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‘Step the f#$@ off’: Dianne Feinstein gets the SNL treatment

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The recent showdown between California Senator Dianne Feinstein and a bunch of young climate activists asking her to back the Green New Deal has taken social media by storm.

Want to relive the heated exchange? Saturday Night Live has you covered. In an unaired sketch, comedian Cecily Strong plays a feisty, condescending version of the Democratic senator. She did not hold back.

“Oh, I see what’s happening,” Strong tells the kids in the video. “You’re gonna tell me how to do my job. OK, well, I don’t come into your first-grade classroom and knock the Elmer’s glue out of your mouth, do I? So why don’t you stay in your lane and step the f#$@ off?”

As each attempt to talk to the kids goes awry, Strong keeps asking for a do-over. One kid states the obvious: “You’re mean.”

The skit is laugh-out-loud funny, but the producers cut the segment from Saturday’s live show. That decision may have been due to time constraints — the sketches ran longer than normal, according to Rolling Stone. But it may also be a sign that SNL’s producers, like Feinstein, might be a little out of touch on climate change.

There’s another indication that SNL doesn’t know what’s up: In the sketch, one of the children holds up a cute sign that says “Save the Whales.” Seems innocuous, right? Well, the purpose of the protesters’ visit to the senator’s office wasn’t to save ocean creatures — it was to get Feinstein on board with the Green New Deal.

“SNL writers/editors thought that made sense, that climate change — the real subject of the visit — is another version of esoteric critter-saving,” tweeted Vox’s David Roberts, a former Grist writer.

While climate change affects every ecosystem on Earth, “saving the whales” overlooks the point of the Green New Deal. Rather, its intent is to propose an economy-wide transformation that links renewable energy with policies such as universal healthcare and a federal jobs guarantee, addressing that climate change and inequality coexist.

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‘Step the f#$@ off’: Dianne Feinstein gets the SNL treatment

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Martian Summer – Andrew Kessler

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Martian Summer

My Ninety Days with Interplanetary Pioneers, Temperamental Robots, and NASA’s Phoenix Mars Mission

Andrew Kessler

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: July 15, 2014

Publisher: Open Road Media

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


A space enthusiast goes inside mission control with a motley crew of rocket scientists in this “fascinating journey of discovery peppered with humor” ( Publishers Weekly ). The  Phoenix  Mars mission was the first man-made probe ever sent to the Martian arctic. Its purpose was to find out how climate change could turn a warm, wet planet (read: Earth) into a cold, barren desert (read: Mars). Along the way,  Phoenix  discovered a giant frozen ocean trapped beneath the north pole of Mars, exotic food for aliens, and liquid water, and laid the foundation for NASA’s current exploration of Mars using the  Curiosity  rover. This is not science fiction. It’s fact. And for the luckiest fanboy in fandom, it was the best vacation ever. Andrew Kessler spent the summer of 2008 in NASA’s mission control with one hundred thirty of the world’s best planetary scientists and engineers as they carried out this ambitious operation. He came back with a story of human drama about modern-day pioneers battling NASA politics, temperamental robots, and the bizarre world of daily life in mission control.

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Martian Summer – Andrew Kessler

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Donald Trump and Amy Klobuchar threw down over climate change this weekend

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In the midst of a snowstorm on Sunday, Senator Amy Klobuchar announced that she is adding her name to a growing list of 2020 presidential hopefuls. It only took a few hours for President Trump to weigh in on her race.

During her speech, the Minnesota Democrat included some details about her climate platform, saying that she would rejoin the Paris climate agreement on her first day as president. The 2020 contender also pledged to “reinstate the clean power rules and the gas mileage standards and put forth sweeping legislation to invest in green jobs and infrastructure” during her first 100 days in office.

Klobuchar didn’t say anything about the Green New Deal during her announcement, but the senator, like many of her fellow Democratic contenders, is a sponsor of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Senator Ed Markey’s recently introduced resolution calling for an economy-wide mobilization against climate change.

President Trump, who has a much different environmental record, took to Twitter hours after Klobuchar’s speech to belittle the candidate for bringing up climate change in the middle of a snowstorm. “Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures,” he tweeted, adding that she looked like a “Snowman(woman)!”

It didn’t take long for Klobuchar to hit back at the president. “I’m sorry if it still snows in the world but the point is that we know climate change is happening,” she said Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America.

If Trump didn’t catch her response on ABC, he probably saw her clapback on Twitter.

Don’t bring a combover to a climate fight, buddy!

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Donald Trump and Amy Klobuchar threw down over climate change this weekend

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Is Budweiser the king of green beers? We unpacked its Super Bowl ads.

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Super Bowl LIII made history yesterday as the lowest-scoring NFL championship of all time. In other words, it was kind of a snoozefest. But if the lack of touchdowns — combined with shirtless Adam Levine — didn’t compel you to turn off the TV, you may have noticed an interesting trend in the big game’s beer commercials. Budweiser, the so-called “king of beers,” is trying really hard to make itself the beer of tree-hugging, health-conscious millennials.

In at least two (we’re going to leave the nature-filled, ASRM ear porn one alone for now) of its eight Super Bowl commercials for various products, beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev seemed to lean hard on environmentally-themed marketing messages.

In the most blatant enviro-targeting ad, the scene opens with a Dalmatian sitting atop a Bud-laden wagon pulled by Clydesdales romping through a picturesque field, which upon zoom-out reveals itself to be a wind farm. Cue the line “Now brewed with wind power, for a better tomorrow.” Oh, and did we mention it’s set to the tune of “Blowin’ in the Wind?” Subtle.

Then, in a Monty Python-esque epic sequence of royal mishaps and alcoholic adventuring, the company made it clear Bud Light is brewed with no corn syrup, directly calling out its competitors — Miller Lite and Coors Light — for using the much-maligned syrup.

Anheuser-Busch is far from the first company to take advantage of Americans’ growing concerns over climate change. Remember those midterm election campaign ads touting candidates’ climate credentials? We certainly do. But to see green issues front and center (at least for 30 seconds at a time) during the Super Bowl was a little surreal to some viewers.

“I never thought there’d be an intersection between AGRICULTURE and FOOTBALL, but then came the BREW-HA-HA about CORN SYRUP in BEER!” Washington Post columnist Tamar Haspel tweeted about the king’s quest ad. But as Haspel points out in her extended thread, being an environmentally friendly beer company takes more than a few commercials.

The criticism of Bud’s Super Bowl ads has been swift. Understandably, the corn industry was pretty miffed that America’s favorite beer would publicly turn on corn farmers.

Bud Light uses rice to do the same job that corn syrup or other added sugars do in competing brews. So … how much does that really matter, planet-wise? Corn syrup, rice syrup, or no syrup, beer has never exactly been a health beverage. Rice and corn both have their associated emissions — but so do all foods. So maybe we should just eat less meat, and get over it?

As for the wind power, Anheuser-Busch InBev is indeed making moves to get to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2025. That’s big coming from such a massive company — the largest brewer in the world. AB isn’t just responsible for big names like Bud and Michelob, it also owns hipster favorites like Elysian, Devils Backbone, and hundreds more. The company set goals to improve sourcing, water stewardship and packaging for all its brews over the next several years. This is all great, and so is the push for greater transparency of ingredients in alcoholic beverages — but before we raise a glass, there are a few more things to consider.

Anheuser-Busch InBev is still a gigantic corporation, and one with apparent ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose rejection of climate science and environmental regulation is so extreme that even Exxon Mobil decided to jump ship.

So at the end of the day, how should we view the green-tinged promise (and it’s not even Saint Patrick’s Day yet!) of these beer ads? Supporting progressive climate action on a political scale, in addition to its company-wide initiatives, would likely be in Anheuser-Busch InBev’s best interest. It’s also in our best interest if we want to keep drinking beer in the years to come. Climate change is coming for our crops, including rice, corn, hops, and barley — so unless we act fast, we won’t even have a frothy pint to drown our sorrows in.

Now if that doesn’t send you running for the vegan chicken wings and electric cars, I don’t know what will.

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Is Budweiser the king of green beers? We unpacked its Super Bowl ads.

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Ryan Zinke’s new gig could be a disaster for the environment too

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Trump’s former secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, departed Washington in January amid a barrage of ethics investigations. It didn’t take long, but Zinke has managed to find a new gig that sees him going from one controversial enterprise (the Trump administration) to another: He’s now a cryptocurrency guy (yes, really).

In an interview with Vice News, Zinke, sporting MAGA socks, made his post-government business debut as the managing director of Artillery One, a little-known blockchain and cryptocurrency investment company based out of North Carolina. He said he’s hoping to make the private crypto company “great again.”

But making something great again implies it was great at some point in the past.

It’s no secret that cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is the first and most valuable, have a huge environmental toll. Most are maintained by a network of specialized computers that crunch mathematical puzzles, or “mine” to log transactions and make new coins. All those computations take a massive amount of energy: At its peak, Bitcoin was consuming the same amount of energy every year as nearly 7 million U.S. homes.

But the libertarian fantasy currency had a wild year in 2018, with more than $480 billion of value wiped off the entire market. With a lower financial worth, Bitcoin only demands the same amount of energy as powering 4 million US households. (Which, you know, is still not ideal.)

Somehow evaluating power-sucking cryptocurrencies in a swanky hotel in Switzerland, as he’s doing in the Vice News clip, seems all too appropriate for Zinke. After all, his legacy at the Interior Department is putting 13 million acres of public lands in private hands for dirty fuel development, rescinding environmental protections, shrinking national monuments, and … an extensive hat collection.

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Ryan Zinke’s new gig could be a disaster for the environment too

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Physics – Aristotle, R. P. Hardie & R. K. Gaye

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Physics

Aristotle, R. P. Hardie & R. K. Gaye

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: August 15, 2012

Publisher: Linkko Publishing

Seller: Lulu Enterprises, Inc.


“The first of those who studied science were misled in their search for truth and the nature of things by their inexperience, which as it were thrust them into another path. So they say that none of the things that are either comes to be or passes out of existence, because what comes to be must do so either from what is or from what is not, both of which are impossible.”…. Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle's Physics is one of the early foundational of physics that offered a coherent, logical, and natural explanation of motion and change within the physical world. It is a collection of treatises that deal with the most general philosophical principles of natural or moving things, both living and non-living. It discusses the principles and causes of change, movement and motion.

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Physics – Aristotle, R. P. Hardie & R. K. Gaye

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Deadly Camp Fire sparks new lawsuit against California utility

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On Tuesday, about two dozen victims from the Northern California town of Paradise, which was destroyed in last week’s deadly Camp Fire, filed suit against Pacific Gas and Electric Co (PG&E) alleging that the company’s lax maintenance and “inexcusable behavior” contributed to the cause of the blaze.

“Most of [the victims] are aware of PG&E’s history of starting wildfires and trying to get away with it,” Mike Danko, a lawyer from one of the three law firms representing the wildfire victims, told Grist. “They want their voice to be heard.”

The victims of the fire who are now suing PG&E lost their homes and possessions, many barely escaping with their lives. The Camp Fire — the deadliest wildfire in California’s history — has already claimed the lives of at least 56 people, with 130 still missing as of Thursday morning.

PG&E and another major utility, Southern California Edison, reported to regulators they experienced problems with transmission lines around the time the blazes started On top of that, just prior to the Camp Fire, PG&E began warning customers it might turn off power because of the high risk of wildfires. But the company ultimately decided to cancel the anti-fire measure, according to a press release:

“Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has determined that it will not proceed with plans today for a Public Safety Power Shutoff in portions of eight Northern California counties, as weather conditions did not warrant this safety measure,” reads the statement published November 8 — the same day the Camp Fire began.

The cause of the Camp Fire has yet to be determined — something PG&E officials are quick to point out. “Right now, our primary focus is on the communities, supporting first responders and getting our crews positioned and ready to respond when we get access so that we can safely restore gas and electricity to our customers,” the company said in a statement.

Danko calls PG&E’s comment “empty words.” This is not the first time the utility has been accused of being responsible for a major wildfire. In 2017, Cal Fire concluded that PG&E broke safety laws — namely, poor maintenance of trees along power lines — which led to a wildfire that took the lives of 22 people.

The new suit cites 18 separate fires and explosions caused by PG&E infrastructure since 1991, including a 2010 explosion at a PG&E natural gas pipeline that killed eight people and led to a fine to the tune of $1.6 billion from state regulators and a felony conviction issued by a jury in federal court.

If PG&E is found liable for the Camp Fire, the company’s payout could exceed its insurance coverage. This could spell financial trouble, not only for PG&E but for California customers. In September, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill designed to help PG&E cope with the fire-related costs of 2017’s wildfires by allowing the utility to pass on some of those costs on to their customers — including those who lost their homes to the wildfires.

The bill was met with swift opposition by consumer advocates who saw the bill as a bailout for a company with a damming record of lax safety oversights. “We don’t think this is safety for Main Street — we think this is safety for Wall Street,” said Mindy Spatt, a spokesperson for The Utility Reform Network consumer group. “We urged the Legislature to do something that would protect consumers and residents, but this wasn’t it.”

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Deadly Camp Fire sparks new lawsuit against California utility

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Young activists and Ocasio-Cortez push Pelosi for Green New Deal

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The young climate activists clustered into California Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office this week to demand a “Green New Deal” hadn’t wasted any time. As soon as it became clear that Democrats will have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, they descended on Washington to exert whatever clout they had.

The protest in Pelosi’s office was organized by the Sunrise Movement, a group of young people who have been pushing for climate action for a little over a year. They may have some sway with Pelosi, who issued a supportive statement while they were occupying her office on Tuesday. But with a Republican-held Senate and Donald Trump in the White House, the chances of enacting meaningful climate legislation next year are close to zero. So what’s their strategy here?

Varshini Prakash, Sunrise’s co-founder and communications director (and one of our Grist 50), said they have two objectives. First, they want all Democrats in leadership positions to stop accepting contributions from fossil fuel interests. And they want Pelosi to back something along the lines of a “Green New Deal,” a massive government mobilization to build a new, non-polluting, economy while also creating jobs.

Prakash said she was under no illusions about Pelosi’s ability to drive a climate bill through a Republican-controlled Senate, but she believes both of the group’s objectives could still be satisfied. Politicians don’t need anyone’s permission to stop taking oil money, and Democrats could set up a select committee in the House to begin laying the groundwork for a massive climate jobs program. As it happens, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newly elected Representative from New York, joined the protesters outside Pelosi’s office, and has already proposed such a committee.

House Democrats need to start hammering out policy now, Prakash said, so that they will have strong legislation to pass when climate-conscious politicians take the Senate. In the meantime, Sunrise will be building a campaign to elect politicians who will support their cause at both the state and federal level. “This is definitely not a one-off event,” she said.

In a statement, Pelosi said she welcomed “the presence of these activists” and noted that she has already recommended reviving a select committee on climate change, which Republicans disbanded when they took the House in 2011.

That’s not enough for Prakash. “The old committee was toothless,” she said “It had no funding and no ability to put forward legislation — its purpose was to make connections and raise awareness. The time for messaging to the public about climate change is over, we need action.”

Pelosi’s office had no comment when we requested a response, but Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, told reporters that even Pelosi’s proposal for a select committee goes too far. It’s unnecessary, Pallone said, because the environmental policy committee he is expected to lead can handle the job.

In her statement, Pelosi said that many Democrats had campaigned on something that looks very much like a Green New Deal. “House Democrats ran on and won on our bold campaign for a $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient to the climate crisis, while creating 16 million new good-paying jobs across the country.”

Environmental journalist Mark Hertsgaard, who might have been the first person to use the term “Green New Deal” back in 1998, said Pelosi needs to embrace the rhetoric of young activists if she wants this idea to take fire.

“The next step is to get Pelosi to use those words, Green New Deal,” Hertsgaard said. “She’s already on board, but her statement about 16 million jobs and $1 billion investment in infrastructure, that’s policy wonk talk out of Washington.The average person can understand what a Green New Deal is.”

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Young activists and Ocasio-Cortez push Pelosi for Green New Deal

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Axl Rose is Twitter feuding with Trump over California wildfires

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California is on fire again. In an alternate universe, the president of the United States would acknowledge the effects of climate change on wildfires as she directed a barrage of federal resources to the afflicted state. In this universe, however, the president blamed forest management and threatened to withhold funds. And then … Guns N’ Roses lead singer Axl Rose got involved? Here’s what happened.

On Saturday, as a trio of wildfires whipped through California and terrified people evacuated, President Trump took to Twitter to berate the state. Yes, at least 31 people died in the Camp Fire and the president thought now would be a good time to threaten to withhold federal relief:

“There is no reason” for the wildfires except for forest mismanagement? Sir! Poor management is certainly one element of a complex problem, but most forests in the state are managed by the federal government. And rising temperatures play a role too: They make wildfires like the Camp Fire bigger and more common by creating drier conditions.

The lead singer of an iconic ‘80s band isn’t exactly the first person you’d call on to debunk Trump’s tweet, but Twitter is a bizarro melting pot so of course Axl Rose hit back at the president with some wildfire knowledge.

We can’t speak to the “demented n’ truly pathetic” part of the tweet, but the lack of federal funding bit is spot on. The U.S. Forest Service can barely keep up with fire suppression, let alone prevention.

California does need more prescribed burns in order to alleviate some of the state’s fuel load (not the commercial logging that the Trump administration would like to promote but rather the small trees, shrubs, and brush that build up). Less fuel load equals more manageable forest fires. But doing so costs billions of dollars — money that policymakers aren’t sending to the state.

N’ what about climate change? Axl didn’t fit that detail in his Tweet. One person remembered though: the Los Angeles County fire chief. In response to Trump’s tweet, Chief Daryl Osby said, “We’re in extreme climate change right now.”

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Axl Rose is Twitter feuding with Trump over California wildfires

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Merchants of Immortality – Stephen S. Hall

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Merchants of Immortality

Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension

Stephen S. Hall

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: June 18, 2003

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


A Discover Best Science Book of the Year: “A fascinating, accurate and accessible account of some of [the] contemporary efforts to combat aging” ( The New York Times ).   Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist   Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times , San Jose Mercury News , and Library Journal   An award-winning writer explores science’s boldest frontier—extension of the human life span—interviewing dozens of people involved in the quest to allow us to live longer, better lives.   Delving into topics from cancer to stem cells to cloning, Merchants of Immortality looks at humankind’s quest for longevity and tackles profound questions about our hopes for defeating health problems like heart attacks, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes. The story follows a close-knit but fractious band of scientists as well as entrepreneurs who work in the shadowy area between profit and the public good. The author tracks the science of aging back to the iconoclastic Leonard Hayflick—who was the first to show that cells age, and whose epic legal battles with the federal government cleared the path for today’s biotech visionaries.   Among those is the charismatic Michael West, a former creationist who founded the first biotech company devoted to aging research. West has won both ardent admirers and committed foes in his relentless quest to promote stem cells, therapeutic cloning, and other technologies of “practical immortality.” Merchants of Immortality breathes scintillating life into the most momentous science of our day, assesses the political and bioethical controversies it has spawned, and explores its potentially dramatic effect on the length and quality of our lives.   “Timely and engrossing . . . This is top-drawer journalism.” — Publishers Weekly , starred review   “A carefully documented examination of how society deals with life-and-death matters.” — Kirkus Reviews , starred review   “An important survey of the entire landscape of the science aimed at extending human life.” — Newsday   “[This] highly readable and important book . . . provide[s] new insights into the intersection of science and politics.” — The Washington Post

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Merchants of Immortality – Stephen S. Hall

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