Scientists find 5,000 new species in Pacific, warn of mining risk

 

A study has identified more than 5,000 new species living in deep-sea habitats in the Pacific Ocean in a region known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a seabed targeted for mining in the coming years.

The zone extends roughly 6 million sq km (2.3 million sq miles) between Hawaii and Mexico.

Researchers said on Thursday that they had identified 5,578 species in the zone, of which 92 percent were new to science.

“There are 438 named, known species from the CCZ,” said the study’s lead author, Muriel Rabone, deep-sea ecologist at the Natural History Museum London. “But then there are 5,142 unnamed species with informal names.”

The zone, which receives little sunlight, has become the world’s largest mineral exploration area. Its seabed contains deposits of nickel, manganese, copper, zinc and cobalt, according to the research...more

Killer whales wreck boat in latest attack off Spain

 MADRID, May 25 (Reuters) - Killer whales severely damaged a sailing boat off the coast of southern Spain, the local maritime rescue service said on Thursday, adding to dozens of orca attacks on vessels recorded so far this year on Spanish and Portuguese coasts.

In the early hours of Thursday, a group of orcas broke the rudder and pierced the hull after ramming into the Mustique on its way to Gibraltar, prompting its crew of four to contact Spanish authorities for help, a spokesman for the maritime rescue service said.

The service deployed a rapid-response vessel and a helicopter carrying a bilge pump to assist the 20-metre (66 feet) vessel, which was sailing under a British flag, he added. The Mustique was towed to the port of Barbate, in the province of Cadiz, for repairs.

According to the research group GTOA, which tracks populations of the Iberian orca sub-species, the incident follows at least 20 interactions this month alone in the Strait of Gibraltar between small vessels and the highly social apex predators. In 2022, there were 207 reported interactions, GTOA data showed...more

Although known as killer whales, endangered orcas are part of the dolphin family. They can measure up to eight metres and weigh up to six tonnes as adults.

Eye surgery and this blog

 Eye surgery in El Paso yesterday, post op visit today

Yesterday was one hour trip there, 4+ hours at surgery center (less than 1 hour surgery related).

Bottom line was, using my phone, I had plenty of time to surf. Saved the links and posted at home on my pc.

Gave me a chance to see what THE WESTERNER might look like if I could do this full time.

Don't worry, I don't have the time and I don't believe my mind could take it

update...and it is so nice to see the cursor again and most of the keyboard too!

Should Drivers Have To Pay More To Register Electric Vehicles?

 

Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed S.B. 505 into law, which will nearly quintuple the annual cost of registering an electric vehicle (E.V.) in the state. Is Texas punishing its eco-friendly citizens, or is there a legitimate reason to charge more?

The new law adds additional fees for motorists registering an electric vehicle. Currently, registering or renewing a Texas car tag costs between $50.75 and $54. Starting September 1, any "motor vehicle that has a gross weight of 10,000 pounds or less and uses electricity as its only source of motor power" would additionally be assessed a $200 annual registration fee. New E.V.s would require a $400 registration fee good for two years.

...But there is an underlying logic to the new rate hike. Under the new law, the extra revenue from E.V. registrations "must be deposited to the credit of the state highway fund." The highway fund, which builds and maintains the state's roads, is primarily funded by vehicle registration fees and the state gas tax. Historically, Texas drivers who drive a lot and put a lot of wear and tear on the roads bought a lot of gas, which means they paid for road upkeep through gas taxes. E.V. drivers don't pay the gas tax, but they do use the roads. Given that disparity, a higher registration fee is one way to ensure that everyone who drives also contributes toward maintaining the roads...more

State to hear first-of-its-kind lawsuit claiming kids have a 'right' to a 'stable climate'

 

A Montana state court is poised to hear a lawsuit against the state brought by children and teens who claim they have a right to a “stable climate.”

The “Youth Plaintiffs,” ranging in age from two to 18, allege they are “disproportionately harmed by the climate crisis” and will “face lifelong hardships” unless the government steps in to mitigate the supposed threats by developing a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the March 2020 complaint. Since Montana’s constitution grants them a right to a “clean and healthful environment,” they argue the courts must bring the state’s energy system “into constitutional compliance.”

“The release of anthropogenic GHGs into the atmosphere is already triggering a host of adverse consequences in Montana, including dangerously increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, increasing droughts and extreme weather events, increasing the frequency and severity of wildfires, increasing glacial melt, and causing numerous adverse health risks, especially to children,” the lawsuit states...more

WWP and Our Allies Win One for Native Wildlife in Wyoming

 Today, Western Watersheds Project and our allies won our case on livestock grazing and livestock-related grizzly bear killings in the Upper Green River Valley, the eastern part of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.  

The court determined that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Opinion authorizing the killing of up to 72 grizzly bears over 10 years in response to livestock losses is “arbitrary and capricious.” The Service failed to impose a limit of the number of female bears allowed to be killed, even after admitting that losses of female bears poses a critical risk to grizzly bear population persistence. It also failed to address the fact that the presence of domestic livestock on public lands – and the number of grizzly bears killed for their benefit – made the Upper Green a ‘population sink’ in which the resident bear population couldn’t sustain itself and immigrating bruins faced an elevated risk of being killed.

Our plaintiff group also raised the issue that the level of livestock grazing authorized in the Upper Green was too high to prevent adverse impacts to native wildlife, and the court ruled that for migratory birds, the grazing was too heavy to comply with Forest Plan requirements based on a report prepared by its own biologist...more 

You can view the decision here.

Germany is Turning Against the EU's Green New Deal, Common Sense to the Forefront

 Fresh on the heels of a sensible request by France to pause new green regulations comes an even stronger pushback in Germany.

Last week it was President Macron who was rowing back on green measures. In a speech he asserted that Europe has, for now, gone far enough – if it introduces any more regulations without the rest of the world following suit then it will put investment at risk and harm the economy. This week, the European People’s Party – a centre right grouping which includes the German Christian Democrats, the party of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – seems to be joining in.

The party is reported to be considering withdrawing its support for the European Commission’s Green Deal. That is the set of proposals which includes, for example, an EU-wide target for eliminating net carbon emissions by 2050. Whilst 11 EU countries have already set themselves legally-binding targets to reach net zero by 2050 (or 2045 in the case of Germany and Sweden), if the Green Deal were to go there would be no obligation on the other member states to follow suit.

Germany now seems to be taking over from France as the seedbed of opposition towards zero carbon policies, not least because it has more severe policies – and because its self-imposed, earlier target of reaching net zero by 2045 is increasingly looking out of kilter with reality...more

SCOTUS deals another blow to Biden’s agenda

The Supreme Court just took another swipe at the Biden administration’s regulatory authority, delivering a major win for multiple industries including oil and gas.

The court’s conservative majority vastly narrowed the reach of federal clean water protections, erasing protections for millions of acres of wetlands, write E.A. Crunden, Pamela King and Ariel Wittenberg. It also sent yet another signal of the justices’ skepticism toward federal regulations, which potentially
bodes ill for President Joe Biden’s other environmental and climate policies.

The decision will require the administration to rework a recent regulation that provided broad protections for wetlands, which trap and store carbon pollution, provide critical wildlife habitat, and soak up floodwaters, writes Annie Snider.

The ruling is a victory for homebuilders and fossil fuel companies, which need permits to build on or damage federally protected waters under the Clean Water Act. For decades, those industries and agricultural businesses have fought to limit the law’s reach.

Environmental groups decried the ruling, calling it a catastrophic loss for water protections that will imperil the nation’s wetlands...more

Department of Education Investigates Schools for Not Sexualizing Kids

...Last year, the Forsyth County School District in Georgia pulled “All Boys Aren’t Blue”, along with 7 other books from middle school shelves. It brought back all the books except ‘Boys’.

Now Biden is going after them.

The Department of Education conducted a civil rights investigation accusing the school district of creating “a hostile environment for students based on sex”.

How did the Georgia school district do this?

According to the Department of Education investigation letter, at the behest of the school board, “books that were obviously sexually explicit or pornographic” detailing “graphic details of sexual acts” were removed from school libraries.

This would have included “All Boys Aren’t Blue” which includes sections such as, “he reached his hand down and pulled out my d____. He quickly went to giving me h___” and “for the first few minutes, we dry humped and grinded.”

The school district launched its review after Mama Bears of Forsyth County made headlines by reading excerpts of the graphic materials being pushed on children at school board meetings. The materials were so shocking that the activist mothers were told to stop and one was banned from school board meetings.

The Department of Education launched its investigation to aid supporters of sexualizing children, but found nothing to justify the false accusations of racial or sexual discrimination. But a mere lack of evidence of wrongdoing means nothing to a predatory woke bureaucracy.

Even though no evidence to back up any civil rights violations was found, the DOE is not giving up. Its investigation letter contends that the act of screening books intended for middle school children for graphic sex acts “created a hostile environment for students” because “board meetings conveyed the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white.”...more

Opposition builds against EPA rule to transition Americans to electric vehicles

Opposition to new Environmental Protection Agency tailpipe regulations is growing after the federal agency projected the regulation would put more than half of American drivers out of gas cars and into electric vehicles.

As The Center Square previously reported, the EPA has projected that the proposed changes would mean that fully electric vehicles make up two thirds of all new "light duty" and 46% of new medium-duty vehicle sales by 2032. That would include most regular consumer vehicles, even SUVs and many pickup trucks. Currently, electric vehicles make up less than 5% of the market.

A group of 151 House Republicans rallied together to oppose the newly proposed rule, sending a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan Monday calling the rules "unworkable and impractical."

"The proposals are the latest effort by the Biden administration to commandeer America’s transportation sector and force its complete vehicle electrification under the guise of mitigating climate change," the letter said...more

NY governor Hochul floats idea of housing illegals in dorms at state universities

Uh-oh!  It turns out that actually experiencing an inflow of illegal aliens can force even the bluest of blue-state Dem politicians to risk angering their equally blue constituents.  Spectrum News reports:

Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration has identified dorms on three SUNY campuses to use as housing sites for migrants, according to a source.

The source told NY1 the plan includes a total of 1,500 beds at the University at Buffalo, Stony Brook University and the University at Albany.

An announcement is expected as soon as next week, the source said.

As long as it was red states Texas and Florida bearing the brunt of massive Biden-era illegal immigration, blue-state Dem politicians were happy to claim that only heartless xenophobes and racists could possibly object to open borders.  But when Texas and Florida started shipping a comparative few to places like Martha's Vineyard, Chicago, and New York City, it got very awkward.  Hoping that nobody would notice that only a comparative trickle of illegals was coming their way compared to, say, El Paso, they declared a crisis.  And started to have to make difficult choices...more

Supreme Court Limits E.P.A.’s Power to Address Water Pollution

 The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to police water pollution, ruling that the Clean Water Act does not allow the agency to regulate discharges into some wetlands near bodies of water.

The court held that law covers only wetlands “with a continuous surface connection” to those waters, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for five justices.

The decision was nominally unanimous, with all the justices agreeing that the homeowners who brought the case should not have been subject to the agency’s oversight. But there was sharp disagreement about the majority’s reasoning...more

You can view the decision here

Be interesting to see what type of maneuvers and machinations EPA and Army Core of Engineers will go through to ignore this decision,

Opposition builds against EPA rule to transition Americans to electric vehicles

 Opposition to new Environmental Protection Agency tailpipe regulations is growing after the federal agency projected the regulation would put more than half of American drivers out of gas cars and into electric vehicles.

As The Center Square previously reported, the EPA has projected that the proposed changes would mean that fully electric vehicles make up two thirds of all new "light duty" and 46% of new medium-duty vehicle sales by 2032. That would include most regular consumer vehicles, even SUVs and many pickup trucks. Currently, electric vehicles make up less than 5% of the market.

...A group of 151 House Republicans rallied together to oppose the newly proposed rule, sending a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan Monday calling the rules "unworkable and impractical."

"The proposals are the latest effort by the Biden administration to commandeer America’s transportation sector and force its complete vehicle electrification under the guise of mitigating climate change," the letter said...more

cartoon

 

New kind of chicken lays eggs that don’t have allergy protein

 

CRISPR-alternative has been used to create eggs that are unlikely to trigger allergic reactions. That’s a potentially big deal for millions of children who are allergic to eggs — not just for their diets but also for their immune systems.

People who are allergic to eggs are also at risk of experiencing a reaction to flu vaccines, which are typically grown in eggs — although rare, the shots can trigger anaphylaxis in a person with an egg allergy.

“These results … reveal that the eggs laid by this OVM knockout chicken solve the allergy problem in food and vaccines,” said lead author Ryo Ezaki...more

IRS commissioner denies retaliating against Hunter Biden probe whistleblowers

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Daniel Werfel denied retaliating against whistleblowers who recently contacted Congress to allege a cover-up in the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation. 

“I want to state unequivocally that I have not intervened – and will not intervene – in any way that would impact the status of any whistleblower,” Werfel said in a May 17 letter to the House Ways and Means Committee obtained by Fox News. 

Werfel contends that the purge of the IRS’s Biden investigatory team on May 15 was allegedly done on the orders of the Justice Department, which aligns with what one of the whistleblower’s attorneys told congressional leaders...more