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Police Say the Biggest Pot Raid in Years Wasn’t Really About Pot

by EcacDespeissis Posted on June 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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There were helicopters, SWAT teams, and nearly 100,000 marijuana plants yanked out of the ground, but last week’s massive raid in Northern California’s rugged Emerald Triangle was not your father’s pot bust. Carried out by county law enforcement with no help from the DEA, it targeted private landowners—and not just because they were growing pot, police say, but because they were illegally sucking some 500,000 gallons of water a day from a section of the nearby Eel river that is now stagnant and moss-ridden.

In short, the cops say this was as much a water raid as a pot raid. One certainly could imagine, in this era of evolving attitudes toward marijuana, a shift in enforcement focus toward environmentally problematic grows on steep wooded hillsides or above sensitive salmon streams in an increasingly dry climate. These are not isolated issues: Among the growers targeted in last week’s raid, according to the Lost Coast Outpost, were members of California Cannabis Voice Humboldt, a group working to bring growers into compliance with state and federal environmental laws.

A leading advocate for Northern California pot growers scoffs at the notion that the raid was environmentally motivated. “This isn’t about the environment; this is about business as usual,” says Hezekiah Allen, director of the Emerald Growers Association. Allen challenges the authorities’ water use estimates, pointing out that the extensive reservoirs discovered at the grow sites could be eco-friendly ways of storing winter runoff for use during the summer growing season. He also questions the value of criminal raids at a time when the California Water Board is drafting a system of water-use permits and civil fines for pot farmers.

“There are 2,200 un-permitted water diversions for wine grapes in the Central Valley,” he points out, citing a state report, “so I am curious when we are going to see the sheriff show up and chop down un-permitted vines. If we are agnostic about what the crop is, the same crime should lead to the same activity. That is all we are asking, just to be treated like any other crop.”

Yet if state and local officials are to be believed (they did not respond to requests for comment), the raid suggests that even the most eco-conscious Emerald Triangle growers could face a reckoning once California (probably inevitably) legalizes cannabis and starts subjecting pot farms to agricultural inspections. Even with the the best land-use practices, many Emerald Triangle farms likely draw too much water from sensitive mountain streams and headwaters. Growers may find that it’s cheaper and more eco-friendly to relocate to the Central Valley.

Or why stop there? Cannabis, indigenous to moist river valleys in Central and South Asia, uses about six gallons per day per plant. That’s more than many other thirsty crops, such as cotton, which uses 10 gallons per plant for the entire growing season. Which suggests that cannabis should be grown somewhere wet—somewhere other than California.

Allen doesn’t see that happening. He argues that cannabis farming in the Emerald Triangle can be sustainable when farmers cultivate drought-tolerant Kush varieties from Afghanistan, and irrigate entirely with rainwater stored in tanks onsite. After all, no crop offers a greater financial yield per gallon of water. “If we step back and take a look at this industry and the jobs that it creates, California cannot afford not to grow cannabis in the 21st century,” he says. “It’s one of the most adaptable, resource-efficient ways of generating revenue on small farms.”

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Police Say the Biggest Pot Raid in Years Wasn’t Really About Pot

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The Threatened Atlantic Puffins Are Nesting And It’s Adorable

by JeannieHeberlin Posted on June 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Atlantic puffins are back…for now. After spending much of the year on the open sea, the photogenic birds have made their annual trip to the North Atlantic shores of Maine, Newfoundland, and the United Kingdom to breed.

Click here to read our feature on Atlantic Puffins

But as Rowan Jacobsen reported in a Mother Jones feature last summer, rising ocean temperatures have taken a huge toll on these seabirds. Cold-water thriving zooplankton, critical to the Gulf of Maine’s food web, have reached their lowest numbers ever, forcing the fish that puffins feed to their young to go elsewhere for food. Without a reliable source of food, in 2013, only 10 percent of puffin pairs in burrows tracked by researchers successfully fledged chicks (normally that rate is 77 percent).

This isn’t the first time puffins in Maine have faced an existential threat. After 300 years of hunting and over harvesting eggs, Atlantic puffin colonies in Maine nearly disappeared. Fortunately, a successful Audubon Society initiative in the 1970s brought them back to nesting islands off the coast of Maine; by 2013, 1,000 pairs were laying eggs there.

During the past couple of years, cold water has returned to the gulf of Maine, which is great news for the puffins. In 2014, they saw a rebound: 75 percent of chicks survived. This year they are back again and as cute as ever. You can watch them below on the Audubon’s puffin live cam until August when they leave again for the ocean:

If that’s not enough, below are some more photos and video of Atlantic puffins:

Randy Rimland/Shutterstock

Helen Kattai/Shutterstock

Eric Isselee/Shutterstock

gabrisigno/Shutterstock

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The Threatened Atlantic Puffins Are Nesting And It’s Adorable

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The fracking industry just got more tech savvy

by RetaRIOEstmqncw Posted on June 3, 2015

Shale 2.0

The fracking industry just got more tech savvy

By on 3 Jun 2015 6:43 pmcommentsShare

It looks like the U.S. fracking industry is becoming a little less “Wild West” and little more West Coast Silicon Valley. And no — I can’t decide which one sounds worse, either.

True, low oil prices recently brought the industry to its knees: The number of rigs nationwide fell by more than half since October of last year. But at the same time, the industry has been getting smarter about how it operates. Here’s the scoop from MIT Technology Review:

Much of the new technological innovation in shale comes from a simple fact: practice makes perfect. Tapping hydrocarbons in “tight,” geologically complex formations means drilling lots and lots of wells—many more than in conventional oil fields. Drilling thousands of wells since the shale revolution began in 2006 has enabled producers—many of them relatively small and nimble—to apply lessons learned at a much higher rate than their counterparts in the conventional oil industry.

Some innovations in fracking hardware include “walking rigs” that move from hole to hole, better drill bits, remote-controlled drilling capabilities, and advanced fracking liquids, Technology Review reports. Big data — like an annoying party guest who has something deep and insightful to say about everything — has also entered the picture:

Thanks to new sensing capabilities, the volume of data produced by a modern unconventional drilling operation is immense—up to one megabyte per foot drilled, according to Mills’s “Shale 2.0” report, or between one and 15 terabytes per well, depending on the length of the underground pipes. That flood of data can be used to optimize drill bit location, enhance subterranean mapping, improve overall production and transportation efficiencies—and predict where the next promising formation lies. Many oil companies are now investing as much in information technology and data analytics as in old-school exploration and production.

And with rigorous data analysis comes another important life lesson: how to take a chill pill. Here’s more from Technology Review:

At the same time, producers have learned when to pause: more than half the cost of shale oil wells comes in the fracking phase, when it’s time to pump pressurized fluids underground to crack open the rock. This is known as well completion, and hundreds of wells in the U.S. are now completion-ready, awaiting a rise in oil prices that will make them economical to pump. Several oil company executives in recent weeks have said that once oil prices rebound to around $65 a barrel (the price was at $64.92 per barrel as of June 1), another wave of production will be unleashed.

We’ll know these fracking companies have gone full-on Silicon Valley when they ditch their old names (Pioneer Natural Resources Co., EOG Resources, etc.) for something a bit more trendy — drlr? FrackIt?

Source:
Big Data Will Keep the Shale Boom Rolling

, MIT Technology Review.

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The fracking industry just got more tech savvy

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Could LA’s $15 Minimum Wage Sweep the Nation?

by JeramySchlenker Posted on May 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Los Angeles became the third major West Coast city to pass a $15 minimum wage ordinance. Though the law won’t fully go into effect until 2020, it’s a huge deal. LA is larger than San Francisco and Seattle, the two other $15-an-hour cities, combined. It also has a much larger contingent of low-wage workers. The ordinance will give a raise to an estimated 750,000 Angelenos, or about 46 percent of the city’s workforce.

LA’s wage hike points to the potential for a major minimum wage boost to sweep the country. Although experts disagree about the LA measure’s impact on growth and employment, the City Council passed it by a 14-to-1 margin. The $15 wage polls well in LA and nationally, despite a dearth of national politicians pushing for such a large increase. If organizers play their cards right, this suggests a $15 wage could gain traction in other cities.

So how did it happen? The original proposal, after all, was a more modest one. The measure’s backers attribute their success to a combination of grassroots and national organizing. The umbrella group leading the push, the Raise the Wage Coalition, includes more than 260 local organizations from labor, business, entertainment, and the civil rights movement. It marshaled economic studies to justify a $15 wage and delivered more than 100,000 petition signatures in favor. But it also benefited from what organizers call “air support”—the national campaign to pressure Walmart and McDonald’s into implementing a $15-an-hour base wage.

“It created a narrative that made it really hard for council members to simply look past the realities of what hard-working people are experiencing,” says Rusty Hicks, executive secretary treasurer of the LA County Federation of Labor. “The facts and campaign brought to bear in LA were in many ways only a next step in the move to address income inequality.”

The organizers are already eyeing other SoCal cities. “It is not our intention to just stop in LA,” says Laphonza Butler, president of the Service Employees International Union in California and co-organizer, with Hicks, of Raise the Wage Coalition. “We need to raise the wage all across the region.”

The group’s next most likely contenders are Pasadena and West Hollywood.

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Could LA’s $15 Minimum Wage Sweep the Nation?

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Billionaire Casino Magnate Sheldon Aldelson’s Israeli Paper Is Obsessed With Marco Rubio

by ColleenGooch Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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For years, Republicans who aspire to the presidency have sought the support of Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate and GOP mega-donor. Adelson spent $150 million backing Republicans during the 2012 election cycle, and the candidate who secures his support this time around will get a big boost in a crowded GOP field. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who announced his campaign on Monday, already has one billionaire backer—Norman Braman, a Miami car dealer. But Rubio also seems to have impressed Adelson himself.

Israel-watchers on Twitter have pointed out that Israel Hayom, the daily newspaper owned by Adelson, has been particularly interested in the junior senator from Florida.

It’s too early to call the Adelson primary for Rubio. As in the past, Adelson will want each of the major candidates to court him; the casino magnate is known to be fond of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.), both of whom are seriously considering runs. But Rubio—who dined one-on-one with Adelson last month—is off to a good start.

Continued – 

Billionaire Casino Magnate Sheldon Aldelson’s Israeli Paper Is Obsessed With Marco Rubio

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The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Exactly Why We Can’t Just Take the Police’s Word For It

by CarriRosado Posted on April 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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A white police officer in South Carolina was arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday, after a shocking video emerged showing him fatally shooting an unarmed black man attempting to flee from the scene. The video, which was first published in the New York Times, captures the lethal confrontation between Officer Michael Slager and Walter Scott that quickly ensued during a traffic stop, which included Slager firing eight shots at Scott.

Slager originally told police that Scott had stolen his Taser and attempted to use it against him. This narrative was largely accepted by police authorities, at least according to what they initially told local media. The first report of the fatal encounter reported by the Post and Courier on Saturday ran with the headline, “Man shot and killed by North Charleston police officer after traffic stop; SLED investigating”:

An officer’s gunfire disrupted a hazy Saturday morning and left a man dead on a North Charleston street.

Police in a matter of hours declared the occurrence at the corner of Remount and Craig roads a traffic stop gone wrong, alleging the dead man fought with an officer over his Taser before deadly force was employed.

The officer’s account, witness statements and other evidence gathered from the scene are now the subject of a State Law Enforcement Division investigation to determine whether the shooting, the state’s 11th this year involving a lawmen, was justified.

A statement released by North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor said a man ran on foot from the traffic stop and an officer deployed his department-issued Taser in an attempt to stop him.

That did not work, police said, and an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the device. Police allege that during the struggle the man gained control of the Taser and attempted to use it against the officer.

The description reads eerily similar to police deaths that occur all around the country. If it had not been for the video’s eventual publication, it’s easy to imagine this being the press’ final narrative of how Scott died. Oftentimes, newspapers struggle to report anything more than what law enforcement agencies tell them.

In the case of the Post and Courier’s first story, the paper’s note that “in a matter of hours” police were quick to label the incident nothing more than a “traffic stop gone wrong” is revealing, as the video that has since surfaced clearly shows a very different account: Slager shoots Scott in the back multiple times; an object that appears to be Slager’s Taser is placed next to Scott’s body as he lays handcuffed on the ground.

It’s unclear when authorities became aware that a video of the incident existed, but on Monday, Slager appeared increasingly defensive. Speaking through an attorney, he doubled down on his actions to the same paper, saying he had “felt threatened” by Scott and needed to “resort to deadly force”:

A North Charleston police officer felt threatened last weekend when the driver he had stopped for a broken brake light tried to overpower him and take his Taser.

That’s why Patrolman 1st Class Michael Thomas Slager, a former Coast Guardsman, fatally shot the man, the officer’s attorney said Monday.

Slager thinks he properly followed all procedures and policies before resorting to deadly force, lawyer David Aylor said in a statement.

Monday’s developments filled in some of the blanks in what was South Carolina’s 11th police shooting of the year.

By Tuesday, the Times and the Post and Courier had obtained a bystander’s footage of the incident and the stories published that day are a direct about-face of the initial account, with both papers leading with news of the officer’s arrest and murder charge. The Post and Courier’s lead below:

A white North Charleston police officer was arrested on a murder charge after a video surfaced Tuesday of the lawman shooting eight times at a 50-year-old black man as the man ran away.

Walter L. Scott, a Coast Guard veteran and father of four, died Saturday after Patrolman 1st Class Michael T. Slager, 33, shot him in the back.

Five of the eight bullets hit Scott, his family’s attorney said. Four of those struck his back. One hit an ear.

In just a few days, the account’s drastic evolution in a single newspaper highlights yet again the problems surrounding police reporting—issues that have received national attention following recent events in Ferguson and New York City. Scott’s tragic death underscores the power video can bring to police accountability. As Scott’s family said during an appearance on the Today show Wednesday, this video helped an officer avoid a successful cover-up. “It would have never come to light,” Walter Scott Sr, Scott’s father, said. “They would have swept it under the rug, like they did with many others.”

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The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Exactly Why We Can’t Just Take the Police’s Word For It

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When Jeb Met Jeb: The Tragic True Story of a Governor and a Manatee

by AYZShantell Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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It was the kind of feel-good photo op that campaigns love: A manatee nursed back to health from the brink of death and now set to be released back into the wild. And a GOP gubernatorial candidate seeking to show voters his softer side. As if in some made-for-TV movie, the manatee and the politician even shared the same name: Jeb.

Jeb the manatee was rescued on March 23, 1998, having ventured too far north from the temperate waters of South Florida where these mammals thrive. The nine-foot-long, half-ton manatee was scarred with lesions comparable to severe frostbite injuries in humans, and he appeared to have sustained injuries from watercraft. He was quickly transported to SeaWorld Orlando to recover.

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When Jeb Met Jeb: The Tragic True Story of a Governor and a Manatee

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How Screwed Are Your State’s Oysters?

by Amilianp2t Posted on February 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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When carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and cars rise into the atmosphere, they don’t always stay there. While the majority of these emissions hang around to create the greenhouse effect that causes global warming, up to 35 percent of man-made carbon falls into the ocean. When that happens, the pH level of the ocean drops, causing a phenomenon known as ocean acidification. Some scientists call this the “evil twin” of climate change.

Over the last century, the oceans have become about 30 percent more acidic, a faster rate of change than at anytime in the last 300 million years. That’s really bad news for any sea creatures that live in hard shells (shellfish) or have bony exoskeletons (i.e., crabs and lobsters), and for coral. Fish larvae and plankton can also be affected. And since many of these organisms are food for bigger fish and mammals, ocean acidification puts the whole marine ecosystem at risk.

Of course, humans depend on these critters as well, especially in coastal communities whose economies are deeply tied to the fishing industry. In the last few years, the threat to oyster harvests in the Pacific Northwest has been well documented. But every bit of the US coastline bears some level of risk, according to a new report in Nature. The study offers the first comprehensive projection of which parts of the US coast will be worst off, and when ocean acidification could reach dangerous levels there.

Julia Ekstrom, a climate adaptation researcher at the University of California-Davis, combed through existing scientific literature for three key types of data: How ocean acidification is projected to change in different regions over the next century; how dependent individual local economies are on the shellfish harvest (the study focused only on bivalves like oysters—other critters could be the subject of future research); and social factors that could help communities adapt, like pollution controls (runoff from rivers can also affect local pH) or the availability of other jobs. That data, combined, led to the map below.

Purple indicates the time at which ocean acidification is expected to become serious enough to significantly affect shellfish (darker is sooner); red indicates how vulnerable a region would be to a drop-off in shellfish productivity. So Washington, for example, could see the impacts soon but is relatively well-prepared to handle them. Impacts to the Gulf Coast are expected much further in the future but could be more economically severe.

Ekstrom et al, courtesy Nature

The good news is that many of what could be the hardest-hit communities still have time to prepare. Then again, the outlook could be worse in some places (Maine, for example) if you conducted similar research on lobsters and other vital fisheries. Ekstrom said localized predictions like this are key to enabling communities to prepare and can also help scientists decide where to focus efforts to monitor and track acidification as it progresses.

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How Screwed Are Your State’s Oysters?

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There’s a Labor Dispute at West Coast Ports, But No One Will Say What It’s About

by RoseannStrempel Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

West Coast port operators are shutting down for a few days because “they don’t want to pay overtime to workers who, they allege, have deliberately slowed operations to the point of causing a massive bottleneck.” This is part of an increasingly rancorous labor dispute, but as usual, we really have no idea what the dispute is about:

Dockworkers are among the best paid blue-collar workers in the country, earning between $26 and $41 an hour, depending on experience and skill.

Union spokesman Craig Merrilees has said the two sides are very close to a deal, but has declined to say what is tying up the talks….According to employers, a major hurdle is a union demand that both sides have the ability to unilaterally remove local arbitrators at the end of a labor contract….Employers say that if such a change is made, alleged union slowdown tactics would become constant, because the union could “fire judges who rule against them.”

The union said Wednesday that employers are “grossly” mischaracterizing its current bargaining position. “It seems to us that the employers are trying to sabotage negotiations,” union President McEllrath said.

This is pretty normal, and it’s one of the things that makes it hard to unilaterally support either side in labor disputes like this. We already know that dockworkers are very well paid, and that’s apparently not a bone of contention. But what’s the deal with the arbitrators? Who has the better of the argument? There’s no telling.

The public probably doesn’t care much about this unless it eventually gets nasty enough that it affects the ability of stores to keep stuff in stock. So maybe public opinion doesn’t matter. But to the extent it does, it sure seems like unions would have a better chance of getting public support if they were more forthcoming about exactly what it is they’re holding out for.

(Or maybe not. One of the big problems with the huge decline in union density over the past few decades is that the public no longer has much of a stake in supporting unions. In the past, there was some sense of solidarity. If one union negotiated a healthy raise, it increased the odds of everyone else getting a healthy raise too. But not anymore. If the dockworkers do well, they’re just the last of the lucky bastards with good union jobs. The rest of us get nothing from it except maybe higher prices for the goods and services we buy. It’s hard to see a way out of this dynamic.)

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There’s a Labor Dispute at West Coast Ports, But No One Will Say What It’s About

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A Thanksgiving Snowstorm Could Make America’s Busiest Travel Day A Living Hell

by PrincesWestover Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

NWS Weather Prediction Service

This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

If you’ve ever wanted to make post-stuffing snow angels, this year could be your chance.

Forget for a moment that Monday will feature near-record highs on the East Coast. (However, if you’re in Washington or New York City, you should bask in this afternoon’s highs in the low to mid-70s, if you can swing it.)

Forget, too, that in my post on Friday I said not to worry (yet) about a looming Thanksgiving Eve nor’easter. At the time, weather models were all over the place, with only the ECMWF showing a direct hit. Some models didn’t show a consolidated storm forming at all, just two separate weak weather systems: a minor storm over the Great Lakes and a stalled-out cold front somewhere between the East Coast and Bermuda.

Since then, there’s been growing consensus among the computers that those two systems will join forces. The National Weather Service has already posted winter storm watches for hefty snow totals just inland of the major Northeast cities along I-95. This storm is happening. And there’s an increasing chance it’ll force a change in your travel plans.

For instance, Sunday’s edition of the GFS model showed explosive storm formation on Wednesday—enough to qualify as a meteorological “bomb,” which is a deepening of the storm’s central pressure by more than 24 millibars in 24 hours.

As the storm grows—starting off the mid-Atlantic on Wednesday morning and heading over Newfoundland on Thanksgiving afternoon—it’s now a lock to produce heavy snows well inland and in higher elevations from North Carolina to Canada. The only real question remaining is, how much snow will fall in the major cities along the coast?

Even the National Weather Service can’t decide. The agency’s local forecast offices—the ones with the most knowledge of small-scale idiosyncrasies of tricky snowfall forecasts—are downplaying the storm’s potential to produce snow in the cities.

Here’s the local snowfall map from the Boston office, for example:

One thing is certain: This storm will produce a very tight snowfall gradient along the coast, making an accurate forecast that much more difficult. NWS Boston

On the low end, that means this storm will bring only an inch or two of messy slush to the major cities, while Grandma’s house upstate gets the bulk.

The agency’s centralized forecast office—the Weather Prediction Center—is much more bullish.

In a reasonable worst case put forward by the WPC, 10 to 12 inches could fall in every major city from D.C. northward, snarling traffic and canceling flights coast to coast. A more reasonable guess is 3 to 6 inches of snow in the major cities, with double that just 30 miles inland. But even that outcome is just a blend of two extremes. The most likely scenario is a sharp cutoff between heavy cold rain mixed with a few flakes, and an all-out snowstorm. All the local forecast offices mentioned this annoying feature in their discussions on Monday.

There are still a few key unknowns, like the exact path the storm’s center will take offshore, that will determine which possibility becomes reality. Ocean temperatures are still in the 50s, so even an hour or two of wind from a northeast direction rather than due north could warm the lower levels of the atmosphere enough to turn snowflakes into raindrops along the coast. Dynamical cooling—which happens when a storm strengthens at quick enough rates—could help tip the scale toward coastal snow.

This map has about a 10 percent chance of panning out. NWS Prediction Center

It would be just the second white Thanksgiving in New York City since 1938. The last one was in 1989, when the snowstorm’s strong winds tore a hole in Snoopy’s nose. In Washington, D.C., the storm promises an end to the longest November snowless streak since recordkeeping began in 1888. The last measurable snow during November in the nation’s capital was in 1996, when a piddly quarter-inch fell. There was also a big Thanksgiving Eve storm just last year, but no snow fell in either city.

In many ways, this is a weather forecaster/masochist’s dream scenario: You’ve got a potentially high-impact weather event, on the highest-impact travel day of the year, with an unusually high amount of uncertainty. To my fellow forecasters: Good luck getting this one right!

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A Thanksgiving Snowstorm Could Make America’s Busiest Travel Day A Living Hell

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