Cool Links

In 1970, Denis Hayes, former student body president at Stanford and an avowed communist, was the driving force behind the first Earth Day, to help students protest what he called a collapsing environment. One that could only be saved by more centralized government control.

To make sure it had as much participation from students as possible he chose...a Wednesday in late April?
If you're a wealthy homeowner who wants a government handout paid for by the state's poorest consumers, you'd better get your solar panels ordered this week.

With $500 billion in unfunded liabilities, a $30 billion deficit just this year, and the nation's most expensive energy costs, the state is finally reducing subsidies that are paid for using added costs borne by everyone who couldn't afford solar panels. It's been an embarrassment for a decade but rich people pretended the money was coming from a magical place - "corporations."
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of ~9,000 common chemicals that became popular as countries moved away from plastic. Like BPA, they keep food safe in ways that paper or metal cannot. Like BPA, they became a target of environmental lawyers because chemical names always sound scary to people who don't understand science.

Unlike BPA, this time lawyers won.(1) They got the Biden administration to create a regulation that had nothing to do with science. Instead, it seems to have been 'what is the lowest level that can be detected at all? and when the answer was 4 parts per trillion, EPA was told to use that. With that in place the Biden administration can now approve it and say 'the science is settled.'
A recent paper estimates that vertical wind shear over the North Atlantic has increased 15 percent during the last four decades - but it is hard to know how much because it's only since the 1980s that we've had accurate measurements, even of things like temperatures.

Models say climate change will lead to an increase in clear-air turbulence, invisible to both pilots and weather radar, and planes will be fine structurally but if you are moving about the cabin when it happens, you will get knocked around.
Mobile homes are only 6 percent of US housing, but they are a 6 percent overwhelmingly dominated by the poor and seniors on fixed incomes. When the Biden administration forced new regulations on the sector in 2022, the argument was that it would curb emissions and save poor people money.
A UK start-up named WNWN is making alternative chocolate using fermentation. Great, I am already a fan. If I had my way my full Easter meal would be GMOs just to stick it to anti-science hippies and the various trade groups they fund to tear down regular food.
In 2014, during the previous recurring drought in the state, California voters bypassed the legislature and the Governor by passing a referendum to build water storage.

Unfortunately, unlike pointless cancer warning labels on virtually every product, building lakes and dams and reservoirs still requires government so the same government - different leader, a few different names in the legislature, same one-party control - has shown voters who is boss by doing nothing.
A recent op-ed in JAMA has an epidemiologist and a lawyer claiming that the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has meant the death of science at the Supreme Court. While common in the "Notorious RBG" era(1), especially as epidemiologists have become more like humanities scholars than scientists, it is in defiance of facts.
California and a few other states have more stringent "emissions" regulations that don't really improve the air, but because air crosses state boundaries and more regulations lead to higher costs for consumers they need a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency to force it on the public. Every few years, EPA has dutifully complied and depending on when you ask, California is either cleaner than ever - regulations worked! - or we're all dying from virtual pollution - we need more regulations!
Genetic research found that horses evolved in North America millions of years ago and spread to Asia and Europe before dying out in the Americas 6,000 years ago.

Then in the early 1600s they were back, brought by Europeans, according to a new study.
Some stories claimed that natives only got horses after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 , when Spanish were defeated in New Mexico and left those and livestock.
The FDA has granted OTC approval of Narcan 4 milligram (mg) naloxone hydrochloride nasal spray to Emergent BioSolutions; the first naloxone product approved for use without a prescription. 

Naloxone reverses the effects of opioid overdose. Recreational fentanyl use has led to a major public health issue in the United States, with more than 101,000 fatal overdoses occurring last year, primarily due to illegal sale and use. 
Once again, 500,000 students couldn't go to school due to a teacher's strike. Teachers are government employees, at least 40 percent and over 50 percent (if you count colleges) of the state budget goes toward education, but a lot of that has nothing to do with teachers. Much of the $129 billion is everything except education, it is nebulous state programs like $250,000,000 to "improve the quality of reading for students" which, like a 2014 voter mandate to add water storage, means years and years of proposals with little being done. 

A year after Governor Newsom bragged during his re-election campaign that his progressive policies were Making California Great Again, he says there is no money for teachers, but there is money for new government agencies.
Assembly Bill 742 will limit the use of police dogs to search/rescue, drugs, and explosives detection, and ban their use in apprehension or crowd control. The reason is racism. 

Obviously dogs are not racist so Democrats who control the legislature, and the ACLU and NAACP groups behind the bill, think police dog trainers are racist -  dogs attack people of color twice as often as white people, they state.
A new survey of 515 trans individuals found that 78 percent are happier since they transitioned from their biological sex. Transitioning means different things, though - only 16 percent report surgery, most changed their personal style or name while 38 percent had therapy. 

It's not all good news. Though they are happier now, in the past 41 percent have felt unsafe in a locker room, 64 percent have been verbally attacked, and 25 percent have been physically attacked.  43 percent reported suicidal thoughts.
The DC Universe may have a harder time defeating evil in "Shazam 3" because the secret weapon of "Shazam: Fury of the Gods" will get banned if Democrats succeed in their latest front in the Forever War Against Science.

It is not just Skittles they are after, it is also Hot Tamales, pez, and others. The reason is because they contain chemicals.
Expanded federal involvement in agriculture using expanded definitions of "waters of the United States" to cover tiny streams and even small ponds has led to a majority of US states fighting in court against Washington, DC.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown has granted an injunction against the Biden administration for Idaho and Texas.

It makes little sense to consider any of them WOTUS, since no American ship is traveling on them, nor could they. The White House is instead arguing because small streams can feed into larger rivers they all fall under the new definition. 
The United Nations, which was basically last to acknowledge the COVID-19 pandemic and even said allegations it originated in Wuhan were racist, has never stopped promoting every alternative to an accidental lab leak - and alleging any other discussion was racism.
After the East Palestine derailment, government officials in states have been worried that eco-terrorists will also ramp up their efforts to sabotage energy infrastructure while media attention is high.

Utah just became the 19th state to pass the infrastructure equivalent of a hate crimes law; HB 370 provides greater penalties for environmentalists who damage railroads, energy plants, pipelines, or infrastructure leading to those. Utah had already been concerned after attacks during the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2017 so a judge can now sentence those caught attempting to go beyond peaceful protests to five years in prison.
Fresh off his single "Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction", United Nations Secretary-General and proud socialist Antonio Guterres has debuted his follow-up “Humanity is on thin ice", backed up by his in-house group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - who had their own big hit when they told us the Himalayas would be melted by 2035 in its Fourth Assessment Report,
If you own an electric car in America, you paid a premium to do a good work; save the planet from CO2 emissions.

Except perhaps not. Unless you are a wealthy elite who can spend $60,000 on a car and $25,000 on solar panels (government subsidies funded by poor people aside) 80 percent of your electricity probably came from conventional energy, like natural gas, anyway.