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Putin Is Wasting Blood and Treasure in Syria. Let Him.

by LazaroPaquin Posted on September 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Tom Friedman gets it right on Syria:

Today’s reigning cliché is that the wily fox, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has once again outmaneuvered the flat-footed Americans, by deploying some troops, planes and tanks to Syria to buttress the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to fight the Islamic State forces threatening him. If only we had a president who was so daring, so tough, so smart.

Yep. Charles Krauthammer, for example, is nonplussed. “What’s also unprecedented is the utter passivity of the United States,” he said yesterday. “The real story this week is what happened at the U.N., where Putin essentially stepped in and took over Syria. He’s now the leader.” And here’s another Republican on the same theme:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) says Russian President Vladimir Putin is escalating his support for the Assad regime in Syria because he thinks the Obama administration won’t stop him. “He sees no pushback, no price to pay,” said Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at the Washington Ideas Forum on Wednesday. “What he’s doing is raising popularity in his country.”

….The Foreign Relations chairman also criticized the Obama administration for missing opportunities in Syria, citing the decision to pull back from its redline after the regime used chemical weapons.

“We have missed opportunities,” he said….”That could have really changed the momentum at a time when we really did have a moderate opposition. “By us not taking that action, it took the wind out of their sails,” he said. “That was the biggest moment of opportunity … and that was mishandled.”

This has become almost pathological. Every time Putin does something, Republicans start wailing about how he’s taking charge, showing what a real leader does while Obama meekly sits back and does nothing. They assume that military action always shows strength, while avoiding military action always shows weakness. That’s just crazy. Let’s take a quick survey of the real situation here:

Syria is the last ally Russia has left in the Middle East. Putin didn’t suddenly increase his military support of Assad as a show of brilliant grand strategy. He did it because he was in danger of losing his very last client state in the Middle East. This is a desperate gamble to hold on to at least a few shreds of influence there.

Fred Kaplan: “In the past decade, Russia has lost erstwhile footholds in Libya and Iraq, failed in its attempt to regain Egypt as an ally….and would have lost Syria as well except for its supply of arms and advisers to Assad….Syria is just one of two countries outside the former Soviet Union where Russia has a military base….His annexation of Crimea has proved a financial drain. His incursion into eastern Ukraine (where many ethnic Russians would welcome re-absorption into the Motherland) has stalled after a thin slice was taken at the cost of 3,000 soldiers. His plan for a Eurasian Economic Union, to counter the influence of the west’s European Union, has failed to materialize. His energy deal with China, designed to counter the west’s sanctions against Russian companies, has collapsed.

Intervention is unpopular with Russians. Corker is dead wrong about Putin doing this to curry favor with the public. On the contrary, they don’t care about Syria and are reluctant to lose any lives helping Assad. Putin is assisting Assad despite the domestic difficulties it will create for him, not because he expects the Russian masses to rally to the flag.

Amanda Taub: “A recent poll by Moscow’s Levada Center shows that only a small minority of Russians support giving Bashar al-Assad direct military support. Only 39 percent of respondents said they supported Russia’s policy toward the Assad regime. When asked what Russia should do for Assad, 69 percent opposed direct military intervention. A tiny 14 percent of respondents said that Russia should send troops or other direct military support to Syria.”

Putin is targeting anti-Assad rebels, not ISIS. For public consumption, Putin claims that he’s helping the US in its counterterrorism operations against ISIS. This is obvious baloney, since Russian jets aren’t operating in areas where ISIS is strong. They’re operating in areas where anti-Assad rebels are strong.

Andrew Rettman: “Philip Breedlove, Nato’s top military commander, believes the Latakia build-up has nothing to do with counter-terrorism….’As we see the very capable air defence systems beginning to show up in Syria, we’re a little worried about another A2/AD bubble being created in the eastern Mediterranean,’ he said.

‘These very sophisticated air defence capabilities are not about IS, they’re about something else … high on Mr. Putin’s list in Syria is preserving the regime against those that are putting pressure on the regime.'”

The benefits of getting further entangled in Syria are….what? Russia may be concerned about Syria becoming a breeding ground for terrorists who then make their way up to Russia. But that’s about it. Putin isn’t going to win Syria’s civil war, and Assad will become a bottomless pit of demands for more military support. Aside from winning the admiration of American conservatives, it’s hard to see Putin getting anything of real worth out of this.

The same is true of the United States. There has never been a cohesive “moderate opposition” that would have ousted Assad if only we had supported them earlier. Republicans keep repeating this myth, but when they had a chance to support strikes on Syria in 2013, they didn’t do it. That shows about how much they really believe this. Nor has there ever been a chance that the United States could topple Assad short of committing tens of thousands of ground troops, something that nobody support. “Arming the opposition” is the last refuge of hawkish dead-enders: something that sounds tough but rarely has much effect. You mostly hear it from people who don’t have the courage to recommend ground troops but are desperate to sound like they’re backing serious action.

The United States doesn’t have the power to fix the Middle East. We can nudge here and there, but that’s about all. As Friedman says, Obama may have caused some of his own problems by talking a bigger game than he’s willing to play, but he’s still right not to play. If Vladimir Putin is so afraid of losing his last foothold in the Middle East that he’s willing to make a reckless and expensive gamble in the Syrian quagmire, let him. It’s an act of peevishness and fear, not of brilliant geopolitical gamesmanship. For ourselves, the better part of wisdom is to stay out. Modest action would be useless, and our national interest simply isn’t strong enough to justify a major intervention. Like it or not, war is not always the answer.

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Putin Is Wasting Blood and Treasure in Syria. Let Him.

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Yet Another Look at How Our Kids Are Really Doing in School

by MabelSloman Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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So how are our kids doing? I mean, really doing? In particular, how are our black high-school kids doing at math?

A few days ago I showed the results for the Long-Term NAEP math test. This is a version of the NAEP that’s stayed fairly similar over the years so that it’s possible to see long-term trends. But Bob Somerby isn’t buying it. Why not look at the Main NAEP instead, since that’s the standard version of the NAEP that usually gets all the headline?

There are two reasons. First, the Main NAEP starts in 1990, so if you want to see longer-term trends, it’s useless. More to the point, it’s not even that useful for medium-term trends because there was a major break in 2005: the test changed and the scale changed, from a 500-point scale to a 300-point scale. So what happened between 2000 and 2005? No one knows. There are no official comparisons.

Still, you can do this: look at the change from 1990-2000 and the change from 2005-2013. That should give you a reasonable idea of what’s happened over the past 25 years. When Somerby does this, he gets 6.11 + 5.24 = +11.34 points. That’s a pretty good gain. By contrast, when you look at the Long-Term NAEP scores over that same period, you get a drop of -1 points. That’s a huge difference. What’s going on?

Let’s take a crack at figuring this out. The long-term scores are easy: neither the test nor the scale have changed, so you just look at the numbers and multiply all of them by 3/5 to norm them to a 300-point scale. For the main test, we need to norm the 1990-2000 scores to a 300-point scale and then paste them together with the 2005-2013 scores. The chart on the right shows what you get.

On the long-term test, scores are still down by about 1 point. Nothing much has changed. But on the main test, scores are up by only 1 point instead of 11 points. What happened? Two things:

The 6-point increase from 1990-2000 becomes a 3.6-point increase when you renorm it to a 300-point scale.
There’s an unrecorded drop of 7.4 points between 2000 and 2005.

Altogether, this shaves about 10 points from the raw 11-point gain. If that’s accurate, it means there’s no mystery. One test is up by a point and the other is down by a point. Since these tests have a margin of error of about one point, that’s close enough to identical not to worry about.

Needless to say, this leaves us with some questions. Is it acceptable to casually renorm scores by simple multiplication? Is the drop between 2000 and 2005 real? Or is it because the test got harder? Why do scores on the main test bounce around considerably while scores on the long-term test stay pretty stable? There hardly seems to be any correlation between scores on the two tests at all.

Almost certainly, experts would be aghast at all this renorming and extrapolation. But I think it gets us closer to the truth. And one way or another, you have to account for that 2000-05 gap. If you ignore it, you’re ignoring what could be a substantial part of the story.

In any case, this is why I think you’re better off looking at the long-term test if you want to see long-term trends. That’s what it’s designed for, and you don’t have to monkey with the data. Either way, though, we end up with pretty much the same story: black test scores (and white scores and Hispanic scores) have been pretty stagnant since 1990 for high school seniors. This doesn’t mean the gains in earlier grades are nothing to celebrate. They are, and reporters should pay more attention to them. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter what the score is in the sixth inning if your bullpen consistently blows big leads. What we care about is how well educated our kids are when they leave school and enter the world. Until our high schools are able to build on the big gains they’re inheriting from middle schools, we’re not going to see any improvement on that score.

POSTSCRIPT: If you want to look at the raw data yourself, there are plenty of ways to do it. However, the following printed reports provide easy access to all of it:

Main NAEP, 1990-2000
Main NAEP, 2005-2013
Long-Term NAEP
Standard errors

For what it’s worth, two more notes. First, the main test is given to 12th graders. The long-term test is given to 17-year-olds, who are both 11th and 12th graders. Also: since 2000, the two tests have been given a year apart. Neither of these is likely to affect scores or trends in any material way.

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Yet Another Look at How Our Kids Are Really Doing in School

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Fired Scott Walker Aide Is Tweeting Up a Shitstorm About What He Did Wrong

by anunturigratuiteonlinebucuresti Posted on September 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will announce at 6 p.m. Monday that he is dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The move is surprising—Walker was, until recently, a favorite among major Republican donors—but not unforeseeable. In the past two months, Walker’s support in the Iowa caucuses, the first voting contest of the race, has plummeted, from first in the polls to seventh. His campaign has already racked up six figures in debt to campaign vendors. And he clocked the least amount of time out of the 11 Republicans who shared the stage in the latest GOP presidential debate.

Immediately after the announcement, Liz Mair, a digital strategist for Walker’s bid who was fired for tweeting negatively about Iowa, began spouting her thoughts about why Walker’s campaign failed to attract enough money and momentum to keep it afloat. For example, “Hiring people who spent a lot to build out a massive operation that would not be sustainable unless financing remained amazing forever.” Here’s a selection:

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Fired Scott Walker Aide Is Tweeting Up a Shitstorm About What He Did Wrong

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We’re Obliterating Global Temperature Records, and There’s No End in Sight

by MalcolmSpell Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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One after another, each of 2015’s summer months have been among the hottest ever recorded on Earth. And a trio of new studies out this week, from three different countries, confirms that temperature records just keep tumbling—falling victim to an unusually massive El Niño climate event gathering strength in the Pacific, as well as unrelenting man-made climate change, which is cooking the entire system.

On Monday, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said that this August was the hottest August worldwide since 1891, when its records begin. August was 0.81 degrees above the 1981-2010 average, smashing 2014’s record.

Data from Japan’s Meteorological Agency shows 2015’s August was the hottest August in more than 120 years. JMA

Also on Monday, NASA confirmed that scientists have never recorded a hotter summer than this year’s. When taken together, temperatures for June, July, and August were 1.4 degrees hotter than the long-term average, passing the previous hottest summer, 1998. Unlike Japan’s study, NASA says this August was very narrowly the second hottest August on record (behind 2014).

And finally, major research from the United Kingdom’s Met Office released this week concluded that 2015’s overall temperatures are running at or near record levels (at about 0.684 degrees above the 1981-2010 average)—which suggests the next two years could be the hottest on record around the world.

“We know natural patterns contribute to global temperatures in any given year, but the very warm temperatures so far this year indicate the continued impact of (manmade) greenhouse gases,” said Stephen Belcher from the Met Office, in a news release. “With the potential that next year could be similarly warm, it’s clear that our climate continues to change.”

The Met Office says this year’s El Niño— the global climate event that occurs every five to seven years, bringing drought to places like Australia while heaping rain on the western United States—is likely contributing to record temperatures. (Sadly, it’s unlikely to help quench California enough to break the drought.)

The El Niño itself could break records. “Recent oceanic and atmospheric indicators are at levels not seen since the 1997–98 El Niño,” Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said on Tuesday, adding that the big climate event is unlikely to subside before early 2016.

El Niño is also probably contributing to the unusually active hurricane season in the Pacific. The Met Office says tropical cyclone activity across the northern hemisphere this year is about 200 percent above normal. Six hurricanes have crossed the central Pacific, more than in any other year on record.

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We’re Obliterating Global Temperature Records, and There’s No End in Sight

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Seattle Teacher Strike Is the Latest Front Line in America’s Public School Wars

by KelleeKarr3 Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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UPDATE: Tuesday, September 15, 2015, 6 PM, P.S.T.: Nearly twelve hours after Seattle’s school district and teachers union bargaining team reached a tentative agreement, the union’s leadership and representative assembly voted to recommend its ratification and end the strike. School will start on Thursday for Seattle schools, but the strike won’t be officially over until Sunday, when the full union membership has a chance to vote on the contract agreement.

Seattle’s first teacher strike in 30 years appears to be nearing its end. After months of contract negotiations between the city’s school district and teachers union broke down, Seattle teachers unanimously voted to go on strike last Wednesday, shuttering the city’s schools for five days so far. Bargaining between the district and the teachers union resumed this weekend, and after negotiating through the night, the two sides reached a tentative agreement early this morning.

Neither the district nor the union has released details of the agreement, and teachers will continue picketing today until the Seattle Education Association’s leadership can review the proposed contract and make recommendations to its membership of 5,000 teachers, specialists, paraprofessionals, and administrative workers. Here’s what’s at stake, for teachers and students alike, in the first teacher strike in a major US city since Chicago’s 2012 strike.

Why are Seattle teachers on strike?

The conflict between striking teachers and the school district is in part about teachers’ salaries. Seattle teachers have not received cost-of-living raises in more than six years, despite Seattle’s skyrocketing rents. Many teachers, whose salaries range from $44,000 to more than $86,000, have struggled to afford life in the city. Furthermore, the district wants to increase the length of the school day by 20 minutes without adequately compensating teachers for the extra time, according to union negotiators.

But the union’s grievances extend beyond pay. It is also seeking to address racial and social inequality in Seattle schools by setting up equity teams to study achievement gaps and discipline trends in 60 of the district’s 97 schools. Recess has also became a sticking point: At some schools, students get as little as 15 minutes for lunch and recess, forcing them to choose between food and play. Schools with more low-income students and students of color tend to have less recess than wealthier, whiter ones. The union wants the contract to ensure that every elementary school student gets at least 30 minutes of time to play outside the classroom. Finally, capping the caseloads for school psychologists and specialists, like occupational and speech therapists, who are often disproportionately overworked at underprivileged schools, is another demand.

The union’s proposed contract also addresses over-testing by imposing limits on the number of tests students take and increasing teacher involvement in deciding which tests are given and how they are used. A recent Mother Jones investigation found that the average American student now takes 10 to 20 standardized tests a year.

How did the school district respond?

It initially threatened to bring legal action against the teachers, but finally decided not to. Before negotiations resumed, members of the district’s school board argued that while they would like to pay teachers more, they “simply do not have the funds.” They pointed to a statewide education funding crisis that led the state supreme court to hold the state legislature in contempt for failing to fund basic education for Washington’s children. The state Supreme Court is currently fining the legislature $100,000 a day for not fulfilling its constitutionally mandated responsibility to fund schools adequately. Washington is one of seven states without an income tax; many people point to this as the main reason that the state hasn’t been able to come up with the money. Meanwhile, the school district has been using a patchwork of local taxes to raise funds to pay teachers.

The district has also argued that students need more classroom time in order to meet state standards, noting that Seattle schools already have among the shortest school days in the state.

So is this really just the state’s fault?

The union recognizes that lack of state funding is part of the problem, but the they have accused the district of exaggerating how much money teachers are asking for. They argue that despite the state funding fiasco, the school district can make budget adjustments that prioritize teachers and use some of the nearly $40 million that the legislature was able to allocate to the district earlier this year to allow teachers to earn a higher wage.

The issues in the contract dispute are part of a larger national debate over education that’s been playing out in Seattle, too. On one side, local billionaires like Bill Gates have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to push Common Core standards and testing in order to create data-driven ways to evaluate teachers and students. On the other side, teachers in Seattle and elsewhere have pushed back against overtesting, saying standardized tests are expensive, take up valuable class time, and measure racial and socioeconomic inequality better than aptitude.

Is this related to the state supreme court’s charter school ruling?

Last week, the state supreme court ruled that charter schools were unconstitutional because they use public funds without oversight from an elected governing board. This news is not directly related to the teacher strike, but many critics of using public money for charter schools, which were first made legal in Washington by a 2012 referendum, also oppose Common Core standards. And many Common Core advocates, including Gates, have also helped bring charter schools to Seattle. One charter school opened in Washington last year, and eight more were slated to open this school year, but their future is now uncertain.

What’s next?

Until union leadership reviews the tentative agreement and its members’ representatives are able to vote on the proposed contract, teachers will continue to picket and schools will continue to stay closed. If the contract is approved, schools could open their doors on Thursday, but there is still a chance it will be voted down. We will update this post as new details emerge.

This post has been updated.

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Seattle Teacher Strike Is the Latest Front Line in America’s Public School Wars

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Study asks: What would it take for a nuclear-powered world?

by ShennaMcmullin Posted on September 14, 2015

Study asks: What would it take for a nuclear-powered world?

By on 14 Sep 2015commentsShare

If renewable energy sources were characters from The Big Lebowski (stay with me here), solar would be The Dude — an insufferably chill ringleader whose reliability and good nature make him the obvious hero. Wind would be Donny — a well-intentioned naif just doing his thing in the face of non-stop criticism. And nuclear would be Walter, a fear-inducing loose cannon who puts everyone on edge but is ultimately the guy you’d want by your side when shit hits the fan.

And, folks, shit is hitting the fan. The world is burning, ice sheets are melting, and delusional narcissists are trying to take control of the country. So in a study published in the journal PLOS One, two researchers mapped out what exactly it would take for the world to go completely nuclear. Scientific American has the scoop:

“If we are serious about tackling emissions and climate change, no climate-neutral source should be ignored,” argues Staffan Qvist, a physicist at Uppsala University, who led the effort to develop this nuclear plan. “The mantra ‘nuclear can’t be done quickly enough to tackle climate change’ is one of the most pervasive in the debate today and mostly just taken as true, while the data prove the exact opposite.”

Qvist and his colleague Barry Brook, a professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Tasmania, studied the rapid adoption of nuclear energy in Sweden and France to make their projections. Sweden started researching nuclear power back in the ’60s as a way to reduce its need for foreign oil and protect its rivers from hydroelectric dams. Within 24 years, the country was generating half of its electricity from nuclear power. France, also wanting to rely less on foreign fuels, built 59 reactors in the ’70s and ’80s, and now, 80 percent of the country’s electricity comes from nuclear power, Scientific American reports.

Here’s what that means for the rest of the world:

Based on numbers pulled by the research team from the experience of Sweden and France and scaled up to the globe, a best-case scenario for conversion to 100 percent nuclear power could enable the world to stop burning fossil fuels and start fissioning uranium for electricity within 34 years. Requirements for this shift of course would include expanded uranium mining and processing, a build-out of the electric grid as well as a commitment to develop and build fast reactors—nuclear technology that operates with faster neutrons and therefore can handle radioactive waste, such as plutonium, for fuel as well as create its own future fuel. “No other carbon-neutral electricity source has been expanded anywhere near as fast as nuclear,” Qvist says.

But this doesn’t seem like a very likely scenario, given the current state of nuclear power around the world. Here in the U.S., nuclear power is on the decline because natural gas and wind power are so cheap, Scientific American reports, while nuclear power in Japan is still limping back to life after the Fukushima disaster. Germany, meanwhile, is phasing out nuclear power completely, and although China is actively growing its nuclear fleet, the country is still drowning in coal power.

Of course, economics aren’t the only reason nuclear is on the decline in so many places. Safety concerns, which can be overblown, also play a major role, Brook told Scientific American:

“As long as people, nations put fear of nuclear accidents above fear of climate change, those trends are unlikely to change,” Brook adds. But “no renewable energy technology or energy efficiency approach has ever been implemented on a scale or pace required.”

And so here we are, at a crossroads, where we must ask ourselves: Is it time to deploy Walter? Sure, in a perfect world, The Dude would get the job done on his own without any drama, and we’d all live happily ever after. But The Dude’s running out of time, and while Walter has had some Fukushimas of his own, he won’t hesitate to beat the shit out of some nihilists if we ask him to. And should The Dude ultimately fall down on the job and get an ominous warning in the form of a severed toe, good ole’ Walter will always be there to pick up the pieces:

Source:

The World Really Could Go Nuclear

, Scientific American.

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Study asks: What would it take for a nuclear-powered world?

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Germany Closes Its Border With Austria, Hoping to Stop the Refugee Flow

by JohnieC64u Posted on September 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Two weeks ago I wrote about what might happen if Germany decided to start policing its borders again in response to the huge numbers of refugees and migrants entering the country. Now we’re going to find out.

The German government has announced that the country is closing its border with Austria and also suspending train traffic its southern neighbor, the route by which tens of thousands of refugees have entered Germany in recent days. Those borders have been open for nearly 20 years under the Schengen Agreement, which turned most of the European Union into one large free-travel zone with no internal border checks. Until now, you could go from Berlin to Amsterdam or Paris much like you were going from New York to DC. Along with the euro, the Schengen zone is considered one of the EU’s most important achievements, a powerful symbol of European unity as a well as a major booster of trade and tourism. All of that now hangs in the balance as the refugee crisis strains internal EU politics.

German politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, have been hinting at closing German borders for weeks, hoping to get the EU moving on a quota system that would send more of the refugees to other countries. Germany is currently taking in the majority of asylum-seekers and migrants, while other EU countries are resisting. Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel newspaper that Germany is “reaching the limits of its capabilities” and called for an EU-wide response to the refugee influx. “By the time thousands of people are walking on the Autobahn, it’s too late,” he said.

Reinstating border checks is sign of how frustrated the German government is with its neighbors—and how divisive the refugee problem is within the EU. “The migrants have to accept that they cannot simply choose an EU member country,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said while announcing the new policy.

Germany says the border closure is temporary. But it’s the first major EU country to take such a step to deal with an ongoing crisis like this, and many are wondering whether it will prompt other Schengen countries to do the same.

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Germany Closes Its Border With Austria, Hoping to Stop the Refugee Flow

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Federal Court to EPA: No, You Can’t Approve This Pesticide That Kills Bees

by DavidPigdon Posted on September 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, a federal appeals court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of a pesticide called sulfoxaflor. Marketed by agrichemical giant Dow AgroSciences, sulfoxaflor belongs to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which have been implicated by a growing weight of evidence in the global crisis in bee health. In a blunt opinion, the court cited the “precariousness of bee populations” and “flawed and limited data” submitted by Dow on the pesticide’s effects on beleaguered pollinating insects.

Before winning approval for sulfoxaflor back in 2013, the company hyped the product to investors, declaring that it “addresses a $2 billion market need currently unmet by biotech solutions,” particularly for cotton and rice.

US beekeepers were less enthusiastic—a group of national beekeeping organizations, along with the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, quickly sued the EPA to withdraw its registration of sulfoxaflor, claiming that the EPA itself had found sulfoxaflor to be “highly toxic to honey bees, and other insect pollinators.”

Thursday’s ruling, a response to that suit, took their side. It applies only to sulfoxaflor, which Dow markets as a foliar spray on a variety of crops, including cotton, soybean, citrus, stone fruit, nuts, grapes, potatoes, vegetables, and strawberries. It has no bearing on the EPA’s equally controversial approval of other neonics like clothianidin and imidacloprid, which are widely used as seed treatments on the two most prominent US crops: corn and soybeans.

But Greg Loarie, an attorney for EarthJustice who argued the case for the beekeeper’s coalition, told me that the decision has broad significance because the ruling “makes clear” that when the EPA is assessing new pesticides, it must assess robust data on the health impacts on the entire hive, not just on individual adult bees.

In its opinion, the court rebuked the EPA for approving sulfoxaflor despite “inconclusive or insufficient data on the effects…on brood development and long-term colony health.” That’s a problem, the court added, because pesticides can cause subtle harm to bees that don’t kill them but that “ripple through the hive,” which is an “interdependent ‘superorganism.'” Indeed, many independent studies have demonstrated just such effects—that low-level exposure to neonics is “sub-lethal” to individual bees but compromises long-term hive health.

“The EPA doesn’t have that hive-level information on very many insecticides, if any,” Loarie said.

And in the case of sulfoxaflor, the agency didn’t try very hard to get that information. In January 2013, because of major gaps in research on the new chemical’s effect on bees, the EPA decided to grant sulfoxaflor “conditional registration” and ordered Dow to provide more research. And then a few months later, the agency granted sulfoxaflor unconditional registration—even though “the record reveals that Dow never completed the requested additional studies,” the court opinion states.

In an even more scathing addendum to the court’s main opinion, Circuit Judge N.R. Smith added, “I am inclined to believe the EPA…decided to register sulfoxaflor unconditionally in response to public pressure for the product and attempted to support its decision retroactively with studies it had previously found inadequate.” The judge added, “Such action seems capricious.”

Sulfoxaflor’s twisted path through the EPA’s approval process isn’t the first time the agency has green-lighted a neonicotinoid pesticide under dodgy circumstances, as I showed in this 2010 piece on clothianidin, a widely marketed pesticide marketed by Dow’s European rival, Bayer.

In 2013—the same year the EPA approved sulfoxaflor—the European Union placed a two-year moratorium on clothianidin and two other major neonics, citing pollinator health concerns. For a study released last year, the US Geological Survey found neonic traces in all the Midwestern rivers and streams it tested, declaring them to be “both mobile and persistent in the environment.” In addition to harming bees, neonics may also harm birds and fish, Canadian researchers have found.

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Federal Court to EPA: No, You Can’t Approve This Pesticide That Kills Bees

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3 Hurricanes Are Hitting the Pacific at the Same Time, and the View From Space Is Amazing

by CQYAidanaxaaivp Posted on September 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are marveling at a particularly awesome view from orbit right now. This week marks the first time that three major hurricanes—dubbed Kilo, Ignacio, and Jimena—have been captured simultaneously churning across the Pacific Ocean, according to the United Kingdom’s Met Office. (The National Hurricane Center agrees.)

The storms are being fueled by warmer waters caused by this year’s El Niño, the global climate event that occurs every five to seven years, bringing drought to places like Australia, while heaping rain on the Western United States. The Met Office says temperature anomalies in this part of the world are currently at their highest since 1997-98.

According to the Met Office: “Hurricanes Kilo, Ignacio and Jimena were all at category 4 simultaneously in the Pacific east of the International Dateline—the first time three major hurricanes have been recorded at the same time in this region.” The Met Office says tropical cyclone activity across the northern hemisphere this year is about 200 percent above normal. Six hurricanes have crossed the central Pacific, more than in any other year on record, the agency says.

The view from space is incredible:

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says manmade global warming is likely to drive up the number of intense hurricanes like these around the world—despite a predicted overall drop in all types of weaker, tropical storms. By the end of the century, hurricanes will likely produce substantially higher rainfall—up to 20 percent more—than present-day hurricanes.

So far, Hawaii appears to be safe, and no humans are in the paths of destruction, allowing us to enjoy the spectacular view.

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3 Hurricanes Are Hitting the Pacific at the Same Time, and the View From Space Is Amazing

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The Raging Future of American Wildfires

by Myrna Posted on August 27, 2015

The risk of major blazes could increase 600 percent by mid-century, say scientists. Tom Reichner/Shutterstock On the one hand, the warming atmosphere is predicted to drench many parts of the U.S. with extreme rain. On the other, for much of the year it’ll likely desiccate vast areas into brittle tinder, setting the stage for more frequent and powerful wildfires. Increasingly balmy temperatures and a steady lengthening of the wildfire season (peep what’s happening this year in Alaska and Canada) will light a flame under America’s fire potential. By mid-century, large hunks of the country—including the West, the Gulf Coast, and the forested Great Lakes—could see a sixfold increase in weeks with a threat of major fires, according to researchers at the University of Idaho, the U.S. Forest Service, and elsewhere. Using climate models, the scientists project a future where “very large fires” have ample opportunity to explode, according to a paper in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. This class of conflagration is responsible for charring most of the land in many parts of the nation. Aside for the above-mentioned places, the researchers say, the risk of large fires could intensify in Northern California’s Klamath Mountains and Sierra Nevada and from Florida up the East Coast. Read the rest at CityLab. See more here:  The Raging Future of American Wildfires ; ; ;

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The Raging Future of American Wildfires

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