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Gene editing could help save the planet — if scientists can avoid the typos

by LeannaFoust8593 Posted on October 7, 2019

For the last few years, writers and scientists have marveled at the potential for gene editing to allow farmers to grow more food on less land and allow more of the earth to grow carbon-sucking forests and savannas.

The main advantage of gene editing is precision. It’s right there in the name: Instead of dealing with the randomness of breeding, or the rough power-tool work implied by the term “genetic engineering,” the “editing” suggests that scientists could now change the letters of genetic code with the same ease that a writer corrects typos.

But in late July, FDA scientists found a chunk of bacterial DNA in gene-edited calves, prompting people to wonder if this precision tool wasn’t as precise as advertised. That hopeful vision of a gene-edited future — verdant with pesticide-free, carbon-sequestering crops — flickered.

On Monday, the scientists studying these gene-edited cattle published a paper in the journal Nature Biotechnology explaining what happened. Essentially, this new paper tells us that gene editing precisely tweaked specific letters of DNA, exactly what it was supposed to do. But scientists also used older, cruder tools, and one of those caused the genetic typo. Even so, the end result might be that gene-editing slides into the muck of controversy over GMOs.

To be clear, the cows at the center of this study have nothing to do with creating more productive, pest-resistant foods. The scientists had edited their genes in stem cells, which grew into calves without horns. Farmers usually remove the horns to prevent cattle from injuring each other — goring is a real danger.

When I visited the University of California Davis in 2015, I saw a pair of these black-and-white bull calves standing and chewing in an outdoor pen, like ordinary but adorable bovines. Unlike other calves, however, they wouldn’t have to suffer through a painful dehorning operation, in which a veterinarian burns out their horn buds.

Some cows are naturally hornless: Angus and Hereford breeds, for instance. But those are beef cattle. For dairy you want Holsteins or Jerseys, and these champion milk producers are more carefully bred than the winners of the Westminster dog show. If you started crossing muscled Herefords with black-and-white Holsteins, it would take decades of breeding to move the hornless trait into the dairy line then weed out all the beefy traits.

What if you just plucked a single gene and moved it into dairy cows? With gene editing, you could tweak dairy cows without messing up their finely tuned milk-producing DNA so that they would no longer have to endure dehorning. The Minnesota-based company Recombinetics tried this using a technique called TALENS (you might have heard of CRISPR — this is just a different version of the same thing).

To run with the editing metaphor, Recombinetics basically took out the DNA that laid out instructions for “HORN” and replaced it with 202 letters of DNA that said “HORNLESS.” But first, they attached it to a bacterial plasmid — think of it as a sub-cellular copy machine — that would reproduce this strand over and over again (HORNLESS, HORNLESS, HORNLESS!). Then they injected all those copies into a cow cell — that gave one of those copies a much better chance of bumping into the one spot in the DNA that read HORN. This is where things went wrong. Instead of just replacing HORN with HORNLESS, the plasmid also folded into the cell’s DNA so that it read something like HORNLESS-COPYMACHINE-HORNLESS. That genetic information went into an egg, which went into a cow’s uterus, and, in 2015, grew into a hornless calf. No one noticed until years later.

The calves I saw at Davis were there to be studied by Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist. Funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to assess the risks of biotech, her team first verified that the hornless trait was being passed down through generations of cattle. “Basically, we found that Mendel knew his shit,” said Van Eenennaam (that’s Gregor Mendel, the scientist from the 1800s who described how traits are inherited).

With this new paper, Van Eenennaam’s team showed that the bacterial plasmid had also been passed down to some of the calves, again following the rules of genetics 101. It doesn’t seem to be causing a problem — it’s fairly normal for DNA from germs and viruses to work its way into genomes (the human genome is about 8 percent virus DNA), and critters can usually just roll with it. But because these cattle had DNA from a bacteria, it meant they were genetically modified organisms, or GMOs in the eyes of government regulators. That, in turn, meant they would have to undergo years of testing. A giant corporation like Bayer could afford that, but not a small startup like Recombinetics. The FDA is now treating gene-edited animals like new drugs, requiring multiple rounds of safety testing, which effectively puts an end to the quest to make hornless dairy cows. Longtime opponents of biotechnology think that would be a good thing. Friends of the Earth recently released a report with Janet Cotter, who runs the consultancy Logos Environmental, condemning gene edited animals.

“The scientific evidence shows that gene editing, particularly in animals, is far from precise.” Cotter said in a statement. “Instead, it can produce unintended changes to genetic material and disrupt genetic processes. Such effects could have far reaching consequences for food safety, so these applications will require a rigorous assessment if they are to be used in agriculture.”

It would be easy enough to screen out plasmids before putting gene-edited eggs into a cow’s womb. That’s a routine procedure, said Van Eenennaam. But she worries that won’t quell fears that gene editing is sloppier than expected. Treating gene-edited animals like drugs is not proportionate with the risk, Van Eenennaam said, and would prevent breakthroughs that might help us meet the challenge of climate change, whether it’s cows that don’t belch methane, or corals that can survive heat., Van Eenennaam said.

“The debate has pretty much blocked the technology in animals through my whole career. I was hoping gene-editing would be different,” she said. “I have students who are excited about gene editing for disease-resistance — but now I feel like it’s Ground Hog Day. Here we go again.”

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Gene editing could help save the planet — if scientists can avoid the typos

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The Ocean Cleanup project finally cleaned up some plastic

by FlynnBnthuuis Posted on October 4, 2019

Well, folks, there’s a first time for everything — the Ocean Cleanup project has successfully deployed a device that collects plastic pollution.

It only took six years, tens of millions of dollars, and a few unsuccessful attempts (or “unscheduled learning opportunities,” in the words of 25-year-old founder and CEO Boyan Slat). The nonprofit’s prior, unsuccessful designs failed to catch any plastic, broke, or overflowed.

The new system even managed to pick up 1-millimeter microplastics, which Ocean Cleanup described as “a feat we were pleasantly surprised to achieve” in a press release.

Now that it finally has working technology, the Ocean Cleanup project hopes to scale up its fleet of 2,000-foot long, plastic-capturing, floating booms. The goal is to remove 50 percent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the next five years, and 90 percent of ocean plastic by 2040, an effort it estimates will require around 60 devices.

The project has drawn criticism over the years from scientists who argue it provides false hope and is disruptive to marine life. All that money and effort would be better spent diverting the 8 million tons of plastic that enter the oceans every year, the thinking goes.

To his credit, Slat acknowledges the importance of preventing pollution, not just cleaning it up. And his team of more than 80 scientists and engineers have also done some research that has contributed to what we know about the sources, scope, and nature of ocean plastic pollution — although their conclusions are controversial.

The first pieces of plastic gathered by Ocean Cleanup are on their way back to the U.S. to be recycled. Is it a perfect solution to the problem of ocean pollution? Probably not. But at the very least, we can all celebrate today knowing that the Dutch 18-year-old from that TED Talk, who saw plastic while scuba diving and asked, “Why don’t we just clean it up?”, is that much closer to his dreams coming true.

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The Ocean Cleanup project finally cleaned up some plastic

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Science is in ‘crisis’ under Trump, new reports show

by JaxonLinares Posted on October 4, 2019

Acceptance of the root cause of climate change — human beings — is growing among the American public. But among policymakers, acceptance is on the decline.

That’s the dismal conclusion of a new peer-reviewed study in Environmental Research Communications published on Thursday. Between 2010 and 2017, Washington policymakers became less supportive of the science behind climate change. What’s more, Washington elites have formed ideological echo chambers — metaphorical hidey-holes for people who have the same views on stuff — and become increasingly polarized.

The researchers who wrote the study surveyed dozens of Washington elites, not just in the government but at think tanks, environmental groups, and other policy-related institutions, in 2010, 2016, and again in 2017. The researchers asked about the respondents’ attitudes on climate change and also where they go for “expert scientific information about climate change.”

In 2010, “the science of climate change was considered settled among policy actors,” the researchers found. But “respondents changed their views to be less supportive of the science that climate change is anthropogenic” between 2010 to 2017. And in 2017 — after President Trump had taken office — the experts formed multiple echo chambers according to whether they agreed that climate change is caused by humans.

Think that’s bad? There’s more.

Another alarming study out Thursday from the Brennan Center for Justice says federal science has reached a “crisis point.” Government science and research are becoming increasingly politicized, and the process that ensures that federal positions are occupied by qualified people is crumbling. The report looks at recent and historical examples of the politicization of government research. The task force members, which include former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, U.S. attorney Preet Bharara, and former U.S. defense secretary Chuck Hagle, make a number of proposals that could counteract the trend.

Here are a few examples from the Brennan Center report that show how the government has led by example when it comes to politicizing climate research:

The EPA approved new regulations that stop experts from serving on congressional science boards and stocked those boards with industry researchers.
The Department of the Interior reassigned its head climate scientist after he raised the alarm about the effects of climate change.
When Trump made a false statement about Hurricane Dorian reaching Alabama, his Chief of Staff threatened to fire officials at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration in order to pressure them into releasing a statement that supported Trump’s false assertion.

The study warns that, if Trump’s efforts continue unchecked, it could create a “vicious cycle” and encourage future administrations to take similar steps to undermine science and research in the government. That’s particularly disturbing considering that government science and research has delivered smash hits like, oh, I don’t know, putting a man on the moon, lifesaving medicines, the internet, and more.

It’s just a coincidence that these two studies came out on the same day, but taken together they paint a bleak picture of the state of climate science under President Trump. The Trump administration has made efforts “to undermine the value of objective facts themselves,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice. And the Environmental Research Communications seems to suggest that those efforts have worked: The objective fact that humans are the main driver behind climate change no longer holds as much sway among policy elites. Will the Trump era deal a fatal blow to objective truth? Only time will tell.

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Science is in ‘crisis’ under Trump, new reports show

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On Shaky Ground – John J. Nance

by Myrna Posted on October 4, 2019

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On Shaky Ground

America’s Earthquake Alert

John J. Nance

Genre: Earth Sciences

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: January 19, 2016

Publisher: Open Road Media

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


A chilling look at the massive earthquakes that could strike America at any moment Far beneath the earth’s surface, great tectonic plates grind against one another with incredible pressure that must—inevitably—be released. Earthquakes manifest with little warning, upending buildings, shattering infrastructure, and unleashing devastating tsunamis. In this remarkable survey of the history of seismology and the extraordinary seismic events that have occurred in the United States, Mexico, China, and other locales, author John J. Nance traces the discoveries of the scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding and predicting one of the deadliest threats known to mankind.   From the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest and the East Coast, most of the United States—not just California—is in danger of a massive quake, and few citizens are adequately prepared. Through riveting firsthand interviews with earthquake survivors, and with the same command of technical detail and gripping style that he brings to his New York Times –bestselling thrillers, Nance demonstrates the need for readiness—because the next big quake could happen tomorrow.

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On Shaky Ground – John J. Nance

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Some economics nerds just realized how much climate change will cost us

by ShaynaFranz Posted on October 3, 2019

A bunch of economists just put down their calculators and concluded that we should act on climate change sooner rather than later. Really.

For decades, economists have suggested that the government should charge a fee on every ton of carbon dioxide that gets emitted, giving companies a bottom-line incentive to change their polluting ways. The conventional wisdom is that we’d ease into it, starting with a low price — say, $40 per ton — and gradually ramp it up over time.

But according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that prevailing wisdom is backwards. The authors argue that a carbon tax should start out steep, above $100 per ton (and potentially above $200 per ton), rise higher for a few years, and then slowly fall over the next few centuries as people get the whole climate crisis thing under control.

Such a high price would encourage countries and businesses to clean up their act much faster. Part of the reason is that we need to make up for lost time. The implication is that the United States and most governments have waited so long to put a price on carbon that a milder approach just doesn’t make much sense.

“To me the most surprising result of the research was how quickly the cost of delay increases over time,” said Robert Litterman, a risk management expert who used to work for Goldman Sachs, in a statement accompanying the study. His team found that if the world procrastinated on a carbon price by just one more year, the damages from climate change would climb an additional $1 trillion. Waiting 10 years would put the price tag at $100 trillion. In other words, the time to act was yesterday (or, like the 1980s).

No one knows exactly how much our planet is going to heat up in the coming decades. The degree of nightmarishness depends on the amount of greenhouse gases we send into the atmosphere and how quickly and ferociously the planet responds with feedback loops that accelerate warming. The euphemism for this is “uncertainty.”

Because studying the climate is a risky business, the researchers borrowed a model from the world of finance, which is hyper-focused on measuring risk (hello β). Their unconventional model considered the damage climate change would bring to agriculture, coastal infrastructure, and human health in the future. Their takeaway: For something as high stakes as the climate crisis, governments should be trying to avoid the worst outcome at all costs.

“We need to take stronger action today to give us breathing room in the event that the planet turns out to be more fragile than current models predict,” said Kent Daniel, a professor at Columbia Business School, in the statement.

The researchers aren’t the first to recommend this “start high, decrease later” approach to implementing a carbon tax, nor are they the first to propose such a steep price. A landmark report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year suggested that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels would take an array of tough climate policies, including a carbon price of at least $135 per ton by 2030, and perhaps as high as $5,500 per ton.

Around the world, carbon prices are either nonexistent or simply not cutting it. Though more than 40 countries have implemented some sort of carbon price, including Canada, Mexico, and Switzerland, their prices are generally considered too low to be very effective.

Even though old-school Republicans and even some oil companies have publicly called for a nationwide carbon tax, it’s not like voters are clamoring for it. Measures have failed in otherwise environmentally-friendly states such as Washington and Oregon in recent years. No carbon tax exists in the United States, though California and a group of states in the Northeast have cap-and-trade programs that serve a similar purpose. Offering an even higher tax would unlikely help a measure’s odds of passing.

So how to square all this? Perhaps a little wordplay will help. A recent study said that people might be more willing to rally behind a plan to tax carbon if proponents simply dropped the t-word and called it “a fine on corporations” instead.

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Some economics nerds just realized how much climate change will cost us

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The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod’s Atlantic Shore – Robert Finch

by Myrna Posted on October 3, 2019

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The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod’s Atlantic Shore

Robert Finch

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: May 9, 2017

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


"Finch is today’s best, most perceptive Cape Cod writer in a line extending all the way back to Henry David Thoreau." —Christian Science Monitor Weaving together Robert Finch’s collected writings from over fifty years and a thousand miles of walking along Cape Cod’s Atlantic coast, The Outer Beach is a poignant, candid chronicle of an iconic American landscape anyone with an appreciation for nature will cherish.

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The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod’s Atlantic Shore – Robert Finch

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Climate change is coming for our toilets. Here’s how we can stop it.

by Dominik58K Posted on October 2, 2019

Of all the amazing conveniences Americans are lucky enough to enjoy, the bowl that makes the poop go away is one of the best — on par with the tap that turns the water on and the box that makes the food hot. But I am here to ruin your day and tell you that climate change could compromise the humble toilet. If we don’t act soon, the consequences could be disgusting.

About one in five households in the United States depends on a septic system to eliminate waste (that’s 60 million households, for those of you who don’t like fractions). Septic systems not only dispose of our waste, they also protect public health, preserve precious water resources, and provide long-term peace of mind for city planners and plumbers alike. But that septic-associated security could go down the drain, according to information in a U.N. report on oceans published last week.

While the report is not specifically about your bathroom, per se, it shows how a stealthy threat — sea-level rise — could make it more difficult for people with septic systems to flush their toilets. A brief primer on septic systems, which are common in rural areas: The stuff in your toilet goes into an underground tank, where it breaks down (I’m gagging) and gets drained out into a leach field (gross) that’s at least 20 feet from your house. In order to function properly, those drainage fields have to be relatively dry.

Rising groundwater levels (a problem that accompanies sea-level rise) are soaking the fields, making it more difficult for our waste to break down and get absorbed properly. Rising groundwater also affects the soil’s ability to filter out harmful bacteria, which poses a public safety risk. And to make matters worse, increased rainfall, another climate change-related perk, is exacerbating the issue. It’s a back-up problem that can’t be solved with a plunger, if you catch my drift.

New England, where roughly half of homes rely on septic systems, is especially at risk. So is Florida — home to 12 percent of the nation’s septic systems. Miami-Dade county commissioned a report on vulnerable toilets this year and found 64 percent of tanks could run into problems by 2040. Minnesota, an inland state, has to contend with another climate-related toilet problem: lack of snow. Snow, which keeps things nice and insulated, has been noticeably absent in early winter and spring. Freezing temperatures are still kicking around, though. That means the frost line has taken a dive deep underground and compromised thousands of Minnesotans’ septic systems. See? Septic tanks are getting it from all sides these days.

So is the solution to dig up all the septic tanks, put them on stilts, and clothe them in Canada Goose parkas? Not exactly, says Elena Mihaly, staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation. She worked on a 2017 report on climate change’s effect on wastewater treatment systems that laid out some possible solutions to this poopy problem.

One method is to reform the way septic systems are regulated so that new systems are evaluated for their susceptibility to climate change before they’re put in. Researchers are already mapping out areas with infrastructure that’s vulnerable to groundwater level rise in coming years in states like New Hampshire. When it comes to existing septic systems, Mihaly says inspecting them when houses change hands at point of sale is a “way to make sure that we’re checking in on how infrastructure is doing given current risk, and how it’s changed from 30 or 40 years ago.”

And there are other practices that can head off this problem, too. Shallower leach fields, for example, rely on a narrower depth to treat water. Municipalities can install town-wide sewer systems in areas where household septic tanks don’t make sense. Frequent inspections are key, too. “It’s important to get your septic system inspected every three or four years,” Mihaly said. “Not only looking at all the pieces on the outside but at what’s happening with the groundwater that is flowing near it.”

Most importantly, it’s crucial to understand that groundwater doesn’t act in predictable ways, and it can impact more than just septic systems. “It’s not a given that if you have 3 feet of sea-level rise you’ll always have this much groundwater rise inland,” Mihaly said. “It’s really dependent on the underlying geology of that area, so it’s going to be very location-specific.” Roads, drinking water wells, landfills, and other infrastructure are susceptible to rising groundwater, too. “We actually have infrastructure that’s inland that we need to be thinking about as well in terms of reliability and functionality in the face of climate change,” she said.

You hear that, America? Climate change is coming for our conveniences. It’s time to get potty trained.

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Climate change is coming for our toilets. Here’s how we can stop it.

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Killing California car pollution rules could kill speed limits

by KieraSweatman Posted on October 2, 2019

If you want to upend a half-century of legal tradition, you better have a damn-solid argument to justify your move. Especially if it’s a legal move so broad that it could nullify local speed limits.

President Donald Trump is attempting a tectonic upheaval of precedent by telling California it can’t set its own rules for the greenhouse gases coming out of cars. The administration’s rationale is so broad, according to one law professor, that it would wipe out a lot more than the state’s ability to set its own standards. It could also outlaw state gas taxes, city speed limits, and various other local rules. If courts agree, the Trump administration’s case would lead to a tremendous shift of power from state and local governments to Washington.

“Their interpretation is just so broad, and so lacking in any limiting principles, that I couldn’t determine why even the most silly example wouldn’t apply,” said Greg Dotson, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, who wrote a paper examining the administration’s argument.

Since the late 1960s, California has been setting car-pollution rules that go beyond the federal standards, and, until recently, the federal government has endorsed that as a reasonable way for state governments to deal with their own unique situations. It all started because California had more cars and more smog than other states.

But now the Trump Administration is trying to change all that, basing its argument on a line from the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which covers federal fuel economy standards. The relevant part:

“no State or political subdivision of a State shall have authority to adopt or enforce any law or regulation relating to fuel economy standards or average fuel economy standards applicable to automobiles covered by such Federal standard.”

On its face, that seems pretty cut and dry. If there’s a federal gas mileage standard, states and cities can’t mess with it. But if that’s the right interpretation, Dotson notes, there’s a ton of laws “relating to fuel economy standards” that would be in deep trouble. Gas taxes and speed limits affect vehicles’ fuel economy more than California’s greenhouse gas rules, as do local laws like bans on idling cars (which exist in nine states and many cities), and rules on the speed you can go when towing a trailer.

“Would anyone expect or want some 50-year-old law to pre-empt every state gas tax?” Dotson asked. “It’s goofy.”

There’s a lot more legalese to the administration’s argument, but that line from the Energy Policy and Conservation Act is the foundation, said Caitlin McCoy a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program.

“It’s everything,” McCoy said. “And it’s indicative of the strategy that the Trump administration has employed on environmental issues, looking for limiting principles in the underlying statutes so they can achieve the biggest cuts to authority.”

And it’s not like the Trump White House is strictly interested in slashing state authority. It argued on the side of state’s rights when fighting the Clean Power Plan, McCoy said.

California and 22 other states have already sued the Trump administration in federal court to stop the move. That means the courts will decide whether there’s any good reason to let states keep the power to set their own rules. If you want a preview of how this might play out in court, it’s worth looking at the last attempt to take away the rights of states to regulate car emissions. In 2007, President George W. Bush’s administration tried to strip California’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from cars. But the Bush administration wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about pursuing the case. As Dotson wrote, a lawyer from the EPA explained that “After review of the docket and precedent, we don’t believe there are any good arguments against granting the waiver [allowing California to regulate greenhouse gases]. All of the arguments . . . are likely to lose in court if we are sued.”

But we never saw that put to the test. When President Barack Obama came into office in 2009, he granted California’s authority to make its own rules, putting off the fight until now.

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Killing California car pollution rules could kill speed limits

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Climate change means wild weather. Does that include snowstorms?

by ShantaeOverlock Posted on October 2, 2019

If it seems like just last week that summer ended, you are correct — so why does the first day of October look like the dead of winter in the Northern Rockies? Over the weekend, Montana Governor Steve Bullock issued a state of emergency after an unusually intense “winter” storm dropped 48 inches of snow on some parts of the state.

This year has already included a slew of record-setting weather events in the Northern Hemisphere, all courtesy of climate change. Heatwaves across Europe and the Arctic made this the hottest summer ever recorded, the midwestern U.S. is still recovering from terrible floods, and we’re currently in the middle of an unusually intense hurricane season.

So where does Montana’s pre-Halloween winter wonderland fit into all that? If you’re reading this, you probably know that weather and climate are not the same thing, and extreme winter weather doesn’t refute the existence of climate change. (Seriously, y’all, it’s 2019 — don’t be that senator who brought a snowball into Congress to disprove global warming.)

But could the Montana storm have been caused or exacerbated by climate change? Yes. Meteorologists and atmospheric scientists caution that more research is required to know exactly how big a role climate change played in this weekend’s storm, specifically. But it’s possible, and even likely, that climate change contributed to, and intensified, the conditions that made a storm this big possible.

The first mechanism by which climate change could have affected the storm is pretty basic: Warming temperatures lead to evaporating water, which leads to a wetter atmosphere, which leads to more precipitation.

“[A]ll storms are influenced to some degree by climate change because the environment is warmer and moister than it used to be,” said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Since weather events are determined by factors specific to each situation, Trenberth didn’t think it was accurate to say the storm’s strength was entirely due to climate change — however, “the potential for bigger snowfalls in spring and fall is one of the signatures of climate change.” (Heavy snowfall in Montana this early in the fall is unusual, but not entirely unprecedented — the first snow of the season in 1992 in Great Falls was on August 22.)

There might be another, slightly more convoluted way climate change is affecting the weather that basically boils down to this: Rising Arctic temperatures are messing with the jet stream.

Jet streams are currents of wind way up in the atmosphere (at the altitude planes fly, hence the name) flowing west to east along the boundaries between hot and cold air. There’s one above the northern U.S., and it’s a key player in determining a lot of the region’s weather.

Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, studies how Arctic warming affects the weather in the rest of the northern hemisphere. She said a “contorted jet-stream configuration” was “a less direct connection” between climate change the storm — “and much more controversial, but a topic of active research.”

It’s normal for jet streams to have some north-south fluctuation. But with the melting of cold-retaining sea ice, the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the hemisphere, which researchers like Francis think is making the jet stream slower-moving and wavier as the difference in temperature between the Arctic and land further south decreases.

Francis explained that “unusually warm ocean waters off the west coast and around Alaska” — the result of melting sea ice — helped caused the jet stream to dip so far south, setting up the conditions for this weekend’s wet, heavy storm.

“An early snowstorm like this could have occurred through random chance, but there’s no question (in my mind) that climate change has made it worse,” Francis said.

Scientists have long warned that climate change will bring more frequent, wetter, and slower-moving storms. If this weekend’s storm shows us anything, it’s that that doesn’t just mean hurricanes. “I’d say the dice are loaded in favor of more unusual weather events this winter,” said Francis, “but it’s hard to say who will be affected the most.”

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Climate change means wild weather. Does that include snowstorms?

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Is red meat bad for you? Climate change sure is.

by AlfredoEldersha Posted on October 1, 2019

Everyone knows that eating lots of red meat is bad for your health. Doctors and public health experts have been advising us to cut down on the hamburgers and steaks for years and years. And people listened: Red meat consumption in the United States has been on the decline for the better part of a decade. But the evidence behind that advice might not be as solid as we thought, according to a controversial analysis released on Monday.

An international coalition of researchers assessed pretty much every single quality study and randomized trial that looked at connections between red meat, cancer, and death. The researchers used a stricter method for evaluating the evidence than is usually used for nutrition, a notoriously tricky topic to study. In the end, they weren’t convinced that reducing red meat consumption is beneficial to the individual, because the methodology behind the studies they assessed was so flawed it was impossible to come to a sound conclusion.

The analysis has prompted quite a bit of disagreement in the nutritional community, with other nutritionists and doctors calling it “perplexing” and “nutritional nihilism.” But you know what scientists agree is bad for your health? Climate change. Rising temperatures will lead to a spike in heat-related deaths and illnesses, like heat stroke and hyperthermia, and exacerbate chronic conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Changing weather patterns associated with warming affect pollutants like ground-level ozone, which can cause emphysema, a chronic lung disease that can be deadly.

In all the uproar over whether or not red meat is healthy for individuals, the big picture of what greenhouse gas emissions mean for all of us is getting overlooked. Agriculture is a big slice of America’s emissions pie, representing 9 percent of total emissions in 2017. Cows, unfortunately, are part of the problem, because they emit large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Beef is 20 times more land- and greenhouse gas-intensive than beans, for example.

So if you do decide to fire up the grill and stack up on T-bones tonight to celebrate the new research, just know that you’re not getting a free pass. More beef means more methane. And a big ol’ spike in methane emissions from beef production is pretty much the last thing we need right now, seeing as we’re on track to warm the planet a crispy 3.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century.

But the good news is that cutting down on red meat can have big payoffs from an environmental standpoint. Between 2005 and 2014, a 19 percent decline in American beef consumption led to a 10 percent decrease in diet-related carbon emissions.

And as for the question of whether eating red meat is OK for your personal health, we’ll leave that one to the experts to duke out.

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Is red meat bad for you? Climate change sure is.

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