If conservatives are wrong to be skeptics of climate science, why won’t liberals accept the science around the safety of GMOs?   Most of us learn in grade school that religious authorities in the 17th century condemned Galileo as a heretic for arguing, based on astronomical observations, that the earth revolves around the sun. One of the morals of the story is that those who oppose science end up looking foolish in history books. But that lesson has somehow failed to take hold in our modern politics. [node:read-more:link]

If new carbon regulations go into effect, U.S. coal production will fall by around 25% by 2040.If the plan doesn't ever take effect, the EIA predicts demand for coal will remain relatively flat over the next 25 years. That scenario assumes natural gas prices and that international demand for US coal will dip down and then return back to higher 2014 levels. [node:read-more:link]

The number of Texas deer with confirmed chronic wasting disease has apparently doubled.  The Texas Animal Health Commission had been monitoring a deer ranch in Medina County and testing found 13 new cases of the fatal disease at the captive breeding facility. "A three-and-a-half year old doe tested positive in April, and so the facility was quarantined and additional testing was done and more CWD was found,” Tom Harvey, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman, said today. [node:read-more:link]

Their latest experiment, documented in Biological Letters, showed that goats will gaze imploringly at their owners when they are struggling to complete a task, a trait common in dogs but not wolves, for example, who have never learned how to co-exist with humans. The team has also demonstrated that goats can work out how to break into a sealed box using levers, a task used to gauge intelligence in apes. They can even remember the skill four years later without prompting. [node:read-more:link]

Like many schools across Mississippi, Morton is scrambling to adjust to an influx of Spanish-speaking students for which it was completely unprepared. In a state that ranks at or near the bottom in education spending nationwide, it can be a challenge just to maintain buildings and stock classrooms with basic supplies. It’s hard to find money to pay for teachers who specialize in helping kids who are learning English, known in academic circles as English Language Learners — ELLs for short. [node:read-more:link]

The North Dakota Farmers Union will fight for better price protections for milk to stimulate the state's slumping dairy industry, the group's president said. Watne said the price paid by consumers is not representative of the price paid to producers. The national average price received by farmers for milk fell to $14.5 per hundred pounds in May compared with $16.8 a year ago and $24.2 per hundred pounds two years ago in May [node:read-more:link]

The story of outmigration from the Midwest to other parts of the country is as old as the advent and widespread use of home air conditioning. So the most recent federal data on trends in domestic migration among states is not surprising: net gains for the South and West at the expense of the nation’s two other regions.  In the U.S. Census Bureau data showing population trends between 2010 and 2015, only two states in the Midwest — South Dakota and North Dakota — had net gains in domestic migration. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. is exporting record volumes of propane, another way in which the shale boom has made the nation a more dominant force in the global energy trade. Foreign sales are surging as U.S. producers capitalize on higher prices overseas. That in turn is causing U.S. prices to rise, making Fourth of July barbecues a bit more expensive than cookouts a few months ago. [node:read-more:link]

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is partnering with 21 states through the Biofuel Infrastructure Partnership (BIP) to nearly double the number of fueling pumps nationwide that supply renewable fuels to American motorists. In May 2015, USDA announced the availability of $100 million in grants through the BIP, and that to apply states and private partners match the federal funding by a 1:1 ratio. USDA received applications requesting over $130 million, outpacing the $100 million that is available. [node:read-more:link]