Stephan: Yet another story of Congressional corruption. The United States has reached a level of corruption, in both political parties, that simply boggles the mind. Worse, as this and the previous story make clear, when it comes to how Congress operates greed always trumps national wellbeing. Everything is a grift
Senators Rob Portman and Kyrsten Sinema answer questions from members of the press during a news conference after a procedural vote for the bipartisan infrastructure framework at Dirksen Senate Office Building on July 28, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Credit: Alex Wong/ Getty
The final negotiations over the infrastructure bill have ground funding down to a paltry $550 billion, from what began as a $2.25 trillion proposal from President Joe Biden.
The bipartisan group of senators overseeing the negotiations cut about $29 billion in new spending from the previous draft, eliminating $20 billion of what little climate spending was left in the bill, E&E News reported.
Compared to the previous draft of the bill announced in June, the latest and final draft of the bill removes $10 billion from public transit spending and $5 billion from electric school bus funding. It also effectively cut electric vehicle charging infrastructure in half from the previous draft from $15 billion to $7.5 billion.
The cuts are yet another instance of drastic reductions that the bipartisan group has repeatedly made to climate provisions from Biden’s original proposal. Electric vehicle […]
Steven Mufson, Climate Change Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: We are apparently headed for a massive methane release which will severely exacerbate climate change. Siberia and northern Alaska is melting and Brazil is destroying the Amazon rain forest. Human stupidity is breathtaking, and yet as humans we can't seem to realize climate change cares nothing for national borders, and that only joining forces and working together is going to get us through what is happening. But I am not sure humans are capable of such intelligent behavior.
Methane gas is released from seep holes at the bottom of Esieh Lake, Alaska. Credit: Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post
Scientists have long been worried about what many call “the methane bomb” — the potentially catastrophic release of methane from thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost.
But now a study by three geologists says that a heat wave in 2020 has revealed a surge in methane emissions “potentially in much higher amounts” from a different source: thawing rock formations in the Arctic permafrost.
The difference is that thawing wetlands releases “microbial” methane from the decay of soil and organic matter, while thawing limestone — or carbonate rock — releases hydrocarbons and gas hydrates from reservoirs both below and within the permafrost, making it “much more dangerous” than past studies have suggested.
Nikolaus Froitzheim, who teaches at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Bonn, said that he and two colleagues used satellite maps that measured intense methane concentrations over two “conspicuous elongated areas” of limestone — stripes that were several miles wide and up to 375 miles long — in the Taymyr […]
Coral Davenport, Lisa Friedman and Christopher Flavelle, Energy and Environmental Policy Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: I identify with this story very personally because I walked away from a career in government because of the criminality and corruption of Richard Nixon, another Republican, and Watergate. It has become very clear that Trump damaged everything he touched, and that it will take years to repair the damage he has wrought. Why Trump has not been indicted, and tried, found guilty and imprisoned for any one or some combination of the many crimes he committed I simply do not understand.
The headquarters of the Department of the Interior in Washington. Credit: Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Juliette Hart quit her job last summer as an oceanographer for the United States Geological Survey, where she used climate models to help coastal communities plan for rising seas. She was demoralized after four years of the Trump administration, she said, in which political appointees pressured her to delete or downplay mentions of climate change.
“It’s easy and quick to leave government, not so quick for government to regain the talent,” said Dr. Hart, whose job remains vacant.
President Donald J. Trump’s battle against climate science — his appointees undermined federal studies, fired scientists and drove many experts to quit or retire — continues to reverberate six months into the Biden administration. From the Agriculture Department to the Pentagon to the National Park Service, hundreds of jobs in climate and environmental science across the federal government remain vacant.
Scientists and climate policy experts who quit have not returned. Recruitment is suffering, according to federal employees, as government science jobs are no longer viewed as insulated […]
Stephan: Data. It cuts through the BS. And here we have some solid data. WIt says two things to me: Donald Trump had the poorest GDP growth of any president back to Eisenhower. Republican presidents across those years consistently had an INFERIOR GDP growth compared to Democratic Presidents. When you look at the state economies in comparison to this it is very clear, Republican governmental views and policies produce inferior wellbeing compared to Democratic views and policies. This is irrefutable, as this data attests.
“Nobody’s ever seen a number like this!” Trump declared at a rally last October, referring to the GDP.
As it turns out, Trump was right — but not in a good way.
Across Trump’s four years in office, the nation recorded its lowest overall rate of GDP growth — at 1.6 percent — since President Herbert Hoover’s administration during the Great Depression, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
Annual GPD numbers go back to 1929, and growth was negative-7.4 percent until Hoover left office in 1933. GDP growth reached a record high of 5.5. percent under John F. Kennedy, and prior to Trump the next-lowest rate was 1.8 percent under George W. Bush. The GDP grew by a rate of 2.1 percent under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
“This is, let’s be clear from the start, not a perfect way of measuring presidential economic performance,” Bloomberg’s Justin Fox reports. “There are lots of things that determine economic growth rates other than who is in the White House, and when a president does make a difference the results […]
Stephan: Here is some wonderful news. Bayer is taking all its Glyphosate products off the residential market. This is not an act of conscience let's be clear. As this report describes the company faces 30,000 lawsuits. The EPA should outlaw the use of these products in farming which will fundamentally change industrial chemical monoculture agriculture.
Roundup products on a shelf at a store in San Rafael, California, Credit: Josh Edelson/ AFP/Getty
The move comes as the company currently faces around 30,000 legal claims from customers who believe use of these products — including the flagship Roundup — caused them to develop cancer, as AgWeb reported.
“Bayer’s decision to end U.S. residential sale of Roundup is a historic victory for public health and the environment,” Center for Food Safety executive director Andrew Kimbrell said in a statement. “As agricultural, large-scale use of this toxic pesticide continues, our farmworkers remain at risk. It’s time for EPA to act and ban glyphosate for all uses.”
Glyphosate is a controversial ingredient because it has been linked to the development of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as Cure noted. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that it was “probably carcinogenic to humans,” in 2015. While the U.S. Environmental Protection […]
