Scott Detrow, - Scientific American
Stephan: We are so used to the environment of carbon energy that the health depredations it causes hardly register on us as a society. But, in fact, as this report describes these are massive and unnecessary, and part of the payoff for transiting out of the carbon era will be their elimination.
None of the health benefits the study focused on would come from reduced carbon dioxide emissions, however, but rather, they would come from reduced output of sulfur dioxide and other emissions.
Credit: John Fowler/Flickr
The Obama administration has taken great pains to frame its Clean Power Plan as an immediate solution for an immediate, quantifiable problem. President Obama and other high-level administration surrogates have routinely focused on easy-to-picture issues like asthma, rather than the more existential threat of an increasingly warming planet, as they try to sell an ambitious plan to lower the power sector’s carbon emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels over the next 15 years.
So the key takeaway of the first independent, peer-reviewed study on the U.S. EPA regulation’s public health benefits was likely music to the administration’s ears.
“The general narrative is addressing climate change will be costly, and the benefits will now accrue for generations,” said Dallas Burtraw, […]
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Veronica Rocha , Reporter - L.A. Times
Stephan: One aspect of climate change that people are simply not fully comprehending is the massive changes in the natural environment that are going to come with it. This report about California is just one example of what I mean. The massive restructuring of natural systems is going to be very challenging to our civilization.
Forest Health Protection Survey
At least 12 millions trees have died in California’s national forests because of four years of extreme drought, scientists say. (emphasis added)
An aerial survey of select areas in Southern California and the south Sierra Nevada in early April showed that millions of trees have died and were “most severely drought impacted,” said biologist Jeffrey Moore, acting regional aerial survey program manager for the U.S. Forest Service.
“It is almost certain that millions more trees will die over the course of the upcoming summer as the drought situation continues and becomes ever more long term and as bark beetle populations continue to expand,” he said.
William Patzert, climatologist for Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has told the Los Angeles Times that Calfornia’s dwindling snowpack and warmer temperatures pose an extreme fire danger in the state’s forests.
Warmer temperatures are rapidly drying out the state, he said. Traditionally by spring, the forest is green and lush due to a substantial rainy season. But four years of drought and warm temperatures have taken their toll.
“The national forest is stressed out,” Patzert said. “The […]
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Natasha Geiling, - Think Progress
Stephan: It isn't just trees. Climate change is going to disrupt the food system, which is going to disrupt us in significant ways. Once again I urge you to grow food and encourage and facilitate local food production. Communities that do that will have an easier time going through this inevitable transition. And that is the reality. This restructuring is going to happen, because climate change is already happening, as this report and the tree story make clear.
A map showing where various crops are grown across the U.S.
Credit: Bill Rankin
On April 1, California Governor Jerry Brown stood in a field in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, beige grass stretching out across an area that should have been covered with five feet of snow. The Sierra’s snowpack — the frozen well that feeds California’s reservoirs and supplies a third of its water — was just eight percent of its yearly average. That’s a historic low for a state that has become accustomed to breaking drought records.
In the middle of the snowless field, Brown took an unprecedented step, mandating that urban agencies curtail their water use by 25 percent, a move that would save some 500 billion gallons of water by February of 2016 — a seemingly huge amount, until you consider that California’s almond industry, for example, uses more than twice that much water annually. Yet Brown’s mandatory cuts did […]
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Alan Yuhas, Reporter - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: One party in this election cycle simply does not believe in science, nor does it make policy on the basis of facts, and this has placed the U.S. at a crossroads. The decisions that are made in the 2016 election will cast America's future, not least because it will shape the Supreme Court for a generation. That ought to be a subject of passionate public discourse but it is not. The fact that the corporate media barely covers this topic is doubly notable. This report comes from Britain.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson
A neurosurgeon who believes the human brain is too complex for anyone but God, an ophthalmologist who refuses to talk about the age of the Earth, and a Harvard-trained lawyer beloved by creationists are running for president of the United States, raising the prospect of an election without science.
Retired doctor
Ben Carson joined senators Rand Paul (the ophthalmologist) and Ted Cruz (the Harvard alum) on the campaign trail on Monday, vying for the Republican nomination against each other and other confirmed and likely candidates including Senator Marco Rubio, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.
But despite assorted elite educations and illustrious careers, none can apparently make up their minds about basics of modern science – that the Earth is about 4.5bn years old, that
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, - Reader Supported News/The Associated Press
Stephan: "Worse than dysfunctional" is how the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission describes the state of American election financing. Would you say that describes a healthy democracy?
Federal Election Commission Chairperson Ann M. Ravel
The chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission says she’s largely given up hope of reining in abuses in raising and spending money in the 2016 presidential campaign and calls the agency she oversees “worse than dysfunctional.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Ann M. Ravel says she was determined to “bridge the partisan gap” and see that the agency confronted its problems when she became its chair last December. She said she had now essentially abandoned efforts to work out agreements on what she saw as much-needed enforcement measures.
Instead, Ravel said she plans on concentrating on getting information out publicly, rather than continuing what she sees as a futile attempt to take action against major violations, the Times reported in a story posted to its website Saturday night. She said she was resigned to the fact that “there is not going to be any real enforcement” in the coming election, the newspaper reported.
“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” said Ravel, a Democrat. “I never […]
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