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Perfect swarm: Giant mosquitos invade Florida
Perfect swarm: Giant mosquitos invade Florida
“Huge,” “giant,” “mega,” and “aggressive” are not the words you want to hear before “mosquito.” But that’s how experts describe Psorophora ciliata, or the “gallinipper” mosquito. Native to the eastern U.S. and immortalized in stories and folk songs for decades, these big biters are now expanding into Florida.
Up to 20 times the size of other mosquitos, the gallinippers aren’t known for spreading disease, but their bites are likened to being stabbed with a knife — and unlike Florida’s other invasive species, they don’t make for an even remotely good meal (we presume). From the Huffington Post:
Doug Carlson, mosquito control director for Indian River County, told WPTV that the insects are so big, “it can feel like a small bird has landed on you.” Meanwhile, Gary Goode of Palm Beach County Mosquito Control told WPBF the mosquito “practically breaks your arm” when it feeds on you.
A warmer winter and stagnant waters left over from Tropical Storm Debby (some parts of the state got 75 inches of rain in 2012) have scientists and residents nervous about the bites to come. The Gainesville Sun reports:
Whatever the mosquito type, locals could be destined for “a very rough summer,” said Paul Myers, administrator for the Alachua County Health Department.
The area’s mild winter spared mosquitoes from the hard freezes that would have killed many of them, he said, adding that major rainfall would amplify the problem. Two-thirds of the county’s population lives in areas with mosquito spraying, but the rest lives in unincorporated Alachua County, where the County Commission has opted not to spray because of concerns about the cost and effectiveness of the treatment, as well as its environmental impacts, Myers said.
New research suggests those sprays aren’t worth much against increasingly invincible super-skeeters anyway, so mosquitoes giant and non- will probably cause an uptick in bloody bites this summer regardless. But it’s not just “this summer” anymore, is it? With extra rain, rising seas, more warm winters, and more warm bodies, gallinippers have good reason to stay in Florida. Wear your long sleeves, folks.
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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New York subway riders swipe back at fare hikes
New York subway riders swipe back at fare hikes
Today, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority boosted subway and bus fares by another quarter, making it $2.50 per ride in the Big Apple (which is about equivalent to four actual apples).
In response to the hikes, some citizens are taking matters and MetroCards into their own hands with a “Swipe Back!” campaign. It’s simple enough: 18 minutes after you use your unlimited card (which now costs $30 per week or $112 per month), you can swipe someone else in for a ride. Says Swipe Back!: “Since you’re giving the swipe away, not selling it, this is perfectly legal.”
A less legal form of swiping back against fare hikes.
The MTA tells Gothamist that fares are up to compensate for “costs for employee healthcare, pension contributions, mandatory paratransit service, energy and other costs out of our control.” No mention of a shit-ton of debt service. Here’s journalist and activist Jesse Myerson to explain how those debts work:
I asked Myerson how a small-scale campaign like Swipe Back! can make a difference.
“It helps out people who can’t afford a too-expensive public transit system. More importantly, though, it hopes to create a united community of riders, which is a crucial prerequisite for engineering the type of mass mobilization that can secure concessions from those in power,” said Myerson. “[Swipe Back!] is therefore a small but important part of the larger strategy to resist transit austerity, which, in turn, is a small but important part of the even larger strategy to liberate public projects of massive social benefit from the extractive clutch of finance capital “
Sarah Goodyear at the Atlantic Cities looks at the Swipe Back! campaign and the history of similar initiatives:
This isn’t the first time the free swipes have been used to raise awareness among the harried riders of the city’s transit system, which carries seven million passengers every day. A group called the People’s Transportation Program offered free rides during a previous round of fare hikes in 2009, with very few people taking notice (except, of course, the lucky ones who benefited directly).
It’s hard not to notice the rising costs of daily needs, though, at least for those of us not lounging in the 1 percent. The No Fare Hikes initiative has a breakdown of ridership and costs throughout the subway system compared to neighborhood incomes. Sure, it’s just a quarter — for now — but those quarters can really add up.
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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New food safety rules are not making us feel all that nauseated
New food safety rules are not making us feel all that nauseated
A bout of food poisoning is a memorable and vomitous experience. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 48 million Americans each year are sickened by bad food and 3,000 of them die. In the case of food-borne illness outbreaks, like the one we saw this fall in peanuts, it can take weeks and even months to track down the culprit. We’d love for causes to be clear, but of course it’s not that easy.
Please stay out of my peanut butter, salmonella.
The Columbia Journalism Review has a long feature on why it’s so hard for scientists and reporters to identify the sources of food-borne illnessess.
The epidemiology of foodborne disease is complicated; there are numerous barriers to definitively linking sick people in multiple states to the same pathogen and a common food product. One of the biggest hurdles is that foodborne illnesses are severely underreported. For every case of Salmonella that is reported, the CDC estimates that some 29 are not. …
Detecting and solving foodborne-illness outbreaks relies heavily on the capacity and expertise of state and local health departments, which have been hit hard by budget cuts and are often tracking multiple outbreaks or small clusters of disease at once. …
Even when dealing with confirmed illnesses, it’s difficult to definitively link them to a food product. Health officials use food-history questionnaires to help identify foods that sick people have in common, but it’s not easy to recall what you had for lunch three days ago, down to the ingredient. Cracking the cases can take some time.
It’s not just our bad food memories at play here, of course — industrial farming practices have done wonders to mix our spinach with our pig feces.
But now the Food and Drug Administration is proposing big, new food-safety rules, especially in some key farming states where our food has gotten pretty gross in recent years. The Los Angeles Times reports that the new rules are aimed at transforming the FDA “into an agency that prevents contamination, not one that merely investigates outbreaks”:
The rules, drafted with an eye toward strict standards in California and some other states, enable the implementation of the landmark Food Safety Modernization Act that President Obama signed two years ago in response to a string of deadly outbreaks of illness from contaminated spinach, eggs, peanut butter and imported produce.
The first proposed rule would require domestic and overseas producers of food sold in the U.S. to craft a plan to prevent and deal with contamination of their products. The plans would be open to federal audits. The second rule would address contamination of fruit and vegetables during harvesting. …
The third rule, which has yet to be issued, would establish how food importers would verify that the products they bring in meet U.S. standards. …
The FDA said developing the complex new rules took time as it consulted “consumers, government, industry, researchers and many others,” and “studied, among many other sources, the California leafy greens marketing agreement.” Additional rules will “follow soon,” the agency said.
USA Today reports that “[f]ood safety advocates and the food industry, who have been waiting for the rules with mounting frustration, are thrilled.”
But the frustrated waiting isn’t over yet: There will be a four-month period for public comment before the rules are finalized, and then at least 26 months before farms have to comply. That sounds like a glass of ginger ale for a food industry sick with E. coli.
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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It probably shouldn’t have taken Exxon 46 minutes to shut off a broken pipeline
It probably shouldn’t have taken Exxon 46 minutes to shut off a broken pipeline
Oil soaks the Yellowstone River shoreline, thanks to the fine folks at Exxon.
You can imagine the scene at Exxon headquarters. The team responsible for spill response has just learned that a pipeline near Laurel, Mont., has ruptured. “Wow,” some team members probably said. A few might have said bad words.
In short order, one pipes up: “What should we do?” Someone suggests shutting the line down partially; this is quickly agreed to. Then, for 46 minutes, the team sits around a heavy oak table, stroking chins and mumbling “hm”s. No one is quite sure what comes next. One guy, like that one kid in fifth grade, is only pretending he’s thinking about it; in reality, he’s thinking about the movie Captain America (this is in July 2011).
Then someone says: “Maybe we should shut the control valve?” General agreement, nodding. The valve is closed; the flow of oil stops. Hearty congratulations all around. Backs are slapped. The team retires for the day, spending their commuting time (in their Hummers) elaborating the story to make it more interesting. “Man,” one guy plans to say upon opening his front door, “you would not believe the day I had.”
Anyway, that’s the scenario I imagined on reading this AP story:
Delays in Exxon Mobil Corp.’s response to a major pipeline break beneath Montana’s Yellowstone River made an oil spill far worse than it otherwise would have been, federal regulators said in a new report.
The July 2011 rupture fouled 70 miles of riverbank along the scenic Yellowstone, killing fish and wildlife and prompting a massive, months-long cleanup.
The damage could have been significantly reduced if pipeline controllers had acted more quickly, according to Department of Transportation investigators.
Well, yes, in theory, Mr. or Ms. Department of Transportation. But in the moment, how was the Exxon team supposed to think of using the “control valve”? How was it supposed to remember to “notify pipeline controllers that the river was flooding?” I mean, that’s some seriously advanced stuff, there. Like, I’m not a pipeline engineer or whatever, but once my house caught fire and it took me about 15 minutes to decide I should stop flinging canisters of gas onto it. In an emergency, the best thing to do is take your time and not do the obvious thing. That’s just what the emergency would expect.
Anyway, Exxon is chastened.
Spokeswoman Rachael Moore said the company will continue to cooperate with Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and “is committed to learning from these events.”
I strongly recommend a mandatory training session featuring a large poster showing a control valve. Superimposed on that image should be the words “TURN THIS.”
Source
Feds Say Delay Made Oil Spill Worse, Associated Press
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It probably shouldn’t have taken Exxon 46 minutes to shut off a broken pipeline
The real gun crisis is in America’s urban sacrifice zones
The real gun crisis is in America’s urban sacrifice zones
Friday’s shooting at an elementary school in sleepy suburban Newtown, Conn., may have rekindled our national conversation about gun control, but that conversation consistently ignores America’s real gun crisis. Suburban rampage killings are on the rise, but they are not the country’s scourge. The vast majority of the guns are in the cities, they are neither big nor particularly scary looking, and they are killing a lot of people, old and young, every day.
On Friday, President Obama said, “Our hearts are broken.” On Saturday, Bob Herbert wrote, “Our hearts should feel broken every day.”
But let’s start here: Over the past few years, violent crime has gone down, way down, across the country. The national murder rate has dropped to mid-1960s levels, and total violent crime is about at the early ’70s. In the intervening decades, Americans fled the cities with a renewed vigor, seeking a safe life for their kids in the suburbs (it’s part of why some demographers think young people will do that again). But this new drop was not due to the safe suburbs. Major cities, including Boston, Los Angeles, and New York, experienced big crime reductions.
Why? No one can agree on exactly how it happened: strict policing, blight reduction, violence intervention, and youth programs, or just old-fashioned gentrification? “America and its biggest cities are becoming unquestionably safer, even in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Richard Florida wrote at The Atlantic last spring. “That’s news we can all celebrate.”
The Brookings Institute noted: “While cities and suburbs alike are much safer today than in 1990, central cities — the big cities that make up the hubs of the 100 largest metro areas — benefitted the most from declining crime rates.”
Safer, healthier cities draw and keep new residents away from the unsustainable suburbs and exurbs. But while the numbers point to positive trends on the whole, they also reveal our sacrifice zones: Cities that have not been revitalized in this recent wave, where we have allowed poverty and violence to concentrate, out of sight and mind — cities that go unmentioned in the wake of mass murders like the one in Newtown, though they are actually our mass murder capitals.
While violent crime rates are down nationwide, they’re up in these places. Depending on the day, the murder rate in Oakland, Calif., where I live, is between No. 3 and No. 5 in the country. Spurred in part by the Newtown shooting, a gun buy-back in Oakland and San Francisco this past Saturday was expected to yield about 600 working weapons. But critics say it’s like “trying to empty the Pacific with a bucket.” That same Saturday morning, there was a shooting just a couple blocks from the Oakland buy-back.
Oakland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore — these are places we are looking to, in many ways, to lead us into a new future for America’s urban centers. Where things are broken, there’s a greater possibility of building new, smarter, and more sustainable infrastructure. But they are plagued. Oakland is one of America’s greenest cities — it’s No. 5 in the country for bicycle commuters, and home to a burgeoning local gourmet food movement. But Oakland’s most vibrant urban farms are yards away from its hottest killing zones.
They are, in fact, zones. The problem is contained to a poor, urban, black and brown demographic, and usually a young male one at that. It’s often brushed off as “thug on thug” crime. This is what we expect of cities, and so long as the blood spilled just doesn’t trickle out, we accept it.
Though they constitute 15 percent of the child population, black children and teens make up 45 percent of total youths felled by guns. On the whole, an average of five to six children and teens are murdered with guns every day. About 40 percent of inner-city residents may suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, though it’s really perpetual traumatic stress disorder. At some points, American urban violence has been so dangerous the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised entire communities not to go outside. These communities are terrorized on a daily basis.
But until gun violence touches quiet suburbs like Newtown, described often by shocked residents and reporters over the last few days as “quiet” and “quaint,” we allow it.
“Death by gun clearly reflects the class divides which vex America, being substantially more likely in poorer, less advantaged places,” writes Florida. “And this concentrated nature of gun violence makes it easier for those in more affluent and sheltered places to ignore its consequences.”
In 2001, Tim Wise wrote of suburban rampage shootings: “What went wrong is that white Americans decided to ignore dysfunction and violence when it only affected other communities, and thereby blinded themselves to the inevitable creeping of chaos which never remains isolated too long.”
Cities are our future, but they’re dying in more ways than one. This is not, in a word, sustainable.
Where do the solutions lie? As America is grappling with the Newtown massacre, semi-automatic rifles seem like a reasonable scapegoat. But they’re responsible for fewer killings than knives. The vast majority of urban murders are perpetrated by handguns obtained illegally. If our response to gun violence is simply an assault-weapons ban like the one that lapsed in 2004, we will make no impact on America’s real murder epidemic.
Massacres like the Newtown shooting are unusual in puncturing our own national desensitization and paralysis when it comes to gun violence. A conversation about gun control which only addresses the rampage killings in the suburbs and ignores the death in the cities — this is a conversation we can no longer afford.
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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Supreme Court takes on dirty water
Supreme Court takes on dirty water
Nobody wants to take responsibility for nasty, polluted storm-water runoff. But the Supreme Court might soon force a few somebodies to do just that.
Today the court is hearing two cases on runoff from logging roads in the Pacific Northwest, which environmentalists say can threaten fish.
And tomorrow the court will hear a case on Los Angeles’ filthy storm water, which contains “high levels of aluminum, copper, cyanide, fecal coliform bacteria and zinc,” the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said last year. That water flows into the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers and ultimately pollutes the area’s beaches.
The fight over L.A.’s dirty water began back in 2008, when the Natural Resources Defense Council brought suit against the county flood control district, hoping to force stricter measures to prevent water pollution. But the county doesn’t acknowledge that the water is its responsibility. From the Los Angeles Times:
County officials agree storm water is polluting the rivers but disagree on who is responsible. Its one monitoring station along the Los Angeles River is in Long Beach, near where it empties into the ocean.
“Yes, there are pollutants in the water, but dozens of municipalities are upstream from there. It’s a collective runoff. It doesn’t point to a particular source,” Gary Hildebrand, assistant deputy director of the L.A. County Flood Control District, said in an interview.
In court, the flood control district’s lawyers have argued that because the Clean Water Act regulates only “discharges” of pollutants, the county is not responsible for discharges that come from the thousands of drains in the county’s 84 cities.
The dispute, if nothing else, illustrates the difficulty of regulating storm water. The Clean Water Act of 1972 first targeted “point sources” of pollution, such as an industrial plant putting toxic chemicals into a creek, or a sewage plant that was leaking sewage into a river. Violators could be identified and forced to stop the pollution.
By contrast, a heavy storm sends water flowing from across a vast area, picking up pollutants along the way. There is no obvious point source.
Who will win: Clean water or municipal fiefdoms that buck collective responsibility?
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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