And While Politics Roils, This is What We Should Be Doing: The Plan to Grab the World's Carbon With Supercharged Plants

Here in WIRED magazine.

For the environment and our future, we are going to have to increasingly focus on things like this.

Machines sucking carbon out of the air sound like a good idea: and the scale and scope is daunting.

Per the article, plants have been doing this for 500 MILLION YEARS.

Thank you Joanne Chory. Let's put this on national and global agendas ASAP.

Every polluting industry should be paying into a fund planting trees and helping research better carbon capture. EVERY POLLUTING INDUSTRY. While we responsibly phase them out and they help us morph into a clean energy civilization, which is self-evident and necessary.

And of course, the below is NOT what we should be doing:

Trump erases offshore drilling rules enacted after BP oil spill

The Trump administration on Thursday dismantled safety rules for offshore drilling put in place by the Obama administration after the disastrous BP oil spill ...

POLITICO

Interior Dept. Loosens Offshore-Drilling Safety Rules Dating From Deepwater Horizon

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday made public its rollback of a major offshore-drilling safety regulation, significantly weakening an ...

The New York Times

Extinction Rebellion protests win political attention in the U.K. - NBC News

Well, we are doing something here 

"After 1,000 arrests and days of disruption, one group's direct action has successfully driven climate change up the political agenda in Britain.

I think we’ve become hugely popular and politicians are aware of that," organizer Nuala Gathercole Lam told NBC News. "There has been a shift toward understanding the urgency of this."

The group is rallying behind warnings from scientists, the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that significant reductions in carbon emissions must be achieved within the next 11 years to avoid devastating consequences for the planet, such as mass extinction, by the end of the century."

We all need to do more, our governments and the US Government in particular.

Because on the same day, Researchers say world's second-largest emperor penguin colony has been wiped out

"Phil Trathan, a penguin expert with BAS who co-authored the report, said “it is impossible to say whether the changes in sea-ice conditions at Halley Bay are specifically related to climate change, but such a complete failure to breed successfully is unprecedented at this site.”

“Even taking into account levels of ecological uncertainty, published models suggest that emperor penguins numbers are set to fall dramatically," he said, adding that the penguins are likely to lose between 50 percent and 70 percent "of their numbers before the end of this century as sea-ice conditions change as a result of climate change.”

"Mueller report: Attorney General Barr jumped the gun in clearing Trump of obstruction" USA Today

Here

And Barr's shameful press conference this morning firmly puts him in the henchman file - not a single negative word about Trump or his campaign's conduct!!

And the report shows Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied and shilled for the President - and she now admits it! See below.

Another Solid and Sane Candidate Running for President in 2020: Democrat Eric Swalwell

Here and Here

You've got to love how reasonable U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell is.

Most Americans would vote for these ideas.

"...a ban on assault weapons..." is a no-brainer in this day and age.

It's a great and necessary policy today, already supported by a majority of Americans.

But he adds, "...a ban on assault weapons was not a step toward broader gun bans. You know, keep your pistols, keep your long rifles, keep your shotguns."

Yep. That is very reasonable.

The buy back plan he mentions for the assault weapons provides incentive too.

He adds that he supports giving "Medicare for all," but doesn't want to see private insurance abolished.

Again, very reasonable. The American people can get behind these ideas.

“I support a bill that would give Medicare to all," Swalwell said on CNN's "State of the Union. "The part of the bill that I would strike would be to give a public option, the Medicare portion, but allow people to keep plans they like."

He's provided good leadership in his committee roles in the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Committee on the Judiciary as well.

Keep bringing it Mr. Swalwell!

William Barr

Well, he’s showing his colors. Any hope that he was less than a partisan hack have evaporated.

As the March 22, 2019 post below stated, “The world and history now fixes its gaze on him”

What a doozy. He’ll go down as another Sarah Huckabee Sanders: a morally vacuous henchman. A lying apologist and enabler of “President Trump.”

First, there was his brutally dismissive “summary”of the Mueller report that has let Trump trot around unscathed for weeks in a media bath of “total” exoneration, where there was not that. Then Barr backtracks and says his was not a summary? What is in the report?

Now he’s refusing to share the unredacted report with Congress. (Really? Why? WHY?)

And he throws out the word “spying” for the authorized investigatory process the DOJ and FBI were tasked to pursue. Spying he said! Complete click-bait and inappropriate, unnecessary sensationalism without context. He is creating and perpetuating bad cover stories for Trump. There is your Sarah Huckabee right there.

As Eric Holder said, “When there is a predicate, a legitimate basis, it’s called “investigating” not “spying”.  I am confident that the people at DOJ/FBI conducted themselves in an appropriate way. No evidence to suggest otherwise.”

So thus far Barr is digging himself in as another entrenched flunky, rowing Trump’s misdeeds across the river Charon where daylight and the public cannot see them. (And why? WHY?)

You had better be representing reality and the interest of the American people Mr. Barr. The truth comes out.

“The end of oil and fossil fuels is coming faster than we realize, but it still may be too late”

Here Fantastic synopsis in April, 2019.

And While Trump and the GOP Denigrate Wind Energy and Cling to Fossil Fuels - Chroncling the End Times on Tangier Island

Here

"And so the people of Tangier are being named as some of the first potential climate-change refugees in America."

Muller's Report Summary Through the Eyes of a Biased Trump Appointee vs. The Report

So, there is still lots going on. William Barr's "summary" or 4-page public offering about the Mueller Report leaves many questions. Firstly, that a reportedly near-400 page report can be distilled into 4 pages. And secondly, what's really in the report, as opposed to a partisan Republican appointee's (Barr's) summation?

The House intends to subpoena the report Wednesday.

There is the sense of a cover-up. We can only know what the truth is by seeing the full report.

Trump has claimed 'total exoneration' - yet even Barr's meager partial quotation in his own summary below shows that the report does not exonerate Trump of obstruction. See below: "The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

How can the American people enjoy being lied to so bluntly? It's like we can't read.


As for Barr's offering that there is no [apparently criminal-level] evidence of the Trump Campaign's collusion with Russia "in its election interference activities", see below. People already know better. There were tons - ok literally dozens - of lied-about interactions between Trump's Campaign and Russians. (And why Russia?? Why not Brazil, or Japan, or North Korea or Iran? Russia, Russia, Russia. And they certainly had the intent, from Jr. to Stone to Donald himself (Russia, if you are listening...). So what else is in there?

And even the fragmented and very narrow phrase Barr offers "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or colluded with the Russian Government in its election interference activities" is worded such that there may be plenty of 'collusion' (or more accurately criminal intent and conspiracy, etc.) evidenced in the report - just not in that specific window. But we haven't seen the report yet. So we don't know. And it seems dubious and certainly early for Trump and the Administration to be gloating and taking such big victory laps.

There is a lot more to learn.

There are also still lots of other investigations into Trump and those in his campaign and inner circle.

There are still lots of shoes to drop. Stay tuned.