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Climate Progress

Global Extinction: Gradual Doom as Bad as Abrupt

By Joe Romm on Feb 23, 2012 at 7:35 pm

In “The Great Dying” 250 million years ago, the devastation came with runaway greenhouse warming

Photo of Griesbach Creek in the Arctic.

The geology of Griesbach Creek in the Arctic tells an ancient tale of slow extinction.  Source NSF.

A reposted National Science Foundation press release.

The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report.

It shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden events.

Thomas Algeo, a geologist at the University of Cincinnati, and 13 colleagues have produced a high-resolution look at the geology of a Permian-Triassic boundary section on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.

Their analysis, published today in the Geological Society of America Bulletin [abstract here], provides strong evidence that Earth’s biggest mass extinction phased in over hundreds of thousands of years.

About 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, Earth almost became a lifeless planet.

Around 90 percent of all living species disappeared then, in what scientists have called “The Great Dying.”

Algeo and colleagues have spent much of the past decade investigating the chemical evidence buried in rocks formed during this major extinction.

The world revealed by their research is a devastated landscape, barren of vegetation and scarred by erosion from showers of acid rain, huge “dead zones” in the oceans, and runaway greenhouse warming leading to sizzling temperatures.

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Economy

Sen. Bill Nelson Uses Six Cows To Avoid Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars In Property Taxes

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 23, 2012 at 6:20 pm

ThinkProgress noted last year that multi-millionaire movie star Tom Cruise manipulated a tax break meant to help struggling farmers in order to pay just $400 of property taxes on his $18 million Colorado estate. Cruise was able to pay so little because he allowed some sheep to graze on the estate, thus qualifying the land as agricultural and making it eligible for a big tax break.

According to the Miami Herald, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) has done much the same thing, letting cows graze on a plot of land that he owns, which dramatically lowered his tax bill:

Thanks to a half-dozen cows that graze Nelson’s 55 acres on the Indian River, he saved $43,000 in property taxes last year…The land has a full market value of $2.7 million, but the county tax collector uses the agricultural value of $210,000. That reduced Nelson’s tax bill in 2011 to $3,696. [...]

Nelson’s property may never have draw attention but over the years he has put some of it up for sale, netting at least $1.4 million. Three of the five lots were not classified as agriculture, according to records he provided to the Times. Two others were agriculture, as is a sixth lot he currently has for sale at about $540,000. On those, he has gotten the benefit of low taxes before selling at market value.

“I pay all the taxes owed on the pasture land,” Nelson said, defending the tax break. “This pasture has been in my family since 1924 and it’s been a cow pasture since 1950.” But this doesn’t change the fact that the state lost much needed revenue on tax breaks that were meant to aid family farmers, but instead went to land that is decidedly not a farm.

As Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out, there’s an easy fix for this problem, as states could just “replace current agricultural land valuation systems with an agricultural circuit breaker that makes property tax relief available only to real family farms.” “This would not only ensure that Senators and movie stars do not abuse the system, it would also better target those farmers most in need of property tax relief — the farmers for whom the tax loopholes were presumably written in the first place,” CTJ noted.

Health

Report: 50,000 Americans With Pre-Existing Conditions Find Coverage As A Result Of Health Reform

By Guest Blogger on Feb 23, 2012 at 6:20 pm

The Affordable Care Act’s Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) is credited with providing comprehensive health coverage to nearly 50,000 Americans with high-risk pre-existing conditions, according to a report released today by the Department of Health and Human Services. The PCIP is a temporary program intended to make health coverage available and more affordable for individuals who are uninsured — and were likely denied coverage based on their pre-existing conditions — and are ineligible to receive Medicare and Medicaid. Once the health reform law is fully implemented, in 2014, insurers will be prohibited from refusing coverage to any American with a pre-existing condition.

Since its launch in November 2010, there has been an approximate 400 percent increase in PCIP enrollment — specifically amongst older uninsured Americans, who’s serious pre-existing conditions require more intensive and ongoing medical care — with the PCIP program attracting 8,000 new applications every month from August through November 2011.

PCIP enrollees are immediately granted access to the most basic medical treatments, including primary and specialty care, hospital care, prescription drugs, home health and hospice care, skilled nursing care, preventive health and maternity care, but because of the severity of many of the enrollees’ conditions, 78 percent of the total cost to run the program is spent on providing care for four types of potentially life-threatening medical needs, such as: cancer, circulatory diseases (i.e. coronary artery disease), degenerative joint diseases, and rehabilitative care/aftercare (i.e. radiation and chemotherapy).

In 2011 the Federally-administered PCIP served 628 enrollees with cancer, including 333 enrollees diagnosed with breast cancer, and covered more than 1,000 enrollees with a diagnosis of either ischemic heart disease or heart failure. Assuming that the risk profile of the Federally-administered PCIP population is reflective of the program as a whole, we estimate that the PCIP program served nearly 1,900 individuals with cancer and approximately 4,700 people with heart disease in 2011.

A recent study examined a sample of 1,485 enrollees in 10 state-based PCIPs and found that 18.7 percent of individuals had joint disease, 16.8 percent of individuals had diabetes or other disorders of the endocrine system, and 15.4 percent had cardiovascular disorders. The top five diagnoses or procedures by cost vary by State, but typically include cancers, ischemic heart.

Some states have had trouble getting the high risk pools off the ground and have either relied on existing state programs or offered patchy benefit packages“. The transition to the new pools has been less than flowing, with enrollment failing to meet the Obama administration’s projections, and while most states still have yet to exceed their operating budgets, at least nine have burned through their money and are currently requesting additional funding — Alaska has spent $13 million on just 45 people. Costs have also stunted enrollment rates, as premiums remain impossibly high, even after the federal government’s decision to reduce them in an attempt to appeal to more people.

– Fatima Najiy

NEWS FLASH

BREAKING: Maryland Senate Passes Marriage Equality Bill | Today, the Maryland Senate passed marriage equality legislation with a vote of 25-22. Opponents proposed numerous amendments in an attempt to derail the bill, including several that failed in the House last week. Sen. Bryan Simonaire (R) even read the full text of the children’s book King & King on the floor, expressing concern that schools will teach that same-sex couples exist — one of many “filibusters” that delayed the vote. All the proposed amendments failed, which means the passed bill now proceeds to Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who has promised to sign it. The law is set to take effect January 1, 2013, but will likely be challenged in a referendum before then.

Update

O’Malley celebrates the vote with a tweet:

Politics

Romney Pushes Altered Versions Of Newspaper Endorsements, Edits Out Criticisms

By Adam Peck on Feb 23, 2012 at 6:00 pm

In the weeks leading up to this Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary in Michigan, Mitt Romney has struggled to defend his 2008 editorial in the New York Times that argued against a government rescue of the US auto industry that the state is so dependent on.

And even while several newspaper editorial staffs have offered endorsements of Romney, many of them have included paragraphs criticizing Romney for his position on the successful Detroit rescue.

Or have they? The Romney campaign is facing a fresh round of criticism for selectively editing out paragraphs that hit Romney for his position on the bailout, as well as his job performance at Bain Capital and involvement in the Massachusetts health care bill. In endorsements from the Detroit News and Grand Rapids Press circulated to reporters covering the campaign and published on his campaign website, any mentions of Romney’s political liabilities have been removed. Here’s one paragraph from the Detroit News editorial that was omitted by the Romney campaign:

At least one editor is not happy about the move. Media critic Jim Romenesko reported that Nolan Finey, the editorial page editor at the Detroit News, was planning on calling the campaign to make his displeasure known. “They should have run the complete, original version,” Finey told Romenesko.

The Romney campaign has defended the decision by claiming that publishing the full editorial would violate copyright law. But it didn’t take long for a commenter on Romenesko’s site to point out that the campaign’s use of the editorial would qualify as fair use, and thus not be subject to any required editing. Not to mention the fact that the Detroit News was asking for the campaign to republish their editorial, as is common when any newspaper endorses any candidate.

Alyssa

Week of Anarchy: Civil Society in Charming

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 23, 2012 at 5:21 pm

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched all four seasons of Sons of Anarchy. And while shotgunning the show’s episodes may not be for the faint of heart (so much grotesque violence!), it’s given me a lot to think about with the show. So every day this week, I’ll be considering another aspect of life in Charming, California. The previous posts in this series appear here and here.

While Sons of Anarchy is deeply immersed in a conversation about institutions, one of the things that distinguishes it from a show like The Wire is that it’s not equally interested in all of the interlocking institutions whose friction produces most of the show’s drama. The focus is always on the MC, and U.S. Attorneys, cops, and businessmen are only important when they wander into the frame that Kurt Sutter’s set up. That’s an interesting choice, and it means the show has, thus far, left a central question unaddressed: how do the citizens of Charming feel about the deal Police Chief Wayne Unser struck with SAMCRO? And about the presence of the MC in their midst in general?

We meet a fairly narrow band of Charming residents who have no formal involvement with the MC or their various rivals: in law enforcement, we’ve got Wayne Unser, David Hale, and Eli Roosevelt; in the business community, we’ve got Jacob Hale, Elliot Oswald, and Mrs. Roosevelt; and in the medical establishment, we have Margaret Murphy. In other words, we have no broad-based sense of how much the ordinary citizens of Charming interact with SAMCRO, or what they feel about their town’s entanglement with a deeply criminal enterprise. Do you bring you minivan to the MC’s shop if you’re a mom with engine trouble? Are you angry about crime on the fringes? Do you think the relationship is worth it to keep the drug trade away from your kids? And if it’ll create jobs and increase property values, would you support the development of Charming Heights?

The people whose perspectives we do have tend to to provide more personal insight than institutional narratives. We understand that Chief Unser is personally entangled with Gemma Teller Morrow, and that he benefits personally from his relationship with the Sons of Anarchy. But given the timing of the club’s founding and its formalized relationship with Charming law enforcement, it makes sense that Charming might have accepted SAMCRO’s protection as service cuts took a toll on California in the wake of the passage of Proposition 13, which severely limited California’s ability to raise additional tax revenue, in 1978. If Sutter does make a First Nine spinoff of Sons of Anarchy, it would be fascinating to explore how SAMCRO burrowed in to its position in Charming. It’s not just that decision that’s obscured: killing David Hale deprived the show of a legitimate counterweight to Unser’s understanding with the Sons and the opportunity to see a Charming native, who perhaps represents more mainstream citizens, work out a new relationship with SAMCRO. Eli Roosevelt’s arrival in Charming could have been an opportunity to see how the Sons responded to a law enforcement structure that wasn’t solely concerned with the crime rate in that one town. But Lincoln Potter’s arrival again derails the development of a new dynamic. I understand that having a single representative of a threat makes for more economical storytelling, but it does deny us the opportunity to see a show balanced between SAMCRO and the cops, and to fully explore the implications of that shifting relationship.
Read more

Climate Progress

Obama: Our Children Want Us To Preserve The Planet

By Brad Johnson on Feb 23, 2012 at 5:21 pm

In a speech today on energy policy at the University of Miami, President Barack Obama went off his prepared remarks to note that young people — including his daughters — seem to care more than his generation does about the fate of the planet:

Anybody who tells you that we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about or just isn’t telling you the truth. Young people especially understand this, because, you know, it’s interesting. When I talk to Malia and Sasha — you guys are so much more aware of conserving our resources and thinking about the planet.

Watch it:

The president’s speech forcefully rejected the Republican idea that the solution to all of the world’s ills — including rising gas prices — is to drill, baby, drill. However, not once did Obama directly recognize the reality of climate change. The past burning of hundreds of billions of tons of fossil fuels is already degrading the safety of our planet for human civilization. To keep Obama’s own promise of limiting total warming to no more than 2°C, about 80 percent of proved fossil-fuel reserves will have to remain in the ground.

NEWS FLASH

Signatures Verified For Maine’s Marriage Equality Ballot Initiative | The Maine Secretary of State has confirmed that enough signatures have been verified to allow a ballot initiative legalizing same-sex marriage to proceed this year. The necessary threshold was 57,277 signatures, but LGBT activists collected 85,216 verified signatures. This will officially be the first referendum that will ask voters to affirm marriage equality, rather than ban it.

Economy

How Big Banks Suckered Foreign Governments Into Helping Them Lobby Against Rule Restricting Risky Trading

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 23, 2012 at 5:15 pm

It’s no secret that the nation’s biggest banks have been trying to kill off the Volcker rule, the regulation named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker that is meant to rein in the banks’ riskiest trading. The banks, with the help of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), watered the rule down before it even became law, and have been heavily lobbying to make it even weaker ever since.

And according to Bloomberg News, the banks even ginned up foreign outrage against the rule, by first pushing regulators to include stricter restrictions on trading by foreign firms, and then getting foreign governments to oppose the rule because of those restrictions:

U.S. banks pushed regulators to widen proposed restrictions on trading and hedge-fund ownership by foreign firms, then encouraged governments around the world to complain about the rule’s reach.

The two-pronged lobbying strategy resulted in foreign officials joining U.S. lenders to push back against the Volcker rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker and incorporated in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

“The criticism of foreign governments on behalf of their banks is helping U.S. banks fight the rule,” said Anat Admati, a professor of finance at Stanford University. “It also muddies the water, shifting the debate away from the main issue, which is reducing the risks banks impose on the economy.”

So the banks pushed for the rule to affect foreign firms more than it had, and then pushed foreign governments complain about the effect the rule would have on their banks. It’s a brilliant strategy to turn the focus away from the banks own malfeasance and to generate an ally where there hadn’t previously been one.

As ProPublica’s Jesse Eisenger noted, when it comes to the Volcker rule, “bank lobbyists with complicit regulators and legislators took a simple concept and bloated it into a 530-page monstrosity of hopeless complexity and vagueness.” And there’s no denying the need for a rule to prevent the sort of trading that the Volcker rule is supposed to prevent. As Donald van Deventer wrote in American Banker, “I can name at least four institutions that effectively ‘went under’ and required taxpayer support because of proprietary trading gone bad: Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Royal Bank of Scotland.”

The Volcker rule will undeniably hurt profits at the nation’s biggest banks. But that’s a feature of the rule, not a bug. As Reuters’ Felix Salmon put it, “These institutions should get smaller. These institutions should be less profitable. There’s no reason to believe that when that happens, the economy as a whole will suffer.” But in order to preserve their ability to gamble their way into oblivion the banks are doing everything that they can, including manipulating foreign governments into pressing for a less secure American financial system.

Security

Santorum Claims Obama ‘Sided’ With Assad, First To Recognize Syria ‘In Many Years’

By Ben Armbruster on Feb 23, 2012 at 5:15 pm

On Fox News after last night’s GOP presidential candidate debate, Rick Santorum tried to take a jab at President Obama’s foreign policy but in doing so he just made himself out to look a bit foolish:

SANTORUM: And the main thing that has to be done is we need to do what president Obama was very willing to do in Egypt and Libya but seems reticent to do in Syria and Iran, those two connected states, which is to support the pro- democracy movement in those countries.

The president was ready to jump in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and Egypt, but again has actually sided originally with Syria in this struggle by recognizing them as a government for first time in many years, put an embassy in place in Syria. And of course during the elections in 2009 when the green revolution was sparked in Iran, he sided with Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs.

Watch the clip:

Obama never “sided with Syria” since the pro-democracy movement broke out there nearly a year ago. In fact, last August, the president called on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down, and reiterated it earlier this month. “Assad must halt his campaign of killing and crimes against his own people now. He must step aside and allow a democratic transition to proceed immediately,” Obama said. The United States also supported and pushed a recent U.N. Security Council measure calling on Assad to step down — only to be vetoed by Russia and China. The veto led Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to call for a “friends of democratic Syria” to unite and rally against Assad’s regime.

But Santorum’s claim that Obama recognized Syria’s government “for first time in many years” has no basis in reality. The United States first recognized an independent Syrian state in 1944 and last reestablished diplomatic relations 30 years later. In 2005, President Bush withdrew the U.S. ambassador in response to the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, but the U.S. did not cut diplomatic relations. In 2010, Obama installed a new ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, amid Republican intransigence, and since then Ford became a thorn in the Assad regime’s side until he, and all embassy staff, were forced to evacuate last month due to increasing violence.

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