Today’s comic by Matt Bors is Bombs away!
• Rate of carbon dioxide growth in past decade 100 to 200 times what Earth experienced in transition from last Ice Age:
For the second year in a row, carbon dioxide concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa Observatory rose at a record-fast clip, according to new data released by the Environmental System Research Laboratory (ESRL). The annual growth of 3 parts per million in 2016 is the slightest shade below the jump in 2015 of 3.03 ppm. Both years mark the first time carbon dioxide has risen more than 3 ppm in a single year in ESRL’s 59 years of monitoring.
An exceptionally strong El Niño helped kick the numbers up a bit, but ever-increasing carbon pollution is the main driver behind the uptick. The annual growth rate has increased since record keeping began in 1960 from just under 1 ppm in the 1960s to more than 2.4 ppm through the first half of the 2010s. The past two years have set a record for the fastest annual growth rate on record.
• There will be no Arkansan Erin Brockovichs if a new state law passes the state Senate: A bill to allow private businesses to sue whistleblowers who expose abuse or other wrongdoing has already passed the Arkansas House. If it passes the Senate and the governor signs it, the bill would allow lawsuits against anyone who goes onto a business’s private property and "records images or sound occurring within an employer's commercial property and uses the recording in a manner that damages the employer."
"This is sort of ag-gag on steroids," said Cody Carlson, a staff attorney at Mercy for Animals, an animal welfare nonprofit that often conducts undercover exposés at factory farms. "It doesn't just apply to animal cruelty undercover investigators, it applies to virtually everybody."
• Can Customs and Border officials search your phone without a warrant? Read about your rights.
• Hate crimes rose 20 percent during 2016:
In 2016 there were 1,037 hate-related incidents in nine U.S. metropolitan areas, up from 841 in 2015, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity.” [...]
But perhaps surprisingly, 2016 saw rates of hate-related incidents rise most sharply in the nation’s most liberal cities. Washington, D.C. saw such incidents increase 62 percent from 2015, while the number of anti-LGBT hate crimes in the District increased by 59 percent. Hate crimes related to ethnicity or national origin quadrupled in that nation’s capital last year, those related to religion tripled, those related to gender identity or expression nearly doubled, and those related to sexual orientation increased by about 50 percent.
• News for Rep. Steve King of Iowa: Your district was built by “somebody else’s babies.”
• South Dakota governor signs bill cracking down on protests:
Senate Bill 176 allows the governor to set up “public safety zones” in which protest activities can be limited to gatherings of 20 people or less. It also authorizes the state’s Department of Transportation to restrict protester access to highways by prohibiting “stopping, standing or parking” in certain areas.
• EPA budget cuts may go even deeper than the 25% already threatened.
• Spiders consume 880 million tons of insects each year:
The new study, published in the journal The Science of Nature, finds that spiders' food consumption rivals — or perhaps dwarfs — the 440 million tons (400 million metric tons) of meat and fish all the humans in world eat each year. Spider prey consumption is similar to the amount of food that all whale species (Cetacea) eat annually, which has been pegged at between 300 million and 550 million tons (280 million and 500 million metric tons), biologist Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel in Switzerland and ecologist Klaus Birkhofer of the Brandenburg University of Technology in Germany wrote in their paper.