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The future looks a lot hotter and wetter, says science

by WinifreKJKO Posted on April 28, 2015

The future looks a lot hotter and wetter, says science

By on 28 Apr 2015commentsShare

Here’s something you don’t hear climate scientists say very often:

“The bottom line is that things are not that complicated.”

That’s Reto Knutti, head of the Climate Physics Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, speaking with The New York Times. And that warm feeling inside of you is the satisfaction of knowing that you’re about to understand some science!

Take a moment to savor that feeling. Knutti is a climate scientist, after all, so we know that whatever he says next is going to be a huge downer:

“You make the world a degree or two warmer, and there will be more hot days. There will be more moisture in the atmosphere, so that must come down somewhere.”

Wow, dude — that’s not science, that’s poetry. (Except that it is science, and the subject of a new paper that Knutti and his colleague Erich M. Fischer published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change.)

Using global climate models to simulate past and future warming scenarios, the duo set out to understand how anthropogenic climate change has and will continue to increase extreme heat and precipitation events — the hotter days and wetter air that Knutti was talking about.

Here’s what they found: Compared to a world where the industrial revolution never happened, today’s warming of about 1.5 degree Fahrenheit is responsible for a 22 percent increase in the frequency of extreme precipitation events and — more dramatically — a four- to five-fold increase in the frequency of 1-in-1,000 day extreme heat events.

Projecting forward, they found that with warming kept under 3 degrees Fahrenheit, heat extremes could be 14 times more frequent than they were in pre-industrial times — which sounds bad, but not as bad as the 62-fold increase we could see if warming surpasses 5 degrees. Precipitation extremes, meanwhile, won’t increase quite as much. With 3 to 4 degrees of warming, what were 1-in-30 year events could be happening more like once every 10 or 20 years by the end of the century.

If you’re having some deja vu, it’s probably because scientists already knew about this unfortunate tie between global warming and extreme weather — but this is one of the first global forecasts predicting how these extreme events will change by the end of the century, says the Times.

All that being said — we all know better than to attribute any single weather event to climate change, right? Climate change just increases the likelihood of an event. Here’s how the Knutti and Fischer put it:

In a broader context, the approach here is reminiscent of medical studies, where it is not possible to attribute a single fatality from lung cancer to smoking. Instead, a comparison of the lung-cancer-related mortality rate in smokers with the rate in non-smokers may allow attribution of the excess mortality to smoking. Likewise, no single weather event exclusively results from anthropogenic influence in a deterministic sense but arises from complex interactions of atmospheric dynamics, local boundary layer and land-surface interaction and potentially anomalous sea-ice and ocean conditions.

Damn. I guess it’s still pretty complicated.

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New Study Links Weather Extremes to Global Warming

, The New York Times.

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The future looks a lot hotter and wetter, says science

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This Is Why You Crave Sugar When You’re Stressed Out

by LeahShowers Posted on April 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s something that won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has ever devoured a pint of Rocky Road after a miserable day at work: Researchers at the University of California-Davis recently found that 80 percent of people report eating more sweets when they are stressed. Their new study, published in the the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, offers a possible explanation.

Sugar, the researchers found, can diminish physiological responses normally produced in the brain and body during stressful situations. With stress levels on the rise, this could explain why more people are reaching for sweets.

The three-phase study involved 19 women, ages 18 to 40, who spent three days on a low-sugar diet at the research facility. Saliva samples and MRIs were taken and stress was induced through timed math tests. After being discharged, over the course of 12 days, the women consumed sweetened drinks three times a day. Half had beverages sweetened with the artificial sweetener aspartame, while the rest had drinks sweetened with real sucrose. This phase was followed by an additional three-day stint at the facility during which MRIs and saliva samples were taken again.

After the 12-day period, the group that had sucrose-sweetened beverages showed higher activity in the left hippocampus (an area of the brain responsible for learning and memory that is sensitive to chronic stress) and significantly reduced levels of cortisol (the hormone released in response to stress) compared to those who had artificially sweetened beverages.

While this study was one of the first to show that sugar can reduce stress responses in humans, it followed up on previous studies that found similar conclusions in animal subjects. The researchers noted the need for future research—especially on whether long-term sugar consumption has the same effect.

“The concern is psychological or emotional stress could trigger the habitual overconsumption of sugar,” lead author Kevin D. Laugero told Science Daily. Not exactly great news for those of us who enjoy eating our feelings.

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This Is Why You Crave Sugar When You’re Stressed Out

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Rand Paul’s Announcement Video Pulled Over Copyright Issues

by Vian Crisanto Posted on April 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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This morning Rand Paul announced that he was running for president. There was a crowded auditorium and they were going wild and then he strode on up to the podium and music was blaring and it was all going great and he gave a speech and the crowd ate it up and they cheered his name and then he finished and they clapped and cheered and the campaign uploaded the video of the speech to YouTube so that the world could clap and cheer and…YouTube bots automatically pulled the video for unlicensed use of copyrighted material.

Womp womp.

Warner Music Group, the official owner of John Rich’s “Shutting Detroit Down,” a song about how much it sucks that rich corporations own things, has now shut Rand down.

Both Billboard and The Washington Post have reached out to get to the bottom of this and neither Warner or YouTube have commented on the situation.

The campaign’s video has been now been deleted from YouTube (C-PSAN’s remains) but you can still enjoy the song in its entirety if you play it through John Rich’s YouTube page, where you can also admire WMG’s copyright claim in plain view:

The lesson, kids, is: if you ever run for president be sure to get permission to use copyrighted material before using it in your announcement speech. Otherwise the dream could end before it ever really begins.

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Rand Paul’s Announcement Video Pulled Over Copyright Issues

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Will This Be the Nail in the Coffin of Toxic Flame Retardants?

by CarriWinning Posted on April 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Flame retardant chemicals are in millions of products, from mattresses and couches to car seats to electronics. In 2011, Environmental Science & Technology published a study that found that 80 percent of 100 randomly tested children’s products were covered in fire-retardant chemical. But there’s a growing consensus that these chemicals don’t belong in our homes: They’ve been linked to cancer, hormone deficiencies, and neurological and developmental problems.

Between 2009 and 2013, the chemical industry agreed to phase out a particularly harmful flame retardant known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)—but further research from scientists at the Environmental Working Group and Duke University has found that manufacturers are simply replacing PBDEs with just-as-toxic, structurally similar chemicals.

Now, a diverse group of organizations—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the International Association of Fire Fighters, and the Consumer Federation of America—is calling for the ban of any children’s products, furniture, mattresses and electronics that have traces of any of the chemicals associated with flame retardants.

“It’s time to stop moving from one harmful flame retardant to its chemical cousin,” said Arlene Blum, founder and executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute, in a statement about the petition that she and nine other organizations filed with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

If the ban catches on, it will come as a major blow to the chemical manufacturers, who, for decades, have been downplaying concerns about flame retardants’ toxicity. The companies’ strategies have been compared to those used by Big Tobacco: They cleverly confuse the public into believing scientific findings are a matter of opinion and up for debate.

The similarities between the two industries shouldn’t come as a surprise, given their interconnected past. In an explosive 2012 investigative series, the Chicago Tribune reported that tobacco companies played a major role in the promotion of flame retardants. After a slew of apartment fires caused by lit cigarettes, the tobacco companies looked for a scapegoat and found one in furniture. Suddenly the media was focusing on flammable dangers we live around everyday—instead of the actual cause of many of these household fires: cigarettes.

The chemical companies, too, quickly realized how lucrative fire retardants could be—in 2012, the value of the market for the chemicals was estimated at $5.1 billion. Part of the reason for the companies’ success was a subtle astroturf campaign: In 2007, Albemarle Corporation, a leading flame retardant manufacturer, teamed up with two other chemical conglomerates to create Citizens for Fire Safety, an organization that advocates for increased use of flame retardants. The organization, which marketed itself as a neutral source of information for consumers, folded in 2012 after the Tribune exposed the real players involved.

Another problem with flame retardants: It’s not even clear that they work. According to the Tribune, in 2009 government scientists lit two couches on fire, one with fire retardant chemicals in its foam and one with out them. Within four minutes “both were engulfed in flames.”

“We did not find flame retardants in foam to provide any significant protection,” Dale Ray, a project manager with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and overseer of the study told the Tribune.

Despite this finding, flame retardants have stuck around—in products, and in people’s bodies. The chemicals, considered persistent organic pollutants, show up in dust particles, which we (and our food) absorb. Particularly vulnerable groups are firefighters, who are exposed to immense doses when extinguishing fires in products that are covered in the chemicals, and children, who are exposed when they play on the floor near dust and stick their hands in their mouths.

Last year, scientists from Duke University and the Environmental Working Group tested the urine of 22 mothers and 26 children. All the samples came back positive for exposure to Tris(1,3-dichloroisopropyl)phosphate (TDCIPP), one of the fire retardant chemicals that was developed to replace PBDEs. The children’s average TDCIPP concentration levels were fives times that of the mothers. TDCIPP caused the growth of tumors when tested on animals and has been labeled as carcinogenic by the state of California under Proposition 65.

“The science is in on this class of flame retardant chemicals,” said Nancie Payne, president of the Learning Disabilities Association of America, which also signed the Consumer Product Safety Commission petition. “They harm brain development, and have no business being in consumer goods.”

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Will This Be the Nail in the Coffin of Toxic Flame Retardants?

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Here’s How Many McDonald’s Workers Aren’t Getting Raises

by GretchenGatliff Posted on April 2, 2015

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, McDonald’s announced that starting this July, it will increase wages for the 90,000 workers who are directly employed by one of the company’s restaurants. The plan is to bring the current hourly wage up by $1; the average McDonald’s employee will make $9.90 by July and $10 by 2016. Benefits like paid vacation time will be available for employees who have worked for the company for more than a year.

The raise, however, only applies to employees of the actual restaurant. The 750,000 workers employed by franchises, which make up 90 percent of McDonald’s restaurants, are not included in this wage hike.

“The fact that a $1.00 raise for 90,000 workers is headline news is evidence of how low the bar has been set,” the Economic Policy Institute noted in a statement. “All workers should receive regular wage increases as productivity rises, and yet despite rising productivity, Americans’ wages have been stagnant for three-and-a-half decades.”

The battle over meager fast food pay has been in the spotlight since November 2012, when the Fight for $15 campaign began with 200 New York fast food workers talking part in a walk out. Since then, the group, which protests for a minimum wage of $15 and the right to organize, has grown into a national movement. This past September, more than 400 individuals were arrested in 32 cities during a Fight for $15 multi-state strike.

Much of the frustration over wage inequity stems from the gaps between worker pay and the large sums that CEOs of fast food companies are raking in. In 2013, the EPI published a report which found that those at the helm of the nation’s top 25 restaurant corporations were bringing in an average of 721 times more than the average minimum wage worker.

“It’s a picture of uncontrolled greed,” EPI vice president Ross Eisenbrey told my colleague Jaeah Lee this past summer. “How can it be that the CEOs are making more in half a day than many of their workers are making in an entire year—and yet they can’t afford to raise the pay of those workers?”

The answer many franchise owners give when asked about wage hikes is that their profit margins are too thin to support any employee pay increases. It’s worth noting, though, that in Denmark, the base rate for fast food workers is $20 an hour. This past fall New York Times reporters Liz Alderman and Steven Greenhouse wondered: “If Danish chains can pay $20 an hour, why can’t those in the United States pay the $15 an hour that many fast-food workers have been clamoring for?”

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Here’s How Many McDonald’s Workers Aren’t Getting Raises

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Notorious Astroturf Pioneer Rick Berman Is Behind Business Group’s Anti-Labor-Board Campaign

by BurtonMount Posted on March 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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In January, viewers catching the morning shows on CNN, Fox, or MSNBC met Heidi Ganahl, the bubbly founder and CEO of a national doggy day care chain called Camp Bow Wow.

“I’ve worked hard and played by the rules to make my franchise business a success,” Ganahl said in an ad that ran on all three networks, as video showed her fawning over a golden retriever. “Now, unelected bureaucrats at the National Labor Relations Board want to change the rules. As Americans, we deserve better. Tell Washington, ‘No.'”

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Notorious Astroturf Pioneer Rick Berman Is Behind Business Group’s Anti-Labor-Board Campaign

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Robot-Building 6-Year-Old Girls Talking Tech With Obama Is the Best Thing You’ll See All Week

by JacquesBroome Posted on March 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, President Obama made his annual rounds at the White House Science Fair. The event is a breeding ground for adorable interactions with kid-nerds (See 2012’s marshmallow-shooting air cannon), but his chat yesterday with five cape-wearing Girl Scouts from Oklahoma was especially magical.

The 6-year-olds from Tulsa’s Girl Scout Troup 411 were the youngest inventors selected to present at this year’s fair. Inspired by conversations with a librarian and one of the girls’ grandmas, they built a mechanical Lego contraption that can turn pages, to help patients with mobility issues read books.

The group of first graders and kindergartners explain to Obama that the device is a “prototype” that they came up with in a “brainstorming session.” One of the girls asks Obama if he’s ever had his own brainstorming session.

“I have had a couple brainstorming sessions,” replies an amused Obama. “But I didn’t come up with anything this good!”

Another girls asks what he came up with:

“I mean, I came up with things like, you know, health care. It turned out ok, but it started off with some prototypes,” the president says.

And then they all go in for a group hug. GOLD.

Suzanne Dodson, the coach of the Lego team and the mom of one of the scouts, told Tulsa World that she’s glad the girls are getting such positive attention for their project: “It really is a problem with girls, when they get to middle school, they lose confidence in their own ability to succeed in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)” she said. “Having this experience at young age really gives them a confidence boost.”

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Robot-Building 6-Year-Old Girls Talking Tech With Obama Is the Best Thing You’ll See All Week

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Scientists: No, We Can’t Fight Climate Change by Burning Trees

by AdrianneFkb Posted on February 14, 2015

Mother Jones

This article originally appeared at the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A group of 78 scientists is criticizing an Environmental Protection Agency memo they say may dramatically undermine President Barack Obama’s directive to cut planet-warming emissions.

In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, a group that includes climate scientists, engineers, and ecologists criticizes a November 2014 EPA policy memo that discounts emissions generated by burning biomass, including plants, trees, and other wood products known as sources of biogenic carbon dioxide. Critics said they fear the memo shows how biomass might be treated under the EPA’s forthcoming Clean Power Plan, which will set the first regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The EPA is expected to finalize those regulations by summer.

The EPA memo states that using biomass as a source of power is “likely to have minimal or no net atmospheric contributions of biogenic carbon dioxide emissions” as long as the biomass is produced with “sustainable forest or agricultural practices.” It also suggests that states will be able to increase the use of biomass in power plants in order to meet the limits set in the Clean Power Plan. The biogenic energy framework was the subject of a recent article in Politico magazine, which found that the interpretation “could promote the rapid destruction of America’s carbon-storing forests.”

The group of scientists argues that not all types of biomass have the same impact on carbon emissions, and that using more biomass derived from trees will actually increase overall emissions. Treating all biomass the same could lead to cutting down older-growth trees for fuel, and older trees store more carbon. The group cites a statistic from the US Energy Information Agency estimating if woody biomass is treated as carbon-free, an additional 4 percent of electricity in the US could be generated from wood over the next 20 years. The scientists estimate that may boost the US timber harvest by 70 percent.

This would likely lead to cutting even more trees, not only in the US, but around the world, the scientists argue. Even if new trees are grown to replace them, it would take many years for the trees to store as much carbon. Further, they say, burning biomass makes power plants less efficient and increases emissions.

“Including such exemptions for broad categories of biomass fuels in a final rule would not only encourage large-scale harvesting of wood to replace coal and other fossil fuels but also place no limits on the diversion of the world’s agricultural land to energy use, requiring conversions of forests and grasslands to meet food needs,” the group’s letter says.

“They’re going to declare biomass carbon-neutral with the wave of a magic wand,” William Moomaw, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Tufts University, told The Huffington Post. “It’s not carbon-neutral. It’s a rather appalling failure to actually do the math.”

Most states except Massachusetts consider biomass to be carbon-free, said Moomaw, as does the European Union.

William Schlesinger, dean emeritus at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and one of the scientists involved in writing the letter, said the EPA memo was “disturbing” because it designates all sustainable biomass as having low carbon emissions, and does not adequately define “sustainable.”

“The EPA made a promise several years ago that it would make its decisions based on science, and the best science,” said Schlesinger. “Here, we’ve got a chance to sit down and look at what the science really says.”

A group of Massachusetts environmental groups issued a statement this week expressing concern about biomass under the Clean Power Plan.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Purchia said in an email to the Huffington Post that the Clean Power Plan isn’t final, and that the framework on biogenic carbon dioxide was designed as a “policy-neutral framework for assessing biogenic CO2 emissions from stationary sources—it was not developed as technical guidance.”

“What we have said repeatedly is that the memo is a snapshot of the issues that have been raised in regards to the role of biomass in how states put together their plans to reduce their carbon pollution,” said Purchia. “But we have made no definitive statements on what the role of biomass will be. We expect certain waste products and forest derived waste products might be ok, but that doesn’t mean all forest products…To reiterate, we don’t assume cutting down forests to power power plants is carbon neutral. This would really be a case by case basis that states would need to show detailed analysis that we’d review. We’d issue additional guidance if needed.”

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Scientists: No, We Can’t Fight Climate Change by Burning Trees

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Chris Christie Is Now Waging 23 Court Battles to Keep State Documents Secret

by TammaraGrinder Posted on February 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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On his first day as governor of New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie promised “a new era of accountability and transparency.” But five years later, local reporters and watchdog groups accuse Christie’s administration of making unprecedented efforts to keep public records a secret.

Stonewalled my the Christie administration, media outlets have been forced to sue to obtain even routinely disclosed information, such as payroll data. Rather than release documents connected to the George Washington Bridge scandal, pay-to-play allegations, possible ethics violations, and the out-of-state jaunts Christie has made while weighing a run for president, Christie’s office and several state agencies have waged costly court battles. As the 2016 presidential primary race draws closer, and Christie considers jumping in, his administration is fighting 23 different open records requests in court.

“The track record is abysmal,” says Jennifer Borg, general counsel for the North Jersey Media Group. Her organization, which publishes The Record, has sued the state for public documents a half-dozen times since Christie took office. When a judge determines that the state withheld records illegally—which happens frequently—her group wins legal fees. As of September 2014, Christie’s administration had paid $441,000 to North Jersey Media Group and other media outlets for records. And that doesn’t count the cost of government lawyers’ time.

The fight has become so expensive for the state because when newspapers go to court for these records, they usually win. But winning doesn’t automatically produce the sought-after records. “We can and do beat them in court. But as long as they’re appealing—I don’t want to call it a Pyrrhic victory, but we’re not going to get the records,” says Walter Luers, an attorney who helped a transparency project run by the state Libertarian Party sue for public access for Christie’s travel expenses. “Appeals take two to three years. We’re already into the presidential elections. By the time we get these records, Christie could have a new address.”

Christie’s reluctance to let these records go is understandable. On Tuesday, for example, The New York Times published an investigation of ritzy trips, underwritten by megadonors and foreign leaders, the governor has taken abroad. Some of those accounts were based on public documents that local newspapers obtained through lawsuits.

Below is a roundup of the Christie administration’s most closely-guarded secrets.

Out-of-state travel. Christie has traveled around the country to raise money for the GOP and to test the waters for a 2016 presidential run. But no one knows whether it’s influential donors or taxpayers who are footing the bill for Christie’s travels. Last year, New Jersey Watchdog, a conservative news site, demanded to know who picked up the tab for more than 60 unofficial trips Christie took out of state beginning in 2012. Christie’s office denied its request, and a judge tossed Watchdog‘s resulting lawsuit in July for being too broad.

In a separate request, New Jersey Watchdog asked for records detailing Christie’s out-of-state air travel expenses. That request also went to court, and the judge ordered the governor’s office to release some travel documents. The records showed the state reimbursing an unknown third party thousands of dollars for Christie’s trip to the 2013 Super Bowl in New Orleans.

Taxpayer-fueled fundraising. Because Christie’s travel is connected to his fundraising work as the Republican Governors Association chair, the RGA probably paid for many of his trips. But The Record, one of Jersey’s largest newspapers, and WNYC, a radio station, requested documents indicating whether taxpayers shouldered any of Christie’s travel costs—such as overtime for the security detail that always accompanies the governor—while he raised cash for the GOP.

Christie’s office sent WNYC “a document so heavily redacted as to be all but meaningless,” says Laura Walker, the president of New York Public Radio, which owns WNYC. The outlet is suing for unredacted files. The Record also went to court for the documents, and the state and the newspaper are trying to reach a settlement.

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This Chart Shows That Americans Are Way Out of Step With Scientists on Pretty Much Everything

by MichelineWorth Posted on January 29, 2015

Mother Jones

Here’s one big reason why the US has been so slow to take aggressive action on climate change: Despite the wide consensus among scientists that it’s real and caused by humans, the general public—not to mention a disconcerting number of prominent politicians—remains divided.

It’s not just climate change. On a range of pressing social issues, scientists and the public rarely see eye-to-eye. That’s the result of a new Pew poll released today that compared views of a sample of 2,000 US adults to those of 3,700 scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the group that publishes the journal Science.

The biggest split was over the safety of genetically modified foods: 88 percent of scientists think GMOs are safe, compared to only 37 percent in the general public. Interestingly, college graduates were split 50-50. The gap between scientists and the public is smaller on the question of whether to mandate childhood vaccines. But it’s still there. Eighty-six percent of scientists and 68 percent of all adults think vaccines should be required.

The poll didn’t attempt to explain the gaps between scientists and the general public. On some issues there are clearly factors beyond pure science, like ethics and politics, that influence opinions. For example, scientists show more support for nuclear power, but less support for fracking, than the public. As our friend Chris Mooney has reported many times, these outside factors tend to creep into peoples’ opinions even on objective questions like whether humans have evolved.

Lee Rainie, Pew’s director of science research, added that trust in scientists can be a big factor. On GMOs, for example, 67 percent of the public believe scientists don’t fully understand the health risks. And on issues like climate and evolution, the public believes there to be more disagreement within the scientific community than there actually is, he said.

More interesting findings are below:

Pew

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This Chart Shows That Americans Are Way Out of Step With Scientists on Pretty Much Everything

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