Israel shuts Mediterranean  shore after oil devastates coast

Israel Whale

Danny Morick, marine veterinarian, and Aviad Scheinin take samples from a 17 meters (about 55 feet) long dead fin whale washed up on a beach in Nitzanim Reserve, Israel, Friday, Feb. 19, 2021. Aviad Scheinin of the Morris Kahn Marine Research Station said samples from the animal will be taken to try to determine a cause of death, officials said the water nearby is polluted, including with tar. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Sun, February 21, 2021, ILAN BEN ZION

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel closed all its Mediterranean beaches until further notice on Sunday, days after an offshore oil spill deposited tons of tar across more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) of coastline in what officials are calling one of the country's worst ecological disasters.

Activists began reporting globs of black tar on Israel's coast last week after a heavy storm. The deposits have wreaked havoc on local wildlife, and the Israeli Agriculture Ministry determined Sunday that a dead young fin whale that washed up on a beach in southern Israel died from ingesting the viscous black liquid, according to Kan, Israel's public broadcaster.

Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority has called the spill “one of the most serious ecological disasters” in the country’s history. In 2014, a crude oil spill in the Arava Desert caused extensive damage to one of the country's delicate ecosystems.

The Environmental Protection Ministry and activists estimate that at least 1,000 tons of tar, a product of an oil spill from a ship in the eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, have already washed up on shore. The ministry is trying to determine who is responsible. It declined commenting on details of the investigation because it was ongoing.

Yoav Ratner, coordinator of the ministry's oil spill contingency plan, said that there were still many “unknown unknowns” about the extent of the ecological damage and therefore it was difficult to say how long clean-up would take.

Thousands of volunteers took to the beaches on Saturday to help clean up the tar, and several were hospitalized after they inhaled toxic fumes. The military also deployed thousands of soldiers to assist in the operation.

The Environmental Protection, Health and Interior Ministries issued a joint statement Sunday warning the public not to visit the entire length of the country's 120-mile (195 km) Mediterranean coastline, cautioning that “exposure to tar can be harmful to public health.”

Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel told Hebrew media that her department estimates the clean-up project will cost millions of dollars.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured one of the country’s tar-pocked beaches on Sunday and praised the ministry’s work.

Representatives from a coalition of Israeli environmental groups said in a press conference on Sunday that the ministry was woefully underfunded and that existing legislation did little to prevent or address environmental disasters.

Arik Rosenblum, director of the Israeli environmental group EcoOcean, said that the Environmental Protection Ministry is “fighting this situation and many other situations with their hands tied behind their back” because of inadequate legislation.

They cautioned that this disaster should be a wake-up call for opposition to a planned oil pipeline connecting the United Arab Emirates and Israeli oil facilities in Eilat — home to endangered Red Sea coral reefs.

'I also defaulted': Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley reveals her experience with student loan debt

Aarthi Swaminathan
·Reporter
Fri, February 19, 2021


Ayanna Pressley

In a heartfelt moment speaking about racial disparities related to student debt, Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) recently revealed that she defaulted on her student loans at one point.

"Like 85% of Black students, I had to borrow; and like so many of those students, I also defaulted on those loans," Pressley said during a press conference organized by the American Federation of Teachers. "We know that Black and Brown students are five times more likely to default for those loans, than our white counterparts."

Ricardo Sanchez, a spokesperson for the congresswoman, confirmed her experience with Yahoo Finance and stated: “Congresswoman Pressley, like many Black women who have disproportionately borne the impact of the student debt crisis, had student loans that were in default for a period of time and have since been paid off. With the public health and economic crisis worsening daily, she is committed to fighting for broad-based student debt cancellation—which would help reduce the racial wealth gap and stimulate our economy—and robust federal investments in education to make tuition-free college a reality.”


U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts raises her hand during a memorial service for George Floyd at North Central University, on Thursday, June 4, 2020, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

'The typical Black borrower owed about $17,500 more'

The experience of Pressley, who previously described student debt cancellation as "a matter of racial and economic justice across our country," is similar to other Americans of color who live with a student loan debt burden.

"Decades of systemic racism and discriminatory policies like redlining and predatory lending... systematically denied Black and Latinx families the opportunity to build wealth," Pressley said, "forcing our families to take on greater rates of student debt, just for the chance at the same degree as our white counterparts, and contributing to the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis that is disproportionately borne by black and brown communities."

A Demos report based on credit records of 35,000 student debtors, sampled from Experian’s entire credit database in December 2014, found that Black student debtors "are 16 percent more likely to be in default or seriously delinquent than white student debtors; Latino borrowers are 8 percent more likely."

Growing up in a single-parent household, Pressley explained, she was the first person in her immediate family to pursue higher education "and there wasn't anyone to hold my hand or a walk you through the college application process, or to fully explain what I was signing on to when I was signing all these documents."

A report from Brookings Institute by Judith Scott-Clayton noted that 38% of Black first-time college students in 2004 had defaulted within 12 years. That number is more than three times higher than white students' performance. Projecting those rates to 20 years out, the author added that as many as 70% of Black borrowers "may ultimately experience default."


(Screenshot from Brookings report)

According to a report by the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, Black students are not only more likely to take on more student debt than their white peers but also more likely to carry that debt for longer periods of time.

Comparing the student cohort that started college in 1995-96, the researchers found while 43% of white students didn't take on any student loans, only 25% of Black students were able to avoid taking on debt to fund school.

Furthermore, the "the typical Black student borrower took out about $3,000 more in loans than their White peers," the authors stated, and "the typical Black borrower owed about $17,500 more than their White peers" 20 years later.


(Screenshot of report by Brandeis University)

"Several Black [woman politicians] have now talked openly about having debt," Louise Seamster, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, told Yahoo Finance. But the stigma of having debt lingers, she added, such as when Stacey Abrams disclosed that she had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when running for public office. Pressley's colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has also tweeted on February 17 that she took on "thousands of dollars in debt" to attend a for-profit college.

"While it doesn't match our image of what Congresspeople are facing," Seamster added, "it's a sign of how stark the racial disparities are, that you can be successful and still not be able to pay off your student debt quickly."

Seamster added that defaulting on student loans was an issue that is often misunderstood.

"We think of debt as an individual thing that's shameful, it's your individual burden," she explained. "And default is thought of as shameful... but this idea of default contributes to a false narrative."


This chart shows how the government's interest-free forbearance on federal loans has caused the delinquency rate to drop sharply. (Screenshot: New York Fed)

While executive orders have paused student loan payments for federally-backed debt amid the coronavirus pandemic, sending the overall delinquency rate plummeting, it's unclear how this will play out once the payment pause is lifted.

Democrats, including Pressley, are urging President Joe Biden to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for roughly 43 million Americans through executive order.

Some experts argue that forgiveness could be a way to partly remedy the racial disparities created by the U.S. student loan system.

VIDEO

Read more:

AOC to struggling student loan borrower: 'Don't lose hope!'

Biden pressed to crack down on troubled college accrediting body saved by Trump

WHO Panel to Recommend ‘Deeper’ Study into First COVID Patient


Brittany Bernstein
Sun, February 21, 2021




A World Health Organization panel will recommend more comprehensive contact tracing of the first known COVID-19 patient in Wuhan, China and the supply chain of the wildlife market where it is thought to have originated in its preliminary report into the origins of the coronavirus.

The panel will call on Chinese officials to conduct a deeper investigation into the contact history of the first known patient, who is believed to have contracted the virus on December 8, 2019, according to CNN. Investigators have described the patient as a white-collar worker in his forties who “lived a typical urban life.”

“He did not do crowded sporting activities. His main hobby was surfing the Internet,” said Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO investigation team.

The patient, who reportedly did not have a history of traveling far from home, revealed to the WHO team that his parents had visited a wet market in Wuhan shortly before he was infected.

“Then he said at the end of the interview — and it was all being translated and the translator, specifically said — ‘My parents visited a local community wet market,'” Daszak said.

That market is separate from the Huanan seafood market where experts believe the virus originated.

“Now, to use the term ‘wet market,’ especially under this political constraint we were under, tells me something very significant: that the other markets in Wuhan — not [only] Huanan market, other markets — sold wildlife products,” Daszak said.

Professor Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the network he was shocked that Chinese officials had not investigated “two important clues like that.”

“They have top-notch scientists, who are much more knowledgeable than most in terms of recognizing the importance of this information,” he said.

The panel will also recommend an immediate probe into the supply chain of the Huanan seafood market, according to CNN.

Chinese scientists gave the WHO team a list of farms in the southern provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong that supplied the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan with wildlife, Daszak said.

“There will be recommendations that will include going down to those farms, testing farmers, interviewing and testing relatives, and finding out if there is any evidence that there were outbreaks down there before Wuhan,” Daszak said.

The team announced earlier this month that the virus was likely spread from an animal to humans, calling a theory that the virus was released in a lab accident “extremely unlikely.”

“Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific, targeted research,” WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek said then.

“However, the findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population,” Embarek said. “Therefore it is not a hypothesis that we advise to suggest future studies . . . into the understanding of the origin of the virus.”

Health experts have said that the novel coronavirus likely originated in Wuhan, China in November 2019. Scientists in recent months have questioned whether the virus originated at a live animal market in Wuhan or was the result of a lab accident at one of the city’s two laboratories — the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control — that had been studying coronaviruses that originated in bats.

China has argued that the virus did not start within its borders and instead has peddled other theories that the virus may have originated elsewhere.

The WHO team, which draws on experts from ten countries, is considering several theories for how the disease first ended up in humans. The team’s work is meant to be an initial step in investigating the origins of the virus, which is believed to have originated in bats before being passed to humans via another species of wild animal, such as a pangolin or bamboo rat.

Mexico’s Controversial Coronavirus Czar Gets COVID-19

By Rodrigo Cervantes

Published: Saturday, February 20, 2021 

 Download mp3 (946.02 KB)

Gobierno de México

Mexican Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s coronavirus czar has become a well-known controversial character in his country. While he heads the strategy to fight the pandemic, he has been criticized for not following the same health protocols he recommends.  And this weekend he revealed that he has contracted COVID-19. 

Hugo López-Gatell is Mexico’s undersecretary of health, leading the fight against COVID-19 along with the president. 

On Saturday, López-Gatell tweeted that he has mild symptoms of the virus, and that he will continue working from home.

López-Gatell has faced criticisms for his policies, arguments and personal approaches to the pandemic. He once defended the president for not wearing facemasks, arguing that he is a source of morality and not of infection.

The undersecretary was recently exposed vacationing in a beach not following health protocols, and he offers press conferences without a face mask.

Critics say López-Gatell’s pandemic strategy has been exceedingly relaxed, while the vaccination numbers are still very low.

Did nuclear spy devices in the Himalayas trigger India floods?


Soutik Biswas - India correspondent
Sat, February 20, 2021, 

Nanda Devi, India's second highest peak, is near the country's north-eastern border with China.

In a village in the Indian Himalayas, generations of residents have believed that nuclear devices lie buried under the snow and rocks in the towering mountains above.

So when Raini got hit by a huge flood earlier in February, villagers panicked and rumours flew that the devices had "exploded" and triggered the deluge. In reality, scientists believe, a piece of broken glacier was responsible for the flooding in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, in which more than 50 people have died.

But tell that to the people of Raini - the farming mountain village with 250 households - and many don't quite believe you. "We think that the devices could have played a role. How can a glacier simply break off in winter? We think the government should investigate and find the devices," Sangram Singh Rawat, the headman of Raini, told me.


At the heart of their fears is an intriguing tale of high-altitude espionage, involving some of the world's top climbers, radioactive material to run electronic spy systems, and spooks.

It is a story about how the US collaborated with India in the 1960s to place nuclear-powered monitoring devices across the Himalayas to spy on Chinese nuclear tests and missile firings. China had detonated its first nuclear device in 1964.

"Cold War paranoia was at its height. No plan was too outlandish, no investment too great and no means unjustified," notes Pete Takeda, a contributing editor at US's Rock and Ice Magazine, who has written extensively on the subject.

In October 1965, a group of Indian and American climbers lugged up seven plutonium capsules along with surveillance equipment - weighing some 57kgs (125 pounds) - which were meant to be placed on top of the 7,816-metre (25,643-ft) Nanda Devi, India's second highest peak, and near India's north-eastern border with China.

A blizzard forced the climbers to abandon the climb well short of the peak. As they scampered down, they left behind the devices - a six-foot-long antenna, two radio communication sets, a power pack, and the plutonium capsules - on a "platform".

One magazine reported that they were left in a "sheltered cranny" on a mountainside which was sheltered by the wind. "We had to come down. Otherwise many climbers would have been killed," Manmohan Singh Kohli, a celebrated climber who worked for the main border patrol organisation and led the Indian team, said.

When the climbers returned to the mountain next spring to look for the device and haul it back to the peak, they had vanished.


Captain MS Kohli, an internationally-renowned climber, led the Indian team

More than half a century later and after a number of hunting expeditions to Nanda Devi, nobody knows what happened to the capsules.

"To this day, the lost plutonium likely lies in a glacier, perhaps being pulverised to dust, creeping towards the headwaters of the Ganges," wrote Mr Takeda.

This could well be an exaggeration, say scientists. Plutonium is the main ingredient of an atomic bomb. But plutonium batteries use a different isotope (a variant of a chemical element) called plutonium-238, which has a half-life (the amount of time taken for one-half of a radioactive isotope to decay) of 88 years.

What survives are the stories of a fascinating expedition.

In his book Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary, British travel writer Hugh Thompson recounts how the American climbers were asked to use an Indian sun tan lotion to darken their skins so that they didn't evoke suspicion among locals; and how the climbers were told to pretend that they were on a "high altitude programme" to study the effects of low oxygen on their bodies. The porters who carried up the nuclear luggage were told it was a "treasure of some sort, possibly gold".

Before that, the climbers, reported Outside, an American magazine, were taken to Harvey Point, a CIA base in North Carolina, for a crash course in "nuclear espionage". There, a climber told the magazine, that "after a while, we spent most of our time playing volleyball and doing some serious drinking".


A set of devices were finally placed on the peak of Nanda Kot

The botched expedition was kept a secret in India until 1978, when the Washington Post picked up the story reported by Outside, and wrote that the CIA had hired American climbers, including members of a successful recent summit of Mount Everest, to place nuclear-powered devices on two peaks of the Himalayas to spy on the Chinese.

The newspaper confirmed that the first expedition ended in the loss of the instrument in 1965, and the "second foray happened two years later and ended in what one former CIA official termed a "partial success".

In 1967, a third attempt to plant a fresh set of devices, this time on an adjacent and easier 6,861-metre (22,510-ft) mountain called Nanda Kot, had succeeded. A total of 14 American climbers, had been paid $1,000 a month for their work to put the spying devices in the Himalayas over three years.

In April 1978, India's then prime minister Morarji Desai dropped a "bombshell" in the parliament when he disclosed that India and the US had collaborated at "top level" to plant these nuclear-powered devices on the Nanda Devi. But Desai did not say how far the mission was successful, according to a report.

Declassified US State Department cables from the same month talk about some 60 people demonstrating outside the embassy in Delhi against "alleged CIA activities in India". The protesters carried signs, saying "CIA Quit India" and "CIA is poisoning our waters".

As for the lost nuclear devices in the Himalayas, nobody quite knows what happened to them. "Yeah, the device got avalanched and stuck in the glacier and God knows what effects that will have," Jim McCarthy, one of the American climbers, told Mr Takeda.

Climbers say a small station in Raini regularly tested the waters and sand from the river for radioactivity, but it is unclear whether they got any evidence of contamination.

"Until the plutonium [the source of the radio-activity in the power pack] deteriorates, which may take centuries, the device will remain a radioactive menace that could leak into the Himalayan snow and infiltrate the Indian river system through the headwaters of the Ganges," Outside had reported.

I asked Captain Kohli, now 89, whether he regretted being part of an expedition which ended up leaving nuclear devices in the Himalayas

"There is no regret or happiness. I was just following orders," he said.

What Ever Happened to Daniel Dale? CNN Fact-Checker Has Disappeared From Air Post-Trump

By Tommy Christopher

Feb 20th, 2021, MEDIAITE

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale was one of the busiest people in the cable news business for several years, but he has almost completely disappeared from the network’s programming over the past month or so. What happened?

Dale became a veritable household name among cable news viewers during Trump’s presidency after his work for the Toronto Star, tallying and debunking false or misleading statements by Trump, landed him a national gig with CNN.

Since joining CNN in June of 2019, Dale has appeared or been mentioned on the network more than once every other day on average, according to the Internet Archive.

That exposure dropped sharply after November 4, and according to the TV Eyes media monitoring database, since President Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, Dale has only appeared on the network once. And that appearance, last Friday, was to fact-check Donald Trump’s lawyers.

Dale is still doing presidential fact-checks, but they have thus far been relegated to CNN’s website. As John Avlon pointed out earlier this month, there’s just something different about the exercise these days.

Noting the growth in fact-checking during the Trump presidency, Avlon said “In the opening days of the Biden presidency, fact checkers have been adjusting to a new normal. Take this headline from CNN Daniel Dale. He went through Biden’s big economic speech and found seven claims worth fact checking. The accuracy was usually a question of calculations or characterizations. Debatable details but far from willful lies.”

Indeed, Dale did perform a fact-check of Biden’s CNN town hall this week, and the result was 4 claims that were statistically inaccurate to varying degrees, and a pair of others that required additional context.

For example, Dale dinged Biden for misquoting Trump’s Proud Boys “Stand back and stand by” line, while noting that Biden stipulated his retelling may not have been exact:

Biden said, “You may remember in one of my debates with the former President, I asked him to condemn the Proud Boys. He wouldn’t do it. He said, ‘Stand by. Stand ready.’ Or whatever the phrasing exactly was.”

Facts First: Biden, who conceded that he might not be correctly reciting Trump’s debate quote, was indeed off at least slightly. After debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, and Biden interjected to mention the Proud Boys in particular, Trump said: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” So Biden got Trump’s “stand by” right, but he replaced Trump’s “stand back” with a “stand ready” — arguably a significant distinction.

We won’t call the claim flat false because Biden made clear he was uncertain.

After a presidency that featured an average of 21 false or misleading claims per day over 4 years, according to The Washington Post, Dale seems to have his work cut out for him if he wants to remain a cable news fixture for the next four years.

Watch the clip  via CNN.

Top U.S. Firms Stop Donations To Republicans Supporting Trump's 'Big Lie'

Artie Villasanta
Updated February 21, 2021 

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump protest in front of the 

U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, U.S. January 6, 2021.

(Photo: Stephanie Keith/REUTERS)

A number of major U.S. corporations continue to punish Republican members of the U.S. Congress that voted against certifying President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory despite the violent and deadly insurrection last Jan. 6 instigated by ex-president Donald Trump

At least 10 corporations slashed donations to Republican Party candidates seeking federal office by more than 90% in January. These companies had earlier vowed to stop making political donations to Republican congressmen who supported Trump's "Big Lie," or his attempt to overturn his election defeat by alleging massive fraud committed by Democrats.

Among these corporations were Microsoft Corporation, Walmart Inc, AT&T Inc and Comcast Corporation. None of the political action committees (PACs) of the 10 major companies donated to any of the 147 congressional Republicans that voted to support Trump's Big Lie, said Reuters.


In addition, PACs from Best Buy Co Inc, State Street Corporation, Dow Inc and Nike Inc didn't report new donations to any of these 147 congressmen in January. Many large U.S. corporations, especially technology firms, tend to support the Democratic Party because their leaderships share the same set of liberal values with Democrats.

The Republican congressmen in question still voted to support Trump during the validation of Electoral College votes just hours after a mob incited to action by Trump launched a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Data from the U.S. Federal Election Commission the corporate PACs affiliated with these 10 companies only made $13,000 in new donations to other candidates in January.

The money donated during January was less than one-tenth of the $190,000 the PACs of these 10 companies donated in January 2017. It's also puny when compared to the $10 million donated to candidates during the 2019-2020 election cycle.

The 147 Congressmen that voted to overturn President Joe Biden's victory received more than $2 million from these 10 PACs during the last two-year political cycle.

Only PACs from General Electric Company and American Express Company reported any new giving to other federal candidates in January.

American Express' PAC gave $5,000 to Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota who voted not to impeach Trump last week. Thune last week blasted Republicans and party leaders for engaging in "cancel culture" by censuring the seven GOP senators who found Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection.

GE gave $5,000 to Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a prominent Republican Trump critic, and $1,000 to Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington, a Democrat.

LAS VEGAS SUN EDITORIAL:

Americans deserve to know the whole truth about what happened Jan. 6

JOHN MINCHILLO / AP

In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo rioters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington.

Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021 | 2 a.m.

In announcing the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took appropriate action.

But a thorough investigation is also critical from the standpoint that Republican Party leaders are warping the truth about the event — downplaying its severity and trying to convince Americans that their alarm over it wasn’t warranted.The nation needs to know much more about the insurrection, particularly how it was fomented and why the Capitol was so lightly protected. Key questions remain, including whether Capitol security forces or Congress and its staff either inadvertently aided the rioters or, more disturbingly, did it knowingly.

It’s important to counter this GOP gaslighting with hard facts.

As is, Republican leaders and their abettors in right-wing media are attempting to normalize the attack and numb Americans to its significance.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin provided the latest example, saying he didn’t consider the attack an armed insurrection and was “literally never afraid” as it played out. The whole thing was overblown by the media, he said.

“When you hear the word ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?” Johnson asked. “Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask: How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired?”

Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson made similar remarks in the immediate aftermath of the riot, ridiculing those who were already calling for a major investigation and suggesting that the violence was merely a protest. After showing video of members of Congress calling the riot an insurrection, Carlson smirked: “According to the Honorable Jim McGovern (a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts) and everyone else you just saw on the screen, this was not a protest, how dare you call it that? This was an insurrection. Insurrection insurrection insurrection! Write that a hundred times on the board and don’t forget it. I-n-s-u-r-r-e-c-t-i-o-n. Insurrection. Learn it. Love it.”

With remarks like this, the GOP leadership wants Americans to disbelieve what they witnessed with their own eyes and ears: Law enforcement officers being beaten with bats, flag poles, hockey sticks or whatever kind of club the attackers could get their hands on; people chanting “Hang Mike Pence”; rioters shattering windows and roaming the halls hunting for victims; pipe bombs being discovered; tasers visible in the hands of rioters (including one used on a police officer who suffered a mild heart attack as a result); guns found in a vehicle near the Capitol, and Lord knows how many concealed in the rioters’ clothing.

According to Johnson, Carlson and the like, though, this was just a political gathering where a few of the good ol’ boys and gals in the crowd decided to take an impromptu tour through the Capitol. Yeah, maybe a few of them got kind of riled up, but it was nothing to get excited about. It certainly wasn’t an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the electoral results and overturn the results of the election.

All wrong, of course. This wasn’t just a bunch of cosplay idiots letting off steam, it was an organized assault that left five people dead and dozens injured in its immediate aftermath, including a law enforcement officer. It was the most serious attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812, and it left Americans stunned and agonized over what they’d witnessed.

News that has emerged since the attack adds to the concerns. Law enforcement officers and former military personnel were arrested for allegedly taking part. It’s been revealed that the insurrectionists had been planning the attack on social media, right under the noses of authorities. The former chief of the U.S. Capitol Police claims officials were aware of the threat well before the rally and asked congressional security officials to call in assistance from the National Guard, but were rebuffed.

It’s time to get a full look at what happened.

Pelosi’s plan calls for the establishment of a bipartisan investigatory panel similar to the 9/11 Commission, the successful undertaking that resulted in dozens of hearings and an authoritative 561-page report about the terrorist attack.

The key now is to establish the Jan. 6 commission in a way that is truly independent and bipartisan, which may be a tall order in today’s polarized political environment. But the good news is that both Republicans and Democrats are calling for such an approach.

They owe it to Americans to follow through, especially to the survivors of those who were killed that day and to the many who were injured. Beyond that, the information is important in defending against the GOP misinformation loop that is crippling the country.

HAPPY HAPPY HYDROCARBONS
Natural Gas Companies Have Their Own Plans To Go Low-Carbon


February 21, 2021


CASSANDRA PROFITA


FROM

A lower-carbon natural gas flame burns on a stovetop at a NW Natural testing facility.Cassandra Profita/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Darren Arnold lights the burners on a natural gas stove at a testing facility near Portland, Ore. He's using a new, lower-carbon gas mixture for NW Natural, a gas utility that serves 770,000 customers across the region.

"For a cooktop burner, we're looking for a nice blue flame, nice little peaks on the tips of the flame," he says. "So everything looks really good. We'll also check the oven."

Though it's burning a different fuel mixture, it still works like a regular gas stove. That's a key part of his company's plan to lower its carbon output, with an eventual goal of being a carbon-neutral gas system by 2050.

Fossil fuel companies face an existential threat as more governments and businesses tackle climate change and vow to zero-out carbon emissions. President Biden has a plan to do that in the U.S., and some gas companies are recognizing they need a survival plan for the future.

Dozens of cities have moved to restrict or ban natural gas in new buildings and use renewable electricity for heating and cooking instead. But gas companies, which have launched expensive public-relations campaigns in response, say that's not the only way to decarbonize.

Kim Heiting, senior vice president of operations for NW Natural, says her company's pipelines — a vast network of them — don't have to deliver fossil fuels.

"Let's use them differently," she says. "Let's think about the gas grid as we think about the electric grid and just change what's going through those pipes."

Heiting says NW Natural could continue fueling home furnaces, appliances and industrial plants with a carbon-neutral mixture of renewable gas that would come from a variety of sources.

ENVIRONMENT
General Motors Aims To Be Carbon Neutral By 2040

First, they'd capture the methane or biogas that's being emitted from rotting food, cow manure, wastewater and sewage treatment plants. They'd clean it and put the resulting biomethane, or renewable natural gas, into the company's pipelines.

Heiting says burning that methane is a way of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are currently contributing to climate change. Methane released from dairy farms, for example, has far more global warming potential than the carbon dioxide released when that methane is burned.

"Those gases can now be captured, cleaned up and used interchangeably with conventional natural gas," Heiting says, "allowing them to flow through the pipeline system and providing a very similar climate benefit to wind and solar."

The supply of waste methane is limited, though. Even gas industry research has found there isn't enough renewable natural gas supply to replace all the natural gas we're using now. So the company would then mix that lower-carbon gas with hydrogen gas, which has no carbon emissions when it's burned.

Think about the natural gas distribution and storage system as a massive battery for wind and solar energy.

Kim Heiting, NW Natural utility company

Heiting says her company could even make its own hydrogen gas. NW Natural is talking with an electric utility in Oregon about building a production plant that would use renewable electricity to make hydrogen gas by splitting the hydrogen from the oxygen in water.

"Think about the natural gas distribution and storage system as a massive battery for wind and solar energy," Heiting says. "Those are the kinds of tools we're going to need if we're truly going to achieve deep decarbonization economy-wide."

There are numerous sources of hydrogen gas, however, and some methods of manufacturing it use natural gas and generate carbon emissions that are sequestered to create what's known as "blue" hydrogen.

Heiting says her company would likely use a combination of hydrogen from various sources, including low-carbon "blue" hydrogen and carbon-free "green" hydrogen which is made using renewable electricity from wind, solar and hydropower. And she's hoping the Biden administration will put in new incentives to help cover the costs.

ENVIRONMENT
U.S. Officially Rejoins Paris Agreement On Climate Change

"This is not going to happen without policy support," she says. "We need production tax credits for renewable natural gas and hydrogen just like we put in place for wind and solar."

Other gas companies are developing similar plans for decarbonizing with renewable gas, and other countries are too.

"The rest of the world is kind of already on this," says Evan Ramsey, a renewable energy systems specialist with the nonprofit Bonneville Environmental Foundation. "In the U.S., we're a little bit behind."

Ramsey has helped utilities and major companies like Intel and Walmart switch to cleaner energy, and he says making hydrogen would be a great way to use large amounts of excess wind, solar and hydropower that can be difficult to store as electricity.

That's one of the goals of Europe's plan to invest billions in renewable hydrogen production as part of its path to net-zero carbon emissions.

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Darren Arnold of NW Natural tests a natural gas stove to see how well it works when it's burning a lower carbon gas mixture.

Cassandra Profita/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Ramsey says hydrogen could be a viable option for decarbonizing shipping and aviation fuel as well as energy-intensive industries such as steel production. Meanwhile, countries around the world have already launched pilot projects to test hydrogen blends in the gas pipes serving homes and businesses — just as NW Natural aims to do.

"Hydrogen is pretty well suited to solve a lot of problems at once and really be this unifier between renewable energy and our society's energy needs," Ramsey says. "This is a big opportunity for oil and gas companies, but also for electric utilities and renewable developers."

But Sasan Saadat, research and policy analyst with the environmental group Earthjustice, says renewable gas from waste methane and hydrogen simply can't replace all the natural gas we're using today.

His group analyzed gas industry data and found only enough waste methane potential to cover 13% of current natural gas use in the U.S.

"You don't even have enough of this gas to make more than a dent in overall gas demand," he says. "So, it's sort of a dead end solution."

Saadat argues a lot of the waste methane used to make renewable natural gas isn't "renewable" in the same way as wind and solar power.

"A lot of it comes from poor management of resources and poor management of waste," he says. "You know, the sun has to shine and the wind has to blow, but we don't have to raise animals on factory farms that create these lagoons of manure that generate this amount of methane."

In his view, that means the amount of renewable natural gas that's genuinely sustainable is even smaller than the industry estimates. And there's a limit to how much hydrogen you can use in metal pipes without causing damage, Saadat says. Research suggests pipes and appliances would need to be replaced to handle a gas blend of more than about 20% hydrogen.

Saadat says the bottom line is we'll have to use way less gas to completely wipe out carbon emissions. His group is pushing cities to outright ban natural gas hookups in new buildings, and flagging the health risks of burning gas indoors to strengthen the case for switching to electricity.

Gas companies agree that gas use will have to decline as the world shifts to completely zero out carbon emissions. NW Natural's plan includes more energy efficiency, and it also offers customers carbon offsets for a small fee. By switching to renewable gas, the company hopes to have a place in a net-zero future — even if it is a smaller one.

Bill Gates: US faces 'tricky' task working with China on climate change

Max Zahn with Andy Serwer
Sun, February 21, 2021, 

President Joe Biden kicked off his administration with a flurry of executive orders on climate change that included cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline and rejoining the Paris Agreement. But his effort to address the issue extends beyond U.S. borders and faces a stiff diplomatic challenge with China, the world's largest emitter of carbon.

The Biden administration has already made climate change a key part of relations with the country, covering the topic in a recent two-hour call with Chinese President Xi Jinping weeks after Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry publicly criticized China’s steps to reduce emissions as insufficient.

In a new interview, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates — who said he has discussed climate change with Biden several times since the November election — told Yahoo Finance that China is "super important" to the global fight against climate change because it's a potential source of new technology and a huge player in the high-emitting industrial sector.

But environmental diplomacy with the country poses a "tricky" task for the Biden administration, which must navigate a "complex relationship" while urging China to speed up its emissions reduction, according to Gates.

In his new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster," Gates says rich countries should reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Speaking with Yahoo Finance, he noted that China's goals lag behind that timeline as it continues to back the carbon-intensive energy source coal.

"Their current commitment is zero by 2060," says Gates, former Microsoft (MSFT) CEO. "So how can we — in a win-win kind of way — get them to bring that date earlier, and not have them promoting coal in such a big way?"

That support for coal continues in domestic production as well as the Belt and Road Initiative, a set of China-led development projects worth billions of dollars spread across more than 100 countries, Gates said.

"They are huge in the industrial economy — almost half of the world's cement [and] half of the steel is made in that one country, some of it embedded in exports that they make," he adds. "They also finance coal plants, not just domestically, but as part of the Belt and Road initiative in other countries as well."

"The remaining coal, although there's a few plants in rich countries — and we need to get rid of those — it's really about China and India," he adds.

Biden inherits an adversarial approach to China taken up by his predecessor, President Donald Trump, which included a years-long trade war, restrictions on telecommunications company Huawei, and efforts to ban social media platform TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.

Gates, who in April downplayed criticism of China's early response to the coronavirus, has carried out philanthropic and public health initiatives in the country on a host of issues since the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation opened an office in the country in 2007.


Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates speak with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer.

Gates took a special interest in climate change over the course of electrification efforts undertaken in the developing world by the Gates Foundation in the early 2000s, when he realized that concerns about carbon emissions could limit energy growth in the developing world, he told The New York Times. His study of the issue culminated with a Ted Talk in 2010 called "Innovating to Zero!," describing the need for net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

In 2015, he helped launch the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a collection of private investors who back ventures that will help the world address climate change. Other investors include Amazon (AMZN) founder and outgoing CEO Jeff Bezos and Alibaba Group (BABA) co-founder Jack Ma.

Gates praised Kerry, saying he will make the U.S. relationship with China a central part his effort to galvanize global action on climate change.

"John Kerry is going to do his best to see if this isn't an area that that we're helping each other," Gates says.