Author Archives: Stephanj0r

Hillary Clinton Refuses to Take a Position on the Keystone Pipeline

by Stephanj0r Posted on July 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Hillary Clinton took a strong stance on clean energy Monday, telling a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa, that her efforts to tackle climate change would parallel President John F. Kennedy’s call to action during the space race in the 1960s.

“I want to get the country back to setting big ambitious goals,” Clinton said. “I want us to get back into the future business, and one of the best ways we can do that is to be absolutely ready to address the challenge of climate change and make it work to our advantage economically.”

Her remarks tracked closely with an ambitious plan her campaign released Sunday night, which set a target of producing enough renewable energy to power all the nation’s homes and businesses by 2027.

“America’s ability to lead the world on this issue hinges on our ability to act ourselves,” she said. “I refuse to turn my back on what is one of the greatest threats and greatest opportunities America faces.”

Still, the Democractic front-runner refused—as she has several times before—to say whether or not she supports construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. That project, which would carry crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries and ports in the United States, is seen by many environmentalists as a blemish on President Barack Obama’s climate record. It has been stalled for years in a lengthy State Department review that began when Clinton was still Secretary of State. The Obama administration has resisted several recent attempts by Congress to force Keystone’s approval, but it has yet to make a final decision on the project—although one is expected sometime this year.

“I will refrain from commenting on Keystone XL, because I had a leading role in getting that process started, and we have to let it run its course,” Clinton said, in response to a question from an audience member.

Her non-position on Keystone earned derision from environmentalist Bill McKibben, whose organization 350.org has been at the forefront of opposition to the pipeline.

“I think it’s bogus,” he said in an email. “Look, the notion that she can’t talk about it because the State Dept. is still working on it makes no sense. By that test, she shouldn’t be talking about Benghazi or Iran or anything else either. The more she tries to duck the question, the more the whole thing smells.”

Clinton also punted on an audience request to reveal further details of how exactly she would finance the renewable energy targets she announced yesterday, which aim even higher than those already put in place by Obama. She reiterated that one key step would be to ensure the extension of federal tax credits for wind and solar energy that have expired or are set to expire over the next few years. And she said that she would continue Obama’s practice of pursuing aggressive climate policies from within the White House, saying that “we still have a lot we can do” without waiting for a recalcitrant Congress to act.

Clinton acknowledged that the clean energy boom would come at a cost for the US coal industry, which is already in steep decline. She said she would “guarantee that coal miners and their families get the benefits they’ve earned,” but didn’t elaborate on what she meant or how specifically she would achieve that.

Environmental groups offered a generally positive reaction to Clinton’s policy announcement Sunday. In a statement, League of Conservation Voters vice president Tiernan Sittenfield commended her for “calling out climate change deniers and effectively illustrating the urgent need to act on a defining issue of our time.” She also earned praise from billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, who has set a high bar on climate action for any candidate who wants to tap his millions.

“I refuse to let those who are deniers to rip away all the progress we’ve made and leave our country exposed to climate change,” Clinton said.

From – 

Hillary Clinton Refuses to Take a Position on the Keystone Pipeline

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hillary Clinton Refuses to Take a Position on the Keystone Pipeline

Body Paint, Piranhas, And Solar Energy

by Stephanj0r Posted on January 19, 2015

earth911

Link:

Body Paint, Piranhas, And Solar Energy

Posted in FF, GE, PUR, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Body Paint, Piranhas, And Solar Energy

Why Are These States Actively Trying to Confuse Their Residents About Obamacare?

by Stephanj0r Posted on January 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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

To help consumers and small businesses make sense of their new health insurance options, the Affordable Care Act created outreach personnel, or “navigators,” tasked with distributing information about coverage and walking people through the application process. On January 23, Texas passed a set of measures aimed at restricting these navigators because of lawmakers’ concerns about patient privacy. That same day, a federal judge in Missouri temporarily blocked enforcement of similar restrictions, ruling that they created too large an obstacle to enrollment.

This tug of war is about a seemingly straightforward program: The navigators, who are required by law to be both unbiased and free, are meant to help uninsured Americans enroll in either Medicaid or private insurance plans. Depending on whether a state has opted to use it’s own insurance marketplace, navigators get funding through state or federal grants. For example, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, in Iowa, received a $214,427 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to employ navigators, which will give in-person assistance by preparing applications and helping consumers determine which plans they qualify for, in 61 of 99 Iowa counties.

But Republican lawmakers have cried afoul, arguing that navigators could steal private information like Social Security numbers and medical records. In an August letter to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the HHS, the attorneys general of 13 states said they were concerned that HHS had “failed to adequately protect the privacy” of consumers because it does “not even require uniform criminal background or fingerprint checks before hiring personnel.” Texas Sen. John Cornyn, for example, praised his state’s regulations, saying on his Facebook, “Obamacare presents enough problems for Texans without the risk of a convicted felon handling their personal information.”

Privacy claims have led to a surge of restrictive measures like those in Texas. At least 17 states have passed regulations on health care navigators since, including Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee, which barred navigators from educating consumers about the specific benefits, terms, and features of a particular health plan. Here is a map of states that have passed laws restricting navigators:

Many policymakers and health care professionals say that these privacy concerns are unfounded and worry that partisan bickering will hurt underserved populations. After 15 Republicans members of the House asked for details and briefings on 51 navigator groups, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wrote, “It is an abuse of your oversight authority to launch groundless investigations into civic organizations that are trying to make health reform a success.” The Democratic members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce also noted that there are already significant privacy safeguards in place, including a $25,000 penalty for disclosing personal information and mandatory navigator training.

Peter Shin, professor of health law and policy George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services, says that conservatives are more interested in decreasing enrollment and making Obamacare look bad than they are in protecting patient privacy. “I think the privacy concern is more of a political issue than a common sense one,” says Shin.

The result of conservative politicking? Underserved populations will remain so, as outreach resources are strained. “The purpose of the navigator programs is to help those who will need most in terms of understanding their options,” says Shin. “The more disenfranchised communities will be hurt the most from the navigator restrictions.”

Several navigator programs have already closed shop because of anti-navigator laws. Cardon Outreach, a Texas-based organization that has helped people enroll in Medicaid in the past, returned its grant from HHS. As the Columbus Dispatch reported, Cardon’s chief legal adviser stated in an email that the state and federal regulatory scrutiny surrounding navigators “requires us to allocate resources which we cannot spare and will distract us from fulfilling our obligations to our clients.”

View this article: 

Why Are These States Actively Trying to Confuse Their Residents About Obamacare?

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Are These States Actively Trying to Confuse Their Residents About Obamacare?

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 20, 2013

by Stephanj0r Posted on December 20, 2013

Mother Jones

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

An M1A2SEP Abrams Tank from Company C, 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment ‘Desert Rogues’, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, sits ready while others complete the night portion of the Gunnery Table VI in the background at Red Cloud Range, Dec. 12. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Richard Wrigley, 2nd ABCT, 3rd ID, Public Affairs NCO)

View original:

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 20, 2013

Posted in Abrams, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 20, 2013

4 Reasons You Should Worry About Another Sandy

by Stephanj0r Posted on October 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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

One year ago, when Superstorm Sandy devastated much of New Jersey and New York City, the event sparked an intense national discussion about an issue that had gone mysteriously un-discussed during the presidential campaign: climate change. According to research by media scholar Max Boykoff of the University of Colorado, there was actually more media coverage of climate change in leading U.S. newspapers following Sandy than there was following the recent release of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report.

Why? According to NASA researchers, Sandy’s particular track made it a 1-in-700 year storm event. It was, to put it mildly, meteorologically suspicious.

So now, with a year’s distance and a lot of thought and debate, what can we say about climate change and Sandy—and hurricanes in general? A lot, as it turns out. Here’s what we know:

1. Sea level rise is making hurricanes more damaging—and Sandy is just the beginning. The most direct and undeniable way that global warming worsened Sandy is through sea level rise. According to climate researcher Ben Strauss of Climate Central, sea level in New York harbor is 15 inches higher today than it was in 1880, and of those 15 inches, eight are due to global warming’s influence (the melting of land-based ice, and the thermal expansion of seawater as it warms). And that matters: For every inch of sea level rise, an estimated 6,000 additional people were impacted by Sandy who wouldn’t have been otherwise. That’s why Strauss told me last year, in the wake of the storm, that there is “100 percent certainty that sea level rise made this worse. Period.”

And what’s true for Sandy is true for every hurricane that makes landfall. While numerous other factors, such as the tidal cycle, also affect the size of a given storm’s surge, global warming is now a measurable part of the total impact. And the more seas rise in the future, the worse the impact gets—and the more likely future Sandys become. “Coastal communities are facing a looming sea level rise crisis, one that will manifest itself as increased frequency of Sandy-like inundation disasters in the coming decades along the mid-Atlantic and elsewhere,” as a recent American Meteorological Society report put it. In fact, a recent analysis by Mother Jones, using data from Climate Central and the National Climate Assessment, finds that by the end of the century the chance of Sandy-level flooding in Lower Manhattan in any given year increases to 50 percent.

2011’s Hurricane Irene caused widespread flooding damage due to heavy rains in New England. Jim Greenhill/Flickr

2. Hurricane rainfall will also be more damaging in the future due to global warming. The principal flooding damage from Sandy came through its storm surge, not its heavy rains. But in other devastating storms, that won’t necessarily be the case. Hurricanes are, at minimum, a triple threat, and can damage lives and property through rainfall, through storm surge, and due to their powerful winds.

We can say with some confidence that global warming is generating more rainfall in storms like Sandy. The reason is simple: Warmer air holds more water vapor, due to basic physics. “For 1 degree Fahrenheit, it’s something like 5 percent more moisture in the atmosphere,” as climate scientist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research has put it.

Extreme precipitation events in the US are already on the rise, and this trend, like sea level rise, is expected to continue in the future. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, by the end of the 21st century we should expect a roughly 20-percent increase in hurricane rainfall.

3. Hurricanes may also be more intense in the future. A knottier issue involves whether the average hurricane is already more intense (in other words, having higher wind speeds) than it was in the past due to global warming—or whether it will be in the future. This is the question that gets the most press attention, even as it also remains among the hardest to answer.

2005’s Hurricane Wilma, the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. NASA/Wikimedia Commons

If you want to go with the conservative (and somewhat dated) scientific view, then the latest IPCC assessment says there is “low confidence” that hurricanes have already gotten more intense due to global warming. The IPCC also says it is “more likely than not” that this will occur by the second half of this century, at least in two major basins that have a lot of hurricanes—the North Atlantic and the Western North Pacific (where they’re called typhoons).

The IPCC, however, has a cutoff date and as a result, cannot always cite the most cutting-edge research. That includes one recent paper suggesting that hurricanes are already more intense, as the global population of storms has shifted towards more Category 4 and 5 storms, and proportionately less Category 1 and Category 2 storms. This issue remains heavily debated within the scientific community, however.

4. Will there be more hurricane left turns into New Jersey? But where things get really scientifically tricky is the matter of storm paths. One of the reasons that Sandy was so devastating is that it, in effect, swung left and slammed into the US East Coast. That’s exceedingly rare behavior for an Atlantic hurricane. By the time they reach the mid-latitudes, most of these storms “recurve” to the northeast, a path that often ensures that they miss land.

That pattern was interrupted in the case of Sandy, however, by what is called a “blocking” event: A ridge of high pressure over Greenland that drove the storm westward, leading to this devastating track:

The bizarre track of Superstorm Sandy. Cyclonebiskit/Wikimedia Commons

So will such atmospheric blocks become more likely in the future?

Officially, the IPCC says no. Or rather, in scientist speak: “there is medium confidence that the frequency of Northern and Southern Hemisphere blocking will not increase, while trends in blocking intensity and persistence remain uncertain.” However, a number of researchers disagree with this assessment, most notably Jennifer Francis of Rutgers, who argues that the rapid warming of the Arctic is leading to a more loopy jet stream and, thus, more blocking patterns. This, too, is likely to be a hotly debated issue in the coming years.

So we already know global warming is making hurricanes more dangerous, through sea level rise and rainfall if nothing else. We don’t know everything, yet: But we know more than enough to be worried.

Continue at source:

4 Reasons You Should Worry About Another Sandy

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Ringer, Springer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 4 Reasons You Should Worry About Another Sandy

The Northeast is producing more natural gas than Saudi Arabia

by Stephanj0r Posted on October 23, 2013

The Northeast is producing more natural gas than Saudi Arabia

By

More natural gas is being fracked out of the Marcellus Shale formation in the Northeastern U.S. than is being produced by most foreign countries.

A report published Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration revealed that Marcellus gas production is growing much faster than had been predicted. (So, too, are the damages that fracking is inflicting on the region’s environment — and the world’s climate.)

EIAClick to embiggen.

The Associated Press reports that daily gas production from the Marcellus Shale is producing as much energy as 2 million barrels of oil. That’s more than six times the region’s production rate in 2009, according to the AP article:

For perspective, if the Marcellus Shale region were a country, its natural gas production would rank eighth in the world. The Marcellus now produces more natural gas than Saudi Arabia, and that glut has led to wholesale prices here that are about one-quarter of those in Japan, for example.

The vast majority of the Marcellus gas is coming from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The shale also lies under other states, but most of the wells in Ohio produce oil, and New York has placed a moratorium on shale gas drilling.

Federal energy experts are surprised by the rapid Marcellus growth, since the number of drilling rigs has fallen over the past two years.

Here’s a map that shows the Marcellus region as well as other top oil and gas producing areas:

EIA

Click to embiggen.


Source
Drilling Productivity Report, U.S Energy Information Administration
Marcellus Shale gas growing faster than expected, Associated Press

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: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Taken from – 

The Northeast is producing more natural gas than Saudi Arabia

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Northeastern, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Northeast is producing more natural gas than Saudi Arabia

No, the House GOP Isn’t Standing Up for Kids With Cancer

by Stephanj0r Posted on October 3, 2013

Mother Jones

Step aside, WWII vets; House Republicans have found their newest government shutdown prop: children with cancer. On Wednesday, having caught wind of the news that about 200 patients—including 30 children—would not be admitted for clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health, the House quickly passed a bill to fund the NIH. (It passed similar resolutions for the National Park Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the District of Columbia.) On Twitter, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) synthesized the new conservative talking points as only he could: “President Stompy Feet now says he’ll kill funding for children’s cancer treatment. Will the media still cover for him?” On Thursday morning, House Republicans who worked previously as doctors and nurses held a press conference on Capitol Hill to call once more for full funding of the NIH.

But missing from all of this is any explanation of what the Republicans’ continuing resolution would actually do: Enshrine the severe cuts imposed on the institute by sequestration. NIH lost 5 percent of its budget—or $1.7 billion—when the cuts included in the Budget Control Act went into effect last spring. It has adjusted by eliminating at least 700 research grants, and slowed down priorities such as developing a universal flu vaccine. As NIH director Dr. Francis Collins told the Huffington Post in August, “God help us if we get a worldwide pandemic.” (Making a bad situation worse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it will be unable to effectively monitor flu vaccination programs and virus outbreaks during the shutdown.) In September, Collins suggested that the cuts to research could put “the next cure for cancer” on ice.

Continue Reading »

From – 

No, the House GOP Isn’t Standing Up for Kids With Cancer

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No, the House GOP Isn’t Standing Up for Kids With Cancer

The Bellowing, Belligerent, But Completely Ineffectual History of Ted Cruz

by Stephanj0r Posted on July 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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

I suppose I could save everyone some time and just tell you to be sure to read Dave Weigel every day, but his clinical dissection of Republican firebrand Ted Cruz is really worth a minute of your time. After running down Cruz’s almost flawless lack of success during his first six months as a senator, he concludes:

That’s the story of Ted Cruz’s strategic acumen in the Senate. The paradox is that the theatrics that completely backfire in D.C. are embraced by activists in the bright world outside.

Cruz has built a quick reputation as the loudest mouth in a body famed for its loudmouths, and it’s led to nothing but disaster and defeat for the Republican Party. But the tea partiers love him all the more for it. If he ever actually made a difference, they’d probably abandon him instantly as a sellout.

Originally from: 

The Bellowing, Belligerent, But Completely Ineffectual History of Ted Cruz

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Bellowing, Belligerent, But Completely Ineffectual History of Ted Cruz