Monday, May 06, 2019
Peter Thiel's Palantir helped
ICE separate families
IMAGE: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
The tech world's vampire-in-chief has reportedly been helping ICE deport families.
A new document unearthed by a coalition of immigrant rights foundations shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used software provided by Peter Thiel's big data company, Palantir, to identify and prosecute the U.S. family members of migrant children found crossing the border. First reported by the Latinx political organizing group Mijente, the documents refute Palantir's earlier statement implying that its ICE contract did not concern the agency's family separation and deportation efforts.
ICE has been a growing cause of concern among U.S. citizens and immigrant rights advocates, especially after its family separation and child detention practices came to light in 2018.
The Palantir revelation could fuel efforts to disrupt tech companies' cooperation and contracts with ICE, a government agency allegedly responsible for multiple human rights violations. Employees asked Palantir leadership to cancel the ICE contract, to no avail. Microsoft faced public and internal backlash when employees criticized its contract with ICE in June 2018. Now, as reported by Gizmodo, a California lawmaker is proposing a bill that would cancel state contracts with tech firms that share data with ICE.
“The state has a moral obligation to protect its residents from persecution,” the bill reads.
BREAKING
New document reveals Palantir played a *key role* in Trump admin's efforts to prosecute & arrest parents of children crossing the border alone.
Border agents used Palantir to build cases against families, helping ICE separate families.mijente.net/2019/05/02/pal…
A 2017 report from The Intercept detailed how Palantir helped power ICE's immigration enforcement efforts. Palantir is a "data firm" founded by early Facebook investor and Trump pal Peter Thiel. Palantir got a $41 million contract from ICE to provide a case management system.
When Palantir renewed the contract in December 2018, it attempted to draw a line in its work with ICE, implying that it helped ICE manage its workflow systems, but did not participate in the part of the organization that carried out family separations.
Now, that statement rings hollow. The documents show that ICE specifically used Palantir software to help it identify and build cases against the family members of children ICE found migrating to the U.S. Previously, Palantir CEO Alex Karp told the New York Times “we’re proud that we’re working with the U.S. government.”
Palantir is expected to go public this year. But with Thiel at the helm, and billions in the bank, it's unclear if moral objections will stop the company from helping ICE separate more families.
Palantir, the CIA-funded data analysis company founded by billionaire Trump adviser Peter Thiel, provided software at the center of a 2017 operation targeting unaccompanied children and their families, newly released Homeland Security documents show.
Satellite photos show how pitiful ice cover is in the Arctic right now
Sea ice in the Arctic: 2014 on left, versus 2019 on right.
IMAGE: NOAA
BY MARK KAUFMAN APR 02, 2019
Happy early spring. This is the time of year that Arctic sea ice often reaches its greatest size, freezing over the vast northern ocean. But in 2019, this ice cover — called the maximum ice extent — is meager, particularly in the usually ice-clad Bering Sea.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a comparison of Bering and Chukchi sea ice in 2014 (a normal year) versus the maximum sea ice extent this year. As you can see, where there is supposed to be ice, there is a great open ocean — months ahead of schedule.
It's the lowest sea ice extent on record for the Bering Sea.
2014-2019
IMAGE: NOAA
In the greater Arctic, 2019 tied for the seventh lowest maximum ice extent in four decades of satellite records. This is part of a now-unquestionable, wide-scale planetary trend.
The Arctic is the fastest warming region on Earth.
Zack Labe
✔@ZLabe
March 2019's total #Arctic sea ice extent was tied for the 7th lowest in the passive microwave satellite record. Note that there is large year-to-year variability in addition to a long-term trend.
9:04 AM - Apr 1, 2019
A month ago, the Bering Sea forewarned of a profoundly low maximum sea ice extent. The waters in the Bering Strait were already nearly ice-free, though scientists expected some ice to grow as more favorable weather patterns set in. But a month later, the ice is gone.
What's more, the ice should be here for months longer. "There should be ice here until May," Lars Kaleschke, a climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, told Mashable in March. World’s largest plane by wingspan lifts off into the history books
Though NOAA is studying the exact causes for the record-low sea ice, Arctic sea ice today is getting hit on multiple fronts. The warming ocean plays an outsized role. Specifically, as more ice melts, there's less bright ice cover to reflect the sun. Instead, the dark ocean absorbs more heat, warming the region even more. Then, of course, there's warming of the atmosphere. In March 2019, extremely high temperatures — stoked by a combination of weather events and longer-term climate change — blanketed Alaska, breaking all-time and daily records around the state.
It was the warmest March on record for nearly all of Alaska. Deadhorse, Alaska, hit a whopping 40 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
Brian Brettschneider@Climatologist49
Here are the daily departures from normal for Deadhorse, AK the last 7 days:
+31.9°F above normal
+33.0°F above normal
+38.0°F above normal
+36.5°F above normal
+36.0°F above normal
+40.0°F above normal
+38.4°F above normal@AlaskaWx
11:46 AM - Apr 1, 2019
Exacerbating matters are storms in the Bering Sea, which roll through and batter whatever sea ice is left. There will be little to no sea ice here before the onset of summer, allowing the sea to stock itself with even more heat before the warm season, noted Rick Thoman, a climate specialist for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Meanwhile, after a long, sun-drenched summer, the melted Arctic reaches its lowest sea ice extent, or minimum, in late September. This year promises to fit the trend: The 12 lowest ice extents on record have all occurred in the last 12 years.
"The changes in the Arctic are happening faster than they’re happening anywhere else on the rest of the planet," Jeremey Mathis, a NOAA oceanographer, told Mashable.
The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it's nearly all gone
BY MARK KAUFMAN MAR 04, 2019
During winter, the Bering Strait has historically been blanketed in ice. But this year, the ice has nearly vanished.
"The usually ice-covered Bering Strait is almost completely open water," Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine, said over email.
At its narrowest point, the Arctic strait between the U.S. and Russia is 55 miles across, and there's a prominent theory that people once crossed from Asia into North America across an exposed Bering land bridge (back when sea levels were lower). In modern times, however, this frigid waterway usually builds ice through the winter, reaching its greatest extent in late March.
After that, the ice usually lingers for months.
"There should be ice here until May," Lars Kaleschke, a climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, said over email.
Lars Kaleschke@seaice_de
· Mar 3, 2019
There is something significant going on in the Bering Sea: a very low ice extent for the second year in a row.
Lars Kaleschke@seaice_de
A new record low sea ice extent for the day of the year in the Bering Sea. pic.twitter.com/DuznyRcKV4
33
3:09 PM - Mar 3, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
But now, in early March, the ice extent is the lowest in the 40-year satellite record, said Labe. On March 2 specifically, the ice extent was lowest on record for that day of the year, added Kaleschke.
Overall, the last two years have now seen exceptionally low ice cover in the Bering Sea, and there are a few reasons why.
In the longer-term, the Arctic is warming over twice as fast as the rest of the globe, leading to significant melting across much of the Arctic, even where the ice is the thickest, oldest, and most resilient. "The 12 lowest extents in the satellite record have occurred in the last 12 years," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2018 Arctic report concluded.
This Arctic warming is especially notable near the Bering Strait. "In the long-term, temperatures in northern Alaska have been rising faster than anywhere else in the United States," said Labe.
SEE ALSO: An appreciation of the persistently grim tweets from the Norway Ice Service
SEE Satellite photos show how pitiful ice cover is in the Arctic right now
Satellite imagery of the mostly ice-free Bering Strait on Feb. 28. 2019.
IMAGE: SENTINEL HUB EO BROWSER/SENTINEL 3
IMAGE: SENTINEL HUB EO BROWSER/SENTINEL 3
BY MARK KAUFMAN MAR 04, 2019
During winter, the Bering Strait has historically been blanketed in ice. But this year, the ice has nearly vanished.
"The usually ice-covered Bering Strait is almost completely open water," Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine, said over email.
At its narrowest point, the Arctic strait between the U.S. and Russia is 55 miles across, and there's a prominent theory that people once crossed from Asia into North America across an exposed Bering land bridge (back when sea levels were lower). In modern times, however, this frigid waterway usually builds ice through the winter, reaching its greatest extent in late March.
After that, the ice usually lingers for months.
"There should be ice here until May," Lars Kaleschke, a climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, said over email.
Lars Kaleschke@seaice_de
· Mar 3, 2019
There is something significant going on in the Bering Sea: a very low ice extent for the second year in a row.
Lars Kaleschke@seaice_de
A new record low sea ice extent for the day of the year in the Bering Sea. pic.twitter.com/DuznyRcKV4
33
3:09 PM - Mar 3, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
But now, in early March, the ice extent is the lowest in the 40-year satellite record, said Labe. On March 2 specifically, the ice extent was lowest on record for that day of the year, added Kaleschke.
Overall, the last two years have now seen exceptionally low ice cover in the Bering Sea, and there are a few reasons why.
In the longer-term, the Arctic is warming over twice as fast as the rest of the globe, leading to significant melting across much of the Arctic, even where the ice is the thickest, oldest, and most resilient. "The 12 lowest extents in the satellite record have occurred in the last 12 years," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2018 Arctic report concluded.
This Arctic warming is especially notable near the Bering Strait. "In the long-term, temperatures in northern Alaska have been rising faster than anywhere else in the United States," said Labe.
SEE ALSO: An appreciation of the persistently grim tweets from the Norway Ice Service
It was the warmest March on record for nearly all of Alaska. Deadhorse, Alaska, hit a whopping 40 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
Here are the daily departures from normal for Deadhorse, AK the last 7 days:
+31.9°F above normal
+33.0°F above normal
+38.0°F above normal
+36.5°F above normal
+36.0°F above normal
+40.0°F above normal
+38.4°F above normal
Exacerbating matters are storms in the Bering Sea, which roll through and batter whatever sea ice is left. There will be little to no sea ice here before the onset of summer, allowing the sea to stock itself with even more heat before the warm season, noted Rick Thoman, a climate specialist for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Meanwhile, after a long, sun-drenched summer, the melted Arctic reaches its lowest sea ice extent, or minimum, in late September. This year promises to fit the trend: The 12 lowest ice extents on record have all occurred in the last 12 years.
"The changes in the Arctic are happening faster than they’re happening anywhere else on the rest of the planet," Jeremey Mathis, a NOAA oceanographer, told Mashable.
Some icebergs are a glorious emerald
green. Why?
A green iceberg.
IMAGE:
AGU/JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH: OCEANS/KIPFSTUHL ET AL 1992
BY MARK
KAUFMAN MAR 05, 2019
While
traversing the seas off of eastern Antarctica in 1988, glaciologist Stephen
Warren came upon green icebergs floating in the ocean. "We never expected
to see green icebergs," said Warren, noting that a deep blue hue — not
emerald green — is commonly observed in these chunks of ice.
Over three
decades later, Warren and a team of researchers have put forward an explanation
for these rarely seen icebergs' green hue. Their hypothesis, published Monday in
the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, argues that tiny
iron-rich rocky particles, similar to flour or dust, are the culprits.
Specifically, this finely ground-up rock, aptly named "glacial
flour," gets trapped in the ice on the bottom of ice shelves — the ends of
glaciers that float over the ocean — ultimately lending to the ice's deep green
appearance. When the icebergs eventually snap off, the fresh bergs carry the
verdant hue.
This irony-rich
glacial flour, though, is reddish-yellow. So, why are the icebergs green?
The answer is
simple: light. Pure icebergs naturally reflect a blue color, as ice
crystals reflect short blue wavelengths of sunlight while absorbing longer
wavelengths of light like reds. But when masses of ice are infused with that
yellowish-red glacial flour (which naturally absorbs blue light), the resulting
iceberg ends up absorbing both blue and red, while reflecting
what's left — a color that falls in the greenish spectrum.
"So what
gets through is the green," said Warren, a professor emeritus at the
University of Washington's Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
IMAGE:
COLLIN ROESLER
Decades ago,
Warren didn't suspect ground-up glacial dust was responsible for the greenery.
Rather, he thought it was long dead sea life frozen in the ice. "We
thought it was some dissolved, organic matter, bits of dead cells." But
there just wasn't enough of this organic matter in the ice to account for the
deep green color. The quandary lasted for years. Then, in 2016, researchers found
that ice in the undersides of an Antarctic ice shelf contained nearly 500 times more iron than
the ice above it, which rekindled Warren's curiosity and led him to this
theory.
Now, Warren
wants to return to eastern Antarctica to collect ice samples and see if their
hypothesis holds true.
"It makes
perfect sense," Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National
Snow and Ice Data Center who had no role in the research, said in an interview.
"When you put it in a red-absorbing material, you're going to get green
light coming back out," he explained.
IMAGE:
WARREN ET. AL/JGR OCEANS 2019
A key element
of green icebergs isn't just what they contain, but how they're made. Unlike
ice atop glaciers, which is made of compressed snow, this ice is built from
below in the ocean (hence the name "marine ice"). Small, plate-shaped
ice crystals form in the frigid water below the ice shelf, and as these
crystals float up, they "bump into" particles of glacier flour and
carry them into the ice shelf. In a way, it's snowing from below, explained
Warren.
Green icebergs
aren't regularly seen. They're only visible in certain parts of Antartica where
the glacial flour mingles with the ice, specifically the Amery Ice Shelf on the
eastern side of the great continent. "The tourist ships don't go
there," noted Warren. What's more, the green ice usually only becomes
visible when an iceberg capsizes and flips over, exposing the green,
iron-infused ice formed in the ocean.
Marine ice freezes and forms under
ice shelves.
IMAGE:
AGU
So green
icebergs haven't just been a mystery for decades, they're also not easy to spot
unless you're on an expedition near the Amery Ice Shelf.
A big question
still remains about the green icebergs: "Why would anyone pay us to do
that research?" Warren asked.
Green icebergs
aren't just a natural curiosity, though. They may serve a critical purpose in
the vast Southern Ocean, which is starved of iron. The phytoplankton that live
here are the base of the food chain and need iron to grow. The green icebergs,
then, might transport these vital nutrients out to sea.
"This
could be an important source of iron," explained Warren.
"These
things would be like big shopping carts for the microbes that live there,"
added Scambos.
Breakingviews - Nature is capitalism’s biggest loser
1 million species face extinction as humans plunder nature at ‘unprecedented’ rate
More than 1 million species are likely to go extinct, many within decades, unless their habitats are restored through dramatic change, a UN report says.
Nature is in more trouble now than at any other time in human history, with extinction looming over one million species of plants and animals, scientists said ...
Nature is in more trouble now than at any other time in human history, with extinction looming over 1 million species of plants and animals, scientists said ...
Nature is being eroded at rates unprecedented in human history, says scientist Robert Watson.
video_youtube
There is hope in the face of environmental crises. But we must all embrace change, says naturalist Chris Packham.
Lauge & Baba Gnohm - Various Tracks [Full Album]
Old Liveset from Operaen, Christiania, Denmark. Download: http://soundcloud.com/laugebabagnohm/
The duo Lauge & Baba Gnohm consists of Henrik Laugesen and Kalle Christensen, both born in 1985 in Denmark. They first met in 2008 in Christiania. After a successful day in the studio, they decided to put their previous solo projects on hold, and team up. Lauge & Baba Gnohm was formed in the late winter of 2008, and that wintry feeling which was present in their first tracks, still leave traces in their more recent soundscapes. Henrik and Kalle are heavily inspired by nature,
especially the arctic parts of the world. Till now Lauge & Baba Gnohm have had many releases on various labels around the globe, as well as being part of a sync company dealing with soundtracks for movies and documentaries. The very first Lauge & Baba Gnohm collaboration release was The Perfect Stranger which was released on the German record label Blue Tunes Records. Along with releases on different compilations,
Lauge & Baba Gnohm have released two EPs: Daybreak, on Soundmute, and Monolith, on Chillbase and the full length album "Langbortistan" on Altar Records... http://soundcloud.com/laugebabagnohm
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Laug...
► Spotify: http://bit.ly/SpotifyTrancentral
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