Stephan: Here we have some good news. The United States is littered with over 1,300 Superfund pollution sites, lethal leftovers of the corporate world, which you and I are paying to maintain. Now thanks to the Biden administration we are going to begin cleaning some of them up.
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY — The laboratories and other buildings that once housed a chemical manufacturer here in New Jersey’s most populous city have been demolished. More than 10,000 leaky drums and other containers once illegally stored here have long been removed. Its owner was convicted three decades ago.
Yet the groundwater beneath the 4.4-acre expanse once occupied by White Chemical Corp. in Newark remains contaminated, given a lack of federal funding.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Douglas Freeman, who runs youth sports programs in nearby Weequahic Park, said on a recent gray autumn afternoon, gesturing to the crumbling brick buildings and junk cars that show how the Superfund site has stunted the city’s revitalization efforts.
But three decades after federal officials declared it one of America’s most toxic spots, it’s about to get a jolt. This plot in Newark is among more than four dozen toxic waste sites to get cleanup funding from the newly-enacted infrastructure law, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday, totaling $1 billion.
“This work is just the beginning,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in […]
Stephan: Because not a single Republican in the Senate cares anything for the wellbeing of Americans, caring only for power, as they make very clear almost daily, Joe Manchin, the corrupt senator from West Virginia, by himself has been able to block millions of families from getting the monthly hundreds of dollars of child support upon which they depend, thus committing many of those youngsters to poverty. How Joe Manchin lives with himself I cannot fathom.
Senator Joe Manchin said Sunday he will not vote for President Joe Biden’s Build Back BetterAct, appearing to end the possibility of hundreds of dollars in monthly direct payments going out to American parents in the new year. Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty
Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, appears to have ended the possibility of hundreds of dollars in monthly direct payments going out to American parents in the new year with his stated opposition on Sunday to President Joe Biden‘s Build Back Better Act.
Millions of Americans have urged the federal government to provide more stimulus checks or recurring monthly payments for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although Congress does not appear to be planning to approve a fourth round of stimulus checks, lawmakers have repeatedly pointed to the popular Child Tax Credit passed as part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan in the spring.
Under that legislation, American parents began receiving monthly direct payments of $300 for each child under 6 and $250 for children […]
Stephan: Through gerrymandering and voter suppression we are watching our democracy be shredded step-by-step, and few seem interested or even if interested capable to reversing this trend. Climate change poorly prepared for, and the unraveling of our democracy, are the dominant trends shaping America, and it is going to culminate in what happens in 2022.
Maryland Rep. Andy Harris get a more competitive district under the state’s Democrat-drawn map. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Short-term advancements in data science combined with long-term shifts in how Americans vote are making swing districts increasingly rare.
State legislatures and political commissions control the redistricting process for the majority of the country. So far, 20 states have finished redrawing their congressional maps, which have produced only a handful of competitive House seats.
“It is almost a survival strategy for political parties within the states,” said Ken Kollman, a political science professor at the University of Michigan. “Competitive districts might be in someone’s interest — it might be in the interest of the public, it might be in the interest of our democracy, it might be in the interest of moderate policies moving forward — but it’s not in the interests of the specific state political parties.”
Political parties burned by recent wave elections — like Republicans in 2018 when Democrats took control of the House — may have gotten skittish about drawing risky seats. Kollman said a House […]
James Temple, Senior Editor - MIT Technology Review
Stephan: Most Americans I find have only the dimmest comprehension about ocean currents and how critical they are to their local environment. This is a catastrophe on the edge of occurring, one with the most profound consequences. Here is a good briefing on this issue.
On a Saturday morning in December of 2020, the RRS Discovery floated in calm waters just east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the massive undersea mountain range that runs from the Arctic nearly to the Antarctic.
The team onboard the research vessel, mostly from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, used an acoustic signaling system to trigger the release of a cable more than three miles long from its 4,000-pound anchor on the seabed.
The expedition’s chief scientist, Ben Moat, and others walked up to the bridge to spot the first floats as they popped up. The technicians on deck, clad in hard hats and clipped into harnesses, reeled the cable in. They halted the winch every few minutes to disconnect the floats as well as sensors that measure salinity and temperature at various depths, data used to calculate the pressure, current speed, and volume of water flowing past.
The scientists and technicians are part of an international research collaboration, known as RAPID, that’s collecting readings from hundreds of sensors at more than a dozen moorings dotting the Atlantic roughly […]
Stephan: My hope is that what happened to Mayfield, Kentucky has awakened Americans to what climate change can do and be like. As this report lays out, what happens to us in the immediate future is going to be largely dictated by how seriously we take climate change, and what we do in response. So far we have been pathetically lax in both planning and response.
Rain fallsbeyond the historical Zion’s Church on Sept. 4 in Ilulissat, Greenland. Credit: Mario Tama/Getty
The ice shelf was cracking up. Surveys showed warm ocean water eroding its underbelly. Satellite imagery revealed long, parallel fissures in the frozen expanse, like scratches from some clawed monster. One fracture grew so big, so fast, scientists took to calling it “the dagger.”
“It was hugely surprising to see things changing that fast,” said Erin Pettit. The Oregon State University glaciologist had chosen this spot for her Antarctic field research precisely because of its stability. While other parts of the infamous Thwaites Glacier crumbled, this wedge of floating ice acted as a brace, slowing the melt. It was supposed to be boring, durable, safe.
Now climate change has turned the ice shelf into a threat — to Pettit’s field work, and to the world.
Planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels and other human activities has already raised global temperatures more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). But the effects are particularly profound at the poles, where rising temperatures have seriously undermined […]
