NewsTrust - Sci/Tech - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

You Need Phosphorous to Live—and We're Running Out

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Tom Philpott - May. 22 (Comment) - Western Sahara , a sparsely populated slice of desert on Africa's northwestern coast, doesn't get much ink as a potential crisis point in the global food system. You've probably never heard of the long-standing independence movement in the Morocco-controlled territory—or that the area harbors vast stores of an element critical to contemporary agriculture. Morocco, it is thought, holds up to 85 percent (PDF) of the globe's known phosphate rock reserve—and a lot of it lies in Western Sahara. Morocco's royal family thus controls what Jeremy Grantham, cofounder of the prominent Boston-based global investment firm Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., called the " most important quasi-monopoly in economic history ." Who cares about phosphorus? For starters, every living thing on Earth—including humans—since all the crops we eat depend on it to produce healthy cells. Until the mid-20th century, farmers maintained phosphorus levels in soil by composting plant waste or ...

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The Lost ‘Trifecta of Scandals’

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Beverly Bandler - May. 16 (Opinion) - the mainstream news media is abuzz about “the trifecta of scandals” besetting the Obama administration, a narrative that fails to assess the actual significance of the three “scandals.” They don’t measure up to the many important scandals that the media neglects

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Dick Cheney, Benghazi, and White House Lies

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By David Corn - May. 15 (Opinion) - Dick Cheney has never been short on chutzpah. Jumping aboard the GOP scandal-mongering machine, the former vice president appeared on Fox News (where else?) and declared to Sean Hannity (who else?) that President Barack Obama and his aides "lied" about the attack in Benghazi last September that left four Americans dead. "I think it's one of the worst incidents frankly that I can recall in my career," Cheney huffed—as if 9/11 had never happened. The former veep went the full Monty and echoed (discredited) right-wing charges that the Obama administration refused to deploy military forces to help Ambassador Chris Stevens and other Americans when they were assaulted in Benghazi.

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12 Animals We Wish We Could De-Extinct

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By — By Maggie Severns, the Mother Jones news team - May. 15 (Comment) - Do you miss the mammoth? Dream of dodos? Long for Lycaena dispar dispar ? After centuries of driving species after species to extinction, we're now tantalizingly close to bringing some of them back. Using advances in genetic sequencing and molecular biology, s cientists across the world are mining extinct animal specimens for ancient DNA to try to resurrect disappeared species. The science is complicated— National Geographic has a great rundown—and so are the ethics involved. But who can resist dreaming up a de-extinction "wish list"? With more species nearing the extinction danger zone every dayâ€‹, there's no shortage of candidates, but some are more scientifically suited for resurrection than others. And even if we could bring a species back, should we? We looked to scientists to explain who they'd like to bring back, and which are best left in the past. T. rex , extinct for 65 million years Designed for "maximum bone-crushing action," Tyrannosaurus ...

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The Most Controversial Chart in History, Explained

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Chris Mooney - May. 09 (Opinion) - Back in 1998, a little known climate scientist named Michael Mann and two colleagues published a paper that sought to reconstruct the planet's past temperatures going back half a millennium before the era of thermometers—thereby showing just how out of whack recent warming has been. The finding: Recent northern hemisphere temperatures had been "warmer than any other year since (at least) AD 1400." The graph depicting this result looked rather like a hockey stick: After a long period of relatively minor temperature variations (the "shaft"), it showed a sharp mercury upswing during the last century or so ("the blade"). The report moved quickly through climate science circles. Mann and a colleague soon lengthened the shaft of the hockey stick back to the year 1000 AD—and then, in 2001, the UN's ...

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Who Am I? Why Everything You Know about Your “Self” Is Wrong

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Psychology Today - May. 09 (Opinion) -

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In Gasland sequel, fracking saga’s pressure ratchets up

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Sarah Laskow - Apr. 27 (Review) - Gasland Part II shows how much higher the stakes have grown in the battle over fracking since Josh Fox made its predecessor.

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GOP Goes Hunting For EPA Emails About Turducken

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Tim McDonnell - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - Earlier this month, when a burst pipe spilled thousands of gallons of heavy oil into an Arkansas suburb, the message from the White House went something like: "Everybody chill, the EPA has it under control." But reporters on the scene found the cleanup orchestrated by the same company, ExxonMobil, that allowed the spill, and heard only crickets when they asked the EPA about its involvement. Turns out, on some of the nation's most pressing environmental health issues, the EPA's transparency record isn't exactly crystal-clear. So with a vote on President Obama's new pick to head the EPA, Gina McCarthy, coming up as soon as next week , it perhaps isn't a surprise that Congressional scrutiny of her nomination has centered more on the agency's secret-keeping habits than on its environmental enforcement goals. At a hearing last Thursday before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, McCarthy got grilled on EPA's transparency record by Republican members, led by Louisiana's David Vitter. ...

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Saving Our Ravaged Planet ... and Ourselves

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Jim Hightower - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - Earth Day cometh — the 43rd year of this national focus on the state of our globe. So, how is Earth doing? Should we be weeping ... or cheering? Both.

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How Science Can Predict Where You Stand on Keystone XL

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Chris Mooney - Apr. 17 (Comment) - On February 17, more than 40,000 climate change activists—many of them quite young—rallied in Washington, DC, to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport dirty tar sands oil from Canada across the heartland. The scornful response from media centrists was predictable. Joe Nocera of the New York Times , for one, quickly went on the attack.

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Keystone XL Would Increase Gas Prices, Reduce National Energy Security, New Public Citizen Report Finds

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

citizen.org - Apr. 15 (Opinion) -

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WATCH: Tar Sands Timmy Needs a Pipeline [Fiore Cartoon]

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Mark Fiore - Apr. 11 () - Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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Al Gore Is Fat, Therefore Global Warming Doesn't Exist

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Chris Mooney - Apr. 11 (Comment) - Ever notice that when conservatives want to attack the science of global warming—or the idea that we ought to do something about it—they almost always find a way to rope in Al Gore? Occasionally, they even try to debunk the science by denigrating Gore personally, in a kind of guilt-by-association gambit. One of the most striking examples came from Ann Coulter, who wrote in a column in early 2007: The only place Al Gore conserves energy these days is on the treadmill. I don't want to suggest that Al's getting big, but the last time I saw him on TV I thought, "That reminds me—we have to do something about saving the polar bears." Never mind his carbon footprint—have you seen the size of Al Gore's regular footprint lately? It's almost as deep as Janet Reno's. Funny stuff, huh? Coulter's attacks on the former vice president's weight were extreme—but new academic research on conservative syndicated columnists and their writings on global warming suggests that ...

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5 Ways Biotech Is Changing Our Pets and Wildlife

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Sarah Zhang - Apr. 08 (Review) - Ever since humans first tamed a friendly wolf, we've been shaping animals to conform to our needs and wants. Just look at a Siberian husky next to a poofy, orange Pomeranian. Science journalist Emily Anthes' new book, Frankenstein's Cat , explores animals created by molecular genetics or wired up to electronics, but, she says, the ethical questions that come along with these futuristic critters are not completely new.

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H-1B/L-1/Offshoring

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

heather.cs.ucdavis.edu - By Norm Matloff - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - In the coming days, we'll likely see a spate of articles similar to the one in today's edition of the San Jose Mercury News, titled, "H-1B Visa Lottery Leaves 40,000 Skilled Foreign Workers Out of Luck." Unfortunately, none of them will mention the simple, obvious solution: Hold an auction, not a lottery. This has been proposed by various organizations, including I believe by WashTech and the Programmers Guild. The idea couldn't be simpler--just dole out the visas in the order of offered wage. Market-based solution, easy to implement, no need for legislation.

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Digital Disconnect: Robert McChesney on "How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy"

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman,Juan Gonzalez - Apr. 05 (Interview) - Longtime media-reform advocate Robert McChesney looks at how the future of American politics could be largely determined by who controls the Internet in his newest book. "'Digital Disconnect' talks about the difference between the mythology of the Internet -- the hope would it empower people and make democracy triumphant -- versus the reality of large corporate monopolies and the government working together are taking away the promise of the Internet to suit their interests,” says McChesney, the co-founder of Free Press and the National Conference for Media Reform. His book begins with a simple claim: "The ways capitalism works and does not work determine the role the Internet might play in society." [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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One Weird Trick for Getting Republicans To Care About Climate

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Chris Mooney - Apr. 03 (Opinion) - It"s a truism at this point to observe that Americans are deeply polarized—along party lines—on climate change. The surveys that have attested to this reality are, by now, too numerous to count. But beneath that depressing surface, there"s a less appreciated and more hopeful reality. If it were somehow possible to strip away the overlay of angry political rhetoric—not to mention doing something about all the scientific misinformation that is constantly being broadcast and rebroadcast by the likes of Rush Limbaugh—a bipartisan political consensus on climate change might really be possible.

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The Coming Crash: Our Addiction to Endless Growth on a Finite Planet [With Photo Slideshow]

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Tara Lohan - Mar. 30 (Review) - If you want to understand how much energy costs, don't look at your electric bill; instead get a copy of the new book Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth. This massive coffeetable book contains hundreds of arresting images showing the effects of our energy choices, including oil spills, nuclear accidents, massive solar arrays, tar sands mines, fracking operations, transmission lines, and more. The photos are complemented by essays from leading writers like Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, Sandra Steingraber, Douglas Tompkins, Bill McKibben, Lester Brown and many others, which put into context our growing energy problems and what we can do about them.

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My doctor doesn't think I'm going to die today

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Kos - By JohnnyRook - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - news can depress. At times it depresses me but, more than anything else, it has filled my life with meaning. I have a mission. Before I die, I want to have some sense that this beautiful planet that has provided the context for my life, will have some chance of enduring. I want to die with hope, believing that my teenage son and his children and your children and their children will live in a world that is reasonably hospitable to human beings. I don't know how that can happen if people will not face the reality of what is taking place in the world. So, I continue to sound the alarm, even though I know that most of what I write is discounted as alarmist or simply ignored as too uncomfortable to deal with.

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Climate Change Denying Congressman to Head Subcommittee on Climate Change

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - As the new chairman of a key House subcommittee on the environment , Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) will be one of the GOP's leading actors when it comes to the Environmental Protection Agency and the growing threats from climate change. So with his first hearing as chairman on tap for Wednesday, what does the freshman Republican—and end times novelist —think about anthropogenic global warming? He's not sure. In response to an inquiry from Mother Jones , Stewart's office emailed a statement suggesting that more study was needed before he could safely say whether—as 97 percent of scientists believe—humans are responsible for rising global temperatures. And even if it was, he explained, that doesn"t mean we should act: The world's climate is changing. That has always been true. Our global climate is always in flux, and always will be. So while I accept that our climate is changing, I also understand that a great deal of research still needs to be accomplished to ...

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CPA Members Visit 105 Congressional Offices

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

prosperousamerica.org - By Sara Haimowitz - Mar. 15 (Press Release) - Fixing the trade deficit was CPA’s number one issue. The U.S. has the worst trade performance of any country in the history of the world. President Obama and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative wrongly push increased “two way trade” which results in record trade deficits and a massive transfer of industries, jobs, intellectual property and wealth to other countries.

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I-Squared Equals I'm Screwed

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Stan Sorscher - Mar. 13 (Opinion) - This January, Senators Hatch and Klobuchar introduced The Immigration Innovation Act, known as "I-Squared." It will triple the number of foreign temporary workers from about 800,000 to over 2.3 million. This will distort the labor market for jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), which has only 4 million workers all told. I-Squared will seriously depress the domestic STEM labor market.

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Georgia Shoots Down Awful Anti-Consumer Broadband Law - Though 19 Cities Now Have Laws Banning or Hindering Community Broadband | DSLReports.com, ISP Information

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

dslreports.com - Mar. 08 (Opinion) -

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AT&T Tells Kentucky That Cutting DSL Lines = 'Upgrades' - AT&T Astroturfers Use Misleading Push Polls to Confuse Locals | DSLReports.com, ISP Information

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

dslreports.com - Mar. 07 (Opinion) -

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Bill Maher Takes On Horse Meat Scandal, Slams California Vote Against GMO Label Prop (VIDEO)

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Bill Maher - Mar. 03 (Comedy News) - video

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