Tag Archives: northern

How Australia Became the Dirtiest Polluter in the Developed World

by KKMBrigette Posted on September 26, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Australians like to think of themselves as green. Their island country boasts some 3 million square miles of breathtaking landscape. They were an early global leader in solar power. They’ve had environmental regulations on the books since colonial times. And in 2007 they elected a party and a prime minister running on a “pro-climate” platform, with promises to sign the Kyoto Protocol and pass sweeping environmental reforms. All of which makes sense for a country that is already suffering the early effects of global warming.

And yet, seven years later, Australia has thrown its environmentalism out the window—and into the landfill.

The climate-conscious Labor Party is out, felled by infighting and a bloodthirsty, Rupert Murdoch–dominated press that sows conspiracy theories about climate science. In its place, Australians elected the conservative Liberal Party, led by a prime minister who once declared that “the climate argument is absolute crap.”

In the year since they took office, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Liberal-led coalition have already dismantled the country’s key environmental policies. Now they’ve begun systematically ransacking its natural resources. In the process, they’ve transformed Australia from an international innovator on environmental issues into quite possibly the dirtiest country in the developed world. And in a masterful whirl of the spin machine, they’ve managed to upend public debate by painting climate science as superstition and superstition as climate science. (We should note here that one of us grew up in Australia.)

The country’s landmark carbon tax has been repealed. The position of science minister has been eliminated. A man who warns of “global cooling” is now the country’s top business adviser. In November, Australia will host the G-20 economic summit; it plans to use its power as host to keep climate change off the official agenda.

If the environment has become Australia’s enemy, fossil fuels are its best friend once again. Two months after it struck down the carbon tax, the government forged a deal with a fringe party led by a mining tycoon to repeal a tax on mining profits. It appointed a noted climate-change skeptic—yes, another one—to review its renewable energy targets. Surprise: He’s expected to slash them. Independent modeling in a study commissioned by the Climate Institute, Australian Conservation Foundation, and WWF-Australia finds that the cuts to renewable energy won’t reduce Australians’ energy bills. They will, however, gift the country’s coal and gas industry another $8.8 billion US

At a time when solar power is booming worldwide, sunny Australia is rolling back its state-level subsidies (despite domestic success) and canceling major solar projects. Meanwhile, the government has given the go-ahead to build the nation’s largest coal mine, with an eye toward boosting coal exports to India.

Did we mention that Australians’ per-capita carbon emissions are the highest of any major developed country in the world? Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific. No, Australia isn’t a theocracy, and oil isn’t the source of its fossil-fuel riches. But it is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal and third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and minerals and fuels account for nearly 50 percent of its export revenues. Its per-capita carbon emissions actually exceed those of Saudi Arabia. And its behavior of late is beginning to bear an ugly resemblance to those petro-states whose governments seem to exist chiefly to guarantee the spectacular profits of the fossil-fuel industry.

The skies aren’t the only realm that Australia is rapidly polluting. After all, the waste that the country is dredging up in new mines and coal port expansions has to go somewhere. Why not dump it on the Great Barrier Reef? (This month, facing a PR disaster, the mining consortium in charge of that particular project reversed its decision and will likely request permission to dump the dredge inland instead.)

The carbon tax became Australia’s equivalent of Obamacare.

“Let’s see,” Australian leaders must wake up wondering every morning: “What natural wonder could we trash today?” At the top of that list is the pristine Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, nearly two-thirds of which the new government pledged to open to commercial logging. Environmentalists argued the logging would harm threatened species such as the swift parrot, the wedge-tailed eagle, and the iconic Tasmanian devil. Those concerns were waved aside by the state government, which, like the federal government, is controlled by the Liberals. Fortunately, their plans were thwarted when UNESCO rebuffed their attempt to repeal the forest’s World Heritage protections.

How the Liberals and their coalition partners have undone so many environmental policiesin such a short time is a study in the power of biased media and irrational thinking.

From the moment the pro-climate Labor Party took power in 2007, opposition leaders and pundits made its environmental policies the focal point of their political attacks. Even environmental policies established under previous Liberal regimes became politically polarized as conservatives recast environmental policies as “job-destroyers.” The carbon tax turned into Australia’s equivalent of Obamacare as the opposition sought a wedge with which to pry apart the Labor Party’s coalition with the environmentally focused political party, the Greens. In some ways, environmental policies are even more vulnerable to being cast as job-killers than health care policies are, because the benefits are less tangible to the individual.

But Abbott and his allies haven’t just turned the public against environmental regulations with threats of economic doom. They’ve also worked hard to shake the public’s trust in climate science. And they’ve done it in a way that would surprise most Americans: by comparing environmentalists to religious kooks.

Green politicians, climate change activists, and even scientists have been painted as modern incarnations of a hated early-20th-century Australian archetype: the holier-than-thou, anti-gambling, anti-alcohol religious wowser. Someone who, according to professor Ken Inglis, “prayed on his knees on Sunday and preyed on his neighbours the rest of the week.”

This line of attack began as early as 2010, when Abbott was in the parliamentary opposition. In a television interview, he said of then–Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s climate change policies, “I am not as evangelical about this as Prime Minister Rudd is. I am not theological about this the way Prime Minister Rudd is.”

In a 2012 op-ed titled “Losing their religion as evidence cools off,” in Rupert Murdoch’s national newspaper, the Australian, Abbott’s top business adviser wrote: “When Mother Nature decided in 1980 to change gears from cooler to warmer, a new global warming religion was born, replete with its own church (the UN), a papacy, (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and a global warming priesthood masquerading as climate scientists.”

Embracing the analogy, the former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard gave a speech at a U.K. fracking conference in 2013 titled “One religion is enough,” in which he called action on climate change “a substitute religion.” Interestingly, while the global-warming-as-religion line probably wouldn’t play as well stateside, it seems that the US-based think tank the Heartland Institute has played a key role in funding Australia’s denial movement.

Also instrumental in sowing doubt and apathy has been Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns about two-thirds of Australia’s metropolitan press and the dominant dailies in most state capitals. According to a study by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, coverage of the former Labor government’s climate-change policies by News Corp. papers was 82 percent negative.

Even so, belief in climate change remains relatively high among Australian voters. According to a 2014 Lowy Institute poll, 45 percent of Australians now see global warming as a “serious and pressing problem,” up 5 points since 2013. (Forty percent of Americans believe it to be a major threat, a 2013 Pew Research poll found.) But belief is not the same as action.

The conservatives’ cultivated agnosticism about climate issues is abetted by the nation’s general indifference about what happens in the “Outback.” Australians have long turned a blind eye toward the 70 percent of the country that is arid bushland and the small number of people who live there. Global mining companies like Rio Tinto run desert fiefdoms in the Northern Territory that are larger than Washington, D.C. The miners themselves—largely fly-in, fly-out workers—barely live in the remote, often indigenous, communities of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, or Queensland whose land they’re gutting and whose small towns they’re destroying. Many commute from Sydney and Melbourne, or even New Zealand and Bali.

Historically, this apathy extends beyond mining. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the government allowed the British to conduct nuclear tests and blast Western Australia’s Monte Bello Islands and parts of South Australia. And just this August, the conservative minister for defense told US Secretary of State John Kerry that the American military was “welcome to use the ‘open spaces’ of the Northern Territory” for their bases and military exercises. (There’s been a US Marine base in Darwin for years.) Imagine the United States gifting Alaska to the Canadian army for war games.

There are some who would like to estrange this swath of the country even further from Australia’s coastal population centers. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart, one of the richest women in the world, has lobbied for the continent’s northern third to be declared a “special economic zone” with reduced taxes, a lower minimum wage, and scant regulation.

If Australians have grown apathetic toward the use of their country, it is fair to point out that it seems equally apathetic toward them. Beautiful as it is, it’s a harsh land in which to make a home. It’s often on fire, usually in drought, and when the streams aren’t bone dry, they’re flooding—all natural disasters that are already being exacerbated by global warming.

Let’s hope that the rapacious policies of the current government represent only a temporary bout of insanity. If the Australian people cannot recover some of their earlier regard for their environment, they may find in time that their great land is no longer merely apathetic toward their residence there, but openly hostile.

Link – 

How Australia Became the Dirtiest Polluter in the Developed World

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Australia Became the Dirtiest Polluter in the Developed World

Why Scotland’s Independence Vote Matters for Climate Change

by Susie Quan Posted on September 17, 2014

Mother Jones

As you’ve no doubt seen by now, Scottish voters are heading to the polls to decide whether to break free from the United Kingdom and chart an independent course for the first time in 307 years. A record number of voters are expected to turn out—97 percent of the adult population, or more than 4.2 million people, are registered. Rugged, remote and sparsely populated as the country is, the actual ballots will take some time to be trucked, boated, helicoptered and fully counted: Results are likely to come in early Friday morning, US time.

One of the big unknowns if Scotland votes “Yes” is what will happen to the UK’s climate and energy goals. The countries are interconnected and interdependent, relying on each other’s infrastructure (the wires, the interchanges, everything) and resources (oil, gas and wind) to power their economies. How that pie gets carved up remains a source of debate and confusion.

Here’s what we know (and what we don’t know) about what will happen to Scotland and the UK’s energy mix and their ability to reach renewable energy targets and to combat climate change if the two go their separate ways.

Will the UK still be able to get 15 percent of its energy from renewables if Scotland leaves?

Scotland produces a lot of green energy. It generates over a third of the UK’s renewable electricity, according to the latest government numbers. Carbon Brief, a London group that tracks climate policy, says that Scotland provides 43 percent of the UK’s wind capacity and 92 percent of its hydroelectric power. So, in theory, losing Scottish energy sources would make the power supply for the rest of the UK “less green,” the group says. That could be especially problematic given that European Union rules will require the UK to get 15 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020.

“Without the windier onshore and offshore conditions in Scotland, the rest of the UK’s ability to meet the target might diminish significantly,” says Simon Moore, a senior research fellow at Policy Exchange, a think tank in London. But that may not actually happen. Moore thinks it’s likely that even if Scotland becomes independent, its energy market will remain tied to the UK’s. “Odds are that an independent Scotland and the remainder England and Wales would continue to operate an integrated electricity market—similar to the ‘Single Electricity Market‘ that is shared by the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland,” he explains.

Still, Moore warns that it’s far too early to know how this issue will be ultimately decided. “No decision has been made—and I doubt any more than preliminary thinking has begun—on how the target might be divided up if Scotland leaves,” he says.

Who will pay for Scotland’s green energy sector if the UK stops subsidizing it?

Scotland’s renewable energy development is subsidized by the entire United Kingdom—to the tune of £560 million (nearly $913 million) in the most recent tax year, according to Bloomberg. If the UK puts a stop to those subsidies—as it appears to be threatening to do—Scotland would have to get that money from somewhere else.

According to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, Scotland would need to spend £1.8 billion (nearly $3 billion) to meet it’s goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2020. Without the UK subsidies, the British government warns that the additional burden could be partly carried by Scottish rate payers. “Our analysis shows that Scottish consumers are up to £189 ($309) better off in the UK as the broad shoulders of the Union allow us to spread energy costs more evenly,” a department spokesperson said, as quoted by the BBC.

DECC Secretary Ed Davey said in April that the rest of the UK would not have to “support an independent Scottish state’s energy costs to ensure its own security of supply.”

The Scottish “Yes” campaign counters that they’ll be able to work out a deal that benefits both countries, with the UK continuing to fund renewable energy north of the border and, in return, importing some of that low-carbon electricity, according to Carbon Brief. Again, we’ll have to wait and see.

Is North Sea oil and gas really the key to Scotland’s economic independence?

The North Sea has been a source of oil and gas for the UK for four decades. The “Yes” movement argues that those resources will help ensure the financial security of an independent Scotland. According to Carbon Brief, the Scottish government says it would be entitled to 90 percent of future North Sea oil and gas tax revenue, and this has been a central feature of the “Yes” campaign.

“The reality is North Sea oil and gas will be with us way beyond 2050,” Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister and the face of the “Yes” campaign, said during a televised debate. “Every other country in Europe would give its eye teeth to have North Sea oil and gas. It cannot be regarded as anything other than a substantial asset for Scotland.”

But the amount of money Scotland can get from the sea is highly disputed. “The ‘Yes’ campaign estimates revenues from the North Sea in 2018 to be twice as large as the UK government does,” Moore said. And what’s more, he adds, the oil and gas field is in “sharp decline.”

“The UK has gone from 100 percent self-sufficient to around 50 percent domestic gas production in less than a decade,” Moore said. “There may be some scope to develop new fields or scrape a few more drops out of old ones here and there as technology improves, but the broad trend is one of declining production volumes.”

Original article – 

Why Scotland’s Independence Vote Matters for Climate Change

Posted in Anchor, Brita, FF, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Scotland’s Independence Vote Matters for Climate Change

It Would Take More Than a Foot of Rain to End California’s Drought

by Ernest Ricafort Posted on July 18, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story first appeared in CityLab and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Every so often there comes an image that really brings home the West’s damnable dryness. There was that photo of California’s disappearing Folsom Lake, for instance, and now there’s this: a map showing how much rain must fall in one month to end the reigning drought.

NOAA

The map, tweeted out by NOAA, is an illustration in impossible outcomes. (It’s dated for June, though with practically no rainfall in California since then it’s safe to assume it still applies.) Though the northern and southeastern parts of the state would require a relatively modest-sounding 3 to 6 inches of rain to escape drought, the parched Central Valley (where so much of America’s food is grown) needs a biblical dousing of 12 to as much as 15 inches. To put that in perspective, 15 inches of liquid precipitation is equal to 12.5 feet of snow.

Now here’s the probability of that rain bomb happening: zero. Forecasters see drought in July not slacking off but persisting or intensifying, according to this outlook from the Climate Prediction Center:

NOAA

The government’s latest climate assessment paints a grim portrait of California’s arid landscape. Ninety percent of the state’s subsoil is “short or very short of moisture,” reflecting the intolerable duration of this dry spell. Three fourths of its pasture and rangeland is considered to be in “poor to very poor condition.” Meanwhile, many wells are at their lowest levels in 20 years and reservoirs are doing terribly, as shown in this depiction of their current capacities versus their historical averages:

NOAA

With harsh times looming, people are scrambling for any possible fix. Earlier this year, California Governor Jerry Brown asked that everyone reduce their water usage by 20 percent. That didn’t work out too well: Compared with the historical average, water use in urban areas actually went up 1 percent in May, reports the LA Times.

So on Tuesday, California approved a measure that slaps “water wasters” with a $500 fine. That means that beginning in August, folks will (hopefully) be looking over their shoulders any time they engage in activities that drain precious H2O, such as hosing down driveways or having runoff from their yard sprinklers.

This article is from – 

It Would Take More Than a Foot of Rain to End California’s Drought

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It Would Take More Than a Foot of Rain to End California’s Drought

Despite Protests, Canada Approves Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline

by Myrna Posted on June 17, 2014

The project, which would send oil from Alberta to Asia, faces stiff opposition from aboriginal groups, environmentalists and community advocates. View the original here: Despite Protests, Canada Approves Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth: Indian Point’s Tritium Problem and the N.R.C.’s Regulatory ProblemReport Finds Higher Risks if Oil Line Is Not BuiltObama Plans Protected Marine Area in Pacific Ocean ;

More:  

Despite Protests, Canada Approves Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline

Posted in Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, horticulture, LAI, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Despite Protests, Canada Approves Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline

Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads to Costco, Skips Walmart on Latest Book Tour

by Juli34Bfuc Posted on June 14, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

How times change. This Saturday Hillary Clinton is scheduled to swing by a Costco in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, for a book signing—part of her tour touting her new release, Hard Choices. The choice of venue isn’t all that surprising: the discount retail outlet has become a favorite among liberals thanks to its reasonable wages and generous health benefits. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden love to get photographed yucking it up at Costco stores, while the company’s co-founder and former CEO spoke at the Democrats’ 2012 convention.

For Clinton, this is a near repeat of her last book tour, almost exactly 11 years ago today. That tour also took her through the DC suburbs. But back then, she appeared at Costco’s rival, a company that has become, for Democratic activists, the emblem of income inequality: Walmart. In 2003, more than 1,000 Hill-fans showed up at the Fairfax, Virginia, store to have their copy of Clinton’s memoir Living History signed. “After many hours of waiting, they finally reached the senator, sitting at a black-curtain display facing a rack of $9.88 women’s shoes and $7.84 denim baby outfits,” according to an Associated Press article from the time. Clinton spent three hours interacting with her adoring crowd, at one point needing a hand massage from an aide after she got post-autograph finger cramps.

Clinton’s Walmart allegiance would soon sour. In 2005 she returned a $5,000 donation from the company’s PAC, severing most of her political ties to the company and putting an end to a long, cozy relationship that dated back to her days in Arkansas. Walmart is the country’s largest private employer with 1.3 million US employees, a wildly profitable company that has led the way in destabilizing unions as a force in the American economy. It is now common course for Democrats with national ambitions to rail against the company’s low wages and efforts to quash workers’ attempts to organize. Clinton’s past association with Walmart shows the dangers of a political career that spans more than three decades. When political tides shift over the years, they can leave stains on one’s resume.

Hillary was the primary breadwinner for the Clinton clan when Bill was governor of Arkansas in the 1980s. With Bill earning $35,000 a year as governor, the family relied on Hillary’s salary from her job as a partner at Rose Law Firm, which she supplemented by serving as a board member for several companies. One of those companies was Walmart, and it was an association that proved particularly lucrative for the Clintons. She sat on the board from 1986-1992 and earned $18,000 a year, with a $1,500 bonus for each quarterly board meeting she attended. Clinton held nearly $100,000 in Walmart stock before she and her husband moved to DC.

Continue Reading »

View original article: 

Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads to Costco, Skips Walmart on Latest Book Tour

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads to Costco, Skips Walmart on Latest Book Tour

Canadian meteorologists barred from talking about climate change

by LorrieNuyts Posted on June 4, 2014

D’oh, Canada

Canadian meteorologists barred from talking about climate change

By

Shutterstock / Nic Neufeld

In the U.S., President Obama recently invited meteorologists to the White House to talk about climate change. In Canada, federal government meteorologists are banned from talking about climate change.

But maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise in a country that’s become a rogue petrostate.

Environment Canada, the national environmental agency that also serves as the government’s weather service, does not allow its weather forecasters to discuss climate change publicly. “Weather Preparedness Meteorologists are experts in their field of severe weather and speak to this subject,” an agency spokesperson told journalist Mike De Souza. “Questions about climate change or long-term trends would be directed to a climatologist or other applicable authority.” Here’s more from a blog post by De Souza:

[T]he department’s communications protocol prevents the meteorologists from drawing links to changing climate patterns following extreme weather events such as severe flooding in southern Alberta or a massive wildfire in Northern Quebec in the summer of 2013. …

[S]ome recently-released quotes from a union-sponsored survey by Environics Research … demonstrat[e] fears among scientists about speaking out.

“With meteorology we are in a somewhat unique position in that our availability to the media is relatively unrestricted,” one government employee told the survey. “We do have to be careful what we say and keep it to the weather however. I outright refuse to answer climate questions, it is an issue fraught with too many traps. Could be career limiting.”

The quote was among dozens of first-hand accounts from federal scientists who expressed frustration about what they described as political interference in research based on the ideological views of Prime Minister Harper’s government.

The quotes, released by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, include references to “Orwellian” practices and descriptions of Canada as a “Banana Republic.” The union didn’t release the names of employees in order to protect their identities.

This is not the first time we’ve heard about science censorship from our neighbor up north. Government scientists have been barred from discussing everything from the ozone layer to snowflake research. That must just mean that there are no fossil-fueled environmental problems facing Canada. Right? Oh, maybe not.


Source
Government’s weather forecasters shouldn’t discuss climate change, says Environment Canada, Mike De Souza’s blog

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.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Follow this link – 

Canadian meteorologists barred from talking about climate change

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, GE, ONA, Safer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Canadian meteorologists barred from talking about climate change

Here’s Why Phoenix Is Ground Zero for the VA Health Care Scandal

by ansonsten Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I’ve steered clear of the VA story for the past few days, though not for the obvious reason. Basically, I got to the point where the collective hypocrisy over the whole thing became too much to take. Rather than write an epic rant I might later regret, I decided to just shut up.

However, in one of my last posts on the topic, I urged everyone to keep at least two things in mind. First, there’s a difference between the backlog of vets trying to establish eligibility for VA health care and wait times for vets who are already in the system. Second, always ask: “compared to what?” If you’re claiming that VA health care is terrible on some metric or another, tell us how that compares to private sector health care.

Today, Phil Longman comes along to write knowledgeably about both topics. In particular, he takes on the second one. Here’s Longman on wait-times:

Here’s a key relevant fact that is just the opposite of what most people think. For all the wars we’ve been fighting, the veterans population has been falling sharply….I have visited VA hospitals around the county and often been unnerved by how empty they are. When I visited two of the VA’s four state-of-the-art, breathtakingly advanced polytrauma units, in Palo Alto and Minneapolis, there was hardly a patient to be found.

But at the same time there is a comparatively small countertrend that results from large migrations of aging veterans from the Rust Belt and California to lower-cost retirement centers in the Sun Belt. And this flow, combined with more liberal eligibility standards that allow more Vietnam vets to receive VA treatment for such chronic conditions as ischemic heart disease and Parkinson’s, means that in some of these areas, such as Phoenix, VA capacity is indeed under significant strain.

This regional imbalance in capacity relatively to demand makes it very difficult to manage the VA with system-wide performance metrics. Setting a benchmark of 14 days to see a new primary care doc at a VA hospital or clinic in Boston or Northern California may be completely reasonable. But trying to do the same in Phoenix and in a handful of other sunbelt retirement meccas is not workable without Congress ponying up for building more capacity there.

VA managers have known for years that some of their facilities were gaming the system by using paper lists and other tactics to mask long wait times. Mariah Blake has the whole story here. In other words, contrary to the legion of pundits who seem to have discovered the phrase “perverse incentives” just last week, VA managers aren’t drooling idiots who didn’t realize that incentive systems can be gamed. They knew it perfectly well and were trying to fix it. Rather, the problem was that (a) they failed to set different goals for different facilities, and (b) they’re apparently lousy at oversight.

Regional imbalances also explain why these problems show up only in some facilities and not in others. And it also explains why, on average, VA wait times are actually pretty good and why VA patients generally rate their care higher than private-sector patients. It helps you get a handle on the “compared to what?” question.

Longman’s piece isn’t an apology for the managers who gamed the system in order to spike their bonuses—or for their higher-ups who failed for years to get this under control—but it does explain why it’s happening in some places and not in others. And there’s more to come:

As I’ll argue further in future posts, the key question to ask when confronting the real deficiencies of the VA is “compared to what?” Once that context is established, it becomes clear that VA as a whole continues to outperform the rest of the American health system, making its true lessons extremely important to learn.

Longman is well worth reading if you genuinely want to understand more about how the VA works and how it compares to health care elsewhere. He’ll make you smarter, not dumber.

Follow this link:  

Here’s Why Phoenix Is Ground Zero for the VA Health Care Scandal

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Why Phoenix Is Ground Zero for the VA Health Care Scandal

What the U.N.’s new climate report says about North America

by FerminCockrell Posted on March 31, 2014

What the U.N.’s new climate report says about North America

By

NASA

Global warming is a global crisis, but the effects of climate change are being felt differently in different corners of the globe. The latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of a world wracked by hunger, violence, and extinctions. But the IPCC also dedicates chapters to impacts that are underway and anticipated in individual regions and continents.

For North America, the report states there is “high confidence” of links between climate change and rising temperatures, ravaging downpours, and declining water supplies. Even if temperatures are allowed to rise by just 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 C), which is the goal of current international climate negotiations (a goal that won’t be met unless everybody gets a lot more serious about curbing greenhouse gas pollution), such severe weather is going to get a lot worse.

North America’s coastal regions will continue to face a particularly long list of hazards, with climate change bringing growing risks of “sea-level rise, warming, ocean acidification, extratropical cyclones, altered upwelling, and hurricanes and other storms.”

Here are some highlights from the North American chapter of the IPCC’s new report:

Observed climate trends in North America include an increased occurrence of severe hot weather events over much of the US, decreases in frost days, and increases in heavy precipitation over much of North America …

Global warming of approximately 2°C (above the pre-industrial baseline) is very likely to lead to more frequent extreme heat events and daily precipitation extremes over most areas of North America, more frequent low snow years, and shifts towards earlier snowmelt runoff over much of the western US and Canada. Together with climate hazards such as higher sea levels and associated storm surges, more intense droughts, and increased precipitation variability, these changes are projected to lead to increased stresses to water, agriculture, economic activities and urban and rural settlements.

The following figure from the report shows how temperatures have already risen — and how they are expected to continue to rise in different parts of the continent under relatively low (“RCP2.6″) and high (“RCP8.5″) greenhouse gas pollution scenarios:

IPCCClick to embiggen.

And this figure shows that rain and snow are falling more heavily in parts of central and eastern U.S., but that the changes are more mixed in the West:

IPCCClick to embiggen.

Care about other parts of the world? Good for you! So do we. Here are links to chapters on other regions, along with our brief summaries of their findings:

Africa. This already overheated continent can expect to experience faster warming than other parts of the world – we’re talking about as much as 11 degrees F of warming by the end of the century. Couple that with worsening water shortages in many areas and more severe floods, and many Africans are staring down a hellish long-term weather forecast.

Europe. Worse floods and droughts, peppered with brutal winter winds over Central and Northern Europe.

Asia. A bento box of impacts varying widely across the region. Water shortages and rising seas are among the big worries. Farmers in some countries might benefit, but rice growers will generally find it more difficult to feed Asia. “There are a number of regions that are already near the heat stress limits for rice,” the chapter states.

Australasia. Crikey, them cyclones are gonna hit Down Under harder than a ‘roo on a bonnet. And that’s not all. Fires, heat waves, and flooding will continue to get worse in many areas of Australia and New Zealand.

Central and South America. Temperatures will continue to rise, and rain and snow will fall harder in some places but grow scarcer in others. The Andes will continue to lose snow.

Polar Regions. As the poles melt and grow more balmy, new biomes will appear. The report notes that the “tree line has moved northward and upward in many, but not all, Arctic areas … and significant increases in tall shrubs and grasses have been observed in many places.” Which sounds like a good thing, except that the melting permafrost is unleashing climate-changing methane.

Small islands. Those island bits that remain above sea level will be buffeted by salty floods, which will make freshwater harder to come by. The coral reefs that foster the ecosystems that support the livelihoods of islanders will continue to bleach and die.

The ocean. Three words: acidic rising seas.


Source
IPCC WGII AR5 Chapter 26, IPCC
WGII AR5 Final Drafts, IPCC

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.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

View original article: 

What the U.N.’s new climate report says about North America

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, Free Press, G & F, GE, ONA, Oster, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What the U.N.’s new climate report says about North America

When in drought, Californian salmon take to the road

by KlaraGuzm Posted on March 14, 2014

When in drought, Californian salmon take to the road

By

duncan_idaho_2007

Spring is typically the time when salmon in Northern California hightail it to the Pacific via freshwater streams. But now that the usual thoroughfares are starting to dry up, thanks to this winter’s epic drought, U.S. Fish and Wildlife suggest the salmon do what Californians do best: Take the freeway.

Despite the recent storms, the state’s snowpack is still critically low, and unless this year’s April showers are more like April monsoons it’s likely that rivers will still be too warm and shallow for salmon to make it from hatchery to sea for their seasonal spring migration. To get them over this hurdle, as many as 30 million fish will be loaded up on tanker trucks and driven the three hours between hatcheries near Red Bluff to San Pablo Bay.

Not that this hasn’t been done before. It’s the same trucking plan that was carried out during the great drought of ’91-’92 . California actually used to truck most of its hatchery-raised fish out to the ocean, in order to protect them from predators and pollution — until they found that the salmon that hitched a ride had a harder time returning to their home base, because they missed the chance to smell the journey (salmon use their noses to imprint their migration paths). Instead, they just vagabonded it to any ol’ hatchery, often to one where they weren’t as well adapted. The result: diminished populations.

Sounds kind of fishy. But Fish and Wildlife are in the midst of a multi-year study to figure out the best mode of transit for salmon during low-water years. Who knows, come next drought, maybe instead of taking a gas-guzzler, they’ll be traveling by zeppelin.

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Food

Follow this link:

When in drought, Californian salmon take to the road

Posted in Anchor, Anker, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on When in drought, Californian salmon take to the road

Monarch Butterflies Can Survive the World’s Most Amazing Migration—But GMOs Are Wiping Them Out

by Michalak876 Posted on January 30, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The monarch butterfly is a magnificent and unique beast—the globe’s only butterfly species that embarks on an annual round-trip migration spanning thousands of miles, from the northern US and Canada to central Mexico. And monarchs aren’t just a gorgeous bug; they’re also pollinators, meaning they help keep land-based ecosystems humming. Their populations have been plunging for years, and the number of them hibernating in Mexico last year hit an all-time low, reports University of Minnesota ecologist Karen Oberhauser. Why? Here’s Oberhauser:

Tragically, much of their breeding habitat in this region the US and Canada has been lost to changing agricultural practices, primarily the exploding adoption of genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant crops in the late 20th and early 21st centuries … These crops allow post-emergence treatment with herbicides, and have resulted in the extermination of milkweed from agricultural habitats.

In a 2012 post, I teased out how crops engineered for herbicide tolerance wipe out milkweed, the monarch’s main source of food, and lead to the charismatic specie’s decline. And here’s the peer-reviewed paper, co-authored by Oberhauser, that documents the trend.

Originally posted here: 

Monarch Butterflies Can Survive the World’s Most Amazing Migration—But GMOs Are Wiping Them Out

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Wiley | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Monarch Butterflies Can Survive the World’s Most Amazing Migration—But GMOs Are Wiping Them Out