Activists topple statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in downtown Montreal

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'We must fight racism, but destroying parts of our history is not the solution,' says Quebec premier

CBC News · Posted: Aug 29, 2020 4:05 PM ET | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, was toppled to the ground by demonstrators as a protest march calling for defunding of the police reached its end at Place du Canada on Saturday. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

A group of activists toppled a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Place du Canada in downtown Montreal on Saturday afternoon in the aftermath of a protest calling for the defunding of the police force.

A handful of people climbed the monument, tied ropes around the statue and held up banners before unbolting it and pulling it down. The falling statue's trajectory caused the head to fly off and bounce onto the cobblestones below. A video posted to social media captured the moment.

The incident took place following a peaceful march through downtown Montreal, one of several demonstrations held across Canada organized by a coalition of Black and Indigenous activists.

It was not clear what affiliation, if any, those who pulled down the statue had with the march. The falling statue appeared to catch other demonstrators, organizers and police by surprise. A march organizer, contacted by CBC Montreal, declined to comment. 

• Jason Kenney says Alberta would re-erect John A. Macdonald statue toppled in Montreal

A CBC journalist obtained a leaflet from a demonstrator who said it had been distributed to explain the act. The leaflet points to an online petition with over 46,000 signatures asking Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante to take down the statue.

"Sir John A. Macdonald was a white supremacist who orchestrated the genocide of Indigenous peoples with the creation of the brutal residential schools system, as well as promoting other measures that attacked Indigenous peoples and traditions," the leaflet reads in part.

Because of the city's inaction, "a diverse coalition of young activists" decided to act, the leaflet says, though it does not identify the coalition.

As of late Saturday afternoon, no arrests had been made.

Premier, mayor denounce vandalism

The statue of Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, has been the site of repeated acts of graffiti in recent years, and it has often been covered in red paint.

It was also decapitated by unknown vandals in 1992. The Montreal Gazette reported at the time that a fax sent to media outlets claimed the act of vandalism was timed to commemorate the anniversary of the hanging of Louis Riel on Nov. 16, 1885.

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On Twitter Saturday, Quebec Premier François Legault wrote that "whatever one might think of John A. MacDonald, destroying a monument in this way is unacceptable. We must fight racism, but destroying parts of our history is not the solution. Vandalism has no place in our democracy and the statue must be restored."

Earlier in the day, Jason Kenney, Legault's counterpart in Alberta, also used Twitter to decry the act and said Alberta would host the statue if Montreal didn't want it.

In a statement Saturday, Plante wrote that the city's public art office and heritage experts will coordinate the statue's restoration.

"I strongly deplore the acts of vandalism that took place this afternoon in downtown Montreal," she said in the statement.

She noted that some monuments are at "the heart of emotional debates," a reference to contemporary critiques of Macdonald's legacy and record on Indigenous issues — which includes establishing Canada's residential school system.

• Ropes tied around John A. Macdonald statue in Regina during demonstration

• Native Council of P.E.I. asking community members for input on John A. Macdonald statue

"I understand and share the motivation of citizens who want to live in a more just and inclusive society," her statement said. "But the discussion and the necessary actions must be carried out peacefully, without ever resorting to vandalism."

Plante said Montreal police would investigate.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante said public art and heritage experts will coordinate the statue's restoration. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

A magnet for controversy

In recent years, concerns about Macdonald's actions and policies have made statues of the man targets of activists in cities across Canada.

In Victoria, B.C., city council voted to remove the statue from the steps of city hall as a gesture of reconciliation in 2018.

Protesters tied ropes around a statue of Macdonald in Regina in July.

One in Charlottetown has been the frequent target of paint and the subject of a debate, with the city's council recently deciding to keep the statue — but begin a conversation with P.E.I.'s Indigenous community about how to present it.

With files from Sarah Leavitt and Radio-Canada

MONTREAL -- Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante condemned the destruction of a statue of Canada's first prime minister during a defund the police rally on Saturday.

Just before 3 p.m. in Montreal, the often-vandalized statue of John A. Macdonald at Place du Canada in the heart of Montreal was toppled by protesters.

The protest was scheduled to demand a reduction in police funding.

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Statue taken down today in so-called #Montreal #BlackLivesMatter #DefundPolice #manifencours #decolonize Kanada pic.twitter.com/0TYGayWUiK— Nore (@noreornot) August 29, 2020

Montreal police (SPVM) spokesperson Jean-Pierre Brabant confirmed that at around 2:45 p.m. the statue was toppled by protesters though police do not have any suspects at the moment.

SPVM officers asked protesters to leave the area over a loudspeaker once the statue was in pieces on the ground.

"People understood and they left," said Brabant.

In a statement, Plante said she strongly condemns "the acts of vandalism that took place this afternoon in downtown Montreal... Such gestures cannot be accepted or tolerated."

"We know that certain historical monuments, here and elsewhere, are at the heart of emotional debate. I reiterate that I prefer to put them in context rather than simply removing them. I am also in favour of adding monuments that will be more representative of the society to which we all aspire."

Plante said the city's public art office will coordinate to restore the statue. 

View this post on Instagram

Jaggi Singh on Instagram: “The racist John A. Macdonald statue in Montreal has fallen! It was taken down minutes ago by anonymous protesters at the end of the…”

The racist John A. Macdonald statue in Montreal has fallen! It was taken down minutes ago by anonymous protesters at the end of the #DefundThePolice demo.

A post shared by Jaggi Singh (@comradejaggi) on Aug 29, 2020 at 11:59am PDT

After the crowd dispersed, a perimetre was erected around the park.

No one was injured, and there were no other incidents during the protest, according to Brabant.

"The protest in general went really well," he said. "It's just the mischief at place du Canada that was a bit negative."

The statue has been the target of spray paint and vanalism many times over the past couple of years, as attention has been drawn to Canada's first Prime Minister's treatment of Indigenous and other marginalized peoples.

Newly elected Conservative leader Erin O'Toole criticized the actions of the protesters on Twitter.

Canada wouldn't exist without Sir John A. Macdonald. Canada is a great county, and one we should be proud of. We will not build a better future by defacing our past.

It's time politicians grow a backbone and stand up for our country. https://t.co/VdskHzFaRy— Erin O'Toole (@ErinOTooleMP) August 29, 2020



NATIONWIDE PROTEST

The protesters in Montreal joined others across Canadian to demand a reduction in police funding.

The Coalition for BIPOC Liberation is calling for a 50 per cent reduction in the budget reserved for the police to invest instead "in black and Indigenous communities."



Repost from @racialjusticecollective • Today is the day! Meet us at Place des Arts at noon, right in face of the metro,...Posted by The Coalition for BIPOC Liberation on Saturday, 29 August 2020

The group is also calling for the demilitarization of the police and "alternate community regulation to handle non-violent calls."

According to the group of activists, protests will also take place in Toronto, London, Montreal, Fredericton, Moncton and Halifax.

Calls to withdraw funding from police forces have multiplied in the United States, but also in Canadian cities since the death of George Floyd in the United States last May.

In a news release presented to the City of Montreal last week as part of a pre-budget consultation, the Fraternite des policemen et policieres de Montréal, which represents the 4,500 police officers of the SPVM, strongly opposed the defunding, saying that reducing the police budget will compromise public safety.

-- this report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 29, 2020.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/black-lives-matter-protesters-topple.html

UPDATED

UK Scientist Discovers Dinosaur Fossil While Running Along Shore Of Eigg Beach

The 166 million-year-old dinosaur fossil was discovered by Dr. Elsa Panciroli, who was with her team members looking for remains of other animals.

Written By Vishal Tiwari


In a bizarre but yet exciting incident, a scientist discovered a dinosaur fossil while running along the shore of Hebridean island in Scotland. The dinosaur fossil was discovered by Dr. Elsa Panciroli, who was with her team members looking for remains of other animals. Panciroli, while talking to the press, said that she stumbled upon the bone of the dinosaur while running and trying to catch up with other members of her team. The dinosaur fossil is reportedly 166 million-year-old, dated to the Middle Jurassic period.

Read: Fossil Embryo Reveals New Details About ‘sauropods’ That Lived 80 Million Years Ago



🚨JURASSIC DISCOVERY KLAXON🚨

A 166 million-year-old dinosaur bone has been found on the isle of Eigg!

Dr Panciroli (@gsciencelady) made the discovery on the Hebridean island. The find has since been identified as belonging to a stegosaurian dinosaur – like Stegosaurus pic.twitter.com/ri5nnLyqAb— National Museums Scotland (@NtlMuseumsScot) August 26, 2020

Read: Fossil Of 13-ft-long Marine Predator Found Inside Larger Animal: Study
First on isle of Eigg

The bone has been kept in the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, where it has been displayed for visitors. According to reports, scientists in Scotland have been searching dinosaur bones for more than 200 hundred years. Until now the only dinosaur fossil discovered in Scotland was on the Isle of Skye. This is the first time that a dinosaur bone has been found os isle of Eigg, where previously only marine reptile and fish fossils were discovered. The dinosaur fossil found on the small island is a limb bone, which is about 50 centimetres long in size.

Read: Fossil Of Long-necked Ancient Reptile Reveals The Spices Was Adaptable, Lived Underwater

The find has since been identified as belonging to a stegosaurian dinosaur, like Stegosaurus. Panciroli discovered the bone on a National Geographic funded fieldwork in 2017. The bone was badly eroded, but paleontologist and Panciroli's colleague Nigel Larkin carefully prepared it for the team to study. It was probably a juvenile, and bite marks show it was scavenged after death, said Panciroli.

Read: Fossils Reveal Dinosaur Predecessor Kongonaphon Kely Was Smaller Than A Cellphone


Dinosaur bone discovered on Scottish island the 1st of its kind in the country

Paleontologist Elsa Panciroli was running to catch up with her colleagues when she spotted the rare fossil

CBC Radio · Posted: Aug 28, 2020 5:57 PM ET | Last Updated: August 28

Researchers believe the discovery is a lower back leg bone of a stegosaurian dinosaur, a species not seen in Scotland before. (N. Larkin)

A rare dinosaur bone from the Middle Jurassic was discovered in Scotland, thanks to the keen eye of a local paleontologist.

Elsa Panciroli got separated from her colleagues while searching for fossils on the Scottish Isle of Eigg. She was hopping from boulder to boulder on the shoreline to catch up with the rest of the team when something caught her eye.

"I suddenly realized the boulder I had just hopped onto and run past, it had something in it. But I wasn't sure quite what," Panciroli, who is a paleontologist at National Museums Scotland, told As It Happens guest host Helen Mann.

"So I turned around, went back to look, and it was a dinosaur bone sticking out of the boulder on the shoreline I'd just literally stepped on."

Her discovery turned out to be a 48-centimetre dinosaur bone, belonging to a species that has never been seen in Scotland before.

Scottish paleontologist Elsa Panciroli discovered a fossil that turned out to be a leg bone from a Jurassic-era stegosaurus. (S. Brusatte)

1st dinosaur on Eigg

Panciroli was so surprised to find the dinosaur bone, she says she downplayed her discovery to her colleagues at first.

"I was a bit reluctant to say the d-word, so I just kept saying I found something," she said. "And eventually they teased [it] out of me, and of course the moment I said 'dinosaur' everyone ... wanted to come and have a look."

Hundreds of people have likely walked over the boulder without noticing anything, she said, and finding the fossil was a matter of luck as much as training.

"I think a lot of the time for people who search for fossils, it's about pattern recognition. You're looking to recognize something. And it was almost unconscious, because I wasn't looking anymore; I was running."

Panciroli said Eigg has been extensively studied, and the purpose of the trip was to look for fossils seen on the island before, like those of marine reptiles and fish.

How a paleontologist and dentist solved the mystery of dinosaur tracks on a cave ceiling

The researchers never expected to find signs of something as big as a dinosaur — and it turns out that Panciroli's discovery is even rarer than that.
Rare fossil from the Middle Jurassic

After months of extensive tests on the bone, its owner was established to be a young stegosaurian dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic period. This is the first time this type of dinosaur and a fossil this old have been found in Scotland.

"It's 166 million years old, and this is a time when fossils — globally speaking, not just in Scotland — are very, very rare," Panciroli said.

"So just finding it in the first place is really quite significant."

Panciroli imagined the last moments of the young stegosaurus, whose fossilized bone she discovered, in her painting. (Elsa Panciroli )

It's also the first time a dinosaur fossil has been found on Eigg; all other dino fossils in Scotland were discovered on the Isle of Skye.

The newfound bone was likely a back lower leg bone of a stegosaurian dinosaur, a large quadruped species with distinctive plates on the back.

Previously, only fossils from two different types of dinosaurs — "the big, long-necked, very heavy dinosaurs" and "the meat-eating dinosaurs that walk on two legs" — have been found in Scotland, Panciroli said.

Storm surge unearths 'incredible' trove of dinosaur fossils in U.K.

Researchers will now continue looking for fossils on Eigg and Skye in hopes of building a more complete picture of the ecosystem of that time period.

"We already know that there were also mammals at this time, the very earliest ones, but also things like salamanders, crocodiles, turtles — so we can even look at food chains. It really is only the beginning of research," Panciroli said.

The researcher also said she was happy to find something so close to home. "It's always lovely to find something in your home country. I think I expected that I would probably have to travel abroad to look for something like this, so it's a big surprise."

Written by Olsy Sorokina. Interview produced by Jeanne Armstrong.

CO₂ removal to halt warming soon would be a gargantuan undertaking

Nothing is perfect, and the trade-offs could be large if poorly managed.

SCOTT K. JOHNSON - 8/27/2020, 1:25 PM

Enlarge / How much switchgrass could we grow for biofuels?
Michigan State University 

One of the options to help us get our balance of greenhouse gas emissions down faster is to actively remove some CO2 from the atmosphere. The idea is that it can be cheaper and easier to start CO2 removal while our energy systems are transitioning than to attempt to make that transition happen quickly enough to reach our climate goals. Obviously, there’s never a free lunch, and these ideas have attracted lots of scrutiny because of their side effects and feasibility.

Crops vs. BECCS

Three studies published this week examine some of the issues of negative emissions in detail. The first focuses primarily on BECCS—bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. This is a technically attractive strategy that would involve growing biofuel crops, burning them to generate electricity, capturing the CO2 leaving the power plant’s exhaust, and storing that CO2 somewhere (probably deep underground). The added value from electricity generation makes this look cheaper than many methods that could pull similar amounts of CO2 out of the air. As a result, many emissions scenarios that manage to halt warming at 1.5°C or 2°C rely on sizable deployments of BECCS to get there.

The primary downside is the potential competition for land with food crops or forests. To get a much clearer picture, the study first set aside the land projected to be used for crops before working out the global potential for BECCS. The researchers focused on crops like switchgrass and sugarcane or woody plants like fast-growing poplar and assumed that any carbon in vegetation present on land converted to this use was lost at the start (burned, for example). They ran the numbers for BECCS as well as liquid fuels like biodiesel or ethanol, for which much of the resulting CO2 is released rather than captured.

The results highlight the importance of sweating the details—outcomes vary considerably by geographic location and methods. Clearing an area of land for crops can create a large carbon “debt” that has to be paid up before your effort accomplishes anything climate-wise. The more productive the biofuel crop is in a given climate zone and soil type, the faster it can pay that debt. Because of this, the timespan of the operation—or accounting—the better things can look. Over an 80-year period, most regions can turn a carbon storage “profit” with BECCS. But if you’re looking at the first 30 years, a number of sites would fail to overcome their initial debt.

Enlarge / Here is where BECCS could overcome its initial carbon debt (negative numbers, cool colors) for 30-year and 80-year timeframes.
Hanssen et al./Nature Climate Change

So sticking with the suitable locations—and leaving cropland untouched—could BECCS supply all the carbon capture needed to make a 1.5°C warming scenario work? According to the study’s simulation, not quite, although it can get close. The effort would be massive, though. By 2100, these biofuel crops would occupy 5-16 percent of the Earth’s land area, depending on how quickly our CO2 emissions declined. At that point, BECCS power plants would be generating more electricity than the current global total.
Fill up my tank

The second study was focused on producing liquid biofuels for things like airplanes and shipping. It zeroed in on an even finer scale, using ecosystem modeling based on several study sites in the eastern US. The goal was to progress beyond generic estimates and see exactly where carbon would be going in biofuel cropland, accounting for soil processes and the details of the biofuel-production process. Might there be cases where that land could have a bigger carbon impact if it were just reforested?

This scenario was based on switchgrass grown for ethanol or biofuel, with a 70-year timeframe and the initial vegetation on converted land harvested for energy rather than burned. It also included scenarios for improved switchgrass crops and fuel-making processes, as well as the possibility of capturing the carbon emitted during fuel production.

Unsurprisingly, the study found that using cropland or former pasture produced a much clearer carbon benefit than converting forest for switchgrass agriculture. But for cropland and pasture, even current methods had a greater climate benefit than restoring them to grasslands would. If the land is suitable for reforestation, on the other hand, doing so would likely beat biofuels. Introduce some improvements in switchgrass yields and biofuel production efficiency, though, and it tops reforestation for climate mitigation. So there is a positive path here in the right circumstances.

The authors write, “While climate and other ecosystem service benefits cannot be taken for granted from cellulosic biofuel deployment, our scenarios illustrate how conventional and carbon-negative biofuel systems could make a near-term, robust, and distinctive contribution to the climate challenge.”
Enlarge / Here's how carbon storage accumulates for different techniques, depending on the land type used.
Field et al./PNAS

DAC it up

The third study looked at an entirely different technology—“direct air capture” (DAC) of CO2 from ambient air, after which it can be stored underground. As several companies have advanced designs for this process and even built pilot plants, DAC has entered the realm of the plausible. It has the advantage of concentrating the work into the footprint of a facility rather than acres of arable land. So is DAC all the capture with none of the side effects?

Well, not exactly. It’s still comparatively quite expensive, and it trades voracious land use for voracious energy use. The study modeled the consequences of meeting 1.5°C warming pathways with BECCS and forest expansion to meet our CO2 removal needs, and it contrasted that with using direct air capture instead. With things like BECCS allowed to take over cropland, the researchres simulated pretty extreme increases in staple crop prices, particularly in the Global South.

Direct air capture doesn’t contribute to that problem, but water use in the two scenarios is actually similar. And the heat required in the DAC process—provided by natural gas with capture of the emitted CO2 in some pilots—could be equivalent to two-thirds of current natural gas production or more.

But even with the current state of this young technology, the economic model shows that DAC could play a substantial role, removing enough CO2 by 2035 to equal 7 percent of current-day emissions, if we’re willing to go that route.

The authors of this study emphasize a take-away message that applies to all three: “These results highlight that delays in aggressive global mitigation action greatly increase the requirement for DAC to meet climate targets, and correspondingly, energy and water impacts.” The sooner we start reducing our emissions, the less of a need there will be for these carbon-removal techniques, allowing us to minimize the scale of the trade-offs they come with.

Nature Climate Change, 2020. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-020-0885-y, 10.1038/s41558-020-0876-z

PNAS, 2020. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1920877117 (About DOIs).

Nine gigawatts of wind turbines were added last year in the US

The 2019 numbers show projects are up, costs are down.

SCOTT K. JOHNSON - 8/28/2020, 2:30 PM

Enlarge
Earlier this year in the US, energy generation from wind, solar, and hydroelectric dams combined to top coal generation for over two months straight. This was the product of spring peaks in renewable generation and reduced electrical demand during lockdowns, but those events were layered on top of coal’s continuing decline and the long-term growth of renewables. A new report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory looks back at 2019—what is now known as the Before Times—to tally up year-end totals for the wind industry.

2020 looks like the year US renewables first out-produce coal
The topline number is that a little over nine gigawatts of wind capacity was added last year—slightly more than in each of the four previous years. Wind accounts for about one-third of all new generation added in 2019, and it ticked up to seven percent of all electricity generated in the US.

But as for the grid carrying that electricity, a little under 1,000 miles of transmission lines were built last year—the second lowest amount in the last 10 years.

The trend toward bigger wind turbines continued, with the average capacity of a turbine built last year reaching 2.55 megawatts. The height of the tower on which the turbine sits has risen over time—now averaging 90 meters—but the bigger factor is longer blades. Average rotor diameter was 120 meters, up from closer to 80 meters a decade ago.


For grid region abbreviations, see the map here.
LBL

New projects in 2019 (yellow dots) and total installed wind capacity by state.
LBL
Transmission infrastructure has gotten less attention.
LBL

Turbines are getting larger over time, with a higher average capacity.
LBL

Over 1,800 older turbines were retrofitted last year, mostly with longer blades. That slightly increases their maximum capacity, but more importantly it leads to more consistent generation. These changes have boosted “capacity factors”—the average fraction of a turbine’s maximum capacity that it is generating as the winds vary over the days and seasons. The report notes that the average capacity factor of turbines built 2014-2018 was 41 percent, beating out turbines built 2004-2012 that come in at 31 percent. Newer turbines are also aging more gracefully, maintaining their output better than wind farms built before 2008.

Costs, meanwhile, continue to tick down from a 2010 peak, reaching about $850 per kilowatt for turbines and $1,400 per kilowatt on the project scale. That brings the average cost of electricity produced from wind to $36 per megawatt-hour. Wind has maintained its cost lead over natural gas electricity, although solar electricity has caught up in the last few years.


Capacity factor has ticked up over time.
LBL

Newer turbines aren't seeing the capacity factor decline after 10 years that earlier turbines were.
LBL

Per-kilowatt-hour costs of new projects have declined over the last decade.
LBL

This cost of electricity calculation accounts for construction and ongoing costs, averaged over the lifetime of the project.
LBL

Wind electricity (blue), solar (yellow), and natural gas (black) have converged over time.
LBL

Here's the report's outlook for wind installations in the next few years.
LBL

While the report projects wind to gradually get cheaper in the future, it also notes that wind is losing a bit of its edge as its slice of the generation pie increases. With transmission capacity still limited, electricity from wind-rich areas in the middle of the country can’t easily be sent to meet demand elsewhere. Without storage, the variability of the wind energy becomes more important as it becomes a bigger player on the grid.

The report still projects a significant increase in wind projects through 2020 (caveat: COVID-19) and 2021. But between the factors mentioned above and (more importantly) the planned phase-out of federal tax incentives for renewable energy, the outlook sees a sharp drop after 2021. Annual wind project activity is pretty sensitive to policy—just look at the swing between 2012 and 2013, when projects were rushed in ahead of the deadline the last time tax credits expired—so actions on the state and national level could yet shift that outlook.

THE END OF CAPITALISM AS WE KNOW IT

Bankrupt OneWeb gets FCC approval for another 1,280 broadband satellites
OneWeb can launch up to 2,000 satellites, seeks permission for another 48,000.

JON BRODKIN - 8/27/2020, 1:16 PM

Enlarge / Illustration of a OneWeb satellite.

Amid a bankruptcy and a pending sale, OneWeb has secured US approval to offer broadband service from 2,000 satellites.

OneWeb already had Federal Communications Commission approval for a 720-satellite constellation that was green-lit in June 2017. In an order released yesterday, the FCC gave OneWeb approval for another 1,280 satellites.

The first 720 satellites, of which OneWeb has launched 74, are for low Earth orbital altitudes of 1,200km. The additional 1,280 satellites were approved for medium Earth orbits of 8,500km. Both are much lower than the 35,000km geostationary orbits used by traditional satellite-broadband networks, which should result in lower latency and a better experience for Internet users.

Bankrupt OneWeb seeks license for 48,000 satellites, even more than SpaceX

OneWeb filed another application in May 2020 to launch a whopping 47,844 satellites at an altitude of 1,200km, but it's not clear how long it would take to get FCC approval. OneWeb's application for 1,280 satellites had been pending for more than three years before the FCC approved it this week. In that intervening time, the FCC adopted several rule changes related to satellite broadband, including an April 2019 order with new licensing rules for one of the spectrum bands that OneWeb eventually got approval to use.

OneWeb, which is based in London, also needs approval from UK regulators.
New spectrum, more capacity

The newly approved 1,280 satellites will use V-Band spectrum (37.5-43.5GHz, 47.2-50.2 GHz, and 50.4-51.4GHz). The FCC decision also gave OneWeb permission to use those frequencies with the previously approved 720 satellites. Originally, the 720 satellites were authorized to use only the Ku and Ka spectrum bands.

"We are pleased to hear the FCC granted our V-Band application. The V-band is critical for next generation satellite broadband services," OneWeb told Ars in a statement today. "OneWeb looks forward to the future growth opportunities this approval will enable as we commercialize our spectrum and execute on our mission to bring low-latency connectivity to communities, governments, businesses, and people in the US and around the world."

The FCC approval is contingent on OneWeb complying with power limits and spectrum-sharing rules, preventing interference with other networks, following procedures to minimize orbital debris, and other conditions. Under FCC rules, OneWeb has six years to launch 50 percent of licensed satellites and nine years to launch all of them.

The FCC said granting OneWeb's application is in the public interest, and that the "additional capacity would enhance OneWeb's ability to offer its proposed broadband services in the United States."
Bankruptcy and sale

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy and laid off most of its staff in late March. On July 3, OneWeb agreed to sell the business to a consortium including the UK government and Bharti Global Limited for $1 billion.


FURTHER READINGOneWeb goes bankrupt, lays off staff, will sell satellite-broadband business



The sale needs approval from regulators and the US Bankruptcy Court; OneWeb said it expects to complete the sale in Q4 2020. Bankruptcy proceedings are ongoing, and OneWeb told Ars that it "continues to target Q4 for exit from Chapter 11."

OneWeb will have to compete against SpaceX, which has already launched over 600 satellites and started beta tests with Internet users. SpaceX has FCC permission to launch nearly 12,000 satellites and has applied for authorization to launch another 30,000.

Like OneWeb, SpaceX is using V-Band spectrum. SpaceX argued in filings that OneWeb should have to "detail how it intends to deploy in both the Ku/Ka and V-bands, whether it will have to replace an initial wave of Ku/Ka-band satellites with a new generation of V-band equipped satellites, and if so, how it intends to manage the significant coordination, collision avoidance, and disposal management challenges that such a rapid turn-over would require," the FCC said in a summary of SpaceX's concerns. The FCC rejected SpaceX's request, explaining that "the information provided by OneWeb is sufficient and consistent with what has been received from other applicants" and that the extra information SpaceX requested "does not affect the interference analyses relied upon for this grant."

In July, Amazon received FCC approval to launch 3,236 low Earth orbit satellites for its planned "Project Kuiper" broadband service.


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JON BRODKINJon is Ars Technica's senior IT reporter, covering the FCC and broadband, telecommunications, wireless technology, and more.EMAIL jon.brodkin@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @JBrodkin

New map shows vulnerability of Antarctic ice to self-fracking
Over half of the ice shelves seem susceptible to process that doomed Larsen B.

SCOTT K. JOHNSON - 8/26/2020

Enlarge / In 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in a matter of weeks.
NASA 


In 2016, a study found that adding a couple new processes to a model of the Antarctic ice sheets made them much more vulnerable to melt, greatly increasing global sea level rise—both this century and in the centuries to come. It was an alarming result, to be sure, but also a bit conjectural. The researchers didn’t have a way to assess how realistically the new processes were modeled, so they viewed their paper as raising a question deserving attention rather than providing an answer.

Two sea level studies have some good news, bad news

The new processes were the collapse of ice cliffs above a certain height (a theoretical constraint, but not something we’ve watched happen) and hydrofracturing. The latter is a propagation of a surface fracture in the ice clean through to the bottom of the ice sheet as the crack fills with water. Hydrofracturing is a known commodity—it was probably the dominant process in the sudden collapse of Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf in 2002. The question here, instead, is how vulnerable is the rest of Antarctica to this process?

A new study led by Ching-Yao Lai at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has tried to answer that question by mapping fractures and calculating where hydrofracturing should be possible.
On the shelf

The work focuses on ice shelves, which are the floating tongues of ice that exist where a glacier slides into the sea. In many places, ice shelves attach to the land along the sides of an embayment, providing some anchoring that slows their forward motion. This also slows the flow of the rest of the glacier on land—a critical function called “buttressing.” If a buttressing ice shelf breaks up, the glacier is more or less uncorked, and its flow into the sea will accelerate.

So to assess the relevance of hydrofracturing for future Antarctic ice loss, the researchers were looking for a combination of three things: the presence of fractures, the conditions that make fractures susceptible to hydrofracturing, and the buttressing area of ice shelves.

First up, they wanted to map fractures. Rather than laboring away for thousands of hours to find and mark all the fractures by hand, the researchers turned to a machine learning technique. After training the algorithm in a small area with hand-marked fractures, the researchers turned it loose on satellite imagery all around Antarctica, identifying nearly 32,000 of them.

To figure out whether fractures are vulnerable to hydrofracturing, the researchers turned to measurements and models of ice flow and temperature. Hydrofracturing only works if there’s enough tension in the ice perpendicular to the fracture. Otherwise, filling the fracture with water isn’t sufficient to force that fracture wider and deeper all the way to the bottom. It will just fill with water and sit there.

The vast majority of fractures turn out to be in stable conditions where surface meltwater flooding would not cause hydrofracturing. That does, however, still leave a significant number of unstable fractures.

Finally, the map of vulnerable fractures is compared to the map of ice shelves that buttress the land ice behind them. And here the stats are not comforting. Roughly 60 percent of the area of buttressing ice shelves around Antarctica should be vulnerable to hydrofracturing, the researchers estimate. And their fracture map shows that some are present in all these areas.

Enlarge / Areas of buttressing ice shelves that are vulnerable to hydrofracturing shown in red. Fractures in green and black areas should be stable; blue areas provide no buttressing. Boxes zoom in on two areas where surface meltwater is present today.
Lai et al./Nature

I’m melting

The recipe for hydrofracturing, of course, requires the “hydro” part—meltwater on the ice surface. That’s quite rare today. Using a recent map of surface meltwater ponds on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which reaches lower (warmer) latitudes, the researchers find that only 0.6 percent of the ice shelf area there is both vulnerable and currently hosting meltwater. In the few notable areas with significant amounts of meltwater, fractures should be stable.

The problem is that projected warming of air temperatures could lead to much greater amounts of surface meltwater on the ice by the end of this century. And given the apparent vulnerability to hydrofracturing, that could mean more collapsed ice shelves like the Larsen B. There's also a lot more land ice behind these vulnerable sites, with bigger stakes for sea level rise.

So far, the biggest problem for Antarctic ice has been warmer seawater eating away at the ice shelves from below. This study highlights an atmospheric method of attack that will have to be studied in great detail to better anticipate Antarctica’s response to climate change.

Nature, 2020. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2627-8 (About DOIs).

Bird deaths down 70 percent after painting wind turbine blades
The study ran for nine years at Norway's Smøla wind farm.

JONATHAN M. GITLIN - 8/25/2020, 11:43 AM

Enlarge
Aurich Lawson / Getty Images

omething as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.

2019 saw over 60 gigawatts of wind power installed

Wind power is surging right now, with more than 60GW of new generating capacity added worldwide in 2019. As long as you put the turbines in the right spot, wind power is reliably cheaper than burning fossil fuels. And most people would prefer to live next to a wind farm than any other kind of power plant—even solar.

Not everyone is a fan of wind turbines, however, because of their impact on local populations of flying fauna like birds and bats. Politicians with axes to grind against renewable energy say that we should continue to mine coal and extract oil because of the avian death toll, and US President Donald Trump has called wind turbines "bird graveyard[s]." Estimates from the US Fish and Wildlife Service calculated that approximately 300,000 birds were killed by wind turbines in 2015 (which is probably two orders of magnitude fewer than die as a result of colliding with electrical power lines each year), and bird deaths from turbines are trending down as the industry moves to larger turbine blades that move more slowly.

Wind power prices now lower than the cost of natural gas

Bird deaths caused by wind power may be overstated then, but they do still occur. Previous laboratory studies have suggested that birds may not be very good at seeing obstructions while they're flying, and adding visual cues like different colored fan blades can increase birds' chances of spotting a rapidly rotating fan.

At the Smøla wind farm, regular checks of four particular wind turbines—each 70m tall with three 40m-long blades—found six white-tailed eagle carcasses between 2006 and 2013. In total, the four turbines killed 18 birds that flew into the blades over those six years, along with five willow ptarmigans that are known to collide with the turbine towers rather than the blades. (Another four turbines selected as a control group were responsible for seven bird deaths, excluding willow ptarmigans, over the same timeframe.)

And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines—a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate.

Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smøla and elsewhere.

Ecology and Evolution, 2020. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6592 (About DOIs).

TICK... TOCK... TICK... TOCK... —

TikTok CEO quits as company reportedly plans sale to Microsoft, Walmart

Can’t do global work if the White House is forcing sale of US business, Mayer said.

KATE COX - 8/27/2020,

Enlarge / TikTok's US operations may soon be part of every cool teen's favorite conglomerates, Microsoft and Walmart.


TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer, who only began the job on June 1, is heading right back out the door again as the company plans a sale under pressure from the White House.

"In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for," Mayer wrote in an email to TikTok employees late Wednesday. "Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company."

Mayer praised employees' efforts, saying that "there is no doubt that the future [of TikTok] is incredibly bright." But at the same time, he added, "I understand that the role that I signed up for—including running TikTok globally—will look very different as a result of the US Administration’s action to push for a sell off of the US business."

Until this spring, Mayer was one of Disney's top executives, where he successfully headed the launch of the Disney+ streaming service. In February, however, he was unexpectedly passed over to succeed outgoing Disney CEO Bob Iger in favor of Bob Chapek. Three months later he announced he was jumping ship to TikTok, in a move that spawned dozens of stories about TikTok's meteoric growth and its potential to make it big as a force in media.

TikTok, in its official statement on Mayer's departure, said, "We appreciate that the political dynamics of the last few months have significantly changed what the scope of Kevin’s role would be going forward, and fully respect his decision."
Not the job he signed up for

Even as TikTok's popularity has skyrocketed amid the 2020 pandemic, though, the company itself has been struggling against the Trump administration. Earlier this month, the White House declared the existence of TikTok—along with another Chinese app, WeChat—to be a national emergency and issued an executive order that would effectively ban it from operating inside the United States.

TikTok has repeatedly denied the administration's allegations that it shares US user data with China, and it filed suit on Monday alleging that the orders are unconstitutional and politically driven by an "anti-China political campaign" ahead of the November election.


TikTok chief Kevin Mayer launches stinging attack on Facebook


President Donald Trump on August 3 issued a personal ultimatum, telling TikTok it had until September 15 to sell to a US buyer if it wanted to keep operating inside the United States. Microsoft at the time publicly confirmed it was considering a way to purchase TikTok's US assets and has been considered the leading contender for an acquisition since.

Today, however, Walmart unexpectedly announced that it has joined forces with Microsoft to go in together on the deal.

Walmart wants TikTok for its potential to integrate e-commerce and advertising, the company said. "We believe a potential relationship with Tik Tok US in partnership with Microsoft could add this key functionality and provide Walmart with an important way for us to reach and serve omnichannel customers as well as grow our third-party marketplace and advertising businesses."

Walmart added, "We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of US Tik Tok users while satisfying the concerns of US government regulators."

Sources told CNBC that TikTok is expected to announce a sale "as soon as next week," ahead of Trump's September 15 deadline and that the transaction is expected to be valued at between $20 billion and $30 billion.

TikTok sues Trump admin., says ban is unconstitutional and political

App accuses Trump of banning it in order to drum up anti-China sentiment for election.

KATE COX - 8/24/2020, 2:42 PM

Enlarge / TikTok's US operations may soon be part of every cool teen's favorite conglomerates, Microsoft and Walmart.

TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, filed suit today in federal court arguing that President Donald Trump's efforts to ban the app or force a sale to a US firm are not grounded in facts but instead are part of an "anti-China political campaign."

An executive order curtailing TikTok's US operations "is not rooted in bona fide national security concerns," TikTok argues in its complaint (PDF). "Independent national security and information security experts have criticized the political nature of this executive order, and expressed doubt as to whether its stated national security objective is genuine," the company adds.

TikTok's complaint seeks to prevent the president and the Department of Commerce from "impermissively banning" the app, alleging that the authority under which the order was enacted (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA) was a "gross misappropriation" and "a pretext for furthering the President's broader campaign of anti-China rhetoric in the run-up to the US election."

The complaint goes on:

Past presidents have used this power responsibly to protect the country from genuine threats from abroad ... Through this executive order, however, President Trump seeks to use IEEPA against TikTok Inc., a US company—headquartered in Los Angeles with hundreds of employees the United States—to destroy an online community where millions of Americans have come together to express themselves, share video content, and make connections with each other. The order imposes these restrictions despite express limitations in IEEPA barring executive actions from restricting personal communications or the transmission of informational materials.

The White House earlier this month officially declared the existence of TikTok—along with another Chinese app, WeChat—to be a national emergency, and issued an executive order prohibiting anyone from making "transactions" with it and effectively ending its ability to operate inside the United States. The order alleged that TikTok's data collection practices, "threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information—potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage."

TikTok has vehemently and repeatedly denied the allegations, arguing that its US customer data is handled on servers based in the United States and Singapore and kept separate from the data collected by ByteDance's other products in China.
The fight goes on

The idea that TikTok might present a threat to national security was first publicly floated in October, when Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked the Director of National Intelligence to launch a probe. Reports then surfaced in November that TikTok was indeed facing review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which evaluates transactions in which an international business acquires part or all of a US business for national security concerns.

Trump declares TikTok, WeChat “national emergency,” preps bans

TikTok's competition also may have dropped a bug in the administration's ear last fall, The Wall Street Journal reported late yesterday, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly pushed the administration toward investigating TikTok around that time.

Sources told the WSJ that at a dinner in October, Zuckerberg told Trump specifically that the rise of Chinese firms can harm American businesses. Zuckerberg also discussed TikTok in meetings last fall with several sitting senators, the WSJ reports.

The administration publicly floated the idea of banning TikTok and other China-based social media apps outright in early July. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News in an interview that a ban was "something we're looking at." Pompeo in the interview framed a potential ban as being in line with the administration's actions against other Chinese tech firms, such as Huawei and ZTE.

Trump on August 3 personally issued an ultimatum telling TikTok it had until September 15 to sell to a US buyer if it wanted to keep operating inside the United States. Microsoft at the time publicly confirmed it was considering a way to purchase TikTok's US assets. Trump at the time said: "We set a date, I set a date, of around September 15th, at which point it's going to be out of business in the United States. But if somebody, whether it’s Microsoft or somebody else, buys it, that'll be interesting." Since then, Oracle has also reportedly thrown its hat in the ring.

The administration's formal move to ban TikTok came only three days later, seemingly launched as part of the administration's "Clean Network," initiative, a set of goals to keep Chinese firms far away from US consumers, networks, and technologies

Why Trump's China animus couldn't sell in academia

Hannan Hussain

Harvard University. /VCG

Editor's note: Hannan Hussain is an assistant researcher at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and an author. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN. 

The U.S. government has no right to pressure American universities into divesting from China – that was the message from the country's higher education institutions after the Trump administration issued a call to remove China-based companies from institutional endowments.

"The boards of your institution's endowment funds have a moral obligation, and perhaps even a fiduciary duty, to ensure that your institution has clean investments and clean endowment funds," said Keith Krach, the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, in a recent letter. "I urge you to divest from [Chinese] companies that are on the Entity List or that contribute to human rights violations."  

The weakest link in Krach's appeal is his use of morality and politics to authorize government interference in academic endowments – particularly those concerning China. Harvard Professor William Kirby called the bluff on that argument, condemning the government's intimidation-heavy approach towards Beijing and its surface-level knowledge of Harvard's endowment process. "Few or no portions of [the endowment] could be tied to 'individual' Chinese stocks," Kirby said.

In his attempt to pit American universities against Chinese stocks, Krach also falsely accused Chinese companies of sidestepping U.S. audit transparency requirements. The allegation is part of a broader Trump administration campaign to forcefully delist Chinese firms from U.S. stock exchanges – a campaign criticized for its political manipulation and lack of clarity.

U.S. academia helps put that criticism into perspective. Dr. Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education – the leading U.S. higher education lobby group – touched on the legitimacy of Chinese stocks on U.S. financial markets by underlining their availability to American investors, including universities.

Screenshot of the letter written by U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach to U.S. university governing boards on China's influence on the U.S. education sector, August 18, 2020.

There is also evidence to establish the reliability of cooperation between American universities and Chinese companies. According to a 2019 Bloomberg investigation, U.S. academic institutions have consistently experienced a sizable return on investments from Chinese companies. This provides a compelling justification for U.S. universities and colleges to sustain their multibillion-dollar investment stakes in competitive Chinese ventures.

Another report, by the Wall Street Journal in August, suggests that it is standard practice for endowment funds to be kept only partly public, raising questions about the U.S. government's political oversight of autonomous institutional dealings. Krach also incorrectly implies that American universities must treat federal compliance as a matter of "moral obligation," when it is the State Department that lacks the authorization to demand institutions divest from Chinese stocks.

Interestingly, U.S. universities are long-time observers of the Trump administration's deliberate escalations with Beijing. Academics have protested the U.S. government's controversial ban on selective Chinese students earlier this year, defending student contributions to cutting-edge research and scientific innovation in America. Numerous universities across the U.S., including Princeton, redoubled their efforts to confront selective visa restrictions on Chinese students by the Trump administration.

Moreover, proposals to discriminate against Chinese nationals in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) triggered nationwide student activism from Stanford to Texas State University.

Above all, top American research centers – such as the Harvard Ash Center – continued to release findings that improved global understanding of the Chinese public, regardless of the Trump administration's push for more anti-China actions.

Hence, it is this same thread that runs through Professor Kirby and Dr. Hartle's rejection of Trump's divestment demands – an unwillingness to present American universities as a battleground for U.S.-China relations and calling out the administration for its implausible reasoning.

It is fair to point out that Beijing made these points categorically clear back in June – that only reason and respect can bring the American and Chinese people together.