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Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45

by StarlaODoherty Posted on April 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Apparently net neutrality is officially dead. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the FCC has given up on finding a legal avenue to enforce equal access and will instead propose rules that explicitly allow broadband suppliers to favor companies that pay them for faster pipes:

The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal.

The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on “commercially reasonable” terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.

….The FCC’s proposal would allow some forms of discrimination while preventing companies from slowing down or blocking specific websites, which likely won’t satisfy all proponents of net neutrality, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The Commission has also decided for now against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation. However, the Commission has left the reclassification option on the table at present.

So Google and Microsoft and Netflix and other large, well-capitalized incumbents will pay for speedy service. Smaller companies that can’t—or that ISPs just aren’t interested in dealing with—will get whatever plodding service is left for everyone else. ISPs won’t be allowed to deliberately slow down traffic from specific sites, but that’s about all that’s left of net neutrality. Once you’ve approved the notion of two-tier service, it hardly matters whether you’re speeding up some of the sites or slowing down others.

This might have been inevitable, for both legal and commercial reasons. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

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Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45

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Dot Earth Blog: A Deeper Look at a Study Finding High Leak Rates From Gas Drilling

by Myrna Posted on April 23, 2014

A closer look at a hot study on high gas leak rates in Pennsylvania’s fracking zone raises coal questions. Continue reading here: Dot Earth Blog: A Deeper Look at a Study Finding High Leak Rates From Gas Drilling Related ArticlesA Deeper Look at a Study Finding High Leak Rates From Gas DrillingOn the Environment: Forty-Four Years of Earth DayDot Earth Blog: Beneath the Surface of China’s Great Urban Rush

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Dot Earth Blog: A Deeper Look at a Study Finding High Leak Rates From Gas Drilling

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Running Away From Obamacare Is a Fool’s Errand

by Cheryle07G Posted on April 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Are red-state Democrat senators certain losers to Republican challengers in this year’s midterm election? According to recent polling, no. The races are all pretty close. But Greg Sargent points out that these Democrats do indeed have an Obamacare problem:

In Arkansas, 52 percent would not vote for a candidate who disagrees on Obamacare, versus 35 percent who are open to doing that. In Louisiana: 58-28. In North Carolina: 53-35. It seems plausible the intensity remains on the side of those who oppose the law. This would again suggest that the real problem Dems face with Obamacare is that it revs up GOP partisans far more than Dem ones — exacerbating the Dems’ already existing “midterm dropoff” problem.

However, in Kentucky, the numbers are a bit different: 46 percent would not vote for a candidate who disagrees with them on the law, while 39 percent say the opposite — much closer than in other states. Meanwhile, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear — the most outspoken defender of Obamacare in the south — has an approval rating of 56-29.

I’m keenly aware that I’ve never run for dogcatcher, let alone had any experience in a big-time Senate race. So my political advice is worth zero. And yet, polls like this make me more, not less, invested in the idea that running away from Obamacare is a losing proposition. Electorates in red states know that these Democrats voted for Obamacare. Their opponents are going to hammer away at it relentlessly. It’s just impossible to run away away from it, and doing so only makes them look craven and unprincipled.

The only way to turn this around is not to distance yourself from Obamacare, but to try and convince a piece of the electorate that Obamacare isn’t such a bad deal after all. You won’t convince everyone, but you don’t need to. You just need to persuade the 5 or 10 percent who are mildly opposed to Obamacare that it’s working better than they think. That might get the number of voters who would “never” vote for an Obamacare supporter down from the low 50s (Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina) to the mid 40s (Kentucky). And that might be enough to eke out a victory.

Needless to say, this works best if everyone is pitching in. And surely this is the time to start. The early website problems have been resolved and the initial signup period has been a success. Conservative kvetching has taken on something of a desperate truther tone, endlessly trying to “deskew” the facts and figures that increasingly make Obamacare look like a pretty successful program. There are lots of feel-good stories to tout, and there are going to be more as time goes by. What’s more, the economy is improving a bit, which always makes people a little more sympathetic toward programs that help others.

Obamacare isn’t likely to be a net positive in red states anytime soon. But it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. It just has to be sold—and the sellers need to show some real passion about it. After all, if they don’t believe in it, why should anyone else?

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Running Away From Obamacare Is a Fool’s Errand

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Most Independent Voters Aren’t, Really

by MichellKen Posted on April 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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I write from time to time about the myth of the independent voter, which goes something like this: there aren’t any. Oh, lots of people say they’re independent, but it turns out that most of them lean in one direction or another, and when Election Day rolls around the leaners vote just as reliably as stone partisans. True independents—the ones who switch between parties from election to election—make up only about 10 percent of the electorate.

Still, 10 percent is 10 percent. It’s not quite nothing. But it turns out that it really is. Today, Lynne Vavreck breaks things down a bit further and explains just how these folks vote:

Only a small percentage of voters actually switched sides between 2008 and 2010. Moreover, there were almost as many John McCain voters who voted for a Democratic House candidate in 2010 as there were Obama voters who shifted the other way….On average, across districts, roughly 6 percent of Obama voters switched and just under 6 percent of McCain voters switched.

So, yes, there are some true switchers. But mostly they’re going to cancel each other out. The net result from a huge push for swing voters is likely to be no more than 2 or 3 percentage points. In a few high-stakes states in a presidential election, that might make them worth going after. But in your average congressional election, it’s a waste of time and money. So what does make the difference?

On turnout, the numbers were not evenly balanced for Democrats and Republicans. Only 65 percent of Obama’s 2008 supporters stuck with the party in 2010 and voted for a Democrat in the House. The remaining 28 percent of Mr. Obama’s voters took the midterm election off. By comparison, only 17 percent of McCain’s voters from 2008 sat out the midterms.

….It may seem hard to believe that the 2010 shellacking was more about who turned up than about who changed their minds between 2008 and 2010, but it lines up with a lot of other evidence about voters’ behavior. Most identify with the same political party their entire adult lives, even if they do not formally register with it. They almost always vote for the presidential candidate from that party, and they rarely vote for one party for president and the other one for Congress. And most voters are also much less likely to vote in midterm elections than in presidential contests.

The problem is that going after turnout is every bit as hard as picking up the crumbs of the swing voters. Traditional Democratic constituencies—minorities, low-income voters, and the young—simply don’t turn out for midterm elections at high rates. They never have, despite Herculean party efforts and biannual promises that this time will be different. But it never is. They’ll vote for president, but a big chunk of them just aren’t interested in the broader party.

So what’s the answer? Beats me.

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Most Independent Voters Aren’t, Really

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Apple: Climate Change Is Real, and It’s a Real Problem

by LanoraRedfern Posted on April 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Climate change is real and a real problem for the world, Apple said on Monday, announcing its progress on environment targets ahead of Earth Day.

The technology company, publishing a video narrated by CEO Tim Cook on its green initiatives and updated environment web pages, claimed that 94 percent of its corporate facilities and 100 percent of its data centers are now powered by renewable energy sources such as solar power.

Lisa Jackson, the former administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency and Apple’s vice president for environmental initiative, wrote in a letter: “We feel the responsibility to consider everything we do in order to reduce our impact on the environment. This means using greener materials and constantly inventing new ways to conserve precious resources.

Greenpeace, which has previously been critical of Apple for sourcing energy from fossil fuels, recently praised the company for improving the energy mix powering its data centers, ranking it above other tech giants such as Amazon. Apple’s Maiden data center in North Carolina is powered by a large 20-megawatt solar farm and biogas fuel cells.

Apple said its carbon footprint in 2013 was 33.8 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2013, or around 5 percent of the United Kingdom’s annual CO2 emissions for the same year. Around three-quarters of the emissions come from manufacturing. “We believe climate change is real. And that it’s a real problem,” the company’s website now says.

The company said its new HQ being built in Cupertino, California, will use 30 percent less energy than an equivalent building, and will be home to around 7,000 trees. It also highlighted a decrease in the material required to make its products—the new iPad Air uses nearly one-third less material, by weight, than the original iPad.

All the company’s retail stores will now take back Apple products for recycling, for free; previously customers had to buy a new product to recycle an old one. In the United Kingdom and United States, an ongoing scheme offering payments for old iPhones, iPads and Macs also continues.

The announcement came ahead of today’s 44th anniversary of Earth Day, a day of activism born in the United States and designed to raise environmental awareness.

Cook recently told climate change skeptics that they should ditch Apple shares if they did not like the company’s backing for renewable energy and sustainability, leading Virgin group founder Richard Branson to say he was “enormously impressed” by Cook’s stance and his call for climate change deniers to “get out of the way.”

Apple has come in for criticism from Friends of the Earth for being slow to admit to using tin in its products sourced from the Indonesian island of Bangka, where mining has caused environmental damage and claimed dozens of lives. Last year, Apple sent a team to investigate conditions on the island and has said it will work to improve them.

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Apple: Climate Change Is Real, and It’s a Real Problem

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Chart of the Day: Wind Turbines Don’t Kill Very Many Birds

by BookerCovey Posted on April 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Tom Randall is fed up with hysteria over wind turbines being responsible for bird genocide. The numbers just don’t support it:

The estimates above are used in promotional videos by Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s biggest turbine maker. However, they originally came from a study by the U.S. Forest Service and are similar to numbers used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wildlife Society — earnest defenders of birds and bats.

….It’s nice for wind-farm planners to take migration patterns and endangered habitats into account. But even if wind turbines were to double in size and provide 100 percent of our energy needs (both of which defy the laws of physics as we currently understand them), they still wouldn’t compare to the modern scourges of high-tension power lines or buildings with glass windows. Not even close.

Wind turbines can be noisy and they periodically kill some birds. We should be careful with them. But the damage they do sure strikes me as routinely overblown. It’s bad enough that we have to fight conservatives on this stuff, all of whom seem to believe that America is doomed to decay unless every toaster in the country is powered with virile, manly fossil fuels. But when environmentalists join the cause with trumped-up wildlife fears, it just makes things worse. Enough.

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Chart of the Day: Wind Turbines Don’t Kill Very Many Birds

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America’s Middle Class is Losing Out

by PBIJannieaz Posted on April 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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First, there was Wonkblog. Then came 538. Then Vox. And now we have The Upshot, a new venture from the New York Times that aims to present wonky subjects in more depth than you normally find them on the front page. Today, David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy kick off the wonkiness with an interesting analysis of median income in several rich countries. Their aim is to estimate the gains of the middle class, and their conclusion is that America’s middle class is losing out.

Their basic chart is below. As you can see, in many countries the US showed a sizeable gap in 1990. Our middle class was much richer than most. By 2010, however, that gap had closed completely compared to Canada, and become much smaller in most other countries. Their middle classes are becoming more prosperous, but lately ours hasn’t been:

Germany and France show the same low-growth pattern for the middle class that we see in the United States, but countries like Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Britain have shown much faster growth. What’s going on?

The data suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality. Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in many other countries, or stronger, a small percentage of American households is fully benefiting from it.

….The struggles of the poor in the United States are even starker than those of the middle class. A family at the 20th percentile of the income distribution in this country makes significantly less money than a similar family in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the Netherlands. Thirty-five years ago, the reverse was true.

Note that these figures are for after-tax income. Since middle-income taxes have been flat or a bit down in the United States, this isn’t likely to have had much effect on the numbers.

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America’s Middle Class is Losing Out

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On the Environment: Forty-Four Years of Earth Day

by Myrna Posted on April 22, 2014

By a number of measures, the United States is cleaner than it was on the first Earth Day in 1970. Original article –  On the Environment: Forty-Four Years of Earth Day ; ;Related ArticlesCalifornia’s Thirsting FarmlandNational Briefing | West: California: A Little More Water Will FlowU.S. Delays Final Call on Keystone XL Pipeline ;

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On the Environment: Forty-Four Years of Earth Day

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Fuels America Launches Major National TV and Digital Ad Campaign, Website on Earth Day

by Posted on April 22, 2014

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Fuels America Launches Major National TV and Digital Ad Campaign, Website on Earth Day

Posted 22 April 2014 in

National

Fuels America coalition members today announced the launch of the “Oil Rigged” television and digital ad campaign and OilRigged.com to expose the many ways the oil industry is rigging the system to protect their profits and block the transition to clean, American renewable fuels.

The campaign begins today with the launch of OilRigged.com, at least two weeks of ads on cable stations nationwide, as well as extensive digital advertising that will include an Earth Day takeover of Politico.com.

The campaign shows the benefits of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which gives consumers access to innovative American renewable fuels — which are “cleaner, less expensive, and better for engines” — and warns not to let the oil industry muddy the renewable fuels debate and “rig the system” against competition. The television advertisement notes that the oil industry reaped profits of “$177,000 per minute” last year at consumers’ and taxpayers’ expense.

Oil companies have made the RFS the focus of hundreds of millions of dollars in distorted attacks, simply because the RFS is the most important policy moving America away from reliance on foreign oil and toward a healthier economy and environment.

Embraced by both Democrats and Republicans and signed into law by President Bush, the RFS calls for the use of American-grown renewable fuels in our transportation fuel supply to benefit our economy and environment. Innovative renewable fuels have saved the U.S. as much as $50 billion in a single year and support over 400,000 jobs across the country.

Fuels America stands with the thousands of farm families, workers, small business owners, environmental advocates, military families and veterans who submitted comments to the EPA in support of renewable fuels and a strong RFS. With the resources on OilRigged.com, consumers and decision-makers can avoid getting “oil rigged.”

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Fuels America Launches Major National TV and Digital Ad Campaign, Website on Earth Day

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NASA Just Found the Most Earth-Like Planet Yet

by HildaYcrekr Posted on April 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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Hello. Good day.

NASA just announced that astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet yet. Kepler-186f is the first Goldilocks planet—not too hot for water, not too cold for water—ever identified that is roughly the same size as Earth. (It’s a bit larger.)

So, is there life on that planet? It hasn’t been disqualified yet. So, maybe! But probably not. But maybe! But almost certainly not. But maybe! And even if there’s not its mere existence means there are very likely more planets like it out there, meaning Earth is maybe not necessarily unique, meaning life is maybe not necessarily unique to Earth. But basically, we don’t know much about this new planet. Take it away, WIRED:

Scientists have fairly little information about this new exoplanet, including its mass and composition. From what they can tell, the place is similar to our own world, though not quite Earth’s twin.

“We consider it more of an Earth cousin,” said astronomer Elisa Quintana of NASA’s Ames Research Center, lead author of a paper about the finding appearing today in Science. “It’s got the same size and characteristics, but a very different parent star.”

The planet is about 500 light years away, so it’s close, but not that close. This is all fun and exciting, but here’s the annoying bit: It was discovered by the Kepler space telescope which means we’re in for a cliffhanger:

Though Kepler is out of commission and won’t be able to provide any more information about this newest exoplanet, future telescopes could give us new insight. NASA is planning to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2017, which will watch bright nearby stars, including M dwarfs, for more exoplanets and be able to determine their masses. Follow up observations with the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope, currently slated to launch in 2018, could even look at the atmospheres of these worlds, providing definitive proof that they have chemicals like oxygen and water on their surfaces.

See you in 2017, possible Earth cousin!

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NASA Just Found the Most Earth-Like Planet Yet

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