Tag Archives: huffington

Arkansas Just Passed Its Own Indiana-Style ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’

Mother Jones

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Despite national outcry over a similar bill in Indiana, the Arkansas state Legislature on Tuesday passed its own ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’ which critics warn would allow business owners to discriminate against gay, lesbian, and transgendered people on religious grounds.

The bill now goes to Republican state Gov. Asa Hutchinson who vowed last week to sign it. Attempts by state lawmakers to add a provision that would prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians were blocked, according to the New York Times.

“The Arkansas and Indiana bills are virtually identical in terms of language and intent,” Human Rights Campaign legal director Sarah Warbelow told the Huffington Post. “They place LGBT people, people of color, religious minorities, women and many more people at risk of discrimination.”

Like Indiana, Arkansas is already facing mounting criticism over the bill. Walmart, which is based in Bentonville, and data-services company Acxiom have openly criticized the bill.

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Arkansas Just Passed Its Own Indiana-Style ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’

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Scott Walker Wants to Know If Wind Power Is Making People Sick

Mother Jones

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

The two-year, $68 billion budget proposal Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker unveiled Tuesday includes a request for $250,000 to study the health impacts of wind turbines.

Page 449 of the budget proposal includes a recommendation from the governor “directing the commission to conduct a study on wind energy system-related health issues.” The request states that a report should be submitted to the governor and legislature within a year after the budget goes into effect.

“The request for a Wind Energy Health Issues Study was included with the intent to provide the Public Service Commission with comprehensive information to consider as they receive requests for future wind energy projects,” said Laurel Patrick, Walker’s press secretary, in a statement to The Huffington Post.

Wind power in the state has been the subject of some public debate, drawing campaigns paid for by conservative groups with ties to fossil fuel interests on one side and by renewable energy advocates on the other.

Last October, health officials in Brown County declared that eight turbines located at the Shirley Wind Farm posed a health hazard to residents. The chairwoman of the local board of health cited “ear pain, ear pressure, headaches, nausea” and “sleep deprivation” as symptoms among nearby residents. Local reports suggest Brown is the first county in the country to reach such a conclusion.

The conservative Heartland Institute, which advocates for “free-market solutions,” has touted the Brown County decision, and used it as an opportunity to criticize the state for “imposing its wind power mandates.” Heartland has received funding in the past from fossil fuel interests. Walker has appeared as a guest speaker at the group’s events.

Previous studies have found no link between wind farms and increased health problems. The Wisconsin Wind Siting Council, an advisory group to the state’s public service commission, issued a report to the state legislature last fall that concluded that “some individuals residing in close proximity to wind turbines perceive audible noise and find it annoying,” but “it appears that this group is in the minority and that most individuals do not experience annoyance, stress, or perceived adverse health effects due to the operation of wind turbines.”

Canada’s health department also undertook a large-scale study of the subject in 2012, and concluded last year that wind turbine noise could not be linked to sleep disorders, illnesses, dizziness, ringing in the ears, migraines or headaches, perceived stress, or quality of life concerns. The only thing Canadian health officials did find to be related to wind turbine noise: annoyance with features of turbines, such as noise, shadows cast by the blades, blinking lights, vibrations and visual impacts. They found that louder turbines had a greater impact in that regard. A panel of health experts in Massachusetts also released a study on wind turbine health impacts in 2012 that reached similar conclusions.

Those studies have not diminished the complaints of some residents who live near turbines, however, and that has prompted additional research in this field.

Some renewable energy advocates in the state said they welcome the additional research funded by the Walker budget, as long as it’s based on sound science.

“All peer-reviewed studies to date indicate using the wind is a safe way to generate electricity, far safer for human health than other forms of electricity production, such as coal,” Tyler Huebner, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, told HuffPost. “If approved and funded, this study should be specifically designed so that the results would be acceptable to the appropriate peer-reviewed science or medical journal. That way, this study would meaningfully expand the body of knowledge on wind and health.”

Others were more skeptical of the governor’s motives. Chris Kunkle, the regional policy manager for the pro-wind group Wind on the Wires, said the study proposed in the budget is “just another example of Gov. Walker’s targeting of an industry that is incredibly successful in largely every other state in the Midwest.”

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Scott Walker Wants to Know If Wind Power Is Making People Sick

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Bill Nye: Screw Deflategate. You Should “Give a Fuck” About Climate Change Instead.

Mother Jones

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

Bill Nye is weighing in on Deflategate again, but this time he has a few props and a message to share about something far more important.

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick claimed atmospheric conditions and temperature changes could have caused footballs to lose air pressure during the team’s AFC Championship win over the Indianapolis Colts.

On Sunday, Nye said taking that much air out of a ball would require an inflation needle. But in a new video posted on Funny or Die, The Science Guy declared that “one test is worth 1,000 expert opinions,” and put some footballs into a fridge set to 51 degrees, or the temperature at the Jan. 18 game.

That’s where the video takes a very different turn.

“While we’re all obsessed with Deflategate, let’s keep in mind that there’s something about which you should give a fuck,” Nye said. “Yes, like Tom Brady, the world is getting hotter and hotter, and you know why? Because we humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

Nye then began listing things that contribute to climate change—including long-winded Deflategate press conferences—and followed that up with a rallying cry.

“You should vote for congressmen and senators that appreciate the threat of climate change and the rate at which the world is getting warmer, so that we can preserve the earth for humankind for generations to come,” Nye said.

Oh, and about those balls…

Nye took one out of the fridge, gave it a squeeze, pronounced it “pretty much the same,” and said “the Patriots probably bent the rules a little bit.”

Nye, who lived in Seattle for a number of years, ended the video with a message that’s bound to rankle the New England faithful: “Go Seahawks!”

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Bill Nye: Screw Deflategate. You Should “Give a Fuck” About Climate Change Instead.

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Yes, candy is evil, but denying yourself on Halloween will only make you healthy and boring

I Want Candy

Yes, candy is evil, but denying yourself on Halloween will only make you healthy and boring

30 Oct 2014 9:21 AM

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Yes, candy is evil, but denying yourself on Halloween will only make you healthy and boring

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Candy is bad for you and often unethical. It’s not even very satisfying. But here’s the thing: My mouth loves it. Three sentences into writing about candy, my salivary glands are spilling slobber. I’m craving a king-size Kit-Kat, or at least a bite of Krackle.

Last week, the Huffington Post blog alerted us once again to an ancient evil long practiced by the mega-confectioners that rule Halloween: Candy, like nearly everything that comes in a package, is made with lots of palm oil, a.k.a. orangutan blood. You probably know pervasive palm products arrive in our homes thanks to rainforest habitat hack-downs and horribly treated workers. But! Buying less candy is NOT the answer. Why not? Because — as fellow Gristfellow Eve Andrews reminded us in an story about the absurdity of lamenting toast’s environmental impact — conscious eating does not equal life hating.

The palm oil news (newsflash: not news) is disappointing but far from surprising. These days, candy makers serve up more tricks than treats. They trick well-intentioned buyers with meaningless green labels and fat-free candy corn. A few years back, Hershey’s got caught tricking foreign students into a “summer work and travel” program that’s effectively a summer of slavery in the company’s packing plants.

Earlier this week, funny guy John Oliver brilliantly reminded us how the sugar industry sneaks sugar into, well, everything, exacerbating our well-documented health problems. His point, though, was one Grist made four years ago, with a piece called “In defense of candy“: The problem is not sweets, it’s the candification of the rest of our food — from high-fructose corn syrupy drinks to mountains of sweetener in all types of secretly sugary packaged foods (like “healthy” granola bars and freezer pizza).

So: Big Candy is about as evil as the rest of Big Food, but candy itself is most definitely not the problem. And, even if it were, we’re not about to forego gobblin’ up Gobstoppers in our goblin suits this Hallow’s Eve. Giving out bullshit-healthy “treats” like Nutri-Grain bars is a good way to get your house TP’ed. Taking the actual-health-food route isn’t any better: It’s Halloween. (Ask your dentist if anyone likes her better for handing out baby carrots.)

Which all begs the question: What sweets do we buy for trick-or-treaters (and then inevitably keep for ourselves to snarf all evening and into the next week)? Spendy ethical chocolate, perhaps from a fair-trade cooperative? Soulless vegan M&M knockoffs? Home-cooked almond joy?

These are all yummy options for the mindful sweet-tooth, but is your 7-year-old neighbor in a Batman costume really going to notice he’s eating a carefully crafted eco-candy in the three-second interval between grabbing the wrapper and emptying its contents directly into his esophagus?

The HuffPost article misses the mark. After painstakingly describing the myriad threats palm oil poses to life and the climate, Diana Donlon of the Center for Food Safety earnestly touts a list of less tricky treats that won’t cost the planet as much, but will probably cost your wallet more than you want to spend on candy.

The solution isn’t to deny ourselves what we love and then spend wads of money on things we don’t love much more but enable us to emit smug out our buttholes. And the solution is definitely not to boycott candy. We all have sugar addictions to feed (guilty as charged).

Allow me to pontificate for one moment: In the fight for a more ecological and fair economy (and food system), voting with our puny candy change does not do much to destabilize the status quo. In fact, shitty candy is the exact right place for Big Sugar. Better to enjoy your once-a-year-binge. Or hell, fuel up on partially hydrogenated palm kernels any old time for a sugar-powered protest against deforestation and human rights abuses — or a transparent food system that doesn’t coddle Big Sugar.

In fact, leave the candy aside (or in my mouth): A better celebration of Halloween might start by not contributing to the $350 million Americans spend on brand-new costumes for pets. But I’ll save that for next Halloween (or tomorrow). Until then, check out all the great ideas from Grist’s guide to a green ‘ween.

Just remember: No handing out pumpkin hummus to trick-or-treaters, you ignorant hipsters.

Source:
Trick or Treat? The Frightening Climate Costs of Halloween Candy

, Huffington Post Blog.

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Yes, candy is evil, but denying yourself on Halloween will only make you healthy and boring

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The Craziest Things Republican Candidates Have Said About Climate Change In One Video

Mother Jones

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

Can the GOP’s 2014 candidates give a straight answer on climate change? It appears not.

Many Republican candidates have offered roundabout answers to climate change questions. Some have said the climate isn’t changing at all, while others have disputed research showing that human activity is driving those changes. Then there’s Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM), who said during a debate this year that he’s confident our climate isn’t changing because he has “Googled this issue.”

Lee Fang of The Republic Report put together a mash-up of Republican candidates’ greatest hits on climate change this year.

Watch it above.

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The Craziest Things Republican Candidates Have Said About Climate Change In One Video

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Polling Cage Fight Heats Up Today

Mother Jones

Nate Silver today:

I don’t like to call out other forecasters by name unless I have something positive to say about them….

But he wants to make an exception for one guy: Sam Wang. The guy is so preposterously deluded that something just has to be said:

That model is wrong — not necessarily because it shows Democrats ahead (ours barely shows any Republican advantage), but because it substantially underestimates the uncertainty associated with polling averages….In 2010, for example, Wang’s model made Sharron Angle the favorite in Nevada against Harry Reid; it estimated she was 2 points ahead in the polls, but with a standard error of just 0.5 points. If we drew a graphic based on Wang’s forecast like the ones we drew above,it would have Angle winning the race 99.997 percent of the time, meaning that Reid’s victory was about a 30,000-to-1 long shot. To be clear, the FiveThirtyEight model had Angle favored also, but it provided for much more uncertainty. Reid’s win came as a 5-to-1 underdog in our model instead of a 30,000-to-1 underdog in Wang’s; those are very different forecasts….If you want a “polls only” model that estimates the uncertainty more rigorously, I’d recommend The Huffington Post’s or Drew Linzer’s.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but Silver has managed to become truly torqued off about Wang. If Wang’s prediction of this year’s Senate race turns out to be more accurate than Silver’s, I almost hate to think what might happen. Silver’s head is going to explode or something. In any case, this is far more fun than you normally get from a couple of geeky poll aggregators.

By the way, Wang is now projecting that Democrats have an 81 percent chance of controlling the Senate after the election. Not by much, mind you: he figures they’re likely to hold exactly 50 seats, which would make Joe Biden the tiebreaker and give Democrats a bare majority. We’ll see.

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Polling Cage Fight Heats Up Today

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This Is What Happens When You Like Everything on Facebook

Mother Jones

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Fun fact about Facebook that people like me who study it a lot can tell you: You should be discerning with the Like button because the News Feed algorithm is pretty sensitive. This can be a struggle because logging onto Facebook is a bit like hiking up a very tall mountain with Satan. It shows you the world and says, “all these things I will give you if you fall down and Like them.” Facebook gives you an unending slew of opportunities to Like things because the more you Like, the more accurate the algorithm gets at predicting what you want to see in your News Feed. In general, it’s pretty good at this. However, it makes a few assumptions about your Like. The assumptions are (1) that you actually Like the posts you Like—you may not like some bad breaking-news alert, but you like that you received it, you like that you received it from the page that posted it; and (2) you are somewhat picky about what you Like. Maybe not too picky! But picky. If you Like everything, you Like nothing and it’s all meaningless.

What happens though if you Like everything? Every Candy Crush request? Every political post? Every bad joke? Every marriage announcement? Wired‘s Mat Honan gave it a shot and the answer is, well, things get crazy:

My News Feed took on an entirely new character in a surprisingly short amount of time. After checking in and liking a bunch of stuff over the course of an hour, there were no human beings in my feed anymore…Nearly my entire feed was given over to Upworthy and the Huffington Post…As I went to bed, I remember thinking “Ah, crap. I have to like something about Gaza,” as I hit the Like button on a post with a pro-Israel message.

By the next morning, the items in my News Feed had moved very, very far to the right. I’m offered the chance to like the 2nd Amendment and some sort of anti-immigrant page. I like them both. I like Ted Cruz. I like Rick Perry. The Conservative Tribune comes up again, and again, and again in my News Feed. I get to learn its very particular syntax.

The syntax he identifies will look familiar to anyone has spent any time on Facebook lately. The whole article is pretty interesting. Go read the whole thing.

Link to article:

This Is What Happens When You Like Everything on Facebook

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You’ll Be Shocked to Learn That Rupert Murdoch Is Wrong About Climate Change

Mother Jones

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

Rupert Murdoch shrugged off the notion that climate change is a big deal in an interview on Sunday.

Speaking to Sky News Australia (which he partially owns), Murdoch dismissed the alarming reports coming from scientists about the devastating impact that climate change is causing to the planet.

“We should approach climate change with great skepticism,” he said. “Climate change has been going on as long as the planet is here. There will always be a little bit of it.”

Murdoch acknowledged that the changing planet could wipe out small countries like the Maldives, but he had a quick fix for that.

“We can’t stop it, we’ve just got to stop building vast houses on seashores,” he added. “The world has been changing for thousands and thousands of years, it’s just a lot more complicated today because we are more advanced.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Murdoch’s Fox News has been found to give its viewers the most inaccurate information on climate change of any American network.

(h/t Guardian)

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You’ll Be Shocked to Learn That Rupert Murdoch Is Wrong About Climate Change

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Republicans confirm they don’t know squat about science

Don’t ask me

Republicans confirm they don’t know squat about science

John Boehner’s Flickr feed

House Speaker John Boehner — not a scientist

GOP politicians are using a new tactic when they talk about climate change: playing dumb.

As the Huffington Post reports, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told journalists on Thursday that he’s “not qualified to debate the science over climate change” — but he does know that Obama’s “prescription for dealing with changes in our climate” involves hurting the economy and “killing” American jobs.

This isn’t a wholly new approach, as Climate Progress point out:

“I’m not a scientist,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in 2009, his first in a long line of statements denying climate change. “I’m not sure, I’m not a scientist,” Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) said of climate change in 2010 (Grimm changed his mind on the issue this past April).

The tactic is an interesting (and seemingly effective) way for politicians to avoid acknowledging or denying the reality of climate change while still getting to fight against any regulation to stop it.

Politico has more recent examples:

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott has offered the response “I am not a scientist” on multiple occasions when the topic has come up lately. Even the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have put big money into fighting President Barack Obama’s energy and climate policies, disclaimed any pretense at scientific know-how when wealthy climate activist Tom Steyer challenged them to a debate on climate change.

“We are not experts on climate change,” Koch spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia said in an email to The Wichita Eagle this month. She added, “The debate should take place among the scientific community, examining all points of view and void of politics, personal attacks and partisan agendas.”

While some Republican politicians and their fossil-fuel overlords might be shying away from public attacks on climate science, they’re not shying away from public attacks on climate action. They are already attacking the new climate rules that President Obama plans to announce on Monday. They would rather doom us all to climate chaos than help the nation switch over to renewable energy — and that really is dumb.


Source
John Boehner: ‘I’m Not Qualified To Debate The Science Over Climate Change’, The Huffington Post
Republicans on climate science: Don’t ask us, Politico
Boehner Says He’s ‘Not Qualified’ To Talk About Climate Science. Here’s How Scientists Responded., Climate Progress

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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ABC, CBS, and NBC nightly news covered climate for less than two hours in 2013

ABC, CBS, and NBC nightly news covered climate for less than two hours in 2013

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If you got all your news from television, you might not even know that the planet is warming.

“Altogether, ABC, CBS, and NBC reported on global warming for nearly an hour and 42 minutes during their nightly newscasts in 2013,” Media Matters reported recently. “Out of a year’s worth of coverage, the Sunday shows focused on climate change for 27 minutes.”

When you see appalling figures like that, it can be tempting to find a television and yell at it. Problem is, it would just keep yell back at you about Justin Bieber, the Super Bowl, or what the weather was like today.

So members of the new Senate Climate Action Task Force went a step further, yelling at the network bosses about their pitiful climate coverage — in letter form.

“We are writing to express our deep concern about the lack of attention to climate change on such Sunday news shows as ABC’s ‘This Week,’ NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ CBS’s ‘Face the Nation,’ and ‘Fox News Sunday,’” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and eight Democratic lawmakers wrote in a Jan. 16 letter to the heads of the four networks.

“We are more than aware that major fossil fuel companies spend significant amounts of money advertising on your networks,” the senators wrote. “We hope this is not influencing you decision about the subjects discussed or the guests who appear on your network programming.”

The letter caught the attention of at least one of those network bosses. Huffington Post reports that CBS News President David Rhodes will meet with Sanders and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday.

Here’s hoping their talk is full of more than just hot air.


Source
STUDY: How Broadcast News Covered Climate Change In The Last Five Years, Media Matters
Jan. 16 letter to network bosses, Sen. Bernie Sanders
CBS Boss Will Meet With Senators Pushing More Climate Change Coverage, Huffington Post

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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ABC, CBS, and NBC nightly news covered climate for less than two hours in 2013

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