Posts tagged environment
CU symposium: Is digital journalism an oxymoron?
Mar 6th
at CU-Boulder symposium March 14-15
Students, scholars and media professionals will discuss media “in the fast-paced world of digital journalism” at a University of Colorado Boulder symposium March 14-15.
CU-Boulder’s Journalism and Mass Communication program will host the conference including two talks that are free and open to the public.
Jay Rosen will give one of the talks on March 14 at 10 a.m. at the Old Main Chapel. Rosen, who will discuss “The Ethics of Point-of-View Journalism,” is a journalism professor at New York University and a media critic. He is an adviser at First Look Media, a new venture featuring the work of Glenn Greenwald, who published the explosive national security documents leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden. Rosen also writes the blog PressThink.
At 2 p.m. on March 14 at the Old Main Chapel, Steve Buttry will present “Upholding and Updating Journalism Values.” Buttry is the digital transformation editor for Digital First Media. The company operates about 800 multi-platform media products nationally, including several in Colorado. He is a prominent consultant in digital journalism and author of the blog The Buttry Diary.
During other portions of the symposium, participants will explore issues such as the loss of the “ethics support group” found in traditional newsrooms for today’s freelancers, developers and entrepreneurs; today’s ethics challenges in the journalism work environment; and what the latest research and journalistic practice says about norms and values in the digital age.
“Technology has enabled new forms of public communication that raise new kinds of ethical questions,” said Paul Voakes, CU-Boulder professor of journalism and mass communication. “For example: When corrections can be made seamlessly and instantly online, is first-time accuracy now overrated? What are the appropriate journalistic uses of drones? In a profession increasingly populated by developers, activists, entrepreneurs and volunteers, where does a code of ethics fit?”
Excluding the two public talks, symposium participants will work in groups to write brief papers about the issues discussed. The papers could lead to collaborative essays or research projects, according to symposium organizers.
The symposium is supported by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Colorado State University and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
For more information about CU-Boulder’s Journalism and Mass Communication program visit http://journalism.colorado.edu/.
-CU-
Why Should Taxpayers Pay for Toxic Cleanups?
Mar 2nd
WE SHOULDN’T! Let the profiteers who cause the problems pay.
JACQUELINE MARCUS
FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
CopperPollution
(Photo: Cls 14)
If an oil or coal firm releases toxic chemicals that poisons every living thing it touches (Freedom Industries) and sends thousands of residents to the hospital from lethal exposure, (read Truthout’s Editor William Rivers Pitt’s recent pieces Diary of a Dying Country and The Poisoner’s Reckoning), U.S. government officials not only will pat the oil-coal thugs on the back, they’ll hand over a check worth millions of tax dollars for cleanup fees. And if that isn’t insulting enough for you, the insurance companies will also allegedly pay the dirty energy oligarchs again for the same amount.
No criminal charges, no one goes to jail, and to add insult to injury, they’re actually paid twice for contaminating our drinking water, for putting thousands of Americans in the hospital from toxic poisoning, and for turning communities into real estate nightmares.
The insurance settlements represent a drop in the bucket to oil companies that receive close to a trillion dollars a year combined in profits, but those extra millions that the oil firms pocket can make a significant difference for cash-strapped states. It’s like stealing a tiny piece of candy from a baby when your store is spilling over with tons of sweets.
Why are we, the taxpayers, paying for the oil oligarchs’ hazardous toxic messes in the first place?
By and large, the fossil fuel industry owns the U.S. government. You will never see oil-coal executives arrested for the environmental crimes they’ve committed even when Americans have died from their toxic explosions and disasters. That’s why when President Obama boasts about how he increased drilling, fracking, and the construction of oil pipelines beyond George W. Bush’s wildest dreams, which means more disasters are bound to happen, it makes you question Obama’s motives, especially when we’re heading full speed ahead to mass extinction from carbon emissions produced from oil and coal.
Federal regulations for sale: Why disasters keep happening
When Republicans rage about federal environmental protection regulations, think about how we’re rapidly heading towards mass extinction. Instead of increasing regulations, Republicans want to gut the Endangered Species Act, and they’re determined to blow up the Environmental Protection Agency so that big polluters can continue to rapidly push us beyond our ability to survive.
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As they’re shredding the last of the public safety regulations, think of the perpetual oil, fracking and coal disasters, and you’ll get the picture of what “deregulation” looks like. Americans pay the consequences for a government that’s been paid to look the other way.
Federal oversight of eroding equipment is not taken seriously. The feds rarely inspect the fossil fuel industry’s equipment whether it be fuel storage tanks, drilling rigs, pipelines, and most importantly, aging equipment at refineries.
For all the brouhaha the President and elected officials make about protecting the public, the fact that oil-chemical disasters continue to happen demonstrate that they could care less about protecting the general public’s welfare. The oil industry is notorious for putting workers at risk. Should petroleum engineers, manual laborers, or if an honest federal inspector complains, they’re threatened and told by the industry’s supervisors that they’ll lose their jobs.
A friend that formerly worked for a major oil company spoke about the federal inspection process, and if what he says is generally true, it explains why these disasters continue to happen: “The federal inspectors are easily bribed, boxes are checked off based on the word of the oil management team, and then permits are stamped for approval.” In short, U.S. federal inspections of antiquated equipment for the protection of workers, the public, and the environment are a joke.
You would think that the petroleum executives would want to maintain and upgrade their equipment to prevent potential disasters. But thanks to our oil-soaked elected officials, oil execs don’t have to worry about the disasters they create from gross negligence. We, the taxpayers, pick up the tab—while the petro-thugs get paid twice for the cleanup and make off with the profits. Oh and speaking of taxes, Big Oil hardly pays any U.S. taxes, if at all.
These recurring disasters are far from being “leaks” and “spills”: those are Big Oil euphemisms that are used by the media and politicians in the attempt to deceive the public. Think of BP’s Gulf catastrophe. There is no clear evidence of a recovery. On the contrary, it’s been over three years after the explosion and enormous dead zones are spreading throughout the Gulf. As Truthout reporter Dahr Jamail noted, thousands of Gulf residents have been suffering from the toxic exposure. Nevertheless, President Obama still refers to BP’s worst oil disaster in history as a “leak”.
Who’s to blame?
Every other week you read about another oil catastrophe: trains exploding from the fuel they’re transporting, toxic water contamination, offshore rig explosions, pipeline ruptures and refinery explosions, on and on it goes, there’s no end to it—many of which could have been prevented if federal inspectors were doing their jobs and if the oil firms were diligent about maintaining safety equipment.
These disasters are systemic cases of gross negligence that threaten the public’s health. While our elected officials are being wined and dined by Big Oil criminals, they see the American people as merely “collateral damage” when disasters happen, and then proceed with business as usual.
Who’s to blame? The oily legislators have passed laws with the fossil fuel lobbyists that benefit the oil industry at the expense of our environment: our drinking water, our oceans, our forests, our farms and ranches—all sacrificed in exchange for campaign funding and happy-go-lucky party money. I’ve asked this before and I’ll ask it again: Can we eat and drink oil?
Executive decisions lead to ongoing disasters
If President Obama is sincere about preventing another BP Gulf disaster, as he often claims, then why did he give Shell approval to drill in Alaska’s dangerously turbulent Chukchi Sea—home to more than half the nation’s polar bears? Moreover: Shell is working with Transocean: BP’s collaborator that contributed to the unprecedented 2010 Gulf of Mexico catastrophe due to Transocean’s faulty equipment which was never properly inspected by the federal government.
President Obama is fully aware of Shell’s critical malfunctions of transporting their rig at sea, which was shoved to the shore like a bobbing toy from Alaska’s turbulent winds. To allow Shell to proceed is unconscionable when this near disaster signaled an alarming siren of warning to the White House. There’s a perfect example of why disasters keep happening.
New Laws: the American public v the U.S. federal government
Our legislators are perpetually occupied at passing new laws that benefit the fossil fuel industry at our expense.
Well maybe it’s time for us to pass a few laws against our legislators:
New Laws: The fossil fuel industry from now on must pay for cleaning up their deadly toxic disasters that they create, not the taxpayers and not the insurance companies. If the federal government fails to inspect faulty and aging equipment, then the President, and members of the legislature that receive dirty energy money, must pay for the cleanup expenses when disasters occur as a result, and they must establish a multibillion dollar fund for families and animals that are harmed, injured, killed or poisoned from the toxic chemical disasters from their dirty energy campaign money. If they (fossil fuel firms and legislators) do not pay for the cleanup expenses, and for all those who have been affected and harmed immediately after it happens, they will be held to a mandatory prison sentence of ten years in federal prison without bail or parole.
If this were to happen, oil and chemical disasters would be reduced to rare exceptions if at all.
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Footnotes:
1. Freedom Industries, a coal-industry surrogate in West Virginia, dumped poison into the water supply known as the Elk River, waited 24 hours to tell anyone about it, waited even longer to mention that they had also dumped a second poison into the water supply, and then declared bankruptcy so as to make themselves judgment-proof in civil court against the hundreds of thousands of people who couldn’t eat or work or bathe or cook for weeks…and this was all before the stuff they dumped into the river evaporated into formaldehyde, which it does, so everyone who couldn’t eat or bathe or cook for weeks was suddenly eating and cooking and bathing in a whole different poison, this one being a known carcinogen…but they’re bankrupt now, so screw you and your tumors. (William Rivers Pitt: “The Poisoner’s Reckoning”)
2.
Asian migrants stuck on land bridge for milleniums
Feb 27th
likely a long-term refuge for early Americans
A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder bolsters the theory that the first Americans, who are believed to have come over from northeast Asia during the last ice age, may have been isolated on the Bering Land Bridge for thousands of years before spreading throughout the Americas.
The theory, now known as the “Beringia Standstill,” was first proposed in 1997 by two Latin American geneticists and refined in 2007 by a team led by the University of Tartu in Estonia that sampled mitrochondrial DNA from more than 600 Native Americans. The researchers found that mutations in the DNA indicated a group of their direct ancestors from Siberia was likely isolated for at least several thousand years in the region of the Bering Land Bridge, the now-submerged plain that lies between northeast Asia and Alaska once exposed by a significantly lower sea level.
CU-Boulder researcher John Hoffecker, lead author of a short paper article appearing in the Feb. 28 issue of Science magazine, said the Beringia Standstill model gained little traction outside of the genetics community after it was proposed and has been seen by some scientists outside of the field as far-fetched. But the new paper by Hoffecker and co-authors Scott Elias of Royal Holloway, University of London, and Dennis O’Rourke of the University of Utah adds credence to the Beringia Standstill idea by further linking the genetics to the paleoecological evidence.
“A number of supporting pieces have fallen in place during the last decade, including new evidence that central Beringia supported a shrub tundra region with some trees during the last glacial maximum and was characterized by surprisingly mild temperatures, given the high latitude,” said Hoffecker of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. The last glacial maximum peaked roughly 21,000 years ago and was marked by the growth of vast ice sheets in North America and Europe.
While a debate rages on about when early humans first migrated into the New World, many archaeologists now believe it was sometime around 15,000 years ago after retreating glaciers opened access to coastal and interior routes into North America.
The relatively mild summer climate in Beringia at the time was caused by North Pacific circulation patterns that brought moist and relatively warm air to the region during the last glacial maximum. Geologists believe the Beringia gateway between Siberia and Alaska was more than 600 miles wide at the time.
Hoffecker and others are now theorizing that a population of hundreds or thousands of people parked itself in central Beringia for 5,000 years or more. One key to the extended occupation may have been the presence of wood in some places to use as a fuel to supplement bone, which burns hot and fast. Experiments have shown that at least some wood is necessary to make bone practical as a fuel.
Elias, a paleoecologist and also an INSTAAR affiliate, said research using fossil pollen, plant and insect material from sediment cores from the now submerged landscape show that the Bering Land Bridge tundra environment contained enough woody plants and trees like birch, willow and alder to provide a supplement to bone.
Work by Elias and others included the analysis of certain beetle species that live in very specific temperature zones, allowing them to be used as tiny thermometers. The insects indicated that temperatures there were relatively mild during last glacial maximum that ran from about 27,000 years to 20,000 years ago, only slightly cooler than temperatures in the region today.
“The climate on the land bridge and adjacent parts of Siberia and Alaska was a bit wetter than the interior regions like central Alaska and the Yukon, but not a lot warmer,” said Elias. “Our data show that woody shrubs were available on the land bridge, which would have facilitated the making of fires by the people there.”
Evidence from the 2007 study indicated a set of genetic mutations in mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from mother to offspring, clearly accumulated after the divergence of people from their Asian parent groups in Siberia but before their dispersal throughout the Western Hemisphere, said O’Rourke. In addition, ancient DNA from human skeletal remains found at a 24,000-year-old archaeological site in southern Siberia also appears consistent with the divergence of Native American groups from their Asian forbearers by that time window, he said.
“The genetic record has been very clear for several years that the Native American genome must have arisen in an isolated population at least by 25,000 years ago, and the bulk of the migrants to the Americas really didn’t arrive south of the ice sheets until nearly 15,000 years ago,” O’Rourke said. “The paleoecological data, which I think most geneticists have not been familiar with, indicate that Beringia was not a uniform environment, and there was a shrub tundra region, or refugium, that likely provided habitats conducive to continuous human habitation.”
“From my view the genetics and paleoecology data come together nicely,” said Hoffecker, who co-authored a 2007 book with Elias titled “The Human Ecology of Beringia.” While the weakest link to the Out of Beringia theory is the lack of archaeological evidence, Hoffecker believes future research on now submerged parts of Beringia as well as lowlands in western Alaska and eastern Siberia that still remain above water may hold clues to ancient habitation by Beringia residents, who eventually moved on to be the first group to inhabit the Americas.
Hoffecker also believes that the Beringia inhabitants during the last glacial maximum could have made successful hunting forays into the uninhabited steppe-tundra region to both the east and west, where drier conditions and more grass supported a plentiful array of large grazing animals, including steppe bison, horse and mammoth.
There is now solid evidence for humans in Beringia before the last glacial maximum, as geneticists first predicted in 1997, said Hoffecker. After the maximum, there are two sets of archaeological remains dating to less than 15,000 years ago. “One represents a late migration from Asia into Alaska at that time,” he said. “The other has no obvious source outside Beringia and may represent the people who are thought to have sheltered on the land bridge during the glacial maximum.
“If we are looking for a place to put all of these people during the last glacial maximum, Beringia may be the only realistic option,” said Hoffecker.
A video news story on the research is available at http://www.colorado.edu/news.
-CU-