Daily Quick Read - August 8, 2019

"Roundup" The Usual Suspects

Besides burying their own research regarding the danger of their chemicals, Monsanto had a “war room” operation specifically to attack anyone who questioned the impact of their chemical poisons on humans and the environment.

Monsanto operated a “fusion center” to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, and targeted a reporter who wrote a critical book on the company, documents reveal.

The agrochemical corporation also investigated the singer Neil Young and wrote an internal memo on his social media activity and music.

Monsanto planned a series of “actions” to attack a book authored by [Carey] Gillam prior to its release, including writing “talking points” for “third parties” to criticize the book and directing “industry and farmer customers” on how to post negative reviews.

Monsanto paid Google to promote search results for “Monsanto Glyphosate Carey Gillam” that criticized her work.

Monsanto PR staff also internally discussed placing sustained pressure on Reuters, saying they “continue to push back on [Gillam’s] editors very strongly every chance we get”, and that they were hoping “she gets reassigned”. Monsanto “fusion center” officials wrote a lengthy report about singer Neil Young’s anti-Monsanto advocacy, monitoring his impact on social media, and at one point considering “legal action”.

The fusion center also monitored US Right to Know (USRTK), a not-for-profit, producing weekly reports on the organization’s online activity.

Monsanto officials were repeatedly worried about the release of documents on their financial relationships with scientists that could support the allegations they were “covering up unflattering research”.

Speaking of Censorship

The Trump administration's war on science and the people's right to know took another hit last week. The USDA don't want you to know that one of the effects of climate change might be to reduce the nutritional value of some of agricultural crops.

Lewis Ziska, a 62-year-old plant physiologist who’s worked at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service for more than two decades, told POLITICO he was alarmed when department officials not only questioned the findings of the study — which raised serious concerns for the 600 million people who depend on rice for most of their calories — but also tried to minimize media coverage of the paper, which was published in the journal Science Advances last year.

Ziska, in describing his decision to leave, painted a picture of a department in constant fear of the president and Secretary Sonny Perdue’s open skepticism about broadly accepted climate science, leading officials to go to extremes to obscure their work to avoid political blowback. The result, he said, is a vastly diminished ability for taxpayer-funded scientists to provide farmers and policymakers with important information about complex threats to the global food supply. 

A POLITICO investigation revealed last month that USDA has routinely buried its own climate-related science and other work on climate change that continues. POLITICO also recently reported USDA suppressed the release of its own plan for studying and responding to climate change.

Polly Damn Well Wants a Cracker

A bird fossil found 11 years ago had originally been suspected as a member of the eagle family.  Upon re-evaluation, scientist have concluded that it is the fossil of a really big parrot species.

Scientists in New Zealand have uncovered the remains of a gigantic parrot that roamed the country some 20 million years ago.

The ancient bird stood up to a meter (39 inches) tall and weighed up to seven kilograms (15.5 pounds), an international team of researchers wrote in an article published in Biology Letters.

"Heracles, as the largest parrot ever, no doubt with a massive parrot beak that could crack wide open anything it fancied, may well have dined on more than conventional parrot foods, perhaps even other parrots," said professor Mike Archer from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Greenwashing or Just A Cock-up

Responding to public concern isn’t the same as doing the right thing. When McDonald’s replaced plastic straws with paper they discovered that the infrastructure to recycle the heavy (thick walled) paper straws that the public wanted (because they worked) wasn’t available. Which is the same reason that the replaced plastic straws hadn’t been recycled. The plastic was recyclable, but no recyclers had the necessary equipment.

McDonald's ditched plastic straws in the United Kingdom and Ireland last fall and replaced them with paper ones made from recyclable materials. It turns out though the new straws can't be recycled. The plastic ones could, according to CNN.

McDonald's received praise for an environmentally sound move when it replaced the 1.8 million plastic straws it uses everyday in the UK and Ireland. It said the move was part of a wider effort to protect the environment. Now the British newspaper The Sun revealed an internal memo that said the paper straws were not able to be recycled and should be put in the general waste bin.

"While the materials are recyclable, their current thickness makes it difficult for them to be processed by our waste solution providers, who also help us recycle our paper cups," a McDonald's spokesman told the UK's Press Association news agency, as CNN reported.

So while the straws are technically 100 percent recyclable material, the infrastructure to recycle them does not yet exist. In order to recycle them, they would have to be individually separated from cups and other rubbish.

Costa Rica Is Powerful

No army.  National healthcare - quality healthcare.  Literacy.  And, meeting their energy goals with renewables.  It's possible with the right leadership for all of Central America to do the same.  

Costa Rica aims to have net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and if it's energy production in 2019 is a sign of things to come, then it is well on its way to that goal. The small Central American nation produced the most electricity in its history during the month of May and nearly 100 percent of it was from renewable sources, according to Think Geoenergy.

The 984.19 GWh of electricity generation in May surpassed all historical counts and it meant that Costa Rican Institute of Electricity (ICE), the state-owned power and telecoms provider, stopped buying energy from the Regional Electricity Market and instead started selling electricity back to other Central American nations in the marketplace...

The May numbers are a crucial milestone since nearly 75 percent of the nation's renewable energy comes from hydropower  produced in rivers and Costa Rica was in the midst of a historic drought before the rainy season started in May.