Tag Archives: january

Goodbye, January — goodbye, another heat record

by holdeminvegas1990 Posted on February 6, 2020

If you found last month unusually balmy for the middle of winter, you’re not alone. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, January was the hottest one of its kind on record, squeaking past the previous record holder, January 2016.

Temperature records have become a fixture of 21st-century life under climate change. Last year, June and September all broke records for global temperature, and July took claimed the hottest month ever recorded. And of course, the last five years have ranked among the hottest years in history.

In some ways, these records seem trivial: After all, last month was just 0.03 degrees Celsius (0.054 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than January 2016. But averages have a way of belying the intensity of temperature changes. Nobody experiences the “global average” increasing temperature; instead, you feel particular anomalies depending on where you live.

Last month, the most extreme temperatures were felt in parts of Northern Europe and Russia, where temperatures were up to 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. Some Scandinavian cities were without snowfall in January for the first time ever; Helsinki, Finland, had less snow than Washington, D.C.

The record warmth threatens livelihoods and pastimes. Skiing areas in Norway and Sweden have been forced to bring in artificial snow to compensate. Meanwhile, in Australia, record-high temperatures and severe drought combined to devastate local wildlife and destroy thousands of homes. Some fires are still burning.

The sobering thing is that these heat records, and even extreme weather events, may soon become so regular that they no longer grab your attention. The steady drumbeats of higher temperatures become background noise, as passing or matching a record every other month becomes the new normal. That’s the problem with broken records: We’re always breaking them.

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Goodbye, January — goodbye, another heat record

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Inmates at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center left without power for days during polar vortex

by isabellinker30 Posted on February 7, 2019

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The scene at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park this past week was harrowing: prisoners — many of whom have yet to be convicted of a crime — relentlessly banged their fists against jail windows, some of them waving lights inside their pitch-black cells. The jail, which houses more than 1,600 inmates, had been without heat for days, just as the city’s temperatures had plummeted to single digits amid a polar-vortex event.

“This is an example of how people who may be voiceless are going to be affected by recurrent extreme weather events,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of UPROSE, a Brooklyn-based community group (located in the same neighborhood as the detention center) that works on issues involving climate change and racial justice.

Indeed, detention centers like the one in Brooklyn are on the front lines of climate change. When temperatures plunge, inmates often lack access to heat; and during heat waves, inmates are often trapped in unbearable conditions sans air conditioning. When detention centers have lain in the path of hurricanes, many facilities have ignored evacuation orders, instead forcing prisoners to ride out the potentially deadly storms in their cells.

“It’s a clear violation of human rights,” Yeampierre told Grist.

As soon as word got out about the facility’s nightmarish conditions, the problem erupted into public outrage. “Disturbing reports have surfaced that the federal government left more than a thousand prisoners without heat, hot water or electricity during subzero temperatures at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn,” Governor Cuomo said in a statement. “No one in New York should live in fear that they may freeze to death alone in the dark.”

(The Bureau of Prisons, which runs the Metropolitan Detention Center, did not immediately respond to Grist’s request for comment.)

Last Friday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Metropolitan Detention Center demanding that power and heat be restored. According to the Washington Post, some protesters even remained overnight in below-freezing temperatures in solidarity with inmates still without power.

“We’re really happy to see how many people stepped up and organized immediately; there was almost an organic rapid response from the community,” Yeampierre said.

During the demonstration, activists chanted “Move them out!” and demanded answers from jail officials. Some carried signs with the words, “Shut it down,” and “Torture at the MDC.” Tensions reached a boil on Sunday when police guards pepper-sprayed protesters, including family members and legal defenders, who attempted to enter the detention facility.

Prison officials attributed the power outage to an electrical fire that shut down primary power to much of the facility on January 27. But, according to a flurry of federal hearings this week, conditions in the prison started to go downhill as early as mid-January — two weeks before the fire.

Full power was restored to the facility on Monday, according to a Bureau of Prisons’ statement.

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Inmates at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center left without power for days during polar vortex

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Ryan Zinke’s new gig could be a disaster for the environment too

by ClaribelOwx Posted on January 28, 2019

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Trump’s former secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, departed Washington in January amid a barrage of ethics investigations. It didn’t take long, but Zinke has managed to find a new gig that sees him going from one controversial enterprise (the Trump administration) to another: He’s now a cryptocurrency guy (yes, really).

In an interview with Vice News, Zinke, sporting MAGA socks, made his post-government business debut as the managing director of Artillery One, a little-known blockchain and cryptocurrency investment company based out of North Carolina. He said he’s hoping to make the private crypto company “great again.”

But making something great again implies it was great at some point in the past.

It’s no secret that cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is the first and most valuable, have a huge environmental toll. Most are maintained by a network of specialized computers that crunch mathematical puzzles, or “mine” to log transactions and make new coins. All those computations take a massive amount of energy: At its peak, Bitcoin was consuming the same amount of energy every year as nearly 7 million U.S. homes.

But the libertarian fantasy currency had a wild year in 2018, with more than $480 billion of value wiped off the entire market. With a lower financial worth, Bitcoin only demands the same amount of energy as powering 4 million US households. (Which, you know, is still not ideal.)

Somehow evaluating power-sucking cryptocurrencies in a swanky hotel in Switzerland, as he’s doing in the Vice News clip, seems all too appropriate for Zinke. After all, his legacy at the Interior Department is putting 13 million acres of public lands in private hands for dirty fuel development, rescinding environmental protections, shrinking national monuments, and … an extensive hat collection.

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States are out of money to keep national parks safe during shutdown

by FerdinaECS Posted on December 31, 2018

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We are now 10 days into this partial government shutdown, and national parks are really feeling the hurt.

As Grist has reported, these shutdowns are not without consequences. Key scientists had holiday plans canceled and are being forced to work without pay. The Violence Against Women Act was allowed to expire. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency ran out of money. Many communities’ disaster relief funds have been held up in political limbo. And while President Trump refuses to back down on his demand for border wall funding, holiday tourists are wreaking havoc on some of our national parks.

National Park Service staff are among the roughly 800,000 federal workers affected by the shutdown. Even though rangers are on furlough, tourists are still visiting these protected areas– with potentially disastrous consequences.

The problems go beyond a lack of toilet paper in the park potties. In Texas’ Big Bend National Park, trash is piling up, which conservationists fear could attract bears and lead to them become permanently habituated to human food. At Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, dozens of cars were seen entering the park despite the lack of park staffing. In California’s Joshua Tree National Park, the Los Angeles Times reports that tourists have strung Christmas lights on the park’s fragile namesake trees.

“We’re seeing so much damage,” said Joe De Luca, an employee at a local mountain supply store, in an interview with the Times. “It’s a free-for-all in there. Absolutely ridiculous.”

In the days before the shutdown began, the National Parks Conservation Association, a non-profit, wrote that during the January 2018 government shutdown, there were similar incidents: “One hunter illegally killed a pregnant elk at Zion National Park when few staff were available to monitor wildlife and enforce rules. Other visitors brought snowmobiles dangerously close to the Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone and drove off-road vehicles illegally into Joshua Tree National Park, leaving tire tracks and harming vegetation.”

Some especially impassioned locals near Joshua Tree are taking it upon themselves to empty trash receptacles and police the park for illegal activity — duties normally performed by temporarily out-of-work park staff.

A few park-heavy states, like Arizona and Utah, have dealt with the shutdown by trying to keep their parks fully staffed with state funds paid directly to the federal government. New York is footing the entire $65,000 per day bill to keep Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty open to visitors. In Hawaii, a local non-profit is staffing Volcanoes National Park.

But today, Utah’s state funding to keep Arches, Canyonlands, and Zion National Parks running with minimal staffing ran out. Rescue services aren’t available in the parks, parts of which are very remote. The Utah Board of Tourism says only Zion will remain staffed in the new year based on funding from a non-profit organization, which will pay about $2,000 to $2,500 a day until January 5.

All the shutdown-related conservation chaos brings into sharp focus how essential park rangers are for preserving these national treasures. So once things (hopefully) get back to normal, make sure to tell one how important they are.

And, you know, keep the Christmas lights at home.

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States are out of money to keep national parks safe during shutdown

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11 Signs that Your Social Media Habits are Unhealthy

by JovitaLarnach Posted on September 2, 2018

Any addiction is unhealthy, so if you?re a self-proclaimed social media addict or tech addict, then you?ll want to examine your relationship with it immediately. But maybe you don?t know whether you?re an addict. If that?s the case, then peruse these signs of social media addiction to determine where you fall on the spectrum.

11 Signs of Social Media Addiction

1. You check your phone constantly.

You know this has to be the first one because the rate of usage is always the first sign. If you?re constantly on your phone, scrolling your social media accounts then that?s a big red flag.

2. You can?t wait in an elevator, line, or at a traffic light without checking your phone.

Silence kills you. Even if you have music blaring in your car and you’re waiting for the light to turn green, you can?t keep your hands off your phone. In fact, it?s so habitual that you don?t even realize you?re doing it. Then one day you run into the car in front of you because some guy in the right lane decided to run the red light. And your peripheral vision tricked you.

3. Your phone is in your hand (and possibly on and facing you) while you?re in an intimate conversation.

If you can?t leave your phone in your pocket or purse during dinner or while you?re in a conversation with a lover, then you?ve got a problem. More than one. First, you?ve got your addiction. Then you?ve got the problem caused by the addiction: an upset lover, friend, or family member.

4. You document your every move.

Go ahead and review your timelines. If your life is so thoroughly documented that you know what you ate for dinner four years ago on Friday the 13th of January at 7:08 pm, then you?ve got an unhealthy relationship with social media. The same goes for when you know every nail polish color you?ve had on your toes and fingers for the last five years.

5. You spend more hours on social media than you do with real people.

You can track how much time you spend on social media with neat apps. Some apps will even show you how many times you open social media or simply open your phone throughout the day. Try tracking yourself for a few weeks. More hours on social media doesn?t nurture a healthy social life. It actually hinders it.

6. You experience FOMO when you go without social media for any amount of time.

If you miss anyone?s posts, even your own, and you experience a deep fear of missing out, then you need to back away from social media for a while. You will miss out on things in life. And you?re making yourself crazy thinking that you won?t. You?ll experience exactly what you need to when you need to.

7. Your sense of self-worth depends on the number of likes, shares, or friends you have.

It?s sad but true. Some individuals rely heavily on the amount of fake congeniality they experience online to bolster their sense of self-worth. This is an extremely unhealthy relationship with social media that has a far-reaching impact. If you depend on likes, shares, or friend requests to feel good about yourself, then you need to reexamine your relationship with social media today. You are worth far more than a mere click of a mouse.

8. You accept friend requests from strangers.

You don?t need to be friends with anyone you don?t know. The only time this would make a difference is if you are a business. And you?re business needs customers. Then you?ll definitely have people you don?t know friending you on Facebook. That?s the only time it?s okay. New friends are to be made in person, then friended on Facebook. Or, if you?re dating and you meet online, that?s a different story. But most of the time, the strangers friending you on Facebook aren?t real anyway.

9. You check your phone first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.

If your morning ritual consists of your phone, then you need to take a step back. Bombarding yourself before you get out of bed and before you go to sleep at night with what other people are doing diminishes your connection with yourself. The more impaired your connection to self, the more you depend on others to give you your sense of self.?That’s?an unhealthy, codependent relationship, even if it is through social media alone.

10 . You walk down the street looking at your phone.

You are putting yourself and others at risk. You could inadvertently walk into traffic, crash into someone carrying groceries, or trip and break a wrist. It?s not worth it.

11. You had to increase your data plan to accommodate your usage.

You may need more data for other reasons, but if you have an unhealthy relationship with social media, then you know that you?re increasing your data for one reason and one reason alone: increased scroll time.

Final Thoughts

You know you?re addicted to social media before you even read these 11 signs. While social media addiction isn?t as big a problem as some might think, it still exists. And it?s more likely to occur in those with addictive personalities.

The same types of people who are likely to get addicted to drugs can experience a social media addiction. Seek help sooner rather than later. Real life social interactions are far more important than the superficial interactions of social media. Plus, real life social interactions have proven to play a role in longevity and overall health.

Image via Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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We Should Have a New List of Banned Countries By Now

by ArturoMedlin63 Posted on May 8, 2017

Mother Jones

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On January 27, President Trump issued an executive order on immigration. Within 30 days, the Secretary of Homeland Security was ordered to compile a list of the information needed from foreign countries to properly adjudicate new visa applications. Immediately thereafter, the Secretary of State was ordered to ask “all foreign governments that do not supply such information to start providing such information regarding their nationals within 60 days of notification.” At that point, any foreign government that refused to provide the necessary information would be “recommended for inclusion on a Presidential proclamation that would prohibit the entry of foreign nationals.”

That’s plain enough, and by April 27 this should have been completed. The executive order may have been stayed by the courts, but that affected only the immediate ban of visitors from seven specified countries. Homeland Security presumably carried out the president’s order to create the list, and the State Department presumably notified foreign countries of its requirements.

So did they? If they didn’t, what held them up? Why hasn’t any such list been published? And why is the Trump administration continuing to waste time in court over its EO since it should be moot at this point?

Has any progress been made on this? Or has Trump put it on hold in a huff because he didn’t get his way? Has anyone asked?

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We Should Have a New List of Banned Countries By Now

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Woman Convicted for Laughing During Jeff Sessions’ Confirmation Hearing

by bfys19 Posted on May 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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Three women involved with the activist group Code Pink were convicted Wednesday on disruption charges after protesting Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Senate confirmation hearing in January. One of the women, Desiree Fairooz, was found guilty of “disorderly or disruptive” conduct for laughing at Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-Ala.) claim that Sessions had a well-documented record of “treating all Americans equally under the law.”

Federal prosecutors said Fairooz’s laughing caused enough of a disruption to turn heads and divert attention from the hearing. They also accused her of provoking further disturbance when she protested her eventual ejection from the hearing.

The campaign director for Code Pink, Ariel Gold, who was sitting near Fairooz during the January 10 hearing, described the laughs as merely a “reflex” and said they were fainter than a cough. HuffPost‘s Ryan J. Reilly was also present at the hearing and recorded Fairooz’s removal:

The other two women convicted on Wednesday, Tighe Barry and Lenny Bianchi, were found guilty on “parading or demonstrating” charges after dressing in Ku Klux Klan robes for the hearing. The New York Times reports they were not convicted of the same disorderly conduct charge as Fairooz because they stood up in costume before the hearing officially began.

All three women pleaded not guilty to the charges. They face up to 12 months in prison each.

Sessions’ nomination to lead the Justice Department was highly contested. Critics claimed he had a history of racist comments and actions, including blocking black judges from serving in federal court and working to prevent black people from voting.

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Woman Convicted for Laughing During Jeff Sessions’ Confirmation Hearing

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GDP Growth Anemic? Blame the Weather!

by RodgerLundie Posted on April 28, 2017

Mother Jones

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A reader emailed this morning suggesting that GDP growth in the first quarter was low because GDP growth in the first quarter is always low:

Something I’ve long wondered is if the seasonal adjustments BLS is making on these numbers is artificially skewing the 1Q results every year. As you recall 1Q09 was the bottom of the Great Recession, it feels like they are overcorrecting for that phenomenon. When you look at the quarterly progression of every year (minus 2015 it looks like) 1Q sucks and then you get q/q improvement during the year.

I remember having read some criticisms of BEA’s seasonal adjustments, so I got curious. Is Q1 growth routinely lower than later quarters?

NOTE: The original chart I used showed GDP growth compared to the previous year. That’s not what BEA reports. The headline number is annualized growth from the previous quarter. I’ve revised the chart, which significantly revises the text below too.

On average, reported first quarter growth really is considerably lower than it is in the other three quarters. Nor is this an issue of unusually high revisions from the advance print to the final print. For the past seven years, the advance number has been a little higher on average than the final revision.

FWIW, if you look at GDP compared to the previous year (i.e., Q1 of 2017 compared to Q1 of 2016 etc.), average growth rates are about the same in all four quarters. This is probably a better measure.

While we’re on the subject, though, the weather is one of my favorite topics when it comes to making excuses for poor growth. Here is Nelson Schwartz in the New York Times today:

Michelle Meyer, chief United States economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said healthier business investment indicated that the overall economy was performing better than the headline numbers would suggest. “Warm weather meant consumers weren’t spending as much on electricity and natural gas and home heating,” Ms. Meyer said. “Government spending can also be affected by seasonal factors, and defense spending is especially volatile.”

Here is Nelson Schwartz in the New York Times three years ago:

In their initial estimate for growth in the months of January, February and March, government statisticians said output expanded at an annual rate of just 0.1 percent, although experts noted that figure was affected by one-time headwinds like unusually cold weather and slower inventory gains after businesses aggressively built up stockpiles in the second half of 2013.

Too hot, too cold, the weather is never just right, is it?

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GDP Growth Anemic? Blame the Weather!

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We Have Weird Ideas About What’s Appropriate for Kids These Days

by michelmartz136 Posted on March 31, 2017

Mother Jones

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Peter Holley has this story up today:

The final straw was a little girl using an iPad with the volume on high, a device her parents refused to turn down despite repeated requests from the staff at Caruso’s, an upscale Italian restaurant in Mooresville, N.C….“Finally, we had to ask them to leave,” Nunez told The Washington Post.

“That was the incident that triggered the entire thing.” “The entire thing,” as Nunez puts it, is the restaurant’s strict ban on children under the age of 5. It went into effect in January, drawing passionate applause from some diners online and angry condemnation from others.

So what does everyone think about banning small kids from an upscale restaurant? I am informally banned from commenting on stuff like this because I have no children and am therefore assumed to have no understanding of the vast stresses involved in raising kids.1 Fair enough. I’ll keep my mouth shut.

Except for this. Thirty years ago, this wouldn’t have been an issue. There were places that were appropriate for small children and places that weren’t. McDonald’s? Appropriate. Denny’s? Appropriate. That little Italian place on the corner? Maybe. How well behaved are your kids? Morton’s Steakhouse? Inappropriate. It’s a grownup place.

This distinction seems to have died out, and I’m not sure why. A lot of people think it has to do with this:

As the number of small children has declined, they all become precious snowflakes who deserves constant attention and only the best things in life. For what it’s worth, I don’t buy this. I don’t have any particular reason. It just doesn’t seem right.

And yet, the distinction between places that are appropriate for small children and those that aren’t sure seems to have gotten bolloxed up. At the same time that lots of parents take their toddlers to upscale restaurants and R-rated movies, older children are all but banned from walking alone to a nearby park lest some busybody call the cops to report this obviously reckless parental neglect.

I dunno. I’m not a parent, and my cats don’t do a damn thing I tell them. What’s going on?

1I also have no experience with the vast stresses of running a restaurant, but no one ever seems to care about that.

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We Have Weird Ideas About What’s Appropriate for Kids These Days

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A Mini Version of Trump Is About to Take Over the USDA

by ClayLafountain Posted on March 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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Back in 2002, a racially divisive fertilizer and trucking magnate shocked the political world by winning Georgia’s governorship, after being down in the polls the entire campaign. As governor, Sonny Perdue refused to divest himself of his companies, declaring, “I am a small business owner, I’m in the agri-business … That’s about as blind a trust as you can get. We trust in the Lord for rain and many other things.” (Hat tip, Politico.)

Perhaps savoring the similarities with himself, President Trump tapped Perdue as his pick for secretary of the US Department of Agriculture way back in January, promising “big results for all Americans who earn their living off the land.” The nomination promptly languished for six weeks, with no date set for Senate confirmation hearings amid complaints of unreturned calls to the White House from sources close to Perdue. On Friday, Perdue’s nomination took a major step forward when the former governor filed ethics papers required by the Senate.

His Public Financial Disclosure Report reveals a Trumpian tangle (though on a much smaller scale) of business interests and obligations, including three Georgia-based agribusiness and berths on the boards of directors of two agribusiness trade groups. In other words, Trump plucked his agriculture secretary from the very industry the USDA exists to regulate. Unlike the president—and himself, during his time as Georgia governor—Perdue (no relation to the Maryland chicken family) pledged to place the businesses in a blind trust (legal, not theological) and step down from the boards.

While the existence of Perdue’s fertilizer, trucking, and grain-trading firms were already well-known, his presence on those two trade-group boards has drawn little attention. Both groups will presumably be thrilled to see one of their own to take the USDA helm.

The National Grain and Feed Association represents the nexus of industries around livestock feed—grain-trading firms, meat companies, and seed/pesticide purveyors. Perdue sat on its board alongside execs from agribiz giants Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, and Dreyfus. The group’s member list reads like a Big Ag version of the Yellow Pages—it includes meat heavyweights Tyson and JB; seed/pesticide titans Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer Cropscience, Dow, and DuPont; and feed giants like Purina Animal Nutrition.

As for the Georgia Agribusiness Council, Perdue serves as the board of directors’ secretary. The council’s “star sponsors” include Bayer Cropscience, Syngenta, Coca-Cola, and Croplife America, the pesticide industry trade group.

As Politico notes, Perdue did plenty of favors for friends while occupying Georgia’s governor’s mansion. The journal found “more than a dozen instances when he gave positions to business associates and campaign donors, and other occasions when he rewarded his state staff with opportunities in his agriculture and shipping empire after he left office.” Even as Perdue awaits confirmation, one of his Georgia associates is already waiting for him in Trump’s USDA, Politico reports: “Heidi Green, a partner of Perdue’s shipping business who also worked for him in Georgia state government, landed a political appointment as senior adviser at USDA in January. She’s now being mentioned as a likely candidate to serve as his chief of staff.”

Meanwhile, a recent report from Environmental Working Group characterized Perdue as “mired in ethical lapses, self-dealing and back-room deals that raise troubling questions about his fitness to run the department.” Two of the many examples cited by EWG—a $100,000 tax break gained Perdue through well-timed legislation; an appointment to a powerful post for his cousin and business partner, now the junior Senator from Georgia, David Perdue—I teased out in this January post.

EWG also shows that Perdue appointed execs from his fertilizer and grain-trading businesses to powerful state boards—again, without divesting himself of those businesses. Then there’s this:

While in office, Perdue failed to meet his own ethical standards by repeatedly taking gifts – including sports tickets and first-class flights— from registered lobbyists. Shortly after taking office, Perdue signed his first executive order, which prohibited any state official from accepting gifts worth more than $25 from lobbyists.

However, a query of lobbyist expenditures shows that Perdue received at least 53 gifts from registered lobbyists over the monetary limit – totaling more than $23,000–between 2006 and 2010, including a $2,400 flight to a NASCAR race. In 2003, the Office of the Inspector General – an office established by Perdue’s second executive order – investigated whether Perdue’s personal use of state helicopters was appropriate, ultimately leading the Office of the Attorney General to prohibit such uses.

Even so, Perdue doesn’t carry quite the baggage of some of Trump’s more outlandish cabinet picks, like Andy Puzder, who ultimately declined to face a Senate confirmation hearing for the labor department post. He’ll likely zoom through confirmation hearings in the Senate, and get a brisk slap on the back from his cousin and erstwhile business partner, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).

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A Mini Version of Trump Is About to Take Over the USDA

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