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While OPEC Meets, Oil Prices Continue to Plummet

Mother Jones

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With oil prices plummeting below $40 per barrel, OPEC is meeting to decide what to do. The answer is…. probably nothing:

Oil prices dropped Friday as traders braced for official word out of a highly anticipated meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Prices slid following conflicting media reports that OPEC had either kept its oil-output target unchanged or increased it. There was also confusion as to whether production in Indonesia, which just rejoined the group, will be included in the target.

….An internal OPEC document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal showed that, if current production remains unchanged, markets will still be oversupplied by 700,000 barrels a day in 2016….The key issue for OPEC is Iran, which is expected to return to the global oil market after the lifting of the international sanctions early next year. Analysts say the country could quickly ramp up production by around 500,000 barrels, adding to the oversupply of crude.

Between fracking, Iran, and slow demand growth thanks to the sluggish global economy, oil prices just aren’t likely to increase in the near future. This is:

Good news for consumers, who get cheaper gasoline.
Probably bad news for global warming, since it makes cleaner fuel sources uncompetitive with oil.
Bad news for OPEC members, which might be bad news for the rest of us. Low prices probably mean cutbacks in government services, which in turn could lead to more widespread unrest. Needless to say, this is not something the Middle East needs right now.
Good news for Hillary Clinton, since the fortunes of the incumbent party have historically been better when gas prices are lower.

Oh: and bad news for us peak oil folks. I don’t have any worries that we’ll hit peak oil eventually, but the Great Recession sure put off the date. I had long figured that 2015 was going to be the peak date, but it now looks like it will probably be 2020 at the earliest, and maybe more like 2025 or so.

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While OPEC Meets, Oil Prices Continue to Plummet

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Portraits of 11 of the Americana Music Festival’s Most Intriguing Acts

Mother Jones

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The Americana Music Association, which just wrapped up its 15th Americana Music Festival, is not so much about defining a genre as it is about circling the wagons around a wide variety of roots-influenced styles and staging a big-tent meeting for the faithful. The music spans roughly three generations of artists, from the likes of Loretta Lynn and Billy Joe Shaver, who helped define classic country music; to musicians like Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, who during the ’70s combined reverence for the past with rock and roll; to young artists like Robert Ellis, The Milk Carton Kids, and others who are innovating and expanding the older traditions with fresh energy. No matter their age, Americana artists are finding a growing audience to start and sustain careers; it’s as much about moving forward as it is preserving the past. With 160-plus acts in Nashville for this year’s festival, there was no shortage of great music and fascinating individuals. Here are portraits of 11 artists who are definitely worth a closer look.

Jim Lauderdale

Nashville’s guardian angel of songwriting, Jim Lauderdale, is truly the face, and voice, of Americana—a humorous, kind, and gracious ambassador to the association, and host of the Americana Awards for the last 12 years. Lauderdale’s songs have been recorded by George Strait (more than a dozen of them), Vince Gill, Blake Shelton, and the Dixie Chicks, to name just a few. His most recent album (number 26), I’m a Song, features songwriting collaborations with Elvis Costello, Robert Hunter, and Bobby Bare. Near the end of his set at the venue 3rd and Lindsley, he was joined onstage by Lucinda Williams, who asked the crowd, in her trademark drawl, “Why is Brad Paisley up on all these billboards and not Jim?”

The Milk Carton Kids: Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan

Winners of the 2014 Americana Award for Best Group/Duo, The Milk Carton Kids are the Los Angeles-based guitar and vocal duo of Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan. With an uncanny chemistry, they blend their voices and guitars through one microphone into gossamer folk songs with the precision and depth of Simon & Garfunkel or the Everly Brothers.

Robert Ellis

Robert Ellis was nominated for Americana’s Artist of the Year, Album of the Year for The Lights from the Chemical Plant, and song of the year for “Only Lies.” While heavily steeped in country and western music, his current album goes into more experimental territory, blending elements of prog/psychedelic rock and jazz within a sparse soundscape. The Houston, Texas native recently relocated to Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The Howlin’ Brothers: Jared Green, Ian Craft, and Ben Plasse

Nashville’s own The Howlin’ Brothers— Ian Craft on banjo and fiddle, Jared Green on guitar and harmonica, and Ben Plasse on bass—play dirt-under-the-fingernails bluegrass, blues, Cajun, social-dance music, and anything else “old-timey” they can scratch up, mixing originals that sit nicely along side timeless songs. Their third album,Trouble, was released this year on Brendan Benson’s Readymade Records.

Leo “Bud” Welch

Leo “Bud” Welch of Bruce, Mississippi, is both one of the oldest and newest artists at the festival. Welch, 82, released his first album, Sabougla Voices, early this year on Big Legal Mess Records, home of Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside. He had been playing gospel in small local churches, and blues at picnics and parties for decades in a stripped-bare style, but a cold call to the record label finally got the ball rolling.

Doug Seegers

Doug Seegers is finally doing what he was born to do: write and sing soulful, sharp-witted, universally identifiable country songs. For much of his 17 years in Nashville, Seegers was homeless, drunk, and playing for change on the streets. A trained cabinet maker from New York, Seegers had tried to make it as a musician and songwriter in the ’70s and had played in a band with a then unknown Buddy Miller in Austin, Texas. Through luck or divine intervention, Swedish country singer Jill Johnson (country music is big in Scandinavia!) met Doug while producing a documentary on Nashville musicians. Dumbfounded by the quality of his songwriting, she recorded a single with him that hit No. 1 on iTunes in Sweden. Through the path of recovery, and support from artists such as Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, steel guitarist Al Perkins, and producer Will Kimbrough, Seegers released his first album, Going Down to the River, on Rounder.

Carlene Carter

The granddaughter of “Mother” Maybelle Carter, daughter Carl Smith and June Carter, and stepdaughter of Johnny Cash, Carlene Carter is music royalty’s wild child. She recorded her first three albums in England. Her 1978 self-titled album with Graham Parker and the Rumor and 1980’s Musical Shapes, with her then husband Nick Lowe and his band Rockpile, blended country music with high-energy New Wave. Last year, she returned to her family’s legacy with Carter Girl, produced by Don Was. The album brings her youthful energy to songs from the Carter Family repertoire. Beginning in early 2015, she will join John Mellencamp on an 80-date tour.

The Haden Triplets: Petra, Rachel, and Tanya

The Haden Triplets use their sibling chemistry to beautifully reanimate classic country and gospel music. They are the daughters of jazz bassist and composer Charlie Haden, who also grew up in a country music family, performing on the radio in Iowa as part of the Haden Family Band. Five years after Charlie’s country music tribute album Ramblin’ Boy, which featured the triplets, they now have their own self-titled album, produced by Ry Cooder and released on Jack White’s Third Man Records.

The Mastersons: Eleanore Whitmore and Chris Masterson

The Mastersons, a husband and wife duo, play straightforward country-inflected rock with big-hearted lyrics, tight song structures, and sweetly intertwined harmonies. They released their second album, Good Luck Charm, this past July on New West Records, but are already touring veterans as the core of Steve Earle’s band, the Dukes.

Ethan Johns

England’s Ethan Johns recently released his second album, The Reckoning, a suite of stark, mythology-steeped songs that draw from British folk and early American blues. Johns also has a substantial career as a producer, having worked with Ryan Adams (who returned the favor to produce this album), Tom Jones, Paul McCartney, and Ray LaMontagne. He no doubt learned a few things from his father, Glyn Johns, the legendary producer of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Eagles.

Sons of Bill: From left, Sam Wilson, Todd Wellons, James Wilson, Seth Green, and Abe Wilson

Sons of Bill are brothers James, Sam, and Abe (father: William Wilson), plus Seth Green on bass and Todd Wellons on drums. The band’s sound ranges from “No Depression” alt-country of Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt to Byrds-like folk-rock to the Chapel Hill alt-rock of early R.E.M, and many points in between. Their new album, Love and Logic, is produced by Ken Coomer of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco.

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Portraits of 11 of the Americana Music Festival’s Most Intriguing Acts

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WATCH: What Can Oklahoma’s Botched Execution Teach Us About the Death Penalty? Fiore Cartoon

Mother Jones

Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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WATCH: What Can Oklahoma’s Botched Execution Teach Us About the Death Penalty? Fiore Cartoon

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Can we save Chesapeake Bay from chicken crap?

Can we save Chesapeake Bay from chicken crap?

Shutterstock

It sucks to be crapped on by a bird. So imagine being crapped on by hundreds of millions of them every year.

That’s the reality for Chesapeake Bay.

In the adjacent state of Maryland, more than 300 million chickens in factory farms produce more than a billion and a half pounds of waste every year. Most of that waste is spread over farmland — ostensibly as a fertilizer, but that just happens to be the cheapest way of disposing of all that crap. Now almost half the farms in the state are saturated with phosphorous from the manure; that phosphorus runs off the farms and into the estuary and bay, where it fertilizes algal blooms that threaten the seafood and tourism industries.

Last year, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) backed away from proposed new regulations to deal with the problem, caving to pressure from the poultry industry. But now two state lawmakers have stepped up by introducing legislation that would compel poultry companies to pay to help protect and restore Chesapeake Bay.

“Poultry companies are polluting with impunity while the public pays for the cleanup,” said one of the lawmakers, Shane Robinson, a Democrat.

The Poultry Fair Share Act would tax poultry companies five cents per bird, with revenue used to cover most of the $20 million annual cost of a state program that helps farmers grow cover crops to reduce soil erosion and nutrient runoff.

According to Food & Water Watch, which has advocated for such legislation, Maryland residents pay $110 million of taxes every year into a bay restoration fund. “Meanwhile, a company like Perdue enjoys annual chicken sales of $4.8 billion and pays nothing into the fund despite the significant impacts the industry has on the health of the Bay,” the nonprofit wrote on its website.

Poultry companies are making the ridiculous claim that the five-cent tax would utterly ruin their industry, which is a big employer in the state. “That bill, if passed, will guarantee that there won’t be any poultry left in the state of Maryland,” one of them told The Daily Times.

When the legislation was being floated in November, a Perdue spokesman dismissed the proposal as “part of an ongoing campaign by radical environmental groups against contemporary animal agriculture.”

If contemporary animal agriculture means dumping shit-derived nutrients into treasured water bodies, ruining water quality and the industries that rely on it, then we’ll take the old variety of agriculture, please.


Source
It’s the Poultry Industry’s Turn to Pay Their Fair Share, Food & Water Watch
Maryland legislators propose five-cent chicken tax, The Daily Times

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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Can we save Chesapeake Bay from chicken crap?

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Last year was the fourth hottest on record, or maybe the seventh

Last year was the fourth hottest on record, or maybe the seventh

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Our extreme-weather-wearied planet fell short in 2013 of breaking the record for hottest year in modern civilization, but it came close. Last year was either the fourth hottest since record-keeping began, or the seventh, depending on which U.S. agency’s data you most trust.

At the surface of the seas and everywhere else around the world, last year was an average of 1.12 degrees F warmer than the 20th century average, NOAA concluded. That made 2013 the 37th year in a row with above-average global temperatures, according to NOAA’s calculations.

NASA performed its own analysis, concluding that 2013 tied 2006 and 2009 as the seventh warmest year since 1880.

Weather.com explains that the discrepancy between the two agencies’ findings is no big deal:

Despite the gap between the two rankings — due to NASA’s “processing [temperature data] slightly differently than NOAA” in areas like the Arctic and Antarctica, NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt said in a conference call — there’s actually little difference between them.

NASA and NOAA certainly agree that nearly all of the hottest years on record have occurred since the dawn of the new millennium. Notice that only one of the 10 warmest years does not start with the digits “2″ and “0,” according to NOAA:

NOAA

Click to embiggen.

With such a clear warming trend, it’s little wonder that climate skeptics are shifting from straight-out denialism to claiming that climate change is no big deal.

“If serious warming happens, we can adjust,” writes John Stossel in a typically unscientific column in the conservative Washington Examiner. “It will be easier to adjust if America is not broke after wasting our resources on trendy gimmicks like windmills.”


Source
Global Analysis – Annual 2013, NOAA
2013 Temperature Anomoly, NASA

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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Last year was the fourth hottest on record, or maybe the seventh

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