EPA’s Scott Pruitt, Defying White House, Doled Out Huge Raises – The Atlantic
Yikes.
Category: Science and Stuff,
EPA To Gut The Only Major Federal Rule To Cut Climate Pollution From Vehicles
The Environmental Protection Agency has outlined plans to undo a landmark Obama-era rule tightening fuel standards for vehicles, weakening the only major federal policy to reduce planet-warming emissions from the nation’s top source of greenhouse gas pollution.
EPA To Gut The Only Major Federal Rule To Cut Climate Pollution From Vehicles | HuffPost
Future generation hating assholes!
Underwater melting of Antarctic ice far greater than thought, study finds
Hidden underwater melt-off in the Antarctic is doubling every 20 years and could soon overtake Greenland to become the biggest source of sea-level rise, according to the first complete underwater map of the world’s largest body of ice.
Warming waters have caused the base of ice near the ocean floor around the south pole to shrink by 1,463 square kilometres – an area the size of Greater London – between 2010 and 2016.
hmmm
Scott Pruitt Getting Pressure To Resign From EPA
Pruitt has come under scrutiny over his accommodations in Washington after ABC News reported last week that he rented a room in a luxury townhouse co-owned by the wife of a top gas industry lobbyist. That same day, Bloomberg News reported that Pruitt paid $50-a-night for the room, well below market value for a place in that neighborhood. The EPA’s Office of General Counsel issued a hasty memo on Thursday arguing that the administrator paid a fair rate.
… Pruitt’s use of taxpayer-funded security details on trips home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, a family vacation to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and an outing to the Rose Bowl college football game in Pasadena, California.
…Federal regulations require government employees to be “prudent” when “making official travel arrangements” and book “the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.”
Yet Pruitt spent between $2,000 and $2,600 on first-class flights to Oklahoma, and regularly books $1,400 to $4,000 flights to Boston, New York and Corpus Christi, Texas, according to The Washington Post. He often stays at luxury hotels.
Pruitt’s international travel costs are especially high. His trip to Italy for an environmental summit last June cost more than $120,000. Pruitt’s trip to Morocco in December to promote liquefied natural gas ― a bizarre decision for an EPA administrator ― cost nearly $40,000, according to E&E News.
… Pruitt made his name on the national stage suing the EPA more than a dozen times to block rules such as the Clean Power Plan, President Barack Obama’s landmark greenhouse gas regulation, which Pruitt is in the process of repealing. He championed Exxon Mobil Corp. in investigations into whether the oil giant committed fraud by covering up evidence that emissions from burning fossil fuels warm the planet.
Scott Pruitt Buffeted By Growing Pressure To Resign From EPA | HuffPost
hmmm
Pruitt’s EPA security broke down door to lobbyist condo
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s protective detail broke down the door at the Capitol Hill condo where he was living, believing he was unconscious and unresponsive and needed rescue, in a bizarre incident last year.
…A Capitol Police officer called 911 at the behest of Pruitt’s security detail, which had tried unsuccessfully to reach him by phone, and by banging on the building’s front door, according to police recordings obtained by ABC News.
“They say he’s unconscious at this time,” the 911 operator is told, according to the recordings.
…The protective detail then broke down the building’s glass-paneled front door and ascended two flights …where two sources tell ABC News he was found groggy, rising from a nap. It is unclear what led to the panic that caused the response. Pruitt declined medical attention, and a police report was never filed.
…The EPA has since reimbursed Pruitt’s former landlord, Vicki Hart, for the cost of the door.
…The EPA allowed Bloomberg News to review copies of canceled checks that Pruitt paid to the condo owner. The news outlet reported that the checks show varying amounts paid on sporadic dates — not a traditional monthly “rent payment” of the same amount each month, according to Bloomberg. In all, Pruitt paid $6,100 over six months to the limited liability corporation for the Capitol Hill condo.
…“It’s not just if he is paying market rent,” Morgan said. “A short-term lease is expensive. Is he given the ability to end it any day? Is this an arrangement any other person could get on the open market? My assumption would be this situation does not involve the hallmarks of a specific fair market transaction.”
…“Since Administrator Pruitt is already involved in allegations of accepting gifts of travel, the question arises whether a sense of entitlement may have led him to violate the gift rules on this rental arrangement as well,” Holman wrote.
The head of the nonprofit watchdog group the Environmental Integrity Project and former EPA Director of Civil Enforcement Eric Shaffer called on the EPA’s inspector general and Congress to look into the issue.
“Does this explain why Pruitt flew to Morocco to pitch natural gas exports, which isn’t really an EPA concern?” Schaeffer wrote in a statement.
EXCLUSIVE: Pruitt’s EPA security broke down door to lobbyist condo – ABC News
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EPA chief lived in condo tied to lobbyist ‘power couple’
For much of his first year in Washington, President Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist [J. Steven Hart,] property records from 2017 show.
…Hart confirmed to ABC News in a brief interview that Pruitt had lived in the flat, which is owned by a limited liability company that links to an address listed to Hart and his wife Vicki Hart, a lobbyist with expertise in the healthcare arena. Steven Hart said Vicki Hart co-owns the condo. He said his wife was not the majority owner, but would not identify her partners.
…[Vicki Hart’s] website says she previously worked as a senior health policy advisor for two Senate Majority Leaders before establishing her firm in 2002.
Steven Hart served in the Reagan Justice Department and became, according to his website, is one of the nation’s top fundraisers, donating more than $110,000 to Republican political candidates and committees last election cycle, records show.
…Mr. Hart is the chairman and CEO of Williams and Jensen, a firm that reported more than $16 million in federal lobbying income in 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Among his many clients are the NRA, for whom he serves as outside legal counsel.
…Another lobbying client of Hart’s, the railroad Norfolk Southern, spent $160,000 last year on lobbying Congress on “issues affecting coal usage, oil production, and transportation, including EPA regulation.”
…The revelations about Pruitt’s living situation come as more questions are being raised by members of Congress about his travel habits.
hmmm
Ocean plastic predicted to triple within decade
Ocean plastic predicted to triple within decade – CNN
goddamnit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
Nasa to launch most powerful planet-hunting mission for other earths |
NASA is conducting its most powerful planet-hunting mission to date, with the launch of a new satellite to find “other Earths”.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will spend at least two years studying more than 200,000 nearby stars looking for “exoplanets” — planets like ours in other our solar system.
Nasa to launch most powerful planet-hunting mission for other earths | HeraldScotland
cool
EPA drops rule requiring mining companies to have money to clean up pollution
Trump’s administration announced Friday that it won’t require mining companies to prove they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution, despite an industry legacy of abandoned mines that have fouled waterways across the U.S.
The move came after mining groups and Western-state Republicans pushed back against a proposal under former President Barack Obama to make companies set aside money for future cleanup costs.
…The U.S. mining industry has a long history of abandoning contaminated sites and leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanups. Thousands of shuttered mines leak contaminated water into rivers, streams and other waterways, including hundreds of cases in which the EPA has intervened, sometimes at huge expense.
The EPA spent $1.1 billion on cleanup work at abandoned hard-rock mining and processing sites across the U.S. from 2010 to 2014.
EPA drops rule requiring mining companies to have money to clean up pollution – Chicago Tribune
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr
Parts of the Amazon thought uninhabited were actually home to up to a million people
Parts of the Amazon previously thought to have been almost uninhabited were really home to thriving populations of up to a million people, new research shows.
…Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that there were hundreds of villages in the rainforest away from major rivers, and they were home to different communities speaking varied languages who had an impact on the environment around them.
…People had assumed ancient communities had preferred to live near these waterways, but the new evidence shows this was not the case.
The discovery fills a major gap in the history of the Amazon, and provides further evidence that the rainforest—once thought to be untouched by human farming or occupation—has in fact been heavily influenced by those who lived in it.
Parts of the Amazon thought uninhabited were actually home to up to a million people
hmmm
Meet Your ‘Interstitium,’ A Newfound Organ
The human body is about 60 percent water. About two-thirds of that water is found inside cells, but the other third is outside cells and is known as “interstitial” fluid. Although researchers already knew that there is fluid between individual cells, the idea of a larger, connected interstitium — in which there are fluid-filled spaces within tissues — had been described only vaguely in the literature, Theise said. The new study, he said, expands the concept of the interstitium by showing these structured, fluid-filled spaces within tissues, and is the first to define the interstitium as an organ in and of itself.
Meet Your ‘Interstitium,’ A Newfound Organ
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Pointy-Headed Medieval Skulls in Germany May Have Been Bulgarian ‘Treaty Brides’
And when the team compared these ancient genes to modern peoples’, they found that the men and the women whose skulls were not modified closely matched northern and central European populations. However, the female skulls with ACD belonged to southeastern European ancestors like Romanians and Bulgarians. (Second-century Romania is considered to be the earliest location in Europe where the practice was common, but there, it was as common for men as for women, Price writes.) One of the women even showed East Asian ancestry.
…The skulls might have belonged to high-status or noble southeastern European women who traveled to Bavaria to marry for political alliances. ACD is believed to have been practiced only amongst the wealthy, Price reports.
…The “political marriages” part of Burger’s theory can be debated, but the research debunks the theory about the Huns bringing skull modification to Western Europe.
wild
Plastic particles found in bottled water
…Tests on major brands of bottled water have found that nearly all of them contained tiny particles of plastic.
In the largest investigation of its kind, 250 bottles bought in nine different countries were examined.
…Companies whose brands were tested told the BBC that their bottling plants were operated to the highest standards.
…”It’s not about pointing fingers at particular brands; it’s really showing that this is everywhere, that plastic has become such a pervasive material in our society, and it’s pervading water – all of these products that we consume at a very basic level.”
Plastic particles found in bottled water – BBC News
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Grocery bags and takeout containers aren’t enough. It’s time to phase out all single-use plastic
Denying free plastic bags at checkout or providing plastic straws only on request sends consumers an important message that there’s a bigger cost to these everyday items than they may have considered. But the actual flow of trash has been disrupted only modestly.
…Plastic makers spent millions of dollars trying to stop the state from banning single-use plastic bags. Imagine what they might unleash if all their disposable plastic products were threatened. As part of that, they will no doubt argue, as they did in the plastic bag fight, that the efforts to clean up plastic waste would mean lost jobs.
…Cutting jobs on a disposable plastic product line doesn’t automatically translate into fewer people employed. If the door closes on polystyrene takeout containers, for example, it will open for cardboard and other biodegradable alternatives.
No one expects consumers to give up convenience completely. In fact, the market for bio-plastic alternatives, which are made from corn starch and other biodegradable sources, is already growing thanks to public awareness and the sporadic efforts to curb plastic waste.
Grocery bags and takeout containers aren’t enough. It’s time to phase out all single-use plastic
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EPA withdraws regulation on ‘major sources’ of pollution
EPA withdraws regulation on ‘major sources’ of pollution – CNNPolitics
Because these asshole do not care about the world they are leaving to their own children. Money before the welfare of their own progeny!!!
There’s a single nerve that connects all of your vital organs — and it might just be the future of medicine
After months puzzling over this, he finally hit upon the idea that the brain might be using the nervous system – specifically the vagus nerve – to tell the spleen to switch off inflammation everywhere.
It was an extraordinary idea – if Tracey was right, inflammation in body tissues was being directly regulated by the brain.
Communication between the immune system’s specialist cells in our organs and bloodstream and the electrical connections of the nervous system had been considered impossible. Now Tracey was apparently discovering that the two systems were intricately linked.
…Operating far below the level of our conscious minds, the vagus nerve is vital for keeping our bodies healthy. It is an essential part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for calming organs after the stressed ‘fight-or-flight’ adrenaline response to danger. Not all vagus nerves are the same, however: some people have stronger vagus activity, which means their bodies can relax faster after a stress.
…Tak suspects that patients will continue to need vagal nerve stimulation for life. But unlike the drugs, which work by preventing production of immune cells and proteins such as TNF, vagal nerve stimulation seems to restore the body’s natural balance. It reduces the over-production of TNF that causes chronic inflammation but does not affect healthy immune function, so the body can respond normally to infection.
… Low vagal tone is associated with a range of health risks, whereas people with high vagal tone are not just healthier, they’re also socially and psychologically stronger – better able to concentrate and remember things, happier and less likely to be depressed, more empathetic and more likely to have close friendships.
…The implications of being able to simply and cheaply improve vagal tone, and so relieve major public health burdens such as cardiovascular conditions and diabetes, are enormous. It has the potential to completely change how we view disease.
…However the technology develops, our understanding of how the body manages disease has changed for ever. “It’s become increasingly clear that we can’t see organ systems in isolation, like we did in the past,” says Paul-Peter Tak. “We just looked at the immune system and therefore we have medicines that target the immune system.
“But it’s very clear that the human is one entity: mind and body are one. It sounds logical [or to some of us: mindblowingly obvious] but it’s not how we looked at it before. We didn’t have the science to agree with what may seem intuitive. Now we have new data and new insights.”
Vagus nerve stimulation – Business Insider
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Bottled Water: You’re Probably Drinking Tiny Bits of Plastic
Drinking from a plastic water bottle likely means ingesting microplastic particles, a new study claims, prompting fresh concerns — and calls for scientific research — on the possible health implications of widespread plastics pollution.
A study carried out on more than 250 water bottles sourced from 11 brands in nine different countries revealed that Microplastic contamination was nearly universal, found in more than 90% of the samples.
Bottled Water: You Could Be Drinking Tiny Bits of Plastic | Time
Am I the only person in the world who think this should be obvious to anyone who is awake????
Trump Administration Eliminates Animal Welfare Rules
The rule, created under the United States Department of Agriculture, would require poultry to be housed in spaces large enough to move freely and fully stretch their wings. Livestock would be required to have some access to outdoor space year round.
Trump Administration Eliminates Animal Welfare Rules
Sigh…
Skeleton of sunken ship laid bare at York’s Short Sands Beach
When it was visible in 1958, locals speculated that it might be the remains of a “pink,” a term used to describe a small, square-rigged vessel with a flat bottom and a narrow stern.
But the wreck was again examined after a spring nor’easter uncovered it in 1980. Based on the type of construction, marine archaeologist Warren Riess hypothesized that the vessel is a sloop of about Revolutionary War age. The remains have been mapped and identified by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission as archaeological site ME 497-004.
…This past weekend’s storm also uncovered ancient tree stumps all over Gooch’s Beach. Similar roots and stumps hide under the sand at Wells Beach. Radiocarbon dating performed on those in 1959 by geologist Arthur M. Hussey indicates that about 3,000 years ago, the white pine trees were growing in a wooded upland. They were gradually drowned by the rising sea level.
During the Archaic period, Maine’s shoreline was much farther out to sea than it is today. From about 5,000 years ago to 3,600 years ago the rate of sea-level rise in this area was 5.5 inches per century. The rate of sea-level rise then slowed to 2 inches per century. The current rate of rise, as measured by the Portland tide gauge, is 7.5 inches per century — nearly four times faster than the rate over the last few thousand years.
…Soon the sand will reclaim these vestiges of the past and the usual views will be restored until the next perfect storm thrills onlookers with another peek.
Skeleton of sunken ship laid bare at York’s Short Sands Beach
cool
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