Category Archives: Keurig

People of color suffer through extra long commutes

by PorfiriHaddon Posted on May 18, 2015

People of color suffer through extra long commutes

By on 18 May 2015commentsShare

Now for the next injustice: If you live in Minneapolis or St. Paul and you’re not white, it takes longer for you to get to work. A new study put together by four Minnesota nonprofits found a pretty astonishing “transit time penalty”: Asian Americans, African Americans, and Latinos living in the Twin Cities spend anywhere from 11 to 46 more hours a year commuting on public transit than whites do.

And if you compare those numbers to white drivers, nonwhite transit riders are spending way more time commuting. Here’s the breakdown, from the study:

Translation: Black and Asian transit users lose the equivalent of 3.5 weeks of work each year because of their long commute-times alone. For Latino transit users, it is nearly 4.5 weeks.

Combine that with the fact that significantly more nonwhites are commuting via public transit – in Minnesota and across the country — and you’ll see that this is just stitched through with all kinds of messed up urban policies and socioeconomic injustices.

In Minnesota, this study finds, 8 percent of Latinos, 10 percent of African Americans, and 29 percent of Native Americans commute to work on public transit, versus just 5 percent of whites and Asian Americans. But thanks in large part to ongoing patterns of development and displacement, low-income communities of color experience not just longer commute times than whites, but shittier service, too:

Infrequent service, indirect routes, delays, overcrowded vehicles, and insufficient shelter at bus stops contribute to the transit time penalty both quantitatively (adding minutes to a trip) and qualitatively (increasing the stress of the experience).

And thanks to a national car-loving ethos that puts roads and freeways above buses and trains, public transportation sucks – across the board! Nationwide, public transit commutes take twice as long as car commutes.

That’s not the only reason just 5.2 percent of U.S. commuters take public transit to work and more than 75 percent drive alone in their cars. But still. As long as there’s a dearth of quick and reliable transit options, it’s going to continue to encourage car ownership. This study points out, for instance, that just 15 percent of jobs in the Twin Cities region have good public transit connections, “resulting in working families in the Twin Cities spending more on transportation than on housing.”

And that is a huge deal when it comes to racial and economic equity. Research shows that access to adequate transportation has an enormous impact on the odds of escaping poverty. Makes sense: an unreliable bus takes a huge toll on your chances of keeping a job. But as one Harvard study suggests, it’s actually commute length that has the biggest impact – beyond crime rates, test scores, or the percentage of two-parent families in a community. According to an article on the study and its implications in the New York Times, “The longer an average commute in a given county, the worse the chances of low-income families there moving up the ladder.”

So there’s another very good reason to adequately fund public transit, America: Not only will it help the planet, it will seriously improve the lives of lots and lots of low-income Americans.

Source:
Twin Cities Commute Times Show Sizable Racial Gap

, NextCity.

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People of color suffer through extra long commutes

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5 Ways to Reuse K-Cups if You Already Own a Keurig

by RobinBroome Posted on April 19, 2015

Link:

5 Ways to Reuse K-Cups if You Already Own a Keurig

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, Keurig, LG, ONA, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 5 Ways to Reuse K-Cups if You Already Own a Keurig

This gorgeous video will remind you what an ugly mess the BP oil spill made

by LorrineWomble Posted on April 17, 2015

This gorgeous video will remind you what an ugly mess the BP oil spill made

By on 17 Apr 2015commentsShare

Disasters (natural or human-caused) are like TV shows. As soon as get into one, your friend tells you about another one that you just have to check out, and then by the time you’re caught up with that one, you start seeing headlines all over the place for a new one, and so on forever until one day you see an article about that one you haven’t thought about in a year, and you’re like, “Huh. Is that still happening?”

Monday is the five-year anniversary of the start of the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst oil spill in U.S. history, lasting for 87 days and spewing more than 200 million gallons of oil into the surrounding environment.

Here to remind us that, yes, the disaster is still a thing and probably will be for a while is renowned doodler and science communicator Perrin Ireland. In this video, she (literally) paints a pretty bleak picture. Basically, scientists are still trying to account for all the leaked oil and expect it to be years before they fully understand the spill’s impact on the local ecosystem.

Check out the video, and be sure to stay tuned for next season, when scientists continue the hunt for those pesky dispersants!

Oh, and by the way, have you heard about all those exploding oil trains?

Source:
Where’d the oil go?

, onEarth.

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This gorgeous video will remind you what an ugly mess the BP oil spill made

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, Keurig, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This gorgeous video will remind you what an ugly mess the BP oil spill made

Why K-Cup Crafts Aren’t the Answer

by CooperFossett Posted on March 13, 2015

Excerpt from: 

Why K-Cup Crafts Aren’t the Answer

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I watched Tim Cook introduce Apple Watch and now I’m depressed

by TamieJ55dxlffb Posted on March 9, 2015

I watched Tim Cook introduce Apple Watch and now I’m depressed

By on 9 Mar 2015commentsShare

As Tim Cook announced in an Apple broadcast conference today, Apple Watch is coming out in April — the 24th, for those of you who can’t wait to have an iPhone melted down and injected in your bloodstream, essentially.

Apple Watch includes the following dystopian features: Wirelessly transmitted physical taps that your friends can send to get your attention, as if the ubiquitous boodle-BOOP! tone weren’t annoying enough; the ability to send your heartbeat to a loved one, possibly to let him know that you have just drunk four Red Bulls in a row and might die; and a litany of fitness apps to make you feel shitty — with reminders! — about failing to meet your daily “calories burned” quota.

And, as Cook very creepily said during the launch announcement: “Apple Watch is the most personal device we have ever created. It’s not just with you, it’s on you.”

It’s on you.

It’s on you.

That is what you say to your friend, in an urgent tone, when a large spider has crawled into her hair.

There’s been a fair amount of talk about how no one cares about Apple Watch, no one will buy it, and maybe it will go the way of Amazon Fire. To which I can only say: God, I hope so.

Cook kicked off the conference by reminding everyone that, barring surgical intervention, we’ve become about as attached to our smartphones as humanly possible: “We never leave home without it, for the vast majority of us it’s never more than an arm’s length away.”

Again: That is not a good thing, sir! I don’t like it! I don’t like the fact that I check Twitter before I put my contacts in in the morning; I don’t like the fact that I text while I eat, walk, and yes, in the spirit of candidness, occasionally drive; and I really don’t like the fact that my relationships with my many friends and family members who live far away are conducted nearly entirely through a $400 device produced by a multibillion-dollar international corporation. Which is why when Cook described Apple Watch as a “revolutionary new way to connect with others … immediately and much more intimately than ever before,” I physically flinched.

When Grist intern Liz Core temporarily lost her phone a couple weeks ago and I returned it to her, she said that she had felt a sort of “phantom limb” syndrome for the 48 hours it was gone — falsely feeling it vibrate, etc. Which smartphone-owner out there doesn’t immediately sympathize with this? Isn’t that a problem?

The announcement of Apple Watch really did make me feel depressed, and has inspired me to follow the lead of a few of my fellow Gristers and take a hiatus from my phone for a week. But not this week, because I have to travel. Goddamn it. Anyway, stay tuned!

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I watched Tim Cook introduce Apple Watch and now I’m depressed

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, Keurig, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on I watched Tim Cook introduce Apple Watch and now I’m depressed

Florida officials banned from talking about climate change

by AnnettaNesbitt Posted on March 9, 2015

The Issue That Must Not Be Named

Florida officials banned from talking about climate change

By on 9 Mar 2015 11:10 amcommentsShare

Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) administration has apparently instituted a ban on using the term “climate change” when making policy. Tristram Korten reports for the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting that state Department of Environmental Protection employees “have been ordered not to use the term ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ in any official communications, emails, or reports.”

This unwritten policy went into effect after Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011 and appointed Herschel Vinyard Jr. as the DEP’s director, according to former DEP employees. Gov. Scott, who won a second term in November, has repeatedly said he is not convinced that climate change is caused by human activity, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. …

But four former DEP employees from offices around the state say the order was well known and distributed verbally statewide.

One former DEP employee who worked in Tallahassee during Scott’s first term in office, and asked not to be identified because of an ongoing business relationship with the department, said staffers were warned that using the terms in reports would bring unwanted attention to their projects.

“We were dealing with the effects and economic impact of climate change, and yet we can’t reference it,” the former employee said.

Even the term “sea-level rise” — referring to an issue that will hit Florida particularly hard in coming years — was banned for a time, according to former state employees who spoke with Korten. “Sea-level rise was to be referred to as ‘nuisance flooding,’” one former DEP employee told Korten, describing a meeting she had with a supervisor in 2014.

This kind of thing is not just happening in Florida. North Carolina, another state that will be hard-hit by rising seas, has banned some state employees from considering sea-level science. Specifically, as of 2012, the state is not allowed to account for new scientific predictions about sea-level rise when making policies that affect coastal communities. Instead, policymakers must stick to more moderate “historical data,” and ignore a 2011 report by the state’s Coastal Resources Commission that predicts 39 inches of sea-level rise by the end of the century. (This policy from the GOP legislature was in part a concession to real-estate industry lobbyists who feared, reasonably, that if prospective buyers knew beachfront homes would end up being swallowed by the ocean, they would probably avoid buying them.)

In fact, across America, lower-level officials have found that the most expedient way of making policy to address climate change is to not admit that the policy is designed to address climate change. Instead, when planning for higher temperatures, higher seas, and stronger storms, they use euphemisms — “sustainability” or “resilience” — to prepare for the Issue That Must Not Be Named. Unfortunately, in Florida, even the word “sustainability” is off-limits, according to one former DEP employee.

This ridiculous situation, and Scott’s policy, would be funny were the stakes for Americans not so high. People are continuing to move to low-lying areas of Florida, even as the scientific community continues to toss out dire predictions about the surging seas they will face as climate change moves forward. With state officials muzzled by order of the governor, Floridians are not likely to see any policy that realistically deals with the threat anytime soon.

Source:
In Florida, Officials Ban Term ‘Climate Change’

, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

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Florida officials banned from talking about climate change

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Obama’s new gaseous release: A strategy to cut back on methane

by mr2ql Posted on March 28, 2014

Pass on Gas

Obama’s new gaseous release: A strategy to cut back on methane

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White House

The White House released its strategy to cut methane emissions this morning — President Obama’s latest sashay around Congress to pursue climate action (as part of the plan he announced in June).

Methane isn’t the most ubiquitous of greenhouse gases (that’d be good ‘ol CO2), but it is a potent one: The same amount of methane as CO2 has 20 times the impact in terms of future global warming over a 100-year period. While methane emissions have decreased by 11 percent since 1990, we’re still not in good shape: 50 percent more methane is leaking from oil and gas sites than previously thought and, without action, methane emissions are expected to increase through 2030 – mostly thanks to fracking. So far the oil and gas industry has balked at the idea of regulating its methane leaks, saying that it might slow production down (we’ve all heard it before, but, man, frack you!).

Obama’s plan looks at culling methane emissions from four big sources: landfills (methane gets released when all of our biodegradable trash breaks down), leaks from oil and natural gas production, coal mining, and cow farts. The report details how the White House will delegate government agencies to come up with and enforce better standards, i.e. the EPA will manage landfills while the Department of the Interior will handle methane leaks on public lands. It also focuses on ways to capture methane to reuse it for clean energy, such as biogas systems, which can convert cattle waste into fuel. So while we’re not going to replace our cows with less-farty kangaroos, it at least offers options for putting all those bovine leavings to good use.

All of these steps are pretty minor in the face of battling climate change, but the plan overall does have people excited. “Curbing methane is … a big step in the right direction,” David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at NRDC, said in a recent press release. And from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: “As climate change continues to harm American communities from the Heartland to the coasts, we must use every tool at our disposal to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing it … I applaud the President for his ongoing commitment to public health and the environment.”

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Obama’s new gaseous release: A strategy to cut back on methane

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A high seas fishing ban scorecard: (Almost) everybody wins

by NicholeCa Posted on March 28, 2014

A high seas fishing ban scorecard: (Almost) everybody wins

By

Shutterstock

When it comes to fishing, most of the ocean is lawless. Fish in the high seas — the half of the world’s oceans that fall under the control of no single nation, because they’re more than 200 miles from a coastline — are being plundered with aplomb by fishing fleets that observe virtually no fish conservation rules.

Some very smart people think that might be a very stupid way of managing the world’s fisheries. They say it’s time for the world to ban fishing on the high seas.

Many of the world’s brawniest fish and shark species migrate through these open waters, where they are being targeted and overfished. Bluefin tuna are becoming so rare that a single fish sold last year for $1.8 million.

Last month, McKinsey & Company director Martin Stuchtey suggested during an ocean summit that banning fishing on the high seas would cause an economic loss of about $2 for every person on the planet. But he said the benefits of more sustainable fisheries, if such a ban was imposed, would be worth about $4 per person, creating a net benefit of $2 apiece. From Business Insider:

Hard numbers reveal that today’s fishing industry is not profitable, and as fleets work harder chasing fewer fish, the losses grow and stocks are further depleted in “a race to the bottom,” the economist explained.

Stuchtey’s numbers were approximations. But the results of a study published in the journal PLOS Biology this week put some flesh on the economist’s back-of-the-envelope calculations. An economist and a biologist, both from California, modeled the effects of such a ban and concluded that the move could double the profitability of the world’s fishing industries — and boost overall fishing yields by 30 percent. It would also boost fish stock conservation and improve the sustainability of seafood supplies.

“The closure will probably result in short-term losses of protein from the sea,” Christopher Costello, a University of California at Santa Barbara environmental and resource economics professor who coauthored the paper, told Grist. “But the key point is that these short-term losses are likely to be followed by significant long-term gains because of the rebuilding of fish stocks.”

The greatest human beneficiaries of such a ban would be residents of developing countries — nations that can’t afford the types of hulking vessels needed for high-seas fishing expeditions. The scientists say these developing nations would benefit from a rise in fish stocks in the waters they control, as would be the case for other countries.

The biggest potential losers, according to the researchers, would include Japan, China, and Spain, which operate large offshore fishing fleets. And that could make a high-seas fishing ban a difficult sell at the United Nations.

“Whether a country like Japan or China would stand to gain or lose is an empirical question that will require careful country-by-country analysis,” Costello said. “It may disadvantage a few politically powerful countries, while it advantages many smaller countries.”

Global Ocean Commission

High seas are shown in dark blue. Click to embiggen.


Source
ECONOMIST: Ban Of High-Seas Fishing Saves $2 Per Person On The Planet, Business Insider
Close the High Seas to Fishing?, PLOS Biology
Could Closing the High Seas to Fishing Save Migratory Fish?, UC Santa Barbara

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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Source – 

A high seas fishing ban scorecard: (Almost) everybody wins

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States struggling to understand frackquakes

by gorso6 Posted on March 28, 2014

States struggling to understand frackquakes

By

Shutterstock

Frackers have been triggering earthquakes across the country by injecting their wastewater at high pressure into disposal wells.

That much is certain. The U.S. Geological Survey has linked the practice to a sixfold increase in earthquakes in the central U.S. from 2001 to 2011. It’s also possible that the very act of fracking has been causing some temblors.

What isn’t certain, though, is what governments can do about it. Bloomberg reports on a new initiative that aims to manage some of those earth-shaking dangers:

Regulators from Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio met for the first time this month in Oklahoma City to exchange information on the man-made earthquakes and help states toughen their standards.

“It was a very productive meeting, number one, because it gave the states the opportunity to get together and talk collectively about the public interest and the science,” Gerry Baker, who attended as associate executive director of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a group that represents energy-producing states, said in an interview. “It was a good start in coordinating efforts.” …

The goal of the regulators is to develop a set of common procedures to monitor for earthquakes, investigate their cause and draft rules and regulations to prevent them, said Scott Anderson, senior policy adviser for the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin, Texas, who has been in communication with state regulators on the issue.

Would we be stating the obvious if we suggested that these states protect themselves from earthquakes by simply stopping fracking — just as New York and countless local municipalities have done — while the drilling risks are better investigated by scientists?


Source
Fracking’s Earthquake Risks Push States to Collaborate, Bloomberg

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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States struggling to understand frackquakes

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Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

by JacelynZ96 Posted on March 27, 2014

Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

By

Kaj Iversön

America’s fossil fuel-smitten Congress helped China blow the U.S. out of the water last year when it came to installing new wind energy farms.

A little more than 16 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online in China in 2013 — nearly half of the 36 gigawatts installed around the world. Compare that with a little more than 1 gigawatt that was installed in the U.S. — down alarmingly from 13 gigawatts the year before.

That means American wind installations plummeted in a single year despite the falling price of wind energy, which is becoming lower than the price of electricity produced by burning natural gas in some parts of the country.

Dude, where’s our wind? Well, the latest figures were calculated by Navigant Research, and it blamed a “politically divided Congress” in a new paywalled report for the faltering wind growth in the U.S.

Congress allowed wind energy tax credits to blow away at the end of 2013 — so why would 2013′s installation figures be so bleak? According to the report, it was all about uncertainty. Lawmakers ”failed to extend tax incentives in time to positively impact the 2013 development and construction cycle.”

(Needless to say, Congress, which failed to extend the tax credits amid fossil fuel lobbyist whining that the wind energy industry needs to stand on its own feet, failed to do anything about the billions of dollars in subsidies doled out to fossil fuel companies every year.)

The new report contains some bleak news for those accustomed to reading about runaway growth in renewables. Less wind capacity was installed around the world in 2013 than had been the case in 2012 — the first time that such a decline has been recorded in eight years.

Still, thing are looking bright — particularly for the emerging offshore wind sector. Thirteen new offshore projects added 1.7 gigawatts of capacity last year — up by 50 percent compared with 2012. And 6.6 gigawatts of new offshore capacity is currently under construction.

The researchers forecast that the sector will rebound globally this year, with new installations expected to better last year’s effort by 30 percent. By the end of 2014, the researchers say wind energy will be meeting 2.9 percent of the world’s demand for electricity — a figure they expect to rise to 7.3 percent by 2018.

Navigant ResearchClick to embiggen.


Source
World Market Update 2013, Navigant Research

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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Climate & Energy

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Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

Posted in Anchor, FF, Free Press, G & F, GE, Keurig, LG, ONA, solar, TOTO, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year