Thursday, September 29th, 2016
John R. Platt , - takepart
Stephan: Do you think much about sand? I mean other than thinking about going to the beach to hang out? Probably not. Few people do.
But the world is headed to a major sand crisis, an environmental catastrophe that is occurring almost invisibly. The media doesn't even seem to know about it, and you certainly won't hear any politician talking about it. But it is going to affect your life big time -- another self-inflicted wound. Here's the story, and I will bet not even many of my readers will read it. That's how invisible it is.
A loader dumps sand into magnetized black sand mining equipment along the shore of San Vicente, Ilocos Sur province, in the northern Philippines.
Credit: Erik De Castro/Reuters
Beaches around the world are disappearing.
No, the cause isn’t sea-level rise, at least not this time. It’s a little-known but enormous industry called sand mining, which every year sucks up billions of tons of sand from beaches, ocean floors, and rivers to make everything from concrete to microchips to toothpaste.
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In the process, conservationists warn, the sand mining industry is damaging ecosystems, changing coastal water flows, and making beaches and communities less resilient to storm surges and floods as climate change accelerates.
“Sand is actually the second-most-used natural resource on Earth, behind water,” said Claire Le Guern Lytle, general director of the Santa Aguila Foundation, which was founded in 2009 to focus on coastal preservation. “It’s a finite resource, and it’s depleting […]
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Thursday, September 29th, 2016
Stephan: Researchers and marketing specialists who study the issue predict that about half the broadcast AM and FM radio stations now operating will be gone by the end of the decade. Along with newspapers, radio's share of the market is shrinking and its profit potential is drying up. Many Millennials and those even younger never read a newspaper nor listen to broadcast radio. This report lays out the issues.
Walter Cronkite
Credit: Associated Press
More and more Americans, and particularly young people, don’t tune into radio stations at all anymore. But is that the end for radio, the medium that’s survived existential threats from TV (and MTV), CD players and iPods?
If it is, it appears to be a slow and painful goodbye, as advertising dollars gradually evaporate and audiences dwindle.
The biggest indicator that terrestrial radio (the traditional broadcast) is once again at death’s door is CBS Corp.’s bid to spin off its 88-year-old radio business — once home to Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — in order to focus on its more profitable television and cable broadcasting segments. If CBS can’t find any buyers for its 117 stations in 29 U.S. markets, it will offer shares of CBS Radio via an initial public offering. So far, no buyers have stepped forward publicly, so the most likely scenario is an IPO that will have absolutely none of the fanfare that Facebook’s did.
While CBS Radio is profitable — thanks […]
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Thursday, September 29th, 2016
Emma Foehringer Merchant, - Grist
Stephan: Several readers wrote to ask me why I thought climate change is not a debate topic in this or any election -- ever. I started to write an answer then came across this report which does an excellent job of answering the question.
Let me make it a bumper sticker: Climate change discussion does not produce ratings, it doesn't make money for television.
Instead we as a culture want to talk about Bill Clinton's 30 year old affairs, Hillary's emails, and whether Obama is a secret Muslim.
Credit: Reuters/Randall Hill
Four years ago, CNN’s Candy Crowley had the perfect opportunity to ask President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney what they would do about climate change. An audience question on gas prices sparked a heated debate about energy policy and oil drilling. But when neither candidate mentioned global warming, Crowley quickly moved on.
Climate hawks squawked with outrage. “Where is global warming in this debate?” tweeted former Vice President Al Gore. “Climate change is an urgent foreign policy issue.” The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert called climate “the debate’s great unmentionable.”
“I had that question for all of you climate change people,” Crowley would later respond to critics. But she skipped it, choosing to stick with the economy instead.
The 2012 cycle would turn out to be the first since 1988 in which climate went unmentioned in either a presidential or vice presidential debate — although to be honest, it’s hardly ever a popular topic with moderators. The advocacy group Media Matters for America analyzed the 1,477 […]
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Wednesday, September 28th, 2016
Emma Foehringer Merchant, - Mother Jones
Stephan: The almost complete absence of discussion about climate change is gobsmacking. We face a civilization threatening crisis and one party's position -- the Republicans -- is that the whole thing is a scam. Donald Trump apparently believes, if his tweets are to be believed, that climate change is a con created by the Chinese. Really. But the Democrats aren't much better, and the American populace, well as a people we just don't seem to be willing to factually address this threat. Just keep this in mind: 400 American cities in whole or part are going to be submerged by the end of the century.
Credit: Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA
One minute and 22 seconds were spent on climate change and other environmental issues in Monday’s presidential debate—and that was pretty much all Hillary Clinton talking. (Surprise, surprise.) How does that compare to debates in past years? We ran the numbers on the past five election cycles to find out.
The high point for attention to green issues came in 2000, when Al Gore and George W. Bush spent just over 14 minutes talking about the environment over the course of three debates. The low point came in 2012, when climate change and other environmental issues got no time at all during the presidential debates. Some years, climate change came up during the vice presidential debates as well.
2016 so far: 1 minute, 22 seconds in one presidential debate.
2012: 0 minutes.
2008: 5 minutes, 18 seconds in two presidential debates. An additional 5 minutes, 48 seconds in a vice presidential debate.
2004: 5 minutes, 14 seconds in a single presidential debate.
2000: 14 minutes, 3 seconds in three presidential debates. 5 minutes, 21 seconds in […]
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Wednesday, September 28th, 2016
Brent Griffiths, - Politico
Stephan: In strongest terms I can I urge you to register and vote and to encourage others to do so as well. This is the most important election in your life and it is essential Donald Trump not win, and that the Senate flip to a Democratic majority. If that does not happen it is not an exaggeration to say the future of humanity is at risk.
Election Day is more than a month away, but voters are already casting ballots to pick their next president.
Voting opened on Monday in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, making the town’s voters among the first in the nation to do so. So far, voting is limited to a smattering of counties and municipalities in states that allow local governments to set their own schedules. On Friday, however, voters statewide in South Dakota and Minnesota will be allowed to cast early ballots. And other states are joining soon: New Jersey starts early voting on Saturday, and Vermont plans to start early voting as soon as the ballots are ready. (State rules say no later than Saturday.)
In total, 37 states and the District of Columbia will allow early voting in 2016. Some of those states allow voters to request mail ballots and send them in, while others open physical polling places weeks or even months before the election. In the 2012 presidential election, approximately 30 percent of the votes cast came via mail or early balloting, meaning many voters will weigh in before the candidates have had a chance to make their closing case.
Typically, Democrats lead in early voting, especially in-person early voting, because […]
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