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Weird wintry weather and the climate-change link

by neogrom Posted on May 3, 2013

Weird wintry weather and the climate-change link

By John Upton

Kara Brugman

May snow in Boulder, Colo.

It was high time to pass around a few cold ones in the shade of an awning in Amarillo, Texas, just a few days ago. Now it’s time to hunker inside, drink whiskey neat, and play charades.

The city broke a heat record on April 30, reaching a scorching hot 97 degrees. Then it got hit by unseasonably cold weather that has swept through the nation’s heartland. A couple days after reaching 97, the temperature bottomed out at 33 degrees, with the cold snap bringing some snow.

The topsy-turvy weather in Amarillo is emblematic of the climatic incoherence reigning across the country. The coasts are basking in spring weather while the Rockies, Great Plains, and Midwest are being smacked by snow storms.

The unseasonably late chill appears to be one of many symptoms of the changing climate. But before we dive into that, let’s take a look at the extraordinary weather pummeling the Midwest. From The Weather Channel:

Winter Storm Achilles may have set the record for the biggest May snowstorm at any single location in four different states! That said, these potential records are based on preliminary data and will have to be verified.

Wisconsin — We’ve seen snowfall reports of 18 inches near Hayward and 17 inches in Rice Lake. …

Minnesota — 18 inches of snow was measured in Blooming Prairie, between Albert Lea and Rochester. …

Iowa — 13 inches of snow has been measured by an observer in Osage. …

Arkansas — Up to 3.5 inches reported in Gravette.

The notion that global warming could trigger cold weather is enough to make a conservative pundit’s head explode. Science is hard!

But Minnesota Public Radio asked a meteorologist about possible links between the late-season snowstorms and climate change. While issuing the standard caveats about how climate change doesn’t “cause” any particular weather events, he explained some likely connections. Here’s a partial transcript of the the exchange during the radio station’s weekly Climate Cast program:

[Host Kerri] Miller: I think this late spring snow is a good opportunity to ask again as we have during our Climate Cast — weather or climate? How do we answer that?

[Meteorologist Paul] Huttner: What’s happening today is weather, there’s no doubt about it. This is a very out-of-season event. All weather in a way seems to be colored or flavored by the climate changes we’re seeing. If you’re going to tie a link to today’s weather to climate change you would have to cite Arctic amplification. We’ve touched on that before. That’s where this slower jet stream gets stuck. It slows down and these blocking patterns set up and our weather patterns get stuck. That’s what’s been happening a lot in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest this spring. Some links that this may be tied to the warmer Arctic Ocean that we saw last summer. It’s not a slam dunk, but the clues all seem to be pointing in the same direction. …

We’re seeing a trend where the atmosphere overall holds about four to five percent more water vapor than it did a decade ago, and that injects these storms with more moisture.

The other thing about this storm and drawing a parallel with Hurricane Sandy late last fall, it’s a little bit out of season. In fact, this is well out of season for Minnesota. It’s unprecedented, the amount of snowfall we’ve had today in Minnesota. Mark Seeley tells me that Dodge Center, with 15.4 inches of snow, broke the all-time state snowfall record for May 2 today. This is definitely an unprecedented out-of-season event. When you get these events in May, when we’ve still got cold enough air for snow but we’ve got so much warmth and moisture to the south, it just supercharges these storms and that can tend to produce more precipitation than an atmosphere with less water in it.

Schoolkids in Minnesota and Wisconsin got a rare May snow day on Thursday, while lucky students at one school in the Seattle area got a “sun day” on Friday to celebrate unusually warm and sunny weather.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie 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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Weird wintry weather and the climate-change link

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Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic Can Stay Open, For Now

by neogrom Posted on April 16, 2013

Mother Jones

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A judge in Mississippi has ruled that Jackson Women’s Health Organization can stay open, for now.

A state law passed in April 2012 threatened to shut down the state’s last abortion clinic, which we recently profiled. But on Monday, US District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III granted a preliminary injunction blocking that law from taking effect, which means that the state cannot revoke the clinic’s license to operate.

The new state law requires doctors who perform abortions at the clinic to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Given the politics on abortion in Mississippi, all of the local hospitals rejected the applications of the two doctors who work at the clinic, so the state Department of Health had begun the process of revoking the clinic’s license for non-compliance. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the clinic, asked the judge to prevent the law from taking effect, as it was impossible for JWHO to comply.

In a statement Monday evening, Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, noted that this is just the first step in the legal battle over this law. “While the women of Mississippi may be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief today, this fight is far from over,” she said. “We will continue our work to see this underhanded attempt to ban abortions in Mississippi struck down as a violation of women’s constitutional reproductive rights.”

Read the judge’s decision here.

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Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic Can Stay Open, For Now

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Selling Solar Power in India’s Slums

by neogrom Posted on April 2, 2013

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The country is fast outgrowing its electric grid. Are small-scale solar projects the solution? Honza Soukup/Flickr Bangalore, INDIA — It’s a little after sundown, and Arun Kumar is hawking his wares in the neighborhood for the first time. He’s selling a light, just a small half-circle tied to a three-inch wide solar panel. An older man tests it in his home, a tiny hut of tarp and tin built like the 30 others in this far north side slum settlement. A kerosene lamp flickers inside. At a second home, Arun wields his 1,600 rupee ($29.48) gizmo for a woman seated with nine children. He points out the small cell phone charger in the light’s rear. The woman turns inside, pulling out her phone to consult her husband. She is one of millions in India and worldwide in a surreal contemporary fix: she owns a cell phone, but her home has no toilet or power line. The country’s mobile users mushroomed in a few short years, reaching some 900 million. Cheap phones have not suddenly lifted owners out of poverty. But they have given them access to resources and economic ladders once unreachable. To keep reading, click here.

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Kraft Mac & Cheese Is Nutritionally Equivalent to Cheez-Its

by neogrom Posted on March 25, 2013

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We taste-tested Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Annie’s Homegrown Macaroni & Cheese, Cheez-Its, and a simple, homemade pasta-and-cheese dish. Watch the video to see how they stacked up.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the recent outcry over the use of yellow dyes 5 and 6 in Kraft’s popular Macaroni Cheese. A couple of food bloggers have petitioned the food giant to ditch the artificial colors, calling them “unnecessary” and “potentially harmful.”

The petition has already racked up more than 250,000 signatures. That isn’t surprising, since Kraft’s cheesy, gooey dish is a childhood staple. (I subsisted on a strict diet of it and Eggo waffles until about age 10.)

So just for fun, let’s pretend that the petitioners succeed, and Kraft replaces its artificial dyes with natural coloring—or (gasp!) no coloring at all. Would the stuff then be healthier?

Well, let’s consider the ingredients list for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese:

Enriched Macaroni product (wheat flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate iron, thiamin mononitrate vitamin B1, roboflavin vitamin B2, folic acid); cheese sauce mix (whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, salt, sodium tripolyphosphate, contains less than 2% of citric acid, lactic acid, sodium phosphate, calcium phosphate, yellow 5, yellow 6, enzymes, cheese culture)

Now compare that to the ingredients list for Kellog’s Reduced Fat Cheez-Its:

Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate vitamin B1, roboflavin vitamin B2, folic acid); soybean and palm oil with TBHQ for freshness, skim milk cheese (skim milk, whey protein, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes, annato extract for color), salt, containst two percent or less of paprika, yeast, paprika oleoresin for color, soy lecithin

To me, the list looked pretty similar—except for one thing: Instead of yellows 5 and 6, Cheez-Its uses annato extract and paprika for color. Yes, you read that right: Cheez-Its uses natural coloring, while Kraft Macaroni & Cheese uses artificial. Indeed, agreed Jesse Jones-Smith, a nutritionist at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, “Kraft actually has a few extra additives, even compared to Cheez-its.” She added, “If you gave a kid two servings of Cheez-its and a glass of milk, you would actually have more sodium in Kraft Mac & Cheese. Otherwise, the two meals are pretty nutritionally equivalent.”

Nutritionist Marion Nestle isn’t a fan of the stuff in the blue-and-yellow box, either. “Kraft Mac & Cheese is a delivery vehicle for salt and artificial colors and flavors,” Nestle wrote in an email. “It is a non-starter on my list because it violates at least three of my semi-facetious rules: never eat anything artificial; never eat anything with more than five ingredients; and never eat anything with an ingredient you can’t pronounce.”

Right. But that got me wondering: What about Annie’s Homegrown, the supposedly healthier brand of packaged mac and cheese? When Jones-Smith compared Annie’s and Kraft’s nutritional information labels and ingredients lists, she found that their dry pasta and sauce packets weren’t too different:

The real difference, she says, was in what the two manufacturers recommended adding: Kraft suggests making the dish with four tablespoons of margarine and a quarter cup of two-percent milk, while Annie’s recommends two tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of lowfat milk. “Margarine often has trans fat—why would they recommend margarine?” wondered Jones-Smith. The result is that when prepared, Kraft packs substantially more calories and fat into a serving than Annie’s:

So what’s a healthier alternative? I asked Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace, for a recommendation. She suggested a simple cheese, pasta, and cauliflower dish. Basically you mash up two cups of boiled cauliflower with a cup of parmesan, a little olive oil, and salt and pepper. Add it to a pound of pasta with a little of the pasta’s cooking water, and you have a creamy, cheesy dish that Jones-Smith says is also more nutritious than both boxed versions: It’s lower in sodium, fat, and calories, and slightly higher in protein. (It’s slightly higher in saturated fat because of the real parmesan.)

It also tastes good. That’s not to say that boxed mac and cheese tastes bad; it’s hard to go wrong with cheesy, starchy comfort food. But I’m willing to guess that Adler’s concoction is a few more steps removed from a bowl of Cheez-Its. Which is, well, comforting in its own way.

You can watch our taste test in the video at the top of this post.

Mother Jones
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Kraft Mac & Cheese Is Nutritionally Equivalent to Cheez-Its

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