Researchers are launching a new project to monitor California’s kelp forests for radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. For Kelp Watch 2014, as it’s called, scientists will fan out this year along the California coast, to collect kelp and find out if it has absorbed any radiation from the 2011 meltdown.

‘I’ve gotten calls from people who are coming here to surf, people who live along the coastline, asking me, “Is it safe to go in the water?’” said Steven Manley, a biology professor at California State University, Long Beach who created Kelp Watch 2014. His plan is to measure radiation levels in kelp three times in multiple locations between the Oregon border and Baja California from mid February through next winter and make the results public.

“It’s sort of like having a large Geiger counter stretching the entire coastline.’

‘Part of the reason for doing this is because the public is very freaked out by all this talk of radioactivity,” he said. ‘If they can actually see the numbers and a commentary as to what they mean, hopefully that’ll put them at ease.”

Kelp forests, he said, are a good indicator. For one, they’re all over the place. ‘You can […]

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The number of Americans who believe global warming isn’t happening has risen to 23 percent, up 7 percentage points since April 2013. The latest survey, taken in November 2013, finds that the majority of Americans – 63 percent – do believe in climate change, and 53 percent are “somewhat” or “very” worried about the consequences.

The proportion of people who do believe in climate change has been steady since April 2013, but the proportion of those who say they “don’t know” whether climate change is happening dropped 6 percentage points between April and November 2013, suggesting that many “don’t knows” moved into the “not happening” category.

“People who prior said don’t know are increasingly saying they don’t believe it,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, which released the new results today (Jan. 16). [10 Climate Change Myths, Busted]

Climate opinion

Leiserowitz and his colleagues surveyed a nationally representative sample of 830 Americans in late November and into early December 2013. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The findings reveal that Americans’ understanding of climate change is mixed.

For example, 42 percent of Americans correctly believe that most scientists agree that global warming is happening. […]

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Texas students in publicly funded charter schools run by Responsive Education Solutions are learning that, ‘in the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth,” as well as that feminism is responsible for single women turning to the federal government as ‘surrogate husband[s].”

According to Zack Kopplin at Slate, Responsive Education Solutions has been ‘infiltrating and subverting” the charter school movement in order to push an explicitly Christian, conservative agenda.

Responsive Education Solutions has 17,000 students, more than 65 schools, and receives $82 million in public funding annually.

Kopplin acquired workbook for the school’s biology ‘Knowledge Unit,” which shares a first sentence with the King James Bible: ‘In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

The material that followed was equally misleading, including sections that claim that scientists ‘question the validity of the conclusions concerning the age of Earth.” The biology workbook is replete with other creationist arguments against evolutionary theory, including that there is no experimental data to back it; that transitional fossils which should exist, don’t; and that the theory can be directly linked to the rise of eugenics in Nazi Germany.

The book manufactures doubt where none should exist, and it does so deliberately. Rosalinda Gonalez, Response Education Solution’s Vice […]

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32-year NSA Veteran Who Created Mass Surveillance System Says Government Use of Data Gathered Through Spying ‘Is a Totalitarian Process”

Bill Binney is the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information. A 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a ‘legend” within the agency, Binney was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees.

Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.

Last year, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together, and said:

We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.

But today, Binney told Washington’s Blog that the U.S. has already become a police state.

By way of background, the government is spying on virtually everything we do.

All of the information gained by the NSA through spying is then shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally ‘launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide […]

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In order to have a genuinely constructive debate, data must be compiled, evidence must be amassed and verifiable truths must be presented. This truism is particularly significant when it comes to debates about security and liberty. When public policy disputes involve such grave issues, facts are a necessity. Without facts, we get the counterproductive discourse we are being treated to right now – the one hijacked by the National Security Agency’s defenders throwing temper tantrums, tossing out fear-mongering platitudes and trying to prevent any scrutiny of the agency.

You don’t have to look far to find this sad spectacle. Tune in to a national news program and you inevitably will hear pundits who have spent the last decade mindlessly cheering on wars and warrantless wiretapping now echoing the talking points emanating from surveillance-state apparatchiks like Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md.

This week, these two lawmakers who head the House Intelligence Committee summarized all the bluster in a press release that should be enshrined for posterity. In an attempt to defend the NSA, the bipartisan duo breathlessly claimed that whistle-blower Edward Snowden ended up ‘endangering each and every American” by exposing the government’s mass surveillance (i.e., metadata) programs. Additionally, they […]

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