EPA is set to roll back restrictions on coal-burning power plants

EPA is set to roll back restrictions on coal-burning power plants

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The Wall Street Journal reports: The Trump administration is escalating an effort to revive the flagging U.S. coal industry with a planned move next week to replace restrictive Obama-era climate policies with new rules designed to help coal-burning plants run harder and stay open longer. The proposed new rules, which the Environmental Protection Agency plans is expected to release within days, would be the latest in a series of reversals of policies the Obama administration adopted to slow climate change….

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Trump administration says conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative

Trump administration says conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative

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The Associated Press reports: Conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the U.S., the Trump administration declares in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars and other conservation programs. The position was outlined in a memo released last month in support of the administration’s proposal to relax fuel mileage standards. The government released the memo online this month without fanfare. Growth of natural gas and other alternatives to petroleum…

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Interior secretary’s school friend crippling climate research, scientists say

Interior secretary’s school friend crippling climate research, scientists say

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The Guardian reports: Prominent US climate scientists have told the Guardian that the Trump administration is holding up research funding as their projects undergo an unprecedented political review by the high-school football teammate of the US interior secretary. The US interior department administers over $5.5bn in funding to external organizations, mostly for research, conservation and land acquisition. At the beginning of 2018, interior secretary Ryan Zinke instated a new requirement that scientific funding above $50,000 must undergo an additional review…

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Trump administration is considering pulling back $3 billion in foreign aid

Trump administration is considering pulling back $3 billion in foreign aid

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The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is considering taking back more than $3 billion in foreign aid that Congress already approved, in a move that senators from both parties are calling questionably legal and promising to resist. The Office of Management and Budget instructed the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this month to provide a balance sheet of foreign aid projects that have not yet been funded. Unless Congress intervenes, the money may be…

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The president’s lawyer and his cooperation in the Russia investigation

The president’s lawyer and his cooperation in the Russia investigation

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Bob Bauer writes: The New York Times reports that White House Counsel Don McGahn has interviewed extensively with the special counsel, cooperating with the president’s consent but perhaps more extensively than President Trump may have anticipated. The result may be a further strain on what, according to the Times, was already a difficult working relationship. One source of the tension appears to be the president’s expectation of loyalty from a counsel who maintains a different view of his function—namely, that…

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Why prolonged sitting may be bad for your brain

Why prolonged sitting may be bad for your brain

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The New York Times reports: Sitting for hours without moving can slow the flow of blood to our brains, according to a cautionary new study of office workers, a finding that could have implications for long-term brain health. But getting up and strolling for just two minutes every half-hour seems to stave off this decline in brain blood flow and may even increase it. Delivering blood to our brains is one of those automatic internal processes that most of us…

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More than 2 billion people lack safe drinking water. That number will only grow

More than 2 billion people lack safe drinking water. That number will only grow

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Science News reports: Freshwater is crucial for drinking, washing, growing food, producing energy and just about every other aspect of modern life. Yet more than 2 billion of Earth’s 7.6 billion inhabitants lack clean drinking water at home, available on demand. A major United Nations report, released in June, shows that the world is not on track to meet a U.N. goal: to bring safe water and sanitation to everyone by 2030. And by 2050, half the world’s population may…

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The next five years will be ‘anomalously warm,’ scientists predict

The next five years will be ‘anomalously warm,’ scientists predict

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The Washington Post reports: The past four years have been the four warmest ever recorded — and now, according to a new scientific forecast, the next five will also probably be “anomalously warm,” even beyond what the steady increase in global warming would produce on its own. That could include another record warmest year, even warmer than the current record year of 2016. It could also include an increased risk of heat extremes and a major heat event somewhere in…

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California burning

California burning

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William Finnegan writes: On the northwestern edge of Los Angeles, where I grew up, the wildfires came in late summer. We lived in a new subdivision, and behind our house were the hills, golden and parched. We would hose down the wood-shingled roof as fire crews bivouacked in our street. Our neighborhood never burned, but others did. In the Bel Air fire of 1961, nearly five hundred homes burned, including those of Burt Lancaster and Zsa Zsa Gabor. We were…

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Trump’s claims of no collusion are hogwash

Trump’s claims of no collusion are hogwash

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John O. Brennan writes: When Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s internal security service, told me during an early August 2016 phone call that Russia wasn’t interfering in our presidential election, I knew he was lying. Over the previous several years I had grown weary of Mr. Bortnikov’s denials of Russia’s perfidy — about its mistreatment of American diplomats and citizens in Moscow, its repeated failure to adhere to cease-fire agreements in Syria and its paramilitary intervention in eastern Ukraine,…

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Revoke my security clearance, too, Mr. President

Revoke my security clearance, too, Mr. President

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Retired Navy admiral William H. McRaven writes: Dear Mr. President: Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him. Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security…

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Living in ignorance about our ignorance

Living in ignorance about our ignorance

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Kaidi Wu and David Dunning write: In 1806, entrepreneur Frederic Tudor sailed to the island of Martinique with a precious cargo. He had harvested ice from frozen Massachusetts rivers and expected to make a tidy profit selling it to tropical customers. There was only one problem: the islanders had never seen ice. They had never experienced a cold drink, never tasted a pint of ice cream. Refrigeration was not a celebrated innovation, but an unknown concept. In their eyes, there…

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How Russia, China or America could accidentally start a nuclear war

How Russia, China or America could accidentally start a nuclear war

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BBC News reports: A mysterious Russian satellite displaying “very abnormal behaviour” has raised alarm in the US, according to a State Department official. “We don’t know for certain what it is and there is no way to verify it,” said assistant secretary Yleem Poblete at a conference in Switzerland on 14 August. She voiced fears that it was impossible to say if the object may be a weapon. Russia has dismissed the comments as “unfounded, slanderous accusations based on suspicions”….

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Senate intel wants to follow the money in the Russia probe. But Treasury isn’t making that easy

Senate intel wants to follow the money in the Russia probe. But Treasury isn’t making that easy

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BuzzFeed reports: In its investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the Senate Intelligence Committee has spent more than a year trying to follow the money. But its efforts, unparalleled on Capitol Hill, have been hampered by a surprising force: the US Treasury Department, which has delayed turning over crucial financial records and refused to provide an expert to help make sense of the complex money trail. Even some of the department’s own personnel have questioned whether Treasury is…

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