Explainer: How Jerusalem tensions sparked heaviest Israel-Gaza fighting in years



Palestinian Israeli conflict
Explainer: How Jerusalem tensions sparked heaviest Israel-Gaza fighting in years
Reuters
Published: 12 May ,2021:

Weeks of violent clashes in East Jerusalem have ignited the heaviest fighting in years between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

At the core of the violence that has left dozens dead are tensions between Israelis and Palestinians over Jerusalem, which contains sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

As both sides appear to be digging in for more prolonged fighting, here are some of the factors that triggered the escalation.

For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
Ramadan protests, Jerusalem evictions

Since the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in mid-April, Palestinians have faced off nightly with Israeli police in East Jerusalem, who put up barriers to stop evening gatherings at the walled Old City’s Damascus Gate.

Palestinians saw the barriers as a restriction on their freedom to assemble. Police said they were there to maintain order.

Tensions have also been high over a long-running legal case that could see multiple Palestinian families evicted from their homes to make way for Israeli settlers who, backed by an Israeli court ruling, want to move in.

The violence quickly spread to the Old City compound containing Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam and the most sensitive site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hundreds of Palestinians have been injured in fighting with police in the compound and around the Old City in recent days.

Play Video ‘Red line’

Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas and other militant groups in the enclave repeatedly warned Israel that the fighting in Jerusalem was a “red line,” and vowed to fire rockets if Israeli police did not stop their raids on the Al-Aqsa compound.

As Israel commemorated its capture of East Jerusalem in a 1967 war with a march on Monday, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad militant group fired rocket barrages toward Jerusalem and its surrounding suburbs.

Israel had “ignited fire in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa and the flames extended to Gaza, therefore, it is responsible for the consequences,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said.

Within hours, Israeli warplanes began bombing militant targets in Gaza, with the military saying that civilian casualties “cannot be ruled out” in the densely populated coastal territory.

The fighting has since escalated dramatically with militants firing hundreds of rockets toward Tel Aviv and Israel carrying out hundreds of air strikes in Gaza.

Violence has also broken out in mixed Arab-Jewish cities across Israel, with members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab minority angry over the Jerusalem evictions and Gaza violence.

An explosion caused by Israeli airstrikes is seen in Gaza City, early Thursday. (AP)
Hamas interests, Israeli politics

The most intensive aerial exchanges between Israel and Hamas since a 2014 war in Gaza have prompted international concern that the situation could spiral out of control.

But Hamas also appeared to see the escalation as an opportunity to marginalize Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and present itself as the guardian of Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Hamas has amassed some 7,000 rockets, as well as 300 anti-tank and 100 anti-aircraft missiles, since the 2014 war, an Israeli military commander said during a briefing in February. Islamic Jihad has amassed 6,000 rockets, the commander said. The groups have neither confirmed nor denied the Israeli estimates.

Some Israeli commentators said Hamas could also see the timing as opportune with Israel in political flux as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents try to form a government that would unseat him after an inconclusive March 23 election.

Other commentators have said that Netanyahu appeared to be distracted by his trial on corruption charges he denies, allowing tensions to surge in Jerusalem and spill over into Gaza.

Gaza has for years had limited access to the outside world because of a blockade led by Israel and supported by Egypt, who both cite security concerns over Hamas for the restrictions.

A Palestinian protester is detained by Israeli border policemen during clashes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem May 4, 2021. (Reuters/Ammar Awad)
Jerusalem at core of conflict

Politics, history and religion all place Jerusalem at the center of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City is the hill known to Jews across the world as Temple Mount - the holiest site in Judaism - and to Muslims internationally as The Noble Sanctuary. It was home to the Jewish temples of antiquity. Two Muslim holy places now stand there, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Christians also revere the city as the place where they believe that Jesus preached, died and was resurrected.

Israel sees all of Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital, while the Palestinians want the eastern section as a capital of a future state. Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally.

Palestinians mark Eid in al-Aqsa days after Israeli forces attacked worshipers

Palestinians mark Eid in al-Aqsa days after Israeli forces attacked worshipers

Palestinian Israeli conflict

Muslims perform the morning Eid al-Fitr prayer, marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, outside the Dome of the Rock mosque in the al-Aqsa mosques compound in Jerusalem early on May 13, 2021. (AFP

AFP, Jerusalem
Published: 13 May ,2021

Palestinian Muslims performed the morning Eid al-Fitr prayer in the al-Aqsa mosque’s compound in Jerusalem on Thursday, marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, days after Israeli forces attacked worshipers in the compound.

For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.

Tensions have soared over Israel's planned eviction of Palestinians from a district in east Jerusalem, which Israel sees as part of its eternal capital but is considered occupied by the United Nations.

Several nights of clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police, particularly around the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, spiraled early this week into a barrage of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza strip and rocket fire from Gaza.

Smoke billows from Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on May 11, 2021. (AFP)

The sharp escalation has killed at least 32 Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip and three Israelis and wounded hundreds more.

Despite the confrontations and attacks, photos and videos showed an estimated 100,000 worshipers gathered at the holy site to perform the Eid prayers.

Muslims perform the morning Eid al-Fitr prayer, marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, outside the Dome of the Rock mosque in the al-Aqsa mosques compound in Old Jerusalem early on May 13, 2021. (AFP)




A Palestinian woman takes a selfie as the Dome of the Rock is seen in the background, during Eid al-Fitr prayers on May 13, 2021. (Reuters)

Muslim women blow up balloons as worshippers celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, after the morning prayer at the al-Aqsa mosques compound, with the Dome of the Rock mosque in the background, in Old Jerusalem early on May 13, 2021. (AFP)

Muslim children celebrate in front of the Dome of the Rock mosque after the morning Eid al-Fitr prayer at the al-Aqsa mosques compound in Old Jerusalem early on May 13, 2021. (AFP)

Muslim worshippers gather at the al-Aqsa mosques compound in Old Jerusalem for the morning Eid al-Fitr prayer early on May 13, 2021. (AFP)

Palestinian youths pose as a friend photographs them, while the Dome of the Rock is seen in the background, during Eid al-Fitr prayers, which mark the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, at the compound that houses al-Aqsa mosque on May 13, 2021. (Reuters)

People wave Palestinian flags during Eid al-Fitr prayers, which mark the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, at the compound that houses al-Aqsa mosque on May 13, 2021. (Reuters)

Greta Thunberg on her gap year climate change tour, Joe Biden, and turning 18
Teen Vogue speaks to the climate activist about what she's been up to — and what comes next.
May 13, 2021
by Marianne Dhenin, Teen Vogue

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, then 16, listens to speakers during a climate change demonstration outside the U.S. Supreme Court Sept. 18, 2019, in Washington. (CNS/Kevin Lamarque, Reuters)


Editor's note: This story originally appeared at Reuters and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

On an overcast August morning, the world watched as Greta Thunberg set sail from a quaint port city in southwest England aboard a racing yacht en route to the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in New York City. The voyage marked a year since the start of Greta's weekly school strikes. She had come a long way from sitting alone in her father's yellow rain jacket outside the Swedish Parliament to being invited to speak in front of the United Nations and galvanizing a global youth movement for climate action, now millions strong.

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This article appears in the Covering Climate Now feature series. 

View the full series.

The transatlantic trip also marked the beginning of a gap year for Greta. Off from school, she planned to take her protest around the world (via a carbon-neutral racing yacht, electric cars, and Europe's vast rail network) and meet with leading climate scientists to learn more about the effects of global warming and the science that could save our planet. But the trip, which is the basis of a new, three-part documentary series premiering on PBS on Earth Day, Thursday, April 22, was disrupted in a way no one could have imagined when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020.

"We decided very early on to cancel or postpone all of the planned strikes and protests because it was the right thing to do," Greta tells Teen Vogue, "so we've had to move online." She had planned to march with thousands of like-minded activists in cities around the world, but instead Greta found herself tweeting selfies from her couch in Stockholm with her now instantly recognizable black-and-white "SKOLSTREJK FÖR KLIMATET" sign.

At first, COVID-19 knocked the climate emergency out of international headlines. But it wasn't long before connections between the two crises began to crystallize. As life around the world slowed at the beginning of the pandemic, climate scientists reported a steep drop in planet-warming fossil fuel emissions. Viral photos showed wildlife exploring emptied cities, where urbanization had destroyed the animals' natural habitats. Experts began to warn that ongoing habitat destruction has created ideal environments for the emergence of zoonotic diseases, like the novel coronavirus, which could lead to more pandemics in the future. And suddenly, governments were mobilizing to find solutions — uniting behind the science, as Greta would say — to develop treatments and vaccines.

Amid the chaos, Greta turned 18. Now, on the brink of adulthood, she speaks to Teen Vogue via Zoom, reflecting on her gap year and what it will take to protect our uncertain future.

Editor's note: These responses have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Teen Vogue: You took a year off from school and traveled around the world to meet leading climate experts and witness the impact of global warming firsthand. What were some of the most striking moments you experienced on that journey?

20190919T1449-CLIMATE-CIDSE-MORAL-DUTY-596010 cc.jpg
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, testifies at before U.S. representatives at a hearing on "Voices Leading the Next Generation on the Global Climate Crisis" in Washington Sept.18, 2019. (CNS/Kevin Lamarque, Reuters)


Greta Thunberg: I don't think there were any specific striking moments, or interviews, or meetings. It's just the accumulated amount: When you take all of them together and read between the lines, connecting the dots between them, you realize that [the climate crisis] is something much bigger. There were still very powerful and very striking moments, but it's when you add it all together that you start to see the full picture, and that's the most powerful thing.

Your trip was interrupted after you spoke at the European Parliament's Environment Council in Brussels in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic brought life around the world to a relative standstill. Do you think the pandemic has helped reveal anything about the climate crisis?

It has maybe put the climate crisis in a different perspective. We always say that we don't have the money, we can't act so quickly, we can't do these kinds of things. But then, when the pandemic came, we saw a completely different crisis response, and that puts [the climate crisis] in a different perspective. It really shows that we can treat an emergency like an emergency.

What do you think we have learned during the pandemic that we can take into the fight against climate change?

That it is not until we really start treating a crisis like a crisis that we can get real change and start addressing that crisis. It has shown us that without science, we wouldn't have made it very far. We are depending on science, both in the role of the solution and as an alarm — like a fire alarm or a warning. For example, we have shown how quickly we can develop a vaccine once we really put our resources into it. Of course, the climate crisis doesn't have a vaccine. But it really shows that once we put support and resources, whether it is financial or something else, into science, then we can start seeing some results.

President Trump was a disaster for the climate. His rollbacks of Obama-era climate policy have the potential to increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 1.8 gigatons by 2035. His successor, Joe Biden, has promised to make climate action a priority of his administration. Many members of Congress were also elected on climate action platforms. What do you think young people in the U.S. can do to hold our elected officials accountable and help recover from Trump-era setbacks in climate policy?

The first thing that we need to keep in mind is that Trump may be gone, and that may be a positive thing for the climate, but we cannot relax just because of that. People seem to think of Joe Biden as a savior and now everything will be alright just because Trump is gone, but that's a very dangerous thing to do. We must not allow ourselves to relax. We must continue to push even harder and still call out Joe Biden because, of course, he's not good for the climate either. Just because he's a bit less bad doesn't mean that he's good for the climate.

We need to see through the speeches [politicians] make. Just because they say they care about the climate doesn't mean that they're actually going to do anything big.

And how do you think, practically speaking, young people can do that?

For example, school strikes or protests. I know that it's hard during pandemic times, but there are still ways that you can become an activist. Because we cannot vote as young people, among the most powerful things that we can do is raise our voices. We always have a voice, no matter how old we are. Another powerful thing that we can do is influence the adults around us — for example, our parents. That's the way I got started. Nothing is too small to begin with.
Related: Greta Thunberg, a prophet for Advent


You've been in international headlines for more than two years now, led dozens of marches in countries around the world, and spoken at some remarkably high-profile events — that's a lot of pressure. You also talk in the PBS documentary series about having Asperger's and how difficult it is to cope with overstimulation at crowded events. How do you manage all of that stress? Do you have a routine for self-care?

I guess I just try to distance myself from it as much as I can; that way it becomes much easier. When I'm on a march, I try to shut off all the inputs and just make my own little bubble in a way, which makes it easy to handle.

I do lots of things [at home]: being with my dogs, lots of jigsaw puzzles, and crafting, like embroidery and knitting. That's very relaxing.

Now that you've turned 18 and taken this trip around the world, what are you going to do next?

Well, I've just started high school. This is my first year, and then, when this term ends, I have two more years. So I'm doing that first, while at the same time doing activism. But after that, I have no idea what I want to do or what I'm up to. I guess I will have to see where I end up. But probably I will be where I can be the most useful — advocating for change in one way or another and being an activist in whatever shape that may take.

Physics of birds and bees – sincerely, Albert Einstein

A newly discovered letter reveals that Einstein predicted recent bee research seventy years ago.

13 May 2021 Ellen Phiddian




Extract from Einstein's letter to Davys. Credit: Dyer et al. 2021, J Comp Physiol A / The Hebrew University of Jerusalem


In 2019, a group of RMIT researchers were in the midst of publishing a series of grand discoveries about how bees use their brains, when they got an unexpected surprise from Albert Einstein.

Led by Scarlett Howard as part of her PhD, the team had shown that, despite their small size, bees could understand the concept of zero, and even perform simple arithmetic.

“We were actually able to show that they could discriminate numbers above 4, so they could do things like 4 versus 5, which is a very hard discrimination to make,” says Howard, now a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin University.

The research caught the attention of the media and was shared worldwide. Shortly after, Howard’s supervisor, Adrian Dyer, received a message from a widow on the other side of the globe.

“A lady in the UK heard about it and wrote to me directly, because I was the corresponding author, and said ‘I have a very unusual letter in my possession, which was written by Albert Einstein to my late husband’,” says Dyer.

The lady – Judith Davys, wife of Glyn Davys, who lived from 1925 to 2011 – said that the letter discussed the same themes Dyer and Howard were now investigating. She asked Dyer if he’d like to examine it.

“Of course I was quite interested.”

Davys sent the letter over, and after verifying with the Albert Einstein Archives that it had actually come from Einstein, Dyer started to do some research on its genesis.

Written in October 1949 and fewer than 100 words, the letter is short but packed with meaning. It was a response to a letter Glyn Davys had sent to Einstein, the content of which is unknown but can be guessed at.
Einstein’s letter to Davys

Dear Sir,

I am well acquainted with Mr V. Frisch’s admirable investigations. But I cannot see a possibility to utilize those results in the investigation concerning the basis of physics. Such could only be the case if a new kind of sensory perception, resp. of their stimuli, would be revealed through the behaviour of the bees. It is thinkable that the investigation of the behaviour of migratory birds and carrier pigeons may some day lead to the understanding of some physical process which is not yet known.

Sincerely yours,

Albert Einstein.

“I am well acquainted with Mr. v. Frisch’s admirable investigations,” begins Einstein. By 1949, Karl von Frisch was becoming well-known for the research on bees that would end up winning him a Nobel Prize. He had recently shown that honeybees can use the polarisation of sunlight to navigate, and news on this research had made it into newspapers in the United Kingdom. Dyer and his collaborators believe that Davys, who had worked on radar as an engineer in the Royal Navy, had read about this research and written to Einstein asking if he was aware of it.

Einstein had, in fact, attended a lecture by von Frisch earlier that year and briefly met the man afterwards. So he knew that bees could distinguish the polarisation of light and navigate – an interesting physical concept, but with little application at the time.

This small letter excited the RMIT researchers, because it was exactly what their team had done with bees.

“His suggestion is [that] new behaviours might reveal new ways of looking at physics,” summarises Dyer.

“This is something that is an active field of research today,” says Andrew Greentree, a physicist at RMIT who has worked with Howard and Dyer.

“I’m attending conferences where people talk about the mechanisms for magneto-sensing in birds, and people are also interested in magneto-sensing in dogs and humans and insects.”

There’s still a lot to be proven in the field (particularly around magneto-sensing), but theoretical physicists are rapidly becoming interested in how animals navigate and communicate – hence Greentree’s involvement in the project. “Understanding how bees [navigate] with a tiny little brain using far less energy than we have in our standard mobile phones is a really important technological challenge,” he says.

Greentree has been working with Dyer’s team for six or seven years, but in Einstein’s time, it was unusual for physicists to spot applications from biology and zoology.

“For a physicist, that’s a really radical thing to be suggesting,” says Greentree.

How does it feel to have your work predicted by Einstein, 70 years prior? How might this bee research be viewed in 70 years’ time?

It’s hard to tell, but Dyer, Howard and Greentree all hope it encourages more interdisciplinary research.

Howard thinks there will be more interest in the growing field of insect cognition. “The honeybee is obviously a really great model, but we don’t know what other great models might also be out there at this stage, and I think in 70 years we’ll see a huge amount of research going into looking at how other insects can help us in our everyday lives as well as how they’re important in their own environments.”

“Every time I’ve worked with Andrew I’ve learned something new, and that goes both ways,” says Dyer.

“I think the fact that Einstein was potentially interested in this will probably capture the attention of some pretty senior physicists to maybe just read a few more papers on what insects and animals can do.”

Greentree agrees. “To have Einstein talking to von Frisch, who is a radically different kind of scientist […] That’s convincing me that I should be someone who’s reaching out more to people in other disciplines.”

He also adds that it “reminds me of our public service, the requirement on us to actually respond to the general public.”

“[Einstein] was a famously prolific writer,” he says. “He would write to essentially anyone. He would try to reply to everyone who wrote to him.”

“We have a responsibility to engage with people, at some level, and to assist wherever we can, to share knowledge.”

A paper analysing Einstein’s letter is published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A.





Credit: Dyer et al. 2021, J Comp Physiol A 

UK

Tories unveil anti-woke manifesto
12 May 2021

Steerpike

The Queen’s Speech yesterday may have seen the government’s fairly dry vision for modern Britain but a group of Conservative backbench MPs and peers have now banded together to propose their own alternative. Cracking down on immigration, breaking up the BBC and taking aim at woke policing are all proposed in a new book by the Common Sense Group of around 50 Tory parliamentarians. Titled Conservative Thinking For a Post-Liberal Age, it takes aim at the Equality Act, Supreme Court, British broadcasters and Extinction Rebellion, proposing a much tougher line on the forces of 'wokeism' and its practitioners.

The group's chairman Sir John Hayes declares that 'the battle for Britain has begun, and guided by the common sense of the people, we must triumph for the common good'. For fellow member Gareth Bacon 'Britain is under attack' from a ‘woke ideology’ with 'no democratic mandate' but instead an 'intense hostility to western civilisation'. Policies to tackle this include 'definitive amendments to the 2010 Equality Act,' tax incentives to encourage marriage, curbs on direct action protests and a requirement for state-funded institutions to 'promote British values, traditions and history.'

Britain's top judges are lambasted by veteran Edward Leigh and new MP Sally-Ann Hart in a chapter on judicial activism undermining democracy. The pair describe the Supreme Court's ruling against Boris Johnson's prorogation of Parliament as 'a naked power grab, with no substantial legal or juridical justification'. Such 'a political act' was just a gamble 'in order to stop Brexit' — something 'the politicised justices lost' with 'legislative reform of the Supreme Court' needed to prevent a repeat again.

The section on media reform co-authored between James Sunderland MP and Express journalist David Maddox demands the break up of the BBC, the abolition of broadcast impartiality rules and that big tech companies like Facebook be treated as publishers. They claim the pandemic has 'been a salutary lesson' with existing broadcasters seeing it 'as their role to promote the pro-Lockdown message' with reform strengthening 'plurality of voices and freedom of speech' against a 'quasi-Marxist movement on the liberal left.'


The police are not spared either with Chris Loder and Tom Hunt calling for an end to the 'woke' culture of 'middle management' infecting forces across the country. Reforms include tackling the 'fear of conduct investigations' which means 'officers are wary of acting according to their instincts' with the Macpherson report being accused of undermining effective policing: 'the words "institutional racism" are so terrifying because they attack the very foundation of policing by consent.'

On immigration, red wall MP Nick Fletcher backs a cap of 100,000 people a year, arguing 'it must be made known to the ordinary working man and woman that their neighbourhoods and communities will not be treated as dumping grounds for anyone and everyone who wishes to come to the United Kingdom.'

Peers Lord Horam and Lord Hodgson propose that all jobs should only be advertised in the UK alongside a cap on the number of skilled workers allowed into the country and a suspension of the 'New Entrant' route which allows employers to bring in young workers from abroad earning over £20,480. An Office of Demographic Change — an independent body established along the lines of the Office for Budget Responsibility — is suggested to undertake a comprehensive transparent analysis of all aspects of demographic growth.

It was of course nine years ago that a similarly punchy book by newly elected members — Britannia Unchained — made the names of some of today’s leading Tory politicians. Four of the work’s co-authors — Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng — now sit around the cabinet table having all co-founded the Free Enterprise Group together. Will similar success greet the co-authors of the Common Sense book too?

WRITTEN BY Steerpike
Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk.

Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier: How Doomed Are We?

Two new papers offer radically different predictions of the glacier’s future — and thus for the future of low-lying cities around the world. Here’s how to understand the divergent projections

By JEFF GOODELL

MAY 12, 2021

Thwaites Glacier, a.k.a the Doomsday Glacier


I came face to face with the Doomsday Glacier (a.k.a. Thwaites glacier) in 2019, on a trip to Antarctica aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a 308-foot-long icebreaker operated by the National Science Foundation. I had dubbed the Florida-sized slab of ice its nickname in an article I’d written a few years earlier, and the name stuck. Nevertheless, I was unprepared for how spooky it would be to actually confront the 100-foot-tall wall of ice from the deck of a ship. Locked up here in the West Antarctic ice sheet was enough water to raise global sea levels nearly 10 feet. As I wrote in a dispatch from Antarctica on the day we encountered Thwaites, it was both terrifying and thrilling to know that our future is written in this craggy, luminous continent of ice.


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Our world is heating up fast. And as every kid knows, on hot days, ice melts. The question is how quickly. At Thwaites, the melting is mostly a result of warm ocean water attacking it from below, which is stressing and fracturing both the ice shelf that protects the glacier and the glacier itself. Just how fast Thwaites and the other big glaciers that make up the West Antarctic ice sheet will all fall apart is one of the most important scientific questions of our time. And it is a question upon which the future of virtually every coastal city in the world depends. “We know there are tipping points in Antarctic ice sheets, and we also know that Antarctica is the biggest wildcard in the future sea level rise projections,” says Andrea Dutton, a professor of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a 2019 MacArthur Fellow. “Basically, it all comes down to ‘when will we reach that tipping point?’ ”

Last week, two new papers were published simultaneously in the science journal Nature that offer radically different visions of the Doomsday glacier, as well as radically different visions of how climate models work and what they can tell us about the future. But they agree on one thing: “Both papers make it very clear that human decisions are important, and that limiting warming can limit sea level rise,” says Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State and one of the most respected ice scientists in the world. But beyond that, the two papers may as well be describing life on different planets.

The first paper might be called the Holy Shit vision of Antarctica’s future. In this scenario, led by Rob DeConto, a climate modeler at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (Dutton and Alley and 10 other scientists are co-authors), the West Antarctic ice sheet remains fairly stable as long as warming stays below 2 C, which is the temperature threshold identified in the Paris climate agreement. Beyond 2 C, however, all hell breaks loose. Thwaites begins to fall into the sea like a line of dominoes pushed off a table and soon takes the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet with it. And once the collapse begins, it will be impossible to stop – at least on any human time scale. In a century or so, global sea levels could rise 10 feet, which would swamp much of South Florida and Bangladesh and many other low-lying regions of the world.

In fact, it could happen even faster than that, says Alley: “We just don’t know what the upper boundary is for how fast this can happen. We are dealing with an event that no human has ever witnessed before. We have no analogue for this.” All in all, the paper makes a very strong argument that cutting emissions today may avert a centuries-long climate catastrophe. DeConto’s paper also warns against betting on a quick techno-fix like CO2 removal. Unless it is widely deployed by 2070, which, the way things are going, is highly unlikely given the cost and scale-up of the technology that is required, it will be too late

The second paper might be called the What, Me Worry? vision of Antarctica’s future. Unlike the DeConto study, which is based on a single model, the second paper, which was led by Tamsin Edwards, a climate scientist at King’s College London, involved 84 people working at 62 institutes in 15 countries. Edwards and her co-authors use an “emulation” technique to compare the outcome of the different climate models, making the results less dependent on assumptions built into any one scenario, creating what amounts to a statistical average of climate-model outcomes.

In this study, the Doomsday glacier isn’t very doom-y at all. There’s no collapse, no tipping point, no big jumps in sea level rise. In fact, although the paper makes clear that the rate of CO2 emissions over the next few decades is clearly important, the difference in global sea level rise from the melting of all land glaciers, not just Thwaites, only differs by 4 ½ inches between a 1.5 C global temperature rise and a 3 C temperature rise (which is a little above where we are headed with current commitments under the Paris agreement). And much of that comes from increased melt in Greenland and mountain glaciers.

As for Antarctica, the paper says explicitly: “No clear dependence on emissions scenario emerges for Antarctica.” Or as Alley put it to me, a tone of mild astonishment in his voice: “For Antarctica, the Edwards paper basically says, Antarctica doesn’t matter to us and our decisions don’t matter to Antarctica.”

So let me roughly sum up where we are with our scientific understanding of sea level rise risk from Antarctica after more than three decades of serious climate change research: One study tells us that if we don’t cut CO2 emissions fast we will condemn the world to a century of rising seas that will flood every major coastal city and reshape the global map. The other study tells us that the likely difference between dramatically cutting CO2 emissions and cruising along on the current path is 4 ½ inches of water. That means more coastal flooding, more erosion, more salt-water intrusion into drinking wells, but it’s a long way from Waterworld.

What to make of all this? Well, for one thing, the discrepancy between the papers demonstrates not only how little scientists really understand about what is going on in Antarctica, but also what a low priority our society has put on funding research to better understand it. For another, modeling ice sheets is just plain hard, in part because it requires high-resolution models, and in part because a lot of the important events in the story of ice happened 20,000 years ago (or more), for which data is sparse.

Finally, there is a big difference in perspective between the two studies: The Edwards paper only looks at sea level rise out to 2100, whereas the DeConto paper stretches out to 2300. Even in the DeConto paper, Antarctica doesn’t really start to fall apart until 2120 or so. As always, what you see depends on the lens you look through. There’s also the question of how additional snowfall from a warmer atmosphere may offset some or all of the melting from warmer ocean water. (Warmer air holds more moisture, and thus can result in more snow.) As Edwards tells me via email, “We are not yet sure how much we have control over Antarctica, because snowfall has a counteracting effect that may also increase in future.”

The most important distinction, however, is that the DeConto paper includes a mechanism called Marine Ice Cliff Instability, or MICI (scientists pronounce it “Mickey,” like the mouse) and the Edwards paper doesn’t.

MICI is best understood as a hypothesis about how ice sheets behave in a rapidly warming world. The gist of it is that, in some conditions, ice sheets don’t simply melt — they collapse. Warm ocean water can get beneath the glaciers, causing them to fracture and destabilize. When the ice shelves that keep the glaciers wedged in place break up, the glaciers themselves become vulnerable. According to the MICI hypothesis, ice cliffs above about 100 meters high or so don’t have the structural integrity to stand on their own, and without ice shelves to buttress them, they will collapse, or calve, into the sea (there’s a more detailed explanation of MICI in my 2017 article on the Doomsday Glacier).

This is more or less what’s happening right now at a few glaciers in Greenland, including Jakobshaven, the fastest flowing glacier in the world. A few years ago, I flew across the front of Jakobshaven in a helicopter and watched huge chunks of ice calve into the water, creating an army of icebergs that float out into Glacier Bay, where climate-catastrophe tourists take pictures of them and post them to their Instagram accounts.

The calving front at Thwaites is roughly 10 times bigger than Jakobshaven. If Thwaites’ ice shelf breaks up and starts behaving like Jakobshaven, a whole lotta real estate is gonna get wet real fast.

MICI may be a radical idea, but it is not new. It has been around since at least the 1960s, when climate scientist John Mercer first traveled to Antarctica and realized that the land beneath the ice in West Antarctica was shaped like a bowl, which means that if warm water got under the ice and began to destabilize the glacier, it could trigger a runaway retreat that could dump a lot of ice into the Southern Ocean very quickly. Richard Alley took up the idea in the early 2000s, understanding it could be a mechanism to explain why sea levels were so high during the Pliocene era, 3 million years ago, when levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were about the same as they are today. In 2016, DeConto co-authored a paper with Dave Pollard, a climate modeler at Penn State, that modeled the implications of MICI in Antarctica for the first time. The paper added more than three feet to sea level rise projections and scared the bejesus out of climate scientists everywhere.

The MICI hypothesis also prompted the formation of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a five year-long, $50 million joint research effort between the U.S. and the U.K., which began in 2018 (my trip to Thwaites in 2019 was with scientists participating in this joint research venture). Among the key questions scientists are asking: How much warm water is getting under Thwaites ice shelf? (Quite a bit, according to a new paper by Swedish oceanographer Anna Wåhlin, which is based on measurements she made while we were in Antarctica together.) How quickly is the glacier losing its grip on the bedrock near the current ice front? How quickly is the ice shelf breaking up?

“In the last few years, we have seen a lot of dynamic change at Thwaites and other glaciers in the region,” says Robert Larter, a geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey who was the chief scientist on the Palmer on my trip to Antarctica. According to one recent study, the net ice-mass loss from Thwaites and nearby glaciers is now more than six times what it was 30 years ago, which Larter calls “mind-boggling.”

None of this research is conclusive, and most of it is still too new in include in climate models. For the moment, MICI remains an outlier idea, one that mainstream climate modelers have yet to fully embrace, despite the risks that civilization faces from it.

“If you want to be generous,” Alley tells me, “You could say that climate modelers really want to make their models carefully, make sure they are calibrated precisely, and they don’t know what to do with MICI.”

It’s also true that there are still a lot of unanswered questions about exactly how MICI works. “Yes, ice cliffs can fail,” says Ted Scambos, the lead U.S. glaciologist in the Thwaites research project. “But is a runaway failure realistic?” And just because ice cliff collapse is happening at Jakobshaven, it doesn’t mean it will necessarily happen at Thwaites. “Jakobshaven is not physically the same as all Antarctic glaciers, nor does their model include all possible physics (e.g. negative feedbacks or other factors that limit the rate and extent of cliff collapse),” Edwards tells me via email. “It’s far too simple to say, ‘Clearly MICI exists so why don’t you believe in it?’ ”

“The reason nobody is rushing off an unstable marine cliff in search of what DeConto and Pollard have done is because nobody thinks there is any good reason to single out MICI and make it the cause of instability in glaciers,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. “Is MICI a large part of why glaciers calve? It’s not inconceivable, but it’s also not inconceivable that it could be other factors.”

Finally, some of the resistance to MICI may simply be a failure of imagination. No human has ever witnessed the rapid collapse of a glacier in Antarctica like Thwaites; ergo, it can’t happen. Alley himself thinks about it simply in terms of risk. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the ice cliffs won’t disintegrate in Antarctica quite as fast as we predict,” he says. “But if you are even a little bit worried that scientists might have made mistakes in their calculations about what is going on in Antarctica, then maybe we should pay attention to this.” He compares Thwaites and other glaciers in West Antarctica with drunk drivers. “They are out there, they are scary, and they don’t behave as you expect them to,” Alley says. “That’s why it’s a good idea to have a seatbelt in your cars.”

In the end, climate modelers are a little like sci-fi writers. They use facts and physics to spin out possible futures. DeConto’s paper imagines we are moving into a new world that will behave very differently from the world we have lived in so far. Edwards’ paper imagines that the rest of the 21st century will look pretty much like it does today, only hotter, and with a little less ice. Both visions are based in science. Both visions are plausible. And both visions are fraught with deep uncertainty about where we are going.

I hope we live in Edwards’ world, but I fear we live in DeConto’s.

Colombia protesters: We're not scared anymore

By Manuel Rueda
Bogotá, Colombia
BBC
Published18 hours ago
Related Topics
Colombia protests



Anti-government protests in Colombia entered their third week on Wednesday. The demonstrations were sparked by a government proposal to increase taxes as millions of people have seen their incomes shrink due to Covid. But they have continued for days even after the government withdrew its proposed tax plan.

Protest leaders say their demands now go much further and include calls for a basic income scheme, free tuition at public universities and a reform of the police. Forty-two people have been killed during the protests, according to Colombia's human rights ombudsman.

Why Colombia's protests are unlikely to fizzle out

Protesters spoke to the BBC about their reasons for keeping up the demonstrations, which are the largest to sweep through Colombia in decades.

Yacila, political scientist



There is a lot of discontent at the national level and it goes further than the issue of taxes. It's caused by all the injustices that have been taking place during the [Iván] Duque government and during previous governments.

Hundreds of community leaders have been killed since the peace deal with the Farc (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was signed in 2016, including indigenous and black leaders.

We have a poster here with the names of almost 300 former Farc fighters who were killed after laying down their weapons. On top of that what we are seeing is that when people come out to protest there is repression, so that just makes us want to continue to mobilise.

I think that these protests should continue until people have satisfied their need to express their frustration with what is happening.

Ramiro Velasco, art teacher



I'm wearing a costume that represents death: it represents the massacres that have been occurring in Colombia under this government, the killings of community leaders in the countryside, deforestation, the growth of poverty and everything else related to death.

At this moment there is a very strong lack of government in this country. The government has no clear plans on how to improve healthcare, it has let the peace deal with the Farc wither. For all those reasons, I'm here. We have to demand that the government do its job because at this moment they are making us an unviable country.

They told us not to go out because we were going to get sick and we were going to die. But these demonstrations are proof that people are not scared anymore. We have to come out and express ourselves.

Liliana Rodríguez, classical singer



I'm showing my support for the protests by coming out here to sing opera. What you see people expressing here is general discontent. It's not just about a tax reform, or reform to the health system, and all the other laws. It's people showing the discontent that they have been feeling for a long time.

Young people are especially frustrated because we study a lot, but we don't have a place to continue our careers afterwards. I used to sing for the choir at the Bogotá Philharmonic but that's just a youth choir. Now there is no choir where I can sing full-time, because in Colombia there are no choirs that pay professionals to sing.

There's no work and things like food are more expensive now, there's government corruption, that's what makes people frustrated. The tax reform was just a fuse. But what is really going on is that we are tired of this bad governance we have.

Ernesto Herrera, leader of the Santa Fé Football Club fan group



We support these protests because we are victims of the state. We've had members killed by the police.

Our youth have lots of needs that are not being met. There are drug addiction problems, economic problems, problems just not being recognised. But we want to get ahead and change things and have a different kind of government.

We don't feel represented by politicians. But we want to sit down with them and show them that from our experience as football fans, we know what young people are going through. We have youth that need basic incomes, access to education, and need access to a decent healthcare system.

Daniela Sánchez, hospital worker



I am a clown, and I do laughing therapy for children in hospital as well as for older people with terminal illnesses.

We decided to participate in these protests because we are fed up with inequality in this country. There are people in the countryside, and in cities, too, who can no longer afford three meals a day, people who have no access to education or to proper healthcare, we have seen that during our work as hospital clowns.

The pandemic exposed the big differences between the rich and the poor in Colombia. It showed how many people have no access to the internet, for example, or how many people lack savings and need to work on the streets to eat.

So I think this has to continue until the government shows remorse for its actions and hopefully it will show people that it is important to vote. We need to make good choices in next year's election.

Miguel Morales, member of the Misak indigenous group



This protest is not just about taxes. We are from the Cauca region, but we have about 200 families that have been here in Bogotá for 10 years because of the violence in our territories.

We think that these protests must continue because the president must realise that his job is not to do what his party wants, or what [his mentor] former President Álvaro Uribe wants, but to carry out the will of the people.

While he doesn't hold real conversations with the people the protests will continue.

We have pulled down statues [of Spanish conquistadors] during the protests. These are symbolic acts of justice. In order for a country to live in peace, the histories of all its inhabitants must be heard.

Wendy Monroy, student at a public university



I was in the second semester of my teaching degree when the pandemic broke out. Classes got suspended for some weeks and then they adjusted things so that we would continue our studies online.

I kept on studying but many of my fellow students dropped out. They dropped out because they had to work to support their families, because their parents didn't have money any more.

So I'm here to ask for things like better healthcare but also to ask for better conditions for students.

At my university, we haven't been able to go back to face-to-face classes yet. At private universities they're already having regular classes again, but that's because they have funds to take bio-security measures, simple things, like providing hand sanitizers, but at my university that hasn't been done.

I believe that there are solutions for this country and we have to fight for that. These are the biggest protests I can remember. It shows that young people are willing to take control of this country and maybe in some years time, things can change.

Scottish Unison members vote to accept NHS pay offer

Unison members demonstrated last year in a bid to be paid more money

Members of Scotland's largest health union have voted to accept a deal that will see most NHS staff receive a 4% pay rise.

Unison said on Wednesday that its members voted "overwhelmingly" for the rise.

The deal has been on the table since the end of March and will be backdated to December, the Scottish government said.

Unison is now calling for the rise to be implemented as soon as possible.

The offer came after a period of negotiation between unions and NHS bosses.


It followed a row in England after Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended plans to give some NHS staff in England a 1% pay rise.


'Above and beyond'


Mr Johnson praised "heroic" health and social care workers but said the rise was as much as the UK government could afford during the "tough times" of the pandemic.


Nurses, paramedics and domestic staff are among those who could receive the boost to their salaries.

GMB union urges members to reject 4% NHS pay rise

Two health workers' unions have accepted the 4% pay offer after ballots
Royal College of Nursing urges members to reject 4% pay offer

Responding to the vote, Unison's head of health Willie Duffy, said the pay rise represented a fair increase for members.

He added: "The fact that 84% of those who took part in the ballot voted in favour of the pay offer shows how much this pay increase means to our members. Scotland's health workers go above and beyond to keep our NHS services running - not just during the pandemic but each and every day - and we're delighted to have secured them a fair pay increase."

The union which represents prison officers who work in the State Hospital at Carstairs - POA Scotland - has also seen its members vote to accept the offer in a ballot.

Assistant General Secretary Phil Fairlie said: "We have a very clear and overwhelmingly supportive response to the pay offer, with 86% of our members voting to accept, from a 70% response rate."

When she announced the offer, former Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said the average pay of a front-line NHS nurse would rise by more than £1,200 a year.

Ms Freeman said the offer - which does not apply to doctors - recognised the "service and dedication" of staff during the pandemic.

It followed the £500 "thank you" payment for all health and social care workers which was announced by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in November.

However, not all unions were behind the 4% offer.


The GMB union recommended its NHS and Scottish Ambulance Service members vote to reject the offer.

Unison and Unite put the offer to members without recommendation.

And the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) recommended members should reject the Scottish government's deal.

The RCN said Scotland's nurses and healthcare support workers deserved a 12.5% rise for the skill, responsibility and experience they demonstrate every day.

Health workers on Agenda for Change (AfC) pay bands 5-7 are being offered a 4% uplift for 2021-22.

Staff on bands 1-4 who currently earn £24,973 or less would receive a flat rise of £1,009, while staff on the highest bands 8-9 would receive an increase of 2% or less.

Tokyo 2020 President acknowledges anti-Olympics petition

Experts call on Canada to use COVAX doses of AstraZeneca or give them back

OTTAWA — Some health experts are questioning Canada's decision to accept thousands of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from a global vaccine-sharing alliance, only to have them sit in freezers in an Ontario warehouse.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

More than 655,000 doses of AstraZeneca, which most provinces have now decided against using first doses, arrived in Canada through the COVAX initiative Thursday.

It is the time vaccines have been delivered to Canada without immediately being distributed to provinces and territories, because Ottawa isn't yet clear who wants them.

Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, who is managing vaccine logistics for the federal government, said Thursday the Public Health Agency of Canada is waiting for provinces to put in their orders for those doses before sending them out.

But most provinces have now decided to stop giving AstraZeneca as a first dose and are still mulling whether to give it as second dose or offer to get their second dose using either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.

Dr. Irfan Dhalla, an internal medicine specialist in Toronto, says it is unconscionable to sit on those doses and the choice must be made immediately to use them or send them to countries that will.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2021.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press