‘Stand tall’: Jimmy Lai writes letter to Hong Kong journalists before sentencing

Helen Davidson in Taipei 

4/13/2021

The Hong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai has told his staff to “stand tall” in a letter from prison, days before being sentenced in two of several cases against him.

Separately on Tuesday, his fellow activist Joshua Wong was sentenced to a further four months in jail, concluding another of the growing number of trials in a sweeping crackdown.

Lai, the 72-year-old founder of Hong Kong tabloid Apple Daily, is in jail on remand after prosecutors successfully appealed against a court decision to grant him bail on national security charges.

On Tuesday, Apple Daily published a handwritten letter Lai sent to staff, urging them to take care of themselves.

“Freedom of speech is a dangerous job,” he wrote. “Please be careful not to take risks. Your own safety is very important.”

On the day of Lai’s arrest in August, hundreds of police raided the Apple Daily newsroom. It marked the start of an escalation in authorities’ moves against journalism in Hong Kong, which have since included the replacement of the head of public broadcaster RTHK, the cancellation of politically sensitive programmes, and the prosecution of a journalist who accessed a public database to investigate police brutality

.

Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters Jimmy Lai, founder of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, has written to staff from prison ahead of his sentencing

In his letter, Lai said it was “a journalist’s responsibility to uphold justice” but the situation in Hong Kong had deteriorated.

Related: Hong Kong activists plead guilty but say ‘history will absolve us’

“It is precisely this that we need to love and cherish ourselves. The era is falling apart before us, and it is time for us to stand tall.”

Lai, who is charged with foreign collusion offences, has not spoken publicly in months. Days after his arrest on national security charges, he said authorities “just want to show the teeth of the national security law, but they haven’t bitten yet. So let’s see what happens”.

On Tuesday, another high profile activist, 24-year-old Joshua Wong, was sentenced to an additional four months in jail for his involvement in an October 2019 unauthorised assembly and for violating an anti-mask law, Hong Kong Free Press reported.

Wong is already serving a 13-month sentence on other protest-related crimes, and is yet to face trial on charges under the national security law. Wong had pleaded guilty in January, and his co-accused, the veteran activist Koo Sze-yiu, was sentenced to five months in jail after pleading not guilty. Koo is being treated for late-stage cancer, and had just completed a jail term on a separate conviction.

Lai’s national security trial is pending, but earlier this month he was convicted over his involvement in one unauthorised protest, and last week he pleaded guilty over another. Sentencing for both is scheduled for Friday. The offences carrying maximum penalties of five years in prison.

The conviction relates to a rally on 18 August 2019, when an estimated 1.7 million people marched peacefully, but against police orders. The guilty plea was over a rally on 31 August, which had originally been called off by the organisers after police arrested pro-democracy lawmakers and activists, but crowds protested regardless. It later descended into violent clashes.

Lai’s co-accused include veteran activist Lee Cheuk Yan and five other leading pro-democracy figures. Martin Lee, an 82-year-old renowned barrister and former legislator considered the father of democracy in Hong Kong, is also facing sentencing for the first time on Friday.

Critics have argued the imposition of jail terms over the unauthorised protest offences would be disproportionate. In pleading guilty, Lee Cheuk Yan told the court: “History will absolve us.”

According to a transcript provided by Lee, he urged the judge to “understand my deep felt pain and sufferings to see how the state power had been using brute force against the people, and the sacrifices of so many Hongkongers who were injured, jailed or exiled, also to witness the deprivation of the basic rights of the people and the regression in democracy.”

“I saw my ideal crumbling but I will continue the struggle even though darkness is surrounding us. It is an ideal for which I am prepared for any sanction.”

More than 10,200 people have been arrested or charged over the 2019 mass protest movements, but just a fraction have reached the judicial system.

VEGAN DEATH RITE

Human Composting? 

Colorado Could Become Second State to Legalize Turning Your Body Into Soil After Death

Colorado may soon join Washington as the second state in the nation to legalize human composting

Georgia Slater 

PEOPLE

4/12/2021

© Provided by People Sabel Roizen/Recompose

According to The Denver Post, a bill has already passed one Colorado legislative chamber and is only a few votes and one signature away from allowing people to turn their bodies into soil after death.

The measure, which is sponsored by two Democrats and a Republican, does not allow the soil to be sold or used to grow food for human consumption. Combining the soil of multiple people is also prohibited under the bill.

According to Recompose, a human-composting company already in use in Washington, the process "requires one-eighth of the energy used in conventional burial or cremation" and saves "one metric ton of carbon dioxide per person."

The company's accelerated procedure costs about as much as cremation but is thought to be more environmentally friendly. One body can create a few hundred pounds of soil, according to Recompose.

RELATED:Los Angeles Lifts Cremation Restrictions as COVID Deaths Surge

© Provided by People Sabel Roizen/Recompose

To begin the process, a body is placed into a "cradle" and then transferred into a vessel filled with wood chips, alfalfa and straw. The body is then covered with more of that material and the vessels get stacked on top of one another.

 The bill has already passed in one legislative chamber

Katrina Spade, the founder and CEO of Recompose, said she thinks of the process as a "hotel for the dead." The bodies stay in a greenhouse-like facility for about 30 days where non-organic materials are sorted and screened as the body is transformed into soil, according to the Post.

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After this step, the soil is moved to a finishing container where it dries out for two to four weeks.

"It's an innovative idea in a state that prides itself on natural beauty and opportunities," Sen. Robert Rodriguez, a Democratic sponsor on the bill, said of human composting.

Denver resident Wendy Deboskey told the Post she was excited about the bill as the idea of human composting appeals to her as an environmentalist.

"It just seems like a really kind of natural and gentle way to be completely returned to the earth, only on an expedited basis," she said.

© Provided by People Recompose

The other sponsors on the bill, Democratic Rep. Brianna Titone and Republican Rep. Matt Soper, said they have also heard that others are looking forward to the option.

Such procedures aren't entirely uncommon.

When actor Luke Perry died in March 2019, he was buried in a special eco-friendly mushroom suit instead of a traditional casket, similar to the idea of human composting.

RELATED: Luke Perry Was Buried in Special Eco-Friendly Mushroom Suit, Reveals Daughter Sophie

His daughter Sophie Perry shared on Instagram at the time that the Beverly Hills, 90210 star excitedly discovered the suit, which "returns your body to the earth without harming the environment," and requested that he be buried in it when the time came.

According to Coeio.com, the company that designs the special burial option, the suit works to essentially speed up the decomposition process. It has built-in mushrooms and other microorganisms that work together to do this, as well as neutralize toxins found in the body and transfer nutrients to plant life.

Councilors approve energy plan that puts Edmonton on the road to a net-zero future

Edmonton is in a challenging position as GHG emissions have increased over the past decade. The city has one of the highest per capita emissions levels in the world at 18 tonnes per person.

CBC/Radio-Canada 

4/12/2021

© City of Edmonton Some homes built in the Blatchford neighbourhood are based on net-zero standards.

The City of Edmonton is moving toward being a low-carbon municipality within 30 years, and is adopting an energy transition strategy now to help get it there.

Council's executive committee agreed Monday that council as a whole should approve the Community Energy Transition Strategy at a meeting next week.

The plan aligns with goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to keep the global temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees above average, and to become carbon neutral by 2050.

The strategy would expand on current investments like the district energy system in the Blatchford neighbourhood, along with an electric vehicle charging infrastructure, more electric buses and LRT, and energy efficiency standards for new buildings.

The energy initiatives are estimated to cost Edmonton $100 million a year, plus capital costs for new city buildings starting in the 2023-2026 budget cycle.

The city would also need consistent investment totalling about $2.4 billion a year from the federal and provincial governments and the private sector.

Mayor Don Iveson said the city needs to set incentives and regulations while it's developing renewable energy industries.

"That's going to unlock hundreds of thousands of jobs answering these challenges and achieving carbon neutrality — a balanced carbon budget if you will — by 2050."

Edmonton is in a challenging position as GHG emissions have increased over the past decade. The city has one of the highest per capita emissions levels in the world at 18 tonnes per person.

Four major sources contribute to GHG emissions in Edmonton: transportation (31 per cent of total emissions); manufacturing, industry and construction (27 per cent); commercial and institutional buildings (20 per cent) and residential buildings (18 per cent).

 
Boost retrofits

The committee heard from 20 people at the meeting, including representatives from the city's Energy Transition Climate Resilience Committee.

One member, Shafraaz Kaba, encouraged council and administration to adopt any measures that will quickly advance the goal of zero emissions by 2050.

"We underline that every decision city council makes has to be a carbon decision," Kaba told the committee. "The time is now to make this happen."

The city's strategy would incorporate stricter regulations when constructing new homes and buildings, which could mean changes in zoning bylaws and codes.

Chandra Tomaras, program manager of the City Environmental Strategies department, said right now only seven per cent of renovation permits are related to energy retrofits.

That needs to be 10 times higher to reach the city's goals, she said.

"We need 10,12,13,000 homes a year being renovated for energy efficiency," Tomaras said.

Tomaras said one of the important steps in the plan requires partnerships and advice from industry to emission-neutral buildings.

Coun. Ben Henderson is calling for net-zero building standards to be adopted sooner rather than later.

Some things, like replacing furnaces, are easier to retrofit but the structure of a building is not, Henderson suggested.

"That's the bit that I'm worried about, that we are just building ourselves another set of neighbourhoods that are going to be our nightmare 10 years from now," Henderson said.

"I would love us to get there as fast as we possibly can."

Stephanie McCabe, manager of the urban form and corporate strategic development branch, said the city will continue to work with industry on establishing net-zero building standards and bring in regulations while watching the affordability of new housing.

New Zealand introduces climate change law for financial firms in world first


SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand has become the first country to introduce a law that will require banks, insurers and investment managers to report the impacts of climate change on their business, minister for climate change James Shaw said on Tuesday.

© Reuters/Henning Gloystein FILE PHOTO: The town of Glenorchy on Lake Wakatipu and Otago river New Zealand

All banks with total assets of more than NZ$1 billion ($703 million), insurers with more than NZ$1 billion in total assets under management, and all equity and debt issuers listed on the country's stock exchange will have to make disclosures.


"We simply cannot get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 unless the financial sector knows what impact their investments are having on the climate," Shaw said in a statement.

"This law will bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial and business decision making."

The bill, which has been introduced to the country's parliament and is expected to receive its first reading this week, requires financial firms to explain how they would manage climate-related risks and opportunities.

Around 200 of the country's biggest companies and several foreign firms that meet the NZ$1 billion threshold will come under the legislation.

Disclosures will be required for financial years beginning next year once the law is passed, meaning that the first reports will be made by companies in 2023.

The New Zealand government last September said it would make the financial sector report on climate risks and those unable to disclose would have to explain their reasons.

The New Zealand government has introduced several policies to lower emissions during its second term including promising to make its pubic sector carbon-neutral by 2025 and buy only zero-emissions public transport buses from the middle of this decade.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who returned to power last October delivering the biggest election victory for her centre-left Labour Party in half a century, had called climate change the "nuclear free moment of our generation."

($1 = 1.4227 New Zealand dollars)

(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Roads produce 84 PER CENT of plastic dust in the atmosphere
Ryan Morrison For Mailonline

4/12/2021

© Provided by Daily Mail 

Roads and the vehicles using them are responsible for 84 per cent of microplastics found in the atmosphere, according to the results of a new study.

Researchers from Utah State University examined different sources of atmospheric microplastic pollution found in the western US over a 14 month period.

These microscopic pieces of plastic pollution are so pervasive they affect how plants grow, waft through the air we breath, infiltrate the oceans, are found in the guts of insects in Antarctica and even in the human bloodstream, study authors warned.

The US team found that 84 per cent of microplastics in the atmosphere came from road dust, mainly tires, 11 per cent from sea spray and five per cent from agricultural soil.© Provided by Daily Mail Study authors found the majority of atmospheric microplastics came from roads, with sea spray (as bottles and packaging breaks down) coming in second

© Provided by Daily Mail Researchers from Utah State University examined different sources of atmospheric microplastic pollution found in the western US over a 14 month period

WHAT ARE MICROPLASTICS?


Microplastics are plastic particles measuring less than five millimetres.

Tonnes of plastic waste fails to get recycled and dealt with correctly.

They end up in waterways, the soil, oceans and even the atmosphere, breaking down over time from larger pieces of plastic waste.

They can also come from tire rubber as cars drive on roadways, and micro beads used in washing and fabrics.

Plastics don't break down for thousands of years, instead forming smaller and smaller particles that enter the atmosphere and climate system.

Scientists warn microplastics are so small they could penetrate organs.

Creatures of all shapes and sizes have been found to have consumed the plastics, whether directly or indirectly.

Janice Brahney, Natalie Mahowald, and colleagues examined major sources of atmospheric microplastics as well as the locations where it is concentrated.

They found microplastics from the land on the surface of the ocean and plastic from the ocean on land - suggesting it spreads through the atmosphere.

Hotspots for terrestrial microplastic sources and accumulation included Europe, Eastern Asia, the Middle East, India, and the US, study authors explained.

Overall, the greatest concentration of atmospheric microplastics was estimated to be over the ocean.

Depending on size, microplastics remained in the atmosphere from approximately one hour to 6.5 days, the latter long enough to take them to another continent.

Even the most remote continent on the Earth, Antarctica, received microplastic pollution from the atmosphere, despite having zero microplastic emissions.

The findings suggest that even after atmospheric microplastics settle on land or in water, they may reenter the atmosphere.

Understanding how microplastics move through global systems is essential to fixing the problem, said Brahney.

'Plastics enter the atmosphere ... not directly from garbage cans or landfills as you might expect ... but from old, broken-down waste that makes its way into large-scale atmospheric patterns,' the team explained.

Roads are a big source of atmospheric plastics, where vehicle tires churn and launch skyward the tiny pieces through strong vehicle-created turbulence.

Ocean waves, too, are full of insoluble plastic particles that used to be food wrappers, soda bottles, and plastic bags.

These 'legacy plastic' particles bob to the top layer of water and are churned by waves and wind, and catapulted into the air.

Dust and agriculture sources for airborne plastics factor more prominently in northern Africa and Eurasia, while road-produced sources had a big impact in heavily populated regions the world over

.

© Provided by Daily Mail These microscopic pieces of plastic pollution are so pervasive they affect how plants grow, waft through the air we breath, infiltrate the oceans, are found in the guts of insects in Antarctica and even in the human bloodstream, study authors warned

© Provided by Daily Mail The US team found that 84 per cent of microplastics in the atmosphere came from road dust, mainly tires, 11% from sea spray and five per cent from agricultural soil

This study is important, said Brahney, but it is just the beginning.

'Much more work is needed on this pressing problem to understand how different environments might influence the process - wet climates versus dry ones, mountainous regions versus flatlands,' she said.

'The world hasn't slowed its production or use of plastic, so these questions become more pressing every passing year.'

The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Microplastics in our air 'spiral the globe' in a cycle of pollution, study finds

By Jessie Yeung, CNN 

4/12/2021

Tiny bits of plastic from your packaging and soda bottles could be traveling in the atmosphere across entire continents, carried by winds, a new study found.

© Courtesy Janice Brahney, Natalie Mahowald A close-up image of microplastics, which researchers found cycle the globe through the atmosphere.

Most of our plastic waste gets buried in landfills, incinerated or recycled -- but up to 18% ends up in the environment. Since plastic isn't easily decomposable it instead fragments into smaller and smaller pieces until the microplastics are small enough to be swept into the air.


"Akin to global biogeochemical cycles, plastics now spiral around the globe," said the study, led by researchers from Utah State University and Cornell University, and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That means much of the plastic that gets dumped in the sea and across the land is broken down and spat back out, posing potential risks for our ecosystems. And though there has been some progress with the creation of biodegradable polymers, the researchers warned microplastics "will continue to cycle through the earth's systems."

"We found a lot of legacy plastic pollution everywhere we looked; it travels in the atmosphere and it deposits all over the world," said lead author Janice Brahney in a news release from Cornell. "This plastic is not new from this year. It's from what we've already dumped into the environment over several decades."

The research team collected atmospheric microplastic data from the western United States from 2017 to 2019, and found an estimated 22,000 tons of microplastics are being deposited across the US each year.

In the US, the main way plastics get tossed into the air is through road traffic. Car tires, brakes and even road surfaces contain plastic, which can be worn down into microplastics that enter the atmosphere. The turbulence of cars on the road -- the motion of tires, the braking process, the exhaust they emit -- all help churn up plastic on the ground and send it skyward, according to the study.

This happens in the ocean, too, where large clusters of waste form entire plastic islands. They are broken down into plastic particles that sit on the top layer of the water, where they are tossed into the air by waves and wind.

There are several other ways microplastics enter the atmosphere, in large cities through the wind, and in farms through soil dust during agricultural processes.

Once they enter the atmosphere, plastics can stay airborne for up to six and a half days, according to the study. Within this time, "under the right conditions, plastics can be transported across the major oceans and between continents, either in one trip or by resuspension over the oceans," the study said.

The US, Europe, Middle East, India and Eastern Asia are hotspots for land-based plastic deposition, said the study. Meanwhile, ocean sources of airborne plastic are more prominent along the coasts, including the US' West Coast, the Mediterranean, and southern Australia. Dust and agriculture sources for microplastics are more prevalent in northern Africa and Eurasia, while microplastics from road traffic are major contributors in "heavily populated regions" worldwide.

Microplastics are everywhere -- they influence soil and plant production, are consumed by flora and fauna, and "act as vectors for contaminants," said the study. Though previous studies have not found that microplastics pose a threat to human health, this study's researchers warned they "may have negative and as yet unknown consequences for ecosystems and human health."

"The inhalation of particles can be irritating to lung tissue and lead to serious diseases, but whether plastics are more or less toxic than other aerosols is not yet well understood," said the study. It added that further research is also needed to understand the impact of different factors including population density and ocean circulation.

The researchers also called for better plastic waste management.

"Our relative ignorance of the consequences despite rapidly rising plastic concentrations in our environment highlights the importance of improving plastic waste management or, indeed, capturing ocean plastics and removing them from the system," the study said.

Why was the ancient city of Cahokia abandoned? New clues rule out one theory.

Glenn Hodges

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

4/12/2021


About a thousand years ago, a city grew in the floodplain known as the American Bottom, just east of what is now St. Louis in Illinois. In a matter of decades, it became the continent’s largest population center north of Mexico, with perhaps 15,000 people in the city proper and twice as many people in surrounding areas. A couple centuries after its birth it went into decline, and by 1400 it was deserted.

© Photograph by Ira Block, Nat Geo Image Collection Cahokia's central plaza is now part of a 2,200-acre historical site.

The story of Cahokia has mystified archaeologists ever since they laid eyes on its earthen mounds—scores of them, including a 10-story platform mound that until 1867 was the tallest manmade structure in the United States. They don’t know why Cahokia formed, why it grew so powerful, or why its residents migrated away, leaving it to collapse. Hypotheses are abundant, but data are scarce.


Now an archaeologist has likely ruled out one hypothesis for Cahokia’s demise: that flooding caused by the overharvesting of timber made the area increasingly uninhabitable. In a study published recently in the journal Geoarchaeology, Caitlin Rankin of the University of Illinois not only argues that the deforestation hypothesis is wrong, but also questions the very premise that Cahokia may have caused its own undoing with damaging environmental practices.

“Cahokia was the most densely populated area in North America prior to European contact,” she says. “Sometimes we think that big populations are the problem, but it’s not necessarily the population size. It’s how they’re managing and exploiting resources.”

Logical sense vs data

In 1993, two researchers from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Neal Lopinot and William Woods, suggested that perhaps Cahokia failed because of environmental degradation. They hypothesized that Cahokians had deforested the uplands to the east of the city, leading to erosion and flooding that would have diminished their agricultural yields and flooded residential areas.

Given the clear evidence that Cahokians had cut down thousands of trees for construction projects, the “wood-overuse hypothesis” was tenable. It fit the available data and made logical sense, and the archaeological community largely embraced it as a possible—or even likely—contributor to Cahokia’s decline. But little was done to test it.

In 2017, Rankin, then a doctoral student at Washington University in St Louis (where she’s now a research geoarchaeologist), began excavating near one of Cahokia’s mounds to evaluate environmental change related to flooding. She discovered something she hadn’t been expecting to find: clear evidence that there had been no recurrent flooding of the sort predicted by the wood-overuse hypothesis.

Her research showed that the soil on which the mound had been constructed was stable during the time of Cahokian occupation. The mound had been in a low-lying area near a creek that would likely have flooded according the wood-overuse hypothesis, but the soil showed no evidence of flood sediments.

Those results led Rankin to question the assumptions that led not just to that particular hypothesis, but to all the environmental narratives of Cahokia’s decline. The idea that societies fail because of resource depletion and environmental degradation—sometimes referred to as ecocide—has become a dominant explanatory tool in the last half century.

And the reason for that is clear: We do see that happening in past societies, and we fear that it is happening in our own. But our present environmental crisis might be inclining us to see environmental crises in every crevice of humanity’s past, Rankin says, whether they were actually there or not.

“The people who lived here in North America before the Europeans—they didn’t graze animals, and they didn’t intensively plow. We look at their agricultural system with this Western lens, when we need to consider Indigenous views and practices,” Rankin says.

A difference of worldview

Cahokians were part of what anthropologists call Mississippian culture—a broad diaspora of agricultural communities that stretched throughout the American Southeast between 800 and 1500 A.D. They cultivated corn and other crops, constructed earthen mounds, and at one point gathered into a highly concentrated urban population at Cahokia. Whether that was for political, religious, or economic reasons is unclear. But it’s not likely that they saw natural resources as commodities to be harvested for maximum private profit.

Cahokians cut a lot of trees—thousands of them were used to build what archaeologists believe were defensive fortifications—but that doesn’t mean they were treating them as fungible goods, or harvesting them in unsustainable ways, the way European-Americans often did. Maybe they were heedless of their environment and maybe they weren’t, Rankin says, but we certainly shouldn’t assume they were unless there’s evidence of it.

“Look at what happened with the bison,” Rankin says. Plains Indians hunted them sustainably. But “Europeans came in and shot all of them. That’s a Western mentality of resource exploitation—squeeze everything out of it that you can. Well that’s not how it was in these Indigenous cultures.”

Tim Pauketat, a leading Cahokia researcher and Rankin’s supervisor at the University of Illinois, agrees that the difference in cultural worldviews needs to be considered more seriously. “We’re moving away from a Western explanation—that they overused this or failed to do that—and instead we’re appreciating that they related to their environment in a different way.”

And that suggests that hypotheses for Cahokia’s decline and collapse are likely to become more complex. Tristram Kidder, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis who chaired Rankin’s dissertation committee, says, “There is a tendency for people to want these monocausal explanations, because it makes it seem like there might be easy solutions to problems.”

Kidder teaches a class on climate change, and he says that’s a constant temptation, not just for the students but for himself—to try to master the problem by oversimplifying it. If Cahokians had just stopped cutting down trees, everything would have been fine. If we only started driving electric cars, everything will be fine. But the reality is much more complex than that, he says, and we have to grapple with that complexity.

Lopinot, one of the archaeologists who originally proposed the wood-overuse hypothesis in 1993, and who is now at Missouri State University, welcomes Rankin’s research. He knew at the time he presented his hypothesis that it was just a reasonable attempt to make sense of a mystery.

“Cahokia’s decline wasn’t something that happened overnight,” he says. “It was a slow demise. And we don’t know why people were leaving. It might have been a matter of political factionalization, or warfare, or drought, or disease—we just don’t know.”

There are clues. In later years, Cahokians built a stockade encircling central Cahokia, suggesting that inter-group warfare had become a problem. And there is preliminary data suggesting there may have been a major drought in the region that would have made food production challenging. But those clues still need to be investigated, researchers say.

“Archaeology is not like physics, where you can set up controlled experiments and get the answers you’re looking for,” Rankin says. You have to get out there and dig, and you never know what you are going to find.

UK
Are conservationists spreading pathogens to threatened species?

AFP 4/12/2021

Conservationists could inadvertently be killing endangered species with kindness by spreading "devastating" diseases and parasites as they relocate populations to protect them, researchers said Monday.

© MICHAL CIZEK Freshwater mussels play an important role in the food web and are crucial in cleaning rivers and lakes

Scientists in Britain looked in particular at efforts to save threatened populations of mussels.

Freshwater mussels play an important role in the food web and in cleaning rivers and lakes, but many species around the world are in decline due to human activity, especially pollution.

The researchers said there is growing interest in shifting mussels to new locations to boost populations, or so they can be used as "biological filters" to improve water quality.

But "moving animals could introduce a disease to a new region, or expose the individuals being moved to a disease that they haven't encountered before," said lead author Joshua Brian, at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge.

"People move mussels and other animals around all the time, and they almost never stop to think about parasites or diseases first," he told AFP.

In a study in the journal Conservation Letters, the researchers looked at 419 published reports of mussel relocation and noted a significant increase since the 1990s.

They found only 34 percent of these movements included a period of quarantine.

The authors identified four risk factors for parasite and disease spread: the number of infected individuals and size of the moved population; the density of the population after it is moved, since disease can spread faster through tightly packed groups; immunity levels; and the life cycle of the parasite or disease.

They said that while pathogen spread has not been well studied in mussels, evidence from other species illustrated the risks.

For example, the authors said a pack of wolves moved to Yellowstone National Park died after being exposed to parasites carried by local canines.

Researchers calculated that if a group of 50 mussels were moved from a population where five percent of the population had a particular pathogen, then there was a 92 percent chance that the pathogen would be transported in at least one individual.

"Given translocation sizes can often reach the thousands, there is high scope for moving and spreading even low-abundance pathogens," the study said.

Brian said every animal or plant could be seen as a community of things that live on it -- like viruses, bacteria, worms, ticks -- that are "often invisible, but can have devastating consequences".

"Before large-scale movements of animals occur, there needs to be an effort to understand these communities more," he said.

- 'Only takes one' -

The report highlighted in particular the risks to mussels of a gonad-eating parasitic worm.

In a complex life cycle that involves mussels and fish, the larval stage of these tiny worms infects the mussel and clones itself, effectively turning the mussel into a "worm factory" and castrating it, said Brian.

Researchers warned in particular of the risk in captive breeding programmes where different mussel populations are brought together.

"We've seen that mixing different populations of mussels can allow widespread transmission of gonad-eating worms," said senior author David Aldridge of Cambridge's Department of Zoology.

"It only takes one infected mussel to spread this parasite, which in extreme cases can lead to collapse of an entire population."

The report recommended that species are only relocated when absolutely necessary and conservationists make use of quarantine periods to stop pathogens spreading.

klm/mh/bp

Intel in talks to produce chips for automakers within six to nine months -CEO

Reuters/Yuya Shino FILE PHOTO: VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger speaks during a news conference in Tokyo

(Reuters) - The chief executive of Intel Corp told Reuters on Monday the company is in talks to start producing chips for car makers to alleviate a shortage that has idled automotive factories.

Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said the company is talking to companies that design chips for automakers about manufacturing those chips inside Intel's factory network, with the goal of producing chips within six to nine months. Gelsinger earlier on Monday met with White House officials to discuss the semiconductor supply chain.

Intel is one of the last companies in the semiconductor industry that both designs and manufactures its own chips. The company last month said it would open its factories up to outside customers and build factories in the United States and Europe in a bid to counter the dominance of Asian chip manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd .

But Gelsinger said Monday that he told White House officials during the meeting that Intel will open its existing factory network to auto chip companies to provide more immediate help with a shortage that has disrupted assembly lines at Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co .

"We're hoping that some of these things can be alleviated, not requiring a three- or four-year factory build, but maybe six months of new products being certified on some of our existing processes," Gelsinger said. "We've begun those engagements already with some of the key components suppliers."

Gelsinger did not name the component suppliers but said that the work could take place at Intel's factories in Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Israel or Ireland.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Chris Reese and Steve Orlofskty)

TC Energy eyes investments in wind energy in bid to decarbonize U.S. pipeline assets

© Provided by Financial Post TC Energy announced it is seeking ideas from 100 power generation companies for potential contracts or investment opportunities in wind energy projects.


CALGARY – Pipeline company TC Energy Corp. is considering wind power investments to electrify its pipelines in the United States, where the company’s assets have been subjected to environmental scrutiny for years.

Calgary-based TC Energy announced Monday it is seeking ideas from 100 power generation companies for potential contracts or investment opportunities in “wind energy projects that could generate up to 2,500,000 megawatt hours per year or 620 megawatts of zero-carbon energy” to power its pipeline assets in the U.S.

“Ultimately, our goal is to leverage our existing asset base to add more renewable power generation to our portfolio and the broader market, resulting in a net reduction of emissions across our North American footprint,” Corey Hessen, TC Energy senior vice-president and president of the company’s power and storage business, said in a press release.

TC Energy plans to create a shortlist from the information it receives, and then pursue proposals for wind power investments.

Hessen said the company wants to use the plan “as a platform for future growth and diversification.”

TC Energy owns a network of oil and natural gas pipelines in Canada and the U.S. and has attracted controversy in recent years over its planned Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried 830,000 barrels of heavy oil per day from Alberta to refineries in Louisiana and Texas. That project was cancelled earlier this year and analysts have been looking for TC Energy to redeploy its capital in other growth projects.

The push into renewable power “could be a significant investment opportunity,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Ben Pham wrote in a Monday research note.

© Pete Marovich/Bloomberg files TC Energy’s planned Keystone XL pipeline was cancelled earlier this year after years of controversy.

Pham said TC Energy’s renewable plans could add up to US$1 billion in investments and would reduce the company’s energy costs as well as its carbon footprint, which amount to roughly two million tonnes of CO2 per year.

“This is consistent with (TC Energy’s) previous signal that it saw significant capital investment opportunity in electrifying its fleet, supporting its long-term 5-7 per cent growth while lowering its overall greenhouse gas emissions,” Pham wrote.

A growing number of companies are using power purchase agreements for renewable power to offset their emissions from the electricity they use, including an announcement from Shell Canada Ltd. last week that it intended to purchase wind power from BluEarth Renewables, said Vincent Morales, a clean energy analyst with the Pembina Institute.

In 2019, TC Energy announced it would purchase solar power from a project in southern Alberta for a portion of its electricity needs.

“In most regions, wind is the most cost competitive power source for new projects,” Morales said, noting that TC Energy’s announcement Monday includes a call for projects in Texas, which generates 20 per cent of its electricity from wind power.

TC Energy did not respond to a request for comment to identify which U.S. pipelines the company wanted to electrify with wind power.

The company’s push into renewable power has previously been telegraphed in investor calls, including a plan to power its controversial Keystone XL pipeline project with renewable power and a commitment to making the heavy oil conduit the first net-zero pipeline in North America. Those plans were not enough to save the Keystone XL pipeline, which was cancelled by U.S. President Joe Biden on his first day in office in January to follow through on climate change promises from his presidential campaign.

TC Energy owns and operates the Keystone pipeline system, which brings Canadian heavy oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, as well as a large network of natural gas pipelines in the U.S. Midwest, Northeast and South that were purchased as part of its US$13-billion deal for Columbia Gas Transmission in 2016.

In its power business, TC Energy currently owns and operates seven power plants in Canada, including the Bruce Power nuclear plant in Ontario and multiple natural gas cogeneration facilities in Alberta.

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Investigation finds Suncor's Colorado refinery meets environmental permits

© Reuters/CHRIS WATTIE 

The Suncor Energy logo is seen at their head office in Calgary

DENVER (Reuters) - A Colorado refinery owned by Canadian firm Suncor Energy Inc meets required environmental permits and is adequately funded, according to an investigation released on Monday into a series of emissions violations at the facility between 2017 and 2019.

The 98,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in the Denver suburb of Commerce City, Colorado, reached a $9-million settlement with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) March 2020 to resolve air pollution violations that occurred since 2017. That settlement also addressed an incident in December 2019 that released refinery materials onto a nearby school.

As part of the settlement, Suncor was required to use a third party to conduct an independent investigation into the violations and spend up to $5 million to implement recommendations from the investigation.

Consulting firm Kearney's investigation found the facility met environmental permit requirements, but also pinpointed areas for improvement, including personnel training and systems upgrades, some of which was already underway.

"We need to improve our performance and improve the trust people have in us," Donald Austin, vice president of the Commerce City refinery said in an interview, adding that the refinery had already undertaken some of the recommendations from the investigation.

In mid-April, Suncor will begin a turnaround at the facility that includes an upgrade to a gasoline-producing fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) at Plant 1 of the facility. That turnaround is anticipated to be complete in June 2021.

Suncor last year completed a similar upgrade of an automatic shutdown system for the FCCU at the refinery's Plant 2.

By 2023, the company will also install an additional control unit, upgraded instrumentation, automated shutdown valves and new hydraulic pressure units in Plant 2.

Together, those upgrades will cost approximately $12 million, of which roughly $10 million is dedicated to Plant 2 upgrades, Suncor said on Monday.

(Reporting by Liz Hampton; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

4/12/2021