Scientists behind a new study published in the journal Nature used sophisticated computer models to decipher a longstanding riddle about how the massive, mostly uninhabited continent surrendered so much ice during previous warm periods on Earth. They found thatsimilar conditions in the future could lead to monumental and irreversible increases in sea levels. If high levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue, they concluded, oceans could rise by close to two meters in total (more than six feet) by the end of the century. The melting of ice on Antarctica alone could cause seas to rise more than 15 meters (49 feet) by 2500.
The startling findings paint a far grimmer picture than current consensus predictions, which have suggested that seas could rise by just under a meter at most by the year 2100. Those estimates relied on the notion that expanding ocean waters and the melting of relatively small glaciers would fuel the majority of sea level rise, rather than the massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.
The projection “nearly doubles” prior estimates of sea level rise, which had relied on a “minimal contribution from Antarctica,” said Rob DeConto of University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who authored the study with David Pollard of Penn State University. [...]
Of course, the deniers and delayers will find reasons to object and postpone action on climate change. Greedheads, ignoramuses and cowards all contributing in their own ways to making the situation worse. Unfortunately, “we told you so” won’t be much comfort from rising seas and a hundred other aspects of global warming.
Officer Kills Navajo woman armed with scissors by shooting her five times
A woman armed with scissors was shot five times and killed by police over the weekend in this small eastern Arizona community, authorities said.
A Winslow police officer responded to a convenience store Sunday on a report of shoplifting and found Loreal Tsingine, a 27-year-old woman who fit the description of the suspect, said Winslow police Lt. Jim Sepi. Tsingine struggled with the officer and threatened with scissors as the officer tried to take her into custody, authorities said. [...]
The shooting comes amid heightened tension around the country with law enforcement over police shootings, including incidents in Cleveland, Chicago and Ferguson, Mo. The Winslow shooting prompted comments from hundreds of people on social media who questioned whether the number of shots was excessive considering the woman was armed with scissors, and others who defended the officer’s actions.
TWEET OF THE DAY
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High-Income Households Get Four Times More Housing Benefits Than Low-Income Households https://t.co/xboWJJ3dsB
While most of the discussion today is about whether the Obama administration made the right or wrong choice by ousting GM's Rick Wagoner and demanding a more comprehensive makeover than GM or Chrysler had provided as part of their deal to get taxpayer assistance, Robert Scott over at the Economic Policy Institute had some things to say about how the Big Three should be investing in America.
While GM, Ford, and Chrysler production in Mexico increased in 2008, it fell in the United States and Canada. GM has invested $3.6 billion in Mexico in the past three years and is increasing its commitment to Mexican production by having its new Aveo subcompact built there instead of in the United States (Black 2008). And the Big Three plan even greater future investments outside of the United States: GM announced plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil (Ortolani 2008), and Chrysler is investing $570 million in a new engine factory near Saltillo in the Mexican state of Coahuila. At the same time, GM and Chrysler are seeking nearly $22 billion in additional restructuring aid from the Obama administration.This, writes Scott, indicates a clear need for the government to make future tax-paid funding for GM and Chrysler dependent on a restructuring that includes an investment here at home instead of sending those production jobs out of the country.
The problem is that administration's Path to Viability for GM and Chrysler that requires aggressive restructuring also may contribute to further pushing the companies to reduce their U.S. manufacturing footprint and increase their outsourcing off-shoring. That would add more losses to the 369,000 jobs already lost in the auto industry and auto parts makers since December 2007. And when recovery does happen, more U.S. auto jobs would be outside the country than ever before.
As Scott says, "This would conflict with the President’s announced 'commitment to support an auto industry that can help revive modern manufacturing.'"
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin says Trump aides say the man never seriously meant for any of this to work. Joan McCarter hits all the hottest dumpster fires: Trump, SCOTUS, Grassley, ID Gov. Butch Otter’s epic fatalism, basic understanding of & access to contraception, etc.
New York City Commissioner William Bratton dismissed Donald Trump's uninformed statements about Americans' security and pointed out Americans have more to fear within. It is evident that the commissioner is concerned with the rhetoric coming from the right. He has been speaking up frequently as the two Republican front-runners continue to put the safety of Americans at risk for short-term political gain. Their racist and Islamophobic statements risk alienating the same people whose help will be needed to fight extremism.
Recently the New York City commissioner had harsh words for Ted Cruz in a press conference alongside New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. The commissioner appeared on CNN's Tonight with Don Lemon where Lemon played clips of Donald Trump scapegoating immigrants.
Donald Trump—the man for whom Senate Republicans are holding a Supreme Court seat open—has one litmus test for his nominee: he (and face it, it would be a "he") would go after Hillary Clinton.
“Well, I’d probably appoint people that would look very seriously at her email disaster because it’s a criminal activity, and I would appoint people that would look very seriously at that to start off with,” Trump said in a phone interview with ABC's “Good Morning America.” “What she’s getting away with is absolutely murder. You talk about a case — now that’s a real case.”
The New York billionaire added, “If she’s able to get away with that, you can get away with anything.”
Previously, the billionaire said he had the "Heritage Foundation and others" working on his list of nominees. They'll have to hop to it now, interviewing those potential nominees for their feelings about Hillary. Who, by the way, would be a totally private citizen in this scenario.
Good to know Mitch McConnell and crew in the Senate want the Supreme Court to be in Trump's hands.
Idaho's Republican legislature ended a long and typically insane session this week having done—and not done—two notable things. First, it overthrew a decades-long concealed weapons permit system that no one had argued was broken to allow permitless concealed carry by anyone 21 or older. Bully for them. The truly egregious failure, however, was continuing to allow 78,000 people in the state who fall in the Medicaid gap to stay there.
Oh, there were lots of pats on their own backs by leadership, who congratulated themselves mightily for moving "from an issue that we weren’t talking about and said that we were not going to take up, that we have in a very meaningful way" started talking about it. Because that's as much as you could hope for in the four years since the Supreme Court ruled states had an option in taking the expansion. In another four years, who knows, they might have an actual bill come to the floor only to fail.
But the real jeers in this have to be saved for Gov. Butch Otter, who just can't be convinced that not having health insurance is any kind of big deal.
Otter said he was disappointed they did not go forward on closing that gap. But he said he did not totally agree with the claim some have made that Idahoans are dying because they fall in the gap.
“I see plenty of people that die every day in hospitals and they have insurance,” Otter said. “And they’re in the hospital. But they still die.”
Otter said multiple times that people without insurance have healthcare options such as the Terry Reilly clinics. He said he is not considering calling a special legislative session to address the health coverage gap.
That's the kind of thinking that most Republicans got over voicing out loud years ago.
Seventeen of 38 guns discovered by TSA agents at airports across the country, during the week of Jan. 22-28, 2016.
Seventeen of 38 guns discovered by TSA agents at airports across the country, during the week of Jan. 22-28, 2016.
Heavy GunFAIL activity marked the last full week of January. While just 38 guns were “mistakenly” left in coat pockets and carry-ons at the airport, gun owners who stayed closer to home were plenty busy, with 31 accidentally shooting themselves inside the space of seven days, bringing the January total to 115. Twelve minors were accidentally shot, ten accidental shootings resulted in fatalities, eight gun owners accidentally shot into their neighbor’s homes and property, and six law enforcement officers were involved in firearms mishaps (plus one judge).
Actually, it was almost two judges. The one I counted actually shot himself at home, when he went to clean his gun after a visit to the firing range. In the “almost” case, the shot was accidentally fired by a St. Louis County Sheriff’s Deputy “handling his weapon” inside the Civil Courts building downtown. His shot passed through at least one interior wall, and lodged in a judge’s desk. In another remarkable pairing of law enforcement-related GunFAILs, an Orange County, California, sheriff’s deputy lost an AR-15 after placing it atop the trunk of his car and forgetting it before driving off, and an FBI agent who forgot to lock his car in Benicia, California, had three handguns stolen out of it. And just to round out the law enforcement officer category, how about the off-duty Freeport, Texas, cop at home in his apartment in Clute, who accidentally fired his weapon through the apartment wall, hitting his sleeping neighbor in the lower back? Not good!
Today’s headline comes from the last item on the week’s list, the Abington, Pennsylvania, woman who took her gun with her for a run, but lost it along the way and didn’t know exactly where. So look out, residents of Abington and Upper Dublin, there’s a gun on the loose out there! Though this could just as easily have happened with a swimming pool, and they’re dangerous, too.
Having apparently semi-realized that barring all Muslim refugees from their states would not fly, what with religious freedom and so forth, some Republicans have moved on to other ways to make sure none of the people fleeing the world's most horrific war zones get to settle in their neck of the woods. As a state already well familiar with the various ways a bigoted government might discourage non-white people from exercising their right to exist even if the Constitution says they're technically allowed to, South Carolina vaults into the lead:
[T]he proposed law would make sponsors — most of whom are religious institutions — legally liable for any and all crimes committed by the refugee.
“A refugee's sponsor shall be strictly liable to a person if…the refugee acted in a reckless, wilful, or grossly negligent manner, committed an act of terrorism as defined by Section 16-23-710(18), or committed one of the violent crimes defined in Section 16-1-60, that resulted in physical harm or injury to a person or damage to or theft of real or personal property,” the bill reads.
The bill’s supporters say its goal is to prevent terrorist attacks perpetrated by refugees, even though only three of 784,000 refugees resettled in America since September 11, 2001 have been arrested for planning terrorist activities (only one was planning an attack in the U.S., but his plans were reportedly “barely credible”).
Oh heavens, three out of 784,000. What a world this would be if only four in every 1 million Christians were unhinged lunatics.
The idea, we shall patiently explain even though you almost certainly don't need it explained, is to frighten religious groups that "sponsor" Muslim refugees into not sponsoring them anymore. Here’s a better idea that would probably result in prosecuting more actual terrorists and terrorist-enablers, as opposed to imaginary ones:
Here's President Obama at a press dinner in Washington, politely pointing out that if news reporters aren't going to do their jobs then America is pretty much boned.
"When our elected officials and our political campaigns become entirely untethered from reason and facts and analysis, when it doesn't matter what's true and what's not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations," Obama said at the awards dinner for the Robin Toner prize, which honors the late New York Times political correspondent.
Well, yes. If one candidate points out that taxes are what pay for us to have nice things like roads and grenade launchers, and another candidate responds by saying that we could pay for all of that by growing and selling magic beans, it might be a wee bit helpful if reporters pointed out that magic beans do not actually exist and therefore basing the entire United States economy around them is likely to be fundamentally flawed. You know: journalism. Or you could whip up a television punditry program in which you pitted the two sides against each other, the side that knows as fact that magic beans do not exist and the side that says eff you, they'll exist if we want them to, and just let them bicker with each other for 30 minutes with absolutely no hint to the viewer that half of the panel is robustly and earnestly lying. We could call it Crossfire.
Not enough is made of the extent to which political pundits are merely extensions of two-party partisanship. It's in nobody's interest to point out when a politician is flat-out lying to the public, because if you say that then the politician won't grant you interviews anymore and your network will look less important and influential. It's in nobody's interest to point out when one of the pundits is themselves flat-out lying, because pundits do not want to be part of a business model in which there is accountability for saying false or stupid things. That's a long, dark road to go down, a road where maybe Bill Kristol doesn't get to be on television anymore and George Will has to stick to anecdotes about baseball.
So then: Donald Trump's nuclear proliferation ideas. Once a phrase I don't think any of us ever expected to have to use, it has suddenly become a bit urgent because he is very, very likely at this point to be the Republican nominee for the presidency. Which means he will be in charge of those things.
(As a side note: Yes, I am aware that many among us are quite tired of thinking about the short-fingered vulgarian currently scooping up the tattered remains of what used to be a national political party and stitching them back together into a grotesque near-parody of that old party's worst elements, but the collapse of one of the two main American political parties into, well, this is the defining political story of our time. This will be in future history books, kids, and which images are used to illustrate it are at this point entirely dependent on which side wins.)
Note that we said nuclear proliferation, not nuclear anti-proliferation, because Donald Trump's big national security idea is that more countries need to build nuclear weapons. You know, the good ones.
COOPER: Let’s talk about nuclear issues because you talked about this in a really interesting article in The New York Times.
TRUMP: One of the very, very big issues. I think maybe the biggest issue of our time.
First off, we see once again that everything Donald Trump sees or hears or thinks becomes, at that moment, "the biggest." It may never be talked about again, and never once talked about with any seriousness, but everything Donald Trump thinks about he thinks about the most, and everything he does he does the classiest, everything he cares about he cares about bigly. This man quite literally has the brain of a child, and not a very nice one at that. There is no evidence whatsoever that this man has the capability to walk from one end of the White House to the other without pilfering the candlesticks, much less run the nation, and it seems no matter how many television interviews the man gives a bigly chunk of the Republican base considers to be, somehow, impressed by it. This itself may be evidence that the American experiment has drawn to an untimely close.
Bank of America, which has its headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., announced late Tuesday on Twitter that its leadership was joining over 80 chief executives, including Timothy D. Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, in objecting to the new law. Earlier in the day, the chief executives published a letter, addressed to Mr. McCrory, on the Human Rights Campaign website, saying, “Such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business.”
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed an executive order banning all non-essential state travel to North Carolina. The order requires all New York State agencies, departments, boards and commissions to immediately review all requests for state funded or state sponsored travel to the state of North Carolina, and bar any such publicly funded travel that is not essential to the enforcement of state law or public health and safety.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray are banning city officials from travel to North Carolina over the recently-passed HB2.
Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue) appears twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. More than 24,810 environmentally oriented stories have been rescued to appear in this series since 2006. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.
OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES
lowkell writes—NY AG Schneiderman, Former VP Al Gore, Other AGs Announce Effort to Combat Climate Change: “Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today joined Attorneys General from across the nation to announce an unprecedented coalition of top law enforcement officials committed to aggressively protecting and building upon the recent progress the United States has made in combatting climate change. Attorneys General Schneiderman, William Sorrell of Vermont, George Jepsen of Connecticut, Brian E. Frosh of Maryland, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Mark Herring of Virginia, and Claude Walker of the US Virgin Islands were joined by former Vice President Al Gore for the announcement in New York City. Today’s announcement took place during a one-day Attorneys General climate change conference, co-sponsored by Schneiderman and Sorrell. The participating states are exploring working together on key climate change-related initiatives, such as ongoing and potential investigations into whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public on the impact of climate change on their businesses. In 2015, New York State reached a historic settlement with Peabody Energy – the world’s largest publicly traded coal company – concerning the company’s misleading financial statements and disclosures. New York is also investigating ExxonMobil for similar alleged conduct.”
Ellinorianne writes—I Respectfully Disagree President Obama: “I was driving to work this week, or maybe it was home, when I heard the President speaking about terrorism in his Weekly Address. It’s on our minds this week with the horrific attacks in Brussels. Terrorism is a serious issue, it harms and disrupts many lives, Governments and more than just those that we often hear on the news like the one in Brussels. There are people who live in constant fear from terrorist attacks, war, rape and food insecurities. ‘I’ve got a lot of things on my plate, but my top priority is to defeat Isil and to eliminate the scourge of this barbaric terrorism that’s been taking place around the world,’ Obama, using an alternative acronym for the group, told reporters. “There’s no more important item on my agenda than going after them and defeating them. The issue is, how do we do it in an intelligent way?’ But, I sincerely believe that there should be another issue vying for his number one spot. Yeah, you know, that little issue that’s been missing from our Presidential debates? Climate change.”
Mary Anne Hitt writes—Taking the Struggle for Clean Air and Water to Washington, DC: “Earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking before more than 30 Sierra Club Beyond Coal volunteers and staff who flew to Washington, DC, for training and in-person meetings with members of Congress. Participants joined from states critical to our effort to defend strong Environmental Protection Agency standards in Congress -- namely Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. These amazing activists had some important goals while in our nation’s capital - ask members of Congress to 1) Oppose anti-environmental amendments and riders, 2) Oppose standalone legislative attacks on EPA standards, and 3) Support full funding for the EPA and for worker and community transition.”
Two giants from DC duke it out! It’s the Battle of the Century, okay, it’s the battle of the news cycle, but it’s a big one. SuperHil, from Metropolis and Bernman from Gotham. SuperHil superpowers and superdelegates seem insurmountable, but Bernman has his secret weapon: outrage! And that bird.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' name is not yet on the ballot in D.C. after the D.C. Democratic Party submitted registration paperwork a day late, News4 has learned.
The Sanders’ campaign as well as Hillary Clinton's campaign submitted registration fees of $2,500 on time earlier this month in advance of the June 14 Democratic primary.
By all indications, this will be fixed before the district’s primary, which is the last in the nation on June 14. Still, what kind of “minor administrative dispute” happened to omit one of only TWO (real) candidates on the ballot? Jeez. Assuming it gets fixed, this is a minor issue in a primary season full of major ones. But the last thing anyone needs in this already charged primary season is another thousand conspiracy theories (or internet flamewars) blooming.
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A Bernie ballot update: NBC4 is told dc board of elections may administratively fix this next week. If not, it may require council action.
