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No new lead crises in 5 years? Clinton has a plan

by VeroniqCollier Posted on April 13, 2016

Hillary Clinton addresses the National Action Network’s 25th Annual Convention in New York City. REUTERS/Mike Segar

No new lead crises in 5 years? Clinton has a plan

By on 13 Apr 2016commentsShare

The day before a Democratic presidential debate in New York, Hillary Clinton rolled out an environmental justice plan that calls for eliminating lead as a major public health threat within five years.

She would have her work cut out for her, as Flint, Mich.’s lead-poisoning crisis has shown. As Clinton reminded her audience today in a speech on racial justice at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference: “There are a lot of Flints across our country where children are exposed to polluted air, unhealthy water and chemicals that can increase cancer risk.”

Studies show that some 500,000 U.S. children under the age of 5, who are predominantly black and Latino, have high levels of lead in their bloodstreams. This is primarily because of lead-based paint in old buildings, but also stems from contaminated soil and drinking water. When it comes to water contamination, we don’t even know where most of the problematic pipes are concentrated; best guesses range from 3 to 10 million lead service lines in America. Nor do we have consistent reporting on concentrated areas of lead paint in homes.

Despite the myriad challenges, Clinton insisted Wednesday: “If we put our minds to it, it can be done.”

Her plan calls for:

A Presidential Commission on Childhood Lead Exposure and a task force charged with finding and fixing 50 other Flints around the country.
Directing all federal agencies to develop plans on environmental justice and ensure that the Justice Department prosecutes environmental crimes as heavily as other crimes.
More funding — specifically, up to $5 billion in federal dollars — to replace lead paint in homes and contaminated soils in school yards.
Federal incentives through her Clean Energy Challenge (something Clinton proposed previously) so that states have a reason to exceed federal standards for lead reduction and other types of pollution.
Funds to replenish the Superfund budget to clean up over 450,000 polluted sites around the U.S.
An update the Lead Disclosure Rule and Safe Water Drinking Act to improve lead inspections, and the need for more infrastructure spending to fix water and transportation-related pollution.

A number of these proposals would require Congress to cough up more funding for infrastructure and transportation, as well as for Congress to amend laws. And a few of them overlap with proposals from Bernie Sanders, who has also called for more funds for Superfund sites and would direct agencies to develop clear priorities on environmental justice. Sanders, too, has highlighted the “unequal exposure of people of color to harmful chemicals, pesticides and other toxins in homes, schools, neighborhoods and workplaces” on his campaign website.

Flint has featured heavily in the Democratic primary and was the site of a Clinton-Sanders debate in March. With a week to go before New Yorkers vote, environmental justice is back in the national spotlight. But the intertwined problems of pollution, poverty, and racism won’t be fixed in just a handful of debates.

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No new lead crises in 5 years? Clinton has a plan

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Inside 2016’s Weirdest Republican Delegate Fight

by RachelleWoodhou Posted on April 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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The US Virgin Islands Republican caucus would hardly register on the national radar in a normal year. Traditionally, it hardly even registers on the islands’ radar—fewer than 100 people participated in the 2012 event. But with front-runner Donald Trump struggling to lock up the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination, the behind-the-scenes wrangling for delegates has taken on an unprecedented significance. And that fight has come to this US territory. The chaos there says a lot about what could unfold in Cleveland in July, when the Republicans convene to select their presidential nominee.

This collection of Caribbean islands—which includes St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas—is home to one of the smallest Republican parties in the United States, but it has produced one of the nastiest and most unexpected political clashes in recent memory. The battle has played out in radio attack ads and in the courts, featuring allegations including corruption, carpetbagging, and Nazi sympathizing.

In one corner is the island’s Republican Party chair, John Canegata, a shooting-range owner who works at a rum distillery and has led the GOP there for four years. In the other is a faction led by John Yob, a veteran political consultant from Michigan who worked for Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign before moving to the islands last winter. Yob and his wife, Erica, along with Lindsey Eilon, another political operative recently arrived from Michigan, were among the six delegates elected on March 10; Canegata is fighting to have the entire slate replaced and has signaled he may take the challenge all the way to Cleveland.

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Inside 2016’s Weirdest Republican Delegate Fight

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The National Weather Service decides to stop yelling at us

by ENJZella078154 Posted on April 12, 2016

The National Weather Service decides to stop yelling at us

By on 12 Apr 2016commentsShare

The National Weather Service will stop issuing forecasts in all-caps beginning on May 11. They’ve given us 30 days’ notice to prepare, AND AS YOU CAN SEE, WE ARE FREAKING OUT.

All this time, we thought that the nation’s top meteorologists were just a bunch of neurotics. We assumed when they told everyone in Boston at 7 a.m. this past Sunday that “ASIDE FROM A FEW MINOR TWEAKS … THE OVERALL TREND IN THE FORECAST REMAINS ON TRACK FOR TODAY,” they were legitimately panicking over this mild update to the “DRY BUT COOL CONDITIONS” that they’d reported just 10 minutes earlier.

But no — turns out, the NWS has just been slow to ditch the last remnants of a decades-old technology called a teleprinter. The technology, which only operates in all-caps, basically amounts to “typewriters hooked up to telephone lines,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

So now we’re in a bit of a predicament. We’ve got just 29 days until our forecasts go mixed capitalization, and since we’re so used to all of our forecasts sounding like they came straight from the screaming weatherman in The Day After Tomorrow, we now have no idea which weather conditions we should be yelling about!

Here to help, we’ve compiled some recent forecasts to experiment with. Here’s one for Kansas City:

“A STRENGTHENING STORM OVER THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST WILL MOVE FURTHER ONSHORE TODAY, WHICH WILL CONTINUE TO PUSH A MID-LEVEL RIDGE OVER THE CENTRAL PLAINS. THE MAIN CONCERN FOR TODAY AND FRIDAY IS FIRE WEATHER DANGER AS A VERY STRONG LOW-LEVEL JET DEVELOPS UNDERNEATH THE RIDGE FROM CENTRAL TEXAS SPREADING NORTHEAST INTO THE FORECAST AREA THIS MORNING.”

Sounds mildly terrifying, doesn’t it?

How about: “A strengthening storm over the Pacific Northwest will move further onshore today, which will continue to push a mid-level ridge over the Central Plains. The main concern for today and Friday is fire weather danger as a very strong low-level jet develops underneath the ridge from central Texas spreading northeast into the forecast area this morning.”

That’s much better. Although, might I suggest that we keep “FIRE WEATHER DANGER” in all caps. That sounds like something we definitely should be yelling about.

OK, here’s another example from Boston: “PRECIPITATION TYPE WILL BE A CONCERN TODAY. LOTS OF LOW LEVEL DRY AIR TO OVERCOME FIRST.”

Now this just sounds melodramatic. “Precipitation type will be a concern today. Lots of low level dry air to overcome first” should do just fine.

Likewise, there’s no need to capitalize “THIS EVENING … LINGERING CLOUDS AND A FEW LIGHT SHOWERS FROM RESIDUAL INSTABILITY … BUT THIS SHOULD DIMINISH.” Unless, of course, the weather service is trying to comfort us, in which case, “BUT THIS SHOULD DIMINISH” should remain in all caps, and we should thank them for being there when we need them.

A few more general guidelines: Tornadoes are worth yelling about. Light rain is not. Hurricanes — yes. Fog — no. Severe flooding — yes. Sunny skies — no. You get the idea.

So are there any circumstances under which the entire forecast should be in all caps? Of course. Here’s one:

CLIMATE CHANGE IS CAUSING THE WEST ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET TO CRUMBLE, WILDFIRES TO RAVAGE THE WEST COAST, AND INSECT-BORN DISEASES TO SPREAD OUT FROM THE TROPICS. EXPECT A COLD FRONT FROM CLIMATE DENIERS TO SLOW ADAPTATION MEASURES THROUGH MID-CENTURY, CAUSING A HEAVY RAINFALL OF WIDESPREAD ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL DEVASTATION.

But then again, that sounds pretty terrifying no matter how you write it.

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The National Weather Service decides to stop yelling at us

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Paul Ryan Does Not Want to Be Your Next President

by SarahBaskervill Posted on April 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Paul Ryan will apparently be making a Shermanesque statement about an hour from now:

Ryan…has arranged a hastily called 3:15 p.m. press conference inside the Republican National Committee. Advisers say he will insist — in his clearest terms yet — to the GOP’s big donor and lobbyist class that he will not attempt to claim the nomination at the July convention in Cleveland.

“He’s going to rule himself out and put this to rest once and for all,” a Ryan aide said, requesting anonymity to discuss the planned speech.

Stay tuned. Presumably this is good news for Ted Cruz.

UPDATE: And the press conference is now over:

“Let me be clear,” Mr. Ryan said. “I do not want nor will I accept the nomination of our party.” He added that he had a message for convention delegates: “If no candidate has the majority on the first ballot, I believe you should only turn to a person who has participated in the primary. Count me out.”

That seems suitably blunt.

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Paul Ryan Does Not Want to Be Your Next President

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Gibraltar ends one of the biggest balloon releases; thousands of whales blow sighs of relief

by QuentinBarker Posted on April 6, 2016

Gibraltar ends one of the biggest balloon releases; thousands of whales blow sighs of relief

By on 6 Apr 2016 4:58 pmcommentsShare

Looks like Gibraltar will need to find a new way to celebrate its national holiday — one that doesn’t involve sending 30,000 balloons into the sky.

Gibraltar, a British territory squeezed onto a tiny peninsula next to Spain, has celebrated National Day every Sept. 10 by releasing one balloon for each of its citizens. It’s quite the spectacle. But after 24 years, that practice is coming to a close thanks to pressure from environmental advocates who denounced the “mass aerial littering.”

The Self-Determination for Gibraltar Group, an organization campaigning for independence, announced an end to the annual balloon barrage on Wednesday. The decision prompted this tweet from Lewis Pugh, U.N. Patron of the Oceans:

So what’s not to love about flooding the sky with helium-filled bubbles of joy? Eventually, those balloons come back down. Back on earth, they can spell the end for turtles, dolphins, and sharks that mistake the deflated latex lumps for food. Eating deflated balloons can lead them to starve. Sea creatures sometimes get entangled in balloons and suffocate.

With 30,000 fewer balloons this year, we hope Gibraltar’s decision will provide our oceans with a little respite from the onslaught of plastic pollution. I guess Gibraltar came to the conclusion that the rest of us did: Sending a bunch of plastic into the air — even if it looks pretty! — is still littering.

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Gibraltar ends one of the biggest balloon releases; thousands of whales blow sighs of relief

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Donald Trump Has No Idea What He Said One Day Ago

by MavisFries43 Posted on April 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has apparently decided that he’s the master of the long-form interview, so he’s been giving a bunch of them lately. But they raise a question: does Trump really think he’s impressing people in these interviews? Today we got our answer: he does indeed. Here he is in his latest Q&A with Robert Costa and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post:

I do say this: My media coverage is not honest. It really isn’t. And I’m not saying that as a person with some kind of a complex. I’m just saying, I will be saying words that are written totally differently from what I’ve said. And I see it all — in all fairness, the editorial board of The Washington Post. I was killed on that. I left the room, I thought it was fine.

Just as a reminder, this is the interview where his comment on racial disparities in law enforcement was “I’ve read where there are and I’ve read where there aren’t.” On Iran: “We should have gone in and said, ‘release our prisoners,’ they would have said ‘no,’ and we would have said, ‘double up the sanctions.'” On his beef with the Ricketts family: “I’ll start doing ads about their baseball team.” On using nukes against ISIS: “I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good-looking group of people here.” On his hands: “My hands are fine. You know, my hands are normal. Slightly large, actually. In fact, I buy a slightly smaller than large glove, okay?” On how he’d address racial problems: “I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader for the country.” On taking Iraq’s oil: “For that, I would circle it….I would defend the areas with the oil”—apparently not realizing that the oil is spread throughout nearly the entire country.

That interview was a train wreck. Trump’s ignorance and incoherence was on a Charlie Sheen-esque level—except that Trump didn’t have any pharmaceutical help. But he thought everything went fine. Apparently he can’t read a room quite as well as he thinks.

And he’d better be prepared to get treated badly again. Here he is on the national debt:

DT: We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.

BW: How long would that take?

DT: I think I could do it fairly quickly, because of the fact the numbers….

BW: What’s fairly quickly?

DT: Well, I would say over a period of eight years. And I’ll tell you why.

BW: Would you ever be open to tax increases as part of that, to solve the problem?

DT: I don’t think I’ll need to. The power is trade. Our deals are so bad.

So…Trump is somehow going to start running a budget surplus of $2 trillion per year without raising taxes. How? Something to do with trade.

Is this even fact checkable? Or is it, in Wolfgang Pauli’s famous words, so nonsensical that it’s “not even wrong”? In any case, I promise Trump that every quote in this post is a direct quotation. Nobody is making him say words that are totally different from what he’s said. Honestly, there’s no need.

However, the fact that he thinks he’s being constantly misquoted really does make you wonder if he’s all there. He seems awfully sincere about this. He really and truly talks in such a stream of consciousness that he doesn’t even realize what he’s said half the time.

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Donald Trump Has No Idea What He Said One Day Ago

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Spring is here! And so are the semen trees.

by JRXSadie40838 Posted on March 30, 2016

Spring is here! And so are the semen trees.

By on 30 Mar 2016commentsShare

People say Asheville, North Carolina, is a beautiful town, and its beauty lies mostly in the landscape. Nestled deep in the North Carolina hills, Asheville is especially lovely in the spring, as color comes back to the Blue Ridge Mountains. But there is a problem with Asheville in spring: It smells like shit.

Actually, it doesn’t smell like shit, per se. It smells more like the inside of a scrotum that has been trapped in tight pleather shorts for six to 12 months. On a recent visit to my hometown, my girlfriend, meeting my family for the first time, asked if Asheville has a public masturbation problem.

“Why does it smell like semen around here?,” she asked as we walked downtown with my family.

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“Oh,” my sister said. “That’s just the Bradford pears.”

Bradford pear trees, also known as the Callery pear, have small, white petals that turn to dark green foliage as the petals drop. They are pretty, but they are also the bane of springtime in Asheville. Urban Dictionary describes it as a “cross between old semen, dirty vagina, and rotting fried shrimp. Common throughout the South,” the linguistic authority continues, “these trees are pleasantly located near eateries and other fine establishments.” This is certainly true in Asheville, where a lovely outdoor lunch is made all the more ripe by the stench of rotting semen.

And Asheville is hardly alone. A native of China, the Bradford pear is now an invasive species, spreading across the world to “almost every city and town to some degree or another,” according to horticulturalist Michael A. Dirr. Dirr also, seemingly without irony, writes that Bradfords “tend to develop rather tight crotches,” although their crotches are unrelated to the smell. According to the 2006 tree census, Bradford pears accounted for over 10 percent of New York City’s nearly 600,000 trees, making it the fifth most popular tree in the city. 

Bradfords were introduced to U.S. cities and suburbs in the 1964 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a decorative tree prized for its appearance and fast growth, but quickly spread beyond where they were planted, as invasive species do. Now, these pretty but stinky trees outcompete other plants in many areas, taking valuable resources and edging natives out of their own ecosystems. Despite efforts to replace them from Missouri to Boston, the problem of Bradford pears and other invasive species will only grow worse in the era of climate change, with spring starting earlier and at warmer temperatures. Invasive species intensified by climate change is one of the leading causes of biological diversity loss worldwide, according to the National Park Service. And Bradford pears are now in an estimated 25 states and over 150 countries, stinking up the globe, and taking over land where they aren’t meant to be. “When you see those fields of white flowering trees, please don’t get giddy with excitement over pretty white flowers,” writes the Asheville Citizen-Times. “What you are looking at are Callery pears destroying nature.”

If it hasn’t already, the semen tree problem could soon reach a city near you, just like it has in my hometown. So remember this for the future: The stench of rotten ejaculate that wafts around you each April is just a tree reminding you that after the long winter, spring, finally, has come.

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Spring is here! And so are the semen trees.

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Justice Department Takes Steps to Protect Transgender Prisoners

by ArletteMcknight Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Amid several proposals in Republican-controlled statehouses to limit protections for transgender residents came a glimmer of hope from the federal government on Thursday. The Department of Justice issued new regulations clarifying guidelines it set in 2012 for the treatment of transgender inmates in prisons. The 2012 guidelines required prison and jail staff to consider inmates’ gender identity when deciding where to place transgender inmates, but many prisons continue to follow state rules that assign inmates housing according to their genitalia, the Guardian US reports. The new DOJ guidelines state that any “written policy or actual practice that assigns transgender or intersex inmates to gender-specific facilities, housing units, or programs based solely on their external genital anatomy” is in violation of the federal standard, which mandates that prisons consider both inmates’ gender identity and personal concerns about their safety when assigning them to a housing facility.

A survey conducted by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2011 and 2012 estimated that 4 percent of state and federal prison inmates and 3 percent of jail inmates reported being sexually assaulted by other inmates or staff in the previous year. But more than a third of transgender inmates in prisons and a third in jails said they had been sexually assaulted during the same time period. Transgender women housed in men’s prisons are at even greater risk for sexual assault. A California study found that nearly 60 percent of transgender women inmates housed in men’s prisons reported being sexually assaulted, compared to just 4 percent of non-transgender inmates in men’s prison. The BJS estimates that there are 3,200 transgender inmates in US prisons and jails.

The new guidelines are largely symbolic—they are not legally binding—but they make plain the federal government’s stance on the housing of transgender inmates, the National Center for Transgender Equality and Just Detention International said in a joint statement. “The new guidance, posted online today by the National PREA Resource Center, sends the clearest message yet that current housing practices in prisons and jails are in violation of PREA and put transgender people at risk for sexual abuse,” they said, according to Guardian US.

Last year, the Department of Justice wrote to a Georgia court in support of Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman who sought a transfer to a women’s prison. Diamond claimed she had been sexually assaulted multiple times at several men’s prisons during her three-year incarceration. She also requested a court order forcing the Georgia Department of Corrections to give her access to the hormones and medications she had been taking for years to treat her gender dysphoria prior to incarceration. (Diamond has since been released.) But most states have been slow to catch up.

There’s one state that’s ahead of the pack. Last year, California became the first state to adopt a policy of providing gender-affirmation surgery to transgender inmates for whom a doctor had determined the surgery was medically necessary. Months before adopting the policy, the state had agreed to pay for gender-affirmation surgery—at an estimated cost of between $15,000 and $25,000—for transgender inmate Michelle Norsworthy, after a judge ruled the state was constitutionally obligated to provide it to her under the Eighth Amendment. Norsworthy was released on parole before receiving the treatment.

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Justice Department Takes Steps to Protect Transgender Prisoners

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‘Humanity’s Final Exam’ – Distinguishing Between Momentary and Millennial Risks

by Myrna Posted on March 24, 2016

Weighing threats: terrorism now and a transformed planet and flooded cities in centuries to come. See original article here:  ‘Humanity’s Final Exam’ – Distinguishing Between Momentary and Millennial Risks ; ; ;

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‘Humanity’s Final Exam’ – Distinguishing Between Momentary and Millennial Risks

Posted in alo, alternative energy, cannabis, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, LAI, LG, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, TOTO, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Humanity’s Final Exam’ – Distinguishing Between Momentary and Millennial Risks

What would actually happen if we stopped eating so much meat?

by JarrodBevan29 Posted on March 23, 2016

What would actually happen if we stopped eating so much meat?

By on 23 Mar 2016commentsShare

If you follow the news about food, you’re no doubt aware that there’s a lot of concern over the impact of eating and raising meat, on both human health and the planet. A new study provides more to chew on: It suggests that if we halved our meat consumption by 2050, we could make huge emissions cuts and save millions of lives.

The Oxford University researchers who published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences don’t expect the whole world to suddenly switch to vegenaise. But they wanted to explore possible environmental and human health outcomes from different diets. So they started by assuming that more people in developing countries would be eating like meat-loving Americans — a logical assumption, since that’s the way the world is headed — then looked at what would happen if we somehow cut that projected meat consumption by half by the middle of this century.

Their conclusion: The world could cut greenhouse gas emissions from food (which currently make up a quarter of the total) by 29 percent, and save 5.1 million lives per year through reduced heart disease, cancer, stroke, and other illnesses associated with meat consumption.

Of course, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of diet advice: There are places where livestock form an important part of the ecosystem, and where people are making real efforts to raise more sustainable meat. But for those of us with abundant food choices, this study provides more evidence that less meat makes more sense.

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What would actually happen if we stopped eating so much meat?

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