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Wide Receiver Turned Foreign Policy Wonk? Donté Stallworth’s Second Act

by JosetteOneil Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Even if you don’t like football, you’ve probably heard of Donte’ Stallworth. Back in March 2009, the then-Cleveland Browns wide receiver made news when, driving drunk the morning after a night of partying with friends, he struck and killed a pedestrian crossing a Miami street.

Stallworth ended up serving just 30 days in jail. He also reached a financial settlement with the victim’s family and was suspended by the NFL for the entire 2009 season, but he couldn’t dodge being seen as just another celebrity escaping justice by virtue of being rich and famous. After his return to football in 2010, Stallworth never again was quite the same. He was a free agent for the entire 2013 season, and after 10 years in the league, his time in football might be over.

For most, that’d be the end of life in the limelight. But Stallworth has gotten a jump on an unusual second act: On the strength of his social-media savvy and his passion for foreign-policy wonkery, he has built a Twitter following of some 143,000 users, who check in with @DonteStallworth to get his take on everything from the latest blown call to the last Snowden revelation. And along with Chris Kluwe and Richard Sherman, he’s pushing back against the dumb-jock stereotype, one tweet at a time.

I recently caught up with Stallworth to talk about his future in the NFL, football and concussions, and how he uses Twitter to interact with the world.

Mother Jones: First of all, given that you last played for Washington, what’s your take on the controversy over the team’s name?

Donte’ Stallworth: I’ve heard both sides of the argument. I don’t know. I mean for one, I do feel like the name itself is obviously—it’s a derogatory term toward a certain racial and ethnic group. However, at the same time, I do know that there have been many Native people—I don’t like to call them “Native Americans,” I guess, definitely not “Indians”—I’ve seen and read a lot about there’s a big number of Natives that don’t mind the Redskins name and they actually embrace it. Although there are a number of groups as well that are opposed to it.

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Wide Receiver Turned Foreign Policy Wonk? Donté Stallworth’s Second Act

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Get ready for more “extreme” El Niños

by OpalSkillen Posted on January 21, 2014

Get ready for more “extreme” El Niños

By

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Batten down the worldwide hatches. Scientists say baby Jesus’ meteorological namesake will become a thundering hulk more often as the climate changes.

The latest scientific projections for how global warming will influence El Niño events suggest that wild weather is ahead. El Niño starts with the arrival of warm water in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and it can culminate with destructive weather around the world. It was named by Peruvian fishermen after the infant Jesus because the warm waters reached them around Christmas.

We’ve previously told you that El Niños appear to be occurring more frequently as the climate has been changing. The authors of the latest paper on this subject, published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, don’t project that El Niños will become more common in future. What they do project, though, is that twice as many El Niños will be of the “extreme” variety.

Extreme El Niños happened in the early 1980s and again in the late 1990s when surface water temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean shot up, triggering global weather pandemonium. Here’s a reminder of what that was like, taken from the new paper:

Catastrophic floods occurred in the eastern equatorial region of Ecuador and northern Peru, and neighbouring regions to the south and north experienced severe droughts. The anomalous conditions caused widespread environmental disruptions, including the disappearance of marine life and decimation of the native bird population in the Galapagos Islands, and severe bleaching of corals in the Pacific and beyond. The impacts extended to every continent, and the 1997/98 event alone caused US$35–45 billion in damage and claimed an estimated 23,000 human lives worldwide.

Jeez, that was a pretty horrible reminder. What’s worse than being reminded of past such disasters, though, is imagining more of them in the future — and that’s just what authors of this paper say we should be doing.

After aggregating the findings of different climate simulations, the scientists found that “the total number of El Niño events decreases slightly but the total number of extreme El Niño events increases.”

The slight decrease in the frequency of El Niños detected by the models wasn’t statistically significant, meaning there’s considerable uncertainty over whether such a decrease would actually occur. But the increase in extreme such events was statistically significant. That means that if the researchers’ models produced accurate simulations, we could start to expect extreme El Niños once every decade by the end of the century.

“Potential future changes in such extreme El Niño occurrences could have profound socio-economic consequences,” the scientists warn in their paper.


Source
Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming, Nature Climate Change

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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Get ready for more “extreme” El Niños

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Why Republicans Cannot Grasp That "Redskins" Is Offensive

by surfikdon Posted on January 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Every once in a while a small controversy comes along that helps explain a big problem. This National Football League season has provided such a controversy. The name of Washington D.C.’s football team, the Redskins, is under fire. “Redskins” is an offensive term and therefore inappropriate for the team representing our nation’s capital. That’s kind of obvious, right?

Most Republicans don’t think so. They defend the name, as they do other Native American-based team names, such as the college football champion Florida State Seminoles, calling them tokens of “honor.” They claim that the names celebrate a “heritage” and “tradition” of “bravery” and “warrior-spirit,” and they publicly wonder: What’s the problem?

The Onion, that fine news source, captured it in one neat, snide sentence: “A new study… confirmed that the name of the Washington Redskins is only offensive if you take any amount of time whatsoever to think about its actual meaning.” So what’s keeping Republicans from thinking about it?

For one thing, Republicans tend to wear a set of blinders, crafted and actively maintained by the party’s functionaries and its media priesthood. They also suffer from mental roadblocks shared by American whites more generally, including a thin, often myth-based “knowledge” about Native Americans. Collectively, all of this blinds Republicans to what it’s like to be on the receiving end of power at home and abroad.

That said, the GOP’s power brokers know the party is facing a demographic time bomb, so why do they let their media minions form an offensive line to protect the Redskins name? Nationally, the Republicans’ short-term hopes and long-term survival may hinge on whether they can manage to make the party welcoming to non-whites. Yet they proudly wear these blinders, as I once did, continuing to “honor” American Indians–as they never would a team called the Whiteskins, the Brownskins, the Blackskins, or the Yellowskins. Here’s a little breakdown on why.

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Why Republicans Cannot Grasp That "Redskins" Is Offensive

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Study: Climate change a death knell for most Californian fish

by Obeey99 Posted on May 31, 2013

Study: Climate change a death knell for most Californian fish

By John Upton

Jacob Katz, UC DavisLead researcher Peter Moyle studying native fish in the Sierra Nevada.

Cold-water-loving fish will find California’s rivers and streams to be increasingly inhospitable — and deadly.

A study published in the online journal PLOS ONE finds that rising water temperatures may drive many of the state’s native species extinct, while helping invasive fish flourish. From the study:

Most native fishes will suffer population declines and become more restricted in their distributions; some will likely be driven to extinction. Fishes requiring cold water [less than 72 degrees] are particularly likely to go extinct. In contrast, most alien fishes will thrive, with some species increasing in abundance and range.

From The Sacramento Bee:

The peer-reviewed study by fishery experts at UC Davis created a framework to measure how vulnerable numerous species are to climate change. It assesses habitat conditions, climate change projections and temperature sensitivity for the 121 native and 50 nonnative fish species that inhabit California.

It found that 82 percent of the native species are at risk of extinction in the next 100 years, largely because climate change will make water temperatures too warm. For nonnative fish, which are generally more adaptable to warm water, only 19 percent are likely to die off.

From a UC Davis press release:

“If present trends continue, much of the unique California fish fauna will disappear and be replaced by alien fishes, such as carp, largemouth bass, fathead minnows and green sunfish,” said Peter Moyle, a professor of fish biology at UC Davis who has been documenting the biology and status of California fish for the past 40 years. …

Climate change and human-caused degradation of aquatic habitats is causing worldwide declines in freshwater fishes, especially in regions with arid or Mediterranean climates, the study said. These declines pose a major conservation challenge. However, there has been little research in the scientific literature related to the status of most fish species, particularly native ones of little economic value.

Moyle saw the need for a rapid and repeatable method to determine the climate change vulnerability of different species. He expects the method presented in the study to be useful for conservation planning.

“These fish are part of the endemic flora and fauna that makes California such a special place,” said Moyle. “As we lose these fishes, we lose their environments and are much poorer for it.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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blogs about ecology

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Study: Climate change a death knell for most Californian fish

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Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide, Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies

by Myrna Posted on March 23, 2013

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Perfect swarm: Giant mosquitos invade Florida

by PierresHood Posted on March 13, 2013

Perfect swarm: Giant mosquitos invade Florida

By Susie Cagle

“Huge,” “giant,” “mega,” and “aggressive” are not the words you want to hear before “mosquito.” But that’s how experts describe Psorophora ciliata, or the “gallinipper” mosquito. Native to the eastern U.S. and immortalized in stories and folk songs for decades, these big biters are now expanding into Florida.

BenSeese

Up to 20 times the size of other mosquitos, the gallinippers aren’t known for spreading disease, but their bites are likened to being stabbed with a knife — and unlike Florida’s other invasive species, they don’t make for an even remotely good meal (we presume). From the Huffington Post:

Doug Carlson, mosquito control director for Indian River County, told WPTV that the insects are so big, “it can feel like a small bird has landed on you.” Meanwhile, Gary Goode of Palm Beach County Mosquito Control told WPBF the mosquito “practically breaks your arm” when it feeds on you.

A warmer winter and stagnant waters left over from Tropical Storm Debby (some parts of the state got 75 inches of rain in 2012) have scientists and residents nervous about the bites to come. The Gainesville Sun reports:

Whatever the mosquito type, locals could be destined for “a very rough summer,” said Paul Myers, administrator for the Alachua County Health Department.

The area’s mild winter spared mosquitoes from the hard freezes that would have killed many of them, he said, adding that major rainfall would amplify the problem. Two-thirds of the county’s population lives in areas with mosquito spraying, but the rest lives in unincorporated Alachua County, where the County Commission has opted not to spray because of concerns about the cost and effectiveness of the treatment, as well as its environmental impacts, Myers said.

New research suggests those sprays aren’t worth much against increasingly invincible super-skeeters anyway, so mosquitoes giant and non- will probably cause an uptick in bloody bites this summer regardless. But it’s not just “this summer” anymore, is it? With extra rain, rising seas, more warm winters, and more warm bodies, gallinippers have good reason to stay in Florida. Wear your long sleeves, folks.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Alaska senator offers a fresh, new energy policy calling for more drilling in Alaska

by rakil23 Posted on February 4, 2013

Alaska senator offers a fresh, new energy policy calling for more drilling in Alaska

By Philip Bump

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) today unveiled a new energy plan, a document that she’d been hyping for weeks. In January, she called it “very comprehensive,” which is, I guess, an improvement over other people’s moderately comprehensive proposals.

usarak

Murkowski is the one who doesn’t appear to be only a head floating in space.

Murkowski very savvily linked the release to the Super Bowl power outage, noting that the darkened Superdome “helps to perhaps kick-start the debate” over exactly how much offshore drilling we should do. Oh, that was a spoiler: Murkowski thinks we should do a lot of offshore drilling. And if we had, the Superdome wouldn’t have gone dark last night, because the game could have been played by the light of burning barrels of crude.

So. The plan. Here’s how the Anchorage Daily News describes it. (We’ve gone ahead and removed the filler.)

Murkowski wants oil leasing off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. She wants an increase in drilling on federal lands, saying that will hasten independence from imported oil.

Her proposals include drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and overturning the Interior Department’s plan to set aside half the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska for wildlife, wilderness and recreation. Murkowski also wants to speed approval for resource production on Alaska Native lands.

Murkowski is resistant to federal regulation of fracking, the controversial process in which high-pressure water and chemicals are injected underground to free up the natural gas inside shale rock. Murkowski said the states already do a good job of regulating it. [Ed. – Ha ha ha ha ha]

She is pushing for immediate approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is opposed by environmental groups because it would tap Canadian oil sands that are higher in carbon emissions than other sources of oil.

What about climate change, you ask? Well: “Her proposal opposes ‘any policy that would increase the price of energy or limit consumer choice.’” She disavows her 2007 push for a cap on carbon emissions, arguing that the economy is worse now. Besides, cheap energy should be embraced! And then she said, presumably not ironically, that access to cheap energy means America is great.

“We like to be comfortable in our temperatures. We like to be able to move around. This is the mark of a successful and an economically healthy world. Where you have energy these are the prosperous areas,” she said.

Well, Sen. Murkowski, you’re going to love Alaska in 2100 when it’s 15 degrees warmer. All that cheap energy, making Alaska comfortable in its temperatures (if at the expense of the rest of America and the world).

Source

There is literally nothing in Murkowski’s proposal which in any way “kick-starts” any debate. It’s only “very comprehensive” in the sense that it comprehensively includes all of the same policies as the GOP’s awesomely named “DEJA” proposal last year, which itself was such a retread that we basically only bothered to make fun of the name when reporting on it.

Murkowski loves oil, loves oil companies, and can thank the industry, in part, for her remarkable 2010 write-in Senate victory. This isn’t an energy plan; it’s a fundraising email for 2016 sent to Shell and ExxonMobil.

But nice Super Bowl hook. Maybe that got a few more eyeballs on this same, tired nonsense.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Shell VP: Yeah, we’re gonna spill some oil in the arctic

by Myrna Posted on November 30, 2012

Shell VP: Yeah, we’re gonna spill some oil in the arctic

By Philip Bump

Your quote of the day comes from the BBC.

There’s no sugar-coating this, I imagine there would be spills, and no spill is OK. But will there be a spill large enough to impact people’s subsistence? My view is no, I don’t believe that would happen.

That’s Shell’s Alaska vice president, Pete Slaiby, discussing the company’s new, fraught drilling operations off the North Slope of Alaska. During the summer, the company had a near–daily series of screw–ups that did little to inspire confidence in its ability to successfully extract oil from the ocean floor without spilling it all over themselves and the ocean and the animals in the ocean and probably you, too, somehow. So I’m not sure if Slaiby’s admission is a refreshing demonstration of realism or a heart-attack-inducing statement of indifference.

artic pj

The Arctic Ocean, where drilling is probs no big deal.

I do however love his statement that, yeah, there’ll be spills, but, don’t worry: minor ones. How … does that work? The entire context for the BBC article is that Native populations in Alaska are nervous about the prospect of drilling and a spill.

“We are the oldest continuous inhabitants of North America,” says Point Hope’s Mayor Steve Oomituk. “We’ve been here thousands of years.”

Oomituk shares the fear of many in the small community — population 800 — that offshore drilling by Shell could destroy the food chain that they rely on for survival. Over 80% of the food eaten in Point Hope is caught by the people themselves. …

“If an oil rig spilled and made a mess of the ocean, how am I ever going to eat a whale that’s not contaminated? Crude oil stays on the bottom of the ocean,” [local resident Patrick Jobstone] says.

To which Shell responds, in essence: Don’t worry your pretty little heads.

The brashness of the dismissal is ridiculous for several reasons. First, this is one of the most remote, unforgiving parts of the world. It took months to stop a spill 100 miles from one of the busiest regions in the United States during warm weather. How long would it take to get spill-response equipment and material in place off the Alaskan coast?

And, second, Shell’s clownish failures over the summer included its inability to demonstrate that its containment system worked. Earlier today, details of that failure were released. From KUOW.org:

Before Shell can drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean, it needs to prove to federal officials that it can clean up a massive oil spill there. That proof hinges on a barge being built in Bellingham, [Wash.,] called the Arctic Challenger. …

According to [Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement] internal emails obtained by KUOW, the containment dome test was supposed to take about a day. That estimate proved to be wildly optimistic.

Day 1: The Arctic Challenger’s massive steel dome comes unhooked from some of the winches used to maneuver it underwater. The crew has to recover it and repair it.
Day 2: A remote-controlled submarine gets tangled in some anchor lines. It takes divers about 24 hours to rescue the submarine.
Day 5: The test has its worst accident. On that dead-calm Friday night, Mark Fesmire, the head of BSEE’s Alaska office, is on board the Challenger. He’s watching the underwater video feed from the remote-control submarine when, a little after midnight, the video screen suddenly fills with bubbles. The 20-foot-tall containment dome then shoots to the surface. The massive white dome “breached like a whale,” Fesmire e-mails a colleague at BSEE headquarters.
Then the dome sinks more than 120 feet. A safety buoy, basically a giant balloon, catches it before it hits bottom. About 12 hours later, the crew of the Challenger manages to get the dome back to the surface. “As bad as I thought,” Fesmire writes his BSEE colleague. “Basically the top half is crushed like a beer can.”

But don’t worry, Native people. A spill will be nothing to worry about. Like Shell’s massive 2011 spill in the North Sea, labeled the worst spill in the region in a decade. No bigs.

Here’s a thought, Shell/Slaiby. If “no spill is OK,” don’t fucking drill.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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