Saturday Snippets is a regular weekend feature of Daily Kos.
• The climate crisis is reducing the flow of the Colorado River, a major source of water in the West: In a new study published in the journal Science, two U.S. Geological Survey scientists have concluded that the 40 million people depending on Colorado River water face a drier future. The pair says that global warming is shrinking the Rocky Mountain snowpack that feeds the river. For every 1°C (1.8°F) increase in temperature, the flow of water from the river falls 9.3%, the study says, noting that there is “a growing potential for severe water shortages in this major basin." The decline, the scientists say, is tied to the loss of albedo, the reflective quality of the snowpack. As with ice in the Arctic, the snowpack reflects back much of the solar radiation that strikes it. But as it dwindles, the ground and air above it warm up. Water from melting snow evaporates instead of feeding the river. Brad Udall, a climate scientist with the Colorado River Research Group, said the research "adds another brick in the wall of evidence that it's very likely we're going to see significant declines in Colorado River flows.
• New Hampshire town council dissolves police department whose sole officer strips off his uniform and departs for home in his underwear and boots.
• Tennessee death-row inmates choosing the electric chair over lethal injection: Nicholas Sutton, a 58-year-old convicted of killing a fellow inmate, was electrocuted Thursday, the fifth inmate in the state to pick electricity instead of the needle. The reason is straightforward. Some executions by lethal injection, the preferred method in most states, have gone horribly wrong. And even when they don’t, the procedure can be horrific. According to a federal judge in Ohio, that state’s lethal injection protocol amounts to waterboarding, and screwed-up procedures in other states have left men writhing and gasping in pain. “When everything works perfectly, it’s about 14 minutes of pain and horror,” said Stephen Kissinger, an assistant federal community defender who has represented Sutton and other death row inmates. “Then, [the condemned] look at electrocution, and how long does it take?” Of course, executions by electric chair have also gone horribly, painfully wrong too—10 of them in five states since executions were begun again after a Supreme Court-mandated hiatus. But none of the recent ones in Tennessee have gone awry. Four states besides Tennessee also include the electric chair as an alternative to lethal injection. Two others also do so, but only if lethal injection is declared unconstitutional or the drugs needed to carry out needle executions are unavailable.
MIDDAY TWEET
• People earning $1 million this year effectively stopped paying into Social Security February 19: Social Security is funded by a payroll tax that is currently capped at the first $137,700 someone earns each year. Said Sarah Rawlins, at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, "That makes a millionaire's effective tax rate well below the 6.2 percent of income that most Americans pay. Instead, it is less than 1 percent of a millionaire's income. She added that "The burden of Social Security taxes falls more heavily on those who make less," and said the system should be made more progressive by "scrapping the payroll tax cap entirely and making everyone pay the same tax rate." Some critics of removing the cap argue that if it is done away with, the cap on monthly SS payments to retired people should also be lifted. This would presumably mean rich recipients would receive hundreds of thousands of dollars every years from the system.
• On the first day of a partial truce in Afghanistan, only a handful of Taliban attacks occurred. The truce is meant to be the first step leading to a complete withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops.
• World’s earliest known figurative art at risk from cement mine in Indonesia: The paintings depicting a hunting scene in a cave on the island of Sulawesi were dated in December to 40,000 years ago. The famous paintings in the Lascaux cave of southwestern France are estimated to be about half that old. The Indonesian paintings are in fragile condition made worse by the fact that they are found on land owned by a cement company, although it has cooperated so far with authorities to protect them from its operations.
• NASA releases dramatic new before-and-after images of ice melt on Antarctic island: Two weeks ago, the temperature at Esperanza Base, an Argentine research station on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, hit 18.3°C (64.9°F), breaking the historical heat record for the ice-sheathed continent. The heatwave ran from Feb. 5 to Feb. 13. NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite photos below show Eagle Island, at the tip of the peninsula, over nine days. The island is about 25 miles from Esperanza Base.