae blooms and now Hurricane Michael are expected to take center stage — voters who were unable to register could have some political influence on the environmental burdens they and other Floridians face.

According to a new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists out earlier this month, the same communities that suffer from the burden of socioeconomic distress and environmental segregation — such as exposure to air toxins — also often face restrictive electoral laws. Researchers made the connection by examining Congressional election turnout and compared the effect of both socioeconomic, environment, as well as institutional factors on turnout.

“These cumulative inequalities add up and make it very difficult for those who are most in need of protecting their interests in their community from actually having a voice in the political process,” said Michael Latner, lead author of the analysis and a Union of Concerned Scientists fellow.

Researchers found that the lowest voter turnout happens in vulnerable communities and communities of color. “You get this cumulative effect such that you’ve got environmental injustice inequalities — that is, the burdens of environmental pollution and degradation — more concentrated among people of color and economically burdened communities,” Latner told Grist.

The areas affected by Hurricane Michael are some of Florida’s poorest. Gulf County and Franklin County have some of the highest poverty rates in the state at 23.5 percent and 23.1 percent, respectively. (Florida’s overall poverty rate stands at 14 percent, per the U.S. Census.) Calhoun County, just inland of where the storm made landfall, has a poverty rate of 21 percent. It’s also the county with the lowest median household income in the state — less than $32,000 per year.

“People who are economically depressed, in many ways, have less of a voice,” said Donita Judge, senior attorney and co-director of the Power and Democracy Program at the Advancement Project, one of the groups that brought suit against the state. “When some communities catch a cold, poor communities catch pneumonia. It’s always worse for them to overcome.”

This is not an isolated instance. Back in 2016, civil rights groups also sued the state after its refusal to extend the voter registration deadline during Hurricane Matthew. “Everybody has had a lot of time to register,” said Florida Governor Rick Scott at the time. Scott is currently on the ballot for one of the state’s two seats in the Senate.

But Scott’s response ignores the fact that, historically, there are spikes in voter registration rates right as a deadline approaches. In 2016, after a court ordered an additional one-week extension of the statewide deadline to accommodate those affected by Matthew, more than 100,000 additional Floridians registered.

Of course, Florida is not the only state facing allegations of voter suppression. Texas, which has some of the worst voter registration and voter participation rates, rejected 2,400 online voter registrations before the October 9 deadline. In Georgia, 53,000 voter registrations — of which nearly 70 percent belonged to African-Americans — are in limbo after the state’s Republican candidate for governor, who is also its current secretary of state, began overseeing an “exact match” registration verification process.

On Sunday, Florida’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner authorized election supervisors in select counties to accept paper registration applications whenever their offices reopen. But considering that prolonged recovery efforts follow soon after devastating hurricanes, civil rights groups feel this “limited, confusing, and inconsistent” solution was insufficient.

As human-induced climate change continues unchecked, disasters the likes of Michael are becoming the norm. “From Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Michael, these past few years make clear that climate change is having an impact on our country,” Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said. “Election officials should do a better job at having emergency plans in place that safeguard the rights of voters.”

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Floridians who missed voter registration deadline because of Hurricane Michael are out of luck

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The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

by Peggy Mason Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bees are dying in record numbers—and now the government admits that an extremely common pesticide is at least partially to blame.

For more than a decade, the Environmental Protection Agency has been under pressure from environmentalists and beekeepers to reconsider its approval of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, based on a mounting body of research suggesting they harm bees and other pollinators at tiny doses. In a report released Wednesday, the EPA basically conceded the case.

Marketed by European chemical giants Syngenta and Bayer, neonics are the most widely used pesticides both in the United States and globally. In 2009, the agency commenced a long, slow process of reassessing them—not as a class, but rather one by one (there are five altogether). Meanwhile, tens of millions of acres of farmland are treated with neonics each year, and the health of US honeybee hives continues to be dismal.

The EPA’s long-awaited assessment focused on how one of the most prominent neonics—Bayer’s imidacloprid—affects bees. The report card was so dire that the EPA “could potentially take action” to “restrict or limit the use” of the chemical by the end of this year, an agency spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

Reviewing dozens of studies from independent and industry-funded researchers, the EPA’s risk-assessment team established that when bees encounter imidacloprid at levels above 25 parts per billion—a common level for neonics in farm fields—they suffer harm. “These effects include decreases in pollinators as well as less honey produced,” the EPA’s press release states.

The crops most likely to expose honeybees to harmful levels of imidacloprid are cotton and citrus, while “corn and leafy vegetables either do not produce nectar or have residues below the EPA identified level.” Note in the below USGS chart that a substantial amount of imidacloprid goes into the US cotton crop.

Imidacloprid use has surged in recent years. Uh-oh. US Geological Survey

Meanwhile, the fact that the EPA says imidacloprid-treated corn likely doesn’t harm bees sounds comforting, but as the same USGS chart shows, corn gets little or no imidacloprid. (It gets huge amounts of another neonic, clothianidin, whose EPA risk assessment hasn’t been released yet.)

The biggest imidacloprid-treated crop of all is soybeans, and soy remains an information black hole. The EPA assessment notes that soybeans are “attractive to bees via pollen and nectar,” meaning they could expose bees to dangerous levels of imidacloprid, but data on how much of the pesticide shows up in soybeans’ pollen and nectar are “unavailable,” both from Bayer and from independent researchers. Oops. Mind you, imidacloprid has been registered for use by the EPA since the 1990s.

The agency still has to consider public comments on the bee assessment it just released, and it also has to complete a risk assessment of imidacloprid’s effect on other species. In addition to their impact on bees, neonic pesticides may also harm birds, butterflies, and water-borne invertebrates, recent studies suggest. Then there are the assessments of the other four neonic products that need to be done. Frustrated at the glacial pace of the EPA’s deliberations, a coalition of beekeepers and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday demanding that the agency withdraw its approvals for the most-used neonic products.

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The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

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How offshore wind farms could protect us from hurricanes

by Peggy Mason Posted on December 11, 2013

How offshore wind farms could protect us from hurricanes

By

Eugene Suslo

It’s time to turn the tables on hurricanes. Instead of allowing their ferocious winds to tear apart our cities and infrastructure, why not use those winds to produce clean electricity?

Stanford University researchers used computer simulations to calculate that a protective wall of 70,000 offshore wind turbines built 60 miles offshore from New Orleans would have reduced Hurricane Katrina’s wind speeds by 50 percent by the time it reached land. The storm surges that toppled levees would have been reduced by nearly three-quarters. And a lot of electricity would have been produced, to boot, with the spinning of the wind turbines absorbing much of the storm’s power.

A similar array off the coast of New York or New Jersey could have reduced Hurricane Sandy’s wind speeds by 65 miles per hours, the scientists found.

The findings were presented this week during the annual get-together of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Climate Central reports:

Stanford civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson and his research team found that if it was feasible to build tens of thousands of wind power turbines off the shores of some of America’s cities most vulnerable to extreme weather, those cities would see lower wind speeds and less severe storm surges from approaching hurricanes. …

“If we have large arrays of offshore wind turbines — large walls of turbines — we could dissipate winds and storm surge quite a bit,” particularly in the vicinity of the turbines themselves, Jacobson said.

A study Jacobson co-authored in 2012 showed that offshore wind power can generate enough power to meet a third of U.S. energy needs. …

Jacobson said he has also envisioned constructing turbines worldwide to produce green energy that would meet half the world’s energy needs. He said it would require 4 million wind turbines globally to do so.

Such a lot of turbines would also affect local wind speeds during non-hurricane times, which could be good or bad. That said, it would sure be nice to rub our collective hands at the prospects of a clean energy rush every time a hurricane started to form in the Atlantic — instead of evacuating and battening down the hatches.

Read more about Jacobson’s planet-saving ideas: When it comes to energy, Mark Jacobson thinks big


Source
Offshore Wind Farms Could Protect Cities from Hurricanes, Climate Central

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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This Baby Rogue Planet Is Wandering the Universe All by Itself

by Peggy Mason Posted on October 10, 2013

An artist’s idea of what PSO J318.5-22 may look like. Photo: MPIA/V. Ch. Quetz

Birthed from the protoplanetary disk, most planets spend their days orbiting their parent star, growing old together as they loop around their galaxy’s core. A newly discovered planet named PSO J318.5-22 (which we’ve decided to call Flapjack, because why not?) has no parent. It has no planetary siblings. The planet is adrift, alone.

Estimated to be just 12 million year old, Flapjack is, relatively, just a baby, a planetary toddler off on an adventure to explore the universe. It’s a rogue planet, and it’s sailing through space some 80 light-years away. It is, says Alan Boyle for NBC, about six times the size of Jupiter.

It’s also, say the researchers in a release, the best example we have yet of a rogue planet. Scientists have known that some big objects tend to travel alone, rather than orbiting as part of a system. But they weren’t sure whether these celestial rogues were teeny, faint stars or wandering planets. Recently, though, astronomers have been finding planets all over the universe. Comparing Flapjack to these confirmed planets gave the scientists what they needed to call it a planet.

Rogue planets, says Universe Today, may be planets that formed normally, as part of a solar system, but then were kicked out to wander alone. That’s what they think happened to Flapjack. But there’s also the possibility that rogue planets could be birthed in interstellar space, growing from cold clouds of dust and gas. If that’s the case, Flapjack, says Universe Today, could have been born free.

The red dot in the middle is a telescope’s view of PSO J318.5-22. Photo: N. Metcalfe / Pan-STARRS 1 Science Consortium

More from Smithsonian.com:

Scientists Get The Best Look Yet at a Rogue Planet With No Star

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This Baby Rogue Planet Is Wandering the Universe All by Itself

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Old Russian nukes provide 10 percent of U.S. electricity

by Peggy Mason Posted on October 10, 2013

Old Russian nukes provide 10 percent of U.S. electricity

By

Shutterstock

Thanks for all the cheap power.

Peace-loving opponents of nuclear energy might find themselves a little conflicted over this one.

U.S. nuclear plants have been using uranium from decommissioned Russian warheads to provide an astonishing 10 percent of America’s electricity over the past 15 years. From Agence France-Presse:

Rose Gottemoeller, US under secretary of state for arms control, told a UN committee [that a 1993 arms-reduction] accord was a disarmament success.

Arms control experts call it the “megatons-to-megawatts” deal and hail the accord as a little known but important example of the United States and Russia pressing disarmament. …

Signed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the deal was concluded as the two countries sought ways to get rid of warheads under their 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

But Russia has concluded that it’s been getting a raw deal, so it’s ending the arrangment:

[T]he deal under which 500 tonnes of Russian weapons-grade uranium has been used to light and heat American homes will end next month because Russia believes its former Cold War rival has been getting energy on the cheap. …

The United States tried to extend the accord, but Russia refused saying the price was too low, diplomats said.

The final shipment under the old agreement is due to be sent next month. Under a new contract, the U.S. will get about half as much uranium from Russia as it’s currently receiving, and that uranium will be commercially produced rather than recycled from old warheads.

The tapering off of cheap Russian uranium is bad news for an industry already in the doldrums. The U.S. nuclear industry will also be challenged by a shrinking supply of a type of lithium produced only in Russia and China, according to a new report.


Source
Russian warhead fallout keeps America warm, Agence France-Presse

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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Government shutdown would close EPA, too

by Peggy Mason Posted on September 30, 2013

Government shutdown would close EPA, too

By

John Boehner’s

Facebook page

Republican House Speaker John Boehner loves America as much as he loves a styrofoam cup full of coffee.

The chief aim of the congressional Republicans who are poised to shut down the U.S. government over the next 24 hours or so is to block the implementation of President Obama’s health plan. But if they do live out their fantasy of paralyzing the federal government, there will be plenty of other consequences — including the effective shuttering of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Here’s the latest from Reuters on the looming government blackout:

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives early on Sunday passed a measure that ties government funding to a one-year delay of President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare restructuring law. Senate Democrats have vowed to quash it.

If a stop-gap spending bill for the new fiscal year is not passed before midnight on Monday, government agencies and programs deemed non-essential will begin closing their doors for the first time in 17 years. …

The high-stakes chess match in Congress will resume on Monday when the Democratic-controlled Senate reconvenes at 2 p.m. Senate Democrats will then attempt to strip two Republican amendments from the spending bill: the one that delays the 2010 healthcare law known as Obamacare and another to repeal a medical device tax that would help pay for the program.

And here’s some details from a story in The Hill last week that explained how the government shutdown would cripple the EPA:

Speaking at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, EPA chief Gina McCarthy said that a potential government shutdown “will mean that EPA effectively shuts down.”

“The vast majority of people at EPA will not be working,” she said. “I think it’s safe to say that I will be, but beyond that I don’t have the details.” …

McCarthy said that a small group of EPA officials would stay on the job “to keep the lights on and to respond in the event of a significant emergency,” but that most of the agency’s 17,000 employees would be sent home.

The Hill reported that the EPA’s efforts to clamp down on carbon pollution from power plants could be delayed by the shutdown. A fact that is surely not lost on the gleeful politicians behind this mess.

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.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Politics

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Government shutdown would close EPA, too

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North Carolina Legislators Also Did a Lot of Environmental Damage This Year

by Peggy Mason Posted on July 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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The news might have flown under the national radar, what with all the motorcycle safety laws that actually deal with abortion and horrible voter ID bill action that’s been happening in the North Carolina this summer, but the state’s environmental laws were another casualty of this legislative session.

First, the legislature passed a law tossing out all the members of the state’s Environmental Management Commission and nearly all of the members of the Coastal Resources Commission (which was better than the original law, which would have fired a bunch of other people as well). And before wrapping up last week, the legislature also approved a one-year moratorium on localities passing their own environmental rules. That bill is now sitting on Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk awaiting approval.

The Charlotte Observer has a wrap up of all the environmental malfeasance that went down in this legislative session. Among other things, one bill that’s still awaiting McCrory’s signature “prohibits local governments, for a year, from passing environmental rules that state or federal governments also address.” That could be a big problem, the Observer reports:

But Robin Smith, a former assistant N.C. secretary of the environment who writes an environmental law blog, said restricting local rules could backfire. State rules often require that local ordinances be adopted, she said, and local conditions sometimes demand local rules.
“It is difficult to predict how big a problem the moratorium would be given the very different circumstances in cities and counties across the state, but it seems an unnecessary gamble,” she wrote last week.

Dan Crawford, director of governmental relations for the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, tells Mother Jones that they’re now lobbying hard to get McCrory to veto the bill. “Federal guidelines are meant to be a floor, not a ceiling,” he said.

Crawford said this was the worst he’s seen in 15 years of lobbying on environmental issues. “I can’t think of a time where it’s been any worse,” he said. “We were in the bull’s eye.”

From – 

North Carolina Legislators Also Did a Lot of Environmental Damage This Year

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Pentagon Unveils Friendly Killer Robot

by Peggy Mason Posted on July 12, 2013

Mother Jones

From Gill Pratt, a program manager at DARPA, after mentioning that their latest robot creation, Atlas, is about as dextrous as a 1-year-old:

But he added that the robot, which has a brawny chest with a computer and is lit by bright blue LEDs, would learn quickly and would soon have the talents that are closer to those of a 2-year-old.

The whole thing is worth a read. I don’t want to be constantly making flashy predictions about the coming robot revolution, but honestly, this stuff is progressing faster than most of us think. The progress is hard to see if you’re not in the robotics/AI field—and possibly even harder to see if you are in the field—but it’s happening.

See more here – 

Pentagon Unveils Friendly Killer Robot

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Read This Article To Find Great Tips To Find Great Solar Panel Contractors

by Peggy Mason Posted on May 24, 2013

It is easy for a lot of people to ignore the fact that there are rules to follow as they go about hiring a solar panel installation contractor. This is why we have complied for you a list of tested and effective rules to abide by so as to improve your hunt for a skilled and experienced contract worker.

After a thorough examination of agreement’s terms select the lender recommended by the solar panel installation contractor. It would be best if you get the terms reviewed by an attorney. As there have been cases of loan scams & frauds, it would help you avoid being a fraud victim where lender ends up paying the contractor with no job done.

Ask around your area for recommendations on solar panel installation contractors. If you find a contractor with a good reputation in the area, they’ll want to keep up that reputation and provide professional business.

Only hire a solar panel installation contractor from your state. States have different laws for contractors and doing this will make sure that your contractor is following the laws of the state and will prevent any legal trouble from coming out of this.

It is important to get to know your solar panel installation contractor before hiring them for your project. They will be in charge of running your project smoothly and you will want to ensure that they have the proper licenses and will be able to perform a proper job on your project.

Trade shows where solar panel installation contractors have exhibits are a great way of getting to know what services they offer. At these shows you can ask hard questions without the fear of being threatening. You can even shop around for the items that you may require for your project in hand.

Stay involved in the whole project. It is not suggested that you let the solar panel installation contractor take all the decisions without your feedback. You have to give your input in every phase and make your goals and objectives of each phase clear to the contractor.

Ask for references from friends and family for a solar panel installation contractor. Many times word of mouth can be important in finding a reputable contractor. Call the numbers on the contractor’s business card to make sure the contact information is legitimate.

To make sure that your solar panel installation contractor is respected and professional you can check with the Better Business Bureau. They ultimately have ratings of all contractors on record. They will let you know if your contractor is right for your job.

Remember that the project is your and requires your attention regardless of the quality of solar panel installation contractor you have hired. It is your responsibility to oversee the entire project to ensure that each and every division is running well under the contractor and give clarifications about the tasks involed.

Did these ideas spark an interest about solar panels perth? Why not go to Bing and start entering westsun solar solar panel installers perth? We promise you might find great answers.

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