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Overnight News Digest for July 26, 2023 (Nothing Compares to You edition) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-26

Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, and JeremyBloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.

OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.

x YouTube Video

x "If we bring those carbon emissions to zero, and we can do it...the only obstacles are political at this point, then the surface of the planet stops warming almost immediately" —@MichaelEMann on how we can prevent the climate crisis from getting worse pic.twitter.com/A5ucEMryF6 — Climate Power (@ClimatePower) July 25, 2023

x As difference between Arctic air and rest of world lessens - Jet Stream has weakened

become slower and wavier, allowing warm air from tropics to flow north and become trapped over Europe, Asia, and North America, fueling severe heat and intense wildfires.https://t.co/GOjY5qOkOu pic.twitter.com/vReGsTMDOR — GO GREEN (@ECOWARRIORSS) July 24, 2023

With tens of millions of Americans under heat alerts, Inslee—who ran a climate-focused 2020 presidential campaign—appeared on ABC's "This Week" to discuss current conditions and solutions with co-anchor Martha Raddatz. x This is climate leadership:

"The Climate Change Bomb Has Gone Off," Says Washington State Governor Jay Inslee. "The Earth is screaming at us... We need to stop using fossil fuels. That is the only solution to this massive assault on humanity." https://t.co/RG9kl6WIlK — Seth Klein (@SethDKlein) July 25, 2023 "Look, the climate change problem, the fuse has been burning for decades, and now the climate change bomb has gone off," Inslee said. "The scientists are telling us that this is the new age. This is the age of consequences because whatever we thought of climate change last year, we now understand that the beast is at the door. We knew this beast of climate change was coming for us, but now, it's pounding on the door." "What the scientific community is telling us now, is that the Earth is screaming at us, and that is the situation," he added. "I talked to a leading international scientist the other day who told me that we knew this was going to happen to us, but it's happening to us maybe two decades earlier than we really thought could be in the realm of the possible."

House Republicans are helping their fossil fuel donors with legislative fine print that would block climate action. Republicans are helping their fossil fuel industry donors by quietly inserting provisions into annual spending bills designed to bar the American government from combating and researching climate change, according to the fine print of legislative text reviewed by The Lever. Some provisions also require the leasing of federal lands and waters for oil and gas development, while potentially limiting such leases for wind power. In all, Republican leaders have added at least a dozen such environmental provisions to four annual government spending bills as property damage and death tolls mount from historic heat waves, floods, and wildfires. x Wildfire smoke from Chicago to NYC, ocean temperatures hot enough to kill you in FL, record low sea ice, record heat in AZ and the @GOP is focused on repealing all climate legislation. Everyone involved in this effort should be ashamed of themselves. https://t.co/qxKeUZh3rG — Sean Casten (@SeanCasten) July 26, 2023 By adding the provisions to annual must-pass spending bills, Republicans who control the U.S. House are attempting to force Senate Democrats to choose between either accepting them or blocking the spending bills and shutting down the government.

“For too long, taxpayer handouts to the fossil fuel industry have helped fuel the climate crisis and delayed the transition to renewable energy. Finally, Canada is delivering on its 2009 promise to end most of these subsidies. Turning off the federal funding tap for these polluting companies is the right thing to do and it’s good to see public financing is next to be tackled. x Ending subsidies for the fossil fuel industry is the right thing to do. But we’re concerned about loopholes and exemptions. Taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for industry to clean up their act as they make record profits and drive inflation. Read more: https://t.co/NjwTRYsV71 — David Suzuki FDN (@DavidSuzukiFDN) July 24, 2023 “It is disappointing to see loopholes, including green-lighting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry to pay for carbon capture and other emissions reduction technology. Taxpayers should not foot the bill for oil and gas companies to clean up their act, especially when these companies are making record profits and driving inflation. “We can’t wait another 18 months for a plan to phase out public financing for fossil fuel companies, beyond the scope of today’s announcement. We call on the minister of environment and climate change to move forward with this plan by the end of the year and implement it in the next federal budget. Whether through subsidies or public financing, the public purse should not be used to line the pockets of fossil fuel companies. “We know we need to phase out fossil fuels to limit global warming. All subsidies and public financing that enable fossil fuel expansion are clearly incompatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

x "Multiple reefs around the Florida Keys are now completely bleached or dead in a grim escalation that took place in as little as two weeks, coral experts told CNN."https://t.co/BrFjG6Hck5 pic.twitter.com/peybAbpLsy — Karl Mathiesen (@KarlMathiesen) July 26, 2023

The June federal indictment of Donald Trump is “radicalizing” support for the use of force on behalf of the former president and current presidential candidate, according to the author of a recent survey about threats to democracy. x Buried lede: 12% of Americans believe that Satanist pedophiles run the government. In other words, 1 in 10 Americans has gone completely insane. | ‘Anger and radicalization’: rising number of Americans say political violence is justified https://t.co/9MNnMxKcBr — Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 26, 2023 … The survey also found that nearly 90% of Trump’s most radical supporters believe the federal government is run by a “deep state” of immoral people. With more indictments of Trump likely to come in the next few weeks, both from the federal government and the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Pape said he was concerned that further radicalization of the public is likely to occur.

Something is happening among young voters in America — even if, to paraphrase the old Bob Dylan song, we don’t know what it is. Consider: Youth turnout exploded during the 2018 midterm elections under President Donald Trump. Then in 2020, energized opposition to Trump among young voters was critical to his defeat. And in the 2022 midterms, surging youth participation helped fend off the widely predicted “red wave.” Even some Republicans fear that expanding youth populations in swing states pose a long-term threat to the GOP. New data supplied to me by the Harvard Youth Poll sheds light on the powerful undercurrents driving these developments. Young voters have shifted in a markedly progressive direction on multiple issues that are deeply important to them: Climate change, gun violence, economic inequality and LGBTQ+ rights. x This chart shows something truly remarkable: On many big issues, young voters are much more progressive than they were only 10 years ago.



Gen Z represents a serious long-term problem for the GOP.https://t.co/jZluIDQgDh pic.twitter.com/HpSo4P1IsH — Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) July 25, 2023 Those numbers — which come from the Harvard Youth Poll of 18-to-29-year-olds released each spring — all suggest that today’s young voters are substantially more progressive on these issues than young voters were even five or 10 years ago. Sizable majorities now reject the idea that same-sex relationships are morally wrong (53 percent), support stricter gun laws (63 percent) and want government to provide basic necessities (62 percent). m

For nearly a decade, Tuberville has described the World War II exploits of his father, Charles R. Tuberville Jr., in a relatively consistent way — that he was a tank commander, that he earned five Bronze Stars, that he participated in the D-Day landing and that he lied about his age to join the army. News organizations have tended to accept Tuberville’s version and either reprint or broadcast it. x Who among us hasn’t lied about our dad being 16 in WW2 as a tank commander at D-Day and storming Normandy beach while receiving 5(!) bronze stars while he holds up 265 military promotions to appeal to knuckle dragger anti-abortion rubes? @SenTuberville https://t.co/c2NusOuLKp — NoelCaslerComedy🌙 (@caslernoel) July 26, 2023 Yet an examination of army histories, newspaper reports and other materials calls into question many of the claims put forth by Tuberville, who sits on both the Senate Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees and is now in a high-profile battle with the Biden administration over a Defense Department policy offering time off and travel reimbursement to service members who need to go out of state for abortions. Since February, he has blocked every senior personnel move in the U.S. military that requires Senate confirmation, stalling the promotions of more than 265 military officers. The Pentagon has said Tuberville’s holds are putting the nation’s military readiness at risk, as 650 general and flag officers will require Senate confirmation by year’s end. In effect, Tuberville has promoted his father to highly decorated tank commander — but based on our research, that claim is dubious.

x A Fox News staffer just said people can’t talk about the Holocaust without also discussing “Jewish presence in banking.”



This comes one day after Fox host Greg Gutfeld said the Holocaust wasn’t all bad because the “Jews” who were “useful” survived. pic.twitter.com/LsgSUdLorJ — No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) July 26, 2023

General Motors (GM.N) CEO Mary Barra has staked billions on a broad lineup of electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet Silverado EV designed from the wheels-up to be electric, software-defined vehicles that can match or beat any Tesla. x Excellent news for one of the top selling EVs and one of the only compact EVs for the US market!



GM does a U-turn to save the Chevy Bolt | Reuters https://t.co/tSc7oz6hgt — Robbie Orvis (@robbieorvis) July 26, 2023 On Tuesday, Barra made a significant exception, reversing a decision to phase out the Chevrolet Bolt. The Bolt does not align with GM's long-term EV technology strategy, but it is the Detroit automaker's best-selling and most affordable EV in North America, by far. News of its scheduled demise at the end of this year prompted criticism of GM for turning its back on an affordable EV in favor of large, expensive models such as the $80,000 and up GMC Hummer EV.

Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated Oppenheimer comes to the big screen five days after the 44th anniversary of the Church Rock uranium mill spill, when 94 million gallons of radioactive waste poured into the Puerco River, spanning northwestern New Mexico and northern Arizona, and across the Navajo Nation. Children played in the contaminated water, while livestock drank from radioactive aquifers. What came next—cancers, miscarriages, and mysterious illnesses—is a direct consequence of America’s race for nuclear hegemony. It’s an accomplishment built on top of the bodies of Navajo men, women, and children—the lived experience of nuclear weapons development in the United States. But, as usual, Hollywood chose to gloss over them. x “The legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo is a perpetual blemish on our nation’s history with its Native people, and the disregard of our stories from media and movies like Oppenheimer can’t mean a continued erasure in U.S. policy.” https://t.co/5e7Esw9r16 — Sammy Roth (@Sammy_Roth) July 25, 2023 The Navajo people cannot afford to be, yet again, erased from history. Hollywood has a lot of work to do, and they can start by standing with the Navajo people and urging Congress to provide just compensation for victims of radiation exposure. As part of this effort, we must all recognize the continued suffering and sacrifice that built the atomic era. From the 1940s to the 1990s, the U.S. used the Navajo Nation to supply them with uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons and energy. While ownership of the mines was transferred from the federal government to private companies in 1971, the U.S. failed to enforce proper safety standards, leaving the sites unregulated until 1990 when the last mine closed. More than 500 now abandoned mines cover our land as a result. Miners and their families were kept in the dark about the heinous dangers of radiation exposure, so they went about their daily activities like any other community. Workers drank the mine’s cool spring water, while their wives washed their yellowed work clothes. Families built homes with local rocks and sediment and let their children play for hours on uranium byproducts, including mine debris piles. Despite the U.S. government’s awareness of the risks inherent in uranium mining, most Navajos did not know what radiation was—let alone the danger presented by every second of exposure.

Nuclear energy is both lauded as a baseload renewable power and decried as risky, expensive and outdated technology. Small modular reactors have received billions in venture capital and unprecedented media attention, but are they a red herring, with philosophy, rather than science, driving our fixation? Professor Allison Macfarlane explores the current sombre state of the technology, where it is falling short, and what philosophy is driving the interest in this unpromising tech. x 'The end of Oppenheimer's energy dream - Modular reactors are supported by ideology alone.'#nuclear #climate https://t.co/3G1t44vaGo — Dr Paul Dorfman (@dorfman_p) July 25, 2023 ...Recent construction experience in the US and Europe does not herald success for SMR new builds. The two French-design evolutionary power reactor (EPR) builds have been far over budget and schedule. The EPR in Finland was originally supposed to cost 3 billion euros and open in 2009. It finally began producing electricity in 2023 at a cost of 11 billion euros. There is a similar story in France, where the EPR at Flamanville was set to begin operation in 2012 at a cost of 3.5 billion euro. Instead, it is still under construction and costs have ballooned to 12.4 billion euros. ...With all these potential drawbacks and delays, why would anyone invest in an SMR company? I put a similar question to Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist, at a meeting of a committee of the National Academy of Engineering that was studying the potential of these new reactors (and of which I was a member). If these reactors won’t be commercially available for a decade or more, how do investors make money? His response? "Even before they sell [energy], they go public and that's how early investors make money…it fits the model - the company hasn't made money, but the investors have made money." He goes on to say that going public opens the door to much more money that is needed. But all of this in the future. If SMRs are not ready to deploy in the next ten years, what are the implications? There are two significant ones. The first is that, given the development timelines for these new reactor designs, they are not likely to have a significant impact on CO2 emissions reductions for decades, and as a result their relevance to the climate argument shrinks. More significantly, if, as a recent study showed, that SMRs will be significantly more expensive than solar photovoltaic (PV) and on-shore wind, and even geothermal, what will the marketplace look like in 20 or 30 years, when renewables will presumably be even cheaper? So why there so much hype around new nuclear power technologies that so far, largely, don’t exist and will likely be very costly? The need to decarbonize energy production plays a role, attracting environmental activists such as Michael Schellenberger and Stewart Brand. The advent of large amounts of available venture capital in the past decade is another factor. One analyst told me, “there’s a lot of stupid money out there right now [for investing].” The ”tech bro” libertarian culture that valorizes new technology, loathes regulation, and embraces the marketplace has spawned a new generation of, according to the Washington Post, “nuclear bros.”

Geothermal energy looks MUCH better… here’s a follow-up podcast to last week’s geothermal story:

x If you haven't listened to this pod on the recent breakthrough in enhanced geothermal power, you really should. It will make you happy. https://t.co/UbJPnD1V66 — David Roberts (@drvolts) July 24, 2023

x "China reduced air pollution nearly as much in 7 years as the US did in 3 decades [...]. The amount of harmful particulates in the air in China fell 40% from 2013 to 2020, vs a 44% drop in US pollution over 30 years from 1970, after the Clean Air Act"https://t.co/q54CeaxdES pic.twitter.com/8dNv3zMxgs — Assaad Razzouk (@AssaadRazzouk) July 24, 2023

Someone with a lab please try to reproduce these results so we know if we should pop the champagne. x The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor:



A material called LK-99, a modified-lead apatite crystal structure, achieves superconductivity at room temperature. pic.twitter.com/Xlm90Zabtg — AI Breakfast (@AiBreakfast) July 26, 2023 South Korean scientists have announced the development of a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor. If the claim is verified, this will change the world. Superconductors transmit electricity without resistance and have a series of magnetic properties that make them invaluable in technological applications. Usually, superconductors need to be cooled down to very low temperatures. A superconductor capable of working outside the lab in regular conditions would be revolutionary. However, the conditional clauses in the first paragraph are necessary. There have been previous claims of room-temperature superconductivity that have not panned out. The researchers uploaded a paper to arXiv, and it is unclear if it was submitted for peer review to a journal. IFLScience has emailed them to learn more about the research and the new material, which is called modified lead-apatite or LK-99. x 1. 100 billion kWh of electricity are wasted on transmission losses each year in the US alone. That's equivalent to 3 of our largest nuclear reactors running 24/7. Superconductivity enables lossless electricity transmission at high voltages and currents. — Alex Kaplan (@alexkaplan0) July 26, 2023 One crucial aspect of superconductivity is critical temperature, the temperature below which the material becomes superconductive. The value stated for LK-99 is 127°C ( 261°F), meaning it could easily be employed in all environments on Earth. If this is confirmed, it would not be the only room-temperature superconductor. But it would be the first to not require enormous pressures to work. The paper is available at arXiv.

x Happening Now: President Biden, joined by the Vice President, signs a proclamation to establish the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Illinois and Mississippi. https://t.co/i0MiJHYkQY — The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 25, 2023

Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor has died at the age of 56, her family has announced. In a statement, the singer’s family said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.” x Sinead O’Connor has Passed Away at Age 56.



- It's so sad to hear that the Irish singer has passed away just 18 months after her son's death.



- O'Connor had consistently advocated on behalf of abused children and has done so much over the years to help.



- In her final social… pic.twitter.com/be9WOuZczB — Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) July 26, 2023 The acclaimed Dublin performer released 10 studio albums, while her song Nothing Compares 2 U was named the number one world single in 1990 by the Billboard Music Awards. ...In 1992, O’Connor tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on US television programme Saturday Night Live in an act of protest against sex abuse in the Catholic Church. x Sinéad O’Connor protests sexual abuse of minors in the church, ripping up a photo of The Pope Live on SNL — earning a lifetime ban from the show.



The following decades would reveal just how pervasive the abuse was. Rest in power. pic.twitter.com/QwjP1lEQ4t — Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) July 26, 2023 “I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she later said of her protest. “But it was very traumatising,” she added. “It was open season on treating me like a crazy bitch.” x A great Irish poet and singer left us today.



She was beautiful, courageous and wore her heart on her sleeve. She was before her time.



Nothing will ever compare to Sinéad O’Connor.



Rest easy Sinéad. pic.twitter.com/wBpRjV2Eol — Seamus Heaney (@HeaneyDaily) July 26, 2023 ...Broadcaster Dave Fanning said O’Connor would be remembered for her music and her “fearlessness” and “in terms of how she went out there all the time, believed in everything she was doing, wasn’t always right and had absolutely no regrets at all”.

How about you all? Any regrets tonight? Share your favorite Sinead moments in the comments...

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