News Blog

This is not the kind of headline that inspires confidence or optimism: “Climate change is here — and worse than we thought.”

The accompanying op-ed was written by James Hansen, a top scientist at NASA and a leading climate-change researcher. And in the second paragraph, he says his earlier projections for what climate change will look like were too optimistic.

“My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true,” he writes. “But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.”

Hansen wrote his op-ed in advance of a peer-reviewed study that’s coming out today; it’s published by the National Academy of Sciences. He and other researchers studied 60 years’ worth of temperature data, and regarding the extreme heat waves in recent years, there’s virtually no explanation other than climate change, he writes. He expects that data for this summer, once it’s all been collected, will show the same.

“The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small,” he writes.

House Speaker John Boehner will be in Rochester tomorrow to help Maggie Brooks raise money for her Congressional campaign. And it looks like some protestors plan to have a little fun at the Republicans’ expense.

Earlier this week, a local CSEA unit blogged about a group called “Millionaires for Maggie.” It included a press release about a demonstration planned for tomorrow’s Boehner visit. Here’s how it describes the demonstration:

“Millionaires for Maggie will hold a demonstration celebrating Speaker John Boehner and Maggie Brooks for their efforts to support millionaires at the expense of the middle class. Just Thursday, John Boehner and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted yet again to extend the Bush tax cuts for millionaires like us while ignoring initiatives on jobs and health care. Now he’s in Rochester recruiting Maggie Brooks to join him in his quest to protect millionaires, and we’ll be out showing our support.”

It’s not clear who’s behind Millionaires for Maggie, though the county’s CSEA leaders have had a contentious relationship with Brooks and her administration. The group and the demonstration appear to be a completely tongue-in-cheek response to GOP policies. A description of the group, which was also included in the blog post, says Millionaires for Maggie “is a grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, the politically well-connected, fat cats, decadent heiresses, and other winners under Maggie Brooks’ economic policies.”

A VIP reception with Boehner and Brooks starts at 11:45 a.m. Millionaires for Maggie say they’ll be there. So expect a show downtown.

The leader of at least one city Democratic committee appears to be the target of some intra-party maneuvering by Assembly member David Gantt.

The situation centers around an arcane bit of party activity: selecting who will sit on city legislative district committees. Typically, the legislative district leader nominates people to serve on the committees. In this case, however, Gantt and his allies filed petitions for additional candidates in the 21st and 29th Legislative Districts, forcing primaries.

• FILE PHOTO
• David Gantt

Some Democrats are particularly concerned about the Gantt camp’s push in the 21st LD. The district’s leader, Anthony Plonczynski, is one of the committee members facing a primary, and if he loses his seat, he loses the leader position with it. Plonczynski is also campaign manager for Jose Cruz, one of two candidates — County Legislator John Lightfoot is the other — challenging Gantt in a Democratic primary.

Some Democratic party leaders say that in the bigger picture, Gantt is trying to increase his influence and weaken opponents headed into the 2013 elections. The 2013 contests include City Council, school board, and the mayoral races. If Gantt’s committee candidates prevail, he’ll have a greater number of reliable votes in the 21st and 29th LD’s. He’d have more influence over whom the committees endorse in elections.

Gantt and his allies aren’t breaking rules here. They’re perfectly within their rights. Nobody ever said politics was neat, tidy, or civil; sometimes it really does come down to a pure power struggle. But some Democratic leaders say Gantt, who serves as leader of the 22nd Legislative District, has been gradually winning seats on other LD committees. They say that this recent effort is an escalation of those activities.

Many men 50 and older are bobbing and weaving their way through the PSA debate that started a couple of years ago. The prostate-specific antigen test is widely used to screen men for prostate cancer, but a number of studies have raised questions about the value of the PSA test. And last year, the US Preventive Services Task Force spoke out against PSA screening for all men, sending shockwaves through the medical community.

It also confused the heck out of many men, especially prostate cancer patients, since early detection has become the front line of defense against most cancers.

But early detection, some researchers argue, has led to over-treatment of prostate cancer. And many men may be having unnecessary surgery to remove their prostate. The surgery, now performed robotically, is frequently to blame for some serious problems: bladder incontinence and erectile dysfunction due to nerve damage.

But a University of Rochester Medical Center study recently published in the journal Cancer says the PSA test may be preventing up to 17,000 deaths in men a year. Early detection of the cancer before it has spread outside of the prostate gland is critically important to survival. If the PSA test is not given, the URMC study says we can expect to see a jump in the number of men who have advanced prostate cancer by the time they’re diagnosed.

The URMC’s Dr. Edward Messing, the co-author of the study and chair of urology, says that once prostate cancer has spread, it is difficult to treat. And men with metastasis at diagnosis will likely die from the disease.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men in the US. According to the URMC, more than 240,000 new cases will be diagnosed in 2012, and about 28,000 men will die from the disease.

The URMC study is one of many that have recently weighed in on the value of the PSA for prostate cancer screening. And more are likely to come, which leaves many men wondering what to do.

My doctor strongly supports using the PSA. What is your doctor telling you?