Saturday, June 20th, 2015
Arturo Garcia, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The fact that NRA board member Charles Cotton can say this, and not be immediately condemned by every Congressional leader and dismissed from the NRA tells you something very sad about the United States.
More guns in church... Just the thing to demonstrate what a civilized society we are.
A screenshot of Cotton’s statement
Credit: The Raw Story
A board member for the National Rifle Association blamed pastor and South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney for not only his own death, but the deaths of eight others in Wednesday night’s terrorist attack at his church, Think Progress reported on Thursday night.
Charles “Chas” Cotton made the remark on the Texas Concealed Handgun License (TexasCHL) forum, which bills itself as “the focal point for Texas firearms information and discussions.” Cotton, who is listed as a moderator on the site, made the derogatory remark in a thread concerning the mass shooting.
“He voted against concealed-carry,” Cotton said of Pinckney. “Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.
Pinckney was the head pastor at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for five years and a member of the state Senate […]
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Saturday, June 20th, 2015
Sasha Harris-Lovett, - Los Angeles Times
Stephan: Stories like this one make the future look so bleak. Why can't we wake up from our trance of gold?
A northern white rhino leaves her pen to graze in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. She is one of about half a dozen of her kind left in the world, and all live in zoos or on protected lands. The species is doomed to extinction, and many others may follow, scientists warn in a new study.
Credit: Los Angeles Times
Today’s animal species are disappearing at a rate up to 100 times higher than they did in the past — and humans are responsible, a new study warns.
Since the year 1500, at least 338 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have become extinct, researchers reported Friday in the journal Scientific Advances. […]
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Saturday, June 20th, 2015
Stephan: David Roberts' report is about the best I have read on the issue of the existing grid and the transition to noncarbon energy. It raises most of the major relevant issues.
See the SR archive for the previous piece referenced.
Credit: VOX
Last week, I described a modeling study showing that it is possible to run the entire US economy on renewable energy: wind, water, and solar power. Technologically, the tools are available. Economically, the total system costs would be lower than a business-as-usual scenario. But politically, the plan is wildly ambitious, to the point of fantasy.
Among other things, it would require that policy and investment decisions be approached holistically, coordinated across multiple sectors, and made on the basis of multidecadal cost-benefit horizons, with enormous upfront investments paying off in health and climate benefits that unfold over decades.
That is not the way humans typically approach big challenges. Engineers aren’t granted the power to redesign large systems from scratch. Energy is not just a physical system, it’s a social and political system too, and social and political change is unpredictable and messy. It lurches and stalls. Progress, when it comes, is often kludged, backward-looking, and incumbent-protecting. It’s a fallen world we live in, but we muddle through.
Barring an unexpected […]
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Saturday, June 20th, 2015
David Auerbach, Columnist - Slate - Reuters
Stephan: Here is the worse case scenario, and it is terminally bleak. Worse, I am seeing scientists advance variations on this theme with increasingly regularity.
Through ignorance, much of it willful, stupidity, and greed we cannot as a civilization seem to get to the critical consensus necessary to create change.
Look at Oklahoma. In the face of an increased earthquakes by orders of magnitude, and increasingly frequent and violent tornadoes, both provably the result of human activity, the people of Oklahoma continue to vote into office climate change deniers, beginning with Republican Senator and science denier James Inhofe.
A couple hugs while standing on a hilly area overlooking Cairo on a dusty and hazy day where temperatures reached 114 Fahrenheit, May 27, 2015.
Credit: Reuters/Asmaa Waguih
Humans will be extinct in 100 years because the planet will be uninhabitable, according to Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner, one of the leaders of the effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. He blames overcrowding, denuded resources and climate change
Fenner’s prediction is not a sure […]
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Eva Sirinathsinghji, Scientist - Institute of Science in Society - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: This report has good news.
Glyphosate is the modern DDT — whose lingering presence now decades later it should be noted is still killing people. Like DDT it has been hugely profitable, but grotesquely destructive, not only as intended, but in other ways as well.
Now a gathering resistance driven from the bottom up challenges this corporate greed, and is succeeding. This report will update you as to where the trend is at the moment.
My reason for seeing Monsanto as an evil corporation is that their business model is based on death, planned and unplanned, and they know this, but continue to do it anyway.
glyphosate molecule
The World Health Organization’s official recognition of the health damage caused by glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, is having ramifications around the world. National governments are moving to restrict the chemical, campaigns to ban it are intensifying, and now ‘Roundup Ready’ GMO crops are coming under the regulatory spotlight.
Could it be that the World Health Organisation’s classification of glyphosate as a ‘probable carcinogen’ (see [1] Glyphosate ‘Probably Carcinogenic to Humans’ Latest WHO Assessment, SiS 66) will be the final nail in the coffin for the world’s most popular herbicide and Monsanto’s flagship product?
Recent weeks have seen the intensification of campaigns to ban or remove the product as well as lawsuits being filed against Monsanto; in the US for false safety claims of glyphosate, and in China, for hiding toxicity studies from the public.
El Salvador has already banned the chemical though yet to be signed into law [2], while the Netherlands last year banned private sales [3]. Sri Lanka had a partial ban in place in regions most afflicted by chronic kidney disease that has been […]
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