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Farewell to the United States
Posted September 19, 2020 by Anonymous
Its difficult to realize that a governmental system that seemed to be so strong and healthy is actually so weak and brittle that the election of one man and the death of one woman could destroy it. But that’s the way I feel right now about t…
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Saturday Stories: Considering Risk and Great Fences
Posted September 19, 2020 by Yoni Freedhoff
Aaron E. Carroll, in The New York Times, with a useful read on how most of us have been considering and responding to risk backwards.
Tomás Pueyo, also in The New York Times, on the need for great fences.
Photo: Ongayo / CC BY-SA (https://creativeco…
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Court Considers If Washington State, Smothered by ‘Climate Fires’ and Smoke, Is Violating Youths’ Rights to Life and Liberty
Posted September 18, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 5 minsAs rampant wildfires worsened by climate change continued to batter the western U.S. this week, a Washington state appeals court examined the question of whether young people should be allowed to sue their state government over the cli…
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Fossil Fuel Industry and Koch Network Fighting Pennsylvania’s Move to Join Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
Posted September 17, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 6 minsAs Pennsylvania took a significant step this week towards joining a regional climate initiative to curb carbon pollution from power plants, newly revealed email records show how fossil fuel interests campaigned to oppose this initiativ…
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European Thinktanks Repeating ‘Well-worn’ US Climate Denial Tropes
Posted September 17, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 3 minsOrganisations promoting climate science denial and anti-environmentalism in Europe share the same rhetoric, narratives and right-wing links as their US counterparts, new research has found.
The paper published in the journal Climatic …
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The US Oil and Gas Industry’s Methane Problem Is Catching up With It
Posted September 16, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 13 minsFor years, the oil and gas industry has been able to downplay, or outright ignore, the problem of methane. Methane is an invisible gas, and lax state and federal regulations in the U.S. have allowed oil and gas producers to self-repor…
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‘Unplanned Gas Release’ at Controversial Gas Facility in Weymouth, South of Boston
Posted September 15, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 6 minsThe standard, pre-operational testing of a new natural gas compressor station in the Massachusetts community of Weymouth, south of Boston, had barely begun last week when a gasket failure prompted an emergency shutdown of the facility …
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Oil Industry’s Shift to Plastics in Question as Report Warns $400 Billion in Stranded Assets Possible
Posted September 14, 2020 by Sharon Kelly
Read time: 11 minsOff Africa’s eastern coast, north of Madagascar, lies Aldabra Atoll, a cluster of coral islands that surround a tropical lagoon.
Aldabra is a UN World Heritage Site that’s home to a stunning array of wildlife, including tens of thous…
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How Charles Koch Is Buying Credibility With Academic Investments
Posted September 12, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 7 minsIn 1996, Richard Fink, an executive at Koch Industries and a top advisor to Charles Koch, outlined a three-tiered strategy for getting the petrochemical industrialist’s free-market ideas out into the world: through academia, think tank…
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Saturday Stories: COVID Winter, Circular Errors, Mutations, And Obesity
Posted September 12, 2020 by Yoni Freedhoff
Irfan Dhalla, in The Globe and Mail, on COVID and the rapidly approaching Canadian winter.
Ed Yong, in The Atlantic, on the recurrent errors being made that hamper progress on COVID.
Edward Holmes, in The New York Times, covers the mutating SARS-CoV2…
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Voting for delusion
Posted September 12, 2020 by Anonymous
As I read this short piece at No More Mister Nice Guy, I felt increasingly horrified:
It’s often said that Trump’s approach to everything is “transactional.” I think Trump’s approach to reality is transactional. The truth is the truth when it serves his purposes. In those moments, Trump believes in reality. But in other moments, not only does he walk out to a podium and contradict reality, he does so without necessarily believing that he’s lying. As I’ve said in the past, Trump doesn’t believe in truth. There are (as we see them) facts, lies, and true and false interpretations of reality, but to Trump they’re all equally valid. He’ll use any of them to shape reality, and he’ll believe whatever he’s saying at the time, even if it contradicts what he said six hours ago. In part this is because, as Yastreblyansky says, he believes in the Power of Positive Thinking and therefore thinks confidence can shape reality. In part it’s because it’s important to him to be his audience’s daddy, someone who dominates us the way his father dominated him.
This is the man that millions of Americans voted for. And will vote for again.
I’m reading more stories now about Americans who don’t believe COVID is actually real – they think its all a Democratic plot, and that millions of Americans are just getting the flu, and hundreds of thousands are dying of something they already had like heart disease.
I don’t know what they think people are getting sick from in other countries around the world, but probably they aren’t even aware that other countries actually exist.
And I’m reading stories now about how people in small towns in Oregon and Washington and California think that Antifa, not campers or lightning, is the cause of the fires that are destroying their homes.
I hear from friends in Oregon that, per local media, some claims ‘antifa is starting forest fires’ have been traced to magabros hearing ‘blm’ on radio scanners and not realizing it means Bureau of Land Management
— David Burbach (@dburbach) September 11, 2020
Its absolutely crazy.
Anyone else make this mistake recently? 😳#climatechange #wildfires #apocalypse2020 #motordumb #yycbike pic.twitter.com/Gn1TljmSgu
— REWORKS (@ReWorksYYC) September 12, 2020
Apparently AP style now says you can use “less” even when “fewer” is correct and so 2020 continues to plumb new depths.
— Jonathan Gitlin (@drgitlin) September 11, 2020
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Australian Teens Bring Class Action Climate Lawsuit to Stop Coal Mine Expansion
Posted September 11, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 6 minsThis week, a group of eight Australian teens has brought a groundbreaking new climate change lawsuit against Australia’s Federal Minister for the Environment in an effort to stop a proposed coal mine expansion in the state of New South…
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Delaware Just Sued 30 Fossil Fuel Companies and the American Petroleum Institute Over Climate ‘Denial and Disinformation’
Posted September 10, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 7 mins
Delaware, the home state of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, announced on Thursday, September 10 that it is taking dozens of major oil and gas companies including BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil to court over the rising costs of climate impacts such as sea level rise and coastal flooding.
Like other U.S. states and municipalities suing the fossil fuel industry, Delaware says that the industry knew half a century ago about the likely climate impacts resulting from the use of its products, but instead of warning the public or changing their business model, the fossil fuel companies engaged in campaigns to attack climate science and downplay the risks of burning coal, oil, and gas in order to stave off policy responses.
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Hurricane Laura’s Aftermath: Miles of Oil Sheen in Louisiana’s Wetlands
Posted September 9, 2020 by Julie Dermansky
Read time: 8 mins
Almost a week after Hurricane Laura struck Louisiana’s coast, which is studded with oil and gas industry pipes, tanks, wells, and rigs, I photographed from the sky oil sheen along at least 20 miles of marsh and bayous that absorbed the full strength of the storm. Scientists say warmer ocean waters due to human-caused climate change is making hurricanes like Laura stronger and causing them to intensify more rapidly; Hurricane Laura spun up to a Category 4 storm in just 24 hours.
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Dumkirk
Posted September 7, 2020 by Anonymous
Yes, I know in the overall scheme of things, the sinking of some of the boats in Trump’s boating parade this weekend is pretty trivial.
But there’s nothing like trivial to make Twitter come alive.
The hashtag of the event is #Dumkirk:
Over the weekend, five boats sank at an event put on by Trump supporters near Austin, Texas. The traffic created choppy waters that submerged several boats. https://t.co/BUX5nDp1sK
— NPR (@NPR) September 7, 2020
This is the worst defeat the Confederacy has suffered in 155 years. https://t.co/VrpmNB0Zxq
— Charlotte Clymer 🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) September 6, 2020
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) September 7, 2020
“Cascading failure through unintended consequences is a perfect metaphor for the Trump presidency.” https://t.co/9NuEzs8tjW
— Jacqueline Keeler (@jfkeeler) September 6, 2020
Boater fraud? https://t.co/yJZXlZGWkF
— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) September 6, 2020
The new Trump ad needs work.#Dumkirk #TrumpBoatParade #BoatersForTrump #LakeTravis #BoatParade #sink #Texas #MAGA #laketravisboatparade #MAGAts pic.twitter.com/cWMlHiDGyZ
— John Óg (@johnogpdx) September 6, 2020
FUNNY ALERT
DEVONS ( MY SON) DAD IS MAGA , HE TOLD DEVON TO START GOFUNDME FOR SURGERY , HE’D HELP , HE DIDNT !!!
WELL .. YESTERDAY , HIS FECKING BOAT SANK IN LAKE TRAVIS ! 🤭🤭😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
TALK ABOUT GOOD KARMA
😂😂😂😂😂😂🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂💞!— CeCeResistance (@gumboqueen3030) September 6, 2020
I have never loved a picture more. pic.twitter.com/hrcZsuUJM6
— Lauren Hough (@laurenthehough) September 7, 2020
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Weighty Matters 2020-09-05 05:30:00
Posted September 5, 2020 by Yoni Freedhoff
Mark Earnest, in The New England Journal of Medicine, on becoming a plague doctor.
James Hamblin, in The Atlantic, on why herd immunity isn’t a strategy.
Jesmyn Ward, in Vanity Fair, on losing her husband to COVID.
Jon Cohen, in Science, interviews Moncef Slaoui, the head of operation Warp Speed who says he’ll quit if politics trump science on vaccine safety and distribution.
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Trump EPA Chief Lays Out Vision for Agency Critics Warn Would Create ‘Apocalyptic, Devastated Planet’
Posted September 4, 2020 by guest
Read time: 4 mins
By Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams. Originally published on Common Dreams under CC BY–SA 3.0 US.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler is under fire for a Thursday speech laying out a vision for the agency that critics warn would unleash untold environmental devastation should it come to pass.
Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, delivered the remarks at the Nixon Library in southern California to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the EPA. The agency was established under the Nixon administration.
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Latest Youth Climate Lawsuit Filed Against 33 European Countries Over Human Rights
Posted September 3, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 7 mins
Six young people from Portugal have filed an unprecedented climate change lawsuit against almost all of Europe, targeting 33 European nations for failing to take adequate action on the climate crisis that they say threatens their human rights.
It is the latest in a series of legal actions brought by young people around the world demanding urgent climate action to protect their fundamental rights and safeguard their futures.
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Hoboken, New Jersey Sues Oil Industry for Climate Impacts From its ‘Deceptive Actions’
Posted September 2, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 5 mins
New Jersey has now joined the wave of lawsuits seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate impacts. The city of Hoboken today filed a case against major oil and gas companies and the American Petroleum Institute (API), a powerful industry trade group which has played a major role in promoting “uncertainty” about climate science.
The lawsuit seeks to recover costs associated with climate impacts like extreme flooding and sea level rise. Like other climate liability lawsuits targeting fossil fuel companies, Hoboken’s suit alleges that the oil and gas companies and their lobbying group not only knew early on about the climate harms resulting from their products, but actively engaged in campaigns of deception to undermine climate science and avoid policy responses.
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‘That’s the Way It Is’: Trump’s Dismissal of Hurricane Laura and Climate Crisis Echoes Remarks on COVID-19 Deaths
Posted September 1, 2020 by Sharon Kelly
Read time: 11 mins
At an August 30 briefing in Orange, Texas, during a visit to tour damage from Hurricane Laura, President Trump answered a question about climate change and hurricanes. Texas has had big storms for a long time, he said, and “that’s the way it is.”
The phrase carried echoes of his remarks on COVID-19 — made at a time when the coronavirus had killed over 156,000 and infected over 4.7 million in the U.S. — that the virus’s death toll “is what it is.”
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As Climate-Fueled Wildfires Worsen, Communities Wrestle With Paying the Costs
Posted August 31, 2020 by guest
Read time: 9 mins
By Karen Savage, Climate Docket. Originally published on Climate Docket.
Pennie Opal Plant spent much of last weekend anxiously scanning the horizon for smoke from California’s growing wildfires, packing and repacking treasured items into her car, and trying to decide which to bring if she needed to evacuate.
Plant, the co-founder of Idle No More SF Bay, a group led by Indigenous women dedicated to climate activism, is no stranger to climate-fueled disasters, including California’s growing wildfire crisis. But for the first time ever, Plant was preparing to flee from the flames at a moment’s notice. She has lived in her home in Richmond for more than 20 years.
She left once last year because of the smoke—Plant and her husband both have respiratory conditions — but this was different. This time she was afraid if they left, she’d never see her home again.
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End of August Doldrums
Posted August 31, 2020 by Anonymous
What a strange week!
I’ve been trying to decide what to post here for this week, and haven’t really got anything organized.
Down South, the Republican Convention came in like a lamb and left like a lamb too, and nobody seems to really remember anything about it.
Hurricane Laura came and went too, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Two more hurricanes are on their way. Oh, great!
More Black people were shot needlessly, and more protests are underway, and now Trump is talking about going to Wisconsin and nobody wants to see him there. I wonder if he ever gets embarrassed by how useless he is at any kind of leadership?
Following the example of the Kenosha shooter – who was just “helping the police” by killing two people and wounding a third – we are seeing more MAGA people driving their pickup trucks and waving their flags at the protests, and so more people are getting shot. This isn’t going to end well.
As Twitter keeps mentioning, it’s bizarre for Trump to be talking about how the protest violence is Biden’s fault, when it is happening under Trump’s watch. Of course, Trump never takes responsibility for anything so why would he ever take responsibility for the violence of his own supporters?
And here in Canada we have a new Conservative leader — Erin (AKA Eric) is not making a good first impression as he refuses to confront the haters in his own party. You know, I seem to remember that it was Trudeau, who is supposedly just a whimpy drama teacher according to the Cons, who didn’t hesitate to boot people out of the Liberal caucus for any accusation of misconduct, and who refused to let anyone run under the Liberal banner if they were not pro-choice, and who refused to give federal money for student employment to any organizations that preached against abortion.
O’Toole doesn’t seem to realize that a leader who goes along with jerks and assholes because he doesn’t want to offend anyone is not a leader that Canadians will respect or support.
And now school is getting underway, and it will be a disaster. Give it a week or two, for COVID to start passing between children and teachers and the families, infecting and killing across Canada.
COVID is the honey badger – it don’t care.
Everybody basically KNOWS this is going to happen. But we all seem to be in some sort of mass-hypnosis fugue Tinker Bell state where we think if we just BELIEVE hard enough and WISH hard enough and HOPE hard enough then everything will be JUST FINE.
Yesterday the Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer said we have to change our “summer bubbles” when school starts — basically, what he was saying in an incredibly convoluted and indirect way, is that Grandma and Grandpa have will have to stop seeing the grandkids once they go back to school.
Oh, what a week!
But then I watch this:
Some things you need to stand back and just watch. Bald eagle 🦅 being released back into the wild. 🤩 pic.twitter.com/HgziUJ2Dbo
— Jim Osman (@EdgeCGroup) August 8, 2020
and this
I’m melting seeing them. pic.twitter.com/JlJ5IeccLX
— Life on Earth (@planetpng) August 22, 2020
Now I feel better.
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Saturday Stories: Racist Pulse Oximeters, Convalescent Plasma Politics, Rapid Testing, And Immunity
Posted August 29, 2020 by Yoni Freedhoff
Amy Moran-Thomas, in Boston Review, on how pulse oximeters, integral to the care of a COVID19 patient, encode systemic racism.
Craig Spencer, in The Atlantic, discusses convalescent plasma politics from his very unique vantage point as both a New York ER physician, and as someone who received convalescent plasma (to treat Ebola) as an experimental treatment.
Katherine Harmon Courage, in Vox, with the lowdown on how inexpensive rapid testing might bring back a semblance of normal sooner than vaccines.
Helen Branswell, in Stat, with 4 different types of immunity and their ramifications.
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Climate Accountability Largely Missing from Senate Democrats’ New Climate Report
Posted August 28, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 8 mins
As blistering wildfires and a monstrous hurricane fueled by rising temperatures ravage the U.S., Senate Democrats this week released their action plan for combating the climate crisis and building a clean energy economy.
But the report appears to have left out any reference to, much less a plan for, climate accountability — that is, holding polluters accountable for the harms they are knowingly causing in communities across the country facing extreme heat, devastating wildfires, and disastrous flooding and storms.
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Pollution Scientist Calls Plastic Pellet Spill in the Mississippi River ‘a Nurdle Apocalypse’
Posted August 28, 2020 by Julie Dermansky
Read time: 9 mins
Three weeks after a shipping container full of tiny plastic pellets fell into the Mississippi River near New Orleans, cleanup hired by the vessel that lost its cargo stopped shortly after it started as a pair of major storms approached the Gulf Coast. But huge numbers of the pellets, which were made by Dow Chemical and are melted down to manufacture plastic products, still line the river banks in New Orleans and further afield.
After visiting a couple locations along the river banks affected by the spill, Mark Benfield, an oceanographer and plastic pollution expert at Louisiana State University, estimated that nearly 750 million of these lentil-sized plastic pellets, also known as nurdles, could have been lost in the river.
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As QAnon Conspiracy Spreads on the Far Right, Climate Science Deniers Jump Aboard
Posted August 27, 2020 by Sharon Kelly
Read time: 10 mins
Back in December 2019, two conspiratorial worldviews collided as, for the first time, QAnon’s Q suggested his followers should question anew a topic that, by now, has been considered, and reconsidered, for decades: climate change.
“The Paris Agreement on Climate is Another Scam to Ripoff Taxpayers and Enrich the Politicians,” the Q-Drop (the term QAnon followers use to refer to messages they believe come from some sort of government insider who signs messages with the letter Q) claimed, labeling climate action a “con.”
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Climate Deniers on Front Line of Battle Over Pennsylvania Joining Cap-and-Trade Program to Slash Carbon Pollution
Posted August 26, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 6 mins
Pennsylvania, traditionally a battleground state in electoral politics, is currently embroiled in a battle over the state potentially joining a regional program to curb carbon pollution from the power sector. That program, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), has seen carbon dioxide emissions from power plants slashed by 47 percent over 10 years while generating over $3 billion in revenue. Participating states have then used that revenue to invest in energy efficiency and clean energy programs.
Environmental advocates say Pennsylvania’s participation in RGGI would be a “game-changer,” but climate science deniers and other fossil fuel allies claim it would be too costly and kill jobs in a state where the coal and fracked gas industries have long dominated the energy landscape.
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U.S. LNG Industry’s Business Model Doesn’t Work
Posted August 25, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 8 mins
In mid-July, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette signed an order authorizing the export of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, from a proposed $10 billion terminal and gas pipline project in Oregon. The news release accompanying Brouillette’s order hailed the approval as having “profound economic, energy security, and environmental implications, both at home and abroad.”
Although the project, known as the Jordan Cove LNG terminal, has struggled to obtain state permits and faces vocal opposition from tribes and others, this consistent Trump administration refrain has not changed. The Obama administration made similar claims about natural gas production and energy security, jobs, and the environment, when it oversaw a rapid expansion of the LNG export industry.
President Obama and President Trump were on the same page about LNG exports. They also share something else in common: They were both dead wrong.
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IDEAS THAT MATTER: The COVID Crisis–Are The Youths Trying to Kill Us?
Posted August 22, 2020 by bigcitylib
I have often felt sad over the state of The Youths. What with robots coming for their jobs and Climate Change, their future seems lacking. But by the time its obvious that their lives will be a dystopian dead-end I will myself be retired an…
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We’ve got a goddamn plan!
Posted August 22, 2020 by Anonymous
Chrystia Freeland is going to be a great Finance minister.
The first thing she will have to do it get a grip on the pro-Morneau leaks from her department.
Like the one this week about Trudeau Chief of Staff Katie Telford’s husband Ron Silver phoning up to see if the Finance Department would change some part of the pandemic benefit programs to benefit his employer:
The most bonkers part about this story isn’t the content itself (though it’s a legit thing). It’s that very few people could have provided the info. And the fact that they chose to, which burns (if indirectly) the PMO, is kinda … wow.
Someone is not happy with the boss. https://t.co/NVTk3eHOdo
— Matt Gurney (@mattgurney) August 21, 2020
At Routine Proceedings, Dale Smith writes:
For the past two weeks, as the leaks about Bill Morneau started coming out in advance of his departure, we also saw a number of warnings over social media about Liberals being their own worst enemies and that now was really not a good time for a civil war within the party. The fact that there were anonymous leaks to both VICE and the National Post about this incident shows that someone is suddenly awfully keen to talk, hoping to possibly embarrass PMO in some way, and considering that the leakers are showing how virtuous they were in standing up to Silver might make one assume that those leakers are loyalists of Morneau who are trying to, if not burnish his reputation, then certainly tarnish his detractors. I do wonder if this is a limited screw-you to Trudeau, because I haven’t yet seen camps loyal to Chrystia Freeland and François-Philippe Champagne forming and trying to oust Trudeau so that one of them can take over just yet. That said, this year has proven to be full of surprises, so we’ll see.
I don’t expect Freeland will have any difficulty with the Finance bureaucrats. Listen to her putting down David Akin for being annoyed on behalf of the opposition parties who are being forced to put up or shut up:
Global News reporter David Akin asks Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland why she hasn’t tabled a budget yet
I mean she has been Finance Minister for
48 Hours!
Plenty of time according to Akin #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/rEqbEm2LLH
— G.T. Lem (@gtlem) August 20, 2020
The next thing Freeland will do is get to work on Trudeau’s grand plan for Canada. I do believe there is an untold and unnoticed (by the WE-obsessed Canadian media) story of the Moreau resignation: Trudeau intends to use the COVID crisis to greatly improve Canada’s social welfare system. Moreau wouldn’t do it, but Freeland will.
I think the Morneau resignation, whether forced or not, provided an opportunity for Trudeau to make changes to Canada that he has long wanted to make — I wondered if Morneau was resisting these changes, and THAT, as much as the WE issue, was why he had to leave.
Here’s Trudeau using a reporter’s question about government pandemic support to talk about his plans:
A winning message from @JustinTrudeau . If the opposition parties want to force an election this fall, this is the Liberal plan they will be objecting to. https://t.co/RTckSWqjIL
— Cathie from Canada 🇨🇦 😷🏳️🌈 (@CathieCanada) August 22, 2020
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Saturday Stories: 7 Months In, Magical Thinking, Long Haulers, And Weighing Kids In School
Posted August 22, 2020 by Yoni Freedhoff
Andrew Joseph, Helen Branswell, and Elizabeth Cooney, in STAT, review all that we currently know about COVID-19 and the pressing questions that remain
Gregg Gonsalves, in The Nation, on the mortal need to resist magical thinking.
Ed Yong (god he’s fantastic), in The Atlantic (who can’t be paying him enough), on the need to understand the COVID long haulers to truly understand the pandemic.
Me, in Medscape, on why I think it’s an incredibly awful idea to weigh kids in schools (as is the plan in the UK) to track their COVID gains.
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Koch Academic Influence Returns to Massachusetts With New Tufts University Think Tank
Posted August 20, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 3 mins
When a new Massachusetts think tank housed at Tufts University launched earlier this year, Boston-based media described it as a “CBO-like center” (referring to the Congressional Budget Office) that would offer an “independent analysis” of proposed state policy and legislation.
But one of the main funders of this think tank, called the Center for State Policy Analysis, is a program tied financially to the petrochemical billionaire Koch family. This apparent Koch-linked funding raises questions about just how independent the center’s policy analyses may be.
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The Risk of Preterm Birth Rises Near Gas Flaring, Reflecting Deep-rooted Environmental Injustices in Rural America
Posted August 20, 2020 by guest
Read time: 6 mins
By Jill Johnston, University of Southern California and Lara Cushing, University of California, Los Angeles
Through the southern reaches of Texas, communities are scattered across a flat landscape of dry brush lands, ranches and agricultural fields. This large rural region near the U.S.-Mexico border is known for its persistent poverty. Over 25 percent of the families here live in poverty, and many lack access to basic services like water, sewer and primary health care.
This is also home to the Eagle Ford shale, where domestic oil and gas production has boomed. The Eagle Ford is widely considered the most profitable U.S. shale play, producing more than 1.2 million barrels of oil daily in 2019, up from fewer than 350,000 barrels per day just a decade earlier.
The rapid production growth here has not led to substantial shared economic benefits at the local level, however.
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New Jersey Should Sue Fossil Fuel Companies Over Climate Costs, Panel Says
Posted August 19, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 4 mins
Advocates for holding fossil fuel companies accountable in court for the substantial costs of climate change are urging New Jersey to sue oil majors like ExxonMobil, as over a dozen municipal and state governments have done over the past three years.
A month after a New Jersey senate committee passed a resolution calling on the state to take this kind of legal action, New Jersey’s Monmouth University hosted a virtual panel discussion on Wednesday, August 19 titled “Accountability for Climate Change Harms in New Jersey: Scientific, Legal and Policy Perspectives.” The discussion was intended to outline the case for New Jersey to file a climate accountability lawsuit ahead of the full state senate voting on the resolution, which could come later this month.
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Environmental Groups Sue Trump Admin to Stop LNG Trains
Posted August 19, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 6 mins
Nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of environmental groups against the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), challenging a recently finalized Trump administration rule to allow the transportation of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by rail.
“It would only take 22 tank cars to hold the equivalent energy of the Hiroshima bomb,” Jordan Luebkemann, an Earthjustice attorney, said in a statement. “It’s unbelievably reckless to discard the critical, long-standing safety measures we have in place to protect the public from this dangerous cargo.
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Routine Gas Flaring Is Wasteful, Polluting and Under-measured
Posted August 18, 2020 by guest
Read time: 6 mins
By Gunnar W. Schade, Texas A&M University
If you’ve driven through an area where companies extract oil and gas from shale formations, you’ve probably seen flames dancing at the tops of vertical pipes. That’s flaring — the mostly uncontrolled practice of burning off a byproduct of oil and gas production. Over the past 10 years, the U.S. shale oil and gas boom has made this country one of the world’s top five flaring nations, just behind Russia, Iran and Iraq.
It’s a dubious distinction. Routine flaring gives the industry a black eye.
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Saturday Stories: Kids And School, The Immune System, Russian Vaccines, And Sharpies
Posted August 15, 2020 by Yoni Freedhoff
Zoë Hyde, in a pre-print in The Medical Journal of Australia, with a review article covering what we do and don’t know about the risks of kids, COVID, and school.
Ed Yong, in The Atlantic, with what we do and don’t know about our immune systems and COVID.
Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, in The Guardian, with what we do and don’t know about the new Russian COVID vaccine.
Jen Coleman, in McSweeney’s, writes about Sharpies (don’t miss this one)
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More funny stuff
Posted August 14, 2020 by Anonymous
One of the things I love about Twitter is the funny people on it:
I ate a box of Thin Mints, didn’t get thinner. I don’t think they work 😡
— Hear Me Roar (@Stop_Trump20) August 12, 2020
Tucker Carlson thinks it’s cool to mispronounce Kamala Harris’s name.
Hmmm. What sounds like “Tucker”?
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) August 12, 2020
Check me out guest hosting @JimmyKimmelLive tonight 🤯 pic.twitter.com/4vVsbT579x
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) August 12, 2020
A priest, a minster, and a rabbit walk into a bar. The rabbit says, “I think I’m a typo.”
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 6, 2020
If you voted for trump because “he’s not a politician”, then I hope your next colonoscopy is done by a plumber.
— Mo Bella🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊#VoteBlueToSaveAmerica (@Mocraig13) August 6, 2020
Feeding 10 dogs at once is like going through Game of Thones every single day with the plots and betrayals and double-crosses and backbiting and frontbiting and dominance and submission and a finale that feels rushed and leaves everyone dissatisfied.
— William K. Wolfrum (@Wolfrum) August 5, 2020
They catch the fish and then let it go. They don’t want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.
— mitch hedberg (@mitchhedbot) July 31, 2020
— Scrappy McBuckyball (@ScrotieMcB) August 14, 2020
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Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline Inches Forward, But Opposition Intensifies
Posted August 14, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 12 mins
Late one night this past April, four people on off-road vehicles drove into a small, Indigenous village near the town of Blue River in British Columbia, Canada. It was dark and the vehicles drove through deep snow, smashing through wooden signs and barriers that guarded the village of tiny houses, erected in the path of a long-distance oil pipeline that runs from Alberta to the Pacific Coast.
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Big Oil Faces Mounting Legal Battles Over Climate Threats to its New England Oil Terminals
Posted August 13, 2020 by Anonymous
Read time: 5 mins
A New England-based environmental law group is taking major oil companies to court, claiming the firms have failed to adapt some of their petroleum storage terminals to withstand increasingly severe storm and flooding events worsened by the climate crisis.
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