After 2023 broke the record for hottest year ever recorded, January and February broke global records again.
This year’s climate-related disasters include sprawling wildfires in Texas cattle country and Mexico City’s unprecedented and intensifying water crisis. Meanwhile, continuing temperature increases will bring more air pollution, respiratory disease, pandemics, malnutrition, dehydration, malaria, strokes and other threats that will cause countless more deaths than extreme weather events.
We know the science and have the technologies to tame climate change, but we’re not doing what needs to be done. It is urgent and essential that we make wiser choices and change our behavior.
In the climate arena, a long-standing and legitimate grievance is that our highest leaders keep failing us — not all, of course, but overall…
One or just a few leaders can only do some of what’s needed, particularly in complex, physics-driven, human-dominated ecosystems. We need more climate leaders. We can take a decisive step in the right direction by voting thoughtfully in fair November elections. Further, we can make dramatic progress by rethinking and reworking the meaning of leadership.
...Injecting future-mindedness into decision processes, especially when the elephant in the room is undiscussed long-term risks, is a crucial act of leadership when stakes are as high as climate change.
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments
The decision removes one of the top remaining prospects for the centrist group hoping to upset the two-party system this year with a “unity ticket"
The decision leaves the group with few remaining high-profile options for candidates, despite widespread public concern over the two major-party contenders.
“I appreciate the encouragement I’ve gotten to pursue a third-party candidacy,” Christie said in a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday. “While I believe this is a conversation that needs to be had with the American people, I also believe that if there is not a pathway to win and if my candidacy in any way, shape or form would help Donald Trump become president again, then it is not the way forward.”
...Ultimately, Christie concluded that while there is a conceptual appetite for a third choice in the upcoming election, there was not a practical path to victory. The obstacles included significant ballot access and litigation expenses, a late start for raising campaign dollars and the risk of drawing votes away from Biden to help elect Trump as president, the people said.
This is a story about the Supreme Court as much as it is one about Trump.
...“About half of the country does not trust the Supreme Court to issue a fair and nonpartisan ruling on the question of whether Trump is immune from prosecution.” That view is held by 46 percent of respondents, compared with 24 percent who do trust the Supreme Court on this question, and 29 percent who are unsure. If those numbers are even close to being correct, one answer to Beutler’s dilemma is that the argument needs to also be about the Supreme Court and its role in allowing Trump to escape legal consequences.
...Connect Trump’s evasion strategy to the Supreme Court’s declining public trust, and a rule-of-law story begins to take shape.
...Perhaps a better way to cover Trump’s current campaign to end any and all legal accountability for himself, while bending the criminal justice system to harm political enemies and rivals, is by starting not deep in the weeds with a mass of civil and criminal trials that are tough to differentiate and that seem to suffer from endless delays. Maybe the story should be one that the American public already well understands: Donald Trump and his cronies bought at least three justices using Leonard Leo’s secret piggy bank of judges, and those justices are shielding him from legal accountability, which is the Trump way in law and justice and always has been.
Maybe “Trump is using his entire presidential campaign to evade legal accountability” is indeed one too many turns in a media narrative that seems to get no specific traction in part because it never lifts off in time to soar. But “Trump Justices doing what MAGA paid for” may not be, since the public already knows it. That isn’t a tricky story to tell. It’s the American dream, turned on its head: Two systems of justice, one for the haves and the other for the have-nots, and two types of justices, Trump’s for the taking.
...Four NBC News staffers expressed concern that instead of fixing the problem, hiring and then firing McDaniel had only alienated liberal viewers while confirming Republican fears. Two Republican aides told Semafor they’d texted their NBC News contacts to express their anger with the decision.
...McDaniel, who was elevated then discarded by Donald Trump, makes an unlikely martyr for a MAGA right that viewed her with suspicion even after she stopped using her middle name, Romney. But even critics like former candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took the opportunity to lambaste the network.
“I would have hoped for a decision other than that one for her first move to be instantly taking a contributorship with that network,” Ramaswamy told Semafor, “but I think it’s very lame of NBC to cower to a mob of people after they did make a decision to not give somebody who they thought was worth giving a voice to. You could debate that question, but once they’ve decided to do it, I think it’s rather lame and pathetic of them to pull it before she had a chance to contribute whatever they thought she had to contribute.”
Three days after abruptly dropping her U.S. Senate bid, New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy on Wednesday reiterated she quit to avoid a “bloody, expensive, and just divisive” Democratic primary in a critical election year — but she stopped short of endorsing U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, her former opponent and now the race’s frontrunner.
...She specifically noted how the Cook Political Report moved the Senate race from “Likely Democrat” to “Solid Democrat” after her departure because it no longer looked like there would be a “brutal primary.”
Much attention in the race was focused on how Tammy Murphy received heavy support from powerful county party chairs that put her in position to have top placement on the primary ballot — known as the “county line” — in large, vote-rich areas of the state.
Several of those leaders do business with the state or hold public jobs, which critics said gave them incentive to support the first lady and not run afoul of the governor. Phil Murphy still has two years left in office and will also oversee the next two state budgets. Both Phil and Tammy Murphy have staunchly denied accusations of nepotism.
The Biden administration’s latest initiative to clean up heavy industries could usher in a new era for one of the dirtiest sectors of all: iron and steel.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Energy announced up to $6 billion for commercial-scale projects that aim to demonstrate technologies for slashing greenhouse gas emissions at an array of U.S. factories. Two of the winners — the steelmakers Cleveland-Cliffs and SSAB — were each selected to receive up to $500 million for “green steel” projects that could transform how America turns iron ore into the ubiquitous high-strength metal.
Both companies are proposing to build low-emissions ironmaking facilities that run on clean hydrogen instead of coal or fossil gas. No such facilities exist yet in the United States, and only one worldwide is operating at a meaningful scale today: the Hybrit project in Sweden, in which SSAB is a partner. Before this week’s announcement, the only other hydrogen-focused projects in the works were based in Europe and China.
The first mass-produced 900V drive system rolled off the production line Wednesday. Chinese EV maker NIO’s (NIO) “Thunder” 900V electric drive system (EDS) can add over 150 miles (255 km) with five-minute fast charge.
NIO announced the milestone Wednesday after building its one-millionth EDS. NIO’s Porsche-rivaling ET9 premium EV will be the first to feature the new tech.
The ET9 was unveiled in December aimed at “the new generation of high-end business users.” NIO packed the luxury EV with its latest tech for a “perfect package of flagship-style exterior, spacious interior, immersive experience, efficient recharging.”
...The ET9 will be the first to use a 925V W-Pin synchronous permanent magnet electric motor (340 kW peak power). At just 174 lbs (79 kg), the unit provides 4.3 kW/kg power density, which NIO claims is the highest among asynchronous induction EV motors. The front motor features 180 kW peak power with 2.6 kW/kg power density.
American Prospect — Tim Ryan’s Natural Gas Advocacy Makes a Mockery of Public Service
Tim Ryan’s Natural Gas Advocacy Makes a Mockery of Public Service
...This year, Biden surrogates came bearing bad news for fossil fuel company executives: Climate change is real, and the energy transition is inevitable. The main target of industry ire was the Energy Department’s pause on permitting new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports while the department conducts a public-interest review of LNG expansion.
The former public servants at the helm of one natural gas advocacy group that held court at CERAWeek are a case study in just how far that crowd has strayed from the public interest. The group calls itself “Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future,” and its aim is to sell Democratic constituencies and leadership on natural gas, a potent climate pollutant, as a “clean energy solution.” Its seven-figure budget comes primarily from a dozen-odd fossil fuel companies and trade associations, and it spends nearly all that money puffing up the wonders of natural gas.
Natural Allies is chaired by former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who lost his Senate bid to J.D. Vance in 2022; former Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who lost her Senate seat to Bill Cassidy in 2014; former Florida Rep. Kendrick Meek, who lost his Senate bid to Marco Rubio in 2010; and former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter. The co-chairs, all moderate to conservative Democrats, wield their status as former public servants to lend credence to the policy arguments they’re paid by private interests to make. Natural Allies paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Landrieu and her colleague, former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), in 2022 for their natural gas PR work. We’ll have to wait for the release of the group’s 2023 tax filings to know how handsomely Ryan, Meek, and Nutter are being paid.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could reinstate restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone and sharply roll back access nationwide.
Being cited in the debate is a 151-year-old law, the Comstock Act of 1873, under which it's illegal to use carriers such as the United States Postal Service to mail "obscene" materials such as drugs that induce abortions.
Abortion rights advocates are concerned that if former President Donald Trump is reelected, he may be able to utilize the law to undercut access to medication abortion -- which accounted for more than 60% of U.S. abortions last year, according to Guttmacher Institute research -- across the country. Abortion opponents hope the next anti-abortion president, potentially including Trump, would rely on the Comstock Act to pursue more restrictions.
Harvard is lending its name to a methodologically flawed poll that often promotes a right-wing political agenda.
Every month, the Harvard-Harris Poll (a partnership between Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies, The Harris Poll, and HarrisX) administers a public opinion survey that tracks Americans’ attitudes on a wide range of political and social issues.
It’s no secret that the Harvard-Harris Poll is inaccurate and misleading. A number of experts from both sides of the aisle — including statistician Nate R. Silver, Democratic pollster Geoff D. Garin ’75, Republican pollster Chris Wilson, liberal journalist Josh M.J. Marshall, and conservative law professor Ilya Somin — have criticized the survey. FiveThirtyEight, a public opinion blog that aggregates political polls, recently ranked Harris Insights & Analytics in the bottom 50 percent of American pollsters.
...Since 2017 — when Trump sympathizer Mark J. Penn ’76 became one of the poll’s co-directors — the poll has relied on leading questions. Unlike a proper survey, which asks unbiased questions in order to collect accurate and reliable information, Harvard-Harris poll questions tend to align with right-wing narratives and prompt respondents to lean toward conservative choices.
The infant star FS Tau B is blasting out a powerful jet of matter that is slamming into sounding material.
The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a powerful jet erupting from a natal envelope of gas and dust that represents a newly born star announcing itself to the cosmos.
Hubble spotted the infant star slicing its way out of the nebula that birthed it when it zoomed in on the youthful multi-star system FS Tau. Located 450 light years from Earth, FS Tau is part of the Taurus-Auriga region. This region of space houses a stellar nursery of dark clouds of gas and dust, or "molecular clouds," that are home to numerous newly forming protostars and young stars.
Astronomers had previously discovered binary infant stars in this 2.8 million-year-old nebula, and now a second infant star, designated FS Tau B, has made itself known.
Doing any star-gazing tonight? Tell us all about it in the comments!
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) eeff, Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw