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Forget Germany. Refugees in Croatia First Have to Figure Out Where the Hell They Are.

by JaredVfirixnsir Posted on September 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Information has been a lifeline for refugees on the route into Europe, with many of them trading updates and tips via WhatsApp while moving from country to country. But in Croatia this week, the information seemed to dry up.

“Where are we?” asked Mohammed, an elderly man from the Syrian city of Aleppo. He and three other men had just stepped off a bus in a cornfield near Šid, a town in northeastern Serbia, after a quick and confusing trip from Greece. They were a 15-minute walk from Croatia, the next step on their trip, but none of them had any clue what country they were in.

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The United States Has Had More Mass Shootings Than Any Other Country

by AlbaSpinelli Posted on August 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Nearly one-third of the world’s mass shootings have occurred in the United States, a new study finds. Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, has released the first quantitative analysis of public mass shootings around the world between 1966 through 2012. Unsurprisingly, the United States came out on top—essentially in a league of its own.


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Over those five decades, the United States had 90 public mass shootings, defined as shootings that killed four or more victims. Of the 170 other countries examined in the study, only four even made it to double-digits: The Philippines had 18 public mass shootings, followed by Russia with 15, Yemen with 11, and France with 10.

Mass shooters in the United States stood out from those in other countries in a few ways. Compared with attackers abroad, Americans were more than three times as likely to use multiple weapons, and they tended to target schools, factories, and office buildings. (Shooters in other countries were more likely to strike at military bases and checkpoints.) But shootings in the United States often killed fewer people than attacks overseas: On average, 6.9 victims died in each mass shooting incident on American soil, compared with 8.8 victims for each shooting in other countries. That may be because American police officers have been trained to respond more quickly to these situations and are often heavily armed, Lankford suggests.

The study drew largely on data from the New York City Police Department and the FBI. It did not consider gang-related or drive-by shootings, as well as hostage-taking incidents, robberies, and shootings in domestic settings.

Lankford suggests America’s high rate of public mass shootings is connected with the number of guns circulating in the country. “A nation’s civilian firearm ownership rate is the strongest predictor of its number of public mass shooters,” he explained in a statement, noting that the United States, Yemen, Switzerland, Finland, and Serbia, which are among the top 15 countries for mass shooters per capita, also rank in the top five countries for firearms per capita, according to the 2007 Small Arms Survey.

But the number of guns in circulation might be less important than ease of access to them. As my colleague Mark Follman has reported, most mass shooters in the United States obtained their weapons legally.

For more of Mother Jones’ reporting on guns in America, see all of our latest coverage here, and our award-winning special reports.

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The United States Has Had More Mass Shootings Than Any Other Country

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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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Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere, As Far As the Eye Can See

by marsxxzaa Posted on December 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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One of the fundamental causes of the housing bubble of the aughts was a global glut of investment money with nowhere productive to go. So instead it went into housing, causing bubbles in the U.S. and several other countries. When the bubble burst, the economy tanked. And since the United States is so big, the Great Recession affected the whole world.

Here in America, we’d like to believe that we learned our lesson. And maybe we did. But there’s still a global glut of investment money around, and there still aren’t enough productive uses for it. So where’s it going? Neil Irwin reports that Nouriel Roubini thinks it’s still going into housing:

Roubini doesn’t see bubbles in the places where they were most severe in the pre-2008 period. He doesn’t mention the United States or Spain or Ireland. Rather, Roubini sees housing prices getting out of whack in quite a few small and mid-sized nations that are well-governed and managed to avoid the worst economic effects of the financial crisis: Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the London metropolitan area in the U.K.

….Roubini’s argument boils down to this: The major economies have been growing only slowly. Yet with low interest rates and aggressive central bank action across the globe, there is a giant pool of money that has to go somewhere. That somewhere has not been productive new investments, like companies building new factories. Rather, it has come in the form of people taking advantage of cheap credit to bid up the price of existing real estate in cities from Stockholm to Sydney.

The key problem, as it’s been for over a decade, is why investors can’t find enough productive uses for their money. Weak economic growth due to rising income inequality is one possibility. Another is the rise of cheap entertainment—Facebook, Xbox, World of Warcraft—which portends lower demand for physical goods and services in the future. Or maybe it’s because of steadily rising unemployment thanks to the growth of automation.

Whatever the reason, if this imbalance continues, it’s hard to see things turning out well in the medium term. We need either less capital formation or else more consumer demand—or both. The alternative is bubble after bubble. They may come in different places and different things, but what other alternative is there?

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Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere, As Far As the Eye Can See

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U.K. joins the club, vows to curb coal financing

by DarellHollway Posted on November 21, 2013

U.K. joins the club, vows to curb coal financing

By

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No longer will British taxpayers have to foot the bill for the climate-unfriendly practice of building coal power plants in developing countries.

Britain pledged Wednesday to end most financing support for coal power projects. The pledge came during U.N. climate talks in Warsaw, Poland. The U.S., Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the World Bank, and the European Investment Bank have already made similar promises, which are aimed at curbing carbon emissions. From Bloomberg:

“We will work to get support of more countries and the multilateral development banks,” U.K. Energy Secretary Edward Davey said in Warsaw, where delegates from about 190 countries met for United Nations climate talks. Funding for coal would be allowed under the “rare circumstances” when alternatives aren’t available and there’s a case for reducing poverty.

Reliance on coal moved into focus at the talks after a UN report indicated that humans already burned more than half the amount of fossil fuels that could lead to dangerous changes in the climate. Coal generated 30.3 percent of the world’s primary energy in 2011, the highest level since 1969, according to the World Coal Association. It slipped to 29.9 percent last year.

“Now the Japanese and Germans need to follow suit,” said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.


Source
Sierra Club commends UK coal financing ban, Sierra Club
U.K. Joins U.S. Pledge to Stop Funding Foreign Coal-Power Plants, 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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Los Angeles to ditch coal by 2025

by w0ujpysd Posted on March 20, 2013

Los Angeles to ditch coal by 2025

By Susie Cagle

Coal currently powers almost 40 percent of sprawling and thirsty Los Angeles, Calif. But the “era of coal” is sunsetting.

By 2025, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will phase out all coal-fired power, putting it slightly ahead of the 2027 deadline imposed by the state. The LADWP is the country’s biggest municipal utility.

“By divesting from coal and investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency, we reduce our carbon footprint and set a precedent for the national power market,” L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) said in a press release.

The mayor’s office said the switch will reduce Los Angeles’ greenhouse gas emissions to 60 percent of 1990 levels. The fashion’s back, but the epic smog might be gone forever. Dumping coal: Even hotter than flannel.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

On Tuesday, commissioners at the Department of Water and Power moved forward with plans to dump the utility’s interest in a coal-burning plant in Arizona and convert another one in Utah to natural gas. …

Villaraigosa declared victory Tuesday, calling the coal divestment plan “game-changing” even though it won’t meet the timeline he set. “I believe the only way to get the goal is to set aggressive timetables,” he said. “Climbing mountains that have never been climbed before [isn’t] easy.” …

The DWP is in negotiations to sell its 21% share of the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Ariz., which will allow the utility to stop receiving power from the plant by 2015, four years before its current contract is up. Getting free of coal at the Intermountain Power Project in Delta, Utah, is more complicated because the DWP does not own the plant and is bound by contract to buy its power through 2027.

On Tuesday the Board of Water and Power Commissioners approved an amendment to its contract with Intermountain Power to allow the plant to transform its power supply to cleaner natural gas. …

A report released by the utility last year estimated that ending coal-power consumption at the Utah plant four years ahead of schedule would cost nearly $1 billion over four years in higher replacement fuel costs and other expenditures.

The whole plan “envisions clean energy and efficiency first, with natural gas fitting in as needed,” according to Take Part.

The move puts Los Angeles on track with Washington state, which is also set to end coal power by 2025, though both are a little behind Oregon, which aims to dump coal by 2020.

It’s not the whole U.S. by any means, but all that soon-to-be-ditched coal power is way more than Finland will get rid of when it dumps the dirtiest fossil fuel by 2025 too.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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The 16 scariest maps from the E.U.’s massive new climate change report

by Myrna Posted on November 21, 2012

The 16 scariest maps from the E.U.’s massive new climate change report

By Philip Bump

Thinking about a Mediterranean vacation? Might want to go sooner rather than later.

The above map shows how the “tourism climate index” — a calculation of how amenable the climate in a location is to outdoor activity — will be affected by climate change during the summer in Europe. Blue areas will see climatic improvements; yellow, moderately worse climate; brown, significantly worse climate. So if you want to visit, say, Italy or Spain — book your flight.

Earlier today, the European Environment Agency walked into the room and, plunk, dropped a 300-page report on the anticipated effects of climate change on the continent. Three hundred pages, chock-a-block with maps far more terrifying than that one up there. It’s a road map on minute details of what Europe can expect on temperature, flooding, forest fires, soil quality, sea animals. It’s the Grays Sports Almanac of the continent through the year 2100.

Here are some of the more alarming maps and graphs, because terror is a dish best shared. (A blanket note: All images from the full report [PDF]; on most, click to embiggen.)

Temperatures

We’ll start with the big one. Temperatures in Europe have increased across-the-board over the last 50 years.

As the report notes: “The five warmest summers in Europe in the last 500 years all occurred in the recent decade (2002–2011).”

Here, the number of summers in the 95th percentile of temperatures over the last 500 years, by decade.

That’s summers past. In the future: more of the same.

Precipitation

Over the past 50 years, warmer areas have gotten drier while colder areas have gotten wetter.

In the future, that trend will be exacerbated. During the summer, precipitation will drop almost everywhere, with the exception of the far north.

The same holds true for the winter: Snowfall will also drop.

Sea level

As you undoubtedly know, sea levels have risen around the world.

The effect in Europe has been distributed — sea levels have been dropping somewhat around Finland and Sweden, but going up dramatically near Denmark and, in a bit of very bad news, the low-lying Netherlands.

That sea-level rise is one component of a massive projected increase in “100 year floods” in certain parts of Europe. Note the 2080 projection in the U.K., below.

Fire danger

Drier conditions mean more fires. Across the continent, there has been an increased danger of wildfire.

By the end of the century, that danger will have increased dramatically for parts of the continent, and increased everywhere to at least some extent.

Agriculture

Again, drier conditions mean more need for irrigation — but also less availability of water with which to irrigate.

And, as a result, drier regions will see significant drop-offs in food production.

Even in more moderate climates, production will drop.

Impact on population

No one in Europe will be spared some environmental impact; nearly everyone will see an economic effect as well.

In summary:

Source

Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012, European Environment Agency

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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The 16 scariest maps from the E.U.’s massive new climate change report

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