http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116091143.htm
Jan. 16, 2014 — More than 5,893 leaks from aging natural gas pipelines have been found under the streets of Washington, D.C. by a research team from Duke University and Boston University.
A dozen of the leaks could have posed explosion risks, the researchers said. Some manholes had methane concentrations as high as 500,000 parts per million of natural gas -- about 10 times greater than the threshold at which explosions can occur.
Four months after phoning in the leaks to city authorities, the research team returned and found that nine were still emitting dangerous levels of methane. "Finding the leaks a second time, four months after we first reported them, was really surprising," said Robert B. Jackson, a professor of environmental sciences at Duke who led the study.
The researchers published their findings this week in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology.
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n addition to the explosion hazard, natural gas leaks also pose another threat: Methane, the primary ingredient of natural gas, is a powerful greenhouse gas that also can catalyze ozone formation. Pipeline leaks are the largest human-caused source of methane in the United States and contribute to $3 billion of lost and unaccounted for natural gas each year.
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Last year, the team mapped more than 3,300 natural-gas pipeline leaks beneath 785 road miles in the city of Boston. "The average density of leaks we mapped in the two cities is comparable, but the average methane concentrations are higher in Washington," said Nathan G. Phillips, a professor at Boston University's Department of Earth and Environment.
Like Washington and Boston, many U.S. cities have aging pipeline infrastructure that may be prone to leaks. The researchers recommend coordinated gas-leak mapping campaigns in cities where the infrastructure is deemed to be at risk.
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The new study comes at a time when the nation's aging pipeline infrastructure is generating increased legislative attention. Last November, Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced two new bills to speed up the replacement of natural gas pipelines in states with older infrastructures by offering new federal programs and incentives to help defray the costs associated with the repairs.
"We need to put the right financial incentives in place," said Jackson. "Companies and public utility commissions need help to fix leaks and replace old cast iron pipes more quickly."
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Who owns CNN? or MSNBC? ABC?
See the link below for more info.http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/47530.php
Apr. 09, 2003
GENERAL ELECTRIC --(donated 1.1 million to GW Bush for his 2000 election campaign)
Television Holdings:
* NBC: includes 13 stations, 28% of US households.
* NBC Network News: The Today Show, Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Meet the Press, Dateline NBC, NBC News at Sunrise.
* CNBC business television; MSNBC 24-hour cable and Internet news service (co-owned by NBC and Microsoft); Court TV (co-owned with Time Warner), Bravo (50%), A&E (25%), History Channel (25%).
The "MS" in MSNBC
means microsoft
The same Microsoft that donated 2.4 million to get GW bush elected.
Other Holdings:
* GE Consumer Electronics.
* GE Power Systems: produces turbines for nuclear reactors and power plants.
* GE Plastics: produces military hardware and nuclear power equipment.
* GE Transportation Systems: runs diesel and electric trains.
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Facts About NPR Funding
Looking at a graph from the following link, 21.7% of NPR funding comes from business donations.http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/dont_forget_the_facts_about_np.php
And some of the individual donors (32.1% of funding) are surely very rich business owners and executives.
By Lauren Kirchner
October 28, 2010
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It’s important to keep in mind, when writing about this issue, that NPR actually receives a lot less money than people might think it does (a fact drummed into listeners’ heads every time a membership drive comes along). The NPR website is quite clear about the organization’s sources of funding, and the past few years’ financial reports are available for download there.
Here’s the chart for NPR’s individual member stations: see that direct funding from Federal, State & Local governments made up only 5.8 percent of the stations’ revenue in FY 2008. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) contributed another 10.1 percent, but even if you add those up, that’s still only about 16 percent of the stations’ funding coming directly or indirectly from government sources.
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NPR is funded in large part by the fees that the member stations pay it for the right to play NPR programs (like Morning Edition, All Things Considered, etc.) and by corporate sponsorships. NPR actually does not receive any government funding for its operations costs.
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Serving the very rich
The Jan. 2014 issue of Harper's magazine has an article by a writer who took a course in private-service to the rich, hoping to become an estate manager. Has some interesting info on how the very rich live. Eg., family offices, which are private companies set up exclusively to serve the financial & personal needs of a single family. The offices include money managers, lawyers, accountants, & support staff to handle money and investments for the family.
Most people in banking put the minimum fortune necessary to support a family office at $100 million ($100,000,000).
Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/12/Target-Cyber-Attack-May-Be-Tip-Iceberg
JIM FINKLE, Mark Hosenball Reuters
January 12, 2014
Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season late last year, according to sources familiar with attacks on other merchants that have yet to be publicly disclosed.
Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light.
Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year.
The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate. They also said that while they suspect the perpetrators may be the same as those who launched the Target attack, they cannot be sure because they are still trying to find the culprits behind all of the attacks.
Law enforcement sources have said they suspect the ring leaders are from Eastern Europe, which is where most big cyber crime cases have been hatched over the past decade.
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JIM FINKLE, Mark Hosenball Reuters
January 12, 2014
Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season late last year, according to sources familiar with attacks on other merchants that have yet to be publicly disclosed.
Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light.
Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year.
The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate. They also said that while they suspect the perpetrators may be the same as those who launched the Target attack, they cannot be sure because they are still trying to find the culprits behind all of the attacks.
Law enforcement sources have said they suspect the ring leaders are from Eastern Europe, which is where most big cyber crime cases have been hatched over the past decade.
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Coal Country Toxic Chemical Spills: Not If, But When
I suggest reading the whole article at the following link:http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/14/Coal-Country-Toxic-Chemical-Spills-Not-If-When
Eric Pianin The Fiscal Times
January 14, 2014
Sometimes it can be nearly as dangerous to live near a coal mine as it is to work in one.
Last week’s chemical spill in Charleston, West Virginia’s Elk River virtually shut down the city and left 300,000 residents and thousands of businesses without clean drinking water. It’s is a rueful reminder of a harsh reality in Appalachian coal country.
The foaming agent that escaped from a 40,000-gallon Freedom Industries storage tank directly into the Charleston area’s sole water supply is used to help separate rock particles from ground up coal. The left-over chemicals and sludge are then piped to nearby slurry ponds for storage and reuse.
Those chemical and waste water impoundments – both natural and man-made – are ticking environmental and economic time bombs that for decades have posed threats to resident of mining communities throughout West Virginia, Kentucky and many other major coal mining states.
Much has been made of the nation’s deteriorating highways and bridges, but the infrastructure crisis plaguing the mining and related chemical industry at times has reached nightmarish proportions.
The worst example dates back to February 26, 1972, when three dams containing a witches’ brew of coal slurry and water in Logan County, W.Va., failed in rapid succession. A startling 125 people were killed, 1,121 others were injured, 17 communities were wiped out and over 4,000 were left homeless after 130 million gallons of sludge and toxic water were released into the Buffalo Creek flood plain. Despite evidence of negligence, the Pittston Coal Company -- the owner of the dams -- called the tragedy an “act of God.”
But state investigators concluded the company had shown a “callous indifference” to public safety,” and had ignored years of warnings from area residents.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Jack Spadaro, an engineer and veteran coal mining safety consultant who took part in a state investigation of the disaster that led to some reforms. “It was the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen.”
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Today, there are 596 coal slurry impoundments operating in 21 states, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The largest number of those facilities -- 114 -- is located in West Virginia.
A 2011 study by the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement cited the mounting risk for communities downriver of these massive embankments or ponds, according to the Washington Post. Tests of the compaction or density of the walls of these impoundments showed flaws at all seven sites surveyed in West Virginia. Only 16 of 73 field tests conducted in a handful of states met the government structural safety standards, according to the report.
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“The great number of chemical plants, coal processing plants, coal slurry impoundments, underground mines, and mountain top removal mines that now exist in all of the watersheds in the southern part of West Virginia have really limited the available locations of reliable drinking water,” Goodwin said in an interview with the Fiscal Times today.
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College Grads Are Elbowing Aside Less Educated for Jobs
See the link below for a chart illustrating this.http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/16/College-Grads-Are-Elbowing-Aside-Less-Educated-Jobs
Eric Pianin
The Fiscal Times
January 16, 2014
It’s no secret that young Americans with a college degree have an easier time finding jobs than those with only a high school diploma. Last year, the unemployment rate for young adults with only a high school diploma was almost 10 percentage points higher than for those with a bachelor’s degree.
Yet their success in the job market often came from lowering their sights and elbowing aside less educated people to take lower-skilled positions they once might not have pursued. In what is being called the “Great Squeeze,” college graduates are squeezing out other young adults with more modest educational records.
Since 2009, many of the occupations with the fastest employment gains for young people have been lower-skill jobs that typically pay less, according to a new report by economist Diana G. Carew of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Production, health care support and food preparation and serving occupations were the three main occupational groups to see gains for young Americans across all levels of educational attainment. The downside is that all three groups have mean hourly earnings significantly lower than the national average for all occupations.
Notably, young college graduates saw a 15 percent increase in office and administrative employment while more generally employment in this group declined, the report stated. “This is consistent with the argument that young college graduates are struggling with high underemployment,” Carew wrote – and in the process are squeezing their less educated rivals aside.
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A recently released study by the organization called Young Invincibles, a national research and advocacy group for young Americans, concludes that the employment crisis among young people is taking its toll on federal and state governments in the form of lost tax revenue and social welfare costs. Among the key findings of the new report: The total annual cost to federal and state governments for severely high unemployment rates among 18-to-34-year-olds is almost $8.9 billion.
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You Can No Longer Take Your Company to Court
10 out of the 14 judges were chosen by Reagan or GW Bushhttp://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/16/You-Can-No-Longer-Take-Your-Company-Court
There are 3 vacancies.
An example of why the Republicans are trying so hard to block President Obama from making judicial appointments. These posts are lifetime appointments, like the supreme court.
by Rob Garver The Fiscal Times
January 16, 2014
In 2006, the nationwide home-building company D. R. Horton, began requiring all new employees – and any existing employees who wanted to keep their jobs – to sign an agreement saying that they agreed to “voluntarily waive all rights to trial in court before a judge or jury on all claims” between the employee and the company. They would submit, instead, to binding arbitration.
Not only did employees who signed the agreement waive their right to participate in a class action lawsuit, they also waived their right to participate in class-based arbitration. The National Labor Relations Board in 2012 ruled that the agreement was illegal, but last month the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans overturned that ruling.
- See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/16/You-Can-No-Longer-Take-Your-Company-Court#sthash.Q0XTOfyW.dpuf
The ruling has some labor lawyers concerned that if the appeals court ruling is upheld, clauses barring class action lawsuits and class arbitrations could quickly become standard elements in most employment contracts, effectively barring many non-unionized workers from a tool that has historically been used to vindicate workers’ rights.
Catherine K. Ruckelshaus, general counsel and program director for the National Employment Law Project, said that because of under-funding of agencies that enforce labor laws, class action “has been pretty much the only game in town” for workers looking for relief from abusive employers. “If you can’t aggregate the claims, there is very little pressure on the employer,” said Ruckelshaus.
In recent years class actions have been used successfully to challenge the practice of making employees work “off the clock” at major retailers and to require that overtime pay be given to workers illegally classified as exempt from overtime requirements.
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Mandatory arbitration clauses are not new, and are not unique to employment contracts. They are a common feature of credit card contracts and other financial agreements. (And are currently being examined by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.) They have also, for example, historically been a part of employment contracts for executive-level and other high-ranking employees in the financial services industry.
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Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) have sponsored a bill, the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2013, which would bar companies from requiring employees and consumers to consent to binding arbitration prior to a dispute arising. Consent to binding arbitration would still be allowed after a dispute has arisen.
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“The Board is very likely to continue to enforce the law and maintain that these kind of clauses are unlawful,” continued Meisburg, who is now a partner and co-head of the Labor-Management Relations Practice Group at the Proskauer law firm in Washington, DC. “So for the time being, maintaining these contract clauses puts companies at risk of NLRB prosecution and an adverse decision.”
A number of other cases, however, including two that are working their way through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, have many labor attorneys convinced that the Supreme Court is likely to weigh in on the issue in the near future.
Chicken products sicken Tenn. inmates, CDC says
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/white-slime-chicken-products-sicken-tenn-inmates-cdc-says-2D11934338
JoNel Aleccia NBC News
Jan. 15, 2014
At least nine inmates at a Tennessee jail have been sickened by salmonella detected in a paste-like chicken product sometimes known as “white slime,” part of an outbreak that may have affected people in 13 states.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service was notified in December of an outbreak of salmonella infections from Nov. 29 to Dec. 5. Tyson officials recalled nearly 34,000 pounds of mechanically separated chicken sent to institutions on Jan. 10.
Epidemiological and traceback investigations found that the illnesses were probably linked to the chicken. Mechanically separated meat is a paste-like product made by forcing beef, pork, turkey or chicken through a sieve or other device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue. The paste is then formed into foods like fully-cooked lunch meat and hot dogs.
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Tyson officials emphasized that the product was sold for institutional use nationwide, and was not available for purchase in grocery stores. The products were sent to institutional customers with distribution centers in eight states: California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
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JoNel Aleccia NBC News
Jan. 15, 2014
At least nine inmates at a Tennessee jail have been sickened by salmonella detected in a paste-like chicken product sometimes known as “white slime,” part of an outbreak that may have affected people in 13 states.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service was notified in December of an outbreak of salmonella infections from Nov. 29 to Dec. 5. Tyson officials recalled nearly 34,000 pounds of mechanically separated chicken sent to institutions on Jan. 10.
Epidemiological and traceback investigations found that the illnesses were probably linked to the chicken. Mechanically separated meat is a paste-like product made by forcing beef, pork, turkey or chicken through a sieve or other device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue. The paste is then formed into foods like fully-cooked lunch meat and hot dogs.
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Tyson officials emphasized that the product was sold for institutional use nationwide, and was not available for purchase in grocery stores. The products were sent to institutional customers with distribution centers in eight states: California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
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In surprise result, gene therapy reverses blinding eye disease
This is the same technique used to create GMO crops.http://www.nbcnews.com/health/surprise-result-gene-therapy-reverses-blinding-eye-disease-2D11934179
Maggie Fox NBC News
Jan. 15, 2014
An experimental therapy for a blinding eye disease showed early – and surprising – promise when it improved the vision of patients in an early trial that was only supposed to test its safety, doctors reported Wednesday.
The experimental gene therapy not only stopped the steady degeneration of the patients’ vision, but appears to have reversed some of the damage. And the effects have lasted two years in one case, British researchers report in the Lancet medical journal.
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“It is still too early to know if the gene therapy treatment will last indefinitely, but we can say that the vision improvements have been maintained for as long as we have been following up the patients, which is two years in one case,” says Dr. Robert MacLaren of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford, who leads the research team.
“In truth, we did not expect to see such dramatic improvements in visual acuity and so we contacted both patients’ home opticians to get current and historical data on their vision in former years, long before the gene therapy trial started. These readings confirmed exactly what we had seen,” he added in a statement.
The men taking part in the trial all have choroideremia, a genetic disease that causes vision to start breaking down when patients are still children. The defective gene, called CHM, is on the x chromosome, so it almost exclusively affects males – females have an extra x chromosome that usually makes up for any lost function. It causes about 4 percent of all cases of blindness, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The condition breaks down various parts of the retina, the reflective tissue at the back of the eye that collects light and images. The gene therapy approach uses a virus to carry a corrective gene directly into the retina.
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House Republicans Just Quietly Passed A Bill Gutting Hazardous Waste Legislation
What wonderful timing, to pass this when a lot of people in W. Virginia can't use their water because of a chemical spill.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/house-superfund-bill_n_4571428.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
The two parties are not just alike.
01/09/2014
Kate Sheppard
The House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday overhauling the country's hazardous waste laws.
The bill, called the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act, amends both the Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (which is commonly known as Superfund). It would remove requirements that the EPA periodically update and review solid waste disposal regulations, and would make it harder for the government to require companies that deal with hazardous substances to carry enough insurance to cover cleanup. The bill would also require more consultation with states before the government imposes cleanup requirements for Superfund sites -- places where hazardous waste is located and could be affecting local people or ecosystems.
The bill passed by a vote of 225 to 188, largely along party lines. Four Republicans voted against it, and five Democrats voted for it.
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The bill is not expected to pass in the Senate, and the White House has already issued a veto threat. "The bill's requirements could result in significant site cleanup delays, endangering public health and the environment," President Obama's advisers wrote in a statement of administration policy.
Dangerous giant smog cloud chokes Beijing
Libertarian heaven.http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/16/22322417-dangerous-giant-smog-cloud-chokes-beijing?lite
This is what Republicans would bring back to our country if they had the power. The business leaders that profit from lack of regulation don't care, they can live elsewhere, or afford things like air and water purifiers to protect themselves.
By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News
Jan. 16, 2014
Air pollution readings spiked across China's capital Beijing on Thursday, prompting residents to don air masks and offices and homes to put electric air purifiers on overdrive.
Commuters across Beijing found themselves cloaked in a thick, gray haze as air pollution monitors across the city registered readings over 20 times the recommended exposure levels suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau readings Thursday for PM 2.5 – air particulate smaller than 2.5 microns blamed for a range of severe respiratory ailments – registered over 500 micrograms per cubic meter. The WHO recommends no more than 25 micrograms per cubic meter.
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Irritating news
I really do not like it when I want to read a news item online and it automatically starts a video report. It is annoying, and slows down my internet usage. I avoid posting links to such items. If I think it is something that should be reported, I do a search and find another source that does not have this annoying trait.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Welfare helps children
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/01/welfare_works_for_kids_children_whose_parents_get_money_grow_up_healthier.single.html
By Matthew Yglesias
Jan. 13 2014
“Think of the children.” It's a cliché, but at times it also serves as a powerful argument in debates over public policy. Welfare payments to the poor and jobless, for example, have often been unpopular in the United States because they are seen as subsidizing indolence or criminality. And even those most inclined to take a dim view of how poor adults ended up poor have to concede that poverty has blameless victims: children who had no role in deciding to have low-income parents. This is why protecting soldiers and mothers rather than childless civilians has long been the core focus of American social policy. And yet, while it’s easy to see that poverty is bad for children, it’s harder to know the extent to which anti-poverty programs succeed in ameliorating those ill effects.
That’s in part because social programs are rarely designed to produce proper experiments. But it’s also because a human life takes decades to run its course. To really get a sense of long-term impacts, you need to wait a long time.
That’s what makes new research into Mothers’ Pensions, one of America’s earliest welfare programs, so fascinating. These state-level programs for widows became popular in the early decades of the 20th century
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Anna Aizer, Shari Eli, Joseph Ferrie, Adriana Lleras-Muney, and a team of research assistants took a detailed look at kids who grew up in Mothers’ Pension households and drew some conclusions about the long-term benefits of modest cash transfers. The program is old enough that almost all the kids whose moms received money are dead now, allowing the researchers to conclude definitively that it increased life expectancy. What’s more, World War II draft records show that poor kids whose moms received pensions were substantially healthier, had more years of schooling, and earned higher incomes than similar kids whose moms didn’t get pensions.
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(Daughters are harder to track because of post-marital name-changing.) Using 1940 census records, draft records, and county-level death records, the researchers determined that the sons of the accepted had early adult incomes that were 20 percent higher than those of rejected mothers; these sons were also 35 percent less likely to be underweight as adults, lived a year longer, and had about a third of a year of additional schooling.
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By Matthew Yglesias
Jan. 13 2014
“Think of the children.” It's a cliché, but at times it also serves as a powerful argument in debates over public policy. Welfare payments to the poor and jobless, for example, have often been unpopular in the United States because they are seen as subsidizing indolence or criminality. And even those most inclined to take a dim view of how poor adults ended up poor have to concede that poverty has blameless victims: children who had no role in deciding to have low-income parents. This is why protecting soldiers and mothers rather than childless civilians has long been the core focus of American social policy. And yet, while it’s easy to see that poverty is bad for children, it’s harder to know the extent to which anti-poverty programs succeed in ameliorating those ill effects.
That’s in part because social programs are rarely designed to produce proper experiments. But it’s also because a human life takes decades to run its course. To really get a sense of long-term impacts, you need to wait a long time.
That’s what makes new research into Mothers’ Pensions, one of America’s earliest welfare programs, so fascinating. These state-level programs for widows became popular in the early decades of the 20th century
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Anna Aizer, Shari Eli, Joseph Ferrie, Adriana Lleras-Muney, and a team of research assistants took a detailed look at kids who grew up in Mothers’ Pension households and drew some conclusions about the long-term benefits of modest cash transfers. The program is old enough that almost all the kids whose moms received money are dead now, allowing the researchers to conclude definitively that it increased life expectancy. What’s more, World War II draft records show that poor kids whose moms received pensions were substantially healthier, had more years of schooling, and earned higher incomes than similar kids whose moms didn’t get pensions.
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(Daughters are harder to track because of post-marital name-changing.) Using 1940 census records, draft records, and county-level death records, the researchers determined that the sons of the accepted had early adult incomes that were 20 percent higher than those of rejected mothers; these sons were also 35 percent less likely to be underweight as adults, lived a year longer, and had about a third of a year of additional schooling.
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Wait, We Inject Antibiotics Into Eggs for Organic Chicken?!
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/01/organic-chicken-and-egg-antibiotics-edition
Tom Philpott
Jan. 15, 2014
When you've covered a topic long enough, you get the idea you've heard it all. Then along comes a factoid like the one I discovered while preparing my recent piece on the recent blockbuster Consumer Reports study on supermarket chicken and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I learned that at the industrial hatcheries that churn out chicks for the poultry industry, eggs are commonly injected with tiny amounts of an antibiotic called gentamicin, which is used in people to treat a variety of serious bacterial infections.
That alone dropped my jaw—what, the practice of dosing chickens with antibiotics has to begin literally in the egg? But get this: The practice is allowed in organic production, too. Organic code forbids use of antibiotics in animals, yet in a loophole I'd never heard of, such standards kick in on "the second day of life" for chicks destined for organic poultry farms. (The practice isn't used for the eggs we actually eat—just the ones that hatch chicks to be raised on farms.)
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Tom Philpott
Jan. 15, 2014
When you've covered a topic long enough, you get the idea you've heard it all. Then along comes a factoid like the one I discovered while preparing my recent piece on the recent blockbuster Consumer Reports study on supermarket chicken and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I learned that at the industrial hatcheries that churn out chicks for the poultry industry, eggs are commonly injected with tiny amounts of an antibiotic called gentamicin, which is used in people to treat a variety of serious bacterial infections.
That alone dropped my jaw—what, the practice of dosing chickens with antibiotics has to begin literally in the egg? But get this: The practice is allowed in organic production, too. Organic code forbids use of antibiotics in animals, yet in a loophole I'd never heard of, such standards kick in on "the second day of life" for chicks destined for organic poultry farms. (The practice isn't used for the eggs we actually eat—just the ones that hatch chicks to be raised on farms.)
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Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Multimillionaire admits to collecting dead mother's social security for 23 years
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/multimillionaire-collects-dead-mom-social-security-23-years-article-1.1578838
By Lee Moran / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
A multimillionaire who hid his mom's death from the government for more than two decades to claim $200,000 in benefits has been sent to prison.
Taco Bell franchise owner Raymond O'Dell, who is worth $4 million, did not notify authorities when his mother died so he could cash her Social Security checks.
The wealthy 70-year-old, from Bellevue, Wash., carried out the scam for 23 years but was busted when Social Security officials asked to speak to his mother.
O'Dell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in prison after a hearing Monday.
Later this month, he is expected to also plead guilty to charges of stealing $100,000 from the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.
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O'Dell was also ordered to pay $188,436.74 restitution and a $20,000 penalty.
By Lee Moran / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
A multimillionaire who hid his mom's death from the government for more than two decades to claim $200,000 in benefits has been sent to prison.
Taco Bell franchise owner Raymond O'Dell, who is worth $4 million, did not notify authorities when his mother died so he could cash her Social Security checks.
The wealthy 70-year-old, from Bellevue, Wash., carried out the scam for 23 years but was busted when Social Security officials asked to speak to his mother.
O'Dell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in prison after a hearing Monday.
Later this month, he is expected to also plead guilty to charges of stealing $100,000 from the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.
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O'Dell was also ordered to pay $188,436.74 restitution and a $20,000 penalty.
Employment May Lead to Improvement in Autism Symptoms
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140114130659.htm
Jan. 14, 2014 — More independent work environments may lead to reductions in autism symptoms and improve daily living in adults with the disorder, according to a new study released in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
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Jan. 14, 2014 — More independent work environments may lead to reductions in autism symptoms and improve daily living in adults with the disorder, according to a new study released in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
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Scientists: Americans are becoming weather wimps
This matches my own memories. We used to get weather as cold or colder as a week ago about every 3 or 4 years.http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2014-01-09-Deep%20Freeze-Weather%20Wimps/id-2c2fc65ae47b4726aa2d747a27fee999
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
We've become weather wimps.
As the world warms, the United States is getting fewer bitter cold spells like the one that gripped much of the nation this week. So when a deep freeze strikes, scientists say, it seems more unprecedented than it really is. An Associated Press analysis of the daily national winter temperature shows that cold extremes have happened about once every four years since 1900.
Until recently.
When computer models estimated that the national average daily temperature for the Lower 48 states dropped to 17.9 degrees on Monday, it was the first deep freeze of that magnitude in 17 years, according to Greg Carbin, warning meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That stretch — from Jan. 13, 1997 to Monday — is by far the longest the U.S. has gone without the national average plunging below 18 degrees, according to a database of daytime winter temperatures starting in January 1900.
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Between 1970 and 1989, a dozen such events occurred, but there were only two in the 1990s and then none until Monday.
"These types of events have actually become more infrequent than they were in the past," said Carbin, who works at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. "This is why there was such a big buzz because people have such short memories."
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There have been far more unusually warm winter days in the U.S. than unusually cold ones.
Since Jan. 1, 2000, only two days have ranked in the top 100 coldest: Monday and Tuesday. But there have been 13 in the top 100 warmest winter days, including the warmest since 1900: Dec. 3, 2012. And that pattern is exactly what climate scientists have been saying for years, that the world will get more warm extremes and fewer cold extremes.
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"We expect to see a lengthening of time between cold air outbreaks due to a warming climate, but 17 years between outbreaks is probably partially due to an unusual amount of natural variability," or luck, Masters said in an email. "I expect we'll go far fewer than 17 years before seeing the next cold air outbreak of this intensity.
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Many climate scientists say Americans are weather weenies who forgot what a truly cold winter is like.
"I think that people's memory about climate is really terrible," Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler wrote in an email. "So I think this cold event feels more extreme than it actually is because we're just not used to really cold winters anymore."
Monday, January 13, 2014
Rich GOP Donor Gets Lawmaker to Draft a Bill to Lower His Child Support Payments
The new law would keep assets from being counted. Anybody not see right away that this would result in such people putting all their money into property?http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/01/gop-donor-lobbies-lawmakers-write-law-lowering-his-child-support-payments
By Molly Redden | Mon Jan. 13, 2014
After Michael Eisenga, a wealthy GOP donor and Wisconsin business owner, failed to convince several courts to lower his child support payments, he came up with an inventive plan B—he recruited a Republican state legislator to rewrite Wisconsin law in his favor.
A set of documents unearthed Saturday by the Wisconsin State Journal shows Eisenga and his lawyer, William Smiley, supplying detailed instructions to Republican state Rep. Joel Kleefisch on how to word legislation capping child support payments from the wealthy. Kleefisch began work on the legislation last fall, weeks after an appeals court rejected Eisenga's attempts to lower his child support payments.
For example, in a September 13 letter, a drafting lawyer with Wisconsin's legislative services bureau complained to a Kleefisch aide, "It's hard to fashion a general principle that will apply to only one situation."
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Eisenga's current child support payments for the three children he has with his ex-wife are set at $216,000 a year. (Per the couple's prenuptial agreement, the divorce settlement left his $30 million ($300,000,000) in assets untouched.)
Current law instructs judges to calculate child support as a percentage of income, with no cap and the option to include assets. Under Kleefisch's bill, which making its way through the Wisconsin statehouse, payments would top out at $150,000 annually, and judges would be prohibited from taking assets into account when determining child support. The bill also includes language that would allow Eisenga to restart court proceedings over his child support payments, as it requires courts to slash such payments if they are 10 percent higher than they would be under the new cap.
In 2010, Eisenga donated $10,000 to Kleefisch and his wife, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, according to the Journal Sentinel. Eisenga also donated $15,000 to Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
The drafting documents, available on the Wisconsin legislature's website, leave little not doubt that the bill was written to Eisenga's specifications.
Water restrictions lifted on day five of W.Va. chemical spill
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/195255-water-restrictions-lifted-on-day-five-of-wva-chemical-spill
By Laura Barron-Lopez
Jan. 13, 2014
After a one-inch hole leaked roughly 7,500 gallons of a chemical from an industrial facility along West Virginia's Elk River last week, about 15 percent of the state's population was left without clean tap water.
Five days later, West Virginia American Water said Monday afternoon that they are finalizing the "Do Not Use" lift process.
Untainted water is starting to flow through pipelines in the Charleston area -- high-need areas like hospitals and nursing homes are getting water first, USA Today reports.
But the spill, which cut off water to over 300,000 people, is raising questions over the state's long known problems of regulating coal and chemical companies, The New York Times reported on Monday.
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Lawmakers have not explained why the storage facility was allowed to be built on the river, close to the largest water treatment plant in the state.
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By Laura Barron-Lopez
Jan. 13, 2014
After a one-inch hole leaked roughly 7,500 gallons of a chemical from an industrial facility along West Virginia's Elk River last week, about 15 percent of the state's population was left without clean tap water.
Five days later, West Virginia American Water said Monday afternoon that they are finalizing the "Do Not Use" lift process.
Untainted water is starting to flow through pipelines in the Charleston area -- high-need areas like hospitals and nursing homes are getting water first, USA Today reports.
But the spill, which cut off water to over 300,000 people, is raising questions over the state's long known problems of regulating coal and chemical companies, The New York Times reported on Monday.
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Lawmakers have not explained why the storage facility was allowed to be built on the river, close to the largest water treatment plant in the state.
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AF Colonel Goes From Pentagon to Homelessness
I can believe it. Went thru the same thing. Too old to get a programming job, "over-qualified" to get a low-level job. Finally got a job as server at Waffle House.http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/01/06/air-force-colonel-goes-from-pentagon-to-homelessness.html#.UtQgs8s3qX8.facebook
I was within two weeks of living in my car when I got the job at Waffle House.
Philadelphia Inquirer | Jan 06, 2014
After a 30-year military career in which he earned three graduate degrees, rose to the rank of colonel, and served as an aide to Pentagon brass, Robert Freniere can guess what people might say when they learn he's unemployed and lives out of his van:
Why doesn't this guy get a job as a janitor?
Freniere answers his own question: "Well, I've tried that."
Freniere, 59, says that his plea for help, to a janitor he once praised when the man was mopping the floors of his Washington office, went unfulfilled. So have dozens of job applications, he says, the ones he has filled out six hours a day, day after day, on public library computers.
So Freniere, a man who braved multiple combat zones and was hailed as "a leading light" by an admiral, is now fighting a new battle: homelessness.
As of January 2012, more than 60,000 veterans were homeless, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Reducing that number has been a priority for the Obama administration -- and the number of homeless veterans dropped 24 percent nationwide from 2009 to 2013. In Pennsylvania, however, it jumped 46 percent, to more than 1,400.
Joblessness among returning servicemembers is even more common. Freniere describes a monthly lunch he has attended in Washington, a hushed tradition that he says attracts about 200 veterans. After they eat, the men and women who are unemployed stand up one by one to recite their service records, hoping someone else in the room will hire them.
Many, he says, are highly accomplished.
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Spots are hard to come by. Freniere, like many of his fellow down-on-their-luck veterans, does not match any hat-in-hand Hollywood image of homelessness. He receives an annual pension from the military of more than $40,000.
His struggle to find a job after retiring from the Air Force collided with the end of his marriage nearly two years ago. Unable to return to the home he shared with his estranged wife, and faced with expenses including bills for two sons in college and debts that mounted when he maintained a nicer lifestyle, he took up a nomadic existence.
Between spells on the couches of friends in multiple states, he sleeps occasionally in motels and other times in the dented blue van.
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In 2005, Freniere said, he volunteered to go to Iraq. "Everybody thought I was nuts, especially my sons," who were 15 and 13 at the time, he said. "But I'm a counterterrorism guy. That's what I do."
But as he was preparing to deploy, he said, he felt his legs go numb one day. He had suffered from back pain since he was injured in his 20s, when a soldier he was training to operate a tank fired the gun too soon.
Three days after the numbness began, Freniere underwent back surgery. Instead of flying to Iraq, he spent a year and a half convalescing, he said. In 2006, he retired from the Air Force.
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Freniere says dyslexia makes focusing on a computer screen difficult. Online applications are so hard for him, he said, that tears well in his eyes as he describes his days at public libraries.
"How many applications can you fill out in a day? And it takes you six or seven hours, and then you don't hear from any of them. You start getting hopeless," he said.
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tags: age discrimination
Republican Deregulation Culture to Blame For Water Poisoning West Virginia Chemical Spill
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/13/republican-deregulation-blame-water-poisoning-west-virginia-chemical-spill.html
January, 13th, 2014
Among the long list of things Republicans hate, rules or directives made and maintained by the government to protect the health and safety of the population rank nearly as high as their hatred for women, taxes, equal rights, democracy and the U.S. Constitution.
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The idea that eliminating regulations will create jobs and end poverty is nearly as absurd as Marco Rubio’s assertion that marriage is the be all, end all solution for poverty borne of income inequality, low wages, and lack of jobs.
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Over the past five years the nation has seen the effects of deregulation, or regulation violations, firsthand whether it was the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas, a West Virginia mine explosion, and a chemical spill last Thursday that gave West Virginia residents another up-close-and-personal view of deregulation’s effects.
On Friday, officials said up to 5,000 gallons of an industrial chemical used in coal processing leaked from a ruptured chemical storage tank owned by Freedom Industries into the Elk River just upstream of the intake pipes used by the largest water utility in the state, West Virginia American Water. It turned out that the chemical spill was larger than originally estimated (7,500 gallons) and it has kept over 300,000 West Virginians without safe water for four days as of Sunday. On Saturday the president of West Virginia American Water Company said it would likely still be “several days” before tap water in the nine affected counties would be safe for anything besides flushing toilets.
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The ruptured chemical holding tank, and “inch wide holes in a retaining wall,” should have failed an inspection if one were conducted, but the Department of Environmental Protection officials said the owners of the tank that ruptured, Freedom Industries, are “exempt from inspections or permitting because the company only stores chemicals, and does not produce them.” The chemicals were produced by Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. According to one county official, the ruptured tank was part of a decades-old Pennzoil refinery “dating back to the 1930s or 1940s,” and Charleston’s mayor believes the chemicals went through the holes in the retaining wall after leaking from the ruptured tank. It is highly probable that since the inch-wide holes in the retaining wall were big enough for anyone to see, Freedom Industries knew the 70 to 80 year-old tanks were in desperate need of replacement and did not want to spend the money to repair them because regulations did not require them to. The tragedy in West Virginia is precisely the deregulation and getting “government out of the way” Republicans are fighting for under the guise of ending poverty and creating jobs, but it underscores why regulations, particularly environmental regulations, need to be strengthened; not eliminated.
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Suffice it to say that where the health and safety of the population is concerned, Republicans never met a regulation they did not hate passionately and work tirelessly to eliminate and they are not about to change just because 300,000 West Virginians were left without water. They still call for gutting regulations after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion claimed 29 lives, the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 workers, and the West Fertilizer explosion in Texas killed 15 and injured 160, so they will be unfazed over a preventable tragedy that only sent over 122 people to the hospital because they were giving speeches calling for the end of regulations the same day President Obama declared a federal emergency in West Virginia.
January, 13th, 2014
Among the long list of things Republicans hate, rules or directives made and maintained by the government to protect the health and safety of the population rank nearly as high as their hatred for women, taxes, equal rights, democracy and the U.S. Constitution.
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The idea that eliminating regulations will create jobs and end poverty is nearly as absurd as Marco Rubio’s assertion that marriage is the be all, end all solution for poverty borne of income inequality, low wages, and lack of jobs.
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Over the past five years the nation has seen the effects of deregulation, or regulation violations, firsthand whether it was the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas, a West Virginia mine explosion, and a chemical spill last Thursday that gave West Virginia residents another up-close-and-personal view of deregulation’s effects.
On Friday, officials said up to 5,000 gallons of an industrial chemical used in coal processing leaked from a ruptured chemical storage tank owned by Freedom Industries into the Elk River just upstream of the intake pipes used by the largest water utility in the state, West Virginia American Water. It turned out that the chemical spill was larger than originally estimated (7,500 gallons) and it has kept over 300,000 West Virginians without safe water for four days as of Sunday. On Saturday the president of West Virginia American Water Company said it would likely still be “several days” before tap water in the nine affected counties would be safe for anything besides flushing toilets.
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The ruptured chemical holding tank, and “inch wide holes in a retaining wall,” should have failed an inspection if one were conducted, but the Department of Environmental Protection officials said the owners of the tank that ruptured, Freedom Industries, are “exempt from inspections or permitting because the company only stores chemicals, and does not produce them.” The chemicals were produced by Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. According to one county official, the ruptured tank was part of a decades-old Pennzoil refinery “dating back to the 1930s or 1940s,” and Charleston’s mayor believes the chemicals went through the holes in the retaining wall after leaking from the ruptured tank. It is highly probable that since the inch-wide holes in the retaining wall were big enough for anyone to see, Freedom Industries knew the 70 to 80 year-old tanks were in desperate need of replacement and did not want to spend the money to repair them because regulations did not require them to. The tragedy in West Virginia is precisely the deregulation and getting “government out of the way” Republicans are fighting for under the guise of ending poverty and creating jobs, but it underscores why regulations, particularly environmental regulations, need to be strengthened; not eliminated.
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Suffice it to say that where the health and safety of the population is concerned, Republicans never met a regulation they did not hate passionately and work tirelessly to eliminate and they are not about to change just because 300,000 West Virginians were left without water. They still call for gutting regulations after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion claimed 29 lives, the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 workers, and the West Fertilizer explosion in Texas killed 15 and injured 160, so they will be unfazed over a preventable tragedy that only sent over 122 people to the hospital because they were giving speeches calling for the end of regulations the same day President Obama declared a federal emergency in West Virginia.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
The good & bad of kale
As in most things, balance is needed. Kale & related foods are nutritious & many reduce the risk of cancer.http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/01/the-dark-side-of-kale-and-how-to-eat-around-it
January 10, 2014 | 2:36 PM | Rachel Zimmerman
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Writing for The Times, Jennifer Berman reports on the dark side of kale, and how the health-infused, veggie Eden she’d carefully built over years began to crumble:
Imagine my shock, then, at my last physical, when my doctor told me I had hypothyroidism, common in women over 40. When I got home I looked up the condition on the Internet and found a list of foods to avoid. Kale, which I juiced every morning, tops the list, followed by broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and collard greens — the cruciferous vegetables I consumed in large quantities because they are thought to prevent cancer, which runs in my family. And flax — as in the seeds — high in omega 3’s, that I sprinkled on cereal and blended in strawberry almond milk smoothies. Also forbidden: almonds and strawberries, not to mention soy, peaches, peanuts, corn, radishes, rutabaga and spinach.
My first reaction: Berman must be misguided, mistaken. Can kale possibly be bad?
Well, yes, possibly. Here’s the science-y low-down on the kale-thyroid connection from the Oregon State University Micronutrient Information site:
Very high intakes of cruciferous vegetables…have been found to cause hypothyroidism (insufficient thyroid hormone) in animals (68). There has been one case report of an 88-year-old woman developing severe hypothyroidism and coma following consumption of an estimated 1.0 to 1.5 kg/day of raw bok choy for several months. Two mechanisms have been identified to explain this effect. The hydrolysis of some glucosinolates found in cruciferous vegetables (e.g., progoitrin) may yield a compound known as goitrin, which has been found to interfere with thyroid hormone synthesis. The hydrolysis of another class of glucosinolates, known as indole glucosinolates, results in the release of thiocyanate ions, which can compete with iodine for uptake by the thyroid gland. Increased exposure to thiocyanate ions from cruciferous vegetable consumption or, more commonly, from cigarette smoking, does not appear to increase the risk of hypothyroidism unless accompanied by iodine deficiency. One study in humans found that the consumption of 150 g/day (5 oz/day) of cooked Brussels sprouts for four weeks had no adverse effects on thyroid function.
Teresa Fung, Sc.D., M.S.. an adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and a professor at Simmons College in Boston, confirms the kale-thyroid link. But, she says, “normal, reasonable amounts of eating should not be a problem. A regular person [with no thyroid issues] who eats several servings of cruciferous vegetables a week should not have problems.”
Fung adds: “It’s the dose that makes a poison. If people have hypothyroidism or they’re taking thyroid medication, then they should check with their doctor. But even in this case, reasonable amounts shouldn’t be a problem. Now, if people have a tall glass of kale juice every single day, then it gets into the unknown territory.”
Saturday, January 11, 2014
World War II’s Strangest Battle: When Americans and Germans Fought Together
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/12/world-war-ii-s-strangest-battle-when-americans-and-germans-fought-together.html
05.12.13
The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding's The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich.
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05.12.13
The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding's The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich.
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Hundreds report symptoms after West Virginia chemical spill
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/11/22258897-hundreds-report-symptoms-after-west-virginia-chemical-spill?lite
By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News
Elisha Fieldstadt contributed to this report
Jan. 11, 2013
Nearly 800 people in West Virginia have reported symptoms after a chemical spill contaminated the water supply for nine counties, officials said Saturday.
By Saturday afternoon, the state's poison control center had logged 787 human exposure calls and 54 animal exposure calls since the massive leak sparked a tap-water ban for 300,000 residents, said the director Dr. Elizabeth Scharman.
Many of those were from people experiencing nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, skin irritation or rashes in “varying degrees of severity," Scharman said.
The center — which called in staff from vacation, recruited volunteers and put workers on 16-hour shifts — recommended that only a few callers go to the emergency room because most of the symptoms can be treated at home.
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The West Virginia American Water Co. announced Thursday that its water supply had become contaminated, after a leak from a Freedom Industries storage tank about a mile upstream on the Elk River sent a strange licorice-like smell wafting through the streets in Charleston, the state capital.
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency in Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane counties after the spill of up to 5,000 gallons into the Elk River.
"If you live in one of these areas, do not use tap water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, washing, or bathing. At this time, I do not know how long this will last," Tomblin said Friday.
"If you are low on bottled water, do not panic. Help is on the way."
The West Virginia National Guard was enlisted to dispense bottled drinking water to emergency services agencies in the affected counties, as the feds opened a probe into the circumstances surrounding the spill.
The National Guard said tests administered on the water on Saturday showed the contamination level was decreasing but that the water was not yet safe to use, reported NBC affiliate WSAZ.
“I would expect that we are talking days” before the water is safe, said West Virginia American Water's president, Jeff McIntyre.
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The leaked product is 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, which is used in the froth flotation process of coal washing and preparation.
The chemical compound is used to rinse coal. It’s a colorless oily liquid that smells like black licorice. Methylcyclohexane can be dangerous in high concentrations, but generally causes eye, skin and throat irritation, trouble breathing and dizziness or drowsiness if people are exposed, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
It can cause pneumonia if it’s breathed deep into the lungs and nausea if it’s swallowed. The effects of prolonged exposure aren’t clear.
By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News
Elisha Fieldstadt contributed to this report
Jan. 11, 2013
Nearly 800 people in West Virginia have reported symptoms after a chemical spill contaminated the water supply for nine counties, officials said Saturday.
By Saturday afternoon, the state's poison control center had logged 787 human exposure calls and 54 animal exposure calls since the massive leak sparked a tap-water ban for 300,000 residents, said the director Dr. Elizabeth Scharman.
Many of those were from people experiencing nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, skin irritation or rashes in “varying degrees of severity," Scharman said.
The center — which called in staff from vacation, recruited volunteers and put workers on 16-hour shifts — recommended that only a few callers go to the emergency room because most of the symptoms can be treated at home.
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The West Virginia American Water Co. announced Thursday that its water supply had become contaminated, after a leak from a Freedom Industries storage tank about a mile upstream on the Elk River sent a strange licorice-like smell wafting through the streets in Charleston, the state capital.
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency in Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane counties after the spill of up to 5,000 gallons into the Elk River.
"If you live in one of these areas, do not use tap water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, washing, or bathing. At this time, I do not know how long this will last," Tomblin said Friday.
"If you are low on bottled water, do not panic. Help is on the way."
The West Virginia National Guard was enlisted to dispense bottled drinking water to emergency services agencies in the affected counties, as the feds opened a probe into the circumstances surrounding the spill.
The National Guard said tests administered on the water on Saturday showed the contamination level was decreasing but that the water was not yet safe to use, reported NBC affiliate WSAZ.
“I would expect that we are talking days” before the water is safe, said West Virginia American Water's president, Jeff McIntyre.
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The leaked product is 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, which is used in the froth flotation process of coal washing and preparation.
The chemical compound is used to rinse coal. It’s a colorless oily liquid that smells like black licorice. Methylcyclohexane can be dangerous in high concentrations, but generally causes eye, skin and throat irritation, trouble breathing and dizziness or drowsiness if people are exposed, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
It can cause pneumonia if it’s breathed deep into the lungs and nausea if it’s swallowed. The effects of prolonged exposure aren’t clear.
Unfit, Lean People Are Better Protected Against Heart Attacks Than Fit, Obese People
But if you can't lose weight, fitness helps.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109103638.htm
Jan. 9, 2014 — In a study published in the European Heart Journal, an Umeå research team has shown that physical fitness in your teens can reduce the risk of heart attack later in life, while men who are fit and obese in their teens run a higher risk of having a heart attack than unfit, lean men.
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The study shows that being physically fit in your teenage years reduces the risk of a heart attack later in life. Fit but overweight or obese men also ran a significantly higher risk of suffering a heart attack than unfit, lean men.
"While being physically fit at the end of your teens can reduce the risk of heart attack, fitness alone does not appear to fully compensate for the risks with being overweight or obese. In other words, having a normal weight is more important than being in good physical shape, but it is even better to be both fit and have a normal weight," says Peter Nordström.
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Heavy Viewers of 'Teen Mom', '16 and Pregnant' Have Unrealistic Views of Teen Pregnancy
Years ago, I knew a teen-age girl who was always talking about how great it would be to have a baby to love. After she had to babysit for her infant step-sister, she started saying she wanted to wait until she was older to have a child.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109132533.htm
Jan. 9, 2014 — The creator of MTV's "16 and Pregnant" and "Teen Mom" said the shows have been called "one of the best public service campaigns to prevent teen pregnancy." A new Indiana University research study finds the opposite to be true.
The paper accepted for publication in the journal Mass Communication and Society presents findings that such teen mom shows actually lead heavy viewers to believe that teen mothers have an enviable quality of life, a high income and involved fathers.
Teens who perceived reality television as realistic were most likely to hold these perceptions.
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"Heavy viewers of teen mom reality programs were more likely to think that teen moms have a lot of time to themselves, can easily find child care so that they can go to work or school and can complete high school than were lighter viewers of such shows," Martins and Jensen wrote.
Frequent viewers of the programs also were more likely to believe that teen moms have affordable access to health care, finished college and lived on their own.
"Our data call into question the content of teen mom reality programming," they added. "Heavy viewing of teen mom reality programming positively predicted unrealistic perceptions of what it is like to be a teen mother."
""While it would be inappropriate to suggest that viewing these programs is the cause of teen pregnancy, one might consider it a contributing factor."Professor Nicole Martins
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If I thought like a climate denialist
Sarcasm
Jan. 11, 2014
Last night the temperature became warmer during the night. That must be a sign of global warming.
Jan. 7, 2014
In San Diego this week, highs are in the 60's & 70's, lows in the high 40's and low 50's. Therefore, there is no cold weather in the east. It is just a trick to enable them to get disaster relief help.
Georgia had plenty of rain last year. So it must be a lie that other places, such as California, have been in a drought and are running out of water. Obviously a ploy by the water companies to raise rates. Or maybe they want to have enough water to sell to other countries.
When Charitable Acts Are 'Tainted' by Personal Gain
People can be so irrational. I very much doubt that they would see themselves as bad when they donate time or money to a charity because they don't donate all their time and money.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109132646.htm
Jan. 9, 2014 — We tend to perceive a person's charitable efforts as less moral if the do-gooder reaps a reward from the effort, according to new research.
This phenomenon -- which researchers call the "tainted-altruism effect" -- suggests that charity in conjunction with self-interested behavior is viewed less favorably because we tend to think that the person could have given everything to charity without taking a cut for themselves.
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Several other experiments supported these results, showing that participants viewed making a profit from a charitable initiative as less moral than making a profit from a business venture, and they were significantly less likely to support that charity as a result. Participants only realized the inconsistency in this logic when they were reminded that the person in question didn't have to contribute to charity at all.
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n their final experiment, the researchers tested the tainted-altruism effect with the Gap (RED) campaign, a real-world initiative that donates 50% of profits from certain products purchased at Gap clothing stores to help fight the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria. This time, participants rated the company poorly if they were reminded that Gap keeps the other 50% of profits. However, those who were asked to further consider that Gap didn't have to donate any money at all realized the flawed logic and rated them more highly.
"We found evidence that 'tainted' charity is seen as worse than doing no good at all," Newman says. "Importantly, this effect can be framed away and appears to be pretty malleable."
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Capturing a Hard-Wired Variability: What Makes Some Identical Twins Noticeably Different?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109143756.htm
Jan. 9, 2014 — A Ludwig Cancer Research study has uncovered a phenomenon that alters prevailing views of how the genome is expressed to make and sustain the life of mammals. Published in the journal Science, the paper helps explain why genetically identical animals are sometimes so different in their biology and appearance, and why some inherited disorders caused by a shared set of aberrant genes can be of such variable severity in different people.
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With the exception of a subset of genes found on sex chromosomes, every mammal inherits one copy of every gene from each of its parents. Each of those copies is known as an allele, and alleles often differ measurably from their genomic siblings -- a fact that accounts for a good deal of human and animal diversity. It has, however, long been unclear whether each allele in any given cell or organism is expressed equally, or whether one allele is favored over the other. The current study finds that only one allele is expressed in between 12 and 24 percent of all such pairs encoded by the mouse genome. Further, the selection of expressed alleles varies randomly from cell to cell, and switches frequently between the two options throughout their lives.
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Jan. 9, 2014 — A Ludwig Cancer Research study has uncovered a phenomenon that alters prevailing views of how the genome is expressed to make and sustain the life of mammals. Published in the journal Science, the paper helps explain why genetically identical animals are sometimes so different in their biology and appearance, and why some inherited disorders caused by a shared set of aberrant genes can be of such variable severity in different people.
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With the exception of a subset of genes found on sex chromosomes, every mammal inherits one copy of every gene from each of its parents. Each of those copies is known as an allele, and alleles often differ measurably from their genomic siblings -- a fact that accounts for a good deal of human and animal diversity. It has, however, long been unclear whether each allele in any given cell or organism is expressed equally, or whether one allele is favored over the other. The current study finds that only one allele is expressed in between 12 and 24 percent of all such pairs encoded by the mouse genome. Further, the selection of expressed alleles varies randomly from cell to cell, and switches frequently between the two options throughout their lives.
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Teen Concussions Increase Risk for Depression
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109175502.htm
Jan. 9, 2014 — Teens with a history of concussions are more than three times as likely to suffer from depression as teens who have never had a concussion, finds a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
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Jan. 9, 2014 — Teens with a history of concussions are more than three times as likely to suffer from depression as teens who have never had a concussion, finds a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
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Study Dispels Theories of Y Chromosome's Demise
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109175736.htm
Jan. 9, 2014 — A comparison of Y chromosomes in eight African and eight European men dispels the common notion that the Y's genes are mostly unimportant and that the chromosome is destined to dwindle and disappear.
"The Y chromosome has lost 90 percent of the genes it once shared with the X chromosome, and some scientists have speculated that the Y chromosome will disappear in less than 5 million years," said evolutionary biologist Melissa A. Wilson Sayres, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the new analysis.
Some mammals have already lost their Y chromosome, though they still have males and females and reproduce normally.
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"Our study demonstrates that the genes that have been maintained, and those that migrated from the X to the Y, are important, and the human Y is going to stick around for a long while," she said.
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Jan. 9, 2014 — A comparison of Y chromosomes in eight African and eight European men dispels the common notion that the Y's genes are mostly unimportant and that the chromosome is destined to dwindle and disappear.
"The Y chromosome has lost 90 percent of the genes it once shared with the X chromosome, and some scientists have speculated that the Y chromosome will disappear in less than 5 million years," said evolutionary biologist Melissa A. Wilson Sayres, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the new analysis.
Some mammals have already lost their Y chromosome, though they still have males and females and reproduce normally.
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"Our study demonstrates that the genes that have been maintained, and those that migrated from the X to the Y, are important, and the human Y is going to stick around for a long while," she said.
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Comprehensive, Nonsurgical Treatment Improves Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in Women
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140110131032.htm
Jan. 10, 2014 — One in three women suffer from pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD), a range of symptoms which include bladder and bowel problems as well as pelvic pain, according to the American Urogynecologic Society. Now, University of Missouri researchers have demonstrated that a comprehensive, nonsurgical treatment significantly improves symptoms in women with PFD.
"Pelvic floor rehabilitation is effective in helping women overcome pelvic floor problems with little or no medication," said Julie Starr, a doctoral student in the Sinclair School of Nursing and a family nurse practitioner at the University of Missouri Women's Health Center. "The treatment involves muscle strengthening for improved bladder control and muscle relaxation for those with symptoms of constipation and pelvic pain."
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For maintaining a healthy pelvis, Starr recommends women do Kegel exercises two to three times a day and take daily fiber supplements. Also, Starr encourages women who have symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction to discuss their concerns with their health care providers. For more information about pelvic floor dysfunction, treatment options and specialists throughout the country, visit www.muhealth.org/urogyn or http://www.voicesforpfd.org/.
Jan. 10, 2014 — One in three women suffer from pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD), a range of symptoms which include bladder and bowel problems as well as pelvic pain, according to the American Urogynecologic Society. Now, University of Missouri researchers have demonstrated that a comprehensive, nonsurgical treatment significantly improves symptoms in women with PFD.
"Pelvic floor rehabilitation is effective in helping women overcome pelvic floor problems with little or no medication," said Julie Starr, a doctoral student in the Sinclair School of Nursing and a family nurse practitioner at the University of Missouri Women's Health Center. "The treatment involves muscle strengthening for improved bladder control and muscle relaxation for those with symptoms of constipation and pelvic pain."
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For maintaining a healthy pelvis, Starr recommends women do Kegel exercises two to three times a day and take daily fiber supplements. Also, Starr encourages women who have symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction to discuss their concerns with their health care providers. For more information about pelvic floor dysfunction, treatment options and specialists throughout the country, visit www.muhealth.org/urogyn or http://www.voicesforpfd.org/.
Prosecutors: Boy Found Dead Was Tortured, Starved for Last 3 Weeks of Life
I don't know who decided to put "tortured" in quotes.http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Boy-Abused-Dead-Times-Square-Dad-Babysitter-Mom-Speaks-239623881.html
The 4-year-old boy who was found dead in a Times Square apartment with burns and cuts on his body had been "tortured" and starved for the last three weeks of his life, including being forced to stand on an apartment balcony in his underwear in near-zero temperatures, prosecutors said Friday.
The child, Myls Dobson, had been left with a babysitter after his father was arrested in December. That woman, 27-year-old Kryzie King, was arraigned Friday on assault and reckless endangerment charges.
At her arraignment, prosecutors said he had been burned, beaten and cut all over his body, tortured for the three weeks that he had been in her care.
He had not been fed in two weeks, and was forced out in the cold the week he died, prosecutors said.
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tags: child abuse,
Neiman Marcus hack affected customers' credit cards
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/10/22259910-neiman-marcus-hack-affected-customers-credit-cards?lite
By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News
Jan. 10, 2014
Neiman Marcus said Friday that some customers' credit cards were compromised in a security breach, but it provided scant detail on the scope of the hack.
The data attack on the upscale department store chain was revealed on the same day that big-box retailer Target announced the number of its customers affected by a breach had swelled from 40 million to 70 million.
Neiman Marcus did not say how many of its customers might have been victimized by a "criminal cyber-security instrusion" it confirmed Jan. 1 — up to two weeks after an alarm was raised by its credit-card processor.
"Neiman Marcus was informed by our credit card processor in mid-December of potentially unauthorized payment card activity that occurred following customer purchases at our Neiman Marcus Group stores," the company said in a statement.
A forensics firm retained to investigate the situation confirmed the hack and found "that some customers' cards were possibly compromised as a result."
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By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News
Jan. 10, 2014
Neiman Marcus said Friday that some customers' credit cards were compromised in a security breach, but it provided scant detail on the scope of the hack.
The data attack on the upscale department store chain was revealed on the same day that big-box retailer Target announced the number of its customers affected by a breach had swelled from 40 million to 70 million.
Neiman Marcus did not say how many of its customers might have been victimized by a "criminal cyber-security instrusion" it confirmed Jan. 1 — up to two weeks after an alarm was raised by its credit-card processor.
"Neiman Marcus was informed by our credit card processor in mid-December of potentially unauthorized payment card activity that occurred following customer purchases at our Neiman Marcus Group stores," the company said in a statement.
A forensics firm retained to investigate the situation confirmed the hack and found "that some customers' cards were possibly compromised as a result."
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Christie appointee watched bridge closure in person, documents show
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/10/22257330-christie-appointee-watched-bridge-closure-in-person-documents-show?lite
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
Jan. 11, 2014
An appointee of Gov. Chris Christie personally showed up to observe the closure of lanes at the George Washington Bridge that triggered an epic traffic jam in New Jersey in September, according to documents made public Friday.
The appointee, David Wildstein, emailed the general manager of the bridge on the day before the lanes were closed to say, “Will be at bridge early Monday am to view new lane test,” the documents show. Other emails show that he arrived by 7 a.m. on Sept. 9, the first of four days of nightmare traffic in the city of Fort Lee.
The documents also show that Wildstein and Bill Baroni, another Christie appointee, were directly told on the first day that the backups were causing problems for police and paramedics. Lane closures at the bridge continued for four days, until the irate head of the Port Authority, which controls the bridge, ordered them reopened.
The matter exploded this week into the biggest scandal of Christie’s career after emails and texts appeared to show that Christie allies ordered the lanes closed as an act of political payback.
The documents were released by a committee of lawmakers looking into why the lanes were closed. Some of the information has been reported in news accounts, but the documents — more than 2,000 pages in all — paint a picture of Christie allies pushing forward with the closings and later trying to keep information from the public.
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By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
Jan. 11, 2014
An appointee of Gov. Chris Christie personally showed up to observe the closure of lanes at the George Washington Bridge that triggered an epic traffic jam in New Jersey in September, according to documents made public Friday.
The appointee, David Wildstein, emailed the general manager of the bridge on the day before the lanes were closed to say, “Will be at bridge early Monday am to view new lane test,” the documents show. Other emails show that he arrived by 7 a.m. on Sept. 9, the first of four days of nightmare traffic in the city of Fort Lee.
The documents also show that Wildstein and Bill Baroni, another Christie appointee, were directly told on the first day that the backups were causing problems for police and paramedics. Lane closures at the bridge continued for four days, until the irate head of the Port Authority, which controls the bridge, ordered them reopened.
The matter exploded this week into the biggest scandal of Christie’s career after emails and texts appeared to show that Christie allies ordered the lanes closed as an act of political payback.
The documents were released by a committee of lawmakers looking into why the lanes were closed. Some of the information has been reported in news accounts, but the documents — more than 2,000 pages in all — paint a picture of Christie allies pushing forward with the closings and later trying to keep information from the public.
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Friday, January 10, 2014
Desert Fairy Circles
Neat, seeing the advance of science in actionhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/27/fairy-circles-namibia-grasslands-mystery-scientists_n_1632571.html
By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 06/27/2012
In the sandy desert grasslands of Namibia in southern Africa, mysterious bare spots known as "fairy circles" will form and then disappear years later for no reason anyone can determine. A new look at these strange patterns doesn't solve the wistful mystery but at least reveals that the largest of the circles can linger for a lifetime.
Small fairy circles stick around an average of 24 years, while larger ones can exist as long as 75 years, according to research detailed today (June 27) in the journal PLoS ONE. Still, the study sheds little light on why the circles form, persist and then vanish into the landscape after decades.
"The why question is very difficult," said study researcher Walter Tschinkel, a biologist at Florida State University. "There are a number of hypotheses on the table, and the evidence for none of them is convincing."
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http://www.universityherald.com/articles/4453/20130906/mystery-fairy-circles-namib-desert-revealed-research.htm
Michael Cramer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa has resolved the mystery behind the formation of millions of strange round patches of barren land called 'fairy circles' that are found across the Namib Desert in southern Africa.
Cramer found that due to scanty rainfall and nutrient deficiencies in the soil, there is an intense competition between the grasses underground. Strong grasses absorb all of the water and nutrients from the soil, leaving nothing for their weaker counterparts. They ultimately die, leaving barren gaps in the landscape, which later forms a reservoir for nutrients and water.
With the help of other resources, larger grass species grow on the border of the gap, forming a steady fairy circle, approximately measuring 2-12m in diameter.
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Prior to this revelation, several researchers believed that the patches were formed due to ants, termites, grass-killing gas and some of them even claimed that a fire-breathing dragon lived underneath which burnt the plants.
In April, Norbert Jürgens from the University of Hamburg claimed that a species of sand termite was to blame for the bizarre patterns. Jürgens arrived at the conclusion, after studying hundreds of fairy circles across 1,200 miles of the desert and found that the Psammotermes allocerus, or sand termite, was the only species constantly present in the region.
Scandal Bowl: Why Tar Heel Fraud Might Be Just the Start
A lot of rich alumni donate to colleges & universities because they have good sports teams, then complain because college graduates they hire are so lacking.http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-06/unc-athletic-scandal-charges-of-fraud-could-be-tip-of-wider-revelations
By Paul M. Barrett January 06, 2014
The corruption of academics at the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus could turn into the most revelatory of all of the undergraduate sports scandals in recent memory. Beginning three years ago with what sounded like garden-variety reports of under-the-table payments from agents and improper classroom help for athletes, the affair has spread and deepened to include evidence of hundreds of sham courses offered since the early 1990s. Untold numbers of grades have been changed without authorization and faculty signatures forged—all in the service of an elaborate campaign to keep elite basketball and football players academically eligible to play.
The rot in Chapel Hill undermines UNC’s reputation as one of the nation’s finest public institutions of higher learning. Officials created classes that did not meet. That’s not the only reason more scrutiny is needed. There’s also the particularly pernicious way that the school’s African and Afro-American Studies Department has been used to inflate the GPAs of basketball and football players. The corruption of a scholarly discipline devoted to black history and culture underscores a racial subtext to the exploitation of college athletes that typically goes unidentified in polite discussion. (UNC’s former longtime Afro-Am chairman, Julius Nyang’oro, has been criminally indicted for fraud.)
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One source of insight is Jay Smith, a professor of early modern French history at UNC. A serious scholar who understands the university’s sports-happy culture, Smith has developed a powerful distaste for the way his employer has obfuscated the scandal. “What’s going on here is so important,” he told me by telephone, “because it’s emblematic of what I think goes on at major universities all across the country,” where the business of sports undermines the mission of education.
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Canadian Government Dismantles Ecological Libraries After Dismissing Thousands Of Scientists
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/10/3145971/canadian-government-closes-libraries-cuts-science/
By Ari Phillips on January 10, 2014
Climate change is a complex, dynamic, and sometimes polarizing issue. Libraries, on the other hand, are an established democratic institution meant to bring people together and facilitate the sharing of information. However, the Canadian government, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has managed to inject libraries into the broader national debate and make them a controversial focal point in a larger polemic between environmental concerns and natural resource development. His administration’s agenda of closing renowned fisheries and oceans libraries along with cutting back scientific funding for important environmental research is experiencing a bout of attention as the reality of certain libraries emptying their shelves comes into public view.
The Canadian government is closing seven of the eleven Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries across the country in what they deem a cost-cutting measure. Government officials promised that critical materials wouldn’t be lost, but would instead be digitized, offering greater access. However a document classified as “secret” that was obtained by Postmedia News mentioned “culling of materials” as a main activity in the reduction of libraries. As some of the libraries proceed through the shutdown process, reports have emerged of books being strewn across floors and even piled into dumpsters.
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While the books themselves should be properly archived, in the long-run they are not necessarily the main concern — it’s the information they possess that really matters. The potential for loss of information through the reorganizing process — information that doubtlessly cost millions of dollars to establish — has brought on a heavy backlash from scientists, already at odds with the Harper administration over research cutbacks.
“In the past five years the federal government has dismissed more than 2,000 scientists, and hundreds of programs and world-renowned research facilities have lost their funding,” CBC News reported on Friday. “Programs that monitored things such as smoke stack emissions, food inspections, oil spills, water quality and climate change have been drastically cut or shut down.”
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n a September editorial, The New York Times wrote that “over the last few years, the government of Canada — led by Stephen Harper — has made it harder and harder for publicly financed scientists to communicate with the public and with other scientists.”
“In retrospect, I am not surprised at all to find them trashing scientific libraries,” retired water ecologist David Schindler said. “Paranoid ideologues have burned books and records throughout human history to try to squelch dissenting visions that they view as heretical, and to anyone who worships the great God Economy monotheistically, environmental science is heresy.”
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By Ari Phillips on January 10, 2014
Climate change is a complex, dynamic, and sometimes polarizing issue. Libraries, on the other hand, are an established democratic institution meant to bring people together and facilitate the sharing of information. However, the Canadian government, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has managed to inject libraries into the broader national debate and make them a controversial focal point in a larger polemic between environmental concerns and natural resource development. His administration’s agenda of closing renowned fisheries and oceans libraries along with cutting back scientific funding for important environmental research is experiencing a bout of attention as the reality of certain libraries emptying their shelves comes into public view.
The Canadian government is closing seven of the eleven Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries across the country in what they deem a cost-cutting measure. Government officials promised that critical materials wouldn’t be lost, but would instead be digitized, offering greater access. However a document classified as “secret” that was obtained by Postmedia News mentioned “culling of materials” as a main activity in the reduction of libraries. As some of the libraries proceed through the shutdown process, reports have emerged of books being strewn across floors and even piled into dumpsters.
-----
While the books themselves should be properly archived, in the long-run they are not necessarily the main concern — it’s the information they possess that really matters. The potential for loss of information through the reorganizing process — information that doubtlessly cost millions of dollars to establish — has brought on a heavy backlash from scientists, already at odds with the Harper administration over research cutbacks.
“In the past five years the federal government has dismissed more than 2,000 scientists, and hundreds of programs and world-renowned research facilities have lost their funding,” CBC News reported on Friday. “Programs that monitored things such as smoke stack emissions, food inspections, oil spills, water quality and climate change have been drastically cut or shut down.”
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n a September editorial, The New York Times wrote that “over the last few years, the government of Canada — led by Stephen Harper — has made it harder and harder for publicly financed scientists to communicate with the public and with other scientists.”
“In retrospect, I am not surprised at all to find them trashing scientific libraries,” retired water ecologist David Schindler said. “Paranoid ideologues have burned books and records throughout human history to try to squelch dissenting visions that they view as heretical, and to anyone who worships the great God Economy monotheistically, environmental science is heresy.”
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Republican Kingston wants taxpayers to pay for his restaurant meals, but not food for poor children
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_01/luncheon_meat048577.php
January 10, 2014 3:49 PM
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Kingston’s tried to demagogue the School Lunch program, but in so doing walked right into a trap, per this report from TPM’s Daniel Strauss:
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) warned that there’s “no such thing as free lunch” for school children in Georgia, but he seems to have enjoyed a few.
An investigation by Georgia’s WSAV channel 3 found that Kingston, who is currently running for Senate and recently suggested students work cleaning cafeterias in exchange for lunch, had expensed as much as $4,182 worth of lunches for his office over the past three years.
“Kingston and his staff expensed nearly $4200 in meals for business purposes to his congressional office, paid for by the American taxpayer,” WSAV 3’s Dan Kartunen reported. The amount could have purchased nearly 2,000 Georgia school lunches.
WSAV also found that Kingston also racked up $4,289 of free meals paid for by third-party groups like the Georgia Bankers Association and the Congressional Institute. Kingston has also travelled to a handful of continents on congressional business racking up $24,313 in costs. Those expenses include more than just meals. What’s more, Kingston also expensed $145,391 worth of meals for campaign events.
In December Kingston, who is against a federal lunch program, also argued that poor students should sweep floors in exchange for lunch.
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January 10, 2014 3:49 PM
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Kingston’s tried to demagogue the School Lunch program, but in so doing walked right into a trap, per this report from TPM’s Daniel Strauss:
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) warned that there’s “no such thing as free lunch” for school children in Georgia, but he seems to have enjoyed a few.
An investigation by Georgia’s WSAV channel 3 found that Kingston, who is currently running for Senate and recently suggested students work cleaning cafeterias in exchange for lunch, had expensed as much as $4,182 worth of lunches for his office over the past three years.
“Kingston and his staff expensed nearly $4200 in meals for business purposes to his congressional office, paid for by the American taxpayer,” WSAV 3’s Dan Kartunen reported. The amount could have purchased nearly 2,000 Georgia school lunches.
WSAV also found that Kingston also racked up $4,289 of free meals paid for by third-party groups like the Georgia Bankers Association and the Congressional Institute. Kingston has also travelled to a handful of continents on congressional business racking up $24,313 in costs. Those expenses include more than just meals. What’s more, Kingston also expensed $145,391 worth of meals for campaign events.
In December Kingston, who is against a federal lunch program, also argued that poor students should sweep floors in exchange for lunch.
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More Than Half of Congress Members Are Millionaires
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/us/politics/more-than-half-the-members-of-congress-are-millionaires-analysis-finds.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=PO_HOC_20140110&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=1
By ERIC LIPTONJAN. 9, 2014
It is hardly the kind of news that lawmakers in Congress would want to highlight during a week when unemployment benefits expired for more than a million Americans. But Congress has achieved something of a milestone.
For the first time in history, more than half the members of the House and Senate are now millionaires, according to a new analysis of financial disclosure reports filed last year.
The median net worth for lawmakers in the House and Senate was $1,008,767 — up 4.4 percent, according to the analysis, conducted by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which examines the influence of money on politics in Washington.
Over all, at least 268 of the 534 current members of Congress had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012, which is the year covered by the reports that each lawmaker had to file in 2013.
The wealthiest member of Congress, as has previously been the case, was Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, who had a net worth of between $330 million and $598 million, a significant chunk of which he earned through the Viper car antitheft system that is marketed and sold by a company he owned.
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“Congress not only seems more responsive to policy desires of the very rich, but increasingly they are the very rich,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington-based research group that focuses on income inequity and poverty. “They probably know far fewer people cut off by the failure to extend unemployment benefits, and that makes them less sensitive to just how much damage that cutoff is going to cause.”
By ERIC LIPTONJAN. 9, 2014
It is hardly the kind of news that lawmakers in Congress would want to highlight during a week when unemployment benefits expired for more than a million Americans. But Congress has achieved something of a milestone.
For the first time in history, more than half the members of the House and Senate are now millionaires, according to a new analysis of financial disclosure reports filed last year.
The median net worth for lawmakers in the House and Senate was $1,008,767 — up 4.4 percent, according to the analysis, conducted by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which examines the influence of money on politics in Washington.
Over all, at least 268 of the 534 current members of Congress had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012, which is the year covered by the reports that each lawmaker had to file in 2013.
The wealthiest member of Congress, as has previously been the case, was Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, who had a net worth of between $330 million and $598 million, a significant chunk of which he earned through the Viper car antitheft system that is marketed and sold by a company he owned.
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“Congress not only seems more responsive to policy desires of the very rich, but increasingly they are the very rich,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington-based research group that focuses on income inequity and poverty. “They probably know far fewer people cut off by the failure to extend unemployment benefits, and that makes them less sensitive to just how much damage that cutoff is going to cause.”
Walmart lobbied to avoid increased safety in Bangladesh
http://www.politico.com/politicoinfluence/0114/politicoinfluence12642.html
By BYRON TAU | 01/07/14
With Andrea Drusch
Retail giant Wal-Mart hired Porter Gordon Silver Communications to work on successfully stripping a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act in December, according to public disclosures released Tuesday. Several members of Congress had championed a worker-safety provision in the annual defense spending bill that would have given procurement priority to companies that signed onto a legally binding Bangladesh workers' safety agreement called the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. Retailers like Wal-Mart and Gap have declined to sign on, and Wal-Mart unveiled its own nonbinding safety plan in May of last year for workers at its Bangladeshi factories. In practice, the provision would have cost Wal-Mart and other retailers not part of the accord a good deal of money — as their products would have suffered at retail stores on military bases as a result of procurement priority given to Accord members. The provision was included in the House version of the NDAA, but was absent from the final bill signed by President Barack Obama in late December.[The provision was removed by the Senate.] Bob Cochran, former chief of staff to Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, is listed on the account. The Huffington Post has a longer piece on the issue here: http://huff.to/1faW1v0
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/04/rana-plaza-bangladesh-senate_n_4538747.html
Dave Jamieson
01/04/2014
How A Plan To Help Curb Garment Factory Disasters In Bangladesh Died In The U.S. Senate
Concerned it may undermine their own response to recent factory disasters and cost them business, U.S. clothing makers pressured the Senate to spike a provision in this year's military spending bill that would have promoted a plan to improve labor standards in Bangladesh.
The measure, tucked into versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, would have required so-called exchange stores on military bases to give preferential treatment to suppliers that sign the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a legally binding agreement between clothing brands, labor groups and non-governmental organizations in the wake of the Rana Plaza clothing factory collapse, which claimed 1,129 lives last year. The amendment was ultimately left out of the defense spending bill that recently landed on President Barack Obama's desk.
For the provision's backers, the events on Capitol Hill made for a rare and disappointing turn of events. The measure survived a vote in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives in June, only to die later in the Democrat-controlled Senate, where such a labor-backed amendment would normally stand better odds. The measure was championed by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) in the Senate and Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) in the House.
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While alliance members have stressed that they share the same safety goals as the accord, labor groups and safety watchdogs have criticized the alliance as a form of corporate self-monitoring with little worker involvement.
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More misleading statements about Pandora
http://thetrichordist.com/2014/01/09/more-misleading-statements-about-pandora/
January 9, 2014
In this piece in the NY post about “independent” artists gaining more market share, there is a very misleading statement about what Pandora plays. We can only assume that this information came from Pandora as the New York Post would have no knowledge of what Pandora’s spins or the contents of it’s servers. Here is the statement:
Songs from outside the major labels make up 50 percent of the content streamed on the 14-year-old service. On broadcast radio, it’s 13 percent.
So on first glance the takeaway is that in aggregate 50% of the total spins on Pandora are by independent artists while 13% of the artists on commercial radio are independents.
Yay! Pandora! The indie musicians’ true friend!
But wait. Did you read that really carefully? This is a statement that you would expect a defense attorney to concoct. It’s very carefully constructed. The statement is not saying that 50% of the total spins on Pandora’s service are from independent artists, it’s essentially saying that the content on Pandora’s servers are made up of more than 50% independent artists. And at some point they’ve been streamed.
Of course that’s true. There are many more unpopular bands than popular bands. And an overwhelming percentage of these “unpopular” bands are independent.
But Necrophagist is not being played nearly as often as a Miley Cyrus. Comparing YouTube views I’d say Cyrus is probably being spun ten thousand times more often than Necrophagist. Yet Necrophagist and Miley Cyrus have a similar number of tracks on Pandora’s servers. So we all see how this statement is totally misleading. Right? It’s not really saying 50% of the spins are indie artists.
Further the distinction between “independent artist” and “major label artist” is somewhat arbitrary and frankly no longer useful. Although Taylor Swift might be considered technically “independent” it’s not exactly edgy underground DIY music. Further like many of the “independent” artists in the count, these artists are promoted and distributed by major labels. That is major labels are actively working these titles and taking large percentages of the revenue!
The more important distinction to look at is how much “unknown” or “non radio friendly” tracks a music service plays.
As I’ve demonstrated with my own catalogue Pandora doesn’t really play that much more music from my “Long Tail” of popularity than commercial radio. For my catalogue it’s more like 20%. That is only 20% of my spins on Pandora are songs that weren’t also hits on the radio. Looking at other artists’ royalty statements I have observed the same approximate percentage.
While it’s true with my catalogue Pandora does marginally better than commercial terrestrial radio, Satellite radio and college radio play more music from my “Long Tail” than Pandora. A LOT MORE.
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January 9, 2014
In this piece in the NY post about “independent” artists gaining more market share, there is a very misleading statement about what Pandora plays. We can only assume that this information came from Pandora as the New York Post would have no knowledge of what Pandora’s spins or the contents of it’s servers. Here is the statement:
Songs from outside the major labels make up 50 percent of the content streamed on the 14-year-old service. On broadcast radio, it’s 13 percent.
So on first glance the takeaway is that in aggregate 50% of the total spins on Pandora are by independent artists while 13% of the artists on commercial radio are independents.
Yay! Pandora! The indie musicians’ true friend!
But wait. Did you read that really carefully? This is a statement that you would expect a defense attorney to concoct. It’s very carefully constructed. The statement is not saying that 50% of the total spins on Pandora’s service are from independent artists, it’s essentially saying that the content on Pandora’s servers are made up of more than 50% independent artists. And at some point they’ve been streamed.
Of course that’s true. There are many more unpopular bands than popular bands. And an overwhelming percentage of these “unpopular” bands are independent.
But Necrophagist is not being played nearly as often as a Miley Cyrus. Comparing YouTube views I’d say Cyrus is probably being spun ten thousand times more often than Necrophagist. Yet Necrophagist and Miley Cyrus have a similar number of tracks on Pandora’s servers. So we all see how this statement is totally misleading. Right? It’s not really saying 50% of the spins are indie artists.
Further the distinction between “independent artist” and “major label artist” is somewhat arbitrary and frankly no longer useful. Although Taylor Swift might be considered technically “independent” it’s not exactly edgy underground DIY music. Further like many of the “independent” artists in the count, these artists are promoted and distributed by major labels. That is major labels are actively working these titles and taking large percentages of the revenue!
The more important distinction to look at is how much “unknown” or “non radio friendly” tracks a music service plays.
As I’ve demonstrated with my own catalogue Pandora doesn’t really play that much more music from my “Long Tail” of popularity than commercial radio. For my catalogue it’s more like 20%. That is only 20% of my spins on Pandora are songs that weren’t also hits on the radio. Looking at other artists’ royalty statements I have observed the same approximate percentage.
While it’s true with my catalogue Pandora does marginally better than commercial terrestrial radio, Satellite radio and college radio play more music from my “Long Tail” than Pandora. A LOT MORE.
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Brain dead and pregnant, forced to stay on life suppport
In my experience, those who want the government to force this woman to stay on life-support will also NOT want the government to use their tax money to help the father take care of his toddler and newborn motherless baby or pay for expenses that would be needed if the baby was damaged when the mother's heart stopped several times.
Dallas Morning News
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/01/brain-dead-and-pregnant-marlise-munoz-poses-a-conundrum-for-fort-worth-doctors.html/
By Tod Robberson2:48 pm on January 8, 2014
Marlise Munoz has been brain dead since November, when she collapsed from a blood clot in her lungs. Her wish was not to be kept alive by artificial means. Her parents and husband want to let her body die. She is dead under the definition of death in Texas law, which says that “if artificial means of support preclude a determination that a person’s spontaneous respiratory and circulatory functions have ceased, the person is dead when, in the announced opinion of a physician, according to ordinary standards of medical practice, there is irreversible cessation of all spontaneous brain function.”
But here’s the catch: Doctors discovered upon her admission to hospital that she was pregnant, and they are now keeping her artificially alive because they believe Texas law requires it. It doesn’t. She is legally dead.
Keeping Marlise alive effectively means her body now serves as nothing more now than an incubator — not something Texas legislators intended when they wrote a law in 1989 stating that doctors may not deny life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient.
By keeping her body artificially functioning, they are not sustaining any sort of life for the pregnant patient. The pregnant patient is dead. Moreover, the same blood clot that killed Marlise might have inflicted irreversible brain damage when it blocked oxygen to her fetus. Keeping her alive for the sake of the unborn baby is certainly doing Marlise no good, and it might even be doing the baby no good.
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http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/05/5461612/husband-says-texas-law-shouldnt.html
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Marlise Machado Muñoz, 33, herself a paramedic then 14 weeks pregnant, had collapsed and fallen into a vegetative state. Each had been exposed to such situations in their profession, and each opposed life-sustaining efforts if either was declared brain dead. She had further discussed this view with her father, Erick Muñoz said.
Her heart stopped several times and she was resuscitated. But when her husband learned she had no brain activity, he expected that the family could decide to have life support withdrawn, he said.
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/05/5461612/husband-says-texas-law-shouldnt.html#storylink=cpy
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Three Texas experts, including two who helped draft the 1999 law, told The Associated Press last week that it doesn’t apply in the Muñoz case. “This patient is neither terminally nor irreversibly ill,” said Dr. Robert Fine, clinical director of the office of clinical ethics and palliative care for Baylor Health Care System. “Under Texas law, this patient is legally dead.”
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Thursday, January 09, 2014
Yes, it was cold in parts of the U.S., but the chill's far from historic
Exactly my own experience.http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059992541
Stephanie Paige Ogburn, E&E reporter
ClimateWire: Wednesday, January 8, 2014
With the launch of a Polar Vortex Twitter account, videos of boiling water freezing going viral, and the Weather Channel reporting on the "shattering" of cold records, anyone tracking the recent cold snap across the eastern and middle parts of the United States could be forgiven for thinking this sort of cold was unprecedented.
In fact, it's not.
"This is not anything that I would deem to be unusual or extraordinary," said Mark Wysocki, the New York state climatologist.
"The type of winter that we are currently experiencing we have experienced in the past, when you take a look at records across the Midwest and Northeast," he continued.
William Schmitz, the service climatologist and a meteorologist at the Southeast Regional Climate Center, agreed.
"It's cold," Schmitz said. "But just like the Northeast, it wasn't all-time record-breaking."
While cold records may be set for individual days -- Monday in Chicago, for example, was the coldest Jan. 6 yet observed, with a low of minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit -- temperatures are not reaching record winter lows and in many cases are far from it.
In Chicago, on Jan. 16, 2009, the town reached minus 18 F, part of another winter cold snap. On Jan. 20 of 1985, the city saw a low of minus 27 F.
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Atlanta and other Southeastern cities saw similarly chilly temperatures, with the expected high for yesterday reaching 24 F.
But a cold snap the city experienced in February 1996 was worse, with daily highs reaching only 18 degrees, said National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Willis.
n the 1980s, Willis said, cold periods like this were much more usual. In the recent past, they have become less frequent. This is perhaps why the cold seems out of the ordinary.
New York climatologist Wysocki said that since the last couple of winters have been fairly mild, this one, which he called "typical," might seem worse in contrast.
"I'm sure if people sat down and really thought about it, they'd think, 'I've experienced this weather before, and this is nothing new. It's just been a while since I've had it, that's all,'" he said.
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As for the dreaded "polar vortex," which is responsible for the cold sweeping through much of the country? It's there every winter but moves around -- sometimes it's nearer Canada and the United States, other times closer to Asia and Europe, Wysocki said.
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Hoerling also addressed the idea of weather weirding, that climate change is causing the weather to behave more erratically. Scientists analyzing temperature fluctuations in the United States have been unable to find any increase in temperature variability, he said.
"The weather is not getting weirder in our neck of the woods, as best as we can tell," he said. One area where a climate change signal is apparent, said Hoerling, is in extreme high temperatures.
"If you take the whole U.S., the indications are that there is an increasing frequency of record high temperatures versus record daily low temperatures," he said.
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How the IPCC Underestimated Climate Change
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-ipcc-underestimated-climate-change
Scientific American
By Glenn Scherer and DailyClimate.org
Scientists will tell you: There are no perfect computer models. All are incomplete representations of nature, with uncertainty built into them. But one thing is certain: Several fundamental projections found in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have consistently underestimated real-world observations, potentially leaving world governments at doubt as to how to guide climate policy.
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Projection: In 2001, the IPCC offered a range of fossil fuel and industrial emissions trends, from a best-case scenario of 7.7 billion tons of carbon released each year by 2010 to a worst-case scenario of 9.7 billion tons.
Reality: In 2010, global emissions from fossil fuels alone totaled 9.1 billion tons of carbon, according to federal government's Earth Systems Research Laboratory.
Why the miss? While technically within the range, scientists never expected emissions to rise so high so quickly, said IPCC scientist Christopher Fields. The IPCC, for instance, failed to anticipate China's economic growth, or resistance by the United States and other nations to curbing greenhouse gases.
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Projection: The IPCC 2007 assessment projected a worst-case temperature rise of 4.3° to 11.5° Fahrenheit, with a high probability of 7.2°F.
Reality: We are currently on track for a rise of between 6.3° and 13.3°F, with a high probability of an increase of 9.4°F by 2100, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other modelers are getting similar results, including a study published earlier this month by the Global Carbon Project consortium confirming the likelihood of a 9ºF rise.
Why the miss? IPCC emission scenarios seriously underestimated global CO2 emission rates, which means temperature rates were underestimated too. And it could get worse: IPCC projections haven’t included likely feedbacks such as large-scale melting of Arctic permafrost and subsequent release of large quantities of CO2 and methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent, albeit shorter lived, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
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Projection: The IPCC has always confidently projected that the Arctic ice sheet was safe at least until 2050 or well beyond 2100.
Reality: Summer ice is thinning faster than every climate projection, and today scientists predict an ice-free Arctic in years, not decades. Last summer, Arctic sea ice extent plummeted to 1.32 million square miles, the lowest level ever recorded – 50 percent below the long-term 1979 to 2000 average.
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Today, ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica is trending at least 100 years ahead of projections compared to IPCC's first three reports.
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Projection: In the 2001 report, the IPCC projected a sea rise of 2 millimeters per year. The worst-case scenario in the 2007 report, which looked mostly at thermal expansion of the oceans as temperatures warmed, called for up to 1.9 feet of sea-level-rise by century's end.
Today: Observed sea-level-rise has averaged 3.3 millimeters per year since 1990. By 2009, various studies that included ice-melt offered drastically higher projections of between 2.4 and 6.2 feet sea level rise by 2100.
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The world’s oceans absorb about a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans release annually into the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. Since the pH scale is logarithmic, this change represents a stunning 30 percent increase in acidity.
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Scientific American
By Glenn Scherer and DailyClimate.org
Scientists will tell you: There are no perfect computer models. All are incomplete representations of nature, with uncertainty built into them. But one thing is certain: Several fundamental projections found in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have consistently underestimated real-world observations, potentially leaving world governments at doubt as to how to guide climate policy.
-----
Projection: In 2001, the IPCC offered a range of fossil fuel and industrial emissions trends, from a best-case scenario of 7.7 billion tons of carbon released each year by 2010 to a worst-case scenario of 9.7 billion tons.
Reality: In 2010, global emissions from fossil fuels alone totaled 9.1 billion tons of carbon, according to federal government's Earth Systems Research Laboratory.
Why the miss? While technically within the range, scientists never expected emissions to rise so high so quickly, said IPCC scientist Christopher Fields. The IPCC, for instance, failed to anticipate China's economic growth, or resistance by the United States and other nations to curbing greenhouse gases.
-----
Projection: The IPCC 2007 assessment projected a worst-case temperature rise of 4.3° to 11.5° Fahrenheit, with a high probability of 7.2°F.
Reality: We are currently on track for a rise of between 6.3° and 13.3°F, with a high probability of an increase of 9.4°F by 2100, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other modelers are getting similar results, including a study published earlier this month by the Global Carbon Project consortium confirming the likelihood of a 9ºF rise.
Why the miss? IPCC emission scenarios seriously underestimated global CO2 emission rates, which means temperature rates were underestimated too. And it could get worse: IPCC projections haven’t included likely feedbacks such as large-scale melting of Arctic permafrost and subsequent release of large quantities of CO2 and methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent, albeit shorter lived, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
-----
Projection: The IPCC has always confidently projected that the Arctic ice sheet was safe at least until 2050 or well beyond 2100.
Reality: Summer ice is thinning faster than every climate projection, and today scientists predict an ice-free Arctic in years, not decades. Last summer, Arctic sea ice extent plummeted to 1.32 million square miles, the lowest level ever recorded – 50 percent below the long-term 1979 to 2000 average.
-----
Today, ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica is trending at least 100 years ahead of projections compared to IPCC's first three reports.
-----
Projection: In the 2001 report, the IPCC projected a sea rise of 2 millimeters per year. The worst-case scenario in the 2007 report, which looked mostly at thermal expansion of the oceans as temperatures warmed, called for up to 1.9 feet of sea-level-rise by century's end.
Today: Observed sea-level-rise has averaged 3.3 millimeters per year since 1990. By 2009, various studies that included ice-melt offered drastically higher projections of between 2.4 and 6.2 feet sea level rise by 2100.
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The world’s oceans absorb about a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans release annually into the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. Since the pH scale is logarithmic, this change represents a stunning 30 percent increase in acidity.
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