Tag Archives: marine

Congressional Committee Says We Should Draft Women

by Gwenn Record Posted on April 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last year, the Pentagon announced that women would be allowed to join men in front-line combat positions in the military for the first time. This year, women may also have to join men in registering for the draft.

The House Armed Services Committee narrowly passed an amendment to the 2017 defense spending bill on Wednesday that would require women to register with the Selective Service System, the federal agency that administers military drafts. A draft hasn’t been held since the Vietnam war, but all American men between the ages of 18 and 25 are still required to register. Some members of Congress now want women to share the burden.

“If we want equality in this country, if we want women to be treated precisely like men are treated and that they should not be discriminated against, then we should support a universal conscription,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), according to The Hill. The Army and Marine Corps’ top generals have already endorsed making women register. Most countries that draft soldiers only do so for men, but a handful, including Norway and Israel, also conscript women.

The amendment, introduced by former Marine officer Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), essentially backfired for him. In fact, Hunter does not support drafting women or allowing them to serve in jobs like the infantry, but has said that Congress should debate the issue of women in combat instead of allowing the Obama administration to simply change the military’s regulations. This amendment was his attempt to push the issue to the limits and thereby dissuade others from supporting putting women on the front lines. “The draft is there to get more people to rip the enemy’s throats out,” Hunter said. “I don’t want to see my daughters put in a place where they have to get drafted.”

Other members want to do away with draft registration altogether, saying a volunteer military is more effective. “The bar would have to be dramatically lowered if we were to return to conscription again,” said Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), according to the Washington Post. Coffman co-sponsored a bill introduced in February that would end Selective Service altogether. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who also sponsored the bill to end selective service, argues the draft also needlessly punishes those who don’t register by cutting them off from federal aid and jobs. “It’s mean-spirited, stupid, unnecessary, and a huge waste of taxpayer money,” DeFazio told Mother Jones.

The Selective Service System currently costs about $23 million dollars per year. Lawrence Romo, the director of the Selective Service System, estimates the agency would require another $8 million per year if women were included in the draft.

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Congressional Committee Says We Should Draft Women

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Here’s What You Need to Know About the West Coast’s Toxic Crabs

by Dee71Xtzgwsbaf Posted on November 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Fisherman from across the West coast are flocking to California, where the start of crabbing season is just days away. Or not: Health officials are warning that rock and Dungeness crabs along the state coast are contaminated by high levels of domoic acid, a known neurotoxin. State authorities are expected to decide this week whether or not to delay the opening of the Dungeness season—which yields one of the biggest harvests in the nation—and temporarily halt the harvest of rock crabs, which is permitted all year. In the meantime, here’s what you need to know:

How do I know whether that crab on I ordered last week was contaminated? Commercial seafood is regularly tested, so while there may be less Dungeness crab, you don’t have to freak out too much about consuming neurotoxins with the crab you ate at a restaurant or bought at a store. West Coasters should avoid eating recreationally caught shellfish (more details here). If domoic acid is ingested, it can cause vomiting, seizures, and in extreme situations, death. There haven’t been any reported hospitalizations or deaths from domoic acid poisoning since the late 1980’s, when three deaths and multiple hospitalizations spurred increased regulation.

Besides Dungeness crabs, are any other marine creatures are affected? Yes, lots. according to a NOAA report released Tuesday, domoic acid is showing up at potentially lethal levels among a record number of animals, including dolphins, whales, sea lions, and seabirds, and causing seizures among the latter two. Washington closed some areas to crabbing and clam digging earlier this year, Oregon has indefinitely postponed the start of its razor clam season, and California health officials have warned against eating recreationally caught shellfish in some regions.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

What’s this going to do the West Coast’s robust crabbing industry? California, Oregon, and Washington are the top producers of Dungeness crab in the United States; in California alone, commercial crabbing boats brought in 17 million pounds of the crab in 2014, worth nearly $60 million. Some fishermen make half of their income from the California Dungeness crab harvest, and the bloom is particularly ill-timed since Dungeness crabs are in highest demand between Thanksgiving and New Years. “These are incredibly important fisheries to our coastal economies and fresh crab is highly anticipated and widely enjoyed this time of year,” said the state Fish and Wildlife regional manager Craig Shuman. “But public health and safety is our top priority.”

Where is the domoic acid coming from? The acid is coming from a toxic phytoplankton, or algae, species that thrives in warm waters and makes its way into the food web as it’s consumed by anchovies, sardines, and shellfish. This year, thanks to a combination of El Niño and a large stretch of warm water off the west coast dubbed “the blob,” the algae has bloomed at record-setting levels, forming a ribbon up to 40 miles wide snaking up the West coast.

Is climate change causing this problem? Scientists are reluctant to attribute any one event solely to climate change, but warmer waters are certainly playing a role—and ocean temperatures are expected to continue warming with climate change. “The toxins are commonly present in the food web but this year, with this unprecedented bloom, they’re likely having a bigger impact than ever before,” said Kathi Lefebvre, a biologist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “Our concern is that there does appear to be a link between warm water and bigger blooms, so what does this tell us about future years with warmer conditions?”

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Here’s What You Need to Know About the West Coast’s Toxic Crabs

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Ben Carson Probably Shouldn’t Have Said That Marines Aren’t Ready to Deploy

by RXQLynne796031 Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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During a discussion about the US military at the Republican debate on Wednesday night, Dr. Ben Carson said that Marines were not ready to be deployed. He was likely referring to something he’s said before, which is that perhaps half of the Marines’ non-deployed units aren’t ready to be deployed. Whatever the fine points, his comment didn’t land well with people on twitter:

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Ben Carson Probably Shouldn’t Have Said That Marines Aren’t Ready to Deploy

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California Is About to Ban Those Little Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste and Face Scrub

by FlorrieQHY Posted on September 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the California Senate passed legislation that will ban the sale of microbeads—â&#128;&#139;those colorful bits of plastic that you find in face scrub, body wash, and toothpaste—in personal care products by 2020.

Though a handful of other states â&#128;&#139;have already passed microbead bans, California’s is by far the most stringent, as it doesn’t provide exemptions for “biodegradeable” plastics. (No plastics have proven to break down in marine environments so far.) Because California makes up roughly one-eighth of the American market for personal care products, the legislation will likely change the way the products are designed throughout the United States.

Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble lobbied against the bill, which is expected to pass the State Assembly next week and be signed into law within the month.

Environmental advocates have expressed concern over microbeads for years, as the particles are so small that they aren’t caught in wastewater treatment plants and end up in waterways and oceans, where they don’t biodegrade and are frequently mistaken for food by fish and other marine animals. There are an estimated 300,000 microbeads in a single tube of face wash; collectively, roughly 300 tons of the plastic ends up in US waterways each year.

“Toxic microbeads are accumulating in our rivers, lakes and oceans at alarmingly high levels. We can and must act now,” said assembly member Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), who authored the bill. “Continuing to use these harmful and unnecessary plastics when natural alternatives are widely available is simply irresponsible and will only result in significant cleanups costs to taxpayers who will have to foot the bill to restore our already limited water resources and ocean health.”

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California Is About to Ban Those Little Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste and Face Scrub

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Climate change will do strange things to this hungry little microbe

by cardpayoneerromania Posted on September 1, 2015

Climate change will do strange things to this hungry little microbe

By on 1 Sep 2015commentsShare

For CO2-eating bacteria, climate change is kind of a sweet deal. It’s like someone sneaking into your kitchen every night and dumping a bunch of cookies on your counter — except, in this scenario, humanity is the one breaking and entering, your house is Earth, and those cookies are ruining everything.

But if you’re a marine microbe just chillin’ in the tropics and subtropics, munching on CO2, and watching the rest of the world go up in flames, there’s no downside, right? Wrong! Researchers at USC and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute tested how Trichodesmium (nickname: Tricho), a cyanobacteria that consumes CO2 and pumps out crucial nitrogen for the rest of the marine food web, would behave under the high-CO2 conditions projected for 2100, and they found that poor lil Tricho faces death-by-gluttony.

In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the researchers report that at first, things won’t look so bad for Tricho. With more CO2, the bacteria grow faster and produce 50 percent more nitrogen. So not only are the bacteria getting stronger, they’re also making more food for other marine organisms that eat nitrogen. But then things go sour, because of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch (or in this case, cookie). So here’s the bad news from USC News:

The problem is that these amped-up bacteria can’t turn it off even when they are placed in conditions with less carbon dioxide. Further, the adaptation can’t be reversed over time — something not seen before by evolutionary biologists, and worrisome to marine biologists, according to David Hutchins, lead author of the study.

“Losing the ability to regulate your growth rate is not a healthy thing,” said Hutchins, professor at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “The last thing you want is to be stuck with these high growth rates when there aren’t enough nutrients to go around. It’s a losing strategy in the struggle to survive.”

Let’s put this in terms of cookies, because I’m hungry. You can’t really have cookies without milk, right? (That’s not actually a question.) So if someone’s stocking your kitchen with extra cookies but not extra milk, and you start pigging out on cookies, you’ll eventually run out of milk. When that happens, you’ll probably be bummed out but will continue to stuff your face.

Unfortunately for Tricho, the milk in this metaphor is phosphorous and iron — crucial nutrients that are in limited supply — so when Tricho runs out of “milk,” it’ll die. Here’s more from USC News:

With no way to regulate its growth, the turbo-boosted Tricho could burn through all of its available nutrients too quickly and abruptly die off, which would be catastrophic for all other life forms in the ocean that need the nitrogen it would have produced to survive.

Even after the researchers put the bacteria back in a CO2-low environment, its enhanced appetite didn’t subside. They basically developed an irreversible evolutionary adaptation which, according to USC News, Hutchins described as “unprecedented.”

“Tricho has been studied for ages. Nobody expected that it could do something so bizarre,” he said. “The evolutionary biologists are interested in it just to study this as a basic evolutionary principle.”

The team is now studying the DNA of Tricho to try to find out how and why the irreversible evolution occurs. Earlier this year, research led by [Eric Webb of USC Dornsife] found that the organism’s DNA inexplicably contains elements that are usually only seen in higher life forms.

“… the organism’s DNA inexplicably contains elements that are usually only seen in higher life forms.” Twenty bucks says Tricho’s an alien. Hell, let’s make it $20 million. It’ll probably be dead before we get a chance to figure it out. (Unless, of course, part of its plan for invasion involves eating up all the phosphorous and iron, then entering a death-like dormant phase until the rest of the marine ecosystem spirals into chaos, and we find ourselves on the brink of extinction …)

Until then, I’ll just be eating cookies and milk.

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Climate change will irreversibly force key ocean bacteria into overdrive

, USC News.

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Climate change will do strange things to this hungry little microbe

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Charlie Hebdo Unveils First Cover Since Paris Massacre Featuring Image of Muhammad

by MeganCamarena Posted on January 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Warning: An image of the controversial cover appears below.

Charlie Hebdo unveiled the cover illustration for its first issue following last week’s deadly attack on the magazine. The cover, for what is being dubbed the “survivors’ issue,” features an image of the Prophet Muhammad holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign. The words “Tous Est Pardonné”—”All Is Forgiven”—hang above. A tear is falling from his eye.

“We don’t feel any hate to them,” cartoonist Zineb El Rhazoui, who survived the attack and worked on the new edition, told the BBC, referring to the terrorists. “We know that the struggle is not with them as people, but the struggle is with an ideology.” Asked if the cover might alienate Muslims who have spoken out against the violence and in support of the satirical magazine—after all, Islam prohibits the portrayal of Muhammad—she said that Islam ought to be treated like any other religion and that anyone who is offended need not buy the issue.

Charlie Hebdo‘s decision to print an image of the prophet appears to be in direct defiance of the two terrorists who executed 12 of the magazine’s staff members last week. Past covers in which the prophet was illustrated, many times in crude or offensive light, have drawn the ire of Muslims throughout the world, prompting repeated threats of violence against the controversial publication. Since the attack in Paris, various news outlets, including the New York Times and the Associated Press, said they would not be publishing Charlie Hebdo images depicting the prophet because of its “deliberately provocative” intent. Other publications, including the Washington Post and the Guardian, have gone ahead and published the latest cover, citing freedom of speech, the covers’ newsworthy element, and the special role that scorching satire has in French political and cultural life. For the Post, it is the first time a depiction of the prophet has appeared. Executive Editor Martin Baron said that although the paper prohibits material that is “deliberately” offensive, Charlie Hebdo‘s newest cover did not meet that measure; the Guardian explained it would be publishing this cover because of its “news value.”

While Charlie Hebdo has historically skewered all religions and various government figures, in the past few years, its editors have specifically targeted Islam. Given France’s fraught relations with its Muslim population, many have questioned whether Charlie Hebdo went too far, or as one French politician once put it, chose to “pour oil on the fire.” Following last week’s attack, Adam Shatz wrote in the London Book of Review:

Charlie Hebdo had an equal opportunity policy when it came to giving offense, but in recent years it had come to lean heavily on jokes about Muslims, who are among the most vulnerable citizens in France. Assia a pseudonym Shatz refers to in his piece does not believe in censorship, but wonders: “Is this really the time for cartoons lampooning the Prophet, given the situation of North Africans in France?”…If France continues to treat French men of North African origin as if they were a threat to “our” civilisation, more of them are likely to declare themselves a threat, and follow the example of the Kouachi brothers. This would be a gift both to Marine Le Pen and the jihadists, who operate from the same premise: that there is an apocalyptic war between Europe and Islam. We are far from that war, but the events of 7 January have brought us a little closer.

The issue is set for release January 14, with an estimated 3 million copies being printed. The normal circulation for the magazine has been 60,000.

Click for larger version. Charlie Hebdo

Update, January 14, 2015, 8:50 a.m. EST: After copies sell out in France, Charlie Hebdo raised its print run to 5 million.

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Charlie Hebdo Unveils First Cover Since Paris Massacre Featuring Image of Muhammad

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France’s Far-Right Leader Exploits the Paris Attack and Calls for Reviving the Death Penalty

by JMUDesiree Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

Shortly after gunmen burst into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and murdered a dozen people, Marine Le Pen, the leader of Front National, a far-right, anti-immigrant party, called for France to revive the death penalty, which it abolished in 1981. In an interview with France 2, she declared that capital punishment should be part “of our legal arsenal,” and she vowed to hold a national referendum to restore it if she is elected president in 2017.

La Pen’s remarks were not surprising. While the manhunt for the Charlie Hebdo killers was underway, she used the horrific attack to justify her own political war on Islam. And it did seem that her party, which promotes a hard-line anti-Islam and anti-immigrant message, was in a good position to gain politically.

But, it seems, Le Pen and the suspected terrorists, Cherif Kouachi and Said Kouachi, who were killed by French authorities on Friday, shared a view: they both wanted death for the gunmen. When the Kouachi brothers were cornered in a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, a French lawmaker who had been inside the SWAT command post told a television station that the brothers had told French negotiators they “want to die as martyrs.”

This was not surprising. The goal of martyrdom has motivated numerous jihadists to conduct murderous action. Suicide bombers, the 9/11 plotters, and others seek to die in pursuit of their cause and believe that there will be a reward on the other side.

So the best punishment, when such criminals are apprehended, would be to deny them martyrdom and force them to wait decades, maybe half a century, to meet their violence-supporting maker—preferably in a small, isolated cell for all that time. Recruiters of jihadist killers might have a tougher time selling a decades-long stint in prison than a glorious exit in a blaze of gunfire or a high-profile state execution that would receive attention around the world.

One key, though dubious, argument for the death penalty is that it deters would-be killers. But terrorists like the Charlie Hebdo murderers are not deterred by death. They desire their own demise. Putting aside the moral considerations regarding state-sponsored executions, a sober (and, yes, vengeful) calculation would be to keep such evildoers alive and miserable for many years. Perhaps that would make them less compelling inspiration for potential terrorists. Le Pen’s call for reviving the death penalty is not geared toward preventing bloody events; it is designed to exploit them.

Unfortunately, in the Charlie Hebdo case, the supposed killers got their death wish. It would have been more gratifying—and probably more beneficial—if they had been captured, placed on trial, convicted, and forced to rot in jail for the rest of their lives.

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France’s Far-Right Leader Exploits the Paris Attack and Calls for Reviving the Death Penalty

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What a shrimp treadmill can teach us about science funding

by MargaretteFAOC Posted on November 17, 2014

Shrimpercise

What a shrimp treadmill can teach us about science funding

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17 Nov 2014 5:15 PM

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When you picture the extravagancies of government spending, what do you see? If your answer is “a tiny marine crustacean jogging in place,” then your memory is a weird place — in 2011, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn (Republican, duh) made some fuss about science grants awarded by the NSF to various projects, deemed by him to be “wasteful.”

Among those Coburn singled out, including the entirety of the search for extraterrestrial life and a robot that can fold laundry, was a project at the Grice Marine Laboratory at the College of Charleston, South Carolina. Coburn complained that the lab had received 12 separate grants from the National Science Foundation, for a total of $3 million … though, to be fair, this was over 10 YEARS of work.

Last week, David Scholnick, a biologist from Pacific University, slowly jogged back with his rejoinder — we can only assume with his legs and arms and miscellaneous appendages flailing. It may have taken three years, but it was worth the wait: “My name is David, and I am the marine biologist who put a shrimp on a treadmill — a burden I will forever carry.”

A burden we all must carry, Dave! Scholnick points out that reports — including a gibe from Forbes and a commercial from the AARP — of the $3 million treadmill price tag are just flat-out wrong. While it’s not chump change, a couple of million is reasonable for a decade worth of lab expenses — but the treadmill itself, he estimates, cost about $47 in spare parts. And he paid for those himself.

What’s more, the shrimp weren’t just experiencing the benefits of cardiovascular exercise for the heck of it, says Scholnick:

S[hr]imply put, my colleagues and I were studying how recent changes in the oceans could potentially affect the ability of marine organisms to fight infections — an important question, given that the amount of bacteria a shrimp is able remove from its body is directly related to how much bacteria could potentially end up on seafood-filled plates. And since shrimp are active animals in nature, it was logical to study the immune response of shrimp during activity.

In an era of public skepticism about the basic tenets of the scientific method, Scholnick’s defense of his shrimpy research stands as a defense of science in general:

In science, it is often necessary to develop creative solutions to complex problems. How do you get active marine animals to move naturally in a laboratory setting? How do marine animals fight off the glut of pathogens they are exposed to in the harsh environments where they live? These are not simple questions, there are no easy solutions, and they require an enormous amount of time and effort to answer.

With such symbolic weight to carry, this little shrimp deserves a more dignified anthem — here’s the Grist remix:

Source:
How a $47 Shrimp Treadmill Became a $3-Million Political Plaything

, Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Biogas, a Low-Tech Fuel With a Big Payoff

by Myrna Posted on October 29, 2014

Whether at household operations or at industrial facilities, a centuries-old technology is increasingly being used to extract energy from crop waste, kitchen scraps and sewage. Source:  Biogas, a Low-Tech Fuel With a Big Payoff ; ; ;

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Biogas, a Low-Tech Fuel With a Big Payoff

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Two Years After Sandy’s Surge, New York City Shifts Toward a Softer Relationship with the Sea

by Myrna Posted on October 26, 2014

Two years after Sandy swamped parts of New York City, a vision emerges for a mix of hard and soft landscape changes reflecting the reality of rising seas. Read article here: Two Years After Sandy’s Surge, New York City Shifts Toward a Softer Relationship with the Sea ; ; ;

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Two Years After Sandy’s Surge, New York City Shifts Toward a Softer Relationship with the Sea

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