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The Secret Lives of Bats – Merlin Tuttle

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The Secret Lives of Bats

My Adventures with the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammals

Merlin Tuttle

Genre: Nature

Price: $17.99

Publish Date: October 20, 2015

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


Few people realize how sophisticated and intelligent bats are. Merlin Tuttle knows, and he has stopped at nothing to find and protect them on every continent they inhabit. Sharing highlights from a lifetime of adventure and discovery, Tuttle takes us to the frontiers of bat research to show that frog-eating bats can identify frogs by their calls, that some bats have social sophistication similar to that of higher primates, and that bats have remarkable memories. Bats also provide enormous benefits by eating crop pests, pollinating plants, and carrying seeds needed for reforestation. They save farmers billions of dollars annually and are essential to a healthy planet. Tuttle’s account forever changes the way we see these poorly understood yet fascinating creatures. “Grips and doesn't let go.” — Wall Street Journal “It’s a terrific read.” — Huffington Post “A whirlwind adventure story and a top-shelf natural history page-turner.” — Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus “One of the best, most interesting books I’ve ever read.” — Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs

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The Secret Lives of Bats – Merlin Tuttle

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Trump still hasn’t decided whether to dump the Paris climate agreement or not.

Born and raised in Oahu, Hawaii, Evan Weber went to the same K-through-12 school attended by future President Barack Obama. By the time Weber got to college, he was taking his fellow Punahou School alum to task for what Weber believed was an inadequate climate action plan.

Together, Weber, a college buddy, and one of their professors drafted their own climate agenda, a policy report they initially simply called “The Plan.” A direct response to Obama’s 2013 climate plan, this version called for the U.S. to go even further in reducing carbon emissions and proposed a set of financial and regulatory solutions to make it happen. Weber ran an Indiegogo campaign to drum up support around The Plan and started popping up as a climate evangelist in media outlets like the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and Newsweek. Now his goal is to build the political power necessary to enact it.

Weber’s organization, U.S. Climate Plan, pushes for climate legislation on the state level and organizes campaigns supporting climate justice. Weber supports young activists by building partnerships between grassroots organizations, teaching statewide strategy plans, and advising college students. This, in Weber’s eyes, is how you build a generational front against climate change. “And morally, we know that we are going to win.”


Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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Trump still hasn’t decided whether to dump the Paris climate agreement or not.

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A leaked list of Trump’s infrastructure priorities looks pretty surprising.

That’s how new news site Axios described it Monday morning, and the news has just gotten worse since then.

A leaked copy of the Trump team’s plan for the EPA calls for slashing its budget, “terminating climate programs,” ending auto fuel-economy standards, and executing “major reforms of the agency’s use of science and economics.”

The Trump administration has frozen EPA grants and contracts, cutting off funding for everything from cleanup of toxic sites to testing of air quality.

EPA employees have been ordered not to share information via social media, press releases, or new website content, Huffington Post reports.

It’s unclear which of these changes are temporary — just in place until Trump’s nominee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, gets confirmed — and which might be put in place more permanently.

More bad news for the EPA will be coming: A new team that Trump has put in place to shift the agency’s direction includes three former researchers from Koch-funded think tanks, one former mining lobbyist, and a number of people who have argued against climate action, according to Reuters. And Trump is poised to issue executive orders to weaken pollution rules and cut agency budgets, Vox reports.

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A leaked list of Trump’s infrastructure priorities looks pretty surprising.

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What Does Donald Trump Know? Anything?

Mother Jones

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At about 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, China agreed to return the Navy drone they had seized in the South China Sea. Four hours later, Donald Trump tweeted his thoughts about this: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international watersâ&#128;&#149;rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.” Then, a few hours later, he bizarrely changed tack: “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!” Did Trump know when he wrote those tweets that the Chinese had already agreed to return the drone?

That information would have been known to Trump had he received the “Presidential Daily Brief” prior to posting his first tweet. Whether he did that Saturday, or whether he or his staff even bothered to check with the State Department or the Pentagon about the status of the matter before weighing in, is unknown. Officials in Trump’s transition office did not respond to queries from the Huffington Post.

Trump has said that he finds the PDB repetitive and that he does not need a daily briefing because he is smart. His staff has said Trump is receiving the briefing about three times a week.

That’s from S.V. Date, and I love the second excerpted paragraph. It makes Trump look like the idiot he is, but there’s nothing objectionable about it. That’s exactly what he said. Trump can hardly cry foul at this characterization.

He will, of course, because he and his team have made a whole new profession out of grievance mongering. You’d think that he expected to govern without criticism or something—and judging by the remarkable volume of whining out of Trump and his team, maybe he did. But since he refuses to speak with the press, and his staff does nothing but kvetch and tap dance, we may never know.

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What Does Donald Trump Know? Anything?

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Sci-fi writers dream up what future Olympic Games will look like

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Sci-fi writers dream up what future Olympic Games will look like

By on Aug 3, 2016Share

Future Olympics games might want to take a cue from science fiction writers.

To find out what the future of the Games might hold, Huffington Post pulled together predictions by some of the most forward-thinking minds of our time. Their ideas range from the wacky (will athletes with entirely synthetic DNA compete?) to thought-provoking (eliminating categories by gender).

Malka Older, author of Infomocracy, idealizes Games that would move away from larger-than-life stadiums and corporate sponsorships and toward something called the Sustainable Olympics:

These Games would be held without any new construction, without packed sunbaked parking lots or rushed and unsafe facilities or dead workers. They would be broadcast to anyone who wanted to watch them, and without any sob story backgrounds beyond what the athletes themselves chose to tell. They would be low-key, low-maintenance, low-carbon, and yet the stakes would still be high: to be named the best in the world.

The writers don’t forget our old frenemy, climate change, either. Author Madeline Ashby expects some sports to go defunct. “After all, how can you have winter sports when winter is only a memory?”

Fair enough, Ashby. That future isn’t far off, as the Olympics have already started using fake snow.

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Sci-fi writers dream up what future Olympic Games will look like

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Clinton and Sanders Just Weighed In on an Old Battle in the Fight for Reproductive Rights

Mother Jones

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Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have repeatedly emphasized the importance of protecting women’s reproductive rights, but mostly they’ve focused on domestic policy. Now, looking overseas, they say the United States should change the regulation of foreign aid for abortions.

The 1973 Helms amendment blocks the use of foreign aid for women who were raped in conflict zones or developing countries and seeking an abortion. The amendment states, “No foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.” The Hyde amendment, which was passed three years after the Helms amendment, prohibits federal funding from being used for elective abortions—abortions that are not because of incest, rape, or life endangerment.

According to the Huffington Post, Clinton promised to change the Helms amendment and create an exception for rape, incest, and protecting the life of the mother. Sanders said he would use executive action to repeal the Helms amendment altogether.

“Sen. Sanders is opposed to the Helms amendment,” Arianna Jones, his deputy communications director, told the Huffington Post. “As president, he will sign an executive order to allow for U.S. foreign aid to pay for abortions in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the woman is at risk. He will also work with Congress to permanently repeal both the Hyde and Helms amendments.”

Clinton was asked about the Helms amendment during her Iowa campaign, where she said she thinks rape is being used increasingly as a war weapon.

“I do think we have to take a look at this for conflict zones,” Clinton said at the town hall, responding to a question from an audience member. “And if the United States government, because of very strong feelings against it, maintains our prohibition, then we are going to have to work through nonprofit groups and work with other countries to…provide the support and medical care that a lot of these women need.”

A Clinton campaign spokeswoman wrote in an email to the Huffington Post that Clinton would “fix” the Helms amendment: “The systematic use of rape as a tool of war is a tactic of vicious militias and insurgent and terrorist groups around the world. She saw first-hand as Secretary of State the suffering of survivors of sexual violence in armed conflict during her visit to Goma in 2009. She believes we should help women who have been raped in conflict get the care that they need.”

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Clinton and Sanders Just Weighed In on an Old Battle in the Fight for Reproductive Rights

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Meet the Republican Senator Who Wants to Fight Global Warming

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) came out in favor of the Obama administration’s effort to cut carbon pollution by power plants on Sunday, bucking Senate leadership that has worked to derail the emissions plan.

The Obama administration announced final regulations on emissions from both new and existing power plants in August. Dubbed the Clean Power Plan, the rules are part of the administration’s larger push to curb emissions that cause climate change. The Clean Power Plan has faced opposition from many conservative politicians.

In supporting the rules, Ayotte cited the work her state has already done to reduce emissions.

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Meet the Republican Senator Who Wants to Fight Global Warming

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Hillary Clinton Just Came Out Against Obama’s Arctic Drilling Plan

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has agreed with the vast majority of President Barack Obama’s policies, but in a Tweet on Tuesday she expressed her disapproval with one: letting Shell drill for oil in the Arctic.

Clinton had previously said she was “skeptical” and had “doubts” as to whether the Obama administration should have given Shell the go-ahead for exploratory drilling. The oil company’s permit from the US Department of the Interior allows it to drill in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. Shell halted its drilling program in the region after it lost control of a massive rig in 2012.

Environmental advocates say drilling in the Arctic will deepen the United States’ reliance on oil, harm local wildlife and upset the region’s fragile ecosystem. They have called Obama’s planned visit to the region later this month—the first to the Arctic by a sitting US president—hypocritical, given the president’s focus on combating climate change since he took office.

Clinton’s willingness to come out against Arctic drilling is at odds with her non-answer on whether she supports construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. When pressed on the issue, she said that it would be inappropriate for her to express an opinion, since she was head of the Department of State when the pipeline review process began.

Clinton outlined her own climate change plan in July, which focuses on incentivizing renewable energy sources.

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Hillary Clinton Just Came Out Against Obama’s Arctic Drilling Plan

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These Kids Are Fed Up and They’re Not Going to Take It Anymore

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Twenty-one young people from around the country filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on Tuesday accusing the federal government of violating their rights by contributing to climate change through the promotion of fossil fuels.

The plaintiffs, who range in age from 8 to 19, filed their complaint in US District Court in Oregon. The complaint lists numerous defendants, including President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Defendants have for decades ignored their own plans for stopping the dangerous destabilization of our nation’s climate system,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint, which was filed with the help of the Oregon-based nonprofit Our Children’s Trust. “Defendants have known of the unusually dangerous risk of harm to human life, liberty, and property that would be caused by continued fossil fuel use and increase carbon dioxide emissions.”

While setting new policies to reduce carbon emissions, the Obama administration has often touted an “all of the above” approach to energy policy that includes oil, natural gas, coal and renewable energy, the complaint continues. By continuing to promote the development and use of fossil fuels, the federal government violated their constitutional rights, the young plaintiffs allege.

“What we are providing is an opportunity for them to participate in the civic democratic process and go to the branch of government that can most protect their rights,” said Julia Olson, the lead counsel on the case.

Olson, a public interest attorney, has been working closely with plaintiff Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, 15, since 2011. It was Martinez who originally asked Olson to prepare the case against the United States government.

Martinez, who serves as the youth director for Earth Guardians, spoke before the United Nations General Assembly in June and demanded world leaders take action against climate change. It was his third time addressing the United Nations.

Climate change threatens the forests surrounding Martinez’s home in Boulder, Colorado, and will lead to a scarcity of water, the complaint says. Another plaintiff, 18-year-old Alexander Lozak, said that extreme drought conditions are threatening the Oregon land that his great, great, great, great, grandmother first farmed.

“The health and bodily integrity of his family and their farm, which they rely on for food and as a source of income—as well as for their personal well-being—increasingly are harmed by climate change caused by Defendants,” the complaint says.

The youngest plaintiff, 8-year-old Levi Draheim, said he can no longer swim in the river near his home in Indialantic, Florida, because of an increase in bacteria and fish die-offs.

In response to the complaint, the Environmental Protection Agency defended its work to confront climate change, which it described as “the biggest environmental challenge we face.”

“That’s why President Obama launched the Climate Action Plan and why EPA is taking action with our Clean Power Plan: to give our kids and grandkids the cleaner, safer future they deserve,” Laura Allen, deputy press secretary for the EPA, said in a statement to The Huffington Post. “We have a moral obligation to leave a healthy planet for future generations.”

“A child born today will turn fifteen in the year 2030—the year when the full benefits of the Clean Power Plan will be realized,” Allen added. “The actions we take now will clear the way for that child—and kids everywhere—to learn, play, and grow up in a world that’s not only clean and safe, but full of opportunity.”

In early August, Obama called climate change “one of the key challenges of our lifetime.”

“We’re the first generation to feel the effects of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it,” the president told an audience at an event in the White House’s East Room, where he unveiled new regulations on emissions from power plants.

But in the eyes of Olson and the plaintiffs, that’s not enough. They are asking for a court order to force Obama to immediately implement a national plan to decrease atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million—a level many scientists agree is the highest safe concentration permissible—by the end of this century. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has already hit 400 parts per million.

“It’s really important that the court step in and do their jobs when there’s such intense violation of constitutional rights happening,” Olson said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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These Kids Are Fed Up and They’re Not Going to Take It Anymore

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Scott Walker Appointee Says Climate Action Is Pointless Because Volcanoes

Mother Jones

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

Wisconsin, which has been in the news this week for voting to bar staff of the state public lands board from talking about climate change, is getting a new state official who is skeptical of human contribution to climate change.

Gov. Scott Walker recently appointed Mike Huebsch to the state Public Service Commission, and Huebsch was asked about his views on climate change during his confirmation hearing this week. The Public Service Commission oversees utility issues in the state, including electricity, gas and water.

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“I believe that humans can have an impact to climate change, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the level of impact of just the natural progression of our planet,” Huebsch said, according to the Wisconsin Radio Network. “You know, the elimination of essentially every automobile would be offset by one volcano exploding. You have to recognize the multiple factors that go into climate change.”

Scientists have studied this issue fairly extensively, and concluded that emissions generated by human activity—specifically, the burning of fossil fuels—far surpass volcanoes when it comes to warming the planet. Human activities generate about 35 gigatons of greenhouse gases per year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, while all the world’s volcanoes combined spew something in the range of 0.13 to 0.44 gigatons per year. That means the human influence on the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is 80 to 270 times greater than that of volcanoes.

Huebsch, who previously served as the secretary of the Department of Administration under Walker, made the remark in a hearing of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee. During the hearing, he also questioned whether the state needs its renewable portfolio standard, which currently requires the state to draw 10 percent of its power from renewable sources.

“I’m not certain that policy is necessarily required in a law,” Huebsch said, according to the radio network. “Everybody recognizes the value of making sure that we have renewables available to us in a cost-effective way, and doing it in a way that’s going to maintain the grid and the infrastructure available for everyone.”

The Walker administration has been generally hostile to action on cutting emissions. Walker signed the Americans for Prosperity “No Climate Tax” pledge, and this week his administration joined a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency to block new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Walker critics say the appointment of someone who thinks volcanoes are causing climate change to the Public Service Commission is just another part of the likely 2016 presidential contender’s assault on environmental regulations.

“It’s not just that Gov. Walker opposes responsible action to try to slow the pace of global climate change and avoid its disastrous consequences if left unchecked,” Mike Browne, deputy director of the progressive group One Wisconsin Now, told The Huffington Post, “he’s also willing to put his cronies with similar science-denying views in charge of regulating an industry central to efforts to stem climate change.”

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Scott Walker Appointee Says Climate Action Is Pointless Because Volcanoes

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