meghan

One of the biggest problems those of us in the reality-based community have in expressing the truth about global warming is that it’s a complex problem, and though we’ve known about it for decades, the effects are only just now clearly starting to manifest themselves.

The folks at the Climate Reality Project have made a series of videos to help. My favorite features my friend Bill Nye—perhaps you’ve heard of him—narrating a great piece that explains, simply and clearly, what global warming is, how it works, and what’s causing it (us).

(It’s also available on Vimeo if you prefer.)

Right now, the biggest problem in explaining the reality of global warming is the well-funded and quite sinister campaign to sow doubt about it. The Climate Reality Project has another video about this that I like, showing the clear and direct connection between—get this—the tobacco companies and their lobby, and that of some of the climate change deniers.

That connection is quite real: Many of the same people and so-called “think tanks” who have labored for years to downplay the dangers of smoking are now shilling doubt when it comes to global warming. I think that lends a needed perspective to their credibility.

As the phrase goes, doubt is their product. The skepticism we really need, though, should be aimed directly at them. The facts about global warming are in and have been for years. The last thing we need is people spinning, folding, and mutilating them.

Today we launch the second major stage of our summer adventure – departing for the UK and Ireland later this evening. But a week ago today, we were in my PhD field area, the McKenzie River watershed in the central Oregon Cascades. Joined by Dana and Lockwood, we had a fabulous day exploring the interplay of water and lava in creating a spectacular landscape and revisiting some of my favorite spots from my PhD years.

My favorite picture of the day comes from Upper Proxy Falls, where snowmelt spilling off a hanging valley forms a high waterfall into a mysterious pool. For no matter how much water tumbles down the falls, the pool never overflows into any stream. Instead, the water sinks through the bottom of the pool into a 1500 year old basaltic andesite lava flow (with a 15,000 year old basalt flow under that). Several miles downvalley, and a 1000 feet lower in elevation, the water from Proxy Falls re-emerges as part of huge a spring. But I love to sit near the pool of Upper Proxy Falls and contemplate the mysteries of water and lava.

For Chris, it was fascinating to see Anne enthusiastically guiding us through the springs and lava flows of her scientific youth, and explaining how the subsurface plumbing system created by ancient lava flows was just as important as what we saw on the surface. But we also made it up the top of the McKenzie pass, where we got a nice view of where a lot of that lava ultimately came from, the volcanoes of the High Cascades.

The lava-dominated landscape reminded me a bit of Hawaii, even if the tectonic setting is totally different. And it was useful to get a good idea of what was lying underneath all the trees at lower altitudes. Check out Lockwood’s blog for some nice panoramas from the same spot.

During a policy breakfast for the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce in Virginia, state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) compared health care coverage to car insurance, and argued that insurance plans shouldn’t cover routine care such as doctors’ visits.

According to an account of the meeting in the Ashburn Patch, Cuccinelli claimed that insurance was “never intended” to cover services like doctor visits and was meant to be limited to catastrophic illnesses. To illustrate his logic, Cuccinelli pointed out that car insurance doesn’t pay for routine maintenance such as oil changes.

Many conservatives have pushed catastrophic care as a way of dealing with rising costs. But these types of plans force consumers who have anything other than a devastating illness or accident to pay for all of their care out-of-pocket or forgo it entirely. Doctors’ visits and regular preventative care, on the other hand, can prevent many of the conditions that may cause a catastrophic condition to form in the first place.

This is the Starry Lights lamp designed by Anna Farkas. It projects accurate constellations on the ceiling and comes in four different models (based on the way the stars appear during different seasons): vernal equinox, summer solstice, autumnal equinox and winter solstice. All the stars are as they appear at 45-degrees north latitude though so if you want some southern hemisphere shit you are OUT OF LUCK. Just kidding, they also make custom ones, it's just going to cost you. And considering they start at $1,000 it's probably smarter to pound some holes in a coffee can with a nail then dangle it over a bare bulb. That's what I did, and I think it turned out pretty good. See? There's the Big Dicker. "It's DIPPER." You sure? "Positive." This reminds me of the time I found up Alaska wasn't an island. Thanks to Christian, who saved himself $990 and used a star map to put up a bunch of those glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling the way we all did in high school and college. Hey baby, wanna see the stars? That was classic.

It’s not just the NSA that’s collecting massive amounts of personal data with judicial approval. In a ruling publicized by EarthRights International, a federal judge in New York approved a subpoena by Chevron to obtain any documents Microsoft has related to the identity of 30 anonymous individuals allegedly of interest in the litigation, including every IP address over a period of nine years.

The case involves an $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron in an Ecuador court, for massive environmental contamination from oil drilling. The Ecuadorian court found that Chevron had dumped toxic waste into Amazon waterways used by indigenous groups for drinking water and caused massive harm to the rainforest. Chevron responded by filing a lawsuit in U.S. court alleging that the plaintiffs engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the company.

As part of this lawsuit, Chevron has subpoenaed Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to request all information related to the email addresses of more than 100 advocates, journalists, lawyers, and others. These individuals are not parties to the suit, but Chevron alleges that they are involved directly or indirectly in the litigation, and may have been outspoken critics of Chevron’s conduct. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan explains the scope of what Chevron was seeking from Microsoft:

To summarize, if Microsoft still has and were to produce the requested information, Chevron would learn the IP address associated with every login for every account over a nine-year period. Chevron could identify the countries, states, or even cities where the users logged into accounts, and perhaps, in some instances, could determine the actual building addresses.

Chevron would not learn who logged into the accounts. That is to say that Chevron would know who created (or purported to create) the email accounts but would not know if there was a single user or multiple users for each account. Nevertheless, the subpoenaed information might allow Chevron to infer the movements of the users over the relevant period (at a high level of generality) and might permit Chevron to make inferences about some of the users’ professional and personal relationships.

Late last month, the court granted the first of these subpoenas in full, holding that the anonymous individuals were not entitled to First Amendment protection because they may not be U.S. citizens. As human rights lawyer Marissa Vahlsing explains:

The account-holders in this case were proceeding anonymously, which the First Amendment permits. Because of this, Judge Kaplan was provided with no information about the account holders’ residency or places of birth. It is somewhat amazing then, that Judge Kaplan assumed that the account holders were not U.S. citizens. As far as I know, a judge has never before made this assumption when presented with a First Amendment claim. We have to ask then: on what basis did Judge Kaplan reach out and make this assumption?

Given similar suggestions that NSA data collection is limited at least in some ways to non-U.S. citizens, this decision – much more public and available than the secret but reportedly expansive rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – should give serious pause to those who think that limiting data collection to non-U.S. citizens protects the rest of us. It is worth noting that this case involves only the First Amendment, and not the Fourth, because parties in civil suits have a whole lot of leeway to access data via administrative subpoenas, which are typically not considered “searches” (and/or seizures) under the Fourth Amendment. Nonetheless, their speech, associations, and political activities, remain protected under the First.

Forget stocking your pantries with non-perishables and canned foods for the end times, we can find what we need to sustain us all around — and thanks to The Eat-a-Bug...

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Whether you're feeling nostalgic for the bygone era of Google Reader, or you legitimately need to read through your RSS feeds, Zombie Reader is a tool that lets you do just that.

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Have a mosquito problem???

At your next outdoor gathering try this SAFE and EFFECTIVE method of keeping mosquitoes at bay! Simply slice a lime in half and press in a good amount of cloves for an ALL NATURAL mosquito repellent.

Thanks Grace H

While visiting an estate in Ontario's Niagara Falls two years ago, a film enthusiast stumbled upon a rare World War I Richard Verascope stereo camera previously owned by the French Army. Here's what he found inside.

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This past weekend was Anime Expo, the ginormous celebration of all things anime, and the sheer amount of lovely cosplay will melt your brain. Check out a gallery below — but also please tell us: What character or concept makes for the best cosplay in the universe?

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Now that we've all had time to digest the appalling mess that was The Lone Ranger, we need to talk about Tonto. Johnny Depp managed to create a character who is a horrifying mashup of Jar Jar and Jack Sparrow. What the hell happened there? Spoilers ahead.

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Note: Larger version HERE, because art was meant to be enjoyed and not just squinted at. This is the Michalangelo's 'The Creation of Adam' (part of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling fresco) reimagined by DeviantARTist PurpleKecleon with 'Adventure Time' characters (which is appropriate because Princess Bubblegum really did create the Earl of Lemongrab). Thankfully Lemongrab has a belt on, because in the original painting Adam's thingy is hanging out. And by thingy I mean pecker, I just can't say pecker or my babysitter will tattle to my parents and I won't be allowed to go to the movies for the rest of the month and I am NOT missing that one about the snail that wants to be a race car driver. Hit the jump for a shot of the original for comparative purposes.

This is the life-size chrome t-rex built by artist Philippe Pasqua and on display near the Seine River in Paris. I smell a field trip! Jk jk, I smell the tuna salad sandwich that's been sitting at the top of my kitchen trashcan for three days that I can't take out because I'm all out of bags.

350 chrome molded bones create the framework for the 3 by 6 meter (12' by 21') contemporary artwork. the t-rex, a fixture in popular culture, is characterized by its massive skull, long powerful tail, and treacherous teeth, all which are exemplified in pasqua's skeletal construction. the towering silver structure surprises passers-by, synthesizing the relationship between artistry and shock value.

Listen: you're finally going to take me to Paris like you've always promised, and you're going to snap a bunch of pictures of me riding this thing, okay? I want you to promise me. And I want you to mean it, not like every other time you've promised you'd take me to the beach for our anniversary. *peeling off shirt* I can't even remember the last time I got to aim these tits at a sailboat. Hit the jump for a head-on shot.

"Shitstorm" has been inducted into Duden, the official German dictionary. It was a favorite among linguists, who admired its applicability to the plagiarism scandal that led to the resignation of Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Strangely, an equivalent German word was not created by stringing together 75 other German words. (via The Mary Sue)

On May 31, just before 9:00 a.m. local time, the International Space Station was passing over the small island of Gaua in the south Pacific. Well, small as seen from above the ocean; it’s actually a massive stratovolcano more than 3,000 meters (2 miles) tall from base to tip and 40 kilometers across.

But only the very top of it pokes above the water. Still, it provides a dramatic view from 420 kilometers (250 miles) above the Earth:

This was taken by an astronaut on ISS, looking not too far from straight down on the volcano. The peak of the volcano is called Gharat, and you can see the obvious and perfectly formed plume made primarily of steam blowing from it to the east. The volcano is active and had been blowing out steam for about a month before this photo was taken.

I like how beautifully framed this picture is and how textbook the volcanic peak is. Gharat rises to about 800 meters above sea level, and has the lovely semicircular Lake Letas to the north and east. (I have to note that “Gharat” sounds Cardassian, and “Letas” Bajoran; perhaps I am simply too big a Star Trek dork.) The island, populated by 2,500 people, is the biggest in the Banks Islands group in the Republic of Vanuatu, east of northern Australia. These are all volcanic islands, though not all currently active.

I would wager a healthy sum that most people have never heard of this tiny island. I know a little about Vanuatu, but mostly because I’m fascinated by both volcanoes and pictures of them from space, so I’ve read about it before. This is a great reminder that we live on a huge planet, so spread out, that there are actually parts of it you weren’t even aware of. How much of Earth don’t you know? How much more is there for any of us to explore and discover? We all live here, after all. Shouldn’t we take the time to learn more about our home?

Brandon Keim has an amazing feature up at Aeon Magazine, about the idea of animal consciousness — i.e., how animals think and feel and experience their own lives. After delving into the chimpanzee experience of death for a couple weeks, this story really grabbed my attention. Increasingly, it's an idea that scientists are paying more attention to, as well.

Brain-eating amoebas? In my local waterways? It's more likely than you think.

Around the country, police are adopting the widespread use of automatic license plate readers, and storing photos with time and location records in databases that are not subject to judicial oversight. In California, the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that this data collection is widespread, with multiple counties creating coordinated databases that enable more thorough police location tracking of everyone, regardless of whether they are suspected of a crime.

A computer security consultant who spoke with CIR requested records of his own police scans several years ago, and found that his county police had logged this information once a week on average. One photo shows him and his daughters in their driveway.

Expansion and funding of this collection has been led by anti-terrorist agencies. Last year in California, for example, a law enforcement intelligence-sharing center set up after 9/11 signed a $340,000 agreement with Palantir, a CIA-funded start-up that has denied alleged links to the recently uncovered NSA surveillance. And a New Jersey county recently purchased the license plate readers under a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. But information collected has been used to solve domestic crime and enforce small-time violations, including parking restrictions or motorists who run red lights. In New York City, police have used the readers to catch car thieves and identify motorists with open warrants.

Like other forms of location tracking, license plate readers pose obvious privacy concerns, which is why several states and jurisdictions have limited their use, with New Hampshire banning them entirely. And a recent report from the International Association of Chiefs of Police has said tracking driver locations could raise First Amendment questions, as it collects data about individuals’ activities, religious practices, and even political protests. But in places where legislative limits have not been set, police are expanding their use of the tactic. An investigation in Los Angeles found the city had already recorded 160 million “data points.” Attempts to pass a California law limiting retention of these records to 60 days failed, after law enforcement and businesses that profit from the technology resisted.

Courts have grappled recently with other surveillance tools, but license plate readers have not come under scrutiny. A major U.S. Supreme Court decision last term significantly limited police use of GPS devices, in holding that attaching one to a suspect’s car without a warrant and monitoring his activity for 28 days constituted a “search.” Police have since turned to other tactics, including cell tower data, as an alternative means of location-tracking, and lower court rulings have set varying limits on the practice. Just this term, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the collection and retention of DNA on every person arrested — not convicted — of a serious violent crime, as the four dissenting justices who expressed passionate disapproval reiterated, “the Fourth Amendment forbids searching a person for
evidence of a crime when there is no basis for believing the person is guilty of the crime or is in possession of incriminating evidence.” This alternative type of location surveillance, which may nor not be deemed a Fourth Amendment search, burdens not just arrestees, but everybody who drives a car.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have filed lawsuits to gain access to the data.

Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's is riding around the country in a rainbow colored van, stamping $1 bills with messages like "not to be used for bribing politicians," as a way of raising consciousness about the impact of money in politics in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court verdict, which opened the doors to infinite campaign financing by special interests.

He's seeking a constitutional amendment that overturns the verdict, and he's got 15 states onboard. You can sign a petition, buy a stamp and stamp your own money, and hold stamping parties with your friends. The full list of stamp messages is:

"Not to Be Used for Bribing Politicians".
"Stamp Money Out of Politics"
"Corporations are Not People"
“Not To Be Used for Buying Elections”

Stamp Stampede

Did you know that we publish original feature articles regularly on Boing Boing? We're more than the old-school linkblog this website began as, way back in the year 2000 (we were a zine before that, but man, that's a whole 'nother saga). In case you missed in the flood of blog posts, here are some of the most recent original features published on Boing Boing:

• Death and the Mainframe: How data analysis can help document human rights atrocities
• Kickstop: how a sleazebag slipped through Kickstarter's cracks
•The making of Family Restaurant, a short film for kids with LGBT parents by Andrea James
• Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy
• The Snowden Principle, by John Cusack

More in our FEATURE archive.

According to a new survey, more than three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck in order to make ends meet.

The study, conducted by Bankrate.com, found that 76 percent of citizens had less than six months’ worth of savings to their name. Half of Americans had less than three months emergency savings and more than a quarter had no savings at all.

Were they to lose their job or face a financial emergency, these savings would not be enough to keep them afloat.

There are many reasons why so many Americans are in a precarious financial situation. The average worker currently earns 273 times less than the average CEO. Median household income actually declined over the last decade from more than $53,000 in 2000 to under $49,500 in 2010 (all in 2010 dollars). Income inequality has grown immensely, as the share of income earned by the middle class fell from 62 percent in 1970 to a record low of just 45 percent in 2010.

Meanwhile, as lower- and middle-class pay has dropped, the cost of living has grown immensely. In the past 40 years, college tuition grew between 80-113 percent, the price of a home nearly doubled, health care costs went up 50 percent, and the price of gas went up nearly 20 percent.

The combination of low wages and higher a cost of living has made it much harder for Americans to create and sustain their own rainy day funds. As a result, the vast majority of find themselves in financially precarious situations, relying on each subsequent paycheck to pay off the bills.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has called for a second special legislative session that will begin on July 1, according to ABC News reporter Arlette Saenz. The news comes less than 24 hours after Texas’ first special session concluded with a 13-hour filibuster that effectively blocked an omnibus abortion bill from passing.

Perry convened the first special session to give lawmakers more time to consider abortion-related bills that failed to advance during the state’s regular legislative period. Since special sessions operate under different rules, they allow the Republican majority to more easily rush through legislation without as much room for debate. Nevertheless, a coalition of grassroots women’s health activists and state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) were able to delay the stringent SB 5 measure by delaying a final vote. On Tuesday night, Davis successfully filibustered SB 5 by talking about the legislation for over 12 hours without sitting down, going to the bathroom, eating, drinking, or straying off-topic.

Nevertheless, despite Davis’ successful maneuver to defeat the legislation and the outpouring of support from activists across the country, there’s nothing to stop Perry from calling another special session. Some women’s health advocates speculated that Republican lawmakers were counting on it. There were two other pieces of legislation up for consideration during Tuesday’s debate, and in order to block SB 5, Davis was forced to filibuster all of them — so the governor may be able to use those bills as an excuse for giving lawmakers yet another extra lawmaking session this year.

It is unlikely that the same tactics that women’s health advocates used to delay SB 5 during the first special session will be effective during the second. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that, under a second special session, the legislation is likely to be approved.

If enacted into law, SB 5 would criminalize abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and shut down 90 percent of the abortion clinics in the state. Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards has pointed out that, due to the Lone Star State’s size and density, leaving Texas women with just five abortion clinics would be tantamount to banning the procedure altogether.

This disaster brought to you by Texaco, Wilson Brothers Drilling and the letters OMG.

Near the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana sits what at one time was a small freshwater lake. At under 11 feet deep, Lake Peigneur was a popular fishing and recreation spot and nearby Jefferson Island was home to a lovely botanical park. However on the morning of November 20, 1980, all of that changed when one of the largest man-made maelstroms in history flushed the lake, barges, big rig trucks, houses, 65 acres of surrounding land and a Texaco oil rig down an enormous vortex.

Early that morning the drilling crew knew something was amiss when their 14” drill bit became stuck and the entire platform shook. What they didn’t know was that they had mistakenly drilled through the ceiling of the long-established Diamond Crystal salt mine below. Wisely, they abandoned the structure and once safely on shore, they watched in horror as their entire 150 foot rig sank like a magic trick from Hell into the shallow lake. Meanwhile, hundreds of feet below, the 55 salt mine workers were scrambling to escape as water poured into the mine. Miraculously there were no fatalities or serious human injuries that day thanks to well rehearsed evacuation procedures. Several dogs were not so lucky.

The damage from the all consuming whirlpool was catastrophic and is still present today. The fresh water lake became permanently salinated with devastating effects on the ecosystem as brackish water from Delcambre Canal and Vermilion Bay poured in via a newly formed 50-ft. waterfall and compressed air from the mine shafts created 400 foot geysers. 

Texaco and Wilson Brothers drilling company agreed to pay damages in out of court settlements. $32 million and $12.8 million to Diamond Crystal and Live Oak Gardens respectively. The mine, which had been in operation for over 100 years, closed in 1986.

The hammock and the bathtub are undeniable fixtures of relaxation — so it's no surprise that the two play well together as the Vessel Hammock Bathtub ($TBA). Unlike other bathtubs,...

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I don’t think Bill Nye needs much of an introduction. His show is legend, of course, and a generation (cough cough a tad younger than me cough) grew up loving science because of him.

In the years since, he’s done more TV, and I applaud him for that, but even more he’s been a strong advocate for science and against anti-science. When reporter John Schwartz contacted me and asked me about Nye, I was too happy to help. The article he wrote is now live at the New York Times site:"Firebrand for Science, and Big Man on Campus."

The money quote people seem to like (judging from Twitter and Facebook) is this:

Mr. Plait said admiringly of Mr. Nye, “He will very calmly tear [anti-scientists] apart,” adding, “His big advantage is, he’s right. We know that climate change is real. We know creationism is wrong. These are no longer scientific controversies.”

“When people call these ‘controversial topics,’ that’s misleading,” he continued. “They are only controversial politically. And politics is not necessarily evidence-based.”

It's a well-written article, and you should read the whole thing.

Nye is a good guy and doing good work. He has a solid background in engineering and science, and he uses that to get people to stretch their imaginations to see what can be done. His new motto is, “You can change the world!”

He’s right. Again.

Related Posts:
Bill Nye: Creationism Is Bad for Children
"That's Just How It Is"
Our Future In Space - Panel at TAM 9

Yesterday, Quartz published an essay by Ankita Rao, in which she argues that “selfies,” images we take of ourselves, often with the intent of distributing them through social media sites, can be fun, but that they reveal our insecurities and a certain kind of posed inauthenticity as much as they do our real selves. Rao writes:

There is also the inevitable, palpable insecurity wrought in selfie culture—especially with those who often seek validation in the face they are willing to snapshot for the world. I often see that the photos people ‘like’ best are not the ones with most meaning, but the ones where they can easily justify a quick comments like “super hot” or, in worse case scenario, “werk it girlll”.

It’s further complicated by the constant, exhausting management of our online and real-life personas. Even if we enjoy the Twitter updates, the chronicling of food-truck tacos, the posting of political news, this new avatar is not native to our minds. And that can make our self-perception hazy at best. If someone else was taking your photo, on the other hand, they wouldn’t be concentrating on hiding that scar you got when you were four because they could see you as more than the sum of your features. There’s a reason the photos we take of ourselves are so different than those taken by others.

On the same day, Jenna Wortham, who covers social media for the New York Times, used the occasion of a rooftop picnic to reflect on the new video function that Facebook has added to Instagram. She argues, I think persuasively, that the problem with the video tool is that it’s in tension with the very attributes that made Instagram popular in the first place, the ability to record, edit, and filter the color and light on images in a way that captures not the literal reality of a moment, but the emotions that make that moment worth capturing in the first place:

Last week, when Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, and Kevin Systrom, the chief executive of Instagram, introduced the new video-sharing feature, they described it as the future of memory, a way to capture the moments and experiences that you wanted to remember and share them with your friends. But while that shaky video that I took on the roof was definitely steeped in reality and definitely true to the moment, it wasn’t the version of the night that I wanted to remember or share with my Instagram friends.

That’s because Instagram isn’t about reality – it’s about a well-crafted fantasy, a highlights reel of your life that shows off versions of yourself that you want to remember and put on display in a glass case for other people to admire and browse through. It’s why most of the photographs uploaded to Instagram are beautiful and entertaining slices of life and not the tedious time in-between of those moments, when bills get paid, cranky children are put to bed, little spats with friends.

What I think Rao’s essay misses, and that Wortham’s reflections hint in the direction of, is that the way we pose, even if it’s stilted or artificial, can be as revealing as documentary photograph taken on the sly. The preference for pursed lips in selfies tells us as much about what women see as valuable—a sense of sexual availability—as images of children dressed and standing like stiff little adults in oil paint, or portraits of powerful men surrounded by objects and images representing their offices and authority did. An image captured without a subject’s knowledge can capture what they actually look like, or provide documentary evidence of what they wore, or what their office or home looked like, or what they ate or drank. But an image that a subject has participated in creating can tell us all of those things and how the subject wants to be seen. Just because someone wants to conceal or to highlight certain facets of their physical person, or their personality doesn’t mean that they’re succeeding. And the gap between intent and execution is often as interesting as the material facts of a scene.

Seventy-two percent of Americans say they support spending government money to put people to work on urgent infrastructure repairs, according to a new survey by Gallup. The same number say they would support a law that would spend government money to create 1 million new jobs. Over 90 percent of Democrats, about 70 percent of independents, and a majority of Republicans support these job creation policies.

While an earlier poll showed higher support for these policies when government spending wasn’t mentioned, the increase was only three to five percentage points, which “suggests Americans’ support for job creation outweighs concerns they may have about government spending,” Gallup concludes. Nearly 80 percent also support lowering taxes for businesses and manufacturers who create jobs in the U.S.

Recent bridge collapses are just one symptom of the need to invest in U.S. infrastructure. The country got an overall D+ grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers. To raise that grade to a B, it would need to spend $3.6 trillion on upgrades by 2020, yet it is only expected to spend about $1.6 trillion. If that gap in spending isn’t closed, the country will not just risk unsafe infrastructure but lose $3 trillion in GDP and 3.5 million jobs.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate still stands at 7.6 percent. Instead of spending more money to get the economy going, the U.S. has turned to austerity, which has reduced GDP and lowered the outlook for growth.

The stimulus bill in 2009 made needed investments in infrastructure while turning the economy around during the Great Recession. President Obama proposed the American Jobs Act in 2011, which would have made further infrastructure investments, but it has been repeatedly blocked by Republicans in Congress.