Anti-gov’t engineers hopeful after Lebanon syndicate victory

Winning coalition sees victory at syndicate election as reclaiming another civic space entrenched by sectarian parties.

By Kareem Chehayeb

1 Jul 2021

Beirut, Lebanon – When the results of the Lebanese engineers’ syndicate election were announced on Sunday, a large group of engineers and activists gathered at its Beirut headquarters erupted in celebration.

A coalition of grassroots activists and political groups had just decisively won against all odds.

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“It feels amazing. I didn’t expect this victory,” said Abir Saksouk, an architect among those elected. “We did expect to make a breakthrough of some sort because we had so many opposition candidates for the first time in the syndicates’ history – but nothing like this.”

The coalition, dubbed The Syndicate Rises, amassed 7,650 votes, effectively controlling six of the syndicate’s seven branches. A broad alliance of the country’s otherwise wrangling political parties clinched the other branch, which represents architects and engineers working at state institutions.

This coalition’s sweeping victory is the second of its kind in Lebanon since an uprising against a ruling class of sectarian elites rocked the country in October 2019. The Beirut Bar Association had also beaten candidates that represented the country’s traditional political powers to elect an independent leader in November 2019.

The result came amid increasing frustration in Lebanon, a country reeling from an economic crisis that has plunged more than half the population into poverty, with the local currency having lost well above 80 percent of its value against the United States dollar in less than two years.

Saksouk, who has worked for years on a slew of issues, from housing rights to public spaces, now hopes that the rest of the country’s syndicates and unions – for decades under the thumb of sectarian political parties – can be “reclaimed” and become effective again.

It was an even sweeter victory for Paul Naggear, an electric engineer who also ran with The Syndicate Rises.

“For the first time since August 4, we felt a sense of relief,” he said.

On that day, nearly 11 months ago, a massive explosion at Beirut’s port flattened much of the Lebanese capital, killing some 200 people and wounding more than 6,500 others.

Naggear lost his three-year-old daughter, Alexandra, to the explosion.

The disaster was seen as the deadly byproduct of years of corruption and neglect in Lebanon, with the authorities leaving more than 2,700 tonnes of a mysterious shipment of explosive ammonium nitrate in the port for several years.

Almost one year later, the state-led investigation continues to stall, leaving thousands like Naggear wondering if they would ever see justice.

“When you can’t find justice, you have to take on another battle,” he said. “But for the first time, my wife and I, after seeing the results, felt there was a battle we could win.”

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Syndicates in Lebanon cannot pass laws, but The Syndicate Rises has promised to work towards improving working conditions for engineers and architects, as well as break the hold of a handful of contracting companies that dominate the market and reform unjust building codes to improve access to housing.

Some believe the victory will also give the grassroots activists greater freedom amid an entrenched system of clientelism and political patronage.

Bassel Salloukh, a professor of political science at the Lebanese American University, said syndicates and other civic spaces have been co-opted by Lebanon’s ruling elite after the end of the country’s 15-year civil war in 1990 to suffocate any forms of viable opposition.

“All this has meant that after the October 17 protests, the invention of new sites for political opposition has to necessarily be incremental and strategic,” Salloukh said.

“One small victory at a time in those sites that form the soft underbelly of the sectarian system.”

Looking ahead, members of the winning coalition hope to also score a victory this month, when engineers and architects vote for the syndicate’s new head.

VIDEOS https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/1/anti-government-lebanese-engineers-win-syndicate-elections

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

 

130 countries back OECD plan to set global minimum corporate tax rate

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Deal comes after U.S. President Biden's push to make multinationals pay at least 15 per cent

The Associated Press · Posted: Jul 01, 2021 1:23 PM ET | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

Inequality around the world has led to more scrutiny over corporate tax rates, which has in turn drawn more attention to tax loopholes that multinational companies employ to keep their tax bills as low as possible. (Luke MacGregor/Reuters)

Some 130 countries have agreed on a global minimum tax backed by U.S. President Joe Biden as part of a worldwide effort to keep multinational firms from dodging taxes by shifting their profits to countries with low rates.

The agreement announced Thursday is an attempt to address challenges presented by a globalized and increasingly digital world economy in which profits can be relocated across borders and companies can earn online profits in places where they have no taxable headquarters.

The deal calls for a global minimum tax of at least 15 per cent, a key element pushed by Biden as he seeks to raise more revenue for his infrastructure and clean energy plans. There are still technical details that need to be worked out and it would be at least 2023 before the agreement takes effect.

The agreement, announced by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, also provides for taxing part of the profits the largest global companies in countries where they do business online but may have no physical presence.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called it "the most important international tax agreement in a century."

Yellen backs plan

Countries led by France have already started imposing unilateral digital taxes aimed at U.S. tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook; under the deal, they would agree to withdraw those taxes, regarded as unfair trade practices by the US, in favor of the global approach.

The French tax on tech giants prompted retaliatory tariffs under former U.S. President Donald Trump, and France has welcomed the Biden administration's push to reach a global deal.

"Online giants must pay their faire share of taxes where they have activities," he said. "There is no reason a small or medium business should pay more taxes than an online giant simply because it's physically present in the country where it carries out its activities."

• Janet Yellen pitches raising corporate rate everywhere to wipe out havens for tax avoidance

• Janet Yellen pitches raising corporate rate everywhere to wipe out havens for tax avoidance

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called it a "historic day."

"For decades, the United States has participated in a self-defeating international tax competition, lowering our corporate tax rates only to watch other nations lower theirs in response," she said in a statement. "The result was a global race to the bottom: Who could lower their corporate rate further and faster?"

Yellen said lower rates deprived countries of money for infrastructure, education and efforts to fight the pandemic.

Many technology companies, including Apple, have large presences in Ireland because the country has very attractive tax rates for intellectual property. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

Manal Corwin, a tax principal at professional services firm KPMG and a former Treasury Department official, said the deal put together "the big pieces" of an overall agreement, although technical complexities remain to be worked out. She said what was approved was "pretty much the US proposal," noting that it was "hugely important" for the US to obtain a commitment from other countries to withdraw their unilateral digital taxes.

Under the deal, countries could tax their companies' foreign earnings up to 15 per cent if they go untaxed through subsidiaries in other countries. That would remove the incentive to use accounting and legal schemes to shift profits to low-rate countries where they do little or no business, since the profits would be taxed at home anyway.

Not all of the 139 countries that joined the talks signed on to the deal. Ireland's finance ministry said it had "broad support" for the approach used in the agreement but could not agree to the 15 per cent minimum. Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has said the country's 12.5 per cent rate is a "fair rate."

• Apple has to pay 13 billion euros in back taxes, European court rules

Ireland has a notoriously generous taxation policy for intellectual property, which is a big reason why numerous technology companies including Google and Apple have extensive operations in the country. Google faced scrutiny a few years ago for setting up what was known as a "double Irish dutch sandwich" system whereby billions of dollars in profits were shuffled between two subsidiaries in Ireland and one in the Netherlands, in order to save more than $6 billion in taxes.

Cayman Islands pledge support

Signers included Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, regarded by economists as tax havens, and major powers such as China and India.

More discussion is expected at the meeting of the G-20 finance ministers in Venice next week, ahead of a final endorsement by the full G-20 summit of country leaders in October. The proposal to tax companies where they have revenue but no physical presence would require countries to sign up for a multilateral convention, while the minimum corporate tax could be adopted by each country through national legislation on a voluntary basis.

Tax experts say that voluntary approach could work if adopted by countries where many multinationals have their headquarters, such as the US and in Europe, by making clear to companies that even if they avoid tax by moving profits to overseas subsidiaries, those profits will be taxed at home up to the minimum.

In the US, Biden has proposed a 21 per cent minimum rate on overseas earnings of big US companies to deter them from shifting profits to tax havens. Biden's US tax must first pass Congress, where the Democratic president has only a narrow majority.

• Major G7 tax agreement only first step toward global deal: Freeland

• Many of the U.S. uber-rich pay next to no income tax, ProPublica reports

WHO asks Western countries to recognize China’s COVID-19 vaccines
By Maria Cheng The Associated Press
Posted July 1, 2021 


The World Health Organization said Thursday that any COVID-19 vaccines it has authorized for emergency use should be recognized by countries as they open up their borders to inoculated travelers.

The move could challenge Western countries to broaden their acceptance of two apparently less effective Chinese vaccines, which the U.N. health agency has licensed but most European and North American countries have not.


READ MORE: China launches COVID-19 vaccine passport for cross-border travel

In addition to vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna Inc., AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, the WHO has also given the green light to the two Chinese jabs, made by Sinovac and Sinopharm.

In its aim to restore travel across Europe, the European Union said in May that it would only recognize people as vaccinated if they had received shots licensed by the European Medicines Agency — although it’s up to individual countries if they wish to let in travelers who have received other vaccines, including Russia’s Sputnik V.

The EU drug regulator is currently considering licensing China’s Sinovac vaccine, but there is no timeline on a decision. It also does not recognize versions of the AstraZeneca vaccine that were made in India, effectively barring travel for people in developing countries who received doses via the U.N.-backed initiative known as COVAX.

Coronavirus: China backs CoronaVac vaccine, says it’s safe and effective – Nov 18, 2020

“Any measure that only allows people protected by a subset of WHO-approved vaccines to benefit from the reopening of travel … would effectively create a two-tier system, further widening the global vaccine divide and exacerbating the inequities we have already seen in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines,” a WHO statement said Thursday. “It would negatively impact the growth of economies that are already suffering the most.”

The WHO said such moves undermine “confidence in life-saving vaccines that have already been shown to be safe and effective.” In its reviews of the two Chinese vaccines, the U.N. health agency said both were found to significantly reduce the risk of hospitalizations and deaths.

The two Chinese shots are “inactivated” vaccines, made with killed coronavirus, whereas the Western-made shots are made with newer technologies that instead target the “spike” protein that coats the surface of the coronavirus.

READ MORE: China widens approval for coronavirus Sinovac vaccine use beyond high-risk groups

Although Western countries have largely relied on vaccines made in the U.S. and Europe, such as Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca, many developing countries have used the Chinese-made shots.

Earlier this year, the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged the effectiveness of its home-grown shots was low. Numerous countries that have used millions of doses of the two Chinese shots, including the Seychelles and Bahrain, have seen COVID-19 surges even with relatively high levels of immunization.

UN confirms 18.3C record heat in Antarctica

by Robin Millard

"The Antarctic Peninsula is among the fastest-warming regions of the planet—almost 3C over the last 50 years," warned the head of the UN's World Meteorological Organization.

The United Nations on Thursday recognised a new record high temperature for the Antarctic continent, confirming a reading of 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit) made last year.


The record heat was reached at Argentina's Esperanza research station on the Antarctic Peninsula on February 6, 2020, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said.

"Verification of this maximum temperature record is important because it helps us to build up a picture of the weather and climate in one of Earth's final frontiers," said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas.

"The Antarctic Peninsula is among the fastest-warming regions of the planet—almost 3C over the last 50 years.

"This new temperature record is therefore consistent with the climate change we are observing."

The WMO rejected an even higher temperature reading of 20.75C (69.4F), reported on February 9 last year at a Brazilian automated permafrost monitoring station on the nearby Seymour Island, just off the peninsula which stretches north towards South America.

The previous verified record for the Antarctic continent—the mainland and its surrounding islands—was 17.5C (63.5F) recorded at Esperanza on March 24, 2015.

The record for the wider Antarctic region—everywhere south of 60 degrees latitude—is 19.8C (67.6F), taken on Signy Island on January 30, 1982.

Verification process

In checking the two reported new temperature records, a WMO committee reviewed the weather situation on the peninsula at the time.

It found that a large high-pressure system created downslope winds producing significant local surface warming.

Past evaluations have shown that such conditions are conducive for producing record temperatures, the WMO said.

The World Meteorological Organization confirmed a record high temperature for Antarctica at the Esperanza Base on February 6, 2020.

The experts looked at the instrumental set-ups and the data, finding no concerns at Esperanza.

However, an improvised radiation shield at the Brazilian station on Seymour Island led to a demonstrable thermal bias error for the permafrost monitor's air temperature sensor, making its reading ineligible to be signed off as an official WMO weather observation.

The new record at Esperanza will be added to the WMO's archive of weather and climate extremes.

The archive includes the world's highest and lowest temperatures, rainfall, heaviest hailstone, longest dry period, maximum gust of wind, longest lightning flash and weather-related mortalities.

The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was minus 89.2C (minus 128.6F) recorded at Vostok station in Antarctica on July 21, 1983.

Global warming concerns

Antarctica's average annual temperature ranges from about minus 10C (14F) on the coast to minus 60C (minus 76F) at the highest parts of the interior.

"Even more so than the Arctic, the Antarctic is poorly covered in terms of continuous and sustained weather and climate observations and forecasts, even though both play an important role in driving climate and ocean patterns and in sea level rise," said Taalas.

The Earth's average surface temperature has gone up by 1C since the 19th century, enough to increase the intensity of droughts, heat waves and tropical cyclones.

But the air over Antarctica has warmed more than twice that much.

Recent research has shown that warming of two degrees Celsius could push the melting of ice sheets atop Greenland and the West Antarctic—with enough frozen water to lift oceans 13 metres (43 feet)—past a point of no return.

"This new record shows once again that climate change requires urgent measures," said WMO first vice president Celeste Saulo, the head of Argentina's national weather service.

"It is essential to continue strengthening the observing, forecasting and early warning systems to respond to the extreme events that take place more and more often due to global warming."


Explore furtherAntarctica registers record temperature of over 20 C

Study challenges claim early human hunters killed off prehistoric elephants


Christy Somos

CTVNews.ca 

Writer

Published Thursday, July 1, 2021 

Visitors walk past a Mastodon skeleton display at the opening of the Royal Alberta Museum, in Edmonton on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson)


TORONTO -- A new study suggests that prehistoric elephants like the mastodon and woolly mammoth were wiped out by waves of extreme global environmental change, rather than being hunted to extinction by early humans.

The study, entitled “The rise and fall of proboscidean ecological diversity,” published Thursday in Nature Ecology & Evolution, challenges the claim that early human hunters hunted prehistoric elephants to extinction over millennia. Instead, it presents findings that the extinction of the last mammoths and mastodons at the end of the last Ice Age marked the end of climate-driven global decline among elephant species over millions of years.

An international group of paleontologists from the Universities of Alcala in Spain, Bristol in the U.K., and Helsinki, Finland, ran the study to analyse the rise and fall of elephants and their predecessors over 60 million years of evolution, according to a release.

The study explains that while today elephants are categorized into three endangered species in the African and Asian tropics, their ancestors were a group of giant herbivores known as the proboscideans, which include the extinct mastodons, stegodons and deinotheres.

By studying the fossil collections in museums across the globe, like London’s Natural History Museum to Moscow’s Paleontological institute, the research team logged and analyzed traits like body size, skull shape and teeth, and found that proboscideans fell within one of eight sets of adaptive evolutionary strategies.

“Remarkably for 30 million years, the entire first half of proboscidean evolution, only two of the eight groups evolved,” said study co-author Dr. Zhang Hanwen in the release. “Most proboscideans over this time were nondescript herbivores ranging from the size of a pug to that of a boar. A few species got as big as a hippo, yet these lineages were evolutionary dead-ends. They all bore little resemblance to elephants.”

However, the evolution of ancient elephant species changed dramatically when a migration corridor opened up through the Bering Land Bridge after the Afro-Arabian plate collided into the Eurasion continent approximately 20 million years ago.

“The immediate impact of proboscidean dispersals [migration] beyond Africa was quantified for the very first time in our study,” lead study author Dr. Juan Cantalapiedra said in the release.

Access to a new continent meant new evolutionary processes to adapt to new environments.

“The aim of the game in this boom period of proboscidean evolution was ‘adapt or die.’ Habitat perturbations were relentless, pertained to the ever-changing global climate, continuously promoting new adaptive solutions while proboscideans that didn’t keep up were literally, left for dead,” Zhang explains in the release.

The researchers found that by three million years ago, environmental disruptions from the coming Ice Ages hit the proboscideans hard, resulting in evolutionary tactics in species like the woolly mammoth, which had shaggy hair and big tusks for retrieving vegetation covered under thick snow, the study says.

By analyzing the extinction peaks, or periods of time the ancient species would be “subject to higher extinction risk,” of the proboscideans at 2.4 million years ago, 160,000 and 75,000 years ago in Africa, Eurasia and the Americas, the team discovered that the results did not correlate with the expansion of early humans and their “enhanced capabilities to hunt down megaherbivores.”

The results surprised researchers.

“We didn’t foresee this result. It appears as if the broad global pattern of proboscidean extinctions in recent geological history could be reproduced without accounting for impacts of early human diasporas,” said Zhang, adding that the study “refutes some recent claims regarding the role of archaic humans in wiping out prehistoric elephants, ever since big game hunting became a crucial part of our ancestors’ subsistence strategy around 1.5 million years ago.”

Dinosaurs were declining before asteroid death blast finished them off

Better to burn out than fade away.


Rae Hodge
June 30, 2021


Ecological factors had already begun mounting their own opposition to Cretaceous creatures, say researchers, well before the species' final betrayal by that fateful asteroidal blast.Getty Images

For decades now, paleontologists have debated whether -- if spared the fiery finality of an asteroidal death-blast -- the 160-million-year reign of the world's most fearsome creatures could've continued unbroken on a planet whose ecology had already begun turning its back on them. In a study released Tuesday, scientists assert that long before a space rock tore a 115-mile-wide crater in the Yucatán Peninsula, the fate of the dinosaurs may've already been sealed.

The new research shows how cooling climate and the decline of herbivores created a domino effect that turned the ecosystem against the Cretaceous creatures. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, comes from an international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Bristol in England and the Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier in France.

"We looked at the six most abundant dinosaur families through the whole of the Cretaceous, spanning from 150 to 66 million years ago, and found that they were all evolving and expanding and clearly being successful," the study's lead author, CNRS researcher Fabien Condamine, said in a Tuesday release.

"Then, 76 million years ago, they show a sudden downturn. Their rates of extinction rose and in some cases the rate of origin of new species dropped off."

Graphs from the study show how speciation rate (in blue) dropped off just as the extinction rate (in red) spiked in the last 10 million years of the dinosaurs' reign. Scientists say that together, this corresponds to a rapid reduction in the number of species just before the impact of the asteroid 66 million years ago.University of Bristol / Fabien L. Condamine

A swirl of variables previously dogged the quest to nail down the condition of the dinosaurs before the asteroid's impact, including incomplete fossil records, uncertainties over age-dating the fossils, and doubts about the evolutionary models. So, using more than 1,600 dinosaur records, the team ran each model millions of times to consider all possible sources of error. And, ultimately, to find out whether the analyses would converge and point toward the most probable answer.

"This means that the data are getting better all the time," said co-author Phil Currie, of the University of Edmonton. "The decline in dinosaurs in their last ten million years makes sense, and indeed this is the best-sampled part of their fossil record as our study shows"

In the end, the dinosaur data pointed toward a handful of key causes for the species' decline, according to co-author Mike Benton, of the University of Bristol.

"It became clear that there were two main factors. First, that overall climates were becoming cooler, and this made life harder for the dinosaurs which likely relied on warm temperatures," Benton said.

"Then, the loss of herbivores made the ecosystems unstable and prone to extinction cascade. We also found that the longer-lived dinosaur species were more liable to extinction, perhaps reflecting that they could not adapt to the new conditions on Earth."

In the meantime, scientists said, the scurrying of tiny burrowing mammals in the undergrowth -- the ultimate inheritors of the postapocalyptic planet we know today -- likely went unnoticed by the massive dinosaurs.

Just as, 66 million years ago, a tiny ball of fire in the sky likely went unnoticed by the Cretaceous titans until -- growing larger and hotter -- the hurtling rock immersed the dinosaurs in one all-consuming final explosion, and it was too late for them to notice anything ever again.

First published on June 30, 2021 

#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)