Rising Sea Levels, Green Jobs and E-cigarettes
Scientists predict rising sea levels over the next century.
Workers at a wind turbine factory stage a protest over announced layoffs.
The Food and Drug Administration issues a warning to makers of e-cigarettes.
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1. SCIENCE
Scientists predict rising sea levels over the next century.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis on the former Vice President’s predictions of melting ice and rising waters:
“[Al] Gore also says half the [Greenland] ice sheet could break off because of ‘moulins.’ For me, this was the scariest part of An Inconvenient Truth. Moulins are cracks that channel meltwater from the surface of the ice sheet to the bedrock below. By lubricating the bedrock, moulins could destabilize the ice sheet, Gore says. Well, a recent study in Science magazine lays that fear to rest. A small meltwater lake poured down a moulin at a flow rate exceeding that of Niagara Falls. Yet, Science magazine reports, ‘For all the lake’s water dumped under the ice that day, and all the water drained into new moulins in the following weeks, the ice sheet moved only an extra half meter near the drained lake.’ An extra half meter.”
2. ENVIRONMENT
Workers at a wind turbine factory stage a protest over announced layoffs.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on the ‘right’ to a green job:
“What is perhaps most interesting about this story is not so much what it reveals about the impermanence of green jobs as the British labor unions’ attitude to them: ‘The court has made its decision, but we will continue with our campaign and the right to work on green energy jobs.’ So it seems that on the British left there is now a substantive right to a green job. What a happy world this will be, when everyone is paid for saving the planet. Presumably this right will be secured by a tax on the productive workers, but one has to wonder, just who will they be in this world?”
3. HEALTH
The Food and Drug Administration issues a warning to makers of e-cigarettes.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Attorney Hans Bader on smoking and harm reduction:
“A bill supported by the nation’s largest cigarette maker that was signed into law earlier this year by Obama will keep producers of smokeless tobacco from truthfully telling smokers about the fact that smoking is more dangerous to their health than smokeless tobacco. That will harm public health, as advocates like Bill Godshall of Smoke Free Pennsylvania have noted.”
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