In Perspective: the Supreme Court’s Mercury and Air Toxics Rule Decision

The Supreme Court’s decision on EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) was disappointing to everyone working to protect public health by reducing emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants.  But as we take stock of what this decision means, there are some important factors that make me confident we are still on track to reduce this dangerous pollution and better protect America’s children, families and communities.

Most notably – the Administration remains committed to finalizing the Clean Power Plan this summer and yesterday’s ruling will have no bearing on the effort to reduce carbon pollution from the largest sources of emissions.

Second – this decision is very narrow.  It did not invalidate the rule, which remains in effect today.  In fact, the majority of power plants are already in compliance or well on their way to compliance.  The Court found that EPA should have considered costs at an earlier step in the rulemaking process than it did.  The court did not question EPA’s authority to control toxic air pollution from power plants provided it considers cost in that step.  It also did not question our conclusions on human health that supported the agency’s finding that regulation is needed.  And its narrow ruling does not disturb the remainder of the D.C. Circuit decision which unanimously upheld all other aspects of the MATS rule and rejected numerous challenges to the standards themselves.

Third – this decision does not affect other Clean Air Act programs that address other sources and types of air pollution. It hinged on a very specific section of the Act that applies exclusively to the regulation of air toxics from power plants.  This is important to understand because it means that rules and programs that reduce other types of pollutants under other sections of the Clean Air Act—like ozone and fine particles (smog and soot) can continue without interruption or delay.

The decision does not affect the Clean Power Plan, which EPA will be finalizing later this summer and which will chart the course for this country to reduce harmful carbon from its fleet of existing power plants.   That’s worth repeating: The Court’s conclusion that EPA must consider cost when determining whether it is “appropriate” to regulate toxic air emissions from utilities under section 112 of the Act will not impact the development of the Clean Power Plan under section 111.  Cost is among the factors the Agency has long explicitly considered in setting standards under section 111 of the Act.

Fourth – America’s power sector is getting cleaner year after year by investing in more modern technologies.   Since President Obama took office, wind energy has tripled and solar has grown ten-fold. The Clean Power Plan will build on these current positive trends.  That means cleaner air in communities across the country, as well as a boost to our economy as we build the clean energy system of the future.

Finally – What’s next for MATS?   From the moment we learned of this decision, we were committed to ensuring that standards remain in place to protect the public from toxic emissions from coal and oil-fired electric utilities.  We will continue to work to make that happen.  There are questions that will need to be answered over the next several weeks and months as we review the decision and determine the appropriate next steps once that review is complete.  But as I’ve already noted, MATS is still in place and many plants have already installed controls and technologies to reduce their mercury emissions.

After nearly 45 years of the implementing the Clean Air Act, there have been many more victories than defeats as we’ve worked together to clean the air and raise healthier children and families.  Despite the Supreme Court’s MATS decision, the agency remains confident that the progress we’ve made so far in improving air quality and protecting public health will continue.

from The EPA Blog http://ift.tt/1C5dCAs

The Supreme Court’s decision on EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) was disappointing to everyone working to protect public health by reducing emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants.  But as we take stock of what this decision means, there are some important factors that make me confident we are still on track to reduce this dangerous pollution and better protect America’s children, families and communities.

Most notably – the Administration remains committed to finalizing the Clean Power Plan this summer and yesterday’s ruling will have no bearing on the effort to reduce carbon pollution from the largest sources of emissions.

Second – this decision is very narrow.  It did not invalidate the rule, which remains in effect today.  In fact, the majority of power plants are already in compliance or well on their way to compliance.  The Court found that EPA should have considered costs at an earlier step in the rulemaking process than it did.  The court did not question EPA’s authority to control toxic air pollution from power plants provided it considers cost in that step.  It also did not question our conclusions on human health that supported the agency’s finding that regulation is needed.  And its narrow ruling does not disturb the remainder of the D.C. Circuit decision which unanimously upheld all other aspects of the MATS rule and rejected numerous challenges to the standards themselves.

Third – this decision does not affect other Clean Air Act programs that address other sources and types of air pollution. It hinged on a very specific section of the Act that applies exclusively to the regulation of air toxics from power plants.  This is important to understand because it means that rules and programs that reduce other types of pollutants under other sections of the Clean Air Act—like ozone and fine particles (smog and soot) can continue without interruption or delay.

The decision does not affect the Clean Power Plan, which EPA will be finalizing later this summer and which will chart the course for this country to reduce harmful carbon from its fleet of existing power plants.   That’s worth repeating: The Court’s conclusion that EPA must consider cost when determining whether it is “appropriate” to regulate toxic air emissions from utilities under section 112 of the Act will not impact the development of the Clean Power Plan under section 111.  Cost is among the factors the Agency has long explicitly considered in setting standards under section 111 of the Act.

Fourth – America’s power sector is getting cleaner year after year by investing in more modern technologies.   Since President Obama took office, wind energy has tripled and solar has grown ten-fold. The Clean Power Plan will build on these current positive trends.  That means cleaner air in communities across the country, as well as a boost to our economy as we build the clean energy system of the future.

Finally – What’s next for MATS?   From the moment we learned of this decision, we were committed to ensuring that standards remain in place to protect the public from toxic emissions from coal and oil-fired electric utilities.  We will continue to work to make that happen.  There are questions that will need to be answered over the next several weeks and months as we review the decision and determine the appropriate next steps once that review is complete.  But as I’ve already noted, MATS is still in place and many plants have already installed controls and technologies to reduce their mercury emissions.

After nearly 45 years of the implementing the Clean Air Act, there have been many more victories than defeats as we’ve worked together to clean the air and raise healthier children and families.  Despite the Supreme Court’s MATS decision, the agency remains confident that the progress we’ve made so far in improving air quality and protecting public health will continue.

from The EPA Blog http://ift.tt/1C5dCAs

Conservation All Around Us: The Great Swamp

By Tina Wei

Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge

On June 9th, I assisted David Kluesner, EPA Region 2 community affairs team leader, at an event with the Great Swamp Watershed Association  where he gave a presentation to the community members of Morristown, NJ about the significant steps the EPA is taking to clean up the lower Passaic River.

At the meeting, we heard attendees express strong support for activities to conserve the environment and protect human health. To learn about the community’s relationship with the environment and to see an example of successful, impactful conservation efforts, we visited the nearby Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

This refuge, established by Congress in 1960 and located in Morris County, NJ, is one of the 560 refuges in the Department of Interior’s U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System. We toured the wonderful Helen C. Fenske Visitor Center, featuring interactive environmental education activities, friendly rangers, and live bird-cams. The refuge’s 7,768 acres of habitat allow for wildlife viewing, photography, and hunting.

We learned that North America is divided into four key flyways for migrating birds. New York City is located in the highly trafficked Atlantic Flyway. This refuge, located only 26 miles away from Times Square, is of great importance, providing a crucial resting place for over 244 species of birds who can’t rest in NYC.

Image by the the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

We also learned about this refuge’s unique history. Beginning in 1844, this area’s marshlands were drained and converted to agricultural fields. As these farms became unprofitable and disappeared, alternative uses for this land were proposed, including a 1959 proposal to turn this area into a major airport (what is now Newark Liberty International Airport). In response, community members raised more than one million dollars to buy almost 3,000 acres of the Great Swamp land, donating it to the Department of the Interior to be conserved and reverted back to swampland.

This history is interesting for thinking about key questions regarding conservation:

• When, why, and how should we conserve the environment?
• How can we understand our local histories in light of these questions?

Do you know about the local history of a National Wildlife Refuge? What do you think about conservation? Tell us in the comments section!

About the Author: Tina Wei is a summer intern in EPA’s Region 2 Public Affairs Division. She has loved this wonderful learning opportunity, and especially enjoys going on work-related fieldtrips. During the school year, she is an undergraduate student at Princeton University.

from The EPA Blog http://ift.tt/1FNL4pW

By Tina Wei

Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge

On June 9th, I assisted David Kluesner, EPA Region 2 community affairs team leader, at an event with the Great Swamp Watershed Association  where he gave a presentation to the community members of Morristown, NJ about the significant steps the EPA is taking to clean up the lower Passaic River.

At the meeting, we heard attendees express strong support for activities to conserve the environment and protect human health. To learn about the community’s relationship with the environment and to see an example of successful, impactful conservation efforts, we visited the nearby Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

This refuge, established by Congress in 1960 and located in Morris County, NJ, is one of the 560 refuges in the Department of Interior’s U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System. We toured the wonderful Helen C. Fenske Visitor Center, featuring interactive environmental education activities, friendly rangers, and live bird-cams. The refuge’s 7,768 acres of habitat allow for wildlife viewing, photography, and hunting.

We learned that North America is divided into four key flyways for migrating birds. New York City is located in the highly trafficked Atlantic Flyway. This refuge, located only 26 miles away from Times Square, is of great importance, providing a crucial resting place for over 244 species of birds who can’t rest in NYC.

Image by the the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

We also learned about this refuge’s unique history. Beginning in 1844, this area’s marshlands were drained and converted to agricultural fields. As these farms became unprofitable and disappeared, alternative uses for this land were proposed, including a 1959 proposal to turn this area into a major airport (what is now Newark Liberty International Airport). In response, community members raised more than one million dollars to buy almost 3,000 acres of the Great Swamp land, donating it to the Department of the Interior to be conserved and reverted back to swampland.

This history is interesting for thinking about key questions regarding conservation:

• When, why, and how should we conserve the environment?
• How can we understand our local histories in light of these questions?

Do you know about the local history of a National Wildlife Refuge? What do you think about conservation? Tell us in the comments section!

About the Author: Tina Wei is a summer intern in EPA’s Region 2 Public Affairs Division. She has loved this wonderful learning opportunity, and especially enjoys going on work-related fieldtrips. During the school year, she is an undergraduate student at Princeton University.

from The EPA Blog http://ift.tt/1FNL4pW

Irreversible loss of world's ice cover should spur leaders into action, say scientists

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Roz Pidcock

We need only look to the world's ice cover to see the urgency with which emissions need to come down, scientists told delegates at this week's climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

At a press conference today, US and German scientists updated negotiators and journalists with the latest science on the state of Arctic sea ice, the Antarctic continent and thawing permafrost.

New observations gathered since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report show the cryosphere in serious and irreversible decline, they warned.

Pam Pearson, director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, the network of policy experts and researchers holding the event, told the audience:

"This is not like air pollution or water pollution, where if you clean it up it will go back to the way it was before."

Sea ice in decline

Arctic sea ice has been retreating rapidly in recent years as a result of greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere, explained Dr Dirk Notz, sea ice expert at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The biggest losses are happening in summer, he said:

"Over the past 10 years or so, we've roughly seen a 50% loss of Arctic sea ice area. So, the ice in the Arctic is currently retreating very, very rapidly."

In March, Arctic sea ice reached its lowest maximum extent in the satellite record. Last week, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre confirmed Arctic sea ice extent for May was the third lowest on record.

Arctic sea ice extent for 2015 compared to the 1981-2010 long term average. Source: NSIDC

Antarctic sea ice has been at record high levels in 2015 but this should be viewed in perspective with what's happening at the other end of the planet, Notz said:

"There is a slight increase, but it's nothing compared to the very, very rapid loss that we've seen in the Arctic."

Scientists' current understanding is that temperature changes as a result of greenhouse gases are causing winds to blow stronger offshore in the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica, driving the sea ice outwards. Notz said:

"Both in the Arctic and the Antarctic, the changes we are seeing in the sea ice are very clearly driven predominantly by human activities."

A slide from Dr Dirk Notz's presentation, putting Antartcic sea ice gain in perspective with the rate of Arctic sea ice loss. Source: ICCI  press conference, Bonn June 2015

Model simulations suggest sea ice could be gone from the Arctic in summer by mid-century. But if we stop emitting greenhouse gases, the chances of losing sea ice diminish quickly, he said:

"Only a very strong and rapid reduction in carbon dioxide might allow for the survival of Arctic summer sea ice beyond this century."

Ice sheets at risk

Turning from sea ice to land ice, a few regions of West Antarctica have grabbed scientists' attention in the past year, explained Prof Ricarda Winkelmann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Each has the potential to destabilise, raising global sea levels.

The Amundsen Basin in West Antarctica, which houses the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, is one of these "hotspots." Winkelmann explains:

"It has been shown in a number of studies last year that [the region] has tipped, meaning that it has crossed that threshold and is now undergoing irreversible change."

Once the glaciers in this region drain into the ocean, the volume of water will raise global sea levels by one metre. The question is how fast that will happen, said Winkelmann.

"We've known that this kind of mechanism exists for a long time, it was first proposed in the 1970s. But the observation that something like this is actually happening right now - that's a new one."

Map shows changes in Antarctic ice shelves from 1994 to 2012. Shading of ice shelves shows rate of thickness change (in metres per decade), from thinning (red) to thickening (blue). Dots show percentage of thickness lost (red) or gained (blue). Source: Paolo et al. (2015)

A second region that's been discussed a lot this year is the Antarctic Peninsula. Warm water is reaching the ice shelves and thinning them from the bottom up, recent research shows.

The scientists are watching the Totten glacier in East Antarctica closely, as the same process of irreversible collapse could be at work there too, they say.

Totten is currently thinning faster than any other glacier in East Antarctica and, if it melts, could raise sea levels by 3.5m - more than the whole of the West Antarctic ice sheet put together.

Permafrost thaw

Carbon has been accumulating in permafrost for many thousands of years, but it is starting to be released as warmer temperatures are causing the once-permanently frozen ground to thaw.

Scientists currently estimate there is 1,500bn tonnes of carbon currently locked away in permafrost. That's twice as much as in the atmosphere, explained Dr. Susan Natali, an expert in permafrost feedbacks on climate from the Woods Hole Research Center in the US.

If even a small amount of that carbon escapes to the atmosphere, it could lead to a significant increase in global greenhouse gas emissions, said Natali.

Polar night in mountains in northern tundra in Russia. Source: Kekyalyaynen, Shutterstock.

If emissions stay very high, scientists expect to see a 70% loss in permafrost worldwide by 2100. This could be reduced to 30% if global temperatures are limited to 2C above pre-industrial levels, Natali explained.

How much carbon will find its way to the atmosphere is a complex question. But current estimates are for 130-160bn tonnes of carbon to be released by 2100. That's on par with current rate of emissions from the whole of the United States, the world's second largest emitter.

The actions that we take now in terms of our fossil fuel emissions will have a significant impact on how much permafrost is lost and, in turn, how much carbon is released, said Natali:

"We know that permafrost emissions will be substantial and irreversible on a human-relevant timeframe and these emissions of greenhouse gases from permafrost need to be accounted for if we want to meet our global emissions targets."

A matter of urgency

This new science isn't feeding into international climate policy as it should be, said Pearson:

"What the IPCC scientists see is a lack of understanding of the urgency of slowing down these processes and the fact that they are irreversible … I think that is the most important aspect [of the science] that still hasn't made it into the negotiations."

Notz urged policymakers to view climate change as a current, not a future, challenge. He said:

"So far, these negotiations have been driven by the idea that this is something that will happen at some point. But if you really look at the developments that have happened over the past two, three or four years, especially in the cryosphere … [they] will have consequences for the next centuries ... We're not speaking about the future here, we're speaking about ongoing changes."

In light of the wealth of new science, Pearson said she would like to see ambitions raised ahead of a global climate agreement in Paris later this year. She said:

"It's clear that given these challenges, the current INDC's [Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions] are not sufficient."

As well as greater ambition, Pearson said she wants to see the flexibility in the final Paris text to enable countries to raise their targets without going through a lengthy negotiation process.

Changes are taking place faster in the cryosphere than anywhere else, making it an ideal lens through which to view climate change negotiations, Pearson concluded. The processes taking place cannot be reversed and while they won't happen while these policymakers are in office, limiting the damage for future generations is a critical part of leadership, she said.

UPDATE: The article was updated on June 10th once Dr Dirk Notz's slides became available online. The figure from his presentation compares changes in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. 

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1RQ2gSt

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Roz Pidcock

We need only look to the world's ice cover to see the urgency with which emissions need to come down, scientists told delegates at this week's climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

At a press conference today, US and German scientists updated negotiators and journalists with the latest science on the state of Arctic sea ice, the Antarctic continent and thawing permafrost.

New observations gathered since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report show the cryosphere in serious and irreversible decline, they warned.

Pam Pearson, director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, the network of policy experts and researchers holding the event, told the audience:

"This is not like air pollution or water pollution, where if you clean it up it will go back to the way it was before."

Sea ice in decline

Arctic sea ice has been retreating rapidly in recent years as a result of greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere, explained Dr Dirk Notz, sea ice expert at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The biggest losses are happening in summer, he said:

"Over the past 10 years or so, we've roughly seen a 50% loss of Arctic sea ice area. So, the ice in the Arctic is currently retreating very, very rapidly."

In March, Arctic sea ice reached its lowest maximum extent in the satellite record. Last week, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre confirmed Arctic sea ice extent for May was the third lowest on record.

Arctic sea ice extent for 2015 compared to the 1981-2010 long term average. Source: NSIDC

Antarctic sea ice has been at record high levels in 2015 but this should be viewed in perspective with what's happening at the other end of the planet, Notz said:

"There is a slight increase, but it's nothing compared to the very, very rapid loss that we've seen in the Arctic."

Scientists' current understanding is that temperature changes as a result of greenhouse gases are causing winds to blow stronger offshore in the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica, driving the sea ice outwards. Notz said:

"Both in the Arctic and the Antarctic, the changes we are seeing in the sea ice are very clearly driven predominantly by human activities."

A slide from Dr Dirk Notz's presentation, putting Antartcic sea ice gain in perspective with the rate of Arctic sea ice loss. Source: ICCI  press conference, Bonn June 2015

Model simulations suggest sea ice could be gone from the Arctic in summer by mid-century. But if we stop emitting greenhouse gases, the chances of losing sea ice diminish quickly, he said:

"Only a very strong and rapid reduction in carbon dioxide might allow for the survival of Arctic summer sea ice beyond this century."

Ice sheets at risk

Turning from sea ice to land ice, a few regions of West Antarctica have grabbed scientists' attention in the past year, explained Prof Ricarda Winkelmann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Each has the potential to destabilise, raising global sea levels.

The Amundsen Basin in West Antarctica, which houses the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, is one of these "hotspots." Winkelmann explains:

"It has been shown in a number of studies last year that [the region] has tipped, meaning that it has crossed that threshold and is now undergoing irreversible change."

Once the glaciers in this region drain into the ocean, the volume of water will raise global sea levels by one metre. The question is how fast that will happen, said Winkelmann.

"We've known that this kind of mechanism exists for a long time, it was first proposed in the 1970s. But the observation that something like this is actually happening right now - that's a new one."

Map shows changes in Antarctic ice shelves from 1994 to 2012. Shading of ice shelves shows rate of thickness change (in metres per decade), from thinning (red) to thickening (blue). Dots show percentage of thickness lost (red) or gained (blue). Source: Paolo et al. (2015)

A second region that's been discussed a lot this year is the Antarctic Peninsula. Warm water is reaching the ice shelves and thinning them from the bottom up, recent research shows.

The scientists are watching the Totten glacier in East Antarctica closely, as the same process of irreversible collapse could be at work there too, they say.

Totten is currently thinning faster than any other glacier in East Antarctica and, if it melts, could raise sea levels by 3.5m - more than the whole of the West Antarctic ice sheet put together.

Permafrost thaw

Carbon has been accumulating in permafrost for many thousands of years, but it is starting to be released as warmer temperatures are causing the once-permanently frozen ground to thaw.

Scientists currently estimate there is 1,500bn tonnes of carbon currently locked away in permafrost. That's twice as much as in the atmosphere, explained Dr. Susan Natali, an expert in permafrost feedbacks on climate from the Woods Hole Research Center in the US.

If even a small amount of that carbon escapes to the atmosphere, it could lead to a significant increase in global greenhouse gas emissions, said Natali.

Polar night in mountains in northern tundra in Russia. Source: Kekyalyaynen, Shutterstock.

If emissions stay very high, scientists expect to see a 70% loss in permafrost worldwide by 2100. This could be reduced to 30% if global temperatures are limited to 2C above pre-industrial levels, Natali explained.

How much carbon will find its way to the atmosphere is a complex question. But current estimates are for 130-160bn tonnes of carbon to be released by 2100. That's on par with current rate of emissions from the whole of the United States, the world's second largest emitter.

The actions that we take now in terms of our fossil fuel emissions will have a significant impact on how much permafrost is lost and, in turn, how much carbon is released, said Natali:

"We know that permafrost emissions will be substantial and irreversible on a human-relevant timeframe and these emissions of greenhouse gases from permafrost need to be accounted for if we want to meet our global emissions targets."

A matter of urgency

This new science isn't feeding into international climate policy as it should be, said Pearson:

"What the IPCC scientists see is a lack of understanding of the urgency of slowing down these processes and the fact that they are irreversible … I think that is the most important aspect [of the science] that still hasn't made it into the negotiations."

Notz urged policymakers to view climate change as a current, not a future, challenge. He said:

"So far, these negotiations have been driven by the idea that this is something that will happen at some point. But if you really look at the developments that have happened over the past two, three or four years, especially in the cryosphere … [they] will have consequences for the next centuries ... We're not speaking about the future here, we're speaking about ongoing changes."

In light of the wealth of new science, Pearson said she would like to see ambitions raised ahead of a global climate agreement in Paris later this year. She said:

"It's clear that given these challenges, the current INDC's [Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions] are not sufficient."

As well as greater ambition, Pearson said she wants to see the flexibility in the final Paris text to enable countries to raise their targets without going through a lengthy negotiation process.

Changes are taking place faster in the cryosphere than anywhere else, making it an ideal lens through which to view climate change negotiations, Pearson concluded. The processes taking place cannot be reversed and while they won't happen while these policymakers are in office, limiting the damage for future generations is a critical part of leadership, she said.

UPDATE: The article was updated on June 10th once Dr Dirk Notz's slides became available online. The figure from his presentation compares changes in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. 

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1RQ2gSt

Lenticular clouds look like UFOs

“Lenticular cloud outside my window in Dublin Ireland this morning. I was surprised to see this as we don’t get them too often here,” by Anthony Lynch Photography June, 2015.

Enjoy these photos and a video of beautiful lenticular clouds taken in places around the world, and shared with us by EarthSky friends on Facebook and Google+.

These lens-shaped clouds typically form where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains. When this happens, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the mountain’s downwind side. If the temperature at the crest of the wave drops to the dew point, moisture in the air may condense to form lenticular clouds. As the moist air moves back down into the trough of the wave, the cloud may evaporate back into vapor. So lenticular can appear and disappear relatively quickly. Plus they’re not familiar to people who live in low-lying or flat terrain. And, just to confound things, lenticular clouds have also been known to form in non-mountainous places, as the result of shear winds created by a front. For all of these reasons, lenticular clouds are often mistaken for UFOs (or “visual cover” for UFOs). Enjoy the photos! Thank you to all who posted.

Enjoying EarthSky? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

View larger. | Lenticular clouds over Sangre de Cristos mountains, New Mexico – in January, 2015 – by EarthSky Facebook friend Geraint Smith.

Angela Mosley caught this lenticular cloud from Denver, Colorado in December, 2014.

Lenticular Timelapse from Michael Fuchs on Vimeo.

Lenticular clouds by Richard T. Hasbrouck in Truchas, New Mexico, January, 2014.

David Marshall captured this lenticular cloud above the Alps in northern Italy.

John Lloyd Griffith in north Wales captured this lenticular cloud on December, 2013.

This last photo comes from Michel Studinger of Project IceBridge. It’s a lenticular cloud over Antarctica, November, 2013.

Radek Zek Photography caught this lenticular cloud in September, 2013.

Emilio Lepeley of Vicuna, Chile captured this lenticular cloud in August, 2013.

Jackie Phillips in Virginia caught this lenticular cloud in October, 2012.

Beautiful shot of lenticular cloud at sunset by Chris Walker in Dayton, Nevada. Taken in spring 2008.

Bottom line: Photos and video of lenticular clouds in various parts of the world, from EarthSky’s community on Facebook and G+.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1FjoI4C

“Lenticular cloud outside my window in Dublin Ireland this morning. I was surprised to see this as we don’t get them too often here,” by Anthony Lynch Photography June, 2015.

Enjoy these photos and a video of beautiful lenticular clouds taken in places around the world, and shared with us by EarthSky friends on Facebook and Google+.

These lens-shaped clouds typically form where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains. When this happens, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the mountain’s downwind side. If the temperature at the crest of the wave drops to the dew point, moisture in the air may condense to form lenticular clouds. As the moist air moves back down into the trough of the wave, the cloud may evaporate back into vapor. So lenticular can appear and disappear relatively quickly. Plus they’re not familiar to people who live in low-lying or flat terrain. And, just to confound things, lenticular clouds have also been known to form in non-mountainous places, as the result of shear winds created by a front. For all of these reasons, lenticular clouds are often mistaken for UFOs (or “visual cover” for UFOs). Enjoy the photos! Thank you to all who posted.

Enjoying EarthSky? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

View larger. | Lenticular clouds over Sangre de Cristos mountains, New Mexico – in January, 2015 – by EarthSky Facebook friend Geraint Smith.

Angela Mosley caught this lenticular cloud from Denver, Colorado in December, 2014.

Lenticular Timelapse from Michael Fuchs on Vimeo.

Lenticular clouds by Richard T. Hasbrouck in Truchas, New Mexico, January, 2014.

David Marshall captured this lenticular cloud above the Alps in northern Italy.

John Lloyd Griffith in north Wales captured this lenticular cloud on December, 2013.

This last photo comes from Michel Studinger of Project IceBridge. It’s a lenticular cloud over Antarctica, November, 2013.

Radek Zek Photography caught this lenticular cloud in September, 2013.

Emilio Lepeley of Vicuna, Chile captured this lenticular cloud in August, 2013.

Jackie Phillips in Virginia caught this lenticular cloud in October, 2012.

Beautiful shot of lenticular cloud at sunset by Chris Walker in Dayton, Nevada. Taken in spring 2008.

Bottom line: Photos and video of lenticular clouds in various parts of the world, from EarthSky’s community on Facebook and G+.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1FjoI4C

Tracking Above-Ground Explosions

By Jessica Hill
Homeland Defense & Security Information Analysis Center

Determining the characteristics of above-ground explosions could be instrumental in the military gaining a better understanding of the exact cause of a blast. Historically, researchers have used seismic monitors to gather information about earthquakes and other below-ground natural and manmade events, but a pair of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed a method for determining the characteristics of near and above-ground explosions using the same seismic technology.

High-speed photographs of a controlled surface explosion at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, similar to the explosions at White Sands Missile Range were used in a study of seismic signals to detect above-ground explosions. (Photo: Defense Threat Reduction Agency Counter-WMD Test Support Division/Released)

In a project funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Michael Pasyanos and Sean Ford were able to show that the explosion of an above-ground tunnel bomb planted by Syrian rebels was smaller than sources claimed. The blast under the Wadi al-Deif Army Base in Syria was originally said to be 60 tons, but the scientists proved the explosion was likely closer to 40 tons.

The team used data from regional seismic stations in Turkey, as well as video footage, to study the Syrian explosion. The equivalent to 100 tons of TNT would be needed produce the seismic signal found in the Syrian blast if it occurred well above the Earth’s surface.

“We estimate a chemical yield ranging from 6 and 50 tons depending on the depth, with the best estimate between 20-40 tons,” Pasyanos said in a press release. “Including independent information on the depth, we could narrow this considerably. If, for instance, we definitively knew that the explosion occurred at 2 meters below the surface, then we would estimate the yield at 40 tons.”

The team tested their method using shallow explosions in New Mexico where the yields and depths of the explosions were known. The method characterizes underground explosions based on regional amplitude envelopes across a broad range of frequencies.

Seismology is an integral part of nuclear explosion monitoring and has been used to show the yield and depth of underground explosions. This new technique can be used by governmental agencies to understand the exact cause of an explosion. “By allowing the methodology to consider shallow, uncontained events just below, at, or even above the Earth’s surface, we make the method relevant to new classes of events including mining events, military explosions, industrial accidents, plane crashes or potential terrorist attacks,” Pasyanos said.

New technologies to detect or mitigate explosive devices are imperative to homeland security as terrorist attacks using explosive materials are a clear threat to public safety and national security. Understanding the characteristics of an explosion will assist the military in preparing for and preventing future attacks and in gaining knowledge of weapons used by adversaries. In addition, research into above-ground explosions has the potential to enhance the nation’s counter-improvised explosive device (IED) capabilities.

Story and information provided by the Homeland Defense & Security Information Analysis Center
Follow Armed with Science on Facebook and Twitter!
———-

Disclaimer: Re-published content may have been edited for length and clarity. The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense. For other than authorized activities, such as, military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation sites, the Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this DoD website.

from Armed with Science http://ift.tt/1T0G62o

By Jessica Hill
Homeland Defense & Security Information Analysis Center

Determining the characteristics of above-ground explosions could be instrumental in the military gaining a better understanding of the exact cause of a blast. Historically, researchers have used seismic monitors to gather information about earthquakes and other below-ground natural and manmade events, but a pair of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed a method for determining the characteristics of near and above-ground explosions using the same seismic technology.

High-speed photographs of a controlled surface explosion at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, similar to the explosions at White Sands Missile Range were used in a study of seismic signals to detect above-ground explosions. (Photo: Defense Threat Reduction Agency Counter-WMD Test Support Division/Released)

In a project funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Michael Pasyanos and Sean Ford were able to show that the explosion of an above-ground tunnel bomb planted by Syrian rebels was smaller than sources claimed. The blast under the Wadi al-Deif Army Base in Syria was originally said to be 60 tons, but the scientists proved the explosion was likely closer to 40 tons.

The team used data from regional seismic stations in Turkey, as well as video footage, to study the Syrian explosion. The equivalent to 100 tons of TNT would be needed produce the seismic signal found in the Syrian blast if it occurred well above the Earth’s surface.

“We estimate a chemical yield ranging from 6 and 50 tons depending on the depth, with the best estimate between 20-40 tons,” Pasyanos said in a press release. “Including independent information on the depth, we could narrow this considerably. If, for instance, we definitively knew that the explosion occurred at 2 meters below the surface, then we would estimate the yield at 40 tons.”

The team tested their method using shallow explosions in New Mexico where the yields and depths of the explosions were known. The method characterizes underground explosions based on regional amplitude envelopes across a broad range of frequencies.

Seismology is an integral part of nuclear explosion monitoring and has been used to show the yield and depth of underground explosions. This new technique can be used by governmental agencies to understand the exact cause of an explosion. “By allowing the methodology to consider shallow, uncontained events just below, at, or even above the Earth’s surface, we make the method relevant to new classes of events including mining events, military explosions, industrial accidents, plane crashes or potential terrorist attacks,” Pasyanos said.

New technologies to detect or mitigate explosive devices are imperative to homeland security as terrorist attacks using explosive materials are a clear threat to public safety and national security. Understanding the characteristics of an explosion will assist the military in preparing for and preventing future attacks and in gaining knowledge of weapons used by adversaries. In addition, research into above-ground explosions has the potential to enhance the nation’s counter-improvised explosive device (IED) capabilities.

Story and information provided by the Homeland Defense & Security Information Analysis Center
Follow Armed with Science on Facebook and Twitter!
———-

Disclaimer: Re-published content may have been edited for length and clarity. The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense. For other than authorized activities, such as, military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation sites, the Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this DoD website.

from Armed with Science http://ift.tt/1T0G62o

Revealing the true face of the antivaccine movement [Respectful Insolence]

Late last week, something happened that I never would have predicted, and it’s all due to how the politics of the issue changed in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak earlier this year. The state that contains some of the most famous pockets of low vaccine uptake and some of the most famous antivaccine “luminaries,” including pediatricians like Dr. Bob Sears and Jay Gordon, as well as actual celebrities like Rob Schneider, Alicia Silverstone, Bill Maher, Charlie Sheen, and Mayim Bialik, actually passed a law, SB 277, that eliminates non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. It’s now been sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk for his signature:

Gov. Jerry Brown must now decide whether to sign into law a bill that would require mandatory vaccinations for nearly all California schoolchildren.

The measure, spawned by an outbreak of measles at Disneyland that ultimately infected more than 150 people, cleared its final legislative hurdle Monday in the state Senate. Brown has not said publicly whether he would sign it.

The measure — one of the toughest vaccination bills in the nation — would require children enrolling in school or day care to be immunized against diseases including measles and whooping cough.

Parents would no longer be able to cite personal or religious beliefs to decline the vaccinations, although children with certain medical problems, such as immune system deficiencies, would be exempt.

Those who decline the vaccinations would have to enroll their children in a home-based private school or public independent study program based off campus.

The bill was one of the most contentious taken up by the Legislature this year, attracting large, vocal crowds of parents during a series of legislative hearings on the measure.

To say it was contentious is an understatement. Indeed, as I’ve repeated—probably more times than regular readers want to hear—even in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak, I expected this bill to fail. I was more than pleasantly surprised as the bill cleared hurdle after hurdle despite all opposition and attempts to water it down to uselessness to the point of taking on an air of inevitability last week in the days leading up to the final vote in the state assembly last week that sent SB 277 to the governor’s desk. That’s great. But we can’t let up the pressure. As you might recall, when an earlier bill in California, AB 2109, was passed into law its intent was to make it more difficult to obtain non-medical exemptions was sabotaged by Governor Brown when he added a signing statement to it. That signing statement directed the California Department of Public Health to add a checkbox on the form for a religious exemption that basically permitted any parent who checked it to skip the Law’s requirement to obtain counseling from specified health care practitioners regarding the risks and benefits of vaccination before a non-medical exemption would be granted. There was no provision in the law for this, and Governor Brown’s action was a profound betrayal of the children of California. We hope he won’t do something like that again, but I sure as hell don’t trust him not to. So if you live in California, keep up the pressure. Certainly the antivaccinationists are. If SB 277 becomes law and California joins Mississippi and West Virginia as states that permit no non-medical exemptions, it will be a watershed. It might even be a turning point that persuades other states to pass similar laws.

It might be a watershed event, a turning point, in a different sort of way. Specifically, the antivaccine war against SB 277, for the first time that I can remember, resulted in the nastiness in the antivaccine movement to percolate up through the media noise to reach the attention of ordinary Americans, most of whom had no idea just how looney and nasty these people can be. Let’s just put it this way. Those of us who stand up for science with respect to vaccines and have been doing so for more than a brief period of time have all experienced varying degrees of vilification and even outright harassment. I myself have had antivaccine zealots contact my bosses at work on a number of occasions; on one occasion our old friend Jake Crosby wrote a post accusing me of an undisclosed conflict of interest and being in the pocket of big pharma, thus inspiring knuckle draggers from the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism to sent complaints to my dean, my cancer center director, and the board of directors at my university. While I must admit that their actions caused me considerable agita at the time, in the end I emerged with much less concern and fear over such attacks because I realized that my university values academic freedom, as do most universities. Of course, the same doesn’t apply to private companies, and people who work in industry or non-university settings can be basically screwed when antivaccine activists target them.

One thing’s for sure, though. Antivaccinationists did themselves no favors in their war against SB 277. Whether it was a persecution complex that led some of them to compare their plight to that of Jews during the Holocaust, a campaign of harassment and vilification of lawmakers and supporters of SB 277 on social media like Twitter, or cozying up to the Nation of Islam and the Church of Scientology in full-on conspiracy mode, antivaccine activists did a better job than I (or any other bloggers ever could) of making themselves look like total loons to anyone with half a brain.

Evidence of this just appeared yesterday in an article in Jezebel by Anna Merlan entitled, Meet the New, Dangerous Fringe of the Anti-Vaccination Movement. Basically, it is about examples of antivaccine nastiness culled from the Anti-Vax Wall of Shame (AVWoS), a Facebook group that collects examples of the most outrageously stupid and/or nasty rhetoric from antivaccine activists on social media. The group exists to expose (and mock), things like what the Jezebel article describes, such as vile messages sent to a mother who belonged to AVWoS.

One thing I learned from the article as well is that there exists another Facebook page, Anti Vax Wall of Shame – The Fall of the Wall that is, apparently, the response of antivaccine activists to AVWoS. I took a few minutes to peruse this AVWoS mirror image and was rather puzzled. For one thing, unlike AVWoS, it wasn’t particularly funny, an it’s not just because of what side I’m on. Believe it or not, I can appreciate truly clever jabs directed at “my side,” even chuckle at them. There really wasn’t anything to chuckle at there that I saw. In fact, I agree with Merlan’s characterization:

Fall of the Wall tends to skew a little less snarky than the Wall of Shame, and a little weirder. It uses an image of someone in a Guy Fawkes mask, clearly taken from a screengrab of an Anonymous video, and makes some wild claims, including that the Anti-Vax Wall of Shame folks are cleverly infecting anti-vaccination activists with computer viruses embedded in photos and links.

Because, obviously, you can’t have antivaccine activism without conspiracy theories. After all, these are the people who, upon learning that the body of one of their most admired “autism biomed” quacks, Jeffery Bradstreet, had been found in a river with a gunshot wound to the chest that appeared to be due to suicide, immediately went into full conspiracy mode, speculating that big pharma had put the hit on him for threatening them. It also has to do with harassing their enemies:

According to pro-vaccination groups, other opponents of SB 277 resorted to harassment, threats, doxxing and nasty impersonation. The mother of the 11-year-old girl—who asked that her name and her daughter’s name be withheld to protect their privacy and safety—told Jezebel that she’s a frequent commenter on Anti-Vax Wall of Shame, and that her daughter was contacted after a Fall of the Wall commenter started combing through her own public Facebook photos.

“She made it clear she was going through my pictures, making remarks about my husband having AIDS and how ugly my children are,” the woman says. “That their teeth are rotting out and they look retarded.”

Next, she says, came the message to her daughter (she provided a screenshot of the message to Jezebel, saying that it came from a sock puppet account impersonating her sister, which has since been taken down). She’s not sure whether the intention was to frighten her child, make her angry, or just show that she could find the woman’s family, but in any case, she’s furious.

And:

One woman who’s testified in favor of the bill—who also asked not to be named, for fear of drawing more troll attention—said that photos of her, her husband and her baby have been tweeted by anti-vaxxers. The day after she spoke in favor of the bill at a public hearing, she saw groups on Facebook speculating that she was affiliated with Merck, the drug company.

“I went home and they’d started posting all my stuff to their Facebook group,” she says. “Things like, ‘She’s an investor paid by Merck. I’ve never met anybody from Merck in my entire life.’”

In an email sent to Jezebel in May, the same woman said the group also speculated about whether someone needed to call Child Protective Services on her.

“Today the anti-vaxxers were discussing calling CPS on me because they think I have ‘mental health problems,’’ she wrote. “They think if they file a case report someone will come to my house and discover that my son is in danger, and then I will leave them alone. They have no fucking boundaries.”

And:

But the doxxing, harassment, and unhinged Hitler comparisons have SB 277 supporters feeling frightened too. While Jezebel spoke with several supporters who said they’d been threatened, doxxed, harassed, or Twitter-mobbed by anti-vax groups, only [Dorit] Reiss and [Alison] Hagood, the Colorado professor, would allow us to use their names. Both women are tenured, and both of them said it’s made it easier for them to continue talking and writing about vaccines in the face of so much increasingly delusional opposition.

This is a phenomenon that is all too familiar to anyone opposing the antivaccine movement. Indeed, to turn the penchant of antivaccinationists for going Godwin and invoking Hitler and Holocaust analogies when describing laws like SB 277 and those who refute antivaccine misinformation. As I said, people who have academic positions, like myself and these women, tend to be more resistant to these tactics at work.

I’ve always said that antivaccine zealots are their own worst enemies. I know it. My regular readers know it. Those dedicated souls who’ve worked to get SB 277 passed in California know it. Another salutary effect of the passage of SB 277 is that the rest of the country is coming to know it as well. If other states follow California’s lead, the reaction will be the same, only in more parts of the country.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1g5pXdO

Late last week, something happened that I never would have predicted, and it’s all due to how the politics of the issue changed in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak earlier this year. The state that contains some of the most famous pockets of low vaccine uptake and some of the most famous antivaccine “luminaries,” including pediatricians like Dr. Bob Sears and Jay Gordon, as well as actual celebrities like Rob Schneider, Alicia Silverstone, Bill Maher, Charlie Sheen, and Mayim Bialik, actually passed a law, SB 277, that eliminates non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. It’s now been sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk for his signature:

Gov. Jerry Brown must now decide whether to sign into law a bill that would require mandatory vaccinations for nearly all California schoolchildren.

The measure, spawned by an outbreak of measles at Disneyland that ultimately infected more than 150 people, cleared its final legislative hurdle Monday in the state Senate. Brown has not said publicly whether he would sign it.

The measure — one of the toughest vaccination bills in the nation — would require children enrolling in school or day care to be immunized against diseases including measles and whooping cough.

Parents would no longer be able to cite personal or religious beliefs to decline the vaccinations, although children with certain medical problems, such as immune system deficiencies, would be exempt.

Those who decline the vaccinations would have to enroll their children in a home-based private school or public independent study program based off campus.

The bill was one of the most contentious taken up by the Legislature this year, attracting large, vocal crowds of parents during a series of legislative hearings on the measure.

To say it was contentious is an understatement. Indeed, as I’ve repeated—probably more times than regular readers want to hear—even in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak, I expected this bill to fail. I was more than pleasantly surprised as the bill cleared hurdle after hurdle despite all opposition and attempts to water it down to uselessness to the point of taking on an air of inevitability last week in the days leading up to the final vote in the state assembly last week that sent SB 277 to the governor’s desk. That’s great. But we can’t let up the pressure. As you might recall, when an earlier bill in California, AB 2109, was passed into law its intent was to make it more difficult to obtain non-medical exemptions was sabotaged by Governor Brown when he added a signing statement to it. That signing statement directed the California Department of Public Health to add a checkbox on the form for a religious exemption that basically permitted any parent who checked it to skip the Law’s requirement to obtain counseling from specified health care practitioners regarding the risks and benefits of vaccination before a non-medical exemption would be granted. There was no provision in the law for this, and Governor Brown’s action was a profound betrayal of the children of California. We hope he won’t do something like that again, but I sure as hell don’t trust him not to. So if you live in California, keep up the pressure. Certainly the antivaccinationists are. If SB 277 becomes law and California joins Mississippi and West Virginia as states that permit no non-medical exemptions, it will be a watershed. It might even be a turning point that persuades other states to pass similar laws.

It might be a watershed event, a turning point, in a different sort of way. Specifically, the antivaccine war against SB 277, for the first time that I can remember, resulted in the nastiness in the antivaccine movement to percolate up through the media noise to reach the attention of ordinary Americans, most of whom had no idea just how looney and nasty these people can be. Let’s just put it this way. Those of us who stand up for science with respect to vaccines and have been doing so for more than a brief period of time have all experienced varying degrees of vilification and even outright harassment. I myself have had antivaccine zealots contact my bosses at work on a number of occasions; on one occasion our old friend Jake Crosby wrote a post accusing me of an undisclosed conflict of interest and being in the pocket of big pharma, thus inspiring knuckle draggers from the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism to sent complaints to my dean, my cancer center director, and the board of directors at my university. While I must admit that their actions caused me considerable agita at the time, in the end I emerged with much less concern and fear over such attacks because I realized that my university values academic freedom, as do most universities. Of course, the same doesn’t apply to private companies, and people who work in industry or non-university settings can be basically screwed when antivaccine activists target them.

One thing’s for sure, though. Antivaccinationists did themselves no favors in their war against SB 277. Whether it was a persecution complex that led some of them to compare their plight to that of Jews during the Holocaust, a campaign of harassment and vilification of lawmakers and supporters of SB 277 on social media like Twitter, or cozying up to the Nation of Islam and the Church of Scientology in full-on conspiracy mode, antivaccine activists did a better job than I (or any other bloggers ever could) of making themselves look like total loons to anyone with half a brain.

Evidence of this just appeared yesterday in an article in Jezebel by Anna Merlan entitled, Meet the New, Dangerous Fringe of the Anti-Vaccination Movement. Basically, it is about examples of antivaccine nastiness culled from the Anti-Vax Wall of Shame (AVWoS), a Facebook group that collects examples of the most outrageously stupid and/or nasty rhetoric from antivaccine activists on social media. The group exists to expose (and mock), things like what the Jezebel article describes, such as vile messages sent to a mother who belonged to AVWoS.

One thing I learned from the article as well is that there exists another Facebook page, Anti Vax Wall of Shame – The Fall of the Wall that is, apparently, the response of antivaccine activists to AVWoS. I took a few minutes to peruse this AVWoS mirror image and was rather puzzled. For one thing, unlike AVWoS, it wasn’t particularly funny, an it’s not just because of what side I’m on. Believe it or not, I can appreciate truly clever jabs directed at “my side,” even chuckle at them. There really wasn’t anything to chuckle at there that I saw. In fact, I agree with Merlan’s characterization:

Fall of the Wall tends to skew a little less snarky than the Wall of Shame, and a little weirder. It uses an image of someone in a Guy Fawkes mask, clearly taken from a screengrab of an Anonymous video, and makes some wild claims, including that the Anti-Vax Wall of Shame folks are cleverly infecting anti-vaccination activists with computer viruses embedded in photos and links.

Because, obviously, you can’t have antivaccine activism without conspiracy theories. After all, these are the people who, upon learning that the body of one of their most admired “autism biomed” quacks, Jeffery Bradstreet, had been found in a river with a gunshot wound to the chest that appeared to be due to suicide, immediately went into full conspiracy mode, speculating that big pharma had put the hit on him for threatening them. It also has to do with harassing their enemies:

According to pro-vaccination groups, other opponents of SB 277 resorted to harassment, threats, doxxing and nasty impersonation. The mother of the 11-year-old girl—who asked that her name and her daughter’s name be withheld to protect their privacy and safety—told Jezebel that she’s a frequent commenter on Anti-Vax Wall of Shame, and that her daughter was contacted after a Fall of the Wall commenter started combing through her own public Facebook photos.

“She made it clear she was going through my pictures, making remarks about my husband having AIDS and how ugly my children are,” the woman says. “That their teeth are rotting out and they look retarded.”

Next, she says, came the message to her daughter (she provided a screenshot of the message to Jezebel, saying that it came from a sock puppet account impersonating her sister, which has since been taken down). She’s not sure whether the intention was to frighten her child, make her angry, or just show that she could find the woman’s family, but in any case, she’s furious.

And:

One woman who’s testified in favor of the bill—who also asked not to be named, for fear of drawing more troll attention—said that photos of her, her husband and her baby have been tweeted by anti-vaxxers. The day after she spoke in favor of the bill at a public hearing, she saw groups on Facebook speculating that she was affiliated with Merck, the drug company.

“I went home and they’d started posting all my stuff to their Facebook group,” she says. “Things like, ‘She’s an investor paid by Merck. I’ve never met anybody from Merck in my entire life.’”

In an email sent to Jezebel in May, the same woman said the group also speculated about whether someone needed to call Child Protective Services on her.

“Today the anti-vaxxers were discussing calling CPS on me because they think I have ‘mental health problems,’’ she wrote. “They think if they file a case report someone will come to my house and discover that my son is in danger, and then I will leave them alone. They have no fucking boundaries.”

And:

But the doxxing, harassment, and unhinged Hitler comparisons have SB 277 supporters feeling frightened too. While Jezebel spoke with several supporters who said they’d been threatened, doxxed, harassed, or Twitter-mobbed by anti-vax groups, only [Dorit] Reiss and [Alison] Hagood, the Colorado professor, would allow us to use their names. Both women are tenured, and both of them said it’s made it easier for them to continue talking and writing about vaccines in the face of so much increasingly delusional opposition.

This is a phenomenon that is all too familiar to anyone opposing the antivaccine movement. Indeed, to turn the penchant of antivaccinationists for going Godwin and invoking Hitler and Holocaust analogies when describing laws like SB 277 and those who refute antivaccine misinformation. As I said, people who have academic positions, like myself and these women, tend to be more resistant to these tactics at work.

I’ve always said that antivaccine zealots are their own worst enemies. I know it. My regular readers know it. Those dedicated souls who’ve worked to get SB 277 passed in California know it. Another salutary effect of the passage of SB 277 is that the rest of the country is coming to know it as well. If other states follow California’s lead, the reaction will be the same, only in more parts of the country.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1g5pXdO

Spectacular Venus-Jupiter conjunction on June 30

Tonight – June 30, 2015 – and tomorrow night, look for the sky’s brightest and second-brightest planets to stage their closest conjunction until August, 2016. Venus and Jupiter will be less than one-half degree apart. That’s less than the moon’s diameter on our sky’s dome.

Venus is currently about to pass between the sun and Earth. It will sweep some 8 degrees S. of the sun on August 15. Meanwhile, Earth passed between Jupiter and the sun in February, 2015. So Jupiter and Venus are no where near each other in space. And yet, as we look outward from Earth, we see these two planets aligned on nearly the same line of sight.

Best photos: Venus and Jupiter, west after sunset

Here’s approximately how Venus and Jupiter would look now if you could view them from a larger perspective. Not to scale. Chart via Jay Ryan at ClassicalAstronomy.com. Used with permission.

So Venus and Jupiter are not close together in space. Venus, the second planet outward from the sun, presently resides a little over 0.5 astronomical units from Earth. In contrast, Jupiter, the fifth planet outward, looms way beyond Venus some 6 astronomical units away from Earth.

By the way, one astronomical unit = the mean sun/Earth distance (approximately 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles).

Venus is a small, rocky planet like Earth. Jupiter is a huge gas giant planet.

And yet Venus and Jupiter do have things in common. They both appear bright in Earth’s sky in part because the cloud cover on these worlds is so good at reflecting sunlight.

Jupiter is much farther away than Venus, and yet its sheer size guarantees the king planet’s brilliance. Jupiter’s diameter is nearly 12 times greater than Venus’ diameter. And Jupiter is nearly 12 times farther away from Earth than Venus is tonight. That means, as seen through the telescope, the apparent angular diameters of Venus and Jupiter would appear about equal.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

This artist’s concept depicts the relative sizes of Venus and Jupiter. Jupiter is the biggest one. Venus is the little world to the right of Earth – about the same size as Earth.

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, rotates more quickly than any other planet. It spins full circle relative to the backdrop stars in less than 10 hours. Venus, the sixth largest planet, rotates more slowly than any other solar system planet, rotating full circle relative to the backdrop stars in 243 days.

So enjoy Jupiter and Venus tonight! They are very different worlds, but both spectacularly bright in Earth’s sky – and spectacularly near each other!

Also, be sure to circle July 18, 2015 on your calendar. Venus will be almost in conjunction with the star Regulus, brightest star in the constellation Leo the Lion. On July 18, the crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter will all fit within a circle sporting a diameter of less than four degrees (approximately two finger-widths at an arms length). Don’t miss out on this close-knit celestial grouping on July 18, featuring the moon, Venus and Jupiter – the brightest, second-brightest and third-brightest orbs of nighttime, respectively.

Circle July 18, 2015, on your calendar. The waxing crescent moon, Venus, Jupiter and Regulus will convene in the west at dusk/nightfall.

Bottom line: On June 30, 2015 – and on July 1 – shortly after sunset, watch for Venus and Jupiter! They are the sky’s brightest and second-brightest planets. This is their closest pairing in the evening sky until August 27, 2016.

EarthSky logo tees back for a limited time, but going fast. Order today!

Donate: Your support means the world to us

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1HLASnN

Tonight – June 30, 2015 – and tomorrow night, look for the sky’s brightest and second-brightest planets to stage their closest conjunction until August, 2016. Venus and Jupiter will be less than one-half degree apart. That’s less than the moon’s diameter on our sky’s dome.

Venus is currently about to pass between the sun and Earth. It will sweep some 8 degrees S. of the sun on August 15. Meanwhile, Earth passed between Jupiter and the sun in February, 2015. So Jupiter and Venus are no where near each other in space. And yet, as we look outward from Earth, we see these two planets aligned on nearly the same line of sight.

Best photos: Venus and Jupiter, west after sunset

Here’s approximately how Venus and Jupiter would look now if you could view them from a larger perspective. Not to scale. Chart via Jay Ryan at ClassicalAstronomy.com. Used with permission.

So Venus and Jupiter are not close together in space. Venus, the second planet outward from the sun, presently resides a little over 0.5 astronomical units from Earth. In contrast, Jupiter, the fifth planet outward, looms way beyond Venus some 6 astronomical units away from Earth.

By the way, one astronomical unit = the mean sun/Earth distance (approximately 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles).

Venus is a small, rocky planet like Earth. Jupiter is a huge gas giant planet.

And yet Venus and Jupiter do have things in common. They both appear bright in Earth’s sky in part because the cloud cover on these worlds is so good at reflecting sunlight.

Jupiter is much farther away than Venus, and yet its sheer size guarantees the king planet’s brilliance. Jupiter’s diameter is nearly 12 times greater than Venus’ diameter. And Jupiter is nearly 12 times farther away from Earth than Venus is tonight. That means, as seen through the telescope, the apparent angular diameters of Venus and Jupiter would appear about equal.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

This artist’s concept depicts the relative sizes of Venus and Jupiter. Jupiter is the biggest one. Venus is the little world to the right of Earth – about the same size as Earth.

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, rotates more quickly than any other planet. It spins full circle relative to the backdrop stars in less than 10 hours. Venus, the sixth largest planet, rotates more slowly than any other solar system planet, rotating full circle relative to the backdrop stars in 243 days.

So enjoy Jupiter and Venus tonight! They are very different worlds, but both spectacularly bright in Earth’s sky – and spectacularly near each other!

Also, be sure to circle July 18, 2015 on your calendar. Venus will be almost in conjunction with the star Regulus, brightest star in the constellation Leo the Lion. On July 18, the crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter will all fit within a circle sporting a diameter of less than four degrees (approximately two finger-widths at an arms length). Don’t miss out on this close-knit celestial grouping on July 18, featuring the moon, Venus and Jupiter – the brightest, second-brightest and third-brightest orbs of nighttime, respectively.

Circle July 18, 2015, on your calendar. The waxing crescent moon, Venus, Jupiter and Regulus will convene in the west at dusk/nightfall.

Bottom line: On June 30, 2015 – and on July 1 – shortly after sunset, watch for Venus and Jupiter! They are the sky’s brightest and second-brightest planets. This is their closest pairing in the evening sky until August 27, 2016.

EarthSky logo tees back for a limited time, but going fast. Order today!

Donate: Your support means the world to us

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1HLASnN