Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
None of that fancy "knowledge-based education" for Texas!"
It is perhaps no surprise that two Texas Republicans are being attacked for critical thinking — since the Texas GOP's 2012 Platform actually opposes any teaching of "critical thinking skills." The Platform contains a plank on "Knowledge-Based Education" that reads (on page 12 here):
Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
None of that fancy "knowledge-based education" for Texas!
Begin forwarded message:
From: John Ward <jlwptr@cox.net>
Date: July 23, 2012 9:23:55 PM EDT
Subject: July 23,Barton, solar, bacteria, Pikas, BP,
Dear reader,
Fewer stories tonight.
Be green,
John
The following story is of particular interest because it puts Joe Barton (Texas Republican representative) on the side of those who want to retain the program of federal loan guarantees. If you have somehow missed Barton's various public statements and positions, before you read the story, check out these (culled from Wikipedia, s.v. "Joe Barton"):
On June 17, 2010, Barton accused the White House of a "$20 billion shakedown" of oil giant BP after the company reached an agreement with Obama to establish an escrow account to pay the claims of people harmed by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He made the accusation at the outset of a House hearing where BP's chief executive officer, Tony Hayward, appeared for the first time before Congress. Facing
Hayward at the witness table, Barton said, "I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again, in my words—amounts to a shakedown, so I apologize."
In November 2011, Barton criticized President Barack Obama for delaying his decision on the Keystone pipeline. He said "We asked him to make a decision not to wait another two years. That's bullshit."
In March 2011, Barton sponsored the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act, which would repeal the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed by Republican President George W. Bush. The 2007 law would set energy efficiency standards for light bulbs, effectively eliminating most or all incandescent light bulbs.
Barton said "People don't want Congress dictating what light fixtures they can use."
Barton tried to block the bipartisan Combating Autism Act of 2006. He said that the money steered toward environmental causes of autism were (sic!) not the reason he blocked passage of the bill.
Barton let the bill die in committee, which upset many people who were vocal about saying Barton had sacrificed the interests of autistic children in the interests of the oil and gas companies that donate heavily to his campaign.
The organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) put Congressman Barton on its CREW's Most Corrupt Report 2011.
CREW also reported that Barton [in addition to some other monetary lapses] paid his wife Terri $57,759 in salary and bonuses, from his campaign funds in the 2006 election cycle. A spokesman said that Terri served as the campaign's outreach director and planned fund raising and special events. Barton's daughter Kristin was paid $12,622 in salary and bonuses and his mother, Nell Barton, was paid $7,000 for a car.
Opposed the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 2006.
Barton has questioned the wisdom of deficit spending to fund an extensive national wind turbine energy generation grid.
In 2005, prompted by a February 2005 Wall Street Journal article, Barton launched an investigation into two climate change studies from 1998 and 1999. In his letters to the authors of the studies he requested details on the studies and the sources of the authors grant funding. The Washington Post condemned Barton's investigation as a "witch-hunt". During Former Vice President Al Gore's testimony to the Energy and Commerce Committee in March 2007, Barton asserted to Gore that "You're not just off a little, you're totally wrong."
GOP Leadership Silences Critical Thinking On Loan
Guarantees While The Texas GOP
Opposes All Such Thinking
by Stephen Lacey on Jul 23, 2012 at 12:27 pm
GOP leaders have a message for any Republicans who dare hold a nuanced position on loan guarantees and clean energy deployment: Be quiet and get back in line to "where they're supposed to be."
That's the message from GOP energy and environmental adviser Mike McKenna, who has been helping House Republican leaders wrangle dissenting lawmakers who've expressed concerns about their party's attempt to dismantle the loan guarantee program.
The conflict emerged after Cliff Stearns (R-FL) introduced a bill called the "No More Solyndras Act" designed to end loan guarantees for clean energy. Rather than toe the party line, a few critical-thinking Republicans said they would rather see the the program reformed to better protect taxpayers, not kill the whole thing.
That didn't sit well with leaders in the party who have made the loan guarantee program a political target this election season. Politico reported on the defection with the GOP after the legislation was introduced:
The spat over the bill started last week when Barton told his fellow committee Republicans at a closed-door meeting on the Solyndra bill that he opposed ending the loan guarantee program.
Barton publicly expressed his opposition to killing the program for the first time the next day at a joint subcommittee hearing on the legislation.
"I don't think we need to throw out the whole program. I think we can clean it up," Barton said, calling for a series of reforms to prevent another Solyndra-like bankruptcy.
In the end, supporters of the measure expect that nearly all committee Republicans will rally behind the bill.
"It's been an interesting thing, but I think at the end everybody's going to end up where they're supposed to be," McKenna said.
Barton was joined by fellow Texas Republican Michael Burgess and Georgia Republican Phil Gingrey, who publicly said they supported reforming the program rather than ending it. Politicoreported that three other Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee — Brian Bilbray, Mary Bono Mack, and Charlie Bass — also expressed concerns about the decision to kill loan guarantees.
It is perhaps no surprise that two Texas Republicans are being attacked for critical thinking — since the Texas GOP's 2012 Platform actually opposes any teaching of "critical thinking skills." The Platform contains a plank on "Knowledge-Based Education" that reads (on page 12 here):
Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
None of that fancy "knowledge-based education" for Texas!
As TPM notes:
Elsewhere in the document, the platform stipulates that "[e]very Republican is responsible for implementing this platform."
Under these standards, Texas Republicans Barton and Burgess were way out of line.
The loan guarantee program was established in 2005 under the George W. Bush Administration. The program is designed to help bridge the "Valley of Death" by providing government backing of private loans for first-of-a-kind projects and innovative technologies. By guaranteeing that the government pays back the loan if a recipient cannot, the program helps leverage private financing that would otherwise not be available.
Many Republicans — including the three top House leaders who've trumped up the Solyndra bankruptcy — have been very supportive of loan guarantees. In 2007, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton requested adding $4 billion to the program for new nuclear power projects; House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa pushed loan guarantees for nuclear projects in 2010; and Cliff Stearns, Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, requested loan guarantees for an innovative biofuels facility in his home state.
Why? Because these lawmakers understood that the program could fill in a major financing gap.
Since the three different loan guarantee programs were established, they have helped draw private financing for the world's largest wind farm, some of the world's largest solar plants, and the first nuclear power project in the U.S. in more than 30 years. Loan guarantees have financed32 projects across 20 states, helping leverage $20 billion in private capital and create 22,000 jobs.
But after the bankruptcy of some higher-risk companies in the loan guarantee portfolio — Abound Solar, Amonix, Beacon Power, and Solyndra — Republicans saw an opportunity to turn this bi-partisan program into a political weapon. Even though these companies were supported by Republicans and represent only 5 percent of funds allocated for the program, GOP leaders have used them in an attempt to weave a fake political scandal.
So what happens if a Republican breaks rank and questions putting an end to a program the party has historically embraced? They'll pay a political price. As soon as Representatives Barton, Burgess and Gingrey made statements in support of maintaining the loan guarantee program, the party rushed to bring them in line.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal attacked each lawmaker personally. Not surprisingly, the editorial board's argument was based on a distortion of the facts. The WSJ claimed that half of the loan guarantees had gone bankrupt. In fact, half of the solar manufacturers — a small fraction of the total program — had gone bankrupt. That's a pretty glaring mistake for a publication focused on business and finance to make.
Republicans Joe Barton and Michael Burgess of Texas and Phil Gingrey of Georgia have defended this politicized venture capital operation. Messrs. Burgess and Gingrey didn't return our calls, but Mr. Gingrey said in one hearing that "I'm not ready to say we should throw the baby out with the bathwater and just eliminate the loan programs entirely." If not after four years of $1 trillion deficits, when? Mr. Barton has been one of the staunchest advocates of the subsidies and he told Politico last week: "I don't think we need to throw out the whole program. I think we can clean it up."
Bloomberg reports that half the solar companies that have received loan guarantees have gone bankrupt. Renewable energy deserves every chance to compete in the open marketplace backed by private investors. But DOE's taxpayer bet on alternative energy is looking steadily worse over time, as abundant natural gas for electricity generation is making renewable energy less competitive even with subsidies.
Republicans will be fiscal frauds if they renew the very money-losing energy programs they attacked Barack Obama for. When the next Solyndra goes bankrupt, voters will have more than Mr. Obama to blame.
Accuracy issues aside, the editorial was effective in bringing Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee back in line. GOP Advisor Mike McKenna said "there's no doubt that [the editorial] helped" change the attitudes of Republicans who had been "wandering" away from the party's messaging strategy.
This awkward public conflict is illustrative of how House Republican leadership approaches the issue. Their goal is not to help make the program better or to find more effective ways to deploy clean energy — it is to turn loan guarantees into a political weapon.
Small U.S. Solar Businesses Suffering from Tariffs on Imported Chinese Panels
U.S. importers of Chinese panels will have to pay some $100 million in retroactive tariffs—unless they get them overturned.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/22/us-climate-oceans-bacteria-idUSBRE86L0ET20120722
Bacteria outbreak in Northern Europe due to ocean warming, study says
LONDON | Sun Jul 22, 2012 1:03pm EDT
(Reuters) - Manmade climate change is the main driver behind the unexpected emergence of a group of bacteria in northern Europe which can cause gastroenteritis, new research by a group of international experts shows.
The paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Sunday, provided some of the first firm evidence that the warming patterns of the Baltic Sea have coincided with the emergence of Vibrio infections in northern Europe.
Vibrios is a group of bacteria which usually grow in warm and tropical marine environments. The bacteria can cause various infections in humans, ranging from cholera to gastroenteritis-like symptoms from eating raw or undercooked shellfish or from exposure to seawater.
A team of scientists from institutions in Britain, Finland, Spain and the United States examined sea surface temperature records and satellite data, as well as statistics on Vibrio cases in the Baltic.
They found the number and distribution of cases in the Baltic Sea area was strongly linked to peaks in sea surface temperatures. Each year the temperature rose one degree, the number of vibrio cases rose almost 200 percent.
"The big apparent increases that we've seen in cases during heat wave years (..) tend to indicate that climate change is indeed driving infections," Craig Baker-Austin at the UK-based Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, one of the authors of the study, told Reuters.
OCEAN WARMING
Climate studies show that rising greenhouse gas emissions made global average surface temperatures increase by about 0.17 degrees Celsius a decade from 1980 to 2010.
The Vibrio study focused on the Baltic Sea in particular because it warmed at an unprecedented rate of 0.063 to 0.078 degrees Celsius a year from 1982 to 2010, or 6.3 to 7.8 degrees a century.
"(It) represents, to our knowledge, the fastest warming marine ecosystem examined so far anywhere on Earth," the paper said.
Many marine bacteria thrive in warm, low-saline sea water. In addition to warming, climate change has caused more frequent and heavier rainfall, which has reduced the salt content of estuaries and coastal wetlands.
As ocean temperatures continue to rise and coastal regions in northern regions become less saline, Vibrio bacteria strains will appear in new areas, the scientists said.
Vibrio outbreaks have also appeared in temperate and cold regions in Chile, Peru, Israel, the northwest U.S. Pacific and northwest Spain, and these can be linked to warming patterns, the scientists said.
"Very few studies have looked at the risk of these infections at high latitudes," Baker-Austin said.
"Certainly the chances of getting a vibrio infection are considered to be relatively low, and more research is focused on areas where these diseases are endemic or at least more common," he added.
Previous Vibrio outbreaks in colder regions have often been put down to a sporadic event or special conditions rather than a response to long-term climate change.
This is because the effects of global warming can be more pronounced at higher latitudes and in areas which lack detailed historical climate data, the study said.
Baker-Austin said there was a growing realization that climate and the emergence of some infectious diseases were closely linked but there are some "huge data gaps in that area which need addressing."
Pika Peril: 'Mountain Bunny Of The Rockies' Pushed To The Brink By Climate Change
Recent drought and extreme heat in the U.S. has had a well-documented impact on people living in the West and Midwest. But another denizen of the American West is facing a dire threat.
The American Pika is a small, mountain-dwelling mammal sometimes referred to as the "mountain bunny of the Rockies." And new evidence shows that Pikas are disappearing from the Great Basin in Nevada, Utah and California at an alarming rate.
* * * * *
In 2010, the Obama Administration opted not to include the Pika on the Endangered Species list because "while some pika populations in the West are declining, others are not." The decision to not protect the Pika outraged some scientists interested in the plight of the furry, flower-eating relative of the rabbit:
"This is a political decision that ignores science and the law," Shaye Wolf, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. "Scientific studies clearly show that the pika is disappearing from the American West due to climate change and needs the immediate protections of the Endangered Species Act to help prevent its extinction. The Interior Department has chosen to sit on its hands instead of taking meaningful action to protect our nation's wildlife from climate change."
Despite its status as a "Species of Least Concern," the American Pika is clearly under threat. As droughts and heat waves like the ones we've seen recently become more frequent and intense, the American Pika will find it harder and harder to survive.
Sadly, the Pika won't be alone in that regard. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that "as global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C [relative to 1980 to 1999], model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe." [And bear in mind that if we continue on our present course we are headed for an estimated 6oC warming by 2100.] If we don't reduce emissions soon, we are headed to far higher warming.
– Max Frankel
Related Posts:
· Study finds "mass biodiversity collapse" at 900 ppm, and possibly a "threshold response … to relatively minor increases in CO2 concentration and/or global temperature."
· Royal Society special issue: "There are very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record."
· Nature Climate Change (9/11): "The proportion of actual biodiversity loss should quite clearly be revised upwards: by 2080, more than 80% of genetic diversity within species may disappear in certain groups of organisms"
BP Oil Disaster Prompts 'Perfect Storm' Behind Mass Dolphin Deaths, Study Finds
Two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP has mostly resumed normal operations in the Gulf of Mexico. But many animals in the Gulf haven't gone back to normal.
Researchers have connected a recent dolphin die-off to the 2010 oil spill, which likely weakened dolphins for colder conditions in Gulf waters.
According to a study from scientists at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, published in PLoS ONE, 186 young dolphins washed ashore along Gulf coasts during a four-month period between January 1 and April 30 2011. This included 86 baby dolphins, which is six times more than the average.
University of Central Florida biologist and study researcher Graham Worthy said:
"Unfortunately, it was a 'perfect storm' that led to the dolphin deaths. The oil spill and cold water of 2010 had already put significant stress on their food resources. . . . It appears the high volumes of cold freshwater coming from snowmelt water that pushed through Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound in 2011 was the final blow.
Other studies have connected the massive dolphin die-off to the BP spill. Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that dolphins off the coast of Louisiana — an area significantly hit by the spill — have become seriously ill due to oil exposure. NOAA "found problems like drastically low weight, low blood sugar and, in some cases, cancer of the liver and lungs."
Since Febrauary 2010 (two months before the spill) 754 marine mammals have washed onto the shore, 95 percent of which were dead. The actual death toll could be much higher since many bodies never wash up.
The BP disaster has hit other marine life, as well, causing eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions
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