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In Irma’s wake, Florida deals with a long-predicted apoocalypse.
There’s been a long decline in the nutrition of our crops, often attributed to people breeding plants for higher yields rather than health benefits. But, as is often the case, climate change is making it worse.
An altered atmosphere means altered food, because plants suck up CO2 from the air and turn it into sugars, Helena Bottemiller Evich points out in a new piece for Politico. That means we’re getting more sugar per bite, and less protein, iron, and zinc. The global phenomenon puts hundreds of millions of people at risk for nutrient deficiencies.
It’s not just a problem for humans. Analysis of pollen samples going back to 1842 shows that protein concentration declined dramatically as atmospheric CO2 rose. That makes yet another suspect in the great bee-murder mystery.
“To say that it’s little known that key crops are getting less nutritious due to rising CO2 is an understatement,” Evich writes for Politico. “It is simply not discussed in the agriculture, public health, or nutrition communities. At all.”
The world is changing in so many ways that it’s nearly impossible to track them all — even when those changes happen right at the ends of our forks.
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In Irma’s wake, Florida deals with a long-predicted apoocalypse.
Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized
Tagged at-risk, Flood, g & f, helena-bottemiller, miami, often-the-case, Ona, people, treated, turn-it-into
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Hurricane Irma’s power leaves Florida powerless
One of the most powerful hurricanes ever to make U.S. landfall has left millions of people across Florida without power.
As of Monday morning, nearly 60 percent of the entire state — close to 6 million customers — had lost electricity. That’s the largest outage in Florida history and one of the country’s biggest ever.
Restoring power could take weeks, or longer. A spokesperson for Florida Power & Light, the state’s biggest utility, said recovery from the storm would require a “wholesale rebuild” of the electrical grid.
The damage to the state’s electrical infrastructure was just one form of devastation left in Irma’s wake, as the United States faces its second hurricane catastrophe in as many weeks.
An unusually large hurricane, Irma left an exceptional swath of damage on both Florida coasts and nearly everywhere in between. By one metric, this single storm packed an entire season’s worth of destructive power.
Some of Irma’s worst impacts were well-removed from the center: Miami looked like “a watery war zone” at the height of the storm, with residents warily eyeing rising floodwaters in the heart of downtown.
In Jacksonville, at the far northeast corner of Florida, Irma set a new coastal flood record, beating the one set during 1964’s Hurricane Dora.
In Naples, near where Irma made its second landfall in southwest Florida after initially striking the Keys, winds reached as high as 142 mph. The city set an odd mark: The ocean rose nearly 10 feet in eight hours, the quickest rise ever recorded there.
As Irma’s center passed close by, strong winds blew the ocean away from land, exposing the seabed, and then the water quickly rushed back in as winds changed direction and the storm moved north. The effect led to surreal scenes and even prompted a special warning from the National Weather Service to gawkers along the shore.
As is so often the case with these storms, Irma could have been worse: A last-second 50-mile jog inland likely prevented higher storm surge across cities on Florida’s western coast, including Tampa.
Still, the combination of damage from Harvey and Irma will probably total in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
And it’s still peak hurricane season. Hurricane Jose skirted the northeast corner of the Caribbean over the weekend, prompting a full-scale evacuation of the tiny island of Barbuda — which Irma almost totally destroyed just four days earlier.
The latest weather models show that Jose could make a loop in the central Atlantic this week, and then possibly head toward the East Coast. One thing’s for sure: In a year when it’s become clear that “natural” disasters aren’t natural any more, we can’t say we weren’t warned.
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Irma, the strongest Atlantic hurricane in history, tears through the Caribbean
This story has been updated.
Just days after Hurricane Harvey brought historic rainfall to parts of Texas and Louisiana, another potentially catastrophic hurricane looms in the Atlantic.
Hurricane Irma rapidly strengthened over warmer than normal ocean waters on Tuesday into a Category 5 storm with estimated wind speeds of 185 mph — the strongest ever measured in the Atlantic Ocean.
On Wednesday, Irma made landfall in a number of northern Caribbean islands at peak strength, including Barbuda, Anguilla, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy, and several of the British Virgin Islands. Its landfall tied a 1935 Florida hurricane for the strongest on record anywhere in the Atlantic basin, and the second strongest ever measured anywhere on Earth. In some of the first reports out of St. Martin, officials say the island suffered “major damage” with even some of the strongest buildings destroyed.
From the National Hurricane Center’s description of Category 5 damage: “A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.”
Quite simply, meteorologists never expected a storm like Irma. The storm appears to have exceeded the maximum theoretical strength for a hurricane in its environment — an estimate based on current water temperature and other conditions.
Irma has grown in size amid nearly ideal circumstances for intensification over the past several days. On social media, hurricane experts pondered whether or not it should be considered a Category 6 — which it would qualify for if the traditional five-tiered Saffir-Simpson scale were extrapolated for wind speeds as strong as Irma’s.
People in Irma’s path have never been through a storm this strong, and the hurricane may rewrite history for the islands that experience a direct hit. Irma packs a punch that’s stronger than Andrew or Katrina, two of the most notorious recent hurricanes. In Antigua, one of the islands that Irma hit, the national meteorological service lapsed into prayer.
As meteorologists marveled at the storm from afar, hurricane hunter aircraft sent back jaw-dropping photos from inside the eye. Earthquake scientists in the Caribbean noticed the hurricane’s winds and waves registering on seismographs as it neared the Leeward Islands, an incredible example of Irma’s strength.
Long-range forecast models have repeatedly projected Irma making landfall in South Florida this weekend, though the hurricane could still veer off on a range of possible paths as it approaches the U.S. mainland.
Preparations are already underway in Florida, a historical hurricane hotspot. Somehow, the state has avoided a Category 3 or higher landfall for more than a decade. The last storm to hit Florida at Irma’s current intensity was the “Labor Day” hurricane of 1935 — the strongest hurricane to ever strike the U.S. coast.
The state has transformed since the most recent Category 5 hurricane, Andrew, hit in 1992. Miami alone has added 600,000 new residents in that time, and the state’s storm-buffering wetlands have degraded amid a push for urbanization. In the past 25 years, 1 in 10 new homes in America were built in Florida, during a slow spell for hurricane landfalls. That lucky streak now appears to be coming to an end.
What’s more, Irma’s projected path up the spine of the peninsular state poses a unique challenge: If hurricane-force winds are wide enough to affect both coastlines simultaneously — which they’re expected to be — where will people evacuate to? It’s nearly inconceivable to think of millions of people traveling northward out of Irma’s path.
So far, the state is preparing in an orderly fashion. The Florida Keys expect to begin a total evacuation on Wednesday. Miami has shifted to an “all hands on deck” preparedness level, and is considering evacuating its most vulnerable residents. Florida Governor Rick Scott announced he will activate the entire Florida National Guard later this week. President Trump approved emergency declarations for Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which will help speed preparations and aid.
But before Irma reaches Florida, it’ll continue to pass over — or dangerously close to — much of the northern Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Bahamas. The northern coasts of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba could also feel significant impacts as Irma passes by.
Wherever it strikes, the hurricane’s impact will be worsened by the rising seas and heavier downpours associated with climate change. There’s still a chance the storm could curve safely out to sea after its trip through the Caribbean, but those odds are quickly slipping.
Should the hurricane make landfall in Florida or elsewhere in the Southeast, it will set a regrettable record — the first-ever back-to-back U.S. landfalls of Category 4 or higher storms.
Hurricane Harvey’s catastrophic impact in Texas and Louisiana now ranks as the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. (Hurricane Katrina cost an estimated $150 billion in 2017 dollars, and the Texas governor’s office estimates Harvey could cost $180 billion.) A recent study examined the possibility of a Category 5 hurricane strike in downtown Miami. It calculated that damages from that nightmare scenario could cost upward of $300 billion.
As improbable as it may seem, two of the worst hurricanes in U.S. history might hit in the span of just two weeks.
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Irma, the strongest Atlantic hurricane in history, tears through the Caribbean
Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Prepara, The Atlantic, Uncategorized
Tagged alo, earthquake, florida, hurricanes, irma, miami, Ona, south-florida
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Rising seas could force a large-scale retreat from U.S. shores within decades.
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Rising seas could force a large-scale retreat from U.S. shores within decades.
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Tagged article, climate & energy, coastal flooding, g & f, justice, miami, new york, news, science
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The Supreme Court Just Dealt a Huge Blow to Wells Fargo and Bank of America
Mother Jones
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In a significant civil rights case, the Supreme Court today issued a blow to banking giants Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The court allowed the city of Miami to proceed with lawsuits it filed in 2013 against the banks for allegedly targeting minorities with predatory loans that contributed to the city’s ongoing foreclosure crisis, potentially exposing the banks to millions in damages. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. provided the surprise swing vote in the 5-3 decision. (Newbie Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in this case.)
“In arriving at its decision, the Court today properly respected its own precedents, as well as Congress’ ratification of those precedents,” said Brianne Gorod, chief counsel for the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, which filed an amicus brief on the side of the city. “Perhaps the most unexpected aspect was the vote of Chief Justice John Roberts,” she noted. “While he clearly remains a conservative Justice, today’s ruling is yet another reminder that he is a conservative who occasionally surprises.”
In its lawsuits, the city argued that between 2004 and 2012, Wells Fargo and Bank of America pushed risky and more expensive loans on minority customers, even when they were eligible for better terms, which led to extensive loan defaults and foreclosures that left the city with diminished tax revenues and huge bills for cleaning up the mess left behind in blighted neighborhoods. The court needed to determine whether Congress had intended the Fair Housing Act to allow municipalities, or only individuals, to sue in order to combat lending discrimination.
The banks counter that the law, which says “any aggrieved person” can sue for violations under the statute, couldn’t possibly have intended that a city would fall into the category of an “aggrieved person.” But the Supreme Court, which has famously found all sorts of personhood rights for corporate entities, has said before that under this particular statute, an aggrieved person can be a village, or a nonprofit, or a municipality. Consequently, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Miami, and the Supreme Court, relying on its earlier precedent, agreed, preserving the right of cities to sue under the FHA.
But the decision wasn’t a slam dunk for Miami. While the court ruled that the city had standing to bring the case, it also said the lower court used too liberal a standard to decide that the city could actually collect damages from the banks from the alleged harm of the discriminatory lending practices. The court sent the case back to the 11th Circuit to apply a much tougher standard for damages than the one the appellate court had approved.
That provision, which limits the scope of the decision, seems specifically tailored to win the vote of Roberts, who was the only conservative justice to side with the court’s liberals. His vote on this important civil rights case prompted University of California-Irvine law professor Rick Hasen to tweet that Roberts is “practicing” to be the court’s new swing vote in preparation for the retirement of 80-year-old Justice Anthony Kennedy, who plays that role now. The Trump administration has reportedly been working on Kennedy, whose children are friendly with Trump’s kids, to persuade him that it’s safe to retire on Trump’s watch. That would leave Roberts, a Reagan conservative, holding the court’s center, if only because after Kennedy’s departure, he would be the only remaining conservative who still occasionally finds common ground with the court’s liberal wing.
Even under the tougher standard Roberts signed off on, advocates are convinced that Miami will be able to prevail and prove that the financial damages the city suffered were a direct result of the banks’ lending practices, which are well documented and egregious. But Justice Clarence Thomas wasn’t so sure.
In a dissent, he argued that the city should not be allowed to sue under the FHA because it didn’t suffer from direct discrimination itself, and it’s not arguing that it even represents anyone who was discriminated against. But Thomas concurred with Breyer, Roberts, and the other liberals that the city needed to prove that the harm it suffered was specifically and directly related to the banks’ conduct under a stricter standard. Given that a number of factors could have caused the wreckage Miami experienced after the housing market collapsed in 2007, Thomas was not convinced the city has any chance of making that case. “The Court of Appeals will not need to look far to discern other, independent events that might well have caused the injuries Miami alleges in these cases,” he wrote.
Whether or not Thomas proves prescient, and regardless of how the case finally works out specifically for Miami, fair housing advocates and other civil rights groups are heartened that the court has at least preserved the option for cities to sue for the foreseeable future. “With this decision, the Supreme Court has acknowledged the crucial role of municipal governments in protecting residents’ rights,” said Dennis Parker, director of the ACLU’s racial justice program. “In housing and lending as in other areas, cities can and should serve as a bulwark against discrimination.”
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The Supreme Court Just Dealt a Huge Blow to Wells Fargo and Bank of America
Mar-a-Lago Is the Definition of Excess—Except When It Comes to Refrigerating Raw Meat
Mother Jones
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Back in January, the swank South Florida resort Mar-a-Lago got even swankier, doubling its initiation fee to $200,000. Weeks later, its owner, the Trump Organization, got some less appetizing news. In an unannounced inspection on Jan. 26, Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation found 11 violations, including hotdogs, burgers, beef, shrimp, duck, and ham stored at temperatures above 41 degrees Fahrenheit, in two different coolers “not maintained in good repair.”
The “winner,” as the Miami Herald cheekily noted its report, was the ham, which clocked in at a cool—certainly not cold—57 degrees.
The inspection report also cited fish “offered raw or undercooked,” which “had not undergone proper parasite destruction.” Oops.
The inspectors deemed the above-temperature meat and under-processed fish “High Priority violations,” defined as “those which could contribute directly to a foodborne illness or injury and include items such as cooking, reheating, cooling and hand-washing.”
No doubt much to the comfort of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who visited and dined at Mar-a-Lago just days after the inspection, all of the serious violations were “Corrected On-Site” under the inspector’s gaze, the report states.
The Herald reports that in the past, Mar-a-Lago owner and US President Donald Trump was “often involved personally in the day-to-day operations,” and it “wasn’t rare to see him check out the kitchen and give directions to the club’s floor personnel.” The paper adds:
At the time, Mar-a-Lago passed inspections with flying colors, with one or two violations at most.
But as Trump jumped into presidential politics, so did the number of health violations.
There were 11 last year compared to just two in 2015.
If the White House gig doesn’t work out, sounds like Trump can make himself useful back at Mar-a-Lago.
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Mar-a-Lago Is the Definition of Excess—Except When It Comes to Refrigerating Raw Meat
Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta
Tagged business, department, food, japanese, miami, public, regulation, venta
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These two bills would make it harder for the EPA to do good science.
Some kids dream of being a movie star or an astronaut, but not Karina Castillo. “Hurricane Andrew hit when I was 6, and it changed who I was,” she says of the historic storm that devastated a swath of South Florida near where her family lived. She decided right then to become a hurricane forecaster.
The youngest daughter of Nicaraguan immigrants, Castillo pursued her dream with the intensity of the storms that fascinated her, earning two meteorology degrees at the University of Miami, then working at NOAA and the Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency Management. But the young scientist soon made an important discovery: “I didn’t want to sit behind a computer and program models,” she says. “I knew I could help communicate science to the public.”
After a stint developing climate curricula at the Miami-based CLEO Institute, she took a job with Moms Clean Air Force, a national coalition of parents and caretakers fighting climate change and air pollution. Castillo is now the point of contact for Florida’s nearly 100,000 MCAF members, guiding them through meetings with policymakers, media appearances, and other climate and clean-air advocacy work. She also conducts national Latino outreach for the group, work she’s eager to ramp up in 2017.
“In the Latino community, the ideas of legacy and conservation are really important,” says Castillo. “When you talk about protecting children, the mama bear comes out of people. And that’s an unstoppable force.”
Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.
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These two bills would make it harder for the EPA to do good science.
Trump’s Biggest Lender Wants New Terms
Mother Jones
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Donald Trump’s biggest creditor, Deutsche Bank, is seeking to restructure some of the president-elect’s debt, Bloomberg reports. Trump’s companies owe the German lender at least $364 million, more than half of his total $713 million debt load, and his loans with the bank—a potential source of leverage over the incoming commander-in-chief—pose a significant conflict of interest.
According to Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank is seeking to limit the conflict by removing Trump’s personal guarantee from the loans, meaning that the president-elect would not be personally on the hook if the loans go bad. Trump has also personally guaranteed loans to his second-biggest lender, Ladder Capital Finance, to which he owes $282 million.
Bloomberg cited unnamed sources who indicated that the bank was the party seeking the changes and that delicate restructuring talks are underway. Trump’s personal guarantees have helped him secure low interest rates, and if the guarantees are removed, the bank could compensate by raising the interest on Trump’s loans or asking for other assets to serve as collateral.
Mother Jones reviewed all of Trump’s publicly listed debts earlier this month and found that Trump has four loans with Deutsche Bank: two mortgages on his Miami Doral golf course, a loan on his Chicago tower, and a $170 million loan tied to his brand-new Washington, DC, hotel. All four loans were made through Deutsche Bank’s private bank, a division that caters to high-net-worth individuals and has the flexibility to make loans that the commercial lending side of the firm might balk at.
Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Ladder Capital show that Trump has guaranteed $8 million of his $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower and $26 million of the $160 million mortgage on the 40 Wall Street office tower.
Since his election, Trump has repeatedly faced questions about the unprecedented conflicts of interest posed by his business empire. So far, the president-elect has done little to allay concerns about his business interests. Trump canceled a scheduled press conference earlier this month at which he said he would discuss how he would separate himself from his business, but he also indicated that his solution did not involve divesting himself from his assets. Instead, he suggested he would step back from daily operations. That would do little to insulate himself from conflicts, and it would do nothing to solve the ethical issues created by his loan guarantees, which make him personally responsible if the bank ever deems the terms of the loans to have been broken. Even if he does divorce himself from his business, he can’t separate himself from the guarantees that put his own money on the line—or from the leverage his lenders have over him.
Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank when he enters the White House is particularly fraught because the German firm is currently in the midst of a regulatory tussle with the Justice Department. In 2015, the bank paid American and European regulators $2.5 billion in a settlement for its role in helping to rig the interest rate market. Now the bank is negotiating with the Justice Department on an even bigger potential settlement—as much as $14 billion—for its role in the creation and sale of bad mortgage products in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
Separately, Reuters recently reported that Ladder Capital may be exploring putting itself up for sale, opening the possibility that Trump’s second-largest lender could wind up in the hands of interests that aren’t necessarily aligned with America’s.
The potential conflicts of interest over the Deutsche Bank loans are separate from concerns that ethics experts have expressed about a possible violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits government officials from receiving beneficial treatment from foreign governments. Those concerns stem from a $920 million loan from the state-owned Bank of China and a coalition of lenders (that also includes Deutsche Bank) to a real estate partnership that Trump is part of.
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Fidel Castro Died
Mother Jones
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Fidel Castro—not a very nice person!—is dead.
Breaking News: Fidel Castro has died at 90. The Cuban revolutionary was a nemesis to 11 American presidents.https://t.co/01wGISur9L
— The New York Times (@nytimes)
It is unclear at this time if he was killed by an exploding cigar lit by JFK’s ghost. I’m going to assume he wasn’t and that he probably died of natural causes. But you know what they say about assume-ing! “It makes asses out of you and me“…
Miami is going to be lit tomorrow.
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Tagged breaking news, dtd, exploding-cigar, fidel, fidel-castro, jfk, miami, natural-causes-, Ona, public
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