Blue Marble Feed | Mother Jones Mother Jones logo en California Just Had Its Warmest Winter on Record <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <div class="inline inline-center" style="display: table; width: 1%"> <img alt="temperature map" class="image" src="/files/201312-201402_0.png"><div class="caption">NOAA</div> </div> <p>This winter has been a tale of two Americas: The Midwest is just beginning to thaw out from a battery of epic cold snaps, while Californians might feel that they pretty much skipped winter altogether. In fact, <a href="" target="_blank">new NOAA data</a> reveal that California's winter (December through February) was the warmest in the <a href=";parameter=tmp&amp;state=4&amp;div=0&amp;year=2014&amp;month=2#ranks-form" target="_blank">119-year record</a>, 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average.</p> <p>The map above ranks every state's winter temperature average relative to its own historical record low (in other words, relative to itself and not to other states). Low numbers indicate that the state was unusually cold; higher numbers mean it was exceptionally warm. As you can see, the Midwest was much colder than average, while the West was hotter than average (despite a season-long kerfluffle about polar vortexes, the East Coast wasn't exceptionally cold, after all).</p> <p>As we've reported, there's currently a scientific debate over whether climate change in the Arcitc is making the <a href="" target="_blank">jet stream "drunk,"</a> and thereby increasing the likelihood of extreme cold spells; the exact role of climate change in California's record heat is <a href="" target="_blank">still unclear</a>.</p> <p>As anyone working in <a href="" target="_blank">California's farming industry</a> could confirm, the state also had an exceptionally dry winter, the third-lowest precipitation on record. Other interesting facts from the NOAA report:</p> <ul> <li>At the beginning of March, 91 percent of the Great Lakes remained frozen, the second-largest ice cover since record keeping began in 1973.</li> <li>With reservoirs in central and northern California at 36 to 74 percent of their historical average levels, these regions would need 18 inches of rain over the next three months to end the drought, much more than the state normally gets in that time period.</li> <li>Alaska's winter was the eighth-warmest on record, 6.2 degrees F over the 1971-2000 average.</li> </ul> </body></html> Blue Marble Maps Climate Change Climate Desk Science Thu, 13 Mar 2014 18:26:04 +0000 Tim McDonnell 247441 at Is a Carbon Tax a Good Idea? Just Ask British Columbia <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>In the US context, the idea of putting a tax on carbon is going nowhere fast. While the policy has been championed by <a href=";_type=blogs&amp;_r=0" target="_blank">liberal legislators</a> and by a few conservative apostates, like former South Carolina <a href="" target="_blank">Rep. Bob Inglis</a>, mainstream Republican sentiment remains opposed to climate action. For the moment, many lawmakers remain <a href="" target="_blank">too busy denying</a> the reality of human-caused climate change.</p> <p>Cross our northwestern border, though, and a carbon tax isn't just an idea, it's a reality. Five years ago, the Canadian province of British Columbia <a href="" target="_blank">joined a small group</a> of local and national governments (still fewer than 20 overall) that have created a carbon tax&mdash;setting a price on carbon in an effort to reduce emissions. Today, the tax brings in $1 billion a year in revenue that is returned to British Columbia taxpayers. Meanwhile, British Columbia's per capita greenhouse gas emissions <a href=";display" target="_blank">declined 10 percent</a> from 2008-2011 alone after the adoption of the tax, compared with an only 1 percent decline for the rest of Canada.</p> <p>At a time when carbon tax policies appear increasingly enticing (especially in light of the failure of cap-and-trade in the US), what can British Columbia's experience teach us about the prospects for solutions to climate change? How is the tax working? How do British Columbians feel about it? And has it prompted a desired growth in the clean energy industry?</p> <p>To delve into these questions,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Climate Desk</a>, <a href="" target="_blank">Climate Access</a>, and <a href="" target="_blank">Bloomberg BNA</a> are partnering to present "The Carbon Tax Return:&nbsp;Lessons Learned From British Columbia's First Five Years of Taxing Emissions." This distinguished panel, preceded by a cocktail reception, will take place on <strong>Thursday, March 27, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Salon C</strong> in downtown Vancouver, with doors opening at 5:30pm PDT. For tickets, <a href="" target="_blank">click here</a>. To join the event on Facebook, <a href="" target="_blank">click here</a>. The event will also be livestreamed at this page starting at <span data-term="goog_1670382642" tabindex="0">6:00pm PDT</span>.</p> <p>Featured speakers include: Spencer Chandra Herbert, a member of BC's legislative assembly and the New Democratic Party's designated voice on the environment; Merran Smith from <a href="" target="_blank">Clean Energy Canada</a>; and Ross Beaty the chairman of <a href="" target="_blank">Alterra Power Corp</a>. Best-selling science writer and <a href="" target="_blank">Climate Desk Live</a> host <a href="" target="_blank">Chris Mooney</a> will lead these policymakers and thought leaders in discussing the innovations, pitfalls, and promise of the first five years of the carbon tax in British Columbia.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong><strong>Speaker Biographies: </strong></strong></p> <p><strong>Spencer Chandra Herbert, Environment Critic and Member of the BC Legislative Assembly</strong></p> <p>Spencer Chandra Herbert was re-elected to represent Vancouver West-End in 2013.&nbsp;He is the official opposition environment critic and previously served as the opposition voice on Tourism, Arts, and Culture and the BC Lottery Corporation and Gaming Policy. Spencer served as an elected Vancouver park board commissioner from 2005-2008, where he worked to improve environmental sustainability in Vancouver's Parks and accessibility to programs for youth and low-income people.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Merran Smith, Director, Clean Energy Canada</strong></p> <p>Merran&nbsp;Smith&nbsp;is the director of Clean Energy Canada at Tides Canada. She leads a team working to diversify Canada&rsquo;s energy systems, cut carbon pollution, and reduce the nation's fossil-fuel dependence, and she writes and speaks extensively on the opportunities for Canada in the global low-carbon economy.</p> <p><strong>Ross Beaty, Chairman Alterra Power Corp.</strong></p> <p>Ross J. Beaty is a geologist and resource company entrepreneur with more than 40 years of experience in the international minerals and renewable energy industries. In early 2008, Mr. Beaty founded Magma Energy Corp. to focus on international geothermal energy development. In 2011, Magma and Plutonic Power merged to create Alterra Power Corp. Mr. Beaty also founded and currently serves as chairman of Pan American Silver Corp., one of the world's leading silver producers.</p> <p><strong>Jeremy Hainsworth</strong></p> <p>Jeremy Hainsworth is a contributor internationally to Bloomberg BNA (BBNA) and the Associated Press.&nbsp;Jeremy has worked with BBNA for over three years on legal, regulatory, and policy issues in western Canada for BBNA's wide-ranging stable of international publications.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Change Climate Desk Energy climate desk live Mon, 10 Mar 2014 18:27:28 +0000 Chris Mooney 247126 at Here Are 5 Infuriating Examples of Facts Making People Dumber <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>On Monday, I <a href="" target="_blank">reported on</a> the latest study to take a bite out of the idea of human rationality. In a <a href="" target="_blank">paper</a> just published in <em>Pediatrics</em>, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth University and his colleagues showed that presenting people with information confirming the safety of vaccines triggered a "backfire effect," in which people who already distrusted vaccines actually became <em>less</em> likely to say they would vaccinate their kids.</p> <p>Unfortunately, this is hardly the only example of such a frustrating response being documented by researchers. Nyhan and his coauthor, Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter, have captured several others, as have other researchers. Here are some examples:</p> <p><strong>1. Tax cuts increase revenue? </strong>In a <a href="" target="_blank">2010 study</a>, Nyhan and Reifler asked people to read a fake newspaper article containing a real quotation of George W. Bush, in which the former president asserted that his tax cuts "helped increase revenues to the Treasury." In some versions of the article, this <a href=";id=507" target="_blank">false claim</a> was then debunked by economic evidence: A correction appended to the end of the article stated that in fact, the Bush tax cuts "were followed by an unprecedented three-year decline in nominal tax revenues, from $2 trillion in 2000 to $1.8 trillion in 2003." The study found that conservatives who read the correction were <em>twice as likely </em>to believe Bush's claim was true as were conservatives who did not read the correction.</p> <p><strong>2. Death panels!</strong> Another notorious political falsehood is Sarah Palin's claim that Obamacare would create "death panels." To test whether they could undo the damage caused by this highly influential morsel of misinformation, Nyhan and his colleagues had study subjects read an article about the "death panels" claim, which in some cases ended with a <a href="" target="_blank">factual correction</a> explaining that "nonpartisan health care experts have concluded that Palin is wrong." Among survey respondents who were very pro-Palin and who had a high level of political knowledge, the correction actually made them <em>more likely </em>to wrongly embrace the false "death panels" theory.</p> <p><strong>3. Obama is a Muslim! </strong>And if that's still not enough, <a href="" target="_blank">yet another Nyhan and Reifler study</a> examined the persistence of the "President Obama is a Muslim" myth. In this case, respondents watched a video of President Obama denying that he is a Muslim or even stating affirmatively, "I am a Christian." Once again, the correction&mdash;uttered in this case by the president himself&mdash;often backfired in the study, making belief in the falsehood that Obama is a Muslim worse among certain study participants. What's more, the backfire effect was particularly notable when the researchers administering the study were white. When they were nonwhite, subjects were more willing to change their minds, an effect the researchers explained by noting that "social desirability concerns may affect how respondents behave when asked about sensitive topics." In other words, in the company of someone from a different race than their own, people tend to shift their responses based upon what they think that person's worldview might be.</p> <p><strong>4. The alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda link. </strong>In a <a href="" target="_blank">2009 study</a>, Monica Prasad of Northwestern University and her colleagues directly challenged Republican partisans about their false belief that Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborated in the 9/11 attacks, a common charge during the Bush years. The so-called challenge interviews included citing the findings of the 9/11 Commission and even a <a href="" target="_blank">statement by George W. Bush</a>, asserting that his administration had "never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda." Despite these facts, only 1 out of 49 partisans changed his or her mind after the factual correction. Forty-one of the partisans "deflected" the information in a variety of ways, and seven actually denied holding the belief in the first place (although they clearly had).</p> <p><strong>5. Global warming.</strong> On the climate issue, there does not appear to be any study that clearly documents a backfire effect. However, in a <a href="" target="_blank">2011 study</a>, researchers at American and Ohio State universities found a closely related "boomerang effect." In the experiment, research subjects from upstate New York read news articles about how climate change might increase the spread of West Nile Virus, which were accompanied by the pictures of the faces of farmers who might be affected. But in one case, the people were said to be farmers in upstate New York (in other words, victims who were quite socially similar to the research subjects); in the other, they were described as farmers from either Georgia or from France (much more distant victims). The intent of the article was to raise concern about the health consequences of climate change, but when Republicans read the article about the more distant farmers, their support for action on climate change <em>decreased</em>, a pattern that was stronger as their Republican partisanship increased. (When Republicans read about the proximate New York farmers, there was no boomerang effect, but they did not become more supportive of climate action either.)</p> <p>Together, all of these studies support the <a href="" target="_blank">theory of "motivated reasoning"</a>: The idea that our prior beliefs, commitments, and emotions drive our responses to new information, such that when we are faced with facts that deeply challenge these commitments, we fight back against them to defend our identities. So next time you feel the urge to argue back against some idiot on the internet&hellip;pause, take a deep breath, and realize not only that arguing might not do any good, but that in fact, it might very well backfire.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Change Climate Desk Economy Health Care Science Wed, 05 Mar 2014 11:00:09 +0000 Chris Mooney 246806 at Survey: These Are the Most and Least Obese States in America <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>West Virginia's tenure as the most obese state in America&mdash;a three-year run that no one ever called a dynasty&mdash;is over.</p> <p>According to Gallup, which just released its <a href="" target="_blank">2013 survey on obesity in America</a>, 35.4 percent of Mississippians have a BMI above 30, giving the home of <em>3 Doors Down</em> the highest obesity rate in the Union. West Virginia came in second at 34.4 percent.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Montana toppled three-time defending least-obese champion and <a href="" target="_blank">budding marijuana tourist</a> destination Colorado, with a svelte 19.6 percent.</p> <p>You can check out the full results <a href="" target="_blank">here</a>.</p> <p>On average, residents of the 10 most obese states were&mdash;unsurprisingly&mdash;less likely to eat healthily, consume fruits and vegetables, or workout regularly than residents of the least obese states.</p> <p>Overall the national obesity rate rose to 27.1 percent in 2013. It has risen every year since 2008.</p> <p><a href="" target="_blank">Impeach</a>.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Food and Ag Tue, 04 Mar 2014 22:23:55 +0000 Ben Dreyfuss 246836 at Watch: Dancers Defy Beijing's "Nuclear Winter" Smog <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//" width="640"></iframe></p> <p>Face masks are <a href="" target="_blank">selling out online</a>&nbsp;as China's cities this week&nbsp;choked on pollution so bad one local&nbsp;scientist called it&nbsp;"<a href="" target="_blank">somewhat similar to a nuclear winter</a>." A <a href=";ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_campaign=1490" target="_blank">local cancer prevention official said</a>&nbsp;this revolting blanket of air, largely caused by a <a href="" target="_blank">"black triangle" of coal pollution</a>, could pose a bigger public health risk than the 2003 SARS epidemic. At rates of over 20 times what the <a href="" target="_blank">World Health Organization</a> says are acceptable, the air has forced Beijing to shutter city factories, and residents have taken to social media to vent their anger using a now-well-known brand of dark humor.&nbsp;One of the funniest tweets&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">reported by the South China Morning Post</a> recalls a saying by current president Xi Jinping: <a href="" target="_blank">"Make socialist core values as pervasive as the air." Chinese netizens: "Also as toxic?"</a></p> <p>The official local scale of "PM2.5"&mdash;those tiny, toxic particles that can prove so dangerous to health&mdash;came in&nbsp;at <a href="" target="_blank">501 micrograms per cubic&nbsp;</a><a href="" target="_blank">meter</a>&nbsp;on Wednesday. The measurements taken from the US Embassy (<a href="" target="_blank">and popularized via its Twitter feed</a>)&nbsp;were higher, at 542: "beyond index." (The US EPA <a href="" target="_blank">says anything above 300 is hazardous</a>). Another measure of how bad it is: Radio Free Asia reported this week that a resident of the coal-burning city of Shijiazhuang, in a rare act of defiance, <a href="" target="_blank">is suing the local government</a> for failing to act over the deadly smog.</p> <p>Comparing the frigid weather hampering the US to Beijing's endemic smog,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Paul Flynn</a>, tech&nbsp;director&nbsp;at PR firm&nbsp;Edelman in Beijing (and a friend),&nbsp;texted me: "After a week of Beijing pollution levels over 500, give me a clear arctic breeze any day."&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 2em;">But if fleeing is not an option, why not dance? I loved watching this homage to </span>Pharrell's<span style="line-height: 2em;"> infectious&nbsp;hit, "Happy," performed by brave locals and </span>expats<span style="line-height: 2em;"> at some of Beijing's most&nbsp;recognizable tourist locations.&nbsp;The video, by&nbsp;filmmakers&nbsp;</span>Stephy<span style="line-height: 2em;">&nbsp;Chung, Em&nbsp;</span>Jaay<span style="line-height: 2em;">, and&nbsp;Sarah E Weber,&nbsp;hit the web this week, and has been already featured on a bunch of very&nbsp;</span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">cool</a><span style="line-height: 2em;"> </span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">China</a><span style="line-height: 2em;"> </span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">blogs</a><span style="line-height: 2em;"> that you should definitely keep tabs on. Enjoy!</span></p> <p><span style="line-height: 2em;">H/t to </span><a href="" style="line-height: 24px;" target="_blank">Paul Flynn</a><span style="line-height: 2em;"> for pointing the video out.</span></p> </body></html> Blue Marble Video China Climate Change Climate Desk Fri, 28 Feb 2014 16:06:18 +0000 James West 246586 at Sorry, California. A Little Rain Isn't Going to Save You. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%"><img alt="comparison of California drought maps" class="image" src="/files/Drought%20Map%20Comparison_1.png" style="height: 528px; width: 630px;"></div> <p><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">California, supplier of nearly half of the </span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">fruits, veggies, and nuts</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;"> produced in the United States, is on track to experience its </span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">driest year </a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">in modern history. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">And though the state was lucky to have </span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">some rain</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;"> this week, even a torrential storm </span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">would not be enough</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;"> to fill its aquifers, replenish its soil, and save many of its crops</span><span style="line-height: 2em;">.</span></p> <p>We've been tracking the drought through the <a href="" target="_blank">US Drought Monitor</a>, which uses satellite imagery, water flow, and precipitation data to create weekly drought maps. (Data is collected on Tuesdays, and released the following Thursday.) As of this week, 21 of the state's 58 counties are experiencing "exceptional drought"&mdash;including those Central Valley areas where <a href="" target="_blank">so many of the state's crops grow</a>. Above, check out the maps we've compiled<span style="line-height: 2em;"> from the past few weeks, starting with the one that prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to announce a state of emergency on January 17.</span></p> </body></html> Blue Marble Charts Climate Change Food and Ag Thu, 27 Feb 2014 22:51:06 +0000 Alex Park and Julia Lurie 246541 at State Dept. Investigators: No Conflict of Interest in Keystone XL Review <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline were dealt another blow Wednesday evening with the release of a <a href="" target="_blank">long-awaited report</a> from the State Department's internal oversight office on a potential conflict of interest in the Department's environmental review of the project. The report found that even though employees of the contractor hired to carry out the review had previously consulted for the company pushing the pipeline, the information they provided to the Department was "not misleading."</p> <p>Moreover, the report found that State Department officials had followed protocol for objectively selecting a contractor, even taking steps that are above and beyond what is officially called for. For example, a six-person panel conducted in-person interviews with each contractor applying for the job.</p> <p>Last night's report, issued by the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG), comes on the heels of <a href="" target="_blank">the environmental review in question</a>, which found that oil in the Canadian tar sands region would likely be exploited with or without Keystone XL. That was unwelcome news for the project's opponents, since President Obama, in his major climate change speech last summer, said his administration would approve the pipeline only if it wouldn't lead to a significant increase in carbon emissions. If rail, trucks, and other pipelines could transport the oil anyway, it's more likely the Obama administration will give a green light to the project. Last week, the editor of the prestigious journal <em>Science</em> (who previously served as the head of the US Geological Survey under Obama) made that argument in a <a href="" target="_blank">surprise endorsement</a> of the pipeline. A final decision could come this spring, but that is far from guaranteed.</p> <p>The conflict-of-interest controversy dates back to November 2011, when the OIG began to investigate claims that TransCanada, the company behind Keystone XL, had improperly influenced the selection of a contractor to write an early environmental impact statement. No impropriety was found, but OIG made recommendations to improve the selection process. The next year, for a second environmental review called for by the president, State hired a new contractor: Environmental Resources Management. ERM's review was released in March 2013, and it was roundly criticized for being soft on the pipeline's potential harms, particularly downplaying the climate impact. Another major problem, as <a href="" target="_blank"><em>Mother Jones </em>first reported</a>, was that the publicly released biographies of the statement's authors, who were employees of ERM, had been redacted, concealing extensive ties to the fossil fuel industry, including work directly with TransCanada. Another OIG investigation was opened up, leading to the report released yesterday.</p> <p>From <a href="" target="_blank">the report</a>:</p> </body></html> <p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/blue-marble/2014/02/state-dept-no-conflict-interest-keystone-xl-review"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p> Blue Marble Climate Change Climate Desk Energy International Obama Thu, 27 Feb 2014 17:23:29 +0000 Tim McDonnell 246476 at Marcellus Energy Development Could Pave Over an Area Bigger Than the State of Delaware <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p><em>This <a href="" target="_blank">story</a> originally appeared on the </em><a href="" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a> <em>website and is reproduced here as part of the </em><a href="" target="_blank">Climate Desk</a> <em>collaboration.</em></p> <p>Development of natural gas and wind resources in the Marcellus shale region could cover up nearly 1.3 million acres of land, an area bigger than the state of Delaware, with cement, asphalt and other impervious surfaces, according to a paper <a href=";jsessionid=81AB6CDB55AE0BFF47EDABF152D1D95E" target="_hplink">published this month</a> in the scientific journal PLOS One.</p> <p>The <a href="" target="_hplink">study</a>, conducted by two scientists from the conservation organization The Nature Conservancy, predicts that 106,004 new gas wells will be drilled in the Marcellus region, based on current trends in natural gas development. The region <a href="" target="_hplink">includes parts of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Virginia</a>.</p> </body></html> <p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/blue-marble/2014/02/marcellus-energy-development-pave-over-delaware-wind-gas"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p> Blue Marble Climate Desk Economy Energy Health Wed, 26 Feb 2014 20:49:37 +0000 Kate Sheppard 246406 at Believe It or Not, January Was Full of Big, Warm Climate Anomalies <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p><em>This <a href="" target="_blank">story</a> first appeared on the </em><a href="" target="_blank">Atlantic Cities</a> <em>website and is reproduced here as part of the </em><a href="" target="_blank">Climate Desk</a> <em>collaboration.</em></p> <p>Much of America is about to be overrun by <a href="">another miserable cold-dozer</a> next week, but on the planetary scale, things have actually been warm. January's temperatures were the hottest for the month since 2007 and, with a combined global average of 54.8 degrees, this was the fourth warmest January since records began in 1880.</p> <p>That's the word from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, which recently released an updated "<a href="">State of the Climate</a>" that includes the above map of temperature anomalies. Note cooler-than-normal patches in the eastern US, central Canada, Scandinavia, and a big hunk of Russia, which had country-scale temperatures 9 degrees below average. But the big story was heat, heat, heat, as <a href="">NCDC explains</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>During January 2014, most of the world's land areas experienced warmer-than-average temperatures, with the most notable departures from the 1981&ndash;2010 average across Alaska, western Canada, Greenland, Mongolia, southern Russia, and northern China, where the departure from average was +3&deg;C (+5.4&deg;F) or greater. Meanwhile, parts of southeastern Brazil and central and southern Africa experienced record warmth with temperature departures between 0.5&deg;C to 1.5&deg;C above the 1981&ndash;2010 average, contributing to the highest January Southern Hemisphere land temperature departure on record at 1.13&deg;C (2.03&deg;F) above the 20th century average. This was also the warmest month for the Southern Hemisphere land since September 2013 when temperatures were 1.23&deg;C (2.21&deg;F) above the 20th century average.</p> </blockquote> <p>Some other outliers: France tied its warmest January on record with 1988 and 1936; China logged its second-warmest January since it started collecting records in 1961; and in Spain, it was the third-hottest month since 1996.</p> <p>The climatologists also highlighted a few "significant climate anomalies and events" for January and pinned them to <a href="">this map</a>. Parts of the US had a severe lack of rainfall, the UK squelched through its third-wettest January on the books, and the Arctic sea ice continues to pull a disappearing act:</p> <p><img alt="" src="" style="width: 500px; height: 385px;"></p> <p>Western Australia doubled its usual precipitation and the extent of the Antarctic sea ice got huge in a season when it <a href="">historically shrinks</a>. Why's that last thing worrisome? "We suspect that the increasing presence of icebergs broken off from ice shelves and glaciers within the Antarctic sea ice pack is a major contributor to a temporary but increasing trend in the Antarctic sea ice extent," <a href="">explains NOAA</a>. "Since the rapid disappearance of the Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers itself is seen as a response to global warming, the slight increase in sea ice extent that we are observing can be paradoxically linked to the same warming trend."</p> <p><img alt="" src="" style="width: 600px; height: 328px;"></p> <p>To zoom in on the climate events in the US, there's <a href="">this map</a> showing California's ingrained drought, piles and piles of snow in Chicago, and the sweaty results of Alaska's recent heat wave. Overall, the country's western heat lost to the eastern frigidness&mdash;temperatures were 0.1 degrees below the 20th-century average and many states had top-10 cold Januaries, including Georgia, Alabama, Indiana, and Michigan:</p> <p><img alt="" src="" style="width: 604px; height: 508px;"></p> <p><em>Images courtesy of <a href="">NCDC / NOAA</a></em></p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Change Climate Desk Top Stories weather Mon, 24 Feb 2014 11:00:13 +0000 John Metcalfe 246136 at Giant Slaughterhouse Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef After Processing "Diseased and Unsound Animals" <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>Last month, Rancho Feeding Corp., a slaughterhouse in Petaluma, California, issued a small recall notice, for beef it had processed on a particular day in 2013. That much was routine&mdash;meat processing facilities have to pull back product with some regularity when contamination is discovered. But the Rancho recall was different: Earlier this month, the company announced that it needed to recall all the beef it processed in 2013&mdash;8.7 million pounds in all, found in more than a thousand <a href=";CONVERT_TO=url&amp;CACHEID=0871ce45-1c81-4af8-99c5-e0d0d60216c5" target="_blank">grocery stores</a> <a href="" target="_blank">in 30 states</a>. The most famous of the recalled items are <a href="" target="_blank">Nestl&eacute; Hot Pockets</a>, but the plant produced a lot of other beef products for wholesale, including cheeks, lips, liver, oxtail, and <a href="" target="_blank">other parts</a>. So have you eaten any of that beef? Here's some background:</p> <p><strong>What is Rancho Feeding Corp.?</strong> Before it <a href="" target="_blank">ceased operations</a> last week, Rancho Feeding Corp. was the only USDA-approved slaughterhouse within about a three-hour radius of Petaluma. According to Stephanie Larson, the livestock and range adviser at the University of California's Cooperative Extension system, about 25 percent of Rancho's customers were "niche market" operations&mdash;many of which raised grass-fed and organic beef. The other 75 percent of the company's business was meat destined for burgers, tacos, chili, and other processed foods for supermarkets and restaurants. Many of Rancho's clients were dairies seeking to slaughter cows that were no longer giving milk.</p> <p><strong>Just how much meat is 8.7 million pounds?</strong> A few years back, my colleague Tom Philpott <a href="" target="_blank">calculated</a> that Cargill's 36 million pounds of recalled ground turkey was enough to make burgers for the residents of the world's six most populous cities. By the same logic, the 8.7 million pounds of Rancho recalled beef could make burgers for every resident of New York City, London, and Tokyo. As Gwynn Guilford at <a href="" target="_blank"><em>Quartz</em></a> points out, letting that much potentially dodgy meat slip through the cracks is what happens when the government <a href=";_ga=1.25575993.520802448.1392962581" target="_blank">skimps on inspectors</a>.</p> <p><strong>Why did they recall it?</strong> According to the <a href="" target="_blank">USDA' s Food Safety and Inspection Service</a>, Rancho issued the recall after FSIS inspectors determined that it had "processed diseased and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection." It was a Class I recall, which means the FSIS considered it "a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death." Beyond the recall notice, though, FSIS has offered <a href="" target="_blank">few details</a>. So far, there are no reports of people getting sick after eating tainted beef processed by Rancho.</p> <p><strong>How does the recall affect ranchers?</strong> Yesterday, the <a href=",0,4740492.story#axzz2tzB0JWgd" target="_blank"><em>Los Angeles Times</em></a> reported that <a href="" target="_blank">Marin Sun Farms</a>, an artisanal meat producer in Point Reyes Station, California, has bought Rancho Feeding Corp. If the company reopens the facility as a USDA-approved slaughterhouse, Rancho's former clients will likely be relieved, since Rancho was the only game in town. (<a href="" target="_blank">Consolidation of slaughterhouses</a> is a problem for ranchers across the nation.)</p> <p>Bill Niman, the founder of sustainable meat company <a href="" target="_blank">Niman Ranch</a> who now runs a grass-fed operation called <a href="" target="_blank">BN Ranch</a>, told the <a href="" target="_blank"><em>Village Voice </em></a>that Rancho's closing would be "a great loss to the Northern California food community."</p> <p>Sally Gale and her husband own <a href="" target="_blank">Chileno Valley Ranch</a>, a 600-acre, 100-head beef operation in Marin County that sells grass-fed beef directly to consumers. The Gales, who have owned their ranch for 15 years, used to hire a slaughterer to dispatch their steers on their property. (A few years ago, Bonne Azab Powell <a href="" target="_blank">profiled</a> a traveling slaughterer in <em>Mother Jones</em>.) But about five years ago, they received a notice saying that the practice was illegal and that they must take their animals to a USDA-certified slaughterhouse. The only one in the area was Rancho.</p> <p>Because of the recall, the Gales have had to dispose of three adult steers&mdash;worth about $1,600 each&mdash;that Rancho had slaughtered. If Rancho closes, Sally Gale worries that the long drive to the next closest slaughterhouse, more than 150 miles away, will stress the animals and add an extra expense to what Gale describes as an "already marginal business." California's drought has hit ranches like hers hard, she says, and she expects that many will have to charge their customers more to make up for the losses.&nbsp;</p> <p>Typically, Chileno Valley Ranch sends about six cows to slaughter every week. Now, the Gales will be waiting until they have 30 ready to make the long trip worthwhile. "The government told us that we couldn't slaughter our own meat," says Gale. "And now they're telling us that we can't bring them to Rancho either."</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Food and Ag Health Top Stories Fri, 21 Feb 2014 11:00:10 +0000 Kiera Butler 246031 at One Weird Trick to Curb Antibiotic Overuse <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>Antibiotic overprescription is a <a href="" target="_blank">major problem</a>. While there have been several campaigns to curb it, few have made a big impact&mdash;until now. In a new study, researchers Jason Doctor, an associate professor at the&nbsp;the University of Southern California's <a href="">Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics</a> and Daniella Meeker, an information scientist at the research think tank <a href="" target="_blank">RAND Corporation</a>, showed that they were able to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions among study participants by 20 percent simply by posting signs.</p> <p>"We were interested in some of the psychological factors that may affect what physicians are doing, and one of the big ones is this idea of a public commitment," Doctor explained. "If [physicians] make a public commitment they want to follow through with it, so that is how we came up with this poster idea."</p> <p>The signs looked like they were meant for patients: Each 18-by-24-inch poster showed two letters&mdash;one in English and another in Spanish&mdash;explaining how unnecessary use of antibiotics can be harmful, causing side effects like diarrhea and yeast infections, as well as contributing to drug resistance. The most important part of the posters, however, was the signature and photo of the physicians who practiced in the offices where they were displayed. The researchers did not tell the doctors that the signs' real purpose was to remind the doctors themselves of their commitment.</p> <p>"There have been studies that have posted these kinds of reminders and education," Meeker explained, "but our results have been much larger, and we attribute that to this commitment device."</p> <p>Half the patients in the study saw doctors who had posted the commitment letter and the rest served as a control group. In the 12-week study period, inappropriate prescriptions&mdash;those written for conditions such as laryngitis, bronchitis, and non-strep sore throat, which don't usually respond to antibiotics&mdash;fell from 43 percent to 33.7 percent. For providers who did not post the commitment letter, the rate of inappropriate prescriptions actually <em>rose</em> to 53 percent. Researchers found in both cases appropriate antibiotic prescriptions were unaffected.</p> <p>The study was small&mdash;it included just 14 physicians who saw close to 1,000 adult patients. But the team hopes to expand the experiment to more doctors' offices soon. Doctor and Meeker calculate that if applied throughout the US, the poster method could potentially save more than $70 million in drug costs and stop over 2 million inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Health Thu, 20 Feb 2014 11:00:16 +0000 Gabrielle Canon 245866 at Watch Bill Nye Explain Climate Change to GOP Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="500" scrolling="no" src="" width="635"></iframe></p> <p>Bill Nye is getting good at this.</p> <p>Fresh off a mega-debate that embarrassed Young Earth creationists and led to <a href="" target="_blank">none other than Pat Robertson</a> denouncing their views, Nye <a href="" target="_blank">appeared on Meet the Press today</a> to debate Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a global warming "skeptic."</p> <p>On the air, Blackburn, who is vice-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, denied that there is a scientific consensus on climate change and argued that "you don't make good laws, sustainable laws, when you're making them on hypotheses, or theories, or unproven sciences." (There <a href="" target="_blank">is indeed such a scientific consensus</a>; at one moment, host David Gregory had to correct Blackburn on this point.)</p> <p>But Nye rebutted her with some simple science lessons that made a lot of sense&mdash;noting that going from 320 to 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, something Blackburn called "very slight," is actually a very big change in percentage terms (Nye said 30 percent; it is actually a 25 percent increase). At the same time, Nye also hammered home a compelling message centered on patriotism. "As a guy who grew up in the US," he said, "I want the US to lead the world in this....The more we mess around with this denial, the less we're going to get done."</p> <p>The key gotcha moment in the debate came when Nye called out Blackburn for failing to lead on the climate issue. "You are our leader," he said to Blackburn. "We need you to change things, not deny what's happening."</p> <p>"Neither he nor I are a climate scientist," Blackburn noted during the debate. But as Nye observed, only one of them is a politician, whose job is to use the best information that we have at our disposal to make the world work better.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Video Climate Change Climate Desk Science Top Stories Sun, 16 Feb 2014 17:05:48 +0000 Chris Mooney 245716 at Watch the Christian Right Argue Over Whether the Earth Is Really 6,000 Years Old <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="355" src="//" width="630"></iframe></p> <p>How do we know that Bill Nye <a href="" target="_blank">won the creationism debate</a> with Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis earlier this month? Simple: The Christian Right is now airing its grievances over the outcome publicly, with one of its top leaders saying the debate made Christians look completely out of touch.</p> <p><a href="" target="_blank">Via Right Wing Watch</a>, here's a video from last week of televangelist Pat Robertson blasting the idea that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old, as Young Earth creationists like Ham assert. "There 'aint no way that's possible," explains Robertson, noting that anyone working in the oil industry can see as much as they drill through layer after geological layer to extract ancient hydrocarbons. "You can't just totally deny the geological formations that are out there," Robertson continued. "Let's be real. Let's not make a joke of ourselves."</p> <p>Watch Robertson's comments above.</p> <p>But that's just the beginning: Ham then <a href="" target="_blank">responded to Robertson and raised the stakes</a> further on Facebook. "Pat Robertson is so misinformed and deceived," Ham lamented. "Sad that so many will believe him." Ham later continued:</p> <blockquote> <p>Oh, that God would convict and open the eyes of Christian leaders and Christian college and seminary professors, so many of whom are as uninformed and deceived as Pat Robertson. God have mercy.</p> </blockquote> <p>The truth is that Ham did make a joke of himself, actually arguing at one point that <a href="" target="_blank">lions were vegetarians</a> before Noah's Flood. Such are the intellectual contortions required of Young Earth creationists who seriously want to insist, against not just biological but also geological and physical evidence, on an Earth that is <a href="" target="_blank">younger than its oldest living tree</a>.</p> <p>Robertson, meanwhile, is no paragon of rationality: This is the same guy who <a href="" target="_blank">asserted</a>, in response to Walt Disney World's "Gay Days," that "I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you ... It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor." And yet here, he comes off as the voice of moderation. Indeed, Robertson even seems to embrace a form of <a href="" target="_blank">theistic or "progressive" evolution</a> that is not necessarily incompatible with scientific understanding.</p> <p>This suggests that, if nothing else, the creationism debate was highly disruptive of the evolution-creationism status quo. Just maybe, there will be enough upheaval on the Christian right to trigger a serious reconsideration of their <a href="" target="_blank">attacks on science education</a> across the country. (Wishful thinking, we know.)</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Desk Education Religion Science Top Stories Sat, 15 Feb 2014 11:00:08 +0000 Chris Mooney 245671 at Why It Makes Sense to Kill Baby Giraffes (Sorry, Internet) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <object height="354" width="630"><param name="movie" value="//;version=3&amp;rel=0"> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="354" src="//;version=3&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="630"></embed></object> <p>A second Danish zoo has announced that it might kill a male giraffe. The news comes just days after the internet exploded with outrage when Marius the 18-month old giraffe was <a href="" target="_blank">dispatched</a> with a bolt gun and dissected in front of an audience that included children, before being fed to the lions at the Copenhagen Zoo. In a dark twist, the next potential euthanasia candidate, at the Jyllands Park zoo, is also named <a href="" target="_blank">Marius</a>.</p> <p>The media circus began with protestors outside the Copenhagen Zoo on Sunday and <a href="" target="_blank">a petition signed by 27,000 people</a> to rehouse Marius in one of several zoos that had already indicated that their doors were open.</p> <p>Then came the <a href="" target="_blank">death threats</a> to Bengt Holst, the zoo's director of research and conservation. And the <a href="" target="_blank">emotional opinion pieces</a>.</p> <p>As this debate rages, it's crucial to remember that Marius was not just an exotic attraction: he was part of a larger conservation program that breeds animals with the specific goal of maintaining the diversity of each species' gene pool.</p> </body></html> <p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/blue-marble/2014/02/marius-giraffe-had-die"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p> Blue Marble Animals Climate Change Media Top Stories Fri, 14 Feb 2014 17:17:51 +0000 Benjy Hansen-Bundy 245511 at New Study: Internet Trolls Are Often Machiavellian Sadists <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>In the past few years, the science of Internet trollology has made some strides. Last year, for instance, <a href="" target="_blank">we learned</a> that by hurling insults and inciting discord in online comment sections, so-called Internet "trolls" (who are frequently anonymous) have a polarizing effect on audiences, leading to politicization, rather than deeper understanding of scientific topics.</p> <p>That's bad, but it's nothing compared with what a <a href="" target="_blank">new psychology paper</a> has to say about the personalities of so-called trolls themselves. The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called "Dark Tetrad": Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).</p> <p>It is hard to underplay the results: The study found correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What's more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet.</p> <p>In the study, trolls were identified in a variety of ways. One was by simply asking survey participants what they "enjoyed doing most" when on online comment sites, offering five options: "debating issues that are important to you," "chatting with others," "making new friends," "trolling others," and "other." Here's how different responses about these Internet commenting preferences matched up with responses to questions designed to identify "Dark Tetrad" traits:</p> <div class="inline inline-center" style="display: table; width: 1%"> <img alt="" class="image" height="320" src="/files/Figure%201.png" width="574"><div class="caption">E.E. Buckels et al, "<a href="" target="_blank">Trolls just want to have fun</a>," <em>Personality and Individual Differences</em>, 2014.</div> </div> <p>To be sure, only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoy "trolling." By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were "non-commenters," meaning they didn't like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users.</p> <p>The researchers conducted multiple studies, using samples from <a href="" target="_blank">Amazon's Mechanical Turk</a> but also of college students, to try to understand why the act of trolling seems to attract this type of personality. They even constructed their own survey instrument, which they dubbed the "Global Assessment of Internet Trolling" or GAIT, comprised of the following items:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>I have sent people to shock websites for the lulz.</em></p> <p><em>I like to troll people in forums or the comments section of websites.</em></p> <p><em>I enjoy <a href="" target="_blank">griefing</a> other players in multiplayer games.</em></p> <p><em>The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt.</em></p> </blockquote> <p>Yes, some people actually say they agree with such statements. And again, doing so was correlated with sadism in its various forms, with psychopathy, and with Machiavellianism. Overall, the authors found that the relationship between sadism and trolling was the strongest, and that indeed, sadists appear to troll because they find it pleasurable. "Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others," they wrote. "Sadists just want to have fun...and the Internet is their playground!"</p> <p>The study comes as websites, particularly at major media outlets, are increasingly weighing steps to rein in trollish behavior. Last year <em>Popular Science </em><a href="" target="_blank">did away with its comments sections completely</a>, citing research on the deleterious effects of trolling, and YouTube also <a href="" target="_blank">took measures</a> to rein in trolling.</p> <p>But Erin Buckles of the University of Manitoba, the study's first author, actually isn't sure that fix is a realistic one. "Because the behaviors are intrinsically motivating for sadists, comment moderators will likely have a difficult time curbing trolling with punishments (e.g., banning users)," she commented by email. "Ultimately, the allure of trolling may be too strong for sadists, who presumably have limited opportunities to express their sadistic interests in a socially-desirable manner."</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Desk Science Tech Top Stories Fri, 14 Feb 2014 11:00:04 +0000 Chris Mooney 245536 at Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than We Thought—But It's Still Better Than Coal <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has underestimated US emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. That's the argument of a new analysis appearing in the Feb. 14 issue of <a href="" target="_blank"><em>Science</em></a>, which also finds that a big factor behind the lowball estimates is the EPA's poor grasp of methane leaks from the natural gas industry.</p> <p>The analysis, which examines more than 200 existing studies, is the first to take a broad view of scientific knowledge of methane emissions, and it has critical implications for the use of natural gas. Gas has been touted by its proponents as a cleaner alternative to traditional fossil fuels such as coal&mdash;President Obama <a href="" target="_blank">hails it as a "bridge fuel"</a> that will allow the country to transition to cleaner energy sources&mdash;since burning natural gas for energy emits far less carbon dioxide. But because methane, a main component of natural gas, is such a powerful greenhouse gas, the new evidence of narrows the gap between the climate change contributions of gas and coal.</p> <p>"Our best guess is that methane emissions in this country are about 50 percent more than the EPA [estimates]," says Adam Brandt, an assistant professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University and the lead author of the analysis. Methane emissions could plausibly be anywhere between 25 to 75 percent more than what EPA measures have shown, Brandt adds. "That amounts to something like 7 to 21 million excess tons of methane every year." Brandt and his co-authors, he says, did not have enough evidence to determine what proportion of total excess methane is released by the natural gas industry, as opposed to by other energy sectors, agriculture, or landfills.</p> <p>But the study concludes that natural gas as a fuel source still contributes less to climate change than coal. "We don't believe that the evidence suggests that burning coal is better," Brandt says. "There's just not support for that." The reason is that while methane is the more damaging greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, which coal emits in huge quantities when burned, stays in the atmosphere for a much longer period of time. Coal is a "cleaner" fuel only in the near-term&mdash;a period of 20 years or so. Brandt says that over a period of 100 years, natural gas&mdash;leaks and all&mdash;would still be a less greenhouse gas-intensive source of energy than coal.</p> <p>Still, Brandt cautions, natural gas is not a long-term energy solution for keeping climate change in check. "Uncontrolled use of gas over a century or more isn't a good thing, from a climate change perspective," Brandt says. "Most climate change scenarios suggest that this can't be a solution for 100 years."</p> <p>The analysis also concludes that even under the most conservative estimates of methane leaks from the gas sector, keeping diesel-powered powered vehicles, such as buses, on the road contributes smaller amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than switching to gas-powered buses.</p> <p>The researchers believe that only a small percentage of methane leaked by the gas sector is coming from the controversial hydraulic fracturing&mdash;or fracking&mdash;process itself. Rather, accidental leaks that occur as the industry moves and processes natural gas likely account for the biggest proportion of these emissions. One study cited by the analysis found that less than 1 percent of individual pieces of equipment at a single natural gas plant were responsible for nearly 60 percent of its leakage. Brandt says new technology that quickly identifies these "superemitters" is the best hope for reigning in the industry's emissions.</p> <p>As for why the EPA underestimates methane leaks in the gas industry, the analysis notes that the agency can only measure emission rates at wells and plants where the operators volunteered to allow the EPA on site. In one instance, the EPA asked 30 natural gas companies to allow them on site, but only six cooperated.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Change Climate Desk Energy Science Top Stories fracking Infrastructure Thu, 13 Feb 2014 19:00:14 +0000 Molly Redden 245461 at PHOTOS: A "Catastrophic...Crippling...Paralyzing" Ice Storm <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>An ice storm the National Weather Service <a href="" target="_blank">has called</a> "catastrophic...crippling...paralyzing... choose your adjective" is sweeping across states from Texas to North Carolina, <a href="" target="_blank">knocking out power</a> in more than 100,000 homes and businesses as it makes its way toward the Northeast. Here are some photos showing the early effects of the storm.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"> <p>Garbage truck with attachment plowing Peachtree St. Resourceful. Well done City of Atlanta <a href="">@KasimReed</a> <a href=";src=hash">#StormWatchOn2</a> <a href=""></a></p> &mdash; Brad Nitz (@BradNitzWSB) <a href="">February 12, 2014</a> </blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"> <p>Good Morning, midtown Atlanta! <a href="">@wsbtv</a> Peachtree and 7th Street <a href=";src=hash">#iceatlanta</a> <a href=";src=hash">#iceatl</a> <a href=""></a></p> &mdash; Gary Brown (@gbro76) <a href="">February 12, 2014</a> </blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%"> <img alt="Car in snowstorm" class="image" src="/files/IceStormCar630.jpg"><div class="caption"> <strong>A vehicle drives through the rapidly falling snow on the US 421 Bypass in Sanford, N.C. </strong>Chris Seward/Raleigh News &amp; Observer/ZUMA</div> </div> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"> <p>From <a href="">@seanmorrisCNN</a> in Atlanta this morning. <a href=""></a></p> &mdash; CNN Weather Center (@CNNweather) <a href="">February 12, 2014</a> </blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"> <p>The <a href="">@ajc</a>'s <a href="">@johnjspink</a>'s wouldn't steer you wrong. Stay off the roads. <a href=";src=hash">#iceatl</a> <a href=""></a> <a href=""></a></p> &mdash; AJC (@ajc) <a href="">February 12, 2014</a> </blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%"> <img alt="Woman in snow" class="image" src="/files/IceStormWoman630.jpg"><div class="caption"> <strong>LORETTA CANTRELL, 75, says '' I feel like a child again playing in the snow,'' during a walk on Popular Stump Road in Helen, Ga. </strong>Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/ZUMA</div> </div> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Desk Infrastructure Wed, 12 Feb 2014 17:15:10 +0000 Matt Connolly 245456 at More and More Americans Think Astrology Is Science <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>"I believe in a lot of astrology." So commented pop megastar Katy Perry in a <a href="" target="_blank">recent <em>GQ</em> interview</a>. She also said she sees everything through a "spiritual lens"&hellip;and that she believes in aliens.</p> <p>According to data from the National Science Foundation's just-released 2014 <a href="" target="_blank"><em>Science and Engineering Indicators </em></a>study, Americans are moving in Perry's direction. In particular, the NSF reports that the percentage of Americans who think astrology is "not at all scientific" declined from 62 percent in 2010 to just 55 percent in 2012 (the last year for which data is available). As a result, NSF reports that Americans are apparently less skeptical of astrology than they have been at any time since 1983.</p> <div class="inline inline-center" style="display: table; width: 1%"><img alt="" class="image" height="412" src="/files/astrology2.png" width="578"></div> <p>The data on Americans' astrological beliefs are compiled by NSF but come from a variety of sources; since 2006 they have come from the <a href="" target="_blank">General Social Survey</a>. Over the years, the GSS and other surveys have asked Americans a recurring question: "Would you say that astrology is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific?"</p> <p>In response, a substantial minority of Americans, ranging from 31 to 45 percent depending on the year, say consider astrology either "very scientific" or "sort of scientific." That's bad enough&mdash;the NSF report compares it with China, where 92 percent of the public does not believe in horoscopes&mdash;but the new evidence suggests we are also moving in the wrong direction. Indeed, the percentage of Americans who say astrology is scientifically bunk has been declining ever since a high point for astrology skepticism in 2004, when it <a href="" target="_blank">hit 66 percent</a>.</p> <p>The recent increase in astrological credulity was most dramatic among those with less science education and less "factual knowledge," NSF reported. In the latter group, there was a staggering 17 percentage point decline in how many people were willing to say astrology is unscientific, from 52 percent in 2010 to just 35 percent in 2012. Also apparently to blame are younger Americans, aged 18 to 24, where an actual <em>majority </em>considers astrology at least "sort of" scientific, and those aged 35 to 44. In 2010, 64 percent of this age group considered astrology totally bunk; in 2012, by contrast, only 51 percent did, a 13 percentage point change.</p> <p>Here's a breakdown of the changes in Americans' astrology beliefs by age group:</p> <div class="inline inline-center" style="display: table; width: 1%"><img alt="" class="image" src="/files/age2_0.png"></div> <p>So what's behind these data? The lead author of the report chapter in question, public opinion specialist John Besley of Michigan State University, cautions that we should probably wait for further data "to see if it's a real change" before speculating. But, he admits, the apparent increase in astrology belief "popped out to me when I saw it."</p> <p>So if it turns out that Americans are indeed becoming even more devoted to astrology than they already are? As with many things in life, there's a Shakespeare quotation appropriate to the situation: "<a href="" target="_blank">The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves</a>."</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Desk Science Top Stories Tue, 11 Feb 2014 11:00:05 +0000 Chris Mooney 245251 at Is Shipping Oil by Rail As Dangerous As the Keystone Pipeline? <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="500px" src="" width="100%"></iframe></p> <p><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">When the State Department issued its long-awaited </span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">environmental-impact statement</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;"> on the Keystone XL project earlier this month, one of its key findings was that if the controversial pipeline weren't built, oil-laden rail cars would pick up the slack. "Rail will likely be able to accommodate new production if new pipelines are delayed or not constructed," it argued. As we&nbsp;</span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">noted recently</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">, that rail transit is already underway.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">&acirc;&#128;&#139;According to the Association of American Railroads (AAR), crude oil traveling by rail&nbsp;</span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">increased from 9,500&nbsp;carloads in 2008 to an estimated 400,000 in 2013</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">.&nbsp;Recently, an ExxonMobil official said the company had already&nbsp;begun to use trains to haul oil out of the Canadian&nbsp;tar sands, and the company&nbsp;plans to move up to 100,000 barrels of oil&nbsp;per day </span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">from a new terminal by 2015</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">. In other words, tar sands will&nbsp;be developed one way or another, according to the State Department,&nbsp;with or without the&nbsp;$5.4 billion pipeline that&nbsp;would eventually link&nbsp;Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.</span></p> <p>The AAR <a href="" target="_blank">argues</a>&nbsp;carrying crude by tanker car is safe, citing a statistic that&nbsp;99.9977 percent&nbsp;of <span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">dangerous&nbsp;chemical</span>&nbsp;shipments by rail&nbsp;reached their destination without incident through 2010, making it safer than other forms of transport.&nbsp;<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">But as crude by rail in the United States is increasing&mdash;the AAR says shipments have&nbsp;shot up 443 percent since 2005&mdash;so too are the spills</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">An analysis of the data from the&nbsp;</span><a href="" style="line-height: 2em;" target="_blank">Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">&acirc;&#128;&#139;</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;"> shows that in the US, 7 of the worst 10 railroad oil spills of the past&nbsp;decade happened in the last three years. This number doesn't include the catastrophic accident in </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">Lac-Megantic,</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">&nbsp;Quebec, last July,&nbsp;which decimated the town and killed 47 people.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">In fact, at&nbsp;over 1.2 million gallons spilled in total,&nbsp;more crude oil was spilled from trains last year than every other year since 1971 combined. The 10 worst spills together cost nearly $2 million in damages. The worst was in Aliceville, Alabama, on November 8, when nearly 750,000 gallons spilled from a <a href="" target="_blank">90-car train after it derailed</a>,&nbsp;setting off a series of&nbsp;explosions. In Casselton, North Dakota, nearly a half-million gallons spilled on December 30, after a grain train derailed in front of a BNSF&nbsp;train filled with crude oil, igniting an inferno that forced the town to evacuate.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">&acirc;&#128;&#139;The severity of the Lac-Megantic&nbsp;incident&nbsp;forced the National Transportation Safety Board, in conjunction with the Canadians (where <a href="" target="_blank">crude by rail is also booming</a></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2em;">), to issue a <a href="" target="_blank">15-page document</a> recommending increased safely measures.</span>&nbsp;The report finds that "railroad accidents involving crude oil have a&nbsp;potential for disastrous consequences and environmental contamination equal to that of the worst&nbsp;on-shore pipeline accidents." Despite the urgency, the report says not enough has been done to properly equip US railways to face the increasing demands: "Although railroad accidents involving large numbers of crude oil tank cars can have similar outcomes [to pipeline spills], oil spill response planning requirements for rail transportation of oil/petroleum products are practically nonexistent compared with other modes of transportation."</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Maps Climate Desk Energy Top Stories Infrastructure Tue, 11 Feb 2014 11:00:04 +0000 James West 245086 at North Carolina Protected Duke Energy from Pollution Complaints Before the Company's Coal Ash Disaster <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>Last year, North Carolina's top environmental regulators <a href="" target="_blank">thwarted three separate Clean Water Act lawsuits</a> aimed at forcing Duke Energy, the largest electricity company in the country, to clean up its toxic coal ash pits in the state. That June, the state went even further, saying it would handle environmental enforcement at every one of Duke's 31 coal ash storage ponds in the state&mdash;an act that protected the company from further federal lawsuits. Last week, one of those coal ash storage ponds ruptured, belching more than 80,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River.</p> <p>Now environmental groups and former regulators are charging that North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who worked for Duke for 30 years, has created an atmosphere where the penalties for polluting the environment are low.</p> <p>The <em>Associated Press</em> <a href="" target="_blank">reports</a> that McCrory's Department of Environment and Natural Resources blocked three federal Clean Water Act suits in 2013 by stepping in with its own enforcement authority "at the last minute." This protected Duke from the kinds of stiff fines and penalties that can result from federal lawsuits. Instead, state regulators arranged settlements that carried miniscule financial penalties and did not require Duke to change how it stores the toxic byproducts of its coal-fired power plants. After blocking the first three suits, which were brought by the Southern Environmental Law Center, the state filed notices saying that it would handle environmental enforcement at every one of Duke's remaining North Carolina coal ash storage sites&mdash;protecting the company from Clean Water Act lawsuits linked to its coal waste once and for all.</p> <p>The Dan River disaster became public on February 3&mdash;one day after Duke officials had been alerted that a pipe beneath a coal ash storage pit of nearly 30 acres had ruptured. "The company reports that up to 82,000 tons of coal ash mixed with 27 million gallons of contaminated water drained out, turning the river gray and cloudy for miles," the <em>AP </em>reports. "The accident ranks as the third largest such coal ash spill in the nation's history."</p> <p>The <em>AP </em>story suggests that McCrory's settlements with Duke are part of a pattern of regulatory slackness. A former North Carolina regulator who recently left to work for an environmental advocacy group after nine years working for the state told the <em>AP</em> that under McCrory, who took office in early 2013, she was often instructed not to fine or cite polluters, but instead to help them reach compliance standards. The article continues:</p> <blockquote> <p>Since his unsuccessful first campaign for governor in 2008, campaign finance reports show Duke Energy, its political action committee, executives and their immediate families have donated at least $1.1 million to McCrory's campaign and affiliated groups that spent on TV ads, mailings and events to support him.</p> <p>After winning in 2012, McCrory has appointed former Duke employees like himself to key posts, including state Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker.</p> <p>His appointee to oversee the state environmental department, Raleigh businessman John Skvarla, describes his agency's role as being a "partner" to those it regulates, whom he refers to as "customers."</p> <p>"That is why we have been able to turn DENR from North Carolina's No. 1 obstacle of resistance into a customer-friendly juggernaut in such a short time," Skvarla wrote in a letter to the editor of the News &amp; Observer of Raleigh, published in December. "People in the private sector pour their hearts and souls into their work; instead of crushing their dreams, they now have a state government that treats them as partners."</p> </blockquote> <p>McCrory hit back, telling the <em>AP </em>that his administration is "the first in North Carolina history to take legal action against the utility regarding coal ash ponds." Duke Energy has also made large donations to Democrats, <a href="" target="_blank">giving $10 million</a> for the Democratic National Convention in 2012.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Desk Energy Regulatory Affairs Top Stories Mon, 10 Feb 2014 15:23:38 +0000 Molly Redden 245226 at Will Sochi Have Enough Snow? <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>The Winter Olympics kicked off yesterday in Sochi, Russia (first up: <a href="" target="_blank">men's snowboarding</a>). When Russian President Vladimir Putin pitched Sochi to the games' organizers back in 2007, he promised there would be <a href="" target="_blank">"real snow"</a>... a bold claim for a town better known as a <a href="" target="_blank">seaside summer resort</a>. Sure enough, this week Sochi had highs in the 50s (warmer than the Super Bowl last weekend in New Jersey) and&mdash;uh oh&mdash;no new snowfall in the town. Conditions are a bit better in the mountains where the ski events take place, and organizers insist the games are ready to speed ahead on a fresh layer of <a href="" target="_blank">fake snow</a>.</p> <p>Low snowfall has become a chronic problem for <a href="" target="_blank">skiers and snowboarders</a> worldwide, which has turned <a href="" target="_blank">many of them</a> into <a href="" target="_blank">vocal activists against climate change</a>. President Obama even mentioned snow sports in his <a href="" target="_blank">major global warming speech</a> last summer, when he <a href="" target="_blank">said</a> that "mountain communities worry about what smaller snowpacks will mean for tourism."</p> <div class="inline inline-left" style="display: table; width: 1%"> <img alt="Porter Fox" class="image" src="/files/porter.jpg"><div class="caption"> <strong>Porter Fox </strong>Courtesy Porter Fox</div> </div> <p>In some cases, global warming can lead to increased heavy precipitation of all kinds, and that <a href="" target="_blank">includes snow</a>, as anyone who lived through the recent polar vortex in the eastern US can attest. But the best conditions for snow sports depend on a snow cover that lasts through the winter, not simply a couple serious blizzards. Over the course of the season, high temperatures can burn through even the heaviest snowfall, and according to Porter Fox, that's already happening from the Rockies to Sochi.</p> <p>Fox is a veteran skier and journalist for <em>Powder</em> magazine who is keeping a gloved finger on the pulse of shifting slopes. He recently published a book that details how global warming is threatening the entire business model of the ski industry. It's called <a href="" target="_blank"><i>Deep: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow</i></a>. Fox joined us for today's <a href="" target="_blank">Inquiring Minds podcast</a> episode, and told me that climate change could soon send snow sports crashing downhill.</p> <p>You can stream our interview below (it can be found at minutes 3:30-8:30) or scroll down to read a transcript:</p> <p><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src=";color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe></p> <p><strong>Porter Fox</strong>: There is going to be huge change in the ski industry in the next 10 to 20 years, and there is going to be cataclysmic change in the next 50 to 70 years. In Europe, North America, around the world, really.</p> <p><strong>Climate Desk</strong>: For skiers and snowboarders, what is that actually going to look like?</p> <p><strong>Fox</strong>: Some of the big visual indicators are we've lost a million square miles of spring snowpack in the last 45 years. Some other changes, in the Northern Rockies that snowpack is down 15 to 30 percent. Specifically in the US the rate of winter warming has tripled since 1970, it seems that winters are starting to warm faster than other seasons, and even high elevation areas are warming faster, and very specifically the US West is one of half a dozen hotspots that are warming faster than the national average. Every single one of those factors is bad news for the Sierras, the Rockies, the Cascades, my favorite places to ski in.</p> </body></html> <p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/blue-marble/2014/02/will-sochi-winter-olympics-have-enough-snow"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p> Blue Marble Interview Podcasts Climate Change Climate Desk Sports Top Stories Sochi Olympics Fri, 07 Feb 2014 11:00:19 +0000 Tim McDonnell 245061 at Why Bill Nye Won the Creationism Debate Last Night <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>They <a href="" target="_blank">warned Bill Nye</a> not to do it. Not to go into the hokey museum of the America's leading Young Earth creationist, <a href="" target="_blank">Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis</a>, and try to reason with the guy.</p> <p>Evolution defenders have long turned down such high-profile public debates, of the sort that creationists yearn for. The logic is simple: It puts creationism on an equal footing with real science; and once you've done that, the creationist has already, in effect, won.</p> <p>But something funny happened on the way to disaster <a href="" target="_blank">last night at the Creation Museum in Kentucky</a>. Sure, creationist leader Ken Ham got the opportunity to appear before a huge audience (<a href="" target="_blank">some 750,000 people</a> were tuned in simultaneously at one moment in the debate; the total number of viewers is surely much higher). He got to show he was likable, and play a lot of well-produced videos featuring people with Ph.D.s or scientific training who nonetheless embrace creationism. In all likelihood, then, Ham gained some followers last night. And he definitely got some priceless advertising for his museum.</p> <p>Yet it came at the cost of being trounced by Nye, who managed to show not only how downright absurd Young Earth creationist beliefs are (noting, for instance, that there is a <a href="" target="_blank">9,550-year-old tree in Sweden</a> that is itself several thousand years older than Ham thinks the Earth is), but to demonstrate the extreme nature of Ham's brand of creationism. In one of the best lines of the night, Nye emphasized that "billions" of religious people around the world accept science, adding, "the exception is you, Mr. Ham."</p> <p>Most of all, Nye allowed Ham to undermine <em>himself </em>before the audience. By in effect preaching, rather than sticking to scientific assertions, Ham demonstrated what we've always known about creationism, and what many canny anti-evolutionists have sought to conceal: It's a religious doctrine, not a scientific one. When asked what kind of evidence would change his mind in the question and answer phase of the debate, Ham basically had no answer. "The answer to that question is, I'm a Christian," said Ham. "And as a Christian, I can't prove it to you, but God has definitely shown me very clearly through his word, and shown himself in the person of Jesus Christ, the Bible is the word of God. I admit that that's where I start from."</p> <p>The picture of a dogmatist, holding out against all evidence for an Earth that's somehow supposed to be only a few thousand years old, where somehow all plant life <a href="" target="_blank">survived being inundated for months</a> by Noah's flood, shone through.</p> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="365" src="//" width="630"></iframe></p> <p>To be sure, it wasn't all smooth sailing for Nye, who in his 30-minute presentation at the outset of the debate laid out a host of facts and scientific details (about the ages of limestone, bristlecone pine trees, air trapped in ice cores, and much else) without articulating a clear message. Early in the debate, Nye's strategy seemed to be to simply show why Ham's brand of creationism is intellectually absurd, even as Nye himself played the role of a "reasonable man" (a phrase he repeated often) who found it all just too much to swallow.</p> <p>Yet this approach likely failed to touch the audience emotionally by showing, for instance, what a threat creationism is to our kids' education, and what an affront it is to the many serious religious believers around the world who don't see any need to pit science and faith against each other. Instead, Nye piled on facts. Or as the moderator, CNN's Tom Foreman, put it when Nye finished, "That's a lot to take in."</p> <p>But as the evening wore on, Nye proved he was better off the cuff than when he was formally presenting. And he started to land a different sort of punch, repeatedly emphasizing the threat to US competitiveness from <a href="" target="_blank">creationism-infused education</a>, and Young Earth creationism's exclusionary nature. "There are billions of people around the world who are religious and accept science," Nye emphasized repeatedly. Meanwhile, Ham appeared increasingly dogmatic, simply banishing from the realm of "observational science" (as he defined it) anything that would tell us how old the Earth is, or what happened there before modern humans could directly observe it.</p> <p>And then, well, there were the lions. Ham's <a href="" target="_blank">particular theology</a> requires him to believe that before Noah's flood, all the animals were vegetarians. "I have not spent a lot of time with lions, but I can tell they have teeth that really aren't set up for broccoli," Nye countered.</p> <p>"Just because an animal has sharp teeth, it doesn't mean it's a meat eater, it means it has sharp teeth," Ham answered, unbelievably.</p> <p>Brian Malow, the science comedian, had fun with this one:</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"> <p>Hey, man, some of my best friends are vegetarian lions. <a href=";src=hash">#creationdebate</a></p> &mdash; Brian Malow (@sciencecomedian) <a href="">February 5, 2014</a> </blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>In the end, the most important thing about this debate, which drew dramatic attention, is that it was thoroughly disruptive of the evolution-creationism status quo. We've been in a rut in this battle for too long, with school boards and lawmakers continuing their <a href="" target="_blank">stealth anti-evolution attacks</a> (rarely admitting, as Ham so plainly did, that they're driven by religion) even as scientists wring their hands about American anti-intellectualism from the safety of their college towns.</p> <p>Last night, in contrast, it all hung out. We saw what Young Earth creationists really, really think. They believe in vegetarian lions and an Earth younger than its oldest-living tree. And for most Americans, there's just no way that makes any sense.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Climate Change Climate Desk Religion Science Wed, 05 Feb 2014 16:06:31 +0000 Chris Mooney 244956 at Creationist Ken Ham: Climate Change Goes Back to "the Flood of Noah's Day" <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="473" src="//" width="630"></iframe></p> <p>When Bill Nye the Science Guy&nbsp;<a href="">took the stage</a>&nbsp;Tuesday night at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, his task was to refute the idea that biblical creationism is a scientifically valid idea&mdash;one that should be taught in schools.</p> <p>But as we've seen&nbsp;<a href="">again</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="">again</a>, science denial is rarely limited in scope. So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that Nye's opponent, museum head Ken Ham, doesn't just reject evolution; he's also spreading some rather unscientific ideas about global warming. Appearing on CNN after the debate, Ham informed viewers that "there's been climate change ever since the flood of Noah's day." Ham added that while the climate had warmed "a bit in the past," it's now "cooling again." (<a href="" target="_blank">Not true</a>.) You can watch Ham and Nye debate climate science in the clip above.</p> <p>This has been something of a theme for Ham, who says in a series of online videos that this supposed "cooling trend" is "no surprise to creation scientists." According to Ham: "Western governments have invested so much in the carbon dioxide theory that they probably won't change their minds any time soon. But Scripture tells us what really happened: We live on a young Earth that has undergone radical climate changes from the global flood."</p> <p>Watch:</p> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="354" src="//" width="630"></iframe></p> </body></html> Blue Marble Video Climate Change Climate Desk Religion Science Top Stories Wed, 05 Feb 2014 06:54:15 +0000 Jeremy Schulman 244946 at How the Feds Are Ripping You Off To Benefit Big Coal <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p>Federal coffers are missing out on what could be billions of dollars in lost revenue due to shoddy accounting work by the office that handles leases for coal mines on public land, according to a <a href="" target="_blank">report</a> made public today by the investigative arm of Congress.</p> <p>The Government Accountability Office was asked by Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a <a href="" target="_blank">stalwart climate hawk</a>, to look into whether the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management routinely sells leases to coal mining companies for far less than their market value. Investigators found that BLM agents in Wyoming (by far the country's largest coal producer) set prices based on coal's historic value, but, in contradiction of the department's own rules, fail to take into account how much it will likely be worth in the future. Similar problems were found in other coal-producing states. As a result, the GAO report claims, many leases were sold far beneath their true market value, depriving taxpayers of additional royalties (which, as it stands, come to about $1 billion per year) that are normally skimmed from the mines' profits.</p> <p>"As a net result, the public is getting screwed," said Tom Kenworthy, an energy analyst at the Center for American Progress who has kept tabs on Interior's longstanding problems with coal lease valuation.</p> <p>That the leases are selling for less than they're worth seems clear; what's less obvious is exactly how much money is at stake, since the values were never properly set in the first place (the GAO report doesn't specify a number). A 2012 <a href="" target="_blank">analysis</a> of federal lease records by former New York State Deputy Comptroller Tom Sanzillo for the independent Institute for Energy Economics found that undervalued coal leases cost the Treasury $28.9 billion in lost revenue since 1983, or almost $1 billion every year. Meanwhile, analysis by <a href="" target="_blank">Senator Markey's office</a> put the figure at $200 million, although a spokesperson would not specify the time period to which that applied, as the underlying data are considered proprietary to the Interior Department, he said.</p> <p>Since 1990, the federal government has leased 107 parcels of public land for coal mining; these parcels typically account for 25-40 percent of the roughly one billion tons of coal produced annually nationwide. That adds up to a massive carbon footprint: Fossil fuels produced on public land create<a href="" target="_blank"> roughly a billion metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution</a> every year, about as much as 285 coal plants.</p> </body></html> <p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/blue-marble/2014/02/coal-ripoff-royalties-gao"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p> Blue Marble Climate Change Climate Desk Energy Tue, 04 Feb 2014 22:41:39 +0000 Tim McDonnell 244906 at Watch: Bill Nye the Science Guy Debates Ken Ham (the Creationist Guy) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ""> <html><body> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="365" src="//" width="630"></iframe></p> <p>As we <a href="" target="_blank">reported earlier</a>, the case for evolution is a slam dunk. Nonetheless, a lot of people don't accept it, and tonight at 7 pm ET, a mega debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ken Ham, leader of the <a href="" target="_blank">Creation Museum</a> in Kentucky, goes forward. The debate will be at the museum itself. It is at 7 pm ET, and can be watched live above.</p> <p>For more of our coverage of evolution, see below. I will be live tweeting the debate on Twitter; follow me <a href="" target="_blank">here</a>.</p> </body></html> Blue Marble Video Climate Desk Religion Science Top Stories Tue, 04 Feb 2014 19:02:40 +0000 Chris Mooney 244911 at