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No, We Should Not Arrest Climate Deniers

by KrystynaWroblew Posted on April 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Should politicians and pundits who deny climate change be held criminally liable for the misinformation they spread? Gawker‘s Adam Weinstein—our friend and former colleague—thinks so, and has called for the arrest of outspoken deniers. “Those denialists should face jail,” Weinstein writes. “They should face fines. They should face lawsuits from the classes of people whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by denialist tactics.”

Predictably, the denier crowd isn’t buying the argument. A post on the Heartland Institute’s website links Weinstein to “liberal fascism”: “Liberals who are that soaked in the ideology of catastrophic man-caused global warming are fascists. Full stop.” Even those normally on Weinstein’s climate-change-believing side are pouring scorn in the comments section: “I also want a unicorn. One that shoots rainbow-colored lasers out of its ass. Since, y’know, we’re talking about wish-fulfillment that will never, ever happen.”

So who’s right? Much as we like the spirit of Weinstein’s argument, ultimately, we disagree with its premise. Here’s why:

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No, We Should Not Arrest Climate Deniers

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A high seas fishing ban scorecard: (Almost) everybody wins

by NicholeCa Posted on March 28, 2014

A high seas fishing ban scorecard: (Almost) everybody wins

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When it comes to fishing, most of the ocean is lawless. Fish in the high seas — the half of the world’s oceans that fall under the control of no single nation, because they’re more than 200 miles from a coastline — are being plundered with aplomb by fishing fleets that observe virtually no fish conservation rules.

Some very smart people think that might be a very stupid way of managing the world’s fisheries. They say it’s time for the world to ban fishing on the high seas.

Many of the world’s brawniest fish and shark species migrate through these open waters, where they are being targeted and overfished. Bluefin tuna are becoming so rare that a single fish sold last year for $1.8 million.

Last month, McKinsey & Company director Martin Stuchtey suggested during an ocean summit that banning fishing on the high seas would cause an economic loss of about $2 for every person on the planet. But he said the benefits of more sustainable fisheries, if such a ban was imposed, would be worth about $4 per person, creating a net benefit of $2 apiece. From Business Insider:

Hard numbers reveal that today’s fishing industry is not profitable, and as fleets work harder chasing fewer fish, the losses grow and stocks are further depleted in “a race to the bottom,” the economist explained.

Stuchtey’s numbers were approximations. But the results of a study published in the journal PLOS Biology this week put some flesh on the economist’s back-of-the-envelope calculations. An economist and a biologist, both from California, modeled the effects of such a ban and concluded that the move could double the profitability of the world’s fishing industries — and boost overall fishing yields by 30 percent. It would also boost fish stock conservation and improve the sustainability of seafood supplies.

“The closure will probably result in short-term losses of protein from the sea,” Christopher Costello, a University of California at Santa Barbara environmental and resource economics professor who coauthored the paper, told Grist. “But the key point is that these short-term losses are likely to be followed by significant long-term gains because of the rebuilding of fish stocks.”

The greatest human beneficiaries of such a ban would be residents of developing countries — nations that can’t afford the types of hulking vessels needed for high-seas fishing expeditions. The scientists say these developing nations would benefit from a rise in fish stocks in the waters they control, as would be the case for other countries.

The biggest potential losers, according to the researchers, would include Japan, China, and Spain, which operate large offshore fishing fleets. And that could make a high-seas fishing ban a difficult sell at the United Nations.

“Whether a country like Japan or China would stand to gain or lose is an empirical question that will require careful country-by-country analysis,” Costello said. “It may disadvantage a few politically powerful countries, while it advantages many smaller countries.”

Global Ocean Commission

High seas are shown in dark blue. Click to embiggen.


Source
ECONOMIST: Ban Of High-Seas Fishing Saves $2 Per Person On The Planet, Business Insider
Close the High Seas to Fishing?, PLOS Biology
Could Closing the High Seas to Fishing Save Migratory Fish?, UC Santa Barbara

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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Progressive Groups Take Obama to Task for Violating Voting Rights Law

by JanisBurrell Posted on March 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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After months of quiet lobbying, civil rights groups and progressive organizations are now coming out publicly against the Obama administration for failing to enforce a voting rights law that applies to the Obamacare health insurance exchanges.

The 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), commonly known as the “Motor Voter” law, requires DMVs and other state agencies that provide public assistance to also help voters register. The Obama administration has acknowledged that Obamacare exchanges are covered by the law. But the federally-run exchange, which serves residents of states whose Republican governors refused to establish their own insurance marketplaces, isn’t doing much to fulfill its Motor Voter obligations, beyond embedding a link to the federal voter registration site in the online insurance application.

The law requires covered agencies to go much further and treat voter registration the same as the application process for other services. In the case of Obamacare, this means the navigators hired by HHS to walk uninsured Americans through the insurance sign-up process should also offer to guide applicants through the voter registration process. But Republicans have decried plans to apply the Motor Voter law to exchanges, saying it would create a “permanent, undefeatable, always-funded Democrat majority,” since the uninsured are disproportionately low-income people and minorities—groups that tend to vote Democratic. Following the outcry by the GOP, the Obama administration decided last year to hold off on full implementation of the Motor Voter provision. But now 32 progressive organizations and unions—including the NAACP, United Auto Workers, and the National Council of La Raza—are calling on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to start requiring navigators to help register voters immediately.

“There is no question that the ACA the Affordable Care Act must meet the requirements of the NVRA, as your administration has acknowledged,” the groups said in a letter to the HHS last week. “As staunch supporters of voting rights, we believe that it is critical for the ACA to meet these legal requirements now and offer voter registration to the millions of Americans who will be shopping for insurance on the exchanges in the coming months and years.”

The letter comes on the heels of a public campaign in January led by the voting rights organizations Demos and Project Vote to get HHS to fall in line with Motor Voter.

The 24 million mostly low-income and minority Americans who are expected to buy insurance through the exchanges by 2017 are far less likely than other citizens to be registered to vote, although Motor Voter has helped lessen the disparity. Some 140 million people have registered to vote through the program since it was enacted. Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, told Mother Jones in January that the reason HHS “has really dropped the ball” on the Motor Voter issue is likely quite simple. “This looks like the administration is running from a political fight,” he says.

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Progressive Groups Take Obama to Task for Violating Voting Rights Law

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Your Rap Lyrics Can Be Held Against You in a Court of Law

by DustyHorniman Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Next month, the Supreme Court of New Jersey will hear arguments about whether rap lyrics written by a defendant are fair game in criminal proceedings—in a case that advocates say could have major First Amendment implications.

In 2008, a New Jersey jury convicted Vonte Skinner of the attempted murder of his associate Lamont Peterson, who was left partially paralyzed after being shot multiple times at close range. During the trial, the prosecutor was permitted to read 13 pages of violent rap lyrics written by Skinner. These lyrics were found in the backseat of his girlfriend’s car at the time of his arrest, and they were written between two months and four years before the crime. None of his raps relate to the particular shooting for which he was convicted, and there was no indication that any of the acts described in the lyrics ever occurred. Prosecutors argued that the lyrics, which depict gun violence in gory detail, showed motive and intent. An appellate court overturned the conviction in 2012, noting that there was no justification for using the lyrics in the case and that there was “significant doubt” that Skinner would have been convicted otherwise. Now it’s up to the state’s highest court to decide.

“We’re arguing to the New Jersey Supreme Court that it needs to provide guidance to the courts in New Jersey that this is artistic and political expression and you need to do a more searching review when you’re seeking to use this kind of expression against someone,” says Jeanne LoCicero, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU of New Jersey (ACLU-NJ), which filed an amicus brief in support of the defendant. She says there must be a direct link between the artistic expression and the crime (as opposed to a description of violent acts with no relation to the crime) for such material to be cited during a trial and that rap lyrics should be treated with the same protections as other artistic expressions and social and political commentary.

“That a rap artist wrote lyrics seemingly embracing the world of violence is no more reason to ascribe to him a motive and intent to commit violent acts than to saddle Dostoevsky with Raskolnikov’s motives or to indict Johnny Cash for having ‘shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,'” ACLU-NJ attorneys wrote in the brief. (The Burlington County prosecutors office, which is arguing for the state, declined to comment.)

The introduction of rap lyrics in Skinner’s case is not unique. Experts say that it’s common for prosecutors to use wannabe rappers’ lyrics against them in criminal proceedings, leaving the songs up to interpretation by people with little knowledge or understanding of the art form.

An ACLU-NJ study completed last year found 18 cases around the country in which prosecutors tried to cite rap lyrics as evidence. Prosecutors won the argument most of the time. In 14 of the cases ACLU-NJ examined, defendants’ rap lyrics were admitted into evidence. But the use of rap lyrics in criminal proceedings isn’t limited to the 14 examples ACLU-NJ dug up, says Erik Nielson, a professor at the University of Richmond who studies rap lyrics and criminal proceedings and who has served as an expert witness for defendants in these cases. “We know they’re also being used in less formal ways,” he explains. “Perhaps a prosecutor may be using rap lyrics as leverage to compel somebody to take a plea agreement or something like that. It’s really difficult to get a sense of it. My guess is that we’re looking in the hundreds.”

Defense attorneys fight like crazy to keep their defendants’ lyrics out of court because they know that rap lyrics can be “devastating” to a defense, Nielson says. But defense attorneys usually lose the argument. “The problem is that prosecutors are able to capitalize on the ignorance and perhaps even preconceived notions of judges,” he says. “They’re able to convince them that unlike any other fictional form out there, this can be presented as legitimate evidence either of confession or of somebody’s motive or intent.”

In his memoir Decoded, hip-hop star Jay-Z wrote, “The art of rap is deceptive. It seems so straightforward and personal and real that people read it completely literally, as raw testimony or autobiography.” As Nielson and his research partner Charis Kubrin note in their paper, “Rap on Trial,” “If rap lyrics are treated as mere diaries or journals, no special skill or training is necessary to analyze them, and consequently juries may hear false or misleading testimony about rap from witnesses…who lack the basic qualifications to offer it.”

Judges and juries across the country are unable to see these amateur rap lyrics as the young men writing them see them, says Nielson—as fictional work imbued with social and political commentary, and a possible pathway into an industry with a number of legitimate job opportunities. Instead, the often-reprehensible lyrics serve only to affirm stereotypes about the pathology of young black or Latino defendants.

“When you put the lyrics in front of the jury or even worse when you play a video for the jury, you present the jury with an image of some sort of remorseless vicious thug,” he says, noting that it’s common for young men of color to write rhymes and aspire to become rappers. “What you don’t see is that same kid in glasses sitting at his desk with crumpled paper all around, who has just spent hours trying to write just one of the lyrics that’s in one of the dozens of notebooks that he has.”

Some First Amendment advocates contend that using rap lyrics in court is a slippery slope to eroding the overall protections given to all types of artistic work and social commentary. Nielson doesn’t buy that. He points to a 1996 study by researcher Carrie Fried, who took violent song lyrics and told one group they were from a country song, one group they were from a folk song, and one group they were from a rap song. The group that thought they were looking at rap lyrics found the song to be more offensive and a greater threat to society than the folk and country groups. The study is old, but the stereotypes remain. “I’m just not convinced that using traditionally white forms, for example country music, or using novels against white authors would work,” Nielson says. “There is something about rap music that gives it this special treatment. It’s been negated as an art form.”

It’s obvious to Nielson that rap gets this special treatment because it’s part of a larger problem. “It’s hard to divorce these conversations from the fact that the justice system has proven itself to be incredibly good at finding ways to lock up young men of color,” he says. “It’s not just about society’s antipathy toward hip hop. It’s about society’s antipathy toward young black and brown men.”

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Your Rap Lyrics Can Be Held Against You in a Court of Law

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Americans have no idea how much water we use — or how to conserve it

by dtynpwb Posted on March 6, 2014

Americans have no idea how much water we use — or how to conserve it

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“I consider myself a fairly water-conscious person,” says the average American, sipping on a venti iced coffee while dipping his toes in an Olympic-sized pool, spritzing himself with Evian. “I probably just use a few gallons a day,” he continues, stepping out of a 45-minute shower. “By the way — have I told you about my toilet that flushes automatically every 20 minutes, just to make sure it’s consistently pristine?”

Just kidding — it’s not quite that bad. But, according to a recent study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the average American consumes twice as much water as she thinks she does. Furthermore, we Americans are not quite sure which practices are the most water-intensive. As it turns out, the Olympic-sized pool isn’t the biggest concern — 70 percent of personal water use occurs within the home, according to a 2005 EPA study. And the biggest culprit under the roof? Toilet-flushing, accounting for 27 percent of all indoor water use.

Perhaps most troubling, Americans overwhelmingly believe that changing their habits, as opposed to improving the efficiency of their plumbing, is the most effective way to cut down on water consumption. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed said curtailment methods, such as flushing less frequently, are the best way to reduce water use. Only 10 percent chose more preventative measures, such as installing new toilets that use just 1.6 gallons per flush in lieu of old toilets that use five to six gallons.

The concept of “embodied water” — also known as virtual water, or the amount of water required to produce a certain quantity of food — was also relatively unknown to the study subjects. A pound of coffee, for example, has a water footprint of 2,264 gallons.

Study author Shahzeen Attari, an assistant professor at Indiana University, reminds us that, contrary to popular belief, we can’t count on the unlimited availability of freshwater. “Most Americans assume that water supply is both reliable and plentiful. However, research has shown that with climate change water supply will become more variable due to salinization of ground water and increased variability in precipitation.”

California’s certainly learning that the hard way right now.

To sum up: Water is involved in pretty much everything you do, and its supply is limited because the planet is being destroyed. Keep that in mind next time you’re in the bathroom.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Cities

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Can These College Football Players Actually Unionize?

by DaneLabynm Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last month, football players at Northwestern University took formal steps to organize a labor union and bargain for benefits like guaranteed multiyear scholarships and medical coverage for concussions and other long-term health issues. The first of what will likely be many battles for the unionization effort came this week, with an hearing before the Chicago regional National Labor Relations Board.

The proceeding, which will continue at least through the end of the week, has pitted the proposed College Athletes Players Association and former Northwestern quarterback (and NFL hopeful) Kain Colter against Northwestern. While the university reacted much less strongly than the NCAA when the unionization efforts were unveiled—the official university statement made sure to say that Northwestern is “proud” of its students for being “leaders and independent thinkers”—it is still the theoretical employer of Colter and the other players and thus must face off against them before the labor board. (Head coach Pat Fitzgerald is expected to testify Friday.) Here’s what you need to know about the hearings and what they mean for college football:

What does the union need to prove to win? The College Athletes Players Association, with the help of star witness Colter, is arguing that football players are employees of the university. The group has some strong arguments in its favor, according to University of Illinois law professor and sports labor expert Michael LeRoy. For one, the players work long hours equivalent to a full-time job. Colter testified that football-related activities take up 40 to 50 hours a week during the season and 50 to 60 hours a week during training camp in the summer. The players’ efforts also benefit the university—an economics professor who testified on the union’s behalf said that Northwestern’s football revenue totaled $235 million between 2003 and 2012, while its expenses added up to just $159 million during that time. “It’s a financial benefit, and that’s putting it mildly,” LeRoy said.

What does Northwestern need to prove? The university’s argument is that the players are student-athletes and nothing more. The players receive scholarships worth about $60,000 a year, a university athletics official testified, and a lawyer for the school noted that players also get “a world-class education, free tutoring services, core academic advice, and personal and career development opportunity.” While some of Northwestern’s other counterpoints lacked substance—school lawyers grilled Colter on whether leadership and other skills learned from the football team helped him get a prior internship at Goldman Sachs, a line of thinking LeRoy called “fairly irrelevant” to whether or not college football counts as labor—perhaps its strongest point is that players signed a scholarship contract, agreeing to their amateur status and therefore waiving their collective bargaining power.

What happens now? No matter which side the Chicago labor board takes, the loser will probably appeal that decision to the national board in Washington, DC. That ruling will likely head to a federal appeals court. The entire process could take years, LeRoy said, which presents a unique challenge for union organizers: There’s a chance all the players who signed union cards will have graduated and moved on by the time a final decision comes down. One big question is how other schools and teams will react—while teams at private schools like Northwestern can try to unionize, teams at public schools must adhere to their states’ collective bargaining laws. If players at some schools are able to negotiate benefits that players at other schools are not, LeRoy said, it could fundamentally change recruiting, realign conferences, and lead to swaths of state legislation addressing the matter. “It’s a huge can of worms,” he said. “It’s a showstopper.”

Who’s going to win? LeRoy said he thinks the regional and national labor boards will rule in favor of the players due to the boards’ liberal slant, but that the courts will rule against Colter & Co. That won’t mean the movement was pointless, though—LeRoy expects the NCAA to compromise on many of the union’s core issues by that point. Vitally, the Northwestern players aren’t asking for pay for play, meaning the university and the NCAA could provide them with the scholarship and medical benefits they’re calling for and still maintain its structure and concept of amateurism. Even a formal union doesn’t hold up legally, LeRoy said, we may see a “union substitute” in which the threat is credible enough that the NCAA provides players with more voice and benefits. “I don’t think we’re going to have collective bargaining,” he said. “But I think this is a necessary step.”

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Can These College Football Players Actually Unionize?

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Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than We Thought—But It’s Still Better Than Coal

by PhilomenaRawson Posted on February 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has underestimated US emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. That’s the argument of a new analysis appearing in the Feb. 14 issue of Science, which also finds that a big factor behind the lowball estimates is the EPA’s poor grasp of methane leaks from the natural gas industry.

The analysis, which examines more than 200 existing studies, is the first to take a broad view of scientific knowledge of methane emissions, and it has critical implications for the use of natural gas. Gas has been touted by its proponents as a cleaner alternative to traditional fossil fuels such as coal—President Obama hails it as a “bridge fuel” that will allow the country to transition to cleaner energy sources—since burning natural gas for energy emits far less carbon dioxide. But because methane, a main component of natural gas, is such a powerful greenhouse gas, the new evidence of narrows the gap between the climate change contributions of gas and coal.

“Our best guess is that methane emissions in this country are about 50 percent more than the EPA estimates,” says Adam Brandt, an assistant professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University and the lead author of the analysis. Methane emissions could plausibly be anywhere between 25 to 75 percent more than what EPA measures have shown, Brandt adds. “That amounts to something like 7 to 21 million excess tons of methane every year.” Brandt and his co-authors, he says, did not have enough evidence to determine what proportion of total excess methane is released by the natural gas industry, as opposed to by other energy sectors, agriculture, or landfills.

But the study concludes that natural gas as a fuel source still contributes less to climate change than coal. “We don’t believe that the evidence suggests that burning coal is better,” Brandt says. “There’s just not support for that.” The reason is that while methane is the more damaging greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, which coal emits in huge quantities when burned, stays in the atmosphere for a much longer period of time. Coal is a “cleaner” fuel only in the near-term—a period of 20 years or so. Brandt says that over a period of 100 years, natural gas—leaks and all—would still be a less greenhouse gas-intensive source of energy than coal.

Still, Brandt cautions, natural gas is not a long-term energy solution for keeping climate change in check. “Uncontrolled use of gas over a century or more isn’t a good thing, from a climate change perspective,” Brandt says. “Most climate change scenarios suggest that this can’t be a solution for 100 years.”

The analysis also concludes that even under the most conservative estimates of methane leaks from the gas sector, keeping diesel-powered powered vehicles, such as buses, on the road contributes smaller amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than switching to gas-powered buses.

The researchers believe that only a small percentage of methane leaked by the gas sector is coming from the controversial hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—process itself. Rather, accidental leaks that occur as the industry moves and processes natural gas likely account for the biggest proportion of these emissions. One study cited by the analysis found that less than 1 percent of individual pieces of equipment at a single natural gas plant were responsible for nearly 60 percent of its leakage. Brandt says new technology that quickly identifies these “superemitters” is the best hope for reigning in the industry’s emissions.

As for why the EPA underestimates methane leaks in the gas industry, the analysis notes that the agency can only measure emission rates at wells and plants where the operators volunteered to allow the EPA on site. In one instance, the EPA asked 30 natural gas companies to allow them on site, but only six cooperated.

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Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than We Thought—But It’s Still Better Than Coal

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There’s no “warming pause” — trade winds are burying heat in the Pacific

by Natalia3007 Posted on February 11, 2014

There’s no “warming pause” — trade winds are burying heat in the Pacific

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Global average land temperatures have not increased as quickly as many scientists had expected over the past 10 or 15 years, leading some climate skeptics to latch onto the bogus idea of a “global warming pause.” Last year researchers reported that much of the “missing heat” was not in fact missing but rather was being sucked up by the oceans.

Now new research helps explain why excess heat is being absorbed into the sea: big-ass winds.

A paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that the slowdown in surface warming and the acceleration in ocean warming has been largely driven by a phase in a natural ocean cycle called the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). That’s a frightfully cumbersome name, but it’s easy to break down: It’s a swing (“oscillation”) in Pacific Ocean weather that takes decades (“interdecadal”) to shift from one phase to another. Instead of switching every few years, like El Niño and La Niña, an IPO can last 20 to 30 years before flipping from one extreme to the other.

“Global warming hasn’t stalled at all,” Matthew England, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia and lead author of the paper, told Grist. “There’s just more heat going into the oceans at the moment.”

Since the turn of the century, the IPO has been in a negative phase, which is marked by strong trade winds in the Pacific. Researchers used models to simulate the effects of these winds on ocean currents and discovered that the strong winds increase the amount of warm water that sinks below the surface, while increasing the amount of cold water that burbles up from ocean depths near the equator.

And that has helped bury extra heat at sea — for now.

From the paper:

Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades … is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake. …

The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1–0.2◦C, which can account for much of the hiatus in surface warming observed since 2001. This hiatus could persist for much of the present decade if the trade wind trends continue, however rapid warming is expected to resume once the anomalous wind trends abate.

This isn’t the first time in recent history that the oceans have absorbed more than their normal share of extra heat. The paper describes a similar surface-warming hiatus that occurred from the 1940s to the 1970s — the last time the IPO was in this pronounced negative phase.

When the cycle inevitably reverses, the scientists warn that some of the extra heat that’s currently swimming with the fishes will rise up out of the ocean and come back to haunt us landlubbers.

“The IPO oscillates roughly every 20 to 25 years, but the timing is quite unpredictable. What we do know is that when we switch back to a positive IPO phase, the trade winds will be much weaker,” England said. “Longer term, regardless of when the winds relax, this temporary slowdown in surface warming will be overwhelmed by greenhouse gas increases.”


Source
Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus, 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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There’s no “warming pause” — trade winds are burying heat in the Pacific

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Republicans Just Won the Food Stamp War

by InaHeardql Posted on January 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday morning, Republicans won a years-long battle over whether to slash or spare food stamps when the House passed the farm bill, a $500 billion piece of legislation that funds nutrition and agriculture programs for the next five years.

The farm bill has been delayed for more than two years because of a fight over cuts to the food stamp program, which is called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Last June, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) forced a vote on a bill that would have cut $20 billion from SNAP. But conservatives said the cuts were not deep enough, Democrats said they were far too deep, and the bill failed, 234-195. That September, House Republicans drafted new legislation slashing $40 billion from the food stamp program. That bill passed the House with Republican votes only. After months of negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate, which wanted much lower cuts of around $4 billion, the House finally passed a farm bill 251-166 Wednesday that contains a “compromise” $9 billion in reductions to the food stamp program.

Both the Senate and President Barack Obama are expected to approve the legislation.

Here’s why the compromise level of cuts is a Republican win: In addition to the $9 billion in food stamp cuts in this five-year farm bill, another $11 billion will be slashed over three years as stimulus funding for the program expires. The first $5 billion of that stimulus money expired in October; the rest will disappear by 2016. In the months since the first $5 billion in stimulus funding was cut, food pantries have been struggling to provide enough food for the hungry. Poverty remains at record high levels, and three job applicants compete for every job opening.

And yet, despite the $5 billion in cuts that already happened and the guarantee of $6 billion more, Republicans succeeded in getting their Democratic peers to cut food stamps further. This is the first time in history that a Democratic Senate has even proposed cutting the program. Now the upper chamber is expected to pass cuts twice the level it approved last year.

“It’s a net loss for Democrats,” Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tells Mother Jones. “It’s absolutely a GOP win,” agrees a House Democratic aide.

How did the GOP do it? In November, Dems said that Boehner was interfering with House-Senate negotiations on the farm bill, rejecting proposed legislation that contained shallower food stamps cuts. (Boehner’s office denies this.)

But Dems deserve much of the blame, the Democratic aide says. Last year, House liberals were scheming to get progressives to vote against any farm bill that contained SNAP cuts. The idea was that if enough progressives voted no along with the House conservatives who think the cuts are too low, Democrats could defeat the bill. In that case, food stamp funding would be preserved at current levels. A “$9 billion cut is too much…It hits in the gut,” Rep. Gwen Moore (R-Wis.) told Mother Jones earlier this month.

When the final bill came up for a vote in the House, the Congressional Progressive Caucus advised its 76 members to vote against the bill. But not enough Dems voted to block the cuts. One hundred three Democrats voted against the farm bill, but 89 voted in favor. If 43 more Democrats had voted no, the farm bill would have failed. “Dems are…complicit in changing the law, when they could just block the bill and let that status quo continue,” the Democratic aide says.

Democrats in the House and Senate agreed to cut nutrition aid for poor Americans because they “have shifted to the right on SNAP politically,” the staffer adds. “If Dems were as absolutist as the tea party, this bill would be dead on arrival and SNAP would continue as is.”

But the assault on the food stamp program “could have been much, much worse,” argues Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. Stacy Dean, the vice president for food assistance policy at the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), agrees. Democrats succeeded in stripping many draconian GOP provisions from the bill. Republicans wanted to impose new work requirements on food stamp recipients; allow states to require drug testing for food stamps beneficiaries; ban ex-felons from ever receiving nutrition aid; and award states financial incentives to kick people off the program. None of those measures were in the final legislation, Dean notes.

The cuts to the food stamp program come from closing a loophole that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agreed needed to be addressed. A household’s level of monthly food stamps benefits is determined by how much disposable income a family has after rent, utilities, and other expenses are deducted. Some states allow beneficiaries to deduct a standard utility charge from their income if they qualify for a federal heating aid program called the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, even if they only receive a few dollars per year in heating aid. The arrangement results in about 850,000 households getting a utility deduction that is much larger than their actual utility bill. Because the deduction makes these families’ disposable income appear to be lower than it actually is, they get more food stamp money each month. The farm bill that passed the House on Wednesday saves $9 billion by closing that loophole.

The savings from closing the heating aid loophole could have been returned to the food stamp program. Instead, Republicans succeeded in prodding Dems to accept $9 billion in new cuts on top of the $11 billion in expiring stimulus funds. That extra $9 billion in cuts means that close to a million households will see their benefits slashed by about $90 a month—enough to pay for a week’s worth of cheap groceries for a family of four.

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Republicans Just Won the Food Stamp War

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Donald Trump’s Climate Conspiracy Theory

by DavidHuber Posted on January 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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When chilling cold first descended in early January, we had an occasion to correct Donald Trump on climate science. To do so, we simply explained that the widely recognized phenomenon known as winter doesn’t refute global warming, especially since winter is inherently limited to one hemisphere. (In a widely lampooned tweet, Trump had cited “record low temps” in arguing that “this very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop.”)

Alas, Trump has now dug himself deeper into the snow drift. Here are the latest tweets:

With this, Trump joins the grand tradition of climate science conspiracy theorizing, as epitomized by Senator James Inhofe 2012 book title: The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. By using the word “hoax,” Inhofe and Trump are suggesting that there is a conscious attempt to mislead us with fake, trumped up science, in the service of political goals.

So how do you refute this global warming conspiracy theory? Simple: You merely have to explain what a real global warming conspiracy would actually entail, whereupon the utter implausibility of the scenario becomes obvious.

For a global warming conspiracy to exist, you’d need scientists around the world to be in on it. Not scientists at one university, or scientists in one country. Scientists everywhere, from Australia to Japan, from China to America.

This is scarcely possible, especially in light of the incentive structure in science: Scientists advance and get promoted by publishing original research that is highly cited by other scientists. And it is hard to imagine a better citation-grabbing paper than one that seriously refuted what most scientists in a given field believe to be true. There is therefore a huge incentive for a scientist or group of scientists to upset everything we thought we knew about climate change, assuming that this could be achieved in a serious scientific paper that passes peer review and stands the test of time. A researcher who achieved such a feat would be on a parallel, as far as fame and renown goes, with someone like Alfred Wegner, who originally proposed the revolutionary idea of continental drift.

The incentives, therefore, are very much against maintaining a climate conspiracy. The incentives instead tilt towards exposing it. And that makes the 97-percent consensus on climate change among scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature that much more powerful.

Finally, let’s take on this idea that scientists are in it for the money, which may or may not be implied by Trump’s first tweet above, but is a frequent fixture of global warming conspiracy theories. According to 2012-2013 data from the American Association of University Professors, the average salary for a US assistant professor at a doctorate-granting institution was $76,822. Salaries rise as high as an average of $134,747 for full professors at doctorate-level institutions, but that’s academia’s most coveted level, and not everybody gets there.

Surely Trump and other conservatives who believe in the power of the free market can see that people who want the big bucks are likely to embark on a different career path.

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Donald Trump’s Climate Conspiracy Theory

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