Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, December 08, 2015
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time. Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - respect is due.
This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Stan by Eminem and Elton John
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Top News |
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Undercover Greenpeace activists buy off corrupt academics in a climate change sting
By Xeni Jardin
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The environmental activism group Greenpeace today disclosed that it led an undercover investigation to expose how easy it is for big oil, gas, or coal companies to pay academics at leading U.S. universities to write research that sheds doubt on climate science, and promotes the commercial interests of the fossil fuel industry.
The scientist involved is speaking at Sen. Ted Cruz's Senate hearing on promoting climate denial this afternoon, on Capitol Hill.
Posing as representatives of oil and coal companies, reporters from Greenpeace UK asked academics from Princeton and Penn State to write papers promoting the benefits of CO2 and the use of coal in developing countries.
. . .
Citing industry-funded documents – including testimony to state hearings and newspaper articles – Professor Frank Clemente of Penn State said: “In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar.” Leading climate-sceptic academic, Professor William Happer, agreed to write a report for a Middle Eastern oil company on the benefits of CO2 and to allow the firm to keep the source of the funding secret.
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More countries reject OECD study on climate aid
By John Vidal, Suzanne Goldenberg and Lenore Taylor in Paris
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The refusal by the world’s four most powerful developing countries to accept the methodology used by western economists, to calculate the money raised for poor countries to adapt to climate change, suggests that finance will be the major hurdle at the end of the talks on Friday.
The OECD study claimed that rich countries had already mobilised $57bn of climate aid in 2013-14, as pledged in 2009. But Indian government economists have claimed that the OECD study counted loans made to developing countries and double-counted aid money, putting the real figure closer to $2bn.
. . .
South Africa said that the OECD figures, which have become the rich countries’ negotiating stance, should have been calculated in consultation with developing countries. “The reality is that parties here were not part of pulling together. Double accounting can not be accounted for. They should clearly say what they have provided, to whom and what is being counted,”said Izabella Teixeria, Brazil’s environment minister.
. . .
The four Basic countries, which are working together, have refused to state whether they want a long term goal of 2C or 1.5C. China and India are thought to want 2C, Brazil “under 2C”, and South Africa “in the region of 2C.” “We are discussing the matter. We will come up with a joint position,” said Teixeria.
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Resistance to 'Last Resort' Antibiotic Discovered in Denmark
By Maddie Stone
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Last month, researchers at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhouin made an alarming discovery: a gene that causes bacteria to become resistant to colistin, a so-called “last resort” antibiotic. Now, New Scientist reports that the resistance gene MCR-1 has been found half a world away in Denmark—and a global hunt for more cases is on.
We’ve heard a lot about antibiotic resistance over the past few years, but MCR-1 is especially worrisome. For one thing, the gene exists on a plasmid, a mobile snippet of DNA that bacteria can easily pass around. For another, MCR-1 offers resistance to colistin, the most common of the polymyxin antibiotics. This is a family of drugs doctors use to treat bacterial infections that are already resistant to all other antibiotics on the market. MCR-1 thus raises the specter of pan-resistant bacteria, or infections that can’t be treated by any known drugs.
. . .
If nothing else, the situation should serve as a wake-up call that it’s past time to end the rampant abuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture. According to New Scientist, 12,000 tons of colistin are fed to livestock every year. In most cases, this life-saving drug is not being used to treat illness, but rather to hasten growth and prevent animals from getting sick in overcrowded, disgusting conditions. Bacteria have proven time and again that they’re extremely good at evolving resistance to any dangerous substances we throw at them. MCR-1 is the direct consequence of a broken system.
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Smith & Wesson triples profits in three months to October
By (BBC)
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The company said its overall results had beaten expectations and that it would now raise its 2016 guidance for income and revenue.
. . .
Following the latest shooting in the US that saw at least 14 people killed after gunmen attacked a community centre in San Bernardino, US President Barack Obama said the country must make it harder for potential attackers to obtain guns.
Demands for tougher legislation, however, are constantly met with much anger from pro-gun civil libertarians. Analysts say the argument is complicated.
. . .
Today, Walmart is the world's largest retailer and the biggest-seller of guns in the US.
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International |
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Much ado about Muslim refugees
By (Al Jazeera)
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Up until October, the case for taking in more refugees and asylum-seekers from regions as far apart as Libya and Afghanistan seemed to be an open-and-shut one, at least as far as those on the left of the political spectrum are concerned.
. . .
There is also a sense that politicians and pundits in the US and EU are in the grip of a prolonged spell of navel-gazing, splitting hairs over whether their own governments and those of Arab Gulf states are being too selfish or too generous, simply because cooperation on humanitarian issues from the other side in the Syrian conflict has fallen way short of expectations.
. . .
A majority of Americans (68 percent) and Canadians (58 percent) are very concerned about the threat of ISIL, according to the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes and Trends report. And that survey was conducted before July.
. . .
And in recent weeks, Americans, Canadians and Europeans have been exposed to a barrage of ISIL claims of responsibility for deadly attacks, so fears that Muslim refugees will bring with them the violence of their home countries or fail to integrate successfully into Western societies would have only grown.
. . .
On a visit to New York City last month to receive an award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, one of the founders of the activists' group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently put it this way in an interview to BBC Trending: "If they want to stop the refugee crisis, they should stop the war in Syria.
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USA |
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First These Cops Shot 140 Bullets at a Black Couple. Then They Complained About Reverse Racism.
By Shane Bauer
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Today, a federal judge threw out a yearlong case centering on a peculiar claim: When non-black cops shoot and kill black people in Cleveland, they face stiffer repercussions than black cops who kill black people. Nine police officers—eight white, one Latino—claimed that they were subjected to "reverse discrimination" and "mental anguish" after a controversial 2012 incident in which they killed two unarmed African Americans in a fusillade of nearly 140 bullets. The suit, filed just days after a Cleveland police officer shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, alleged that the officers were singled out due to their race and were unfairly punished while the state investigated the shooting. Their claim of victimization, ruled Judge James Gwin in response to the city's request for summary judgment, was "illogic."
. . .
Following the shooting, the 13 officers who had shot Russell and Williams were given three days of paid leave to "recuperate and adjust emotionally." As required by the police department's policy on officers who have used deadly force, they were then put on restricted duty and stationed in the police gymnasium for a 45-day "cooling off period." They remained there for another year while the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation looked into the shooting, a process that included gathering forensic evidence, interviewing more than 130 officers, reviewing dash-cam and surveillance videos, retrieving the officers' text messages and phone records, and creating an animated reenactment of the shooting. . . .
The data, which had not previously been publicly available, also shows a striking racial imbalance in the use of deadly force by Cleveland cops. While 53 percent of Cleveland's population was black when Russell and Williams were killed, just 26 percent of its police officers were. Between 2007 and 2013, the city's police killed at least 21 people, of whom 16, or three quarters, were black. Of the 32 cops who fatally shot black people (this includes the shooting of Russell and Williams and other cases in which multiple cops killed one person), 24 were white and 7 were black. And in the at least 18 instances in which police fatally shot unarmed black people, at least 15 involved white cops. (Black police, on the other hand, did not kill any white people, armed or unarmed.)
The cops' discrimination claim was not unprecedented, but the judge's dismissal of it was. In 2010, an all-white jury awarded Cleveland patrolman Edward Lentz nearly $300,000 for emotional distress in a federal discrimination case. Lentz had been assigned to the police gym while the city investigated an incident in 2000 where he jumped on top of a car and fired 14 bullets through the roof, killing the driver, an unarmed 12-year-old black boy. Lentz claimed that he was made into a scapegoat to appease the "considerable ongoing outcry in black communities regarding shootings by white police officers."
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
When Eminem found himself unable to pull himself out of a prescription-drug-fueled spiral of self-destruction , he turned to his friend Elton John for help — and continues to do so to this day, as John made clear in a recent interview. But this wasn’t the first time the rapper leaned on the pop-music elder statesman for support.
. . .
“We were debating on whether I was going to perform the Grammys or not,” the rapper told MTV News after the performance. “I was like, ’The only way I’ll perform at the Grammys is with Elton John.’ And I was saying it in kind of jest, thinking it would never happen. The idea of it started becoming more, ’OK, this is a way to really flip it around and really f— people’s heads up.”
. . .
Back in 2001, Eminem took home three Grammys, but it was his duet with John — they embraced after the song and held up their hands together in solidarity — that became that moment everyone was talking about the next day.
Back to what's happening:
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Environmental |
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Hold on to your straw hats. Farming is about to go low-carbon
By Nathanael Johnson
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. . .
A new report takes a close look at the energy that goes into our food and offers some tools for envisioning a low-carbon path forward. It’s called “Opportunities for Agri-Food Chains to Become Energy-Smart” and it was produced with backing from USAID, Duke Energy, and agencies in Germany and Sweden (the partnership is named Powering Agriculture).
. . .
And providing energy to farmers and food producers would not only increase the food-per-megawatt ratio, it would also enrich low-income farmers. Millions of small family and subsistence farmers could “improve their livelihoods and achieve greater productivity per hectare, or per labor unit, by gaining energy access through modern low-carbon systems,” the authors of the report write.
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China is just at a more advanced stage in the process, Shelby said. China started by having local governments build mini grids, which allowed those more remote areas to get power earlier than if they had waited to connect to the big power plants.
The same thing happened in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, he said. Shelby’s home of Letohatchee, Ala., was powered by a rural electric co-op — essentially a microgrid — under Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electric Administration. Eventually, these rural co-ops were connected to the main system. The same thing is happening right now, but with clean energy this time. In Haiti, a nonprofit called EarthSpark has activated Haiti’s first microgrid, powering the town of Les Anglais long before a national grid could get anywhere near the area. That’s just the beginning. The NGO is supposed to build 80 microgrids by 2020.
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Science and Health |
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Near zero friction from nanoscale lubricants
By (ScienceDaily)
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Friction hampers the movement of all mechanical parts from engines, motors, etc. in transportation, oil refineries, power plants, and other facilities. At the Center for Nanoscale Materials, scientists built a system with virtually no friction. The system wraps graphene flakes around nanodiamonds that then roll between a diamond-like carbon-surface and graphene on silica. Such hard ball bearings wrapped in slippery Teflon(R) tissue paper rolling between two surfaces reduces the friction to almost zero.
. . .
In this system, the coefficient of friction is just 0.004, and contact areas are reduced by more than 65%. Analysis of the wear debris revealed that the graphene flakes form nanoscroll-like features wrapping the nanodiamonds. Computer simulations show that more and more graphene flakes scroll with time, gradually reducing the contact area between the nanoscrolls and the diamond-like carbon surface, which allows superlubricity to be attained.
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Technology |
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How Old Is Too Old for a Nuclear Reactor?
By Richard Martin
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. . .
The International Energy Agency says that worldwide nuclear capacity must more than double by 2050 in order to help limit global warming to 2 °C, the target set by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to avert catastrophic consequences. As of late 2015 a total of 66 reactors are under construction worldwide, the highest number in 25 years. (There are 437 civilian nuclear reactors operating worldwide, according to the World Nuclear Association.)
. . .
While there are significant unknowns around extending the lives of nuclear plants built in the 1970s and 1980s, most people in the industry believe that the reactors can operate safely for 80 years. And it’s economic issues, not technical ones, that are likely to shutter aging nuclear plants over the next 20 years. Cheap natural gas and flattening demand for electricity have combined to make older nuclear plants relatively uneconomical. Although the price of uranium fuel is relatively low, nuclear plants remain costly to run: according to the Institute for Energy Research, the levelized cost of electricity from existing nuclear plants is 50 percent higher, on a per-megawatt-hour basis, than that from combined-cycle natural gas plants.
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The problem with money-driven nuclear shutdowns is that they don’t account for the cost of replacing that power with other forms of generation. U.S. utilities cannot meet their obligations to lower emissions under the EPA’s Clean Power Plan—to say nothing of whatever agreement emerges from the Paris talks—if they’re forced to replace large amounts of zero-carbon generating capacity from closing nuclear plants.
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Cultural |
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The Creativity Bias against Women
By Daisy Grewal
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. . .
A recent paper by Devon Proudfoot, Aaron Kay, and Christy Koval at the Fuqua School of Business suggests that in certain contexts, people are more likely to associate creativity with men than with women. If this is true, then women may see their professional opportunities limited in workplaces where creativity is highly prized — and companies may lose out by undervaluing the creative ideas generated by their female employees.
. . .
Why would the bias towards seeing men as more creative fail to show up when it comes to design or fashion design? One possible explanation is that people may believe that women are just as likely to possess the kind of creative thinking needed to excel in design. In fact, perhaps it is the way that we define creativity in a particular domain that determines whether we’re likely to be biased towards one gender or the other. Proudfoot and colleagues found that people’s general beliefs about what it takes to “think creatively” show substantial overlap with traits we more closely associate with men, such as competitiveness, self-reliance, and risk-taking. Future studies may want to look at whether explicitly defining creativity in terms of more stereotypically feminine traits reduces, or even reverses, the bias towards men.
Clearly, the impact of gender on perceived creativity has potential implications for how women are seen in the workplace. Proudfoot et al. ran a different study that looked at data collected about one-hundred and thirty-four senior-level executives enrolled in an MBA program. As part of the curriculum, each executive was anonymously evaluated by their supervisors and direct reports on several dimensions, including perceived innovativeness. Looking at the evaluations in terms of gender revealed that the female executives were judged by their supervisors as less innovative in their thinking compared to the male executives. There were no differences in the ratings of innovativeness by direct reports. Past research has shown that people in high-power positions are more likely to rely on stereotypes when judging others compared to those in low-power positions. Therefore, it makes sense that supervisors, and not direct reports, showed the bias. If the results from this study can be generalized to other settings, then women may be at an unfair disadvantage in workplaces where people at the top place a high degree of emphasis on creative and innovative thinking.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already.