Greenpeace wins Australian court case against power company


CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s largest electricity generator on Tuesday largely lost its court case alleging that the environmental group Greenpeace had breached copyright and trademark laws by using its logo in a campaign that described the company as the nation’s “biggest climate polluter.”

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Justice Stephen Burley ruled that AGL Energy had failed in its trademark infringement claim and failed in its copyright infringement claim for all of the uses of the logo except for three social media posts as well as some photographs and placards.

Burley denied AGL's request for damages.

Greenpeace had argued the Federal Court case had significant implications for charities and advocacy groups. Greenpeace also described AGL as the latest fossil fuel corporation to seek to stifle dissent through litigation.

In the online advertising campaign, Greenpeace Australia Pacific accused AGL, which predominantly generates coal-fired electricity, of “greenwashing” by promoting itself as a leading investor in renewable energy. The campaign used the AGL logo and featured the slogan, “AGL – Australia’s Greatest Liability.”

Greenpeace lawyer Katrina Bullock said Tuesday's decision was a win for freedom of expression and set an important legal precedent in copyright law.

“Today’s legal victory is good news for charities, advocacy organisations, satirists and anyone else who seeks to rely on the ‘fair dealing’ freedom of speech safeguard in the Copyright Act to criticise, review, satirise or parody powerful corporations,” Bullock said in a statement.

Greenpeace plans to continue its campaign to pressure AGL to close its three coal-burning power stations by 2030.

AGL released a statement welcoming the parts of the case decided in its favor.

“As we’ve always made clear, this legal action was about the integrity of how our brand is used,” AGL said.

“AGL understands its role as Australia’s largest integrated energy generator to lead the energy transition while continuing to deliver reliable and affordable energy,” AGL added.

AGL unsuccessfully applied for an interim court order in early May that would have forced Greenpeace to stop using the logo.

Greenpeace argued during a one-day hearing last week that Australian trademark law allows for the logo to be used for satire, parody and criticism.

AGL lawyer Megan Evetts told the court there was a “clear intention to harm the brand” through the Greenpeace campaign.

Greenpeace lawyer Neil Murray told the court the campaign did not breach the law because it did not use the AGL trademark in a trade context and its motives were “pure.”

AGL accepted in its latest annual report that it was Australia’s largest greenhouse gas emitter with plans to continue generating electricity by burning coal until 2048, Murray said.

The campaign was aimed at ending Australian reliance on coal-fired power by 2030 as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator confirms that AGL is the nation’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, accounting for 8% of the nation’s total emissions.

Greenpeace and AGL must return to court on Wednesday to offer wording for orders to give the judge’s verdict effect.

Rod Mcguirk, The Associated Press

CRISPR CRITTERS
Scientists saving endangered salmon get help from gene-slicing tool
By Nathan Frandino 1


Video: 'Sherlock' tool identifies endangered fish (Reuters)

© Reuters/NATHAN FRANDINO Emily Funk, an associate specialist at the University of California Davis, collects a mucus sample from a Chinook salmon to determine its exact species while on a research vessel on the San Joaquin River off Antioch

ANTIOCH, California (Reuters) - A gene-editing tool that has led to new cancer therapies and a rapid test for COVID-19 is now helping scientists find endangered species of salmon in the San Francisco Bay.

The CRISPR-based Sherlock tool can identify four types of Chinook salmon, including Sacramento winter-run and Central Valley spring-run, which are both protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

"The Chinook are a great fit actually because all of the runs, more or less, look the same," said Andrea Schreier, an adjunct associate professor at the University of California Davis and coauthor of a study

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1755-0998.13186 

published last year in Molecular Ecology Resources that examined using this genetic identification on the endangered Delta smelt.

"They're visually very similar and the current method we have to identify the different types is based on what length they are at a particular age and it's not very accurate."

Sherlock, which stands for Specific High-sensitivity Enzymatic Reporter Unlocking, identifies the fish using their genomic sequence. Researchers begin by taking swabs of mucus from the fish and combining with reagents that will glow if certain snippets of DNA are present. The battery-powered fluorescent reader gives results in 30 minutes, ideal for field research.

© Reuters/NATHAN FRANDINO Emily Funk, an associate specialist at the University of California Davis, waits for a fluorescent reader to finish running a SHERLOCK test, on a research vessel on the San Joaquin River off Antioch

By identifying the species, researchers believe they can better monitor population sizes and habitats.

With extreme drought

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA 

gripping California, some rivers are too warm for the salmon to survive, forcing the state to truck 17 million young fish to the San Francisco Bay from hatcheries.

Emily Funk, an associate specialist who joined the team in July 2020, said the conservation angle drew her to the project.

"I think it's important to preserve our ecosystems," she said. "I hope we can save the fish in our oceans."

Melinda Baerwald, an environmental program manager with the California Department of Water Resources and coauthor of the study, plans to deploy the technology at water pumping stations, which can impact endangered species.

"You don't have to wait for weeks or in some cases months to find out the answer to if you're impacting an endangered or threatened species," she said, adding that they currently have to drive an hour and a half to a lab to confirm the identity of a species. "Instead, you can find out at the moment that you're actually interacting with that species if you are affecting it."

MPs call on Nav Canada to give up $7M in bonuses paid out during pandemic

Ashley Burke

CBC

© The Associated Press 

Nav Canada confirms that bonuses amounting to $7 million were given to management in 2020 for their work between Sept. 2019 and August 2020.

Politicians are calling on executives and management at Nav Canada to pay back $7 million in bonuses they received last year during the pandemic, while the private non-profit was tapping into government aid and warning of possible layoffs.

Opposition MPs told CBC News they want the company — which owns and operates Canada's air traffic control system — to follow Air Canada's lead. The airline announced yesterday its senior executives will give back their 2020 bonuses in response to "public disappointment."

"It's very frustrating," said Conservative MP Michael Kram, who sits on the House of Commons' transport committee.

"If the Air Canada executives can make the right steps in the right direction to pay back some of their bonuses, I don't see why Nav Canada can't pay back their bonuses as well."

Public outrage flared last week after the Globe and Mail reported Air Canada gave corporate executives and managers $10 million in "COVID-19 Pandemic Mitigation bonuses" — along with other stock awards — while the company negotiated with the federal government for a multi-billion-dollar pandemic aid package.

Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland increased the pressure on Air Canada Wednesday by calling the bonuses "inappropriate."

Nav Canada said it won't decide until the fall whether it will hand out bonuses for 2021.

When asked repeatedly by CBC News if company executives will pay back the bonuses from 2020, Nav Canada refused to answer directly. Instead, the company's spokesperson Brian Boudreau defended the "management incentive program," saying it was "reduced significantly" last year by 20 per cent.

"Last year, cuts were made to our management compensation, pension plan and incentive programs as well as a significant reduction to overall management staffing numbers, including the executive management team, to reflect the challenging financial environment," Boudreau said in a media statement sent to CBC News.

© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press 

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland blasted Air Canada for paying $10 million in executive bonuses while negotiating for federal aid.

Nav Canada rescinded layoff notices

Bloc Quebecois MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval called the bonuses "selfish." He said not paying back the money shows a "lack of sensitivity" in a hard-hit sector.

"I don't understand how you can think it's a good thing to give bonuses to bosses when everything is going wrong around you," said Barsalou-Duval, who is the vice-chair of the transport committee.

NDP MP Brian Masse called it "shameful and a dereliction of leadership during a crisis."

Nav Canada said the bonuses handed out last year to 558 managers at all levels of the organization were for their work prior to the pandemic.

But MPs said that in the same year the bonuses were granted, Nav Canada was tapping into the federal government's Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy to help cover its payroll as the pandemic crippled air travel. At the time, the company also was looking at closing flight control towers at several locations across the country and issuing potential layoff notices.

The company announced on Friday it was cancelling 41 surplus notices affecting workers in Gander, Moncton, Montreal and Edmonton who were slated to lose their jobs in just days. The company also previously called off 87 other layoff notices and committed to keeping air traffic control towers open.

"Increased vaccination rates, anticipated reductions in travel restrictions and growing travel demand are expected to drive the aviation sector recovery," said Boudreau in a media statement.

NDP MP Taylor Bachrach said MPs demanded answers from the president and CEO of Nav Canada during a parliamentary committee hearing in February, but nothing changed.

"We've been clear that organizations receiving massive amounts of government aid should not be giving their executives bonuses," he said. "That applies to Nav Canada just as it applies to companies like Air Canada and others."

Bachrach said it's the government's responsibility to create rules that prevent this kind of behaviour.

Union concerned about 'poor quality of decisions'

Doug Best, president of the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association, told CBC News his organization is concerned about the "poor quality of decisions being made and the bad faith environment in which they are being made."

"The original decision to pay bonuses was done in bad faith," said Best in an email to CBC News Monday. "Whether the decision is made to give the money back like Air Canada or not does not change the fact they were paid at the same time they were laying off employees, all the while taking government handouts."

In a memo to staff, the union's executive board said that while it's happy Nav Canada workers will not be losing their jobs, that's not good enough.

"Rescinding the letters provides relief for our members but does not make amends for the treatment they have received for the last six months at the hands of the company," said the memo, dated June 4.

UPDATE
U.S. recovers millions from pipeline ransom because of hackers' mistake

 Colonial Pipeline paid nearly $5 million ransom to hackers (NBC News)

Kevin Collier and Pete Williams and Ken Dilanian 

The U.S. has recovered much of the ransom payment that the Russian hacker group DarkSide extorted from Colonial Pipeline earlier this year, the Justice Department said Monday.  

Provided by NBC News

The announcement details a rare disruption of the cryptocurrency payment systems favored by hackers, which have enabled ransomware efforts around the world.

The FBI was able to seize control of DarkSide's proceeds by gaining access to a central bitcoin account holding about 63.7 bitcoin, worth around $2.3 million, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said. A court document detailed that then seizure took place in Northern California, putting it within reach of U.S. law. It was unclear why the hackers didn't immediately move their funds to make them more difficult for the U.S. government to seize, as most cybercriminals do.

DarkSide hacked into Colonial in April as part of a months-long crime spree, leading the company to shut down operations. The group demanded a $4.4 million ransom, which the company quickly paid.

The pipeline's systems came back online five days after the initial hack.

"Today we turned the tables on DarkSide," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a press conference.

"Ransomware attacks are always unacceptable, but when they target critical infrastructure we will spare no effort in our response," she saiid.

Ransomware gangs are responsible for more than 1,000 hacks worldwide this year, mostly in the U.S., according to figures prepared for NBC News by Allan Liska, an analyst at the cybersecurity company Recorded Future.

Most attacks are on smaller targets, but the Colonial hack was the first to have direct effect on everyday American life. The threat of a major pipeline shutdown led to the U.S. issuing an emergency order for truckers to work overtime delivering fuel, and some gas stations reported shortages as drivers rushed to the pumps.

Jen Ellis, a coauthor of a landmark Ransomware Task Force report studying how to slow the pace of ransomware attacks, praised the DOJ’s announcement as “fantastic news.”

"This kind of collaboration between victims and law enforcement is exactly what we need to see," Ellis said.

"Hopefully if we see actions like this continue, it will encourage other victims to disclose attacks to law enforcement, and also make it harder for ransomware attackers to realize a pay day," she said.

The recovered payment that the Justice Department announced Monday is still a small fraction of what DarkSide has been able to steal since the gang became active around October 2020, said Tom Robinson, CEO of Elliptic, a British company that tracks bitcoin payments. The gang had been paid at least $90 million since it became active, Robinson said in an email.

THE BOURGEOISE TREMBLE
Analysis: Peru markets and miners fear Castillo, see silver lining in split vote

By Marco Aquino, Fabian Cambero and Rodrigo Campos 

 Reuters/ALESSANDRO CINQUE FILE PHOTO: Peruvians vote to elect president

LIMA/SANTIAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Peru's market and mining watchers are wary of a presidential election victory for socialist Pedro Castillo, who was building a narrow lead on Monday, but see a potential silver lining: a sharply split vote could hinder his plans for dramatic reforms.

The leftist candidate has rattled miners and investors since a surprise win in the first-round vote in April, pledging to tear up Peru's decades-old constitution and take up to 70% of profits from firms mining in the country's copper-rich Andes.

On Monday the former teacher and union leader held a razor-thin, though growing, lead https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/peru-awakes-uncertain-future-with-polarized-vote-knife-edge-2021-06-07 over his market-friendly conservative rival Keiko Fujimori in the run-off vote. The country's sol currency and equities sank https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/peru-could-face-capital-flight-if-castillo-clinches-presidency-jpmorgan-2021-06-07.

A final tally may take days to arrive and there could be challenges to the results.

"The only positive factor - even if Castillo wins - is that the result of the election shows you that the country is very divided," said Guillaume Tresca, senior emerging market strategist at Generali Asset Management.

"And with a divided congress it will be very hard for him to implement structural and disruptive reforms."

Whoever wins the presidential vote, Peru will have a deeply fragmented legislature with ten diverse political parties, none of whom hold a majority. Castillo's Free Peru socialists will have the largest bloc, followed by Fujimori's conservatives.

Peru's congress has relished clashing with the presidency in the past. Last year, it pushed through a controversial impeachment process against then-President Martin Vizcarra that forced him to step down and sparked deadly protests.

Mining firm executives in the country stayed mostly quiet on Monday as they waited for the final outcome.

Roque Benavides, chief executive of local miner Buenaventura, told Reuters that miners could agree to things like voluntary contributions to finance local infrastructure projects but more drastic measures like nationalizations would derail investments.

"I think that neither of the two candidates can impose their position and therefore I think that the idea of them making dramatic, drastic changes is very debatable," he said.

Francisco Acuña, a Santiago-based analyst at mining consultancy CRU, said it was quite likely the new government would need to negotiate and reach consensus with companies.

"It is evident that the country is torn. Whoever wins, the margin will be minimal," he said.

Graphics : Peru's stocks, currency rattled by election - 

https://graphics.reuters.com/PERU-ELECTION/MINING/ygdpzxkompw/chart_eikon.jpg

RADICAL CHANGES

Gustavo Medeiros, deputy head of research at emerging market-focused fund manager Ashmore Group, said that a Fujimori presidency would bring less risks of "populism" than Castillo, though there was much still unknown about the leftist.

"Whoever wins is going to have to govern with a very fragmented congress and that is going to complicate any radical structural legislative changes," he said, adding that market weakness from a Castillo win could create a buying opportunity.

Castillo said in a statement on Monday evening that if confirmed as president he would respect the central bank's authority and that he was not planning nationalizations or expropriations, but added a tax overhaul on mining was needed to help pay for planned healthcare and education reforms.

Julio Ruiz, chief economist for Mexico and Peru at Brazilian bank Itau, said a win for Fujimori - who has pledged to keep in place market-friendly policies that underpinned Peru's economic growth in recent decades - would be more positive for markets.

A win for Castillo, said Ruiz, could lead to pressure on the exchange rate and raise the probability that the central bank would hike rates before the end of the year to avoid inflationary pressures.

Alejo Czerwonko, Chief Investment Officer for Emerging Markets Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management, said a Castillo win would lead to a sell-off in Peruvian assets, though he faced challenges turning his rhetoric into reality.

"Whether he manages to deliver will depend on how well he navigates the institutional constraints he will face given his party only enjoys 42 out of the 130 seats in congress," he said.

"Key to watch is whether he is successful in his attempt to push for a constitutional reform."

(Reporting by Marco Aquino, Fabian Cambero, Rodrigo Campos, Stefanie Eschenbacher, Marc Jones, Tom Arnold and Karin Strohecker; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

How scientists are using drones to lower the risk of catastrophic flooding from large glacial lake

Author: Rodrigo Narro Pérez, PhD Candidate, School of Earth, Environment and Society, McMaster University

Early in the morning on Dec. 13, 1941, the citizens of Huaraz, Peru, heard a terrifying rumble echo across the valley. Within minutes, a torrent of water, ice and rocks had poured over the city, destroying a third of it and killing at least 2,000 people.

The natural dam of rocks and loose sediment that had held back Lake Palcacocha had failed. Eighty years later, its collapse remains one of Peru’s most tragic natural disasters.

This type of catastrophic event is known as a “glacial lake outburst flood.” Glacial lakes, such as those found throughout the Cordillera Blanca in the Andean mountain range, are often dammed by glacial moraines that can reach heights of over 100 metres. They are impressive, but they are often unstable.

Heavy rainfall and rock, snow or ice avalanches can raise water levels in moraine-dammed glacial lakes, generating waves that overtop the moraine dam or cause it to collapse, releasing huge amounts of water. These natural disasters are only expected to become more common in Peru — and around the world as climate warming melts glaciers at historically unprecedented rates.

Predicting future floods

This dark history has spurred international research into the stability of the moraines damming Peru’s glacial lakes. The Cordillera Blanca in northern Peru contains the highest concentration of tropical glaciers in the world. Predicting when these outburst floods will occur — and how destructive they will be — is of enormous concern to the over 320,000 people who live downstream.

Geological engineering models use variables such as the size and volume of the lake, height, width and slope of the moraine dam, and channel and valley dimensions to estimate the stability of the moraine dam and the risk of flood. Unfortunately, these models don’t include much information about the composition of the moraine dam, which can vary signifcantly depending on on its location and mode of formation.

My research, part of a collaboration between McMaster University and Peru’s National Institute for Research on Glaciers and Mountain Ecosystems (INAIGEM), focuses on establishing the origin of these moraine dams and the physical characteristics of the dams and the lakes they hold back. These features can have considerable influence on the stability of the dam and its potential for failure.

Using UAV to understand the structure of moraine dams

Glaciers create moraines by transporting, depositing and pushing boulders, sands and fine-grained silts and clays along the valley floor and adjacent valley walls, often forming a barrier. But one moraine may be much more stable than another, depending on the materials it contains and how it is formed.

Water may leak through weak points in the moraine’s stacked layers, taking sediment with it, or loose rocks may fall after a disturbance such as an earthquake. These weak points make a complete collapse of the moraine dam more likely. Locating these weak points is an important step in predicting the stability of the lake dams and can allow geoscientists and engineers to design more effective remediation strategies.

My colleagues and I are analyzing the architecture of large lateral moraines, which form along the sides of glaciers, in southern Iceland using un-crewed aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) to collect high-resolution images. We use these images to identify and classify areas of coarse- and fine-grained sediment that may form zones of water leakage and sediment removal and cause the dam to fail. We’ve planned similar high resolution UAV surveys of moraine dams in the Cordillera Blanca for early 2022.

The research will enhance the reliability of predictive models to identify potential glacial lake flood hazards. It will also identify areas where remediation work, such as the building of additional outlet channels or armoured barriers, is most needed to strengthen the moraine.

This will be particularly important as glaciers melt more quickly, the volume of water held by these natural moraine dams builds, and the destructive power of floods also continues to increase. A recent study by researchers at the University of Calgary showed that the volume of water in glacial lakes has increased by 50 per cent globally since 1990.

Since the beginning of the 19th century, an estimated 165 moraine-dammed glacial lake outburst floods have occurred. In addition, approximately 12,000 deaths worldwide can be attributed directly to glacier floods.

Our research in Peru will provide new insights into moraine dam stability that can be applied to other regions, such as Bolivia, the Himalayas and the Canadian Rockies, which are also experiencing an increased risk of glacial lake outburst floods as climate warming continues to melt glaciers.

___

This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site.
___

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read the original article:

https://theconversation.com/how-scientists-are-using-drones-to-lower-the-risk-of-catastrophic-flooding-from-large-glacial-lakes-158689

Rodrigo Narro Pérez, PhD Candidate, School of Earth, Environment and Society, McMaster University, The Conversation

Rodrigo Naro Perez receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) in the form of a SGS D scholarship.

Why agriculture, not AI, will secure Canada's place in the post-pandemic world order

Kevin Carmichael 
POSTMEDIA

JUNE 7,2021


Canada could yet breed a stable of unicorns that shows the wild success of Shopify Inc. isn’t a fluke, but a smart bettor wouldn’t put money on it. There’s too much risk, history argues against it and the landscape is already dominated by better players. It would be like a wager on the Toronto Maple Leafs getting past the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs (smirk).

© Provided by Financial Post Agriculture is perhaps the one industry in which Canada will have obvious comparative advantages in the future.

But if not in digital technology, where might Canada make a mark in a post-pandemic world full of angst over the climate and the ability of the United States and China to get along? Answer: Food. Artificial intelligence gets all the press, but agriculture holds more promise, since it is perhaps the one industry in which Canada will have obvious comparative advantages in the future.


For one thing, Canada’s growing season will get longer as climate change makes agriculture in some parts of the world impossible. Our reputation for being nice might finally become an advantage in global business, because who buys dinner from someone they distrust?

Becoming one of the world’s primary sources of food might even be enough to give us a say on how the world is run. China controls about nine per cent of the world’s arable land, but has to feed about 20 per cent of the population. It is going to need some help and it might have to take seriously those countries responsible for an outsized share of the world’s nutrition.

Food is the new oil, even if most of the world — including, remarkably, Canada — hasn’t realized it yet.

“Canada’s agri-food system has a significant comparative advantage, but it is not being leveraged to maximize outcomes,” a report last month by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI), an Ottawa-based research group, concluded . “Strategies need to be developed to leverage the assets the agri-food system has today and the advantages it will have in 20-30 years.”

Christopher Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., offered a similar assessment of Canada on May 11 at a virtual conference hosted by CAPI. He was enthusiastic about the country’s potential as an agri-food power, but observed it comes up short, in part, because it has been content to grow raw ingredients and ship them elsewhere for processing, which is where most of the value is created. It’s like choosing to be poor.

“Without food security, you don’t have anything,” Ted Bilyea, a former Maple Leaf Foods Inc. executive and CAPI’s chief strategy officer, said in an interview. “The Canadian government needs to be more strategic. No one wants to look at agriculture like a system.”

Strategic thinking means breaking down silos. Multiple cabinet ministers should be involved, not just the agriculture minister. The various farm lobbies need to get over their jealousies and try harder to work together. The same applies to the processors, grocers and transportation companies. Universities and colleges must be present, because research and development is the engine of innovation.

The effort might be anchored on the goal of neutralizing carbon pollution. Agriculture is responsible for about 10 per cent of global emissions, but Canada’s farmers and processors are greener than many of their peers, since they account for about eight per cent of Canadian emissions, according to Bilyea. That suggests they could be part of the solution to climate change, giving the industry a comparative advantage as the world’s biggest economies strive to meet net-zero goals.

Of course, the various agriculture ministers, farmers and processors would be unable to take full advantage of that opportunity without help. Importantly, they need the support of a trade minister who backs open commerce, not tit-for-tat protectionism. If the connection to the environment isn’t obvious, consider what would happen if a trade war between China and the G7 powers led the former to purchase all its grain from Brazil, a country that has had little difficulty razing the Amazon rainforest to make room for more farmland. Global commodity markets stuffed with Canadian cereals are good for the environment.

Farmers would need to be at the cutting edge of innovation, so they would need easy access to the newest research and technology. That means governments should reinvest in extension services that were decimated by the deep budget cuts of the 1990s. The final piece would be figuring out why Canada has created so few globally significant food companies, because, ultimately, it is the processors that generate most of the value and wield much of the clout.

“Processing gives you leverage,” Bilyea said.

It all makes so much sense, and yet there is little evidence the agricultural establishment is even close to getting its act together. Consider the dairy industry. It suffered consecutive blows in recent years, as the federal government was forced to make space for more dairy imports to gain admittance to important trade agreements with the European Union and 10 Asian nations, and to keep former U.S. president Donald Trump from wrecking the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The beating appeared to persuade the public servants, lobbyists and politicians who set the parameters for Canada’s highly regulated dairy industry that the time had come to take a hard look at the system. Lawrence MacAulay, who was agriculture minister when the North American trade pact was signed, promised at the time to set up a “working group” that would “chart a path forward to help the dairy sector innovate and remain an important source of jobs and growth for future generations.” The group was put together, but, more than two years later, “no recommendations have been made,” an Agriculture Canada spokesperson said by email.

Participants blame circumstances. Pierre Lampron, president of the Dairy Farmers of Canada, said talks were first interrupted by the 2019 election, and then by the pandemic. He said the delays haven’t stopped his group from coming up with a “blueprint” of its own, and he hopes that work will accelerate the process once the group resumes meeting. “We have come to acknowledge that these processes sometimes require patience,” said Mathieu Frigon, president of the Dairy Processors Association of Canada.

Hopefully, patience doesn’t lead to more inertia. Canada’s agriculture industry has been handed a rare opportunity. We will all be better off if seizes it.

• Email: kcarmichael@postmedia.com | Twitter: CarmichaelKevin

Canadian barley growers exploiting Australia’s troubles expose vulnerability in any alliance against Beijing

Kevin Carmichael: Don’t fear the robots, people

Like Hockey Canada in the late ’90s, our industrial policy needs to refocus on the fundamentals

Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time

The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began.

Provided by The Canadian Press

And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported Monday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million, said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans.

Carbon dioxide levels peak every May just before plant life in the Northern Hemisphere blossoms, sucking some of that carbon out of the atmosphere and into flowers, leaves, seeds and stems. The reprieve is temporary, though, because emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas for transportation and electricity far exceed what plants can take in, pushing greenhouse gas levels to new records every year.

“Reaching 50% higher carbon dioxide than preindustrial is really setting a new benchmark and not in a good way,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the research. “If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away.”

Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme weather — storms, wildfires, floods and droughts — worse and more frequent and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic, studies show. There are also health effects, including heat deaths and increased pollen. In 2015, countries signed the Paris agreement to try to keep climate change to below what's considered dangerous levels.

The one-year jump in carbon dioxide was not a record, mainly because of a La Nina weather pattern, when parts of the Pacific temporarily cool, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography geochemist Ralph Keeling. Keeling’s father started the monitoring of carbon dioxide on top of the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Loa in 1958, and he has continued the work of charting the now famous Keeling Curve.

Scripps, which calculates the numbers slightly differently based on time and averaging, said the peak in May was 418.9.

Also, pandemic lockdowns slowed transportation, travel and other activity by about 7%, earlier studies show. But that was too small to make a significant difference. Carbon dioxide can stay in the air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions don’t register much.

The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.

“Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely unusual,” Tans said. “For example, when the Earth climbed out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million and it took the Earth system, the natural system, 6,000 years. We have a much larger increase in the last few decades.”

By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to increase carbon dioxide by that same amount.

“The world is approaching the point where exceeding the Paris targets and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost inevitable,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of the research.

___

Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press

WHERE THERE IS SMOKE THERE IS WORK 

Highest in more than 4 million years: Earth's carbon dioxide levels soar to record high despite pandemic

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY

The COVID-19 pandemic barely registered as a blip as humanity continued to spew carbon dioxide into Earth's atmosphere over the past year to levels not seen in more than 4 million years, scientists announced Monday.

© Kevin Frayer Smoke billows from a large steel plant on November 4, 2016 in Inner Mongolia, China. Over the industrial era, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by about 40%, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2), the chief human-caused greenhouse gas, averaged 419 parts per million at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, for May, when carbon levels in the air peak, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than in May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

Overall, NOAA said, "there was no discernible signal in the data from the global economic disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic."

"We are adding roughly 40 billion metric tons of CO2 pollution to the atmosphere per year," said Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory. "That is a mountain of carbon that we dig up out of the Earth, burn and release into the atmosphere as CO2 – year after year.

"If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change, the highest priority must be to reduce CO2 pollution to zero at the earliest possible date."

Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme weather – storms, wildfires, floods and droughts – worse and more frequent and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic, studies show. There are also health effects, including heat deaths and increased pollen.

Carbon levels in the air were higher in the distant past before humans came on the scene. But levels probably haven't been this high in millions of years.

In fact, not only is CO2 at its highest levels in human history, but you would have to go all the way back beyond the beginning of human history – to the Pliocene Epoch, 4.1 million to 4.5 million years ago – to find a time when Earth's atmosphere held a similar amount of carbon, Axios reported.

During that time, sea level was about 78 feet higher than today, the average temperature was 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than in pre-industrial times, and studies indicate large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra, NOAA reported.

'Wake-up call': Climate change could edge Earth's annual temperature past Paris agreement limits in 5 years

There are natural ups and downs of greenhouse gas, which before the Industrial Revolution would come only from volcanoes and decomposing plants and animals. Carbon dioxide is called a greenhouse gas because of its ability to trap solar radiation and keep it confined to the atmosphere.

It is invisible, odorless and colorless, yet it is responsible for 63% of the warming attributable to all greenhouse gases, according to NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory.

Carbon dioxide pollution is generated by emissions from carbon-based fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal that are used for transportation and electrical generation, cement manufacturing, deforestation, agriculture and many other practices, NOAA said.

Along with other greenhouse gases such as methane, CO2 traps heat from the planet’s surface that would otherwise escape into space, causing the planet’s atmosphere to warm steadily.

"The ultimate control knob on atmospheric CO2 is fossil-fuel emissions,” said Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which oversees the Mauna Loa CO2 measuring station. “But we still have a long way to go to halt the rise as each year more CO2 piles up in the atmosphere. We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020."

In February, the U.S. officially rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change, an international treaty signed by 196 countries that have committed to limiting global warming and avoiding its potentially destabilizing effects.

But “the world is approaching the point where exceeding the Paris targets and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost inevitable,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of Monday's report.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Highest in more than 4 million years: Earth's carbon dioxide levels soar to record high despite pandemic

COMRADES!
'Hold the sand': The battle to tame China's deserts

After a hard morning planting fresh shoots in the dunes on the edge of the Gobi Desert, 78-year-old farmer Wang Tianchang retrieves a three-stringed lute from his shed, sits down beneath the fiery midday sun, and starts to play.

"If you want to fight the desert, there's no need to be afraid," sings Wang, a veteran of China's decades-long state campaign to "open up the wilderness," as he strums the instrument, called a "sanxian."

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Wang Tianchang, 78, waters a tree planted on the edge of the Gobi desert on the outskirts of Wuwei, China, April 15, 2021.

Tree-planting has been at the heart of China's environmental efforts for decades as the country seeks to turn barren deserts and marshes near its borders into farmland and screen the capital Beijing from sands blowing in from the Gobi, a 500,000 square-mile expanse stretching from Mongolia to northwest China, which would coat Tiananmen Square in dust nearly every spring

.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

But in March, heavy sandstorms hit Beijing for the first time in six years, putting the country's reforestation efforts under scrutiny, with land increasingly scarce and trees no longer able to offset the impact of climate change.

Now a local institution in northwest China's Gansu province, Wang and his family lead busloads of young volunteers from the provincial capital of Lanzhou into the desert each year to plant and irrigate new trees and bushes.

Their painstaking work to rehabilitate marginal land has been promoted as an inspiration for the rest of the country, and they are the subject of government propaganda posters celebrating their role in holding back the sand.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Wang Yinji plows the ground before planting straw to prevent sand movement on the edge of the Gobi desert on the outskirts of Wuwei, China, April 16, 2021.

Over the last four decades, the Three-North Shelter Forest Programme, a tree-planting scheme known colloquially as the "Great Green Wall," has helped raise total forest coverage to nearly a quarter of China's total area, up from less than 10% in 1949.

In the remote northwest, though, tree planting is not merely about meeting state reforestation targets or protecting Beijing. When it comes to making a living from the most marginal farmland, every tree, bush and blade of grass counts -- especially as climate change drives up temperatures and puts water supplies under further pressure.

"The more the forest expands, the more it eats into the sands, the better it is for us," said Wang's son, Wang Yinji, 53, who has taken over much of the backbreaking farming and planting while his father recovers from illness.

Holding down the sand

In a battered jeep loaded with a water tank and flying a large Chinese national flag, the Wang family have been planting the spindly "huabang" in the rolling dunes.

The flowering bush known as the sweetvetch has an 80% success rate even in harsh desert conditions and has become a key part of efforts to "hold down the sand," a term used locally for planting bushes and grasses in even squares across the desert slopes to stop sand drifting into nearby farmland.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters A worker shovels soil next to irrigation channels and recently planted shoots of Xinjiang poplar at the Yangguan state-backed forest farm, on the edge of the Gobi desert on the outskirts of Dunhuang, China, April 13, 2021.

The Wangs have been fighting desertification since they settled on barren land near the village of Hongshui in Wuwei, a city in Gansu close to the border with Inner Mongolia, in 1980.

Their home is now surrounded by patches of rhubarb and rows of pines and blue spruces. Twenty bleating goats are locked in a wooden paddock nearby to stop them devouring the precious vegetation.

The family's four acres of farmland are protected on one side by a forest planted about a decade ago, and on the other by a long sandy cliff.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters A tree is lifted with a crane before being placed on a truck at Toudunying state-owned commercial forest estate in a village near the edge of the Gobi desert, on the outskirts of Wuwei, China, April 16, 2021.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Wheel loaders move soil to prepare a field for tree planting, at one of the sections of the Yangguan state-backed forest farm, on the edge of the Gobi desert on the outskirts of Dunhuang, China, April 13, 2021.

Trees have become a major part of the local economy. Hongshui is dominated by a large state-owned commercial forest estate called Toudunying.

"After 1999, when the tree-planting sped up, things got much better," Wang Yinji said, referring to the state-led reforestation initiative. "Our corn grew taller. The sand that used to blow in from the east and northeast was stopped."

Experts say China's reforestation work has become more sophisticated over the years, the government benefiting from decades of experience and able to mobilize thousands of volunteers to plant trees, emulating front-line pioneers like the Wangs.

But the fight is far from over, they add, with climate change set to worsen conditions for farmers living in the arid north.

"They have been living in similar conditions for generations," said Ma Lichao, China country director for the Forest Stewardship Council, a nonprofit organization promoting sustainable forest management. "But it is very important to say that climate change is something very new."

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Piled tree shoots lay on the ground waiting to be planted, at the Yangguan state-backed forest farm, on the edge of the Gobi desert on the outskirts of Dunhuang, China, April 13, 2021.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Wheel loaders move soil to prepare a field for tree planting, at one of the sections of the Yangguan state-backed forest farm, on the edge of the Gobi desert, on the outskirts of Dunhuang, China, April 13, 2021.

Completing land use

China plans to increase total forest coverage from 23% last year to 24.1% by 2025, but the constant expansion has masked many underlying problems.

"There's been relatively low survival of trees in some regions, and discussions about the depletion of underground water tables," said Hua Fangyuan, a conservation biologist who focuses on forests at China's Peking University.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Ding Yinhua, 69, shepherds her sheep and goats back home in the Gobi desert in Minqin county, Wuwei, China, April 18, 2021.

Struggling to find space for new trees, the government of an administrative division in Inner Mongolia was accused in 2019 of seizing farmland to meet forest coverage targets set by Beijing. Artificial monocultural plantations, such as rubber, have also been created at the expense of natural forest, according to some studies.

"This (competing land use pressure) is a problem not just for China but all over the world," said Hua. "We are talking about millions of hectares of targets. With the growing population, there is going to be competition and tension."

This competition for land has been reinforced by China's reliance on government-backed industrial-scale plantations to meet targets, though it is gradually shifting to a more nature-based approach to reforestation.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Li Lanying plants a shoot of Huabang, a yellow flowering bush known as the "sweetvetch", while her son Wang Yinji holds a bucket of water on the edge of the Gobi desert, on the outskirts of Wuwei, China, April 15, 2021.

One such state-backed forest farm designed to repair the region's overworked ecosystem is the 4,200-acre Yangguan project, on the outskirts of the city of Dunhuang, which has proven controversial.

Leaseholders eager to plant lucrative but water-intensive grapes levelled large sections of forest in 2017. In March, a government investigation team found Yangguan had violated regulations by allowing vineyards to be planted in protected forest. Villagers were also accused of illegally felling trees, and authorities were ordered to reclaim the illegally occupied land.

Officials on the estate said hundreds of staff from government agencies in Dunhuang would arrive soon with the aim of planting 31,000 trees on 93 acres of land in just four days. Gradually the surviving vineyards would be replaced with trees, a manager said, a move that would affect hundreds of farmers.

"The government and the farmers should work together to find a way to make money and ensure the water levels are sustainable at the same time," said Ma of the Forest Stewardship Council

.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Wang Yinji, 53, cleans the backyard of his house in a village near the edge of the Gobi desert, on the outskirts of Wuwei, China, April 14, 2021.

There are signs that China has learned from past mistakes, when trees were planted -- often by scattering seeds from military aircraft -- with no consideration for existing ecosystems or weather conditions, meaning many failed to take root.

The government is now more careful in which species it selects to plant, and more inclined to make room for natural forests to expand, rather than create artificial plantations.

The forestry commission also plans to rethink its strategy in northwest China to reflect concerns that new plantations have put water resources under more strain, experts said.

But with local governments under pressure to grow the economy and guarantee food supplies, China's tree-planting may also be reaching a point of diminishing returns.

"It's getting more and more difficult to really increase the forest coverage rate simply because there aren't so many places left for big reforestation projects," said Ma.

Changing Climate

Ma said the sandstorms that hit Beijing in March did not mean planting trees had failed, but showed it would no longer be enough to offset the impact of climate change.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Wang Yinji, 53, carries a bowl of noodles in his kitchen at his home in a village near the edge of the Gobi desert on the outskirts of Wuwei, China, April 14, 2021.

"To be honest, I don't think the trees can help the situation," he said.

At a briefing last week, Li Jianjun of the China National Environmental Monitoring Centre said temperatures in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia have been 2-6 degrees Celsius higher than normal since February, with the melting snow exposing more sand to the wind.

Some of the farmers in Wuwei have begun to lose hope after decades trying to subdue the deserts.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Ding Yinhua, 69, a shepherd, opens the gate of a pen for sheep and goats at her house in the Gobi desert in Minqin county, Wuwei, China, April 18, 2021.

Ding Yinhua, a 69-year-old shepherd, told Reuters the sandstorms were so severe that sometimes she didn't dare open her eyes.

Despite the tree-planting, pastures have deteriorated in recent years as a result of declining rainfall in the spring and summer, she added.

"It's just no good without rain. We don't have land so there's no other way: we just herd sheep. In 2015 and 2016, there was rain but since then there's been nothing, and you now have to wait until September," she said.

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Wang Yinji sits in front of posters while smoking at his house in a village near the edge of the Gobi desert on the outskirts of Wuwei, China, April 14, 2021.

Her husband, Li Youfu, 71, said he thought tree-planting had made no difference at all.

"The sand is still moving. This can't be controlled," he said. "When the wind comes, it's usually really strong. No one can stop it."

© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters Wang Tianchang, 78, a veteran of China's decades-long state campaign to "open up the wilderness", prepares to light up his pipe at his house on the edge of the Gobi desert, on the outskirts of Wuwei, China, April 15, 2021.

Reporting by David Stanway for Reuters