10 mega myths about farming to remember on your next grocery run

Washington Post-Speaking of Science

10 mega myths about farming to remember on your next grocery run

By Jenna Gallegos July 24, 2017

Most of us don’t spend our days plowing fields or wrangling cattle. We’re part of the 99 percent of Americans who eat food, but don’t produce it. Because of our intimate relationship with food, and because it’s so crucial to our health and the environment, people should be very concerned about how it’s produced. But we don’t always get it right. Next time you’re at the grocery store, consider these 10 modern myths about the most ancient occupation.

Most farms are corporate-owned

This myth is probably the most pervasive on the list. It is also the furthest off-base. Nearly 99 percent of U.S. farms are family-owned. The vast majority of these are small family farms, but the bulk of our food comes from large family farms.

Food is expensive

Americans spend a considerably smaller percentage of their income on food than they did in the 1960s. Americans also spend among the least amount worldwide on food as a percent of income. We spend less of our money on food than people in many other developed nations.

Between 10 and 20 percent of the cost of food actually reaches the farmer. That means when commodity prices rise or fall, food costs remain relatively constant, buffering consumers from spikes in their grocery bills.

That’s not to say that food isn’t difficult for some American households to afford, and nutrition and obesity experts worry about the relatively high cost of nutrient-rich versus calorie-dense foods.

Farming is traditional and low tech

Self-driving cars are still out of reach for consumers, but tractors have been driving themselves around farms for years. And driving tractors isn’t the only role GPS plays on a farm. Farmers collect geospatial data to monitor variations across a field in soil type, water and nutrient use, temperature, crop yield and more. The average farmer on Farmer’s Business Network, a social media-like platform for farm analytics, collects about four million data points every year. Artificial intelligence helps sort through all this data and maximize performance within a field down to the square meter.

The seeds farmers plant are also carefully crafted by years of state-of-the-art research to maximize yield and efficiency. Gene sequencing and molecular markers help track the best traits when breeding new crops. Chemical mutagens and radiation speed up evolution by introducing new mutations. And genetic engineering enables scientists to move genes between species or turn off genes for undesirable characteristics.

Organic farms are not necessarily any less high-tech. Except for genetic engineering, all the above technologies improve yields on many USDA-certified organic farms.

With all this technology going into modern farms, the demand for skilled workers in the agriculture sector is also rising. In 2015, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that jobs in food and agriculture outnumber degrees granted in those fields nearly two to one. Of those job opportunities, 27 percent are in science, technology, engineering or math.

That’s why I switched from a largely pre-med major to plant biology for my PhD. I grew up in a farm and ranch community on the dry eastern plains of Colorado. There, slim margins prevent many farmers from investing in the newest technologies, so I wanted to help make better seeds more affordable.

A pesticide is a pesticide is a pesticide

Pesticide is a generic term for a range of compounds. Different classes target certain types of pests: herbicides for weeds, fungicides for fungi, insecticides for insects, rodenticides for rodents. Some kill very specifically. For example, certain herbicides target only broad-leafed plants, but not grasses. Others, like certain insecticides that can also harm larger animals at high doses, cross categories.

Pesticides fight bugs and weeds in organic and conventional fields. The difference is that organic pesticides cannot be synthesized artificially. This does not necessarily mean they are less toxic. Toxicity depends on the specific compound and a person’s exposure to that compound. Some pesticides, especially older ones, are toxic at relatively low levels. Others are safe even at very high doses. Pesticides also differ in how quickly they break down in the environment.

Different regulations apply to different pesticides. Permits are required to purchase some agricultural chemicals, and many farmers call on crop consultants to diagnose problems in a field and prescribe the proper treatment.

Organic farmers and conventional farmers don’t get along

Adjacent farms have to cooperate regardless of how they grow their crops. For example, potentially damaging herbicides applied to one field can drift onto a neighbor’s crops. Poorly managed weeds or insects can also spread from one field to another.

But many farm families actually grow organic and conventional crops on different fields. Organic and conventional agriculture are different business models. It typically costs more to grow crops organically, but farmers can sell these crops for a higher premium. Some crops are easier to grow organically than others depending on the type of pests they face. Whether a given crop can be grown with more sustainability by conventional or organic methods also differs by crop and by region.

A GMO is a GMO is a GMO

Farmers and plant scientists find the term “GMO,” or genetically modified organism, frustrating. There are many ways to genetically modify a crop inside and outside of a lab. Yet the term GMO and the regulations that go with it are restricted to particular types of genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering is a tool that can be used in many different ways. The technique has produced virus-resistant papayas, grains that can survive herbicide application, squash unpalatable to insects and apples that don’t brown. Each of these traits can lead to very different outcomes. For example, herbicide-resistant crops allow an increased use of certain herbicides, while insect-resistant crops enable farmers to use less insecticides.

Each GMO food crop currently or soon to be on U.S. shelves (these include canola, corn, papaya, soybean, squash, sugar beets, apples and potatoes) has been individually tested for safety. Collectively, this research spans two decades and nearly 1,000 studies by multiple independent organizations from all over the world.

Only meat with a “hormone-free” label is hormone free

No meat is hormone-free, because animals (and plants) naturally produce hormones. Use of added hormones is prohibited in all pork and chicken operations. Hormones like estrogen can be used to help cows reach market weight more quickly, but the average man produces tens of thousands of times more estrogen every day than the amount found in a serving of beef from a hormone-treated cow. For a pregnant woman, that figure is in the millions.

Only meat with an “antibiotic-free” label is antibiotic free

All the meat in your grocery store is antibiotic-free. An animal treated with antibiotics cannot be slaughtered until the drugs have cleared its system. The label “ no antibiotics added” or “raised without antibiotics” means that an animal was raised without receiving any antibiotics ever. Overuse of antibiotics in animals that have not actually been diagnosed with a bacterial infection fuels antibiotic resistance and is a major public health concern. On the other hand, forgoing antibiotic treatment if an animal is sick would be inhumane. Labels stating “no sub-therapeutics added” or “not fed antibiotics” mean antibiotics were only used as necessary.

Foods labeled “natural” are produced differently

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Natural food labels don’t actually mean anything. Not yet, anyway. The FDA took public comment last fall and will be discussing whether to regulate “natural” in food labels in the future. Where to draw the line between natural and unnatural is a tough call, and many experts argue it’s irrelevant, because naturalness is not an indication of quality or safety.

Chemicals are the biggest threat to food safety

Biological contaminants are by far the most common food safety issue. Harmful bacterial like E. coli, salmonella or listeria, viruses and parasites can contaminate meat or produce. Thorough cooking, cleaning, and proper food storage are the best defense against these pathogens. For raw vegetables, washing can reduce but not eliminate threat of exposure. Certain raw vegetables, such as those fertilized with manure and those that grow in warm and humid conditions, like alfalfa sprouts, are a higher risk. Diseases such as mad cow disease can also be a food safety concern, but only in extremely rare cases.

Chemicals make their way into foods much less often. These include mycotoxins which are naturally produced by fungi, industrial pollutants, or heavy metals that are naturally found in soils. The Agriculture Department monitors food for pesticide residues annually and per its latest report, “pesticide residues on foods tested are at levels below the tolerances established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pose no safety concern.”

This controversial pesticide could threaten queen bees. The alternatives could be worse.

Nutrition science isn’t broken. It’s just wicked hard.

Punishing drought takes toll on crops across Northern Plains

Miami Herald

Punishing drought takes toll on crops across Northern Plains

The Associated Press July 23, 2017

Billings, Mont. A punishing drought that stretches across much of the U.S. Northern Plains could cause farmers to lose 64 million bushels of wheat production this year, according to federal officials.

That dire projection comes as northeast Montana experiences the worst drought in the country, with similar dry conditions in neighboring North Dakota and South Dakota. The federal government has declared numerous counties in the three-state region to be disaster areas and authorized haying and grazing on land meant for conservation to help alleviate the conditions.

Federal agriculture officials have labeled as poor or very poor more than half of Montana’s 2017 crops of spring wheat, lentils and durum. Combined, the three crops were valued at more than $600 million in 2016.

A scant 1.2 inches of rain have been recorded since April 1 in the small town of Nashua on the edge of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Ranchers also will lose in this drought, said Ed Hinton, an auctioneer who drives down from Scobey for the weekly sale at the Glasgow Stockyards. Ranchers turn up every Thursday to sell off an animal or two, usually a heifer who didn’t get pregnant, or a belligerent steer not worth the trouble, or the hay now selling for $180 a ton.

There’s nothing like crop insurance for livestock. In times of drought, the U.S. Department of Agriculture opens up grasslands previously off limits for conservation. After that, there’s low interest loans.

The Thursday sale the week before the Fourth of July brought a thousand cattle to the stockyards, Hinton said, at a time of year when a few hundred cattle at a sale is respectable.

Small farmers push for USDA reforms

The Hill

Small farmers push for USDA reforms

By Sumner Park July 23, 2017

Small farm and ranch companies and animal rights activists flew to Washington to meet with lawmakers and push for legislation they say will bring needed reforms to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

At issue are mandatory USDA fees for so-called checkoff programs. Farmers and ranchers are required to pay for federal programs that help market industry products. The funds have been used for such popular and iconic campaigns as the “Got Milk” ads and the “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner” campaign.

But critics say those programs promote policies for industrialized agriculture, not small farmers and ranchers. The fly-in July 19-20 was organized by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and Humane Society Legislative Fund.

“The least we are asking for is transparency,” Eric Swafford, Tennessee HSUS state director and a former state representative told The Hill. “No one can see how these checkoff dollars are being spent, and there is no accountability. The system is inherently broken.”

One of the bills, the Opportunities for Fairness in Farming (OFF) Act, would enforce greater transparency on how the funds are used.

The bill has bipartisan support and was introduced by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.). Reps. Dave Brat (R-Va.) and Dina Titus (D-Nev.) also are working on companion legislation in the House.

“Federal checkoff programs — which impose a mandatory tax on farmers and ranchers — are in desperate need of reform,” Booker told The Hill. “Checkoff programs need to do a better job of spending their dollars in ways that benefit small family farmers, and the legislation that Senator Lee and I have introduced will increase transparency and help restore trust in checkoff program practices.”

The OFF Act would require checkoff programs to publish all budgets and expenditures of funds and to submit periodic audits by the USDA inspector general.

In 2005, checkoff dollars were ruled as government taxes rather than producer fees, but there is no system for auditing those funds.

Those promotional ad campaigns have helped boost American agriculture, but smaller farmers and ranchers say their needs are not being met. They say the funds are also used to lobby for legislation that promotes the interests of big producers and blame lax oversight at the Agriculture Department.

“These funds are being used to lobby for control over the perceived voice of the American farmer,” Swafford said. “Young and alternative farmers are seeking a voice, but are being deprived of the opportunity.”

One example the fly-in attendees pointed to were the Country of Origin Labeling, which required companies to provide labels informing customers where their meat originated. Small ranchers and farms backed the rule, but it was opposed by larger companies.

Congress repealed the rule in 2015.

“The current system forces responsible farmers to pay into a system of taxes that is used against them,” Mike Weaver, president of the Organization for Competitive Markets, told The Hill. “It’s a game of survival for independent family farmers.”

“We are so behind in our food system because it has taken on an industrialized approach,” Pete Eshelmen, owner of Joseph Decuis Farm in Indiana, told The Hill.

Amanda Carter, owner of a private family farm in North Carolina, said there has been a false narrative against alternative agriculture.

Another reform bill, the Voluntary Checkoff Program Participation Act, introduced by Lee and Brat in the House, would take the OFF Act a step further by prohibiting the compulsory checkoff programs altogether.

Many of the attendees were hopeful the Trump administration would back their push.

“If the Trump administration is serious about draining the swamp, fighting for free enterprise and getting rid of regulations,” Eshelmen said. “Then this is the chance for them to prove it.”

Republicans brewing Russian scandal to target greens

Politico Energy

Republicans brewing Russian scandal to target greens

Allegations the Kremlin is bankrolling U.S. anti-fracking activists are ludicrous, groups say. But lawmakers want Treasury to investigate.

By Ben Lefebvre July 23, 2017

$People protest against hydraulic fracking June 30, 2014, in New York City.$

People protest against hydraulic fracking June 30, 2014, in New York City. | Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Republicans are trying to conjure up a Russian scandal they can get behind.

GOP House members and at least one Trump Cabinet member are pushing years-old allegations from conservative activists that Russia has funneled money to U.S. environmental groups to oppose fracking. The story has reappeared in conservative circles in recent weeks — a respite, perhaps, from the steady drip-drip of news reports about dealings between Russians and President Donald Trump’s inner circle.

Allegations have circulated for years that Moscow has sought to discourage European countries from developing their own natural gas supplies as an alternative to Russian fuel. And conservatives have sought to extend those concerns to the U.S. — though there’s little but innuendo to base them on.

But the rumors gained new life in late June, when House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith and fellow Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber asked Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to investigate whether the Kremlin is bankrolling green campaigns against the fracking technology that helped the U.S. overtake Russia in gas production.

Among other material, Smith and Weber cited articles in conservative news publications and an alleged Hillary Clinton speech published by WikiLeaks — part of a trove of stolen Clinton campaign documents that U.S. intelligence agencies have linked to Russia’s election-meddling efforts.

The reports, the Republican lawmakers wrote in the letter to Mnuchin, suggest “that Russia is also behind the radical statements and vitriol directed at the U.S. fossil fuel sector.”

Green groups dismissed Smith’s allegations as an attempt to divert attention from all the news surrounding Trump and Russia.

“If congressional Republicans are so concerned about Russian influence, they should start seriously investigating that country’s interference in our election, not attacking long-standing environmental organizations,” said Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the Sierra Club, one of the groups Smith and conservatives have accused of potentially taking Russian money.

The League of Conservation Voters, another group named in Smith’s letter, also blasted the Science Committee’s allegations.

“This is false,” LCV spokesman David Willett said. “We have no connections to Russia and have been an effective advocate for environmental protection for over 45 years. This seems like nothing more than an attempt at distraction away from the Trump campaign’s well-publicized interactions with Russian interests to influence the election.”

Still, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal op-ed page have both run items about the committee’s letter, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry lent his voice to the effort when a Fox Business anchor asked whether he supported an investigation.

“Absolutely,” Perry said in the July 11 broadcast. “Steve is a very capable and very focused business individual who knows that this type of activity has to be investigated, has to be halted.”

Spokespeople for the Energy Department and Treasury Department did not respond to questions. A White House spokesperson did not reply to questions about whether the allegations had made their way to Trump.

Anti-fracking sentiment in the U.S. started bubbling up among U.S. environmental groups as soon as the oil and gas production method started surging in the late 2000s, with the documentary “Gasland“ appearing in theaters in 2010 after a year and a half in production. Much of that opposition was driven by local activists in new gas hot spots like Pennsylvania who complained about threats to their drinking water, while major national environmental groups like the Sierra Club were slower to take up the cry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who oversees an economy almost totally dependent on oil and gas exports, has also slagged fracking technology. He once said that fracking makes “black stuff” come out of people’s water faucets, according to a New Yorker report.

Still, there is no evidence that Russian money has gone to U.S. green groups, at least on the national level, said Brenda Shaffer, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and Eastern European Studies. And there is even less evidence that any money would have been well spent, given how hard it would be to push widespread fracking bans through the myriad of local, state and federal governments involved in permitting, she added.

“It would be almost impossible to prevent fracking in the United States,” Shaffer told POLITICO.

The evidence the committee cites includes comments that former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made at a London-based think tank in 2014, when he said he believed Russia was working with environmental groups in Europe to oppose shale gas development.

“Other officials have indicated the same scheme is unfolding in the U.S.,” Smith’s letter goes on to say — though from there the trail becomes murkier.

The letter also cites a speech that Clinton allegedly delivered in Canada in 2014, according to Clinton campaign emails published by WikiLeaks, in which the former secretary of state supposedly said she had encountered “phony environmental groups” that opposed pipelines and fracking. The emails were part of a cache of Democratic documents that U.S. intelligence officials believe were originally pilfered by Kremlin-linked hackers.

“I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by Russians,” Clinton says in the alleged transcript.

But the text does not indicate whether Clinton — who promoted shale gas drilling in Europe — was referring to environmental groups in Europe or the United States. A Clinton campaign aide did not answer questions about the veracity and the context of the speech. The campaign has refused to confirm or deny the content of any of the leaked materials.

Still, the alleged Clinton quotes have taken off in conservative news outlets, with The Daily Caller and Washington Times including them in articles published in the past year. Smith, in turn, cited those articles in the footnotes of his letter to Treasury.

“It’s a theory, but the reasoning behind it makes sense,” said a committee aide, who requested anonymity. “The chairman is saying there’s data points pointing to this theory, and he’s saying the Treasury secretary can shine some light on this. This isn’t out of left field and crazy.”

Science Committee aides also argued that last year’s national intelligence report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election supports the concerns raised in Smith’s letter. However, the intelligence report doesn’t allege any Kremlin outreach to U.S. environmental groups.

The intelligence report’s non-classified, 14-page version makes reference to anti-fracking programming broadcast by Kremlin-controlled news channel RT. “This is likely reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability,” the report says.

Much of the rest of the case that Russia funneled money to U.S. green groups comes from a 2014 report created by the Environmental Policy Alliance, which describes itself as “devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups.”

The group shares a Washington, D.C., address and a phone number with a public relations firm run by Richard Berman, a lawyer and former lobbyist who has also created issue groups such as the Center for Union Facts and Center for Consumer Freedom— prompting liberal critics to nickname him “the astroturf kingpin.” CBS News once called him “Dr. Evil” in a 2011 piece focusing on his lobbying efforts on unpopular issues, including a campaign against Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

A representative of the Environmental Policy Alliance confirmed that Berman’s firm manages the group.

The group’s report and Smith’s letter focus on $23 million that a Bermuda-based philanthropic firm, Klein Ltd., donated in 2010 and 2011 to the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation, according to information disclosed in Sea Change’s IRS tax forms. Sea Change then awarded around $55 million in each of those years to the Sierra Club Foundation, U.S. Climate Action Network, Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups to promote energy efficiency and climate change-related operations, according to its IRS tax filings.

“Although the source of Klein’s capital has not been documented,” the Science Committee’s letter says, the panel alleged that various corporate and personal connections “strongly suggest” that the money originated with “the Russian government and energy sector.”

But a lawyer representing Klein told POLITICO that none of the money came from sources connected to Russia. And a Sea Change spokesperson said none of its donations to environmental groups were earmarked for opposition to fracking.

“The Klein Foundation grants were given as general support and no requirement was made that the funds be used for specific projects, programs, or activities of the Sea Change Foundation,” the spokesperson said.

Berman’s report draws on a court case filed in the British Virgin Islands in the mid-2000s that resulted in a money-laundering conviction against IPOC Group, an entity owned by Leonid Reiman, Russia’s former telecommunications minister and adviser to Putin, according to an outline of the case maintained by the World Bank. Roderick Forrest, a lawyer for Wakefield Quin, a law firm representing Klein Ltd., was one of IPOC’s directors, according to case documents.

The House committee did not contact Klein as part of its fact-finding, a committee aide said. But Forrest railed against the accusations and said the company was considering legal action following the committee’s letter.

“The allegations are completely false and irresponsible,” Forrest told POLITICO. “We can state categorically that at no point did this philanthropic organization receive or expend funds from Russian sources or Russian-connected sources, and Klein has no Russian connection whatsoever.”

The Sierra Club’s Pierce also denied that any of the money it received from Sea Change ultimately came from Moscow.

“We have confirmed that the origin of these funds is a private U.S. donor who cares about climate change and has invested in the work the Sierra Club does to tackle the climate crisis and advance the clean energy economy — not from Russia,” she said.

Why Big Oil Can’t Make the Renewable Energy Transition

The Motley Fool

Why Big Oil Can’t Make the Renewable Energy Transition

Today’s fossil fuel giants can see that wind and solar power will be eating their lunch tomorrow, but knowing the disruption is coming doesn’t mean they can pivot to meet it.

Travis Hoium July 23, 2017

Big oil companies are starting to consider what the world will look like after the reign of petroleum is over. For example, Royal Dutch Shell recently announced it will invest $1 billion per year in clean energy — a large number, but still a relatively small investment compared to its $25 billion in annual capital spending. Nonetheless, it was a public admission that clean energy is the future, not oil. Rival Total has, arguably, made the biggest investments in renewable energy, buying two-thirds of solar solutions leader SunPower, battery company Saft, and stakes in a number of solar power plant projects.

Chevron and BP have also been in and out of the renewable energy business over the past decade, though both have taken steps back recently. ExxonMobil is really the only holdout among the hydrocarbon majors, continuing to focus solely on fossil fuels. What the rest of them are trying to do is create a path to a world beyond oil. But these old-school energy industry giants have a long road ahead to reach powerhouse status in renewable energy.

A solar array with two wind turbines in the background.

Image source: Getty Images.

Disruption you can see a mile away

Everyone sees the renewable energy revolution coming. Solar and wind are getting cheap — I mean, really cheap — and systems for storing energy with batteries, compressed air, or hydrogen are getting more affordable by the day. Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Total can see the threat coming a mile away. The question is what they can do about it.

Disrupting your own business is hard. When a company is running at full steam and generating cash, and has decades of profitable history to look back on, it’s nearly impossible to admit that disruption is coming, even if it’s staring you in the face. Microsoft could have produced a viable device to compete with the iPhone, but it was making so much money from Windows and Office that it didn’t want to reinvent its business, so it missed out on the smartphone revolution. Sears, JC Penney, Walmart, and nearly every other major retailer are losing sales to Amazon.com, despite the fact that even a decade ago, it was easy to forecast that e-commerce was going to skyrocket. One could tell story after story about steady, profitable, incumbents that were unwilling or unable to make strategic shifts to new business models, despite the fact that they were able to see the changes coming to their industries years in advance.

Oil and renewables don’t mix

The idea of a company making a firm transition from oil to wind or solar energy seems simple enough. Fellow Fool investor Jason Hall recently asked me if I thought Total would buy out the rest of SunPower soon, as part of its path to the energy business of the future. That decision would seem to make sense for Total, on the surface, but I still view it as unlikely, for now.

It’s difficult to make a wholesale shift to a new business model, and Total is a perfect example of that. Sources have told me that when it bought its majority stake in SunPower, it asked the company for a 10-year plan — something that’s standard in the fossil fuel industry, where businesses chart their investments many years in advance. But SunPower had never crafted such a plan, because if they did, it would be obsolete in a matter of months. The solar industry changes so quickly that companies must constantly adjust on the fly. According to GTM Research, in 2007, the solar industry installed 2.5 GW of generating capacity worldwide. In 2017, China alone installs about that much every two weeks! No one could have predicted that a decade ago, let alone devised a plan then that still made sense in the current environment.

It would be almost impossible for SunPower to be as nimble as it needs to be now under Total’s corporate umbrella. The better strategy for Total would be to keep its major stake, support the company financially if that’s needed, and maybe swoop in to buy the company outright in five or 10 years when the solar industry is mature and the oil business is dying.

Why big renewable buyouts aren’t on the horizon… yet

Just because oil companies don’t have the corporate structure, dexterity, or know-how to run renewable energy companies today doesn’t mean they’ll all go down in flames with the decline of oil. Once the world definitively moves past peak oil consumption and energy companies see darker days ahead, they’ll feel compelled to adjust their strategies. That’s when their acquisitions of solar manufacturers and developers will likely begin in earnest. But buying into the still-evolving industry that renewable energy is today is too risky, even for big oil’s balance sheets.

There’s a reason incumbent industries in general have a hard time adapting to upstarts that disrupt their businesses, even if they see the disruption coming. It’s hard to turn away from a profitable model and leap to a new growth opportunity, even if it’s one with a bright future like solar or energy storage. So, while it seems like the big oil companies are starting to take renewable energy seriously, a decade from now, they probably won’t be the big energy players they are today. They’re just not built to thrive in the fast-moving renewable energy industry.

Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Travis Hoium owns shares of Royal Dutch Shell (A Shares), SunPower, and Total and a family member works for Amazon. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool owns shares of ExxonMobil. The Motley Fool recommends Chevron and Total.

Bad News for Big Oil: Electric Vehicle Sales to Surpass Gas Guzzlers by 2038

EcoWatch

Bad News for Big Oil: Electric Vehicle Sales to Surpass Gas Guzzlers by 2038

Lorraine Chow July 14, 2017

Despite the Koch brothers’ best efforts, it looks like gas guzzlers are on the way out. Sales of electric vehicles will surpass those using internal combustion engines by 2038, a new analysis has found.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) projects that “electric cars will outsell fossil-fuel powered vehicles within two decades as battery prices plunge, turning the global auto industry upside down and signaling economic turmoil for oil-exporting countries … [displacing] about 8 million barrels a day of oil production—more than the 7 million barrels Saudi Arabia exports today.”

“This is economics, pure and simple economics,” BNEF’s lead advanced-transportation analyst Colin McKerracher said. “Lithium-ion battery prices are going to come down sooner and faster than most other people expect.”

The report’s bold forecast was also bolstered by surging investment in lithium-ion batteries, higher manufacturing capacity at companies like Tesla Inc. and Nissan Motor Co., as well as rising demand for EVs in China and Europe.

BNEF admitted that its report is the “most bullish to date and is more aggressive than projections made by the International Energy Agency.”

Here are other notable projections for the booming category, according to BNEF:

In just eight years, electric cars will be as cheap as gasoline vehicles, pushing the global fleet to 530 million vehicles by 2040
Electricity consumption from EVs will grow to 1,800 terawatt-hours in 2040, or 5 percent of global power demand, from 6 terawatt-hours in 2016
There’s around 90 gigawatt hours of EV lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity online now, and this is set to rise to 270 gigawatt hours by 2021.
Charging infrastructure will continue to be an issue with bottlenecks capping growth in key Chinese, U.S. and European markets emerging in the mid-2030s

The report is another sign of the shifting energy landscape. Just this month, France joined Norway, Germany and Kenya’s efforts to ban gasoline- and diesel-powered cars. Also, Volvo became the first major carmaker to phase out vehicles powered by fossil fuels. Finally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his company is building the world’s largest lithium ion battery to solve in South Australia’s energy woes.

Meanwhile, DeSmog reported that conservative oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are funding a campaign called Fueling U.S. Forward to squash the rise of electric vehicles. The group released a video called the Dirty Secrets of Electric Cars., featuring “blatant factual errors, misleading statements, and glaring omissions,” DeSmog writes.

Interestingly, the BNEF points out that the world’s “Electric Car Revolution” could be well underway except for one major factor: Donald Trump.

According to the report:

“In Europe, almost 67 percent of new cars sold will be electrified in 2040, and 58 percent of sales in the U.S. and 51 percent in China, BNEF said. Though there’s uncertainty in the U.S., where President Donald Trump could dramatically disrupt electric vehicle growth by withdrawing support for the technology in the world’s second biggest car market.”

Lorraine Chow July 14, 2017

BNEF admitted that its report is the “most bullish to date and is more aggressive than projections made by the International Energy Agency.”

Here are other notable projections for the booming category, according to BNEF:

In just eight years, electric cars will be as cheap as gasoline vehicles, pushing the global fleet to 530 million vehicles by 2040
Electricity consumption from EVs will grow to 1,800 terawatt-hours in 2040, or 5 percent of global power demand, from 6 terawatt-hours in 2016
There’s around 90 gigawatt hours of EV lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity online now, and this is set to rise to 270 gigawatt hours by 2021.
Charging infrastructure will continue to be an issue with bottlenecks capping growth in key Chinese, U.S. and European markets emerging in the mid-2030s

Interestingly, the BNEF points out that the world’s “Electric Car Revolution” could be well underway except for one major factor: Donald Trump.

According to the report:

Editorial: Trump names an anti-science blowhard as ‘chief scientist’. Help! Congress….

The Mercury News

Editorial: Trump names an anti-science blowhard as ‘chief scientist’. Help! Congress….

Sam Clovis, a talk radio host, calls climate change “junk science” and “not proven.”

Mercury News Editorial Board July 23, 2017

President Trump’s disdain for science apparently knows no bounds. He has now nominated climate change skeptic Sam Clovis, a talk radio host, to serve as the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist — a slap in the face of the scientific community and a disservice to those responsible for the integrity of the USDA’s research.

The Senate should should reject the nomination. Naming an anti-science blowhard to a job meant for a scientist would be like Ford picking a CEO who rides a horse to work.

If confirmed as the Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary of research, education and economics, Clovis would be responsible for implementing the department’s mission of providing leadership on agriculture and natural resource issues “based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management.”

The post, created in 1994 by Congress, demands someone who commands the respect of scientists. The 2008 farm bill clarified the requirements, saying the undersecretary “shall be appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.”

Clovis has none of these qualifications. His degree is in political science, and his chief claims to fame are as a conservative talk radio host and Trump’s national campaign co-chair.

The most recent undersecretary, Catherine Woteki, had a PhD in human nutrition, a bachelor of science in biology and chemistry and had served as Director of the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences.

Woteki, under the direction of the Obama administration, had focused the agency’s research dollars largely on trying to help farmers get a better understanding of how to deal with the impact of climate change — droughts, for example — on their crops.

She was vocal about this: “We really need to increase the amount of research that we’re doing to face challenges like we’re facing with this variable weather, and how can we increase productivity both in crops as well as in livestock to be able to produce more food on the same amount of land or perhaps less, depending on how climate might change over the next 30 to 40 years.”

It was bad enough that Trump’s choice as USDA Secretary, Sonny Purdue, thinks climate science is “obviously disconnected from reality” and “a running joke among the public.” This even though polls show 70 percent of Americans favor aggressive action to slow global warming.

Clovis calls climate change “junk science” and “not proven.” That goes against the consensus of more than 90 percent of climate scientists.

He’s entitled to his opinion. He’s perfect for today’s talk radio. He is not a scientist, let alone qualified to be a “chief scientist.” Congress needs to take a stand.

Did you know in rural America, disability benefit rates are twice as high as in urban areas?

Washington Post-Social Issues

Did you know in rural America, disability benefit rates are twice as high as in urban areas?

By Terrence McCoy July 22, 2017

Between 1996 and 2015, the number of working-age Americans who subsist on federal disability benefits grew rapidly, becoming one of the country’s most hotly debated social benefits. The rise has become another indicator of the divide between urban and rural America, where disability benefit rates are nearly twice as high.

Here are answers to some of the most important questions about this form of public assistance.

Q: What programs serve Americans with disabilities?

A: Two federal programs provide benefits to people with disabilities. One is Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), which was signed into law in 1956 and serves disabled workers. It is available only to people with enough work experience. The other, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which began paying benefits in 1974, serves the disabled poor and is a means-tested benefit.

Q: If the number of people receiving disability has increased so much, it must be easy to get on the rolls, right?

A: Wrong. Disability benefits, for both SSI and SSDI applicants, are very difficult to secure. In fact, only about four in 10 applications are approved. It can take as long as two years, after several layers of appeals, to win approval.

Q: So what has driven the growth then?

A: This is more controversial. Most experts agree that the primary factor in SSDI’s growth is demographics. Because of the aging of the baby-boom generation, more people are at an age when disability is more likely. More women also are in the workforce. Then there is simple population growth. Some experts think those factors represent nearly all of the increase. But others point to a congressional act that broadened the definition of disability, economic factors such as recessions and approvals they criticize as too lenient as contributing factors.

Q: Is the number of people on disability still rising?

A: No. In 2015, for the first time in decades the number of people on disability decreased slightly as the demographic factors that drove the rise started to subside and older Americans aged into their retirement years.

Q: In that case, what’s the problem?

A: The program for disabled workers, which Congress had to rescue from insolvency in 2015, is estimated to go broke again sometime over the next decade or so. The government this year is expected to spend $192 billion on disability payments — more than the combined total that will be spent on welfare, unemployment benefits, housing subsidies and food stamps.

Q: What sort of income, individually, does this provide for recipients?

A: A meager one. The maximum monthly payment for an SSI beneficiary is $735. The amount of money SSDI beneficiaries receive depends on how much money they made. The average monthly check is less than $1,200. For most beneficiaries, the checks are not taxable.

Q: Do they receive any other services?

A: Beneficiaries receive health insurance through Medicare, for SSDI recipients, and Medicaid, for SSI recipients.

Q: Do beneficiaries ever return to work?

A: Rarely. Some die within a few years of starting benefits. Other disabled workers try to return to work, but don’t keep their jobs for long. Or they continue working, but make less than the income threshold that would put their benefit at risk. Less than 4 percent of disabled workers get off disability within 10 years of their first payment.

Q: Are disability beneficiaries spread evenly nationwide?

A: The majority of disability recipients live in densely populated urban and suburban areas, but they are disproportionately prevalent in rural America — where, on average, 9.1 percent of the working-age population receives disability, compared to the national average of 6.5 percent and an urban rate of 4.9 percent. Beneficiaries are even more over-represented in the Southeast and central Appalachia. These are places economists have called “disability belts.”

Terrence McCoy covers poverty, inequality and social justice. He also writes about solutions to social problems.

Scientists Found a Second Giant Garbage Patch in the Pacific

Popular Mechanics

Scientists Found a Second Giant Garbage Patch in the Pacific

As if one wasn’t bad enough.

Getty Rosemary Calvert / Contributor

By Avery Thompson July 21, 2017

Somewhere in the North Pacific, there’s a giant floating patch of garbage thousands of miles wide. It contains millions of tons of plastic and is estimated to take up an area the size of Alaska. We’ve known about it for around 30 years, and scientists have struggled to develop a method to clean it up.

And now, a group of researchers has discovered another one.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch floating in the North Pacific is the result of ocean currents called gyres. These gyres are circling currents that can trap particles floating in them and push them into a single area. Essentially, all the trash thrown into the North Pacific is brought to a single area off the coast of North America.

But the Pacific Ocean has another gyre in the Southern hemisphere, and it behaves the same way. Recently, scientists exploring a remote island in the South Pacific found almost 20 tons of plastic washed up on a beach, and they began to suspect that the South Pacific had a garbage patch of its own.

A recent expedition to the area appears to confirm that this new garbage patch does exist. The researchers found an area about a million square miles in size, bigger than the state of Texas, containing over a million tons of plastic.

Most of this plastic is tiny, less than a millimeter in size. These “microplastics” are often worn down, broken apart, and eroded by ocean currents until they become microscopic in size. These microplastics can still kill large ocean animals, but they also pose a danger to smaller organisms too.

This second garbage patch appears to be a relatively new phenomenon. An expedition to the area in 2011 picked up little trace of the patch, which means it’s likely only formed in the past few years.

With any luck, we can figure out how to get rid of it as quickly as we created it.

Trump has lost 1 in 8 people who backed him in 2016 – and now say they want a do-over

Daily Mail

Trump has lost 1 in 8 people who backed him in 2016 – and now say they want a do-over

Just 88 per cent of Trump voters say they would support him again if the 2016 election were held again today
That number is better than the 82 per cent who said the same thing in May
‘If I had to walk around wearing a T-shirt saying who I voted for, I may have voted differently,’ one Trump backer said

By Reuters Published July 20, 2017

About one in eight people who voted for President Donald Trump said they would not do so again after witnessing Trump’s tumultuous first six months in office, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 2016 voters.

While most of the people who voted for Trump on Nov. 8 said they would back him again, the erosion of support within his winning coalition of older, disaffected, mostly white voters poses a potential challenge for the president.

Trump, who won the White House with the slimmest of margins, needs every last supporter behind him to push his agenda through a divided Congress and potentially win a second term in 2020.

The poll surveyed voters who had told Reuters/Ipsos on Election Day how they had cast their ballots. While other surveys have measured varying levels of disillusionment among Trump supporters, the Reuters/Ipsos poll shows how many would go as far as changing the way they voted. The survey was carried out first in May and then again in July.

President Donald Trump has lost the support of 12 per cent of the Americans who voted for him in November

The new Reuters poll shows 12 per cent of Trump voters would abandon him in a do-over

In the July survey, 12 percent of respondents said they would not vote for Trump ‘if the 2016 presidential election were held today’ – 7 percent said they ‘don’t know’ what they would do, and the remaining 5 percent would either support one of the other 2016 presidential candidates or not vote.

Eighty-eight percent said they would vote for Trump again, a slight improvement over the May figure of 82 percent. Taken together, the polls suggest that Trump’s standing with his base has improved slightly over the past few months despite his Republican Party’s repeated failures to overhaul the healthcare system and multiple congressional and federal investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

To be sure, most presidents lose support among core supporters the longer they are in the White House. According to the Gallup polling service, former President Barack Obama saw his popularity dip among Democrats and minority voters, though it did not come until later in his first term. But Obama, who won the Electoral College with greater margins than Trump, was not as reliant on retaining his core supporters.

The minority of Trump voters who said they would not vote for him again gave varying reasons in interviews for why they had changed their minds.

Some were tired of his daily trolling of Democrats, the media and the judiciary. Some were disappointed that the Trump administration has not yet swept illegal immigrants out of their communities. Others said the president has not ended the mistrust and hyper-partisanship in Washington as much as they had hoped.

Some of the president’s failures in his first six months have turned die-hard supporters into skeptics

‘If I had to walk around wearing a T-shirt saying who I voted for, I may have voted differently,’ said Beverly Guy, 34, a Trump voter who took the poll in July. If the election were held today, Guy said she would vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Guy said she picked Trump mostly because she did not support Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. She never cared that much for Trump and now finds herself rationalizing a decision that has angered many of her friends.

‘I care more about my neighbors than I do about politics,’ she said.

Another poll respondent, Brian Barnes, said he was standing by his choice to vote for Trump. He thinks the media is focusing too much on the Russia investigation and not enough on Trump’s accomplishments like his elevation of another conservative justice to the Supreme Court.

‘I think he’s doing all he can,’ Barnes said, ‘even though the Republicans in the House and Senate are creating a lot of problems’ by not passing a healthcare bill.

Experts in American politics said it makes sense that a transformative political figure like Trump would retain a high degree of loyalty from his supporters no matter what negative headlines are swirling around the White House. Political winds do not shift quickly in a strong economy, they said, especially when many of the president’s decisions have yet to take root.

‘People are still invested in the choices they made’ on Election Day, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. ‘They’re not about to admit that they’re wrong, at least not yet.’

Elaine Kamarck, an expert in American electoral politics at the Brookings Institution, said the erosion in Trump’s base could certainly hurt his chances of re-election, though it is too early to say so for sure. The most important question is whether he loses support where it counts – in battleground states that he barely won last year.

‘If these disenchanted Trump voters are in California, it doesn’t matter,’ Kamarck said. ‘If they live in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania, it matters.’

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of about 5 percentage points.

The July 11-12 poll gathered its sample from 1,296 people, including 541 Trump voters, while the May 10-15 poll gathered its sample from 1,206 people, including 543 Trump voters. In both cases, Ipsos weighted their responses according to voter profiles gathered from the U.S. Census´ voting and registration supplement to the Current Population Survey.