Author Archives: DeanaMoeller

Chart of the Day: Republican Tax Plans for the Middle Class

by DeanaMoeller Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Of the five leading candidates, four have released semi-detailed tax plans. We’re still waiting on Ben Carson’s tithe-based plan. Still, I thought everyone ought to get a look at how their plans affect the middle class vs. the rich. After all, we liberals keep nattering on about how these guys all want to “cut taxes on the rich,” so let’s see the evidence.

Well, the Tax Foundation is a right-leaning outfit, so you have to figure they’re going to give Republican plans a fair shake. And their distributional analysis of Rubio, Bush, Trump, and Cruz shows that their tax plans are all pretty similar: tiny gains for middle-income workers and huge gains for the top 1 percent. I’ve used the static analysis, since it’s the most tethered to reality, but even if you use the magic dynamic estimates you get roughly the same result: the rich make out a whole lot better than the middle class.

That said, you really have to give Ted Cruz credit. When it comes to giving huge handouts to the rich, he’s the true Republican leader.

Originally posted here – 

Chart of the Day: Republican Tax Plans for the Middle Class

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chart of the Day: Republican Tax Plans for the Middle Class

Why Is This Year’s Flu So Dangerous for Young Adults?

by DeanaMoeller Posted on January 27, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

You’ve probably heard by now that this year’s flu season is a bad one. Below is a guide to the viruses that are going around now, plus a refresher on flu basics.

Is the flu widespread where I live?
Probably:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

How many people have died so far this year?
Twenty-eight children have died so far. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not keep track of adult deaths. That’s because states are not required to report flu deaths to the CDC. Older adults often die of flu complications or secondary infections rather than the flu itself, so tracking flu deaths is not an exact science. That said, in California, the death toll is currently at 146, including 95 people under the age of 65. At this time last year, just 9 Californians under 65 had died of the flu, and by the end of the season, a total of 106 people had died.

How does this year’s season compare to last year’s?
As the chart below shows, so far, this season is milder in terms of number of cases. However, CDC spokesperson Jason McDonald notes that more people between the ages of 18 and 64 have been hospitalized for flulike symptoms this year than in previous years. This season’s predominant virus strain is H1N1—which, when it originated in 2009, also sent an unusually high number people in the 18-to-64 age range to the hospital. Epidemiologists don’t know why H1N1 hits younger people hard, but one theory, says McDonald, is that older adults have built up more immunity to it. H1N1 is similar to the virus that caused the Spanish Flu of 1918, and also to strains that circulated in the ’60s and ’70s. Another possible factor: Only about 30 percent of younger adults get flu shots, compared to about 40 percent of older adults.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Is there a cure for the flu?
Doctors sometimes use antiviral medications to treat the flu—but it’s worth noting that, according to McDonald, about 1 percent of the H1N1 strains that the CDC has tested are resistant to a common antiviral drug. Although over-the-counter medications can make flu symptoms less severe, a recent study found that fever reducers like ibuprofen and acetaminophen actually help spread the flu by making people feel well enough to leave the house before they’ve kicked the virus.

How do I even know I have the flu? How can my doctor tell?
To know for certain, you’d need to have a blood test. But most doctors won’t do that, since it won’t really change the treatment (rest, drink fluids). But there are some key differences between a bad cold and a flu, CDC spokesman Curtis Allen told me last flu season. “You will be running a high temperature for several days, and it will keep you in bed for a week or more,” he said. But the most distinctive feature of the flu is its sudden onset. “You could be feeling fine at 10 and very sick at noon.”

If the flu season has peaked, should I still get a flu shot?
Yes. A typical flu season is 10 to 12 weeks long—so if it just peaked, that means there’s still another 5 or 6 weeks left. The caveat: The shot takes about two weeks to kick in, so even if you got the shot today, you could still come down with the flu, said Allen. Even if you think you’ve already had the flu this year, you should get a shot; it’s possible (though unlikely) that you could still come down with a different strain.

Can you get the flu from the flu shot itself?
No. That’s impossible, since the virus in the shot is not alive. You might get soreness, irritation, or even a fever after the shot, but that’s your body reacting to the shot, not the flu.

Why is there a “season” for the flu?
Last flu season, Jeffrey Shaman, a flu researcher and assistant professor in the department of environmental health sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told me that there are several reasons. Some have to do with us humans: In the winter, we spend more time indoors sneezing on each other. During this time of short days and long nights, we don’t get as much vitamin D or melatonin—both thought to be essential for healthy immune system function. Then there’s the virus itself: It seems to thrive when absolute humidity is low, a common condition in cold winter weather.

So that’s why the flu is so bad this year—the drought! So climate change actually made the flu worse, right?
Wouldn’t it be nice if epidemiology were that easy? Unfortunately, it’s not. If that were the case, you’d never see the flu in hot, humid places. Other variables make it impossible to predict flu seasons based on weather alone.

It’s worth noting, though, that in a 2012 paper, Shaman and his colleagues did document that each of the four flu pandemics of the 20th century were preceded by La Niña cycles, likely because birds mingled with each other differently during these unusual weather patterns. The flu strains that they were carrying probably hybridized and created a strain so new that humans had no immunity to it. Since, as we recently learned from this Climate Desk video, climate change does interact with El Niño/La Niña cycles, it’s not completely out of the question that global warming could affect flu transmission, at least indirectly.

Link:

Why Is This Year’s Flu So Dangerous for Young Adults?

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Is This Year’s Flu So Dangerous for Young Adults?

Chicken vs. Turkey Is an Unfair Fight

by DeanaMoeller Posted on November 27, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This year, Matt Yglesias’s annual bout of turkey hate takes a quantitative approach:

Consider these striking facts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistical Service’s latest report on poultry production (PDF).

It reveals that in the United States in 2012 we produced a staggering 49.5 billion pounds of chicken meat worth an aggregate of $24.8 billion.

By contrast, we raised a paltry 7.3 billion pounds of turkey worth just $5 billion.

If everybody likes turkey so much, then why aren’t you buying any?….Here at Slate we think it’s very important to be clear on what’s a contrarian take and what’s the conventional wisdom. And the conventional wisdom is that turkey is bad and you should eat chicken if you’re interested in some not-very-flavorful poultry. People eat turkey on Thanksgiving because it’s traditional, but people do not enjoy eating turkey.

Unfortunately, there’s a confounding variable that Matt has failed to consider: as the illustration on the right demonstrates scientifically, turkeys are big. One reason that we don’t buy turkeys routinely throughout the year is that your average household of 2.58 members doesn’t want that much of anything. Most of us don’t cook big standing rib roasts very often either, but that’s not because we don’t like beef. It’s because they’re too damn big for everyday consumption. Add to that the fact that roasting a turkey is a pain in the ass, and you just aren’t going to have turkey very often.

Now, that said, it’s hard to escape Matt’s central contention that turkey isn’t really all that tasty. Most of us eat it only alongside forkfuls of cranberry sauce or drenched in gravy, which pretty much gives the game away taste-wise, doesn’t it?

Still, this raises yet another question. Of that 49.5 billion pounds of chicken, I’d guess that a sizeable fraction of it is consumed in the form of chicken nuggets of some variety. So why aren’t there turkey nuggets instead? Once you batter it and toss it in a deep fryer, turkey would taste just fine.1 And that brings up a second reason that we eat more chicken than turkey—one that should be of special interest to a Moneybox columnist: it’s cheaper. According to that Ag Department document above, chicken goes for 50 cents per live-weight pound while turkey sells for 73 cents.

In other words, we don’t really need to get into inherently personal arguments about the relative tastiness of chicken vs. turkey. Chicken is both cheaper and far more convenient than turkey for your average consumer, and that’s enough. It’s no suprise that it’s the world’s poultry of choice.

1Wouldn’t it? I’m no foodie, and anyway, I happen to like nibbling on turkey leftovers from the fridge with nothing more than a little salt as seasoning. But maybe there’s something about turkey meat that makes it poorly suited to the indignities of nugget-dom. Anyone happen to know?

From:  

Chicken vs. Turkey Is an Unfair Fight

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chicken vs. Turkey Is an Unfair Fight

Student-Led Project Keeps CUNY Green

by DeanaMoeller Posted on November 11, 2013

HSP members strike a pose at the first-ever Hunter Goes Green week. Photo: Hunter Sustainability Project

The City University of New York (CUNY) is the largest urban university in the U.S., serving more than 480,000 students. And one student-led organization is taking up the task of educating CUNY students about sustainability and spreading awareness of environmental issues.

Founded in 2008 at Hunter College in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the Hunter Sustainability Project (HSP) membership includes students whose majors range from environmental studies and chemistry to economics. It was established to expand the university’s use of sustainable energy sources by installing a solar energy system on campus for power generation, education and research.

Since then, Hunter has unveiled a small 3-kilowatt PV solar array, which now offsets a portion of the school’s nonrenewable energy consumption and reduces its GHG emissions. The system has also created research and educational opportunities for Hunter students in physics, environmental science, economics and renewables, according to HSP.

The organization has taken on the broader goal of connecting the CUNY community with sustainability issues — hosting on-campus events like CUNY Divest and Love It Again! Revamp and Reuse.

Earlier this year, the group also hosted Hunter College’s first week-long educational event focused on sustainability earlier, including workshops, games and giveaways geared toward educating Hunter students and staff about living a sustainable life.

The organization made such a splash in the ecosphere that it recently received a grant from The Green Initiative Fund at the University of California–Berkeley to supplement the university’s solar panels with a green roof.

Set to be installed next year, the new roof will provide data to help students better understand and apply lessons learned in the classroom, as well as foster opportunities for creative capstones, HSP said.

earth911

Read this article – 

Student-Led Project Keeps CUNY Green

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, solar, solar panels, solar power, sustainable energy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Student-Led Project Keeps CUNY Green

Venice has a grand plan to protect itself from rising seas

by DeanaMoeller Posted on October 14, 2013

Venice has a grand plan to protect itself from rising seas

By

Paolo Pescio

Flooding in Venice last week.

A multibillion-dollar effort to protect Venice from flooding has passed its first public test.

The Moses project involves flood barriers that will stretch a mile across the mouth of Venice’s lagoon, rising from the water when high tides threaten to deliver acqua alta — periodic floods that inundate the Italian city. The effort is designed to prevent flooding that has become more common and severe during the last two centuries as sea levels rise and as the soggy city sinks.

Construction has been underway for a decade and is expected to continue until 2016, when 78 barriers will be in place. Last week, Venice tested out the first four floodgates, each weighing more than 300 tons. The barriers rose from the lagoon as intended, drawing applause from VIP spectators. From The Telegraph:

The gates are being built at the three inlets which link the lagoon to the Adriatic sea: Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia.

“The benefit of the city is that no more floods will arrive and that all the ground floors of the city, which are usually washed out and destroyed by these tides, will be safe,” [said] Hermes Redi, Chief Executive of Consorzio Venezia Nuova which are in charge of the project.

He explained that in normal weather conditions the movable barriers will lay full of water on the bottom of the channel.

In case of high tides, the barriers will be emptied through to the input of compressed air so that they can emerge and separate the lagoon from the sea.

The successful test came just days after the city’s first acqua alta of 2013. In theory, if the the barriers had been operational, the city would have stayed high and dry even as the rising Adriatic Sea pressed in against the devices. Watch:


Source
Venice tests massive movable flood barrier, The Telegraph

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: Cities

,

Climate & Energy

See the original post:  

Venice has a grand plan to protect itself from rising seas

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Venice has a grand plan to protect itself from rising seas