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Sunday, October 22, 2023

Contaminants in cannabis and hemp flowers create potential for health risks

Team of researchers urges further study and evaluation of standards for medical use

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE

Cannabis use, even for medical purposes, could make some people sick due to harmful fungi that contaminate the plants.

That is the finding of a recently published peer-reviewed journal article, whose authors recommend further study and consideration of changes to regulations to protect consumers, especially those who are immunocompromised. They examined data, previous studies, and U.S. and international regulations related to the cannabis and hemp industry.

The article was published in Frontiers in Microbiology. It was researched and written by Kimberly Gwinn, professor of entomology and plant pathology at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture: Maxwell Leung, assistant professor, and Ariell Stephens, graduate student, both from the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at Arizona State University; and Zamir Punja, professor of plant pathology/biotechnology at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

“Hemp and cannabis are new crops, and we are in the early stages of understanding relationships with their pathogens. Several pathogens produce mycotoxins, compounds that negatively impact human health and are regulated in other crops. In this review, we summarize the current literature on mycotoxins in hemp and cannabis products, identify research gaps in potential mycotoxin contamination in hemp and cannabis, and identify potential developments based on research in other crop systems,” Gwinn said.

Cannabis research has mostly focused on the substance and medical uses of the plant, but with the increased legalization of cannabis for various uses, this article addresses the need for more study of potential health risks.

“Although fungi and mycotoxins are common and well-studied contaminants in many agricultural crop species, they have been generally under-studied in cannabis and hemp. This is partly because human health risk assessment methodologies used to regulate food and pharmaceuticals have yet to become standard for the emerging cannabis and hemp industries. Additionally, the wide range of consumer uses of cannabis and hemp flowers, including for medical use by patients with susceptible conditions, makes it uniquely challenging to assess and manage human health risk of these contaminants,” according to the article.

The authors discuss Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium, Mucor, and other fungi that can infect the plants and can produce mycotoxins; review the regulations and assessment methods of the contaminants; and offer recommendations to produce safer products for all consumers. Environmental factors such as where the plants are grown, whether indoors or outdoors, and in soil or soilless media, may impact the kinds of contaminants and ensuing health risks.

Studies reviewed by the authors show some fungi may cause infection on lung and skin tissues, and these infections were most common when smoked and less common in edibles. They also found cancer patients using cannabis to help with nausea and appetite as well as transplant patients and consumers with HIV and type 1 diabetes may be particularly susceptible to infection. Studies also show workers harvesting cannabis could also be at risk. The authors encouraged consumers who are immunocompromised to use products that have been sterilized until better data are obtained.

The authors studied international and U.S. standards for these contaminants, but there is a lack of data on the prevalence of the contaminants and their health impacts. Another issue for consumers is the varying levels of legalization of cannabis products from state to state, which has resulted in each state creating its own regulations. Fusarium mycotoxins, a prevalent class of fungal contaminants in agricultural commodities that can result in vomiting, are not currently regulated.

Assessing and testing for pathogens can be problematic, as the authors found when they studied various methods including culture-based assays, immuno-based technologies, and emerging technologies. The article also examines management of the possible toxins before harvest and after harvest. “A major hurdle faced by cannabis and hemp industries is addressing the disconnect between production-related issues and human safety issues,” the article states. Recreational use of hemp and cannabis is common in many areas and all case studies linking cannabis use and fungal infections, except one, involved patients who were immunocompromised. The authors suggest a potential solution is “to reduce potential harm to medical users of cannabis from toxigenic fungi is to develop a two-tier system that distinguishes products intended for medical and recreational use.”

“We wrote this article to bring these issues to the attention of the scientific, medical, and regulatory communities. We hope to encourage further research in this area, particularly in the areas of mycotoxins in product. Better data and public access to data will allow us to fully evaluate these risks and subsequently ensure safe products for consumers,” Gwinn said.

The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is composed of UT AgResearch, UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT Extension, and the Herbert College of Agriculture. Through its land-grant mission of research, teaching and extension, the Institute touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. utia.tennessee.edu.

mycelium (IMAGE)

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE

Proliferation of mycelium of a *Fusarium* species within cannabis inflorescence tissues under conditions of high humidity.
CREDIT
Photo from Frontiers in Microbiology, courtesy of Z. Punja.

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Microbiology

ARTICLE TITLE

Fungal and mycotoxin contaminants in cannabis and hemp flowers: implications for consumer health and directions for further research

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Oct-2023

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Canada Goes To Pot

Canada is a nation of pot heads.

\Marijuana use in Canada is the highest in the industrialized world and more than four times the global rate, according to a report from the United Nations.

Forty per cent of Canadian cannabis is produced in British Columbia, 25% in Ontario and 25% in Quebec, the report noted.
 Health

   -   One in 10 Canadian women uses marijuana.
Experts and activists are not concerned about the high rate of Canadian marijuana use reported in 2007 UN World Drug report —even though young people are the largest users of the drug.

The report states that 16.8 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 64 used marijuana in 2004. Canada is ranked fifth in marijuana use and the country’s usage percentage is four times the world average of 3.8 per cent. To compare, the report found that 12.6 per cent of people in the United States and 6.1 per cent in Holland have used the drug.

Richard Mathias, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine, said he is pleased with the results from the report and is not worried about the high numbers of young people using the drug.

“I think that marijuana is a safer drug than some other options and I know that youth is a difficult, highly stressful time and it is to be expected that youth will explore and that’s good,” he said. “I teach these kids. They’re not criminals.”

A study conducted in 2002 by Carleton University professor Peter Fried also concluded that only heavy pot smokers are negatively affected by marijuana use. Fried’s 70-person study found that only heavy marijuana users between the ages of 10 and 20 had a decline in their IQ scores. The rest saw an increase in their scores.

The study also found that those who smoked heavily and later quit returned to their former IQ level.
Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa-based lawyer who specializes in drug policy issues, said the UN report shows that the legal status of marijuana in a given country seems to have little bearing on consumption rates.

The report found that only 6.1 per cent of people in the Netherlands, where marijuana use has effectively been decriminalized, reported trying pot.

This shows decriminalization has no bearing on rates of use, and Canada shouldn't be so afraid to follow the Dutch lead, Oscapella said.

"The criminal law does not prevent people from using marijuana, nor does legalization force people to use it," he said.

Jean Chretien's Liberals first introduced a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in 2003, but it was never brought to a final vote. Stephen Harper's Conservatives killed the bill when they came to office in January 2006.

Oscapella added that Canada should be focusing its resources on the root causes of drug abuse, rather than persecuting people for possession.

"It is a health and a social issue," he said. "The criminal law is not the appropriate mechanism for dealing with drugs in the vast majority of cases."

Marijuana and tobacco use among young adults in Canada
The authors characterized marijuana smoking among young adult Canadians, examined the co-morbidity of tobacco and marijuana use, and identified correlates associated with different marijuana use consumption patterns. Data were collected from 20,275 individuals as part of the 2004 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey. Logistic regression models were conducted to examine characteristics associated with marijuana use behaviors among young adults (aged 15-24). Rates of marijuana use were highest among current smokers and lowest among never smokers. Marijuana use was more prevalent among males, young adults living in rural areas, and increased with age. Young adults who were still in school were more likely to have tried marijuana, although among those who had tried, young adults outside of school were more like to be heavy users. Males and those who first tried marijuana at an earlier age also reported more frequent marijuana use. These findings illustrate remarkably high rates of marijuana use and high co-morbidity of tobacco use among young adult Canadians. These findings suggest that future research should consider whether the increasing popularity of marijuana use among young adults represents a threat to the continuing decline in tobacco use among this population.

We have a large scale industry in producing illicit and licit marijuana. The latter for medicinal purposes. We have approved marijuana and its byproducts for medicinal uses.

Since the 1970's when the LeDain Commission recommended decriminalization to today when the right wing think tank the Fraser Institute recommends decriminalization for controlling grow ops and increased tax income.

Canadians favour decriminalization. However the Harpocrites ignored their old Fraser pals as they ignore 'polls' and once elected declared war on pot. Quietly without much fanfare, what had been Liberal policy waiting for a vote was squashed.

“We will not be reintroducing the Liberal government’s marijuana decriminalization legislation,” Harper announced at a Canadian Professional Police Association meeting. “I thought we might find a receptive audience here,” he added, according to a Reuters report.

The Harpocrites would rather pander to their regressive base with a phony war on drugs, blaming as they do the rise in crime and pot smoking on the Liberals, pathetic.

In view of the former Liberal government's determination to medicalize and legalize marijuana, it is not surprising that, according to a study of young people in Canada released in 2004, our youth now hold the distinction of topping all nations (Switzerland was second) in frequent marijuana use. The lead researcher for this study, Dr. William Boyce of Queen's University, stated that the increased use of marijuana in Canada was tied to the three As - affordability, availability and acceptability. He stated, "in Canada, I think all three of those things come together so that it's actually used quite a bit by kids here. It's not so expensive, it's definitely available and with the legislation introduced in the last Parliament - and perhaps again in this one - that decriminalizes marijuana use, it certainly provides a signal to kids that this is not a highly illegal activity."

Thank heaven, the Conservative government is now providing a different message to our youth on marijuana use.

Please write to Prime Minister Harper and Minister of Justice Toews to thank them for the planned enforcement of the present marijuana laws rather than legalizing its use. Their actions will make a significant difference to our nation's youth. Please also request that marijuana use for so-called medical reasons be stopped if and until such time that it can be scientifically determined that its use has in fact, medical benefits.

The Harpocrites have adopted the oh so successful American War On Drugs Policy. And they have included marijuana as a key element of their new anti-drug campaign. Look forward to more regressive stupidity in the fall sitting of the house as the Minister of Health declares a drug panic.

Clement to MDs: Get tougher on illicit drugs
Federal Health Minister Tony Clement delivered a tough, anti-drug message to doctors yesterday, saying young people need straight talk about the dangers of illicit drugs, including marijuana.

"The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," Clement told the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

"We are very concerned about the damage and pain that drugs cause families and we intend to reverse the trend toward vague, ambiguous messaging that has characterized Canadian attitudes in the recent past," he said.

Ottawa plans a campaign emphasizing the dangers of all illicit drugs in any quantity, Clement said. "We will discourage young people from thinking there are safe amounts or safe drugs."

Meanwhile the Police and Senate disagree with the Harpocrites new War On Drugs.

Victoria's No. 2 cop testified in B.C. Supreme Court yesterday that neither the Vancouver Island Compassion Society nor its distribution of medical marijuana has ever been the subject of a criminal investigation.
Deputy Chief Bill Naughton said the society's Cormorant Street office of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society has not generated any complaints, adding marijuana ranks behind drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin in terms of Victoria police priorities.
"The enforcement of federal laws against marijuana takes a back seat," said Naughton, who was subpoenaed by the defence in the trial of Michael Swallow, 41, and Mat Beren, 33.
Also testifying yesterday in Victoria was Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who chaired the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which called in 2002 for the legalization of marijuana in Canada.
Nolin told the court the regulations, as they currently exist, are an obstacle to Canadians who want access to medical marijuana.
He said the rules ask doctors to be "gatekeepers" for access to legal marijuana. It's a role doctors don't want, and so Canadians are being denied access to a medical product.
"[The] medical profession is reluctant, generally reluctant," he said. "They don't want to be the gatekeepers, they don't want that responsibility."

Heck even the da Judge disagrees with the Government.

Rolling a joint might require the removal of stems and seeds, but the legal limbo in which pot smokers in Canada find themselves is far from clear-cut.
On July 13, an Ontario Court judge in Toronto acquitted Clifford Long, who was charged with possession of 3.5 grams of marijuana.
The court held that Canada's marijuana possession laws are unconstitutional. Justice Howard Borenstein cited a seven-year-old Ontario Court of Appeal case, which also described the possession law as unconstitutional, due to its ambiguity on medical marijuana.
Long argued in court that since the government of Canada allowed for medicinal use, but did not change the law on marijuana to accommodate this policy change, then all possession laws should cease to exist.

While the Harpocrites declare a War On Drugs, including marijuana, at the same time they approve big pharma profiting off Medical Marijuana.

GW Pharmaceuticals plc (AIM: GWP) and Bayer Inc., a subsidiary of Bayer AG, announce that Health Canada has approved Sativex®, a cannabis derived pharmaceutical treatment, as adjunctive analgesic treatment in adult patients with advanced cancer who experience moderate to severe pain during the highest tolerated dose of strong opioid therapy for persistent background pain.

While local marijuana growers are limited in providing medical marijuana to one or two Canadians. Clearly the Harpocrites missed the point of the Fraser Institute Report. Local grow ops legally functioning can produce medical as well as recreational marijuana that then could be taxed. Quality and consumer protection, would be assured.

A Vancouver Island grower of organic marijuana is being inundated with pleas for pot from disease sufferers, but Health Canada says he can supply only one person, a provincial court trial has been told.
Eric Nash said he wrote to Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement with a list of 121 people, all approved by Health Canada to use marijuana as medicine and asking him to grow it for them. One of them was a former RCMP officer diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
But Nash said regulations forbid him from growing for more than one person at a time. So his company, Island Harvest, can supply only two people, one each for him and his partner, although it could easily supply more.

And Tony's announcement of a new PR campaign in the War On Drugs looks suspicious in light of the governments failure to extend the license for the Vancouver Safe Injection Site.

The Canadian government is ramping up a massive anti-drug campaign, the first in 20 years, amid calls to keep open a Vancouver clinic that monitors heroin addicts as they inject themselves with the drug.
"Canada has not run a serious or significant anti-drug campaign for almost 20 years. The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," federal Health Minister Tony Clement said yesterday in a speech to the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.
Meanwhile, the Health Minister was vague about whether the Insite injection clinic in Vancouver would stay open. "There has been more research done, and some of it has been questioning of the research that has already taken place and questioning of the methodology of those associated with Insite," he said.
Isra Levy, president of the National Specialty Society for Community Medicine called for Insite to remain open in an interview with The Globe and Mail, stating that "illicit drug use is indeed a scourge, it's the cause of untold misery for those ill with addiction and their loved ones."

Is Harpers War in Afghanistan an excuse to expand his War On Drugs.....not only against opium but against the powerful Cannabis Indica and Afghani Hash....remember Afghani hash? It ain't been around in North America since the late Sixties and early Seventies when Hippies made their holy pilgrimage to Marrakesh and on to Afghanistan and back. It remains however a staple in Europe.

Hashish is produced practically everywhere in and around Afghanistan. The best kinds of Hash originate from the Northern provinces between Hindu Kush and the Russian border (Balkh, Mazar-i-Sharif). As tourist in Afghanistan it will be very difficult to be allowed to see Cannabis-Fields or Hash Production. The plants which are used for Hash production are very small and bushy Indicas. In Afghanistan Hashish is pressed by hand under addition of a small quantity of tea or water. The Hashish is worked on until it becomes highly elastic and has a strong aromatic smell. In Afghanistan the product is stored in the form of Hash-Balls (because a round ball has the less contact with air), however, before being shipped, the Hash is pressed in 100g slabs. Good qualities of Afghani are signed with the stem of the producing family. Sometimes Hash of this kind is sold as Royal Afghani. Color: Black on the outside, dark greenish or brown inside. Can sometimes look kind of grayish on the outside when left in contact with the air. Smell: Spicy to very spicy. Taste: Very spicy, somewhat harsh on the throat. Afghani can induce lots of coughing in inexperienced users.
Afghani
aka Afghanistan
Marijuana

Afghani Marijuana Strains - The origins of this seed strain come from Afghanistan and travel to Holland. Afghani has big round fat leaves and the same beautiful big fat buds. It usually has a rich smooth hash like heavy smoke taste. The Afghani marijuana plant tends to be very bushy and will yield large amounts of very sticky buds. Well known for excellent growth because it originated in mountainous conditions and over thousands of years a very stocky, sturdy and disease resistant plant was produced.

Well Cannabis in Afghanistan is back in a big way. As Canadian forces found last fall. Hey guys don't put that to the torch or ya' all will fall down.

Maj. Patrick Robichaud, commander of the operating base, this week characterized the security situation around Ma'sum Ghar as "fragile." He said Taliban insurgents appear to have taken advantage of a change in command among the Canadians and the Afghan National Army to slip back into the region. The insurgents are looking to strong-arm local farmers for a piece of the action in the impending marijuana harvest, said Maj. Robichaud.

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-tall marijuana plants.
Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.
"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.

Weed Fields in Afghanistan Video

The United Nations has conducted surveys of poppy crops, but has not done so for marijuana plants. The focus on poppies possibly reflects the view of international donors that highly addictive heroin is the more urgent problem.
Marijuana plants are widely grown in at least three of the 16 districts in Balkh province, which is home to Mazar-e-Sharif. Local authorities have sent letters to villages urging farmers to stop growing the illegal crop, but they have yet to decide how and when they will crack down.
"The farmers have planted this stuff like smugglers," said Saheed Azizullah Hashmi, head of the province's agriculture department. "We don't know how much there is out there."
He said many people associated with the hashish trade were linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. But marijuana plants thrived well before they held sway over much of Afghanistan, and local commanders with large land holdings reportedly benefit from its cultivation.
Rouzudin and his fellow farmers made no effort to hide their plants, which loom over nearby cotton bushes. The two crops are interspersed along the road leading to Shibergan, the headquarters of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek commander and powerful political figure in the north.
Farmer Majid Gul said he can get 5 million Afghanis, or about $100, for 2.2 pounds of hashish, 200 times more than he could earn for the same amount of cotton.
"When we're ready to sell, people in big cars will come from the bazaar in town," he said. "We don't know who they are, we just want the money."
. For the decade before the Soviet army invaded in 1979, the teahouses of Afghanistan were the toking tourist's hangout of choice. And even during 23 years of war, when the Afghans fought the Soviets and then one another, the hash trade thrived. "Afghan black" remained a staple sale for cannabis dealers across the world. Mazar-i-Sharif gave its name to a particularly potent variety. And last year, in the final weeks of the Taliban, Amsterdam's coffee-shop owners even boasted they were doing their bit for the war on terror by buying blocks stamped with a golden Northern Alliance stencil reading "Freedom for Afghanistan."
Now, as Afghanistan emerges from war, dope farming has never been so good�and the drought never so bad. The Taliban banned hash production, but in the postwar chaos of lawless fiefdoms that dot the land, growers and traders across the country are finding themselves free once again to cultivate and export hashish without fear, and often with warlord protection. Moreover, the international perception that cannabis is a relatively benign drug�prompting some authorities across Europe and Australia to decriminalize its use�has persuaded drug-policing agencies to largely ignore it. So, while opium cultivation is monitored to the acre, neither Interpol, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention nor the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Agency can offer even rough estimates for how much hashish Afghanistan produces or what the trade is worth. But around Mazar it's almost impossible to find a field where hemp is not being grown, either openly or poorly hidden behind watermelons or knee-high cotton plants. "Everybody's farming chaars now," says former Taliban fighter Faizullah, 27, watering a verdant six-hectare oasis of hemp surrounded by desert. Cannabis used to be outlawed by the Taliban. "But now," says Faizullah, "it's a free-for-all."

Harpers War On Drugs is doomed to fail, as has the American campaign. But this proves once again that he and his pals have abandoned any pretense to libertarianism, while embracing the traditional right wing screed of Law and Order Republicanism. Heck Canadians even support the medical use of opiates despite this governments opposition.

While in the U.S. Republican Presidential Candidate and Libertarian Ron Paul embraces his inner Canadian and calls for decriminalization, and an end to Americas war on drugs. Why Is This Canadian Pot Dealer Campaigning for Ron Paul?

Also, a little known fact is that if Ron Paul got his way, there would be no federal war on drugs. He has called the war on drugs “as stupid as the war in Iraq”. He is uncompromisingly against federal laws banning medical marijuana, and completely opposed to the federal government coming in, when a state has legalized medical marijuana, and using force to nullify this legalization (such as has happened in California, where medical marijuana is legal, but the federal government uses force to effectively keep it criminalized. This would NOT happen under a Paul administration.)

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
medicare, healthcare, Canada, Afghanistan, Ron Paul, war on drugs,marijuana,cannabis,pot,Stephen Harper,Tony Clement,drug war, medical marijauana,

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Junque Journalism

The National Post and its resident flat earther; Terence Corcoran attacked Nobel Prize winner Al Gore over Global Warming on their front page in yesterdays paper with another of their Fox News style Tabloid Headline; A coup for junk science

They forgot to mention that there were Canadian climate scientists on the UN IPCC committee who shared the Nobel with Gore And those scientists don't believe as the National Post and Corcoran do that;

"Global warming theory has been in political and scientific trouble for some time."

Nor would these Canadian scientists accept Corcoran's assertion that;

Onto this heap of forgotten causes and marginalia the Nobel has just tossed Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's official climate science group. What a blow the award must be to the IPCC, self-proclaimed home of scientific rigour, to now be lumped in with Reverend Al and his Travelling Snake Oil Road Show and Climate Terror Machine.

The Post and Corcoran of course have engaged in junk journalism making political statements that they assert are facts. And in making Gore their straw man they forgot the Canadian Scientists, the guys who share the Nobel with him, who assert that their two decades of warnings about Global Warming are only in trouble because of lack of media and political attention to the problem. In other words because of articles like the Post published. Not only is it junk journalism it's failure to mention the Canadian scientists is sloppy journalism.

Unlike Al Gore, University of B.C. climate change expert John Robinson won't be going to Oslo, Norway, to pick up the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
But Robinson, who has been called "Dr. Sustainability," still felt like a winner when the award was announced early Friday.
"I've been in this area of research since the late '80s and it's been a long struggle to make the case that climate change really matters," Robinson, a professor at UBC's Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability, said Friday.
He is one of thousands of scientists in more than 100 countries who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including about two dozen Canadian scientists.
"It's unbelievable how climate change has risen to the top of the policy agenda and hopefully not in a flash-in-the-pan kind of way," he said.
The panel uses scientific reports and data to explore man-made climate change and ways to fight it.
Five Victoria scientists also contributed to the reports.
"It brings more awareness to the biggest issue facing humanity today. The consequences of global warming are huge," said Andrew Weaver, Canada research chairman in climate modelling and analysis at the University of Victoria.
The IPCC has been releasing regular reports on the state of climate change since it was established by the United Nations in 1988. In an IPCC report earlier this year, top scientists from 113 countries agreed unanimously that the mass burning of fossil fuels, land use and agriculture practices are melting polar ice caps.
"We are treating the atmosphere like a landfill and we're not paying for it," said Weaver.
University of Victoria senior scientist Ken Denman said the prestigious award raises climate change in the public consciousness.
"I hope it will help people and government take action. It makes the work worthwhile," he said. "If we accept collective responsibility for this it can be empowering. If we have created this, we have the capability of reversing it."

The Post and Corcoran further slighted Canadians when they deliberately overlooked Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the Canadian Inuit woman who was in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize, and who has seen the real effects of the theory of Global Warming.

The Post front page 'news' was all about attacking Gore, and promoting the myth that Global Warming is not a fact. Hence facts would just get in the way of such partisan pontificating.

H/T to Mentarch

SEE

Michael Crichton Climate Change Denier

Strange Bedfellows

Saving Capitalism From Itself

Echo Chamber

Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Flat Earth Society Meets In London

Capitalism Creates Global Warming

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize, Environment, UN IPCC, Al Gore,

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Australia’s spy agency predicted the climate crisis 40 years ago – and fretted about coal exports

A composite image showing former Australian PM Malcolm Fraser and pioneering scientist

Graeme Pearman Composite: Getty/Supplied

In a taste of things to come, a secret Office of National Assessment report worried the ‘carbon dioxide problem’ would hurt the nation’s coal industry

Graham Readfearn
THE GUARDIAN
Sat 27 Nov 2021
The report was stamped CONFIDENTIAL twice on each page, with the customary warning it should “not be released to any other government except Britain, Canada, NZ and US”.

About 40 years ago this week, the spooks at Australia’s intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA), delivered the 17-page report to prime minister Malcolm Fraser.

The subject? “Fossil Fuels and the Greenhouse Effect”.

Michael Cook, the agency’s director general, wrote in an introduction how his team had looked at the implications of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “with special reference to Australia as a producer and exporter of coal”.

Cook wrote: “Scientists now agree that if such emissions continue it will some time in the next century lead to a discernible ‘greenhouse effect’ whereby the Earth’s atmosphere becomes measurably warmer with related climatic changes.”

Graeme Pearman, a former CSIRO scientist who was doing work to measure CO2 in the early 1970s. Photograph: Supplied

The agency had several warnings for the Fraser government, but central to the concerns was the potential for the country’s coal exports to be affected.

Those concerns from high levels of government show that from the beginning, the country was seeing the climate change issue through the prism of its fossil fuels.

There were “potentially adverse implications” for the “security of Australia’s export markets for coal beyond the end of the century”.

'What could I have done?' The scientist who predicted the bushfire emergency four decades ago

About 16 years after the ONA report, the Howard government signed the Kyoto protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

John Howard, who was treasurer when the ONA report was released, later refused to ratify that Kyoto deal, saying it would damage the country’s industries, including coal.

ONA was predicting in 1981 that tensions were likely. Sooner or later the “carbon dioxide problem” would “arouse public concerns and so engage the attention of governments”.
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If there wasn’t cost-effective technology “to reduce the carbon dioxide problem” by the end of that century, then concerns could “culminate in pressure for action to restrict fossil fuel usage”.

There was no “anti-fossil fuel lobby” yet that could be compared to “anti-nuclear groups” but some environmental organisations were starting to express concern.

Public attention was only going to increase as more scientific results were published “and are sensationalised by the press and others”.

But in a concluding sentence that could be commenting on the Morrison government’s current defence of fossil fuels from a distance of four decades, the report says: “Australia could well find its export market particularly vulnerable to international policies aimed at limiting the use of coal.”

Dr Robert Glasser, head of the climate and security policy centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said: “It’s the job of intelligence agencies to anticipate these long-term threats and then alert the government.

“In that respect, they were doing their job.”

Former Australian prime minister John Howard refused to ratify the Kyoto deal. Photograph: Mark Baker/REUTERS

The existence of the ONA report – sent to Fraser on 25 November 1981 – is still not widely known.

Scientists working on the issue at the time said they had never seen it until the Guardian sent them a copy. Australia’s longest-serving science minister, Barry Jones, who took up his ministerial role in 1983, also said he had no recall of it.

Glasser says those who have followed the science over decades might not be surprised that Australia’s intelligence was exercised by climate change 40 years ago.

“The science has been clear in terms of a general direction ever since the 1970s – a decade before this report. But we now know the impacts.”

But he says despite the country’s intelligence agency first engaging with the issue 40 years ago, Australia is still “way behind” on the security risks being posed by climate change.

“We are failing to assess the climate and security risks generally, not just in Australia where we can see these simultaneous record-setting compounding events, but even in the region it’s a major security issue.”

Download original document

One of the first people outside government to see the document was likely Prof Clive Hamilton, who says he was handed it by a “senior public servant” while he was researching his 2007 book Scorcher on the “dirty politics of climate change”.

“The document was amazingly prescient and remains accurate in its essentials,” said Hamilton

“It was one of those extraordinary things a researcher occasionally stumbles upon. Almost no one seemed aware of the report. It was just gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.”

As well as forecasting problems for the country’s coal industry, the ONA report included qualified forecasts of the potential impacts on the climate.

The area where cyclones could hit could extend as the tropics expand. Sea levels could rise, plants might grow quicker and the polar regions would warm much faster.

There would be global winners and losers, the report said. Canada’s wheat-growing belt could grow, gaining area from the USA as the climate shifted. A loss of permafrost in the USSR and Canada could deliver more agricultural land (permafrost is now melting, with concerns about the release of large amounts of greenhouse gases that could further raise temperatures).

If CO2 levels doubled in the atmosphere, then the ONA thought this could cause between 2C and 3C of warming. That estimate – from 40 years ago – is within the range of the UN’s latest assessment.
Emerging science

But the science and the concerns among Australia’s top scientists had been building well before the ONA report dropped on Fraser’s desk.

Some of the data in the report was drawn from the work of Dr Graeme Pearman and colleagues at CSIRO. Pearman is a pioneering climate scientist who started working on the issue in the early 70s and remembers speaking to ONA staff at the time.

‘I knew they were aware of the issues’: Graeme Pearman in Melbourne last week. Photograph: Darrian Traynor

“I knew they were aware of the issues but I didn’t know how they would play that game,” says Pearman, who is now aged 80 but who saw the report for the first time this week.

“The report does reflect pretty well the state of our scientific understanding at that time. Where it perhaps falls down is that there seems to be no real attempt to evaluate the risks associated with what may unfold.”

The CSIRO had started measuring CO2 levels in the air using instruments in a wheat field in Rutherglen, Victoria, in 1971.

The following year, Pearman and colleagues had put air-sampling equipment on planes – some commercial and some government-owned. More than 3,500 samples were taken.

Pearman was curious about CO2 measurements that had been taken continually since 1958 in Hawaii by pioneering climate scientist Charles David Keeling, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.

To Pearman’s amazement, the amounts of CO2 in the air above the wheat field and from the aircraft instruments were almost identical to Keeling’s findings from Hawaii

In 1974, Pearman took the Australian air samples in six steel flasks across the world, visiting Keeling’s laboratory in California as well as other scientists doing CO2 measurements in Sweden, Canada, American Samoa and New Zealand.

In 1976, the Australian Academy of Science published a Report of a Committee on Climatic Change that mostly dealt with natural variations in the climate.

But that report included a chapter on “man’s impact on climate”. All past climate changes had been due to natural events “on an astronomic or global scale,” the report said. But then came this sentence: “Human activities are now developing in ways that could have an appreciable effect on the climate within decades.”

Graeme Pearman with a book about climate change that he edited in 1988.

Photograph: Darrian Traynor
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Four years later, and one year before the ONA report, Pearman edited a book – Carbon Dioxide and Climate: Australian Research that summarised the work going on in Australia. How were the levels of CO2 changing? What could this mean for rainfall? How would plants respond?

“The potential significance of a CO2-induced climatic change is large,” wrote Pearman, but so too were the uncertainties. A lot more work needed to be done.

Pretty ordinary or prescient?

“It is fascinating and remarkable to read how this was being viewed [by the intelligence agency] only 10 years after we started our CO2 and climate work at CSIRO,” says Pearman.

Australia’s longest-serving science minister from 1983 to 1990, Barry Jones, could not recall ever seeing the ONA report, but he wasn’t particularly impressed.

Australia was ready to act on climate 25 years ago, so what happened next?

“I think it’s pretty ordinary,” says Jones, whose latest book is called What Is to be Done: Political Engagement and Saving the Planet.

“They imposed on themselves a very narrow terms of reference,” he said, and was puzzled why the report mentions other greenhouse gases but ignored methane.

Prof Ian Lowe was lecturing students on the future of energy supply at Griffith University in the early 1980s. He also hadn’t seen the ONA report before.

A Queensland coal-fired power station during construction, circa 1980. Australia has been worried about climate change’s implications for fossil fuels for decades. Photograph: Peter Righteous/Alamy

“It’s stamped confidential top to bottom. I was surprised how accurate it was though,” he said.

“The spy agency thought it was important enough to draw it to the attention of our political leadership largely because of what they saw as the commerce implications for the Australian export markets for coal.

“But what’s politically interesting is there was absolutely no response to this warning, even though the expansion of fossil fuels was tragically compromised.”

Author and academic Dr Jeremy Walker, of UTS in Sydney, is researching the history of climate science and energy policy. He’s been reviewing the ONA report as part of a wider project.

“What’s interesting to me is that this was being considered at the highest levels of government, but the security issue is being interpreted in terms of the profitability of the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry is central to the government’s response – then and now.”

Wednesday, August 02, 2023

Genetic variant linked to lower levels of HIV virus in people of African ancestry

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

An international team of researchers has found a genetic variant that may explain why some people of African ancestry have naturally lower viral loads of HIV, reducing their risk of transmitting the virus and slowing progress of their own illness.

Reported today in Nature, this is the first new genetic variant related to HIV infection discovered in nearly 30 years of research. It could, in the future, help direct the development of new treatments approaches for those living with HIV.

HIV remains a major threat to global health. According to UNAIDS, there were 38.4 million people living with HIV globally in 2021. A combination of pre-exposure drugs and medicines that dramatically reduce viral loads has had a major impact on transmission, yet 1.5 million people were newly infected in 2021. And while treatments have improved dramatically since the virus was first identified, 650,000 people still died from AIDS-related illnesses in that year.

Viral load is the amount of a virus in a patient’s system. Higher levels are known to correlate with faster disease progression and increased risk of transmission. But viral load varies widely among infected individuals, influenced by a number of factors including an individual’s genetic makeup.

Most of what we know about the relationship between our DNA and HIV comes from studies among European populations. But given that HIV disproportionately affects people on the African continent – more than 25 million people who are HIV-positive live on the continent – it’s important to better understand the role of genetics in HIV infection in African populations.

To investigate this question, researchers analysed the DNA of almost 4,000 people of African ancestry living with HIV-1, the most common type of the virus. They identified a variant within a region on chromosome 1 containing the gene CHD1L which associated with reduced viral load in carriers of the variant. Between 4% and 13 % of people of African origin are thought to carry this particular variant.

Paul McLaren from the Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory, joint first author, said: “African populations are still drastically underrepresented in human DNA studies, despite experiencing the highest burden of HIV infection. By studying a large sample of people of African ancestry, we’ve been able to identify a new genetic variant that only exists in this population and which is linked to lower HIV viral loads.”

CHD1L is known to play a role in repairing damaged DNA, though it is not clear why the variant should be important in reducing viral load. However, as HIV attacks immune cells, researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Medicine, led by Dr Harriet Groom and Professor Andrew Lever, used stem cells to generate variants of cells that HIV can infect in which CHD1L had either been switched off or its activity turned down.

HIV turned out to replicate better in a type of immune cell known as a macrophage when CHD1L was switched off. In another cell type, the T cell, there was no effect – perhaps surprising since most HIV replication occurs in the latter cell type.

Dr Groom said: “This gene seems to be important to controlling viral load in people of African ancestry. Although we don’t yet know how it’s doing this, every time we discover something new about HIV control, we learn something new about the virus and something new about the cell. The link between HIV replication in macrophages and viral load is particularly interesting and unexpected.”

Co-author Professor Manjinder Sandhu from the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London said: “With more than a million new HIV infections a year, it’s clear that we still have a long way to go in the fight against HIV – we are yet to have a vaccine to prevent infection, have yet to find a cure and still see drug resistance emerging in some individuals. The next step is to fully understand exactly how this genetic variant controls HIV replication.”

The research in Cambridge was largely funded by the Medical Research Council. A full list of funders can be found in the research paper.

Reference
McLaren, PJ; Porreca, I; Iaconis, G; Mok, HP, Mukhopadhyay, Sl; Karakoc, E et al. Africa-specific human genetic variation near CHD1L associates with HIV-1 load. Nature; 2 Aug 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06370-4