#CRYPTID
Mouse thought extinct for 150 years found living on island


CNNDigital
Published Wednesday, June 30, 2021 


A mouse thought to have become extinct more than 150 years ago has been found alive on an island off the coast of Western Australia, researchers have discovered. (Credit: Wayne Lawler / Australian Wildlife Conservancy via CNN)

AMY WOODYATT -- A mouse thought to have become extinct more than 150 years ago has been found alive on an island off the coast of Western Australia, researchers have discovered.

Scientists compared DNA samples from eight extinct Australian rodents and 42 of their living relatives, and discovered that the extinct Gould's mouse was "indistinguishable" from the Shark Bay mouse.

Researchers were studying the decline of the country's native species since the arrival of Europeans in Australia in 1788.

The mouse -- which will still be known by the common name "djoongari," or "Shark Bay mouse" -- was once found across the country, from south-west Western Australia to New South Wales, but was last seen in 1857. The introduction of invasive species, agricultural land clearing and new diseases destroyed the native species, researchers said, adding that climate change and poor fire management also affected population sizes.

The remaining populations of the djoongari were located on a single 42 square-kilometre island in Shark Bay, Bernier Island. One small population is not enough for a species to survive, researchers said, so the mice have been taken to two other islands to establish new populations.

"The resurrection of this species brings good news in the face of the disproportionally high rate of native rodent extinction, making up 41 per cent of Australian mammal extinction since European colonisation in 1788," lead author Emily Roycroft, an evolutionary biologist from the Australian National University (ANU), said in a statement.

"It is exciting that Gould's mouse is still around, but its disappearance from the mainland highlights how quickly this species went from being distributed across most of Australia, to only surviving on offshore islands in Western Australia. It's a huge population collapse," she added.

The team also studied seven other extinct native species, which were found to have high genetic diversity immediately before extinction, showing that their populations were widespread before Europeans arrived.

"This shows genetic diversity does not provide guaranteed insurance against extinction," Roycroft warned.

More than 80% of Australia's mammals are endemic, as result of Australia's long period of isolation from other continents. But the country has what researchers described in a 2015 paper as an "extraordinary rate of extinction." Meanwhile, a study published in 2019 found that Australia was home to 6-10% of the world's post-1500 recognized extinctions.

Roycroft said the extinction of the seven native species happened "very quickly."

"They were likely common, with large populations prior to the arrival of Europeans. But the introduction of feral cats, foxes, and other invasive species, agricultural land clearing and new diseases have absolutely decimated native species," she said.

Humans have already wiped out hundreds of species and pushed many more to the brink of extinction through wildlife trade, pollution, habitat loss and the use of toxic substances. The Earth's sixth mass extinction is happening now, much faster than previously expected -- and the rate at which species are dying out has accelerated in recent decades, scientists have warned.

The research will be published in the journal PNAS next month.

Earth's cryosphere is shrinking by 87,000 square kilometers per year

by American Geophysical Union

Sea ice melting in the Arctic Ocean. Credit: NASA/Kathryn Hansen

The global cryosphere—all of the areas with frozen water on Earth—shrank by about 87,000 square kilometers (about 33,000 square miles, an area about the size of Lake Superior) per year on average between 1979 and 2016, as a result of climate change, according to a new study. This research is the first to make a global estimate of the surface area of the Earth covered by sea ice, snow cover and frozen ground.

The extent of land covered by frozen water is just as important as its mass because the bright white surface reflects sunlight so effectively, cooling the planet. Changes in the size or location of ice and snow can alter air temperatures, change the sea level and even affect ocean currents worldwide.

The new study is published in Earth's Future, AGU's journal for interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants.

"The cryosphere is one of the most sensitive climate indicators and the first one to demonstrate a changing world," said first author Xiaoqing Peng, a physical geographer at Lanzhou University. "Its change in size represents a major global change, rather than a regional or local issue."

The cryosphere holds almost three-quarters of Earth's fresh water, and in some mountainous regions, dwindling glaciers threaten drinking water supplies. Many scientists have documented shrinking ice sheets, dwindling snow cover and loss of Arctic sea ice individually due to climate change. But no previous study has considered the entire extent of the cryosphere over Earth's surface and its response to warming temperatures.

The percentage of each area that experiences ice, snow or frozen ground at some point during the year (1981–2010). Credit: Peng et al. (2021) Earth’s Future https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001969

Contraction in space and time

Peng and his co-authors from Lanzhou University calculated the daily extent of the cryosphere and averaged those values to come up with yearly estimates. While the extent of the cryosphere grows and shrinks with the seasons, they found that the average area covered by Earth's cryosphere has contracted overall since 1979, correlating with rising air temperatures.

The shrinkage primarily occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, with a loss of about 102,000 square kilometers (about 39,300 square miles), or about half the size of Kansas, each year. Those losses are offset slightly by growth in the Southern Hemisphere, where the cryosphere expanded by about 14,000 square kilometers (5,400 square miles) annually. This growth mainly occurred in the sea ice in the Ross Sea around Antarctica, likely due to patterns of wind and ocean currents and the addition of cold meltwater from Antarctic ice sheets.

The estimates showed that not only was the global cryosphere shrinking but that many regions remained frozen for less time. The average first day of freezing now occurs about 3.6 days later than in 1979, and the ice thaws about 5.7 days earlier.

"This kind of analysis is a nice idea for a global index or indicator of climate change," said Shawn Marshall, a glaciologist at the University of Calgary, who was not involved in the study. He thinks that a natural next step would be to use these data to examine when ice and snow cover give Earth its peak brightness, to see how changes in albedo impact the climate on a seasonal or monthly basis and how this is changing over time.

To compile their global estimate of the extent of the cryosphere, the authors divided up the planet's surface into a grid system. They used existing data sets of global sea ice extent, snow cover and frozen soil to classify each cell in the grid as part of the cryosphere if it contained at least one of the three components. Then they estimated the extent of the cryosphere on a daily, monthly and yearly basis and examined how it changed over the 37 years of their study.

The authors say that the global dataset can now be used to further probe the impact of climate change on the cryosphere, and how these changes impact ecosystems, carbon exchange and the timing of plant and animal life cycles.

Explore further Climate warming increases cryospheric hazards

More information: Xiaoqing Peng et al, A Holistic Assessment of 1979–2016 Global Cryospheric Extent, Earth's Future (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2020EF001969

Provided by American Geophysical Union

Global Opinions
Opinion: Canada’s record-breaking temperatures are an alarm. We must act.

Multiple fires have broken out in British Columbia and evacuation orders have been issued for the village of Lytton, which has set a new temperature record in recent days. (BC Wildfire Service / AFP) (-/AFP/Getty Images)

Opinion by
David Moscrop 

Contributing columnist

WASHINGTON POST
July 1, 2021 at 10:07 a.m. MDT

Residents of Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, have been living the opening pages of a post-apocalyptic novel for several days now, as a heat dome settled over the Pacific Northwest.

On Sunday, Lytton, B.C., set the country’s record for hottest temperature at 114.98 degrees (46.1 Celsius), displacing the previous record of 113 degrees (45 Celsius), set in 1937. On Monday, Lytton set the record again: 118.22 degrees (47.9 Celsius). On Tuesday, it set one for a third day in a row: 121.28 degrees (49.6 Celsius). On Wednesday, a wildfire forced the entire town to evacuate. Across the province, the heat wave is suspected of contributing to the loss of dozens of lives and stretched first responders thin. Several school districts have closed and crops have been stressed.

The ideal number of times an 84-year-old heat record should be broken in a week is zero, not three and counting. But this is what climate change has brought us. And we knew it was coming. In 2020, a study published in Science Advances warned of rising temperatures and the risks they pose to humans. The research article, titled “The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance,” found that “reported occurrences of extreme TW [wet-bulb temperature] have increased rapidly at weather stations and in reanalysis data over the last four decades and that parts of the subtropics are very close to the 35°C survivability limit, which has likely already been reached over both sea and land. These trends highlight the magnitude of the changes that have taken place as a result of the global warming to date.”


As if on cue, thus arrived the heat dome.

Years of dire warnings about climate change and its effects may have inured some of us to the alarming idea of life on a planet so deeply altered by human behavior that it is increasingly inhospitable to our survival, but the past few days have reminded millions of us what that looks like in practice. The immediate question is how governments, organizations, families and friends can take care of folks, reduce suffering and save lives, especially those of the most vulnerable among us. Following that, we must ask ourselves how we can process these extreme weather events in a way that underwrites immediate, aggressive climate action.


It is tempting to give up. The tasks ahead of us are daunting, and some of the consequences of our slow, inadequate climate measures are locked in. But nihilism serves few of us, while hope and action will serve many.

In March 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to sweep the world, Damian Carrington wrote in the Guardian: “There’s no ‘deadline’ to save the world.” While “deadlines can focus efforts,” he wrote, “even if this deadline is missed, it will not be too late, because every act reduces human suffering.”

That message of possibility is essential, a necessary frame if we are to mobilize in the face of tougher, more frequent challenges induced by climate change. Strategies of mitigation and adaptation can improve and save lives; as despairing as extreme weather events are, they ought not to drive us into morbid complacency. Indeed, it is an act of privilege to give in to despair while we might still create a better world.

Creating a better world, however, takes structural changes at the level of states. While we ought to be focused on improving our climate fortunes, individual behavioral changes must be secondary to national and subnational policy that retools how we govern ourselves and how we do business. Last year, Seth Klein, in his book “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency,” laid out a program for such change. Whether you appreciate the war frame or not — I do — or agree with each idea or not, the action outline gives plenty of suggestions for transformative adaptation and mitigation polices. At the very least, Klein outlined the scale at which we ought to be operating.

The heat wave in the Pacific Northwest should focus our minds — once those sweating through the heat can focus again, at any rate. The latest extreme weather event should impel us to demand more from our governments and should remind us that politicians will not do enough to address climate change and its effects on their own. They won’t jump; we’ll have to push them.

How do we begin? In Canada, election speculation is rampant, with an expected vote in the fall. That’s a good place to renew our efforts on climate, committing to making aggressive climate action the top issue and ensuring that breaking weather records doesn’t become our national pastime.

Explainer: Binance, the giant crypto exchange under regulatory scrutiny

By Tom Wilson and Huw Jones© Reuters/DARRIN ZAMMIT LUPI FILE PHOTO: The logo of Binance is seen on their exhibition stand at the Delta Summit, Malta's official Blockchain and Digital Innovation event promoting cryptocurrency, in St Julian's

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's financial watchdog has barred major cryptocurrency exchange Binance from carrying out regulated activities, the latest in a string of moves against the platform by authorities across the world.


Here are answers to some key questions on Binance, one of the world's biggest exchanges, and what the latest regulatory moves mean.

HOW BIG IS BINANCE?

Very.

Trading volumes in June were $662 billion, up almost ten-fold from July 2020, according to data from CryptoCompare. On a single day in May, daily volumes hit $92 billion, U.S. researcher Coin Metrics said.

Headed by Canadian Changpeng Zhao, Binance offers a wide range of services to users across the globe, from crypto spot and derivatives trading to tokenised versions of stocks.

It also runs an exchange that allows users to trade directly with each other. Its own cryptocurrency, Binance Coin, is the fourth-biggest in the world.

Binance is growing in popularity in Britain, where its app has been downloaded 1.8 million times in 2021, and 2.2 million times in total, according to mobile data firm Sensor Tower.

WHERE'S IT BASED?

It's unclear.

Binance's corporate structure is opaque, with its holding company widely reported to be registered in the Cayman Islands. A Binance spokesperson declined to comment on its location, saying it was "decentralised" and that it "works with a number of regulated entities around the world".

Binance has built up a huge following across the world, with channels on the Telegram social media app for users in more than 30 countries.

AND IT'S COMING UNDER SCRUTINY FROM REGULATORS?

Yes - in Britain and elsewhere.

Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said last week Binance's UK arm cannot conduct any regulated activity, without saying why it took the action.

Crypto trading is generally unregulated in Britain, though some activities such as offering crypto derivatives do require permission.

Regulators including the FCA are increasingly worried over the standard of anti-money laundering checks at crypto exchanges and the risks crypto trading poses to consumers.

Japan's regulator said last week Binance was operating in the country illegally, while Germany's watchdog said in April it risked being fined for offering tokens connected to stocks. In May, Bloomberg reported Binance is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service.

Yet national regulators often struggle to rein in crypto exchanges based elsewhere, lawyers said.

"It's very difficult," said Simon Treacy, senior lawyer at Linklaters. "(The FCA) don't have jurisdiction over the whole of Binance's operations, so they use the point where they do have jurisdiction and put pressure on the business there."

The Binance spokesperson said it takes its compliance obligations very seriously and is committed to following all regulatory requirements wherever it operates.

HOW WILL THE UK MOVE IMPACT BINANCE?

Its influence may be limited.

Beyond a loud warning to investors, the FCA has done all it can under its limited powers over an offshore exchange, experts say.

"At the moment the method is to emphasise risks to investors in the UK of these services rather than to regulate them outright," said Barney Reynolds, a lawyer at Shearman & Sterling.

UK investors can still access Binance via its main website, which the FCA does not have powers over.

Still, the FCA's demand that Binance seeks its permission to offer regulated services means it would be an offence to suggest to investors it was regulated in the UK.

Binance will also have to rethink plans announced last year to offer crypto trading services using pounds and euros on a platform regulated by the UK.

Google said this week it would only allow FCA-authorised entities to run ads for UK-based financial products on its website, after repeated FCA calls to crack down on online fraud.

Concern at banks over investment scams and fraud involving crypto exchanges may also impact Binance. Britain's Natwest Group last week capped the daily amount customers can send to exchanges, including Binance.

(Reporting by Tom Wilson and Huw Jones; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

Canada Day dawns as country reckons with horrific legacy of residential schools

OTTAWA — The country's second pandemic-shaded Canada Day is underway, with events again scaled back due to COVID-19, or cancelled as Canadians reckon with the horrific legacy of residential schools on Indigenous Peoples.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Groups, organizations and municipalities have decided against holding special events today after hundreds of unmarked graves were found at residential school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

Cowessess First Nation last week said that ground-penetrating radar detected 751 unmarked graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School, not long after the discovery of what are believed to be the remains of 215 children in Kamloops, B.C.

And then on Wednesday, the Lower Kootenay Band said a search using ground-penetrating radar had found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site close to a former residential school in Cranbrook, B.C.

Canadian Heritage plans to still go ahead with virtual Canada Day events like last year, with an online music show featuring English, French and Indigenous artists, but the flag atop the Peace Tower will be at half-mast to honour the Indigenous children who died in residential schools.

In his Canada Day message, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reflected on how the pandemic has changed daily lives, taught hard lessons, and kept many apart as part of the sacrifices needed to keep communities and neighbours safe and healthy.

But he also noted the horrific findings at the sites of former residential schools that Trudeau said have "rightfully pressed us to reflect on our country's historical failures" and injustices that still exist for many people in Canada.

Video: Carr addresses the reported discovery of unmarked graves at Cowessess First Nation (cbc.ca)

"While we can't change the past, we must be resolute in confronting these truths in order to chart a new and better path forward. Together, we have a long way to go to make things right with Indigenous peoples," said Trudeau, who plans to spend the day with his family.

"But if we all pledge to do the work – and if we lead with those core values of hard work, kindness, resilience, and respect – we can achieve reconciliation and build a better Canada for everyone."

New polling suggests a recent rethinking of this country's history, with the dominant narrative of European settlers discovering Canada making way for Indigenous Peoples being the First Peoples of the land.

Polling from firm Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies found that one in every two respondents said Indigenous Peoples "discovered Canada," while one-in-three said it was Jacques Cartier.

Association president Jack Jedwab says that among other findings point to recent events and more people beginning to understand the presence of Indigenous Peoples prior to what we have conventionally thought of as the discovery and settlement of Canada.

The same poll found about six in 10 respondents held a positive view of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, whose likeness has been removed from various public displays over his role in setting up the residential school system.

"People are aware of what's going on, clearly, about the horrible tragedy about residential schools," Jedwab said of the results. "But I don't think that as many people as we think are making the connection to Sir John A. Macdonald."

The survey of 1,542 Canadians in an online panel took between June 18 and 20, but can't be assigned a margin of error because online panels aren’t considered truly random samples.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 1, 2021.

Canada: More unmarked graves found near indigenous residential school run by church

Canada's First Nations have found a third group of unmarked graves at an assimilation school in recent weeks. 

This time 182 human remains have been detected.

 Previous discoveries amounted to nearly 1,000 dead


A woman mourns beside a memorial in Vancouver for indigenous children discovered in unmarked graves at the Kamloops residential school last month

A First Nations group in Canada's British Columbia said Wednesday it found 182 bodies using radar detection equipment near the site of a former residential school for indigenous children.

St. Eugene's Mission School near Cranbook was operated by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s.

The Lower Kootenay Band said in a news release that the search yielded the remains in unmarked graves 90 centimeters to 1.2 meters deep (approximately three to four feet). It is believed the remains belong to bands of the Ktunaxa nation and other nearby First Nation peoples.

Third such morbid discovery

Wednesday's discovery follows two similar discoveries at two other church-run schools in Canada in recent weeks.

A memorial in front of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School after the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found

First, 215 children were discovered in unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, also in British Columbia, in May.

Last week, 751 more bodies were detected at a school in Marieval in Saskatchewan.

Community members place solar lights next to flags marking the spots where remains were discovered at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School on the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan
Canada's residential schools for 'cultural genocide'

Until the late 20th century, the children of Canada's First Nations were forcibly enrolled in 139 residential reform schools. There they were physically and emotionally abused by teachers and principals who refused them the right to speak their language and practice their culture.

A commission of inquiry established that Canada had committed "cultural genocide" and conceded 4,000 had died in the process of forced assimilation.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last Friday addressed the issue, calling it a "harmful government policy."

Joe Biden to nominate Amy Gutmann ambassador to Germany, reports say

If confirmed by the Senate, Amy Gutmann will be the first woman to serve as US ambassador to Germany. The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, she is currently president of the University of Pennsylvania.


Amy Gutmann would be the first woman US ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany

US President Joe Biden will nominate Amy Gutman, currently the president of the University of Pennsylvania, as ambassador to Germany, according to German government sources.

Gutmann, 71, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, would also be the first woman appointed ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, were confirming a report in Der Spiegel magazine. US diplomat Rozanne Ridgway served as the US ambassador to East Germany in the 1980s.

Gutmann's appointment requires confirmation by the US Senate and approval by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier before she can take up the post. If confirmed by the US Senate, Gutmann would replace current Charge d'Affaires Robin Quinville; the US Embassy has been without an official ambassador since June 2020.

Relations on the mend

A change at the top of the US Embassy to Germany comes after several troubled years with former President Donald Trump's ambassador of choice. The previous Berlin envoy, Richard Grenell, stirred controversy with a combative approach to relations and vowed to support right-wingers in Europe.

He had also accused Germany of undermining NATO's nuclear deterrent and criticized Germany's involvement in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. Grenell returned to the US to become Trump's director of national intelligence before resigning as ambassador in June 2020.
'An experienced bridge builder'

"With Amy Gutmann, Joe Biden is relying on an experienced bridge builder. She is taking on a difficult legacy after Richard Grenell," Johann Wadephul, deputy parliamentary leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative alliance, told Reuters news agency.

Gutmann has headed the University of Pennsylvania since 2016 and is an expert in democratic processes and ethics. She also served as chair of former President Barack Obama's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

In a 2013 interview, she told the university's newspaper that her Jewish father's experiences in Nazi Germany had had a "profound influence" on her.

"It's true that his whole family would have disappeared from the face of the earth had it not been for what he did," Gutmann told The Daily Pennsylvanian. Despite ongoing differences, relations between Germany and the United States have improved substantially since Biden took office.

 

Russia: Jehovah's Witnesses receive long prison sentences

Two Jehovah's Witnesses received prison sentences of seven and eight years in Russia's far east. Russia declared Jehovah's Witnesses an extremist organization, outlawing it in 2017.

    

Sixty Jehovah's Witnesses are currently serving prison sentences or are under arrest in Russia

Two men who belong to the Jehovah's Witnesses religious group received prison sentences of seven and eight years Wednesday in the far eastern Russian city of Blagoveshchensk.

Dmitry Golik, 30, and Alexei Berchuk, 43, received seven and eight-year terms in a penal colony. The US-based religious movement released a statement calling it "a new record for cruelty."

Judge Tatyana Studilko handed down a sentence that matched the prosecutor's request in the case. Berchuk received the longest sentence handed down to any Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia to date.

The Jehovah's Witnesses said Berchuk's apartment was wiretapped in 2018 following a raid on seven members of the group in the city of Blagoveshchensk. Russian outlet Mediazona reported that the group alleges Berchuk and his wife have been under surveillance for six months.

An extremist group Putin says is not comprised of terrorists

Sixty Jehovah's Witnesses are currently serving time or are under arrest in Russia. In 2017, Russia outlawed the religious group, labeling it an extremist organization.

In February, two Jehovah's Witnesses were sentenced to prison. Alexander Ivshin, 63, was sentenced to 7.5 years by a court in Krasnodar, and Valentina Baranovskay received a two-year term.

The group was founded in the US in the last 19th century. While the Russian Orthodox Church considers the group "a destructive sect," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2018 that the Jehovah's Witnesses should not be considered terrorists.

Yet, members of the group continue to face persecution.

ar/sms (AFP, local media)

Generation Equality Forum gets underway in Paris

The opening of the largely virtual forum at the Elysee Palace will include remarks from Emmanuel Macron and Kamala Harris. The conference has been initiated by the UN body fighting to empower women.



Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka said the forum is focused on tackling all areas where women have been "short-changed''

Governments, companies and philanthropists vowed to invest billions of dollars to boost gender equality at an international conference convened by UN Women on Wednesday.

US Vice President Kamala Harris told those in attendance at the Generation Equality Forum, which was largely held online, that our pledges will "yield tangible results."



An initiative of UN Women marking 25 years since the 1995 Beijing women's conference, the forum was postponed last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the core aims of the forum is to fast-track programs that will help achieve gender equality and generate millions of dollars to reach that long-sought goal quickly, UN Women's Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told The Associated Press.


Watch video03:21Promoting gender equality in India by focusing on boys

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donation

Among the private donors, government officials and civil society leaders gathered, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday it would spend $2.1 billion (€1.77 billion) to advance global gender equality.

The foundation said it would spend the money in the next five years on health and family planning programs, economic empowerment projects, as well as several other initiatives.

Ahead of the conference, UN Women's Mlambo-Ngcuka said the underfunding of programs "leaves a lot of women in a situation where they will never really realize their true and full potential."

What the three-day forum is about, she said, is tackling and funding all areas where women have been "short-changed."

Topics such as forced marriage, gender-based violence, education and experiencing the devastating impacts of climate change are at the heart of the conference, Mlambo-Ngcuka said.


Watch video02:04 What's the secret of Niger's women's markets?

'We know the answers'

"Many of the problems that women face in 2021, we know the answers,'' she continued. "The fact is that we are not doing what is right by women is a true reflection of people who really don't care or understand the pain that women go through."

The opening of the meeting at the Elysee Palace will include remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the presidents of South Africa and Argentina and US Vice President Kamala Harris.

Watch video 04:15  'Women are having to fight their way'

Climate change boosted heat deaths by more than a third: Study
Daniel Martins 

Extreme heat events aren’t just a matter of having a few uncomfortably warm days: they’re a real and recognized threat to public health, particularly for society’s most vulnerable.


 "Rate of extreme heat deaths accelerating with climate change"

Now, with global temperatures continuing to rise, a new study says heat-related deaths over the last three decades were 37 per cent over and above what they would have been without the effects of climate change.

“Burdens varied geographically but were of the order of dozens to hundreds of deaths per year in many locations,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published this month in Nature Climate Change. “Our findings support the urgent need for more ambitious mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize the public health impacts of climate change.”

The study arrived at those figures by comparing two climate models: one factoring in global warming due to human emissions, and one without. It was based on temperature and mortality data collected from 732 locations across 43 countries over a 28-year period from 1991 to 2018.

The researchers point out that the 37 per cent estimate is an average, and the figure would vary from country to country — for parts of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America, heat-related deaths were at least 50 per cent higher than what they would have been without the effects of climate change.

Global warming has been on the rise since the industrial era, but has been accelerating in recent years. NASA says the per-decade average increase since 1880 was 0.08°C, more than doubling to 0.18°C from 1980 to the present. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 2005, and 2020 came within a hair’s breadth of taking the top spot from 2016.

WATCH: ‘THIS SCARES US ALL IN MEDICINE,’ A LOOK INTO EXTREME HEAT IN 2100
 "Extreme heat events are on the rise, what this means for your health"


In recent years, there’ve been several instances of large amounts of excess deaths that could be plausibly linked to individual extreme heat events. In August 2003, a heat wave in Europe was responsible for around 11,000 deaths in France alone, many of them seniors. In Montreal, a 2018 heat wave killed or hastened the deaths of 66 people, many of them among people with low income or social isolation, and triggered a public health investigation.

Many cities across Canada have extreme heat event protocols that open public cooling centres and employ other methods to reduce the risk to residents, but the researchers say more concerted action will be needed in the coming century.

"We expect the proportion of heat-related deaths to continue to grow if we don't do something about climate change or adapt," one of the lead authors, Dr. Ana Vicedo-Cabrera, said in a release from the University of Bern. "So far, the average global temperature has only increased by about 1°C, which is a fraction of what we could face if emissions continue to grow unchecked."

Even with efforts to limit future temperature rise, a certain amount of global warming is baked in at this point. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which advises governments on the science of climate change and recommends courses of action, doesn’t aspire to completely reverse the warming process: its current stated goals are to limit the warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and closer to 1.5°C if possible.

Canada, meanwhile, is actually warming twice as fast as the global average, and a study released last year by the Prairie Climate Centre offered a grim outlook on what that means for the kind of extended heat events that threaten public health.

The study found that, across most of Canada’s major cities, heat waves will be more frequent, last longer, and be slightly hotter on average than in previous decades, even in communities where they are relatively rare. In Ottawa, for example, heat waves could last at least 17 days by 2051–2080, up from the current average of four days. In Regina, the number of days that reach at least 34°C is expected to jump from three to at least 23 over the same period.

Thumbnail credit: David Bradley

Sky Brown to be Britain's youngest summer Olympian

Issued on: 01/07/2021 - 14:44

Sky Brown, photographed here in 2020, is set to become Britain's youngest ever summer Olympian when she takes part in the skateboarding in Tokyo, aged 13

 Nick DIDLICK OIS/IOC/AFP/File

London (AFP)

Skateboarder Sky Brown will be Britain's youngest ever competitor in a summer Olympics after being named in the team for the Tokyo Games.

Brown will be 13 years and 11 days old when she competes in Japan, beating the record set by Margery Hinton, who was 31 days older when she swam in Amsterdam in 1928.

Japan-born Brown, who turns 13 on July 12, won a bronze medal at the 2019 World Championships in Sao Paolo and ranked third after a series of qualification events.

She was rushed to a California hospital by helicopter after a horrific fall in training last year that left her with skull fractures, as well as a broken wrist and hand.

Brown's mother is Japanese and her father is British, with the youngster living in Japan and the United States.

She is famous in the US for winning the 2018 reality TV show Dancing with the Stars: Juniors.

Brown will be joined by fellow British teenager Bombette Martin in the park discipline when their sport makes its Olympic debut.

Team GB Chef de Mission Mark England said: "It is incredibly exciting to announce Sky and Bombette to Team GB for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

"Not only will they both make history as Team GB's first ever skateboarders, but Sky will also make history of her own as she becomes our youngest ever summer Olympian."

Britain's youngest overall Olympian remains Cecilia Colledge, who was 11 years old when she competed in figure skating at the 1932 Winter Games.

The youngest female competitor was the Italian gymnast Luigina Giavotti, who competed in 1928 aged 11 years 301 days.

The youngest confirmed male Olympian was Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras aged 10 years and 218 years old at Athens in 1896 but some claim an unnamed member of the Dutch men's rowing team at Paris in 1900 was younger.

The Tokyo Olympics, delayed from last year due to the coronavirus, will be held from July 23 to August 8.

© 2021 AFP