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Robots Aren’t Here Yet, But That Doesn’t Mean They Never Will Be

by Silvester Mongan Posted on February 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Robert Gordon is one our preeminent scholars of economic growth. He’s also a well-known pessimist about the future: he believes that well-known trends in demographics, education, inequality, and government debt will suppress growth rates over the next several decades.

Fair enough. But what about the possibility that advances in robotics and artificial intelligence will have a huge impact between now and 2050? In a new paper, Gordon dismisses the idea in a few disdainful paragraphs. Here’s an excerpt:

Much attention has been paid in the popular media to small robots since “Baxter,” the inexpensive $25,000 robot, made his debut on the TV program 60 Minutes….Reflections on Baxter lead to skepticism that it/he is a major threat to American jobs outside of routine tasks in manufacturing, which only makes up 8 percent of American employment. For his demonstration at the TED conference in Long Beach in late February, 2013, Baxter had to be packed in a suitcase. He could not get his own boarding pass and walk onto the plane. This is the problem with robots — they are both mentally and physically limited to narrow tasks. They can think but can’t walk, or they can walk but can’t think.

….This lack of multitasking ability is dismissed by the robot enthusiasts — just wait, it is coming. Soon our robots will not only be able to win at Jeopardy but also will be able to check in your bags at the sky cap station at the airport, thus displacing the skycaps. But the physical tasks that humans can do are unlikely to be replaced in the next several decades by robots.

….What is often forgotten is that we are well into the computer age, and every Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and local supermarket has self-check-out lines that allow you to check out your groceries or paint cans by scanning them through a robot. But except for very small orders it takes longer, and so people still voluntarily wait in line for a human instead of taking the option of the no-wait self-checkout-lane. The same theme — that the most obvious uses of robots and computers have already happened — pervades commerce. Airport baggage sorting belts are mechanized, as is most of the process of checking in for a flight.

I promise that this is a fair excerpt (and of course you can decide for yourself by clicking on the link). Gordon’s entire argument is that computers were invented a long time ago and we still don’t have smart robots today. And if we don’t have them by now, we won’t have them anytime soon.

This is an embarrassingly bad argument. I can somehow imagine a circa-1870 version of Gordon arguing that all this folderol about electricity is ridiculous. Why, we’ve been studying electricity for over a century, and what do we have to show for it? Some clunky batteries, the telegraph, a few arc lamps with limited use, and a steady supply of techno-optimist inventors who keep telling us that any day now they’ll invent a practical generator that will replace steam engines and change the world. Don’t believe it, folks.1

It’s funny. Every time I write about AI, I get email from some friends and regular readers telling me that I’m all wet. And these correspondents have good arguments. I don’t happen to think they’re right, but they’re good arguments from people who have obviously thought about this stuff. Gordon, however, doesn’t even pretend to engage with the AI literature. He just says that since the current level of AI is primitive, it’s obviously all a bunch of bunk.

But if that’s all you’re going to say, why even bother? A little over a year ago Gordon wrote an op-ed in which he dismissed the prospects of several evolving technologies, but didn’t even mention AI. At the time, I wrote that this was a blinkered view: “At the very least, you need to acknowledge it, and then explain why you think it will never happen, or why it won’t produce a lot of future growth even if it does.” This time around, Gordon hasn’t ignored AI completely, but he certainly hasn’t taken it remotely seriously.2 This is, to be frank, not the work of a scholar who seriously wants to engage with the prospects of future technological growth. It’s the work of someone who’s just checking off a box in order to fend off critics of his pre-ordained conclusion.

1Ironically, Gordon writes that in the mid-1870s everyone knew what was coming: “Inventors were feverishly working on turning the telegraph into the telephone, trying to find a way to transform electricity coming from batteries into the power source to create electric light, trying to find a way of harnessing the power of petroleum to create a lightweight and powerful internal combustion engine. The 1875 diaries of Edison, Bell, and Benz are full of such ‘we’re almost there’ speculation. Once that was achieved, the dream since Icarus of human flight became a matter of time and experimentation.” But for some reason, similar feverish work on intelligent machines in the 2010s is treated as obviously going nowhere.

2This would actually be fine if he’d just say so. AI is speculative enough that it would be perfectly reasonable to simply treat it as a wild card: write a paragraph acknowledging that, yes, it could upend everything, but that this particular paper is a look into a future in which AI remains immature for the foreseeable future. Nothing wrong with that.

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Robots Aren’t Here Yet, But That Doesn’t Mean They Never Will Be

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America’s natural gas system is super-leaky, and that’s bad news for the climate

by Cindy Lin Posted on February 14, 2014

America’s natural gas system is super-leaky, and that’s bad news for the climate

By

Beechwood Photography

Like a free-riding bus passenger whose expired ticket gets overlooked by the driver, the natural gas industry has been getting a free pass from the EPA for its global warming impacts for well over a decade.

A new mega-analysis of 20 years worth of research suggests that the EPA is underestimating the fossil fuel’s climate impacts by 25 to 75 percent.

The problem with the EPA’s math doesn’t concern the burning of natural gas, which produces less carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels (but way more than solar panels or wind turbines). The problem is in the leaky systems that extract and transport the fuel.

The EPA relies on 1990s estimations to calculate the climate-warming effects of the natural gas industry. A new paper published in the journal Science concludes that the EPA is severely underestimating the amount of natural gas that leaks into the atmosphere during drilling, processing, and distribution.

And those leaks are important, because natural gas is basically just methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, responsible for perhaps a fifth of global warming since the 18th century. Levels of methane detected in the atmosphere have been rising rapidly since 2007, although scientists aren’t quite sure why. Some of it appears to be oozing out of the ground, in some cases because global warming is breaking down icy sheaths that had helped keep it in place, but the livestock and fossil fuel industries are also playing major roles.

“People who go out and actually measure methane pretty consistently find more emissions than we expect,” said Stanford University researcher Adam Brandt, the lead author of the new paper. “Atmospheric tests covering the entire country indicate emissions around 50 percent more than EPA estimates. And that’s a moderate estimate.”

The scientists didn’t just rely on studies of methane levels in the atmosphere. They also looked at studies that attempted to quantify the amount of natural gas that escapes from fracked wells, pipelines, and other infrastructure.

The findings were so stark that the researchers dispute the widespread assumption that natural gas–burning buses are better for the climate than those that burn diesel. 

Still, when it comes to power plants, the authors say it is better to switch over to natural gas than to continue burning coal. That’s partly because coal burning releases a lot of carbon dioxide, and partly because coal mining releases a lot of methane. “Natural gas is very likely to provide climate benefits compared to coal for electricity generation,” Garvin Heath, a National Renewable Energy Laboratory researcher who coauthored the new paper, told Grist.

The study concluded that fracking “is unlikely to be a dominant contributor to total emissions,” but it reported elevated methane levels near some gas and oil fields.

Ultimately, this synthesis of 20 years’ worth of research highlighted the desperate need for more research. One priority area needs to be the identification of a presumed small number of “superemitters” that are believed to be responsible for a large proportion of methane leaks. “Identifying superemitters will take investment by a combination of governmental and industrial research and development to reduce the cost of methane detection and leak source identification. Some approaches exist, but radical improvement is needed in their speed and cost for widespread adoption,” Heath said. “We note this as a priority.”


Source
Methane Leaks from North American Natural Gas Systems, Science
America’s natural gas system is leaky and in need of a fix, new study finds, Stanford University

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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America’s natural gas system is super-leaky, and that’s bad news for the climate

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There’s One Group of Voters Who Likes Chris Christie More Than Ever

by KristinaRosenba Posted on February 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Bernstein notes today that Chris Christie’s poll numbers have actually risen among one particular group of voters: tea partiers. It’s a small sample from a single poll, so you don’t want to take this to the bank until we get confirmation. And yet:

If true (and again: see caveats above), it’s a fascinating finding, confirming that for at least some non-trivial group of Republicans, all a politician has to do to win their favor is to get attacked by anyone outside of the conservative bubble.

Which is, to put it bluntly, pathetic.

But it does suggest — at least a little — the appeal of a Sarah Palin or a Herman Cain….Or, for that matter, the continuing appeal of Newt Gingrich to some conservatives despite his frequent and major deviations on public policy over the years. If the core credential for being a Real Conservative is to be attacked (by liberals? by the “neutral” news media? by prosecutors?), then demagogues, charlatans and the inept have a real advantage over responsible, competent politicians. Which really is a problem for the Republican Party, but beyond that, is an even more important problem, I would think, for actual ideological conservatives — that is, people who care about public policy and ideology, as opposed to being purely concerned with tribal allegiances.

Partisans are always susceptible to circling the wagons when one of their own is attacked. But conservatives have turned victimization into a high art over the past few years—led, as Bernstein points out, by the high priestess of grievance and victimization herself, Sarah Palin. When reports surface that make you look bad, just spin them as desperate attacks against real American values by East Coast elitists and you’re golden. After all, if the lamestream media says you did something bad, then you must actually be doing something very, very good, amirite?

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There’s One Group of Voters Who Likes Chris Christie More Than Ever

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One More Time: No, the Fort Lee Lane Closures Were Not Part of a Traffic Study

by ShadWeiland Posted on February 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Chris Christie’s radio interview about Bridgegate yesterday:

You still don’t know at this point whether there was a traffic study?

Well, what I’m saying, Eric, did this start as a traffic study that morphed into some political shenanigans, or did it start as political shenanigans that became a traffic study?

Oh come on. If this started as a legitimate traffic study, there would be two pieces of routine evidence for it. First, there would be some kind of planning document from the Port Authority engineering department. Second, there would be some kind of report on the results of the study. This is the absolute bare minimum that would accompany a genuine traffic study, especially one that involved a major lane closure.

If either of these documents exists, Christie would have produced it long ago. He hasn’t, and it’s simply not plausible for him to continue pretending that we don’t know if there was a real traffic study that prompted this affair. There wasn’t.

POSTSCRIPT: Robert Durando, general manager of the George Washington Bridge, has testified that data was collected during the days when the Fort Lee access lanes were closed. This is meaningless. It was tolls data, which is collected routinely every day. The fact that this is the only data that was collected is evidence against the the notion that there was a real traffic study being conducted, not evidence for it.

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One More Time: No, the Fort Lee Lane Closures Were Not Part of a Traffic Study

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Will McDonald’s Stop Serving Big Macs With a Side of Antibiotics?

by q9v9lw Posted on February 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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This month, McDonald’s announced that it plans to start transitioning to sustainable beef by 2016, with the goal of eventually making all of its burgers from sustainable meat. But the fast food chain has yet to specify what, exactly, it means by “sustainable.” The company is working with the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, a stakeholder group that includes Walmart and the World Wildlife Fund, to come up with a definition, and expects to announce further details of its plans in the spring. But food experts say that unless McDonald’s stops purchasing cows that are fed antibiotics to ward off disease in overcrowded feed lots, the promise will be an empty one. It’s not an unattainable goal—other chains that buy antibiotic-free beef, including Chipotle and Shake Shack, say they’ve been able to do so without significantly raising costs. But McDonald’s isn’t on board yet.

When Mother Jones asked McDonald’s whether it plans to cease using antibiotic-fed beef, a spokesman said, “McDonald’s will continue to rely on the sound science derived from this group of expert advisors including academia, suppliers, animal health and welfare experts and the FDA, as we continue to review our policyâ&#128;&#139;.” According to Hal Hamilton, founder of the Sustainable Food Laboratory, who is helping McDonalds develop its sustainability plan, the company “definitely cares about antibiotics and other feed additives, and they would like to achieve a system that avoids things that worry consumers, but I don’t think they’ve made any specific policies.”

Food experts say that could be a problem. “You can’t have sustainable production if you’re using antibiotics other than very, very occasionally, and only when there’s a diagnosed clinical disease,” says David Wallinga, M.D., the founder of Healthy Food Action, a network of health professionals. “In the case of cattle, they shouldn’t be in feed at all.” McDonalds has a written policy that aims to reduce antibiotic use, but the policy has been criticized for having major loopholes—such as allowing farmers to feed cows antibiotics for disease prevention, rather than merely treatment. (The McDonald’s spokesman says, “We take seriously our ethical responsibility to treat sick animals, using antibiotics to treat, prevent and control disease in food producing animals.”)

Last December, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that “it is important to use these drugs only when medically necessary,” given that 80 percent of antibiotics in the United States go to livestock farms, and overuse of these drugs poses a demonstrated threat to public health. For example, some women have been afflicted by antibiotic-resistant urinary tract infections that have been linked to overuse of antibiotics in poultry. But sustainability experts say the FDA’s new guidance is weak, since not only does it allow antibiotics to be used for prevention, but the recommendations are voluntary.

“The government kind of punted on this issue, when it announced voluntary standards,” says Michael Pollan, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, noting that it’s hard for the government to tackle two big industries at the same time—Big Agriculture and Big Pharma. “But if McDonald’s committed to getting rid of antibiotics, that would be a huge deal, it would change the industry.”

Industry experts say that it’s definitely possible for McDonalds to make this change. When Chipotle switched to sustainable, antibiotic-free beef, in increased prices by only about 25 to 50 cents per burrito (the price of antibiotic-free pork is a bit higher.) “Our customers are willing to pay a little more for food they recognize as being better,” says Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold. He notes that Chipotle does have some trouble getting the antibiotic-free supply to meet its demand, but adds: “Having more companies use this kind of meat would likely result in faster changes within the supply system, and that could be a good thing.” Shake Shack, which has been serving antibiotic-free beef since the chain opened, says it only costs 15 to 20 percent more than regular beef. The costs are higher, spokesman Edwin Bragg says, but notes that McDonalds could change that. “If a restaurant company of McDonalds’ size could do this on a large scale, it could change the paradigm.”

And Pollan says that this change needs to come sooner, rather than later: “I think it’s just hitting us. We’re now dealing with infectious microbes that are resistant to most antibiotics we have. We’re already paying a price and it’s going to get worse.”

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Will McDonald’s Stop Serving Big Macs With a Side of Antibiotics?

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Do Sex Traffickers Really Target the Super Bowl?

by rikkiqlyons Posted on February 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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For the past few years, as January comes to an end, the media and government officials sound an ominous warning: Sex trafficking will be on the rise during the Super Bowl. Because of the sporting event, “the cruelty of human trafficking goes on for several weeks,” said Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey, the site of this year’s Super Bowl. John McCain’s wife, Cindy, has called the Super Bowl “the largest human-trafficking venue on the planet.” As their logic goes, hundreds of thousands of fun-seeking fans will descend on New Jersey and New York this weekend. With the crowds will come an increased demand for sex, and, in turn, sex trafficking.

But as several publications have noted, data from the past few years doesn’t support this link—only four arrests were made during coordinated sweeps at the last three Super Bowls combined. Bradley Myles, the CEO of anti-trafficking nonprofit Polaris Project, which houses the National Human Trafficking Hotline, told Mother Jones that “we haven’t seen a great deal of evidence that there is a massive rise in trafficking during the Super Bowl,” adding that the hotline will “staff up modestly” but “doesn’t experience a major increase in calls.”

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Do Sex Traffickers Really Target the Super Bowl?

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Here’s What People Are Saying About the Big Keystone XL Report

by KennethCovingto Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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The end is in sight for the tumultuous public debate over the Keystone XL pipeline. On Friday, the State Department released its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for TransCanada Corporation’s controversial pipeline project—and concluded that approving the pipeline to carry oil from Alberta’s tar sands would have little impact on climate change.

The environmental assessment is one of the last major reports awaited by President Obama before he decides whether or not to approve construction of the pipeline. In his June speech on climate change, Obama said he would sanction the pipeline “only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” The pipeline requires State Department review because it crosses the international border between the US and Canada.

Obama’s final decision is still weeks away. But reactions to the report are already plentiful—here’s a sampling.

A statement from 350.org, the environmental organization founded by climate change activist Bill McKibben, reads, in part, “The President has already laid out a climate test for Keystone XL, that it can’t significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions. It’s clear that Keystone XL fails that test…the pipeline would pose an astronomical cost to our climate and a huge risk to families along the pipeline route. Keystone XL will fuel the climate crisis, which means more drought, more fires, more extreme weather events, and a more cost to our economy and the environment.”

Larry Schweiger, the president of the National Wildlife Federation, tells the Washington Post:

Regardless of what the EIS says, the Canadians have admitted that the amount of carbon they’re going to be releasing from the tar sands will increase Canada’s total emissions by 38 percent by 2030 instead of reducing emissions when all the science says that’s what we need to do in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Cindy Schild, senior manager for refining and oil sands policy at the American Petroleum Institute, told Bloomberg News, “If they can’t show this project is in our national interest, what is? The only thing left is for the president to decide that this project is in our national interest.”

Brian Straessle, a spokesman for API, added, “The president has had five years of inaction on the Keystone XL pipeline. If 2014 is really his ‘year of action,’ he should start by approving Keystone.”

In a statement, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international program director, said, “This is far from over. Next we must address whether the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be in America’s national interest. To that question, there is only one answer: No. The evidence is overwhelming that this project would significantly worsen carbon pollution, endanger our farms, our homes and our fresh water, create few jobs and transport dirty tar sands to the Gulf for export.”

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Here’s What People Are Saying About the Big Keystone XL Report

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How 2 Inches of Snow Created a Traffic Nightmare in Atlanta

by ManieFerrell Posted on January 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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This article originally appeared on Conor Sen’s personal site and was published by the Atlantic. It is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

I know what you’re thinking (I grew up outside of D.C. and Boston): “How can 2 inches of snow shut down Atlanta?”

Before I got here, I thought that too. I wonder it every time there’s a run on the grocery stores before a storm, or when some other city cancels schools before a flake has even hit the ground.

And surely, the drivers play a part. I was out getting coffee around noon yesterday, just when things were starting to get bad (at the time there was, at most, a half inch of snow on the ground), and set out to drive my 2 miles home, a straight shot on a fairly major surface street. It took me around 30 minutes. Part of the reason was one of the drivers in front of me (with Tennessee plates) was going 5 miles-per-hour in a 35 miles-per-hour zone with no cars in front of them. But even with my car—2013 model, 10,000 miles on it—I was skidding at times on the gentle incline of a street that hadn’t been treated with sand/salt/gravel at all.

My wife left work in Woodstock, a city 30-35 miles northwest of here, a little after noon yesterday, and took 3.5 hours to get home. She was one of the lucky ones.

Yes, Atlanta has many drivers who are inexperienced in the snow, but for a region that gets a storm (I know, I know “2 inches = storm”) like this at most once every few years, how is anyone supposed to be experienced in the snow? How do you think San Francisco would handle a couple inches of snow? Going north/south on Franklin or Gough, or east/west on Fell or Oak? How do you think the N-Judah out in Cole Valley or the Sunset would handle it? This is a metro area of 6 million people, and it’s time to think beyond “those silly southern drivers.”

Metro areas of 6 million people need to be prepared for anything.

Which leads into the blame game. Republicans want to blame government (a Democrat thing) or Atlanta (definitely a Democrat thing). Democrats want to blame the region’s dependence on cars (a Republican thing), the state government (Republicans), and many of the transplants from more liberal, urban places feel the same way you might about white, rural, southern drivers. All of this is true to some extent but none of it is helpful.

How much money do you set aside for snowstorms when they’re as infrequent as they are? Who will run the show—the city, the county, or the state? How will preparedness work? You could train everyone today, and then if the next storm hits in 2020, everyone you’ve trained might have moved on to different jobs, with Atlanta having a new mayor and Georgia having a new governor.

Regionalism here is hard. The population of this state has doubled in the past 40-45 years, and many of the older voters who control it still think of it as the way it was when they were growing up. The urban core of Atlanta is a minority participant in a state government controlled by rural and northern Atlanta exurban interests. The state government gives MARTA (Atlanta’s heavy rail transportation system) no money. There’s tough regional and racial history here which is both shameful and a part of the inheritance we all have by being a part of this region. Demographics are evolving quickly, but government moves more slowly. The city in which I live, Brookhaven, was incorporated in 2012. This is its first-ever snowstorm (again, 2 inches). It’s a fairly affluent, mostly white, urban small city. We were unprepared too.

The issue is that you have three layers of government—city, county, state—and none of them really trust the other. And why should they? Cobb County just “stole the Braves” from the city of Atlanta. Why would Atlanta cede transportation authority to a regional body when its history in dealing with the region/state has been to carve up Atlanta with highways and never embrace its transit system? Why would the region/state want to give more authority to Atlanta when many of the people in the region want nothing to do with the city of Atlanta unless it involves getting to work or a Braves game?

The region tried, in a very tough economy and political year (2012), to pass a comprehensive transportation bill, a T-SPLOST, funded by a sales tax. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an attempt to do something. The Sierra Club opposed it because it didn’t feature enough transit. The NAACP opposed it because it didn’t have enough contracts for minority businesses. The tea party opposed it because it was a tax. That’s politics in the 2010s. You may snicker, but how good a job has any major city done with big transportation projects over the past 30 years?

As anyone paying attention knows, Atlanta’s finally moving in the right direction. The Beltline build-out is underway and reshaping neighborhoods. Downtown is finally getting some investment, and we’ll see how useful it is, but it’s building a streetcar that will be up and running this year, with plans in the works for extensions. More and more counties in the region are tipping from red to purple/blue (Henry, Gwinnett, soon Cobb), which should help ease some of the racial and partisan tensions associated with regionalism. Most of the development dollars in a region driven by real estate are now flowing to urban, walkable projects. There are increasingly serious conversations about extending MARTA to the north and east. We’ve become one of the top 3 markets in the country for electric vehicle sales.

But clearly, there’s work to be done.

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How 2 Inches of Snow Created a Traffic Nightmare in Atlanta

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Snow’s Melting in Alaska and Pelting the South. What’s Going On?

by LaurieBPKC Posted on January 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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This article originally appeared at Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Earlier this month, squeals of delight (and/or searing pain) gripped much of the country as we were collectively introduced to the wonders of the polar vortex. But now the novelty’s over, and for the second time this month, an extreme weather pattern is sending Arctic weather toward the Deep South.

An uncommonly sharp kink in the jet stream is partly responsible for plunging more than half of the United States into the freeze. Meanwhile, (and for the same reason), Alaska is toasty warm. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Satellite image shows the “Arctic blanket.” NOAA/NASA GOES Project.

Much of Alabama is currently under a “civil emergency” due to snow and ice. Interstates have been shut down, and traffic in Atlanta has slowed to a crawl. It’s almost like people there don’t know what to do anymore when winter arrives. #sneauxmageddon is already shutting down New Orleans, and nearly a foot of snow is on tap for the Carolinas by Wednesday morning. The bread and milk purveyors at Piggly Wiggly must be loving this, assuming they’ll be able to keep stores open.

Wind chills have already dipped below freezing all the way south to the Mexican border, and more than a half-inch of ice could cause widespread power outages from Mobile, Ala. across the Florida panhandle.

How’d we get to this point? Here’s the science.

A good measure of the magnitude of jet stream irregularity is the Arctic Oscillation, an indicator of short-term climate variability that, roughly speaking, tracks the strength of the jet stream. In extreme cases, like this week, the circumpolar jet stream—which typically locks the coldest of the cold air up by the North Pole where it belongs—can slow down and spill Arctic frigidity southward. The current Arctic Oscillation is even more negative than during the first polar vortex cold snap, earlier this month.

Research hints that this type of pattern can be triggered by the recent massive loss in Arctic sea ice due to the effects of human-induced climate change. One recent studywhich attempted to explain this counterintuitive “Warm Arctic—Cold Continents” phenomenon during similar patterns in the 2009-‘10 and 2010-‘11 winters called it “a major challenge” to understand, though the pattern is “consistent with continued loss of sea ice over the next 40 years.” Bottom line: Something weird is going on, but scientists are still trying to nail down exactly what it is.

In preparation for Tuesday’s polar weather, meteorologists have started a massive crash course in winter weather safety, lest millions of poor wayward souls abandon all hope for any shred of common decency (think: cats and dogs living together).

One such meteorological hero, Nate Johnson of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C., sent out this helpful tip via Facebook:

“Best advice: By dinnertime tonight, be where you want to be (with whatever you need to have) through at least Thursday.”

Back in the day, cold weather wasn’t so rare down South. Earlier this month, Climate Central did an excellent survey of the dwindling frequency of extreme cold weather across the country, which even got picked up in an xkcd Web comic.

Chart by Climate Central.

Which brings us back to Alaska, where it’s currently more than a dozen degrees warmer than New Orleans. On Monday, Seward, Alaska hit 61 degrees and broke its daily record high by more than 20 degrees. Webcams across the southern part of the state showed snow melting down to bare ground over the weekend, with all-time January record high temperatures crushed and warm rain falling over the dwindling snowpack. As a result, the snow melted so fast that it triggered massive avalanches, cutting off the town of Valdez. A nearly unbelievable helicopter video went viral, showing the extent of the snow slide.

In comparison, Tuesday night’s snow dumping probably won’t even break the currentdaily record in Raleigh, where the biggest ever snowfall on Jan. 28 was 7.5 inches way back in 1899.

The current extreme warmth in Alaska is more typical of April and is essentially being stolen from California by the abnormally persistent jet stream that has dominated the winter so far.

Alaskans, break out the T-shirts, and Southerners, hunker down. Looking forward for the next week or two, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.

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Snow’s Melting in Alaska and Pelting the South. What’s Going On?

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6 Things Obama Can Do on Climate Without Congress

by BobbyYrhvpdup Posted on January 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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When President Obama takes the stage this evening for his annual State of the Union address, a likely theme will be how the Oval Office can work toward its goals on everything from income inequality to the federal debt without relying on an obstinate, unproductive Congress. In his speech last year, Obama threatened to sidestep the legislative branch on actions to mitigate climate change, specifically, if Congress failed to provide its own solutions. This year, environmentalists are hoping to hear more details on what that plan could entail.

Some of the major goals of climate policy wonks, like putting a price on carbon pollution, can’t happen without the help of Congress, but that doesn’t mean the president’s hands are completely tied; last week, the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University released a report co-authored by former Colorado governor Bill Ritter that details 200 climate actions Obama could take without Congress.

So what options does the president have? Here are a few ideas:

1. Continue the crackdown on coal pollution: This month the Environmental Protection Agency released a new draft of rules that would strictly curtail emissions of carbon dioxide from new coal-fired power plants; a second set of rules that would apply to existing plants is expected later this year. Slashing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which account for roughly a third of country’s total GHG emissions, is a major pillar of the president’s climate platform, even though a lengthy review process and probable legal challenges from the coal industry mean the rules aren’t likely to take effect before the end of his term. But in the absence of a national price on carbon or other legislation, regulations like this are the most significant way the president can promote a transition away from our dirtiest power sources.

2. Fix fracking: Today, regulations for natural gas drilling companies are mainly applied by states, but the president has an opportunity to influence the industry’s practices when it shows up to drill on federal land. The Colorado State report calls on the Bureau of Land Management to apply stringent rules for fracking on public land, like full disclosure of what’s in the fracking chemical cocktail, zero tolerance for methane leaks from wells and pipes (a major, unregulated source of highly potent greenhouse gases), and more efficienct water-use practices. The president also needs to set a more concrete timeline for how long fracking, often described as a “bridge” fuel between coal and renewables, will continue to be a major source of domestic energy, said Bill Becker, the report’s co-author and executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

“We recognize that natural gas is a logical transition fuel,” Becker added. “But we think that should be happening a lot faster than it’s happening now.”

Somehow, Becker said, the president needs to reconcile his “all of the above” energy plan with his stated goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020; working with the fracking industry to cut methane leaks is a great place to start.

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6 Things Obama Can Do on Climate Without Congress

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