MEPs call on EC to recognise nuclear as sustainable

09 July 2021

Nearly 100 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have called on the European Commission "to follow the science" and include nuclear under the EU's Sustainable Finance Taxonomy. According to a letter sent to Commissioners and published by European nuclear trade body Foratom, the MEPs urge them "to choose the path that their scientific experts have now advised them to take", namely to include nuclear power in the EU's Taxonomy on Sustainable Finance.

Swedish MEP Sara Skyttedal is one of the signatories to the letter (Image: Twitter)

"The EU has just 30 years to decarbonise its economy in a sustainable way," said Yves Desbazeille, Foratom director general. "Member States who wish to invest in low-carbon nuclear should not be prevented from doing so just because others are politically opposed to nuclear," he added.

In the letter, MEPs draw attention to the fact that the scientific assessment of nuclear concludes that "the existing legal framework provides adequate protection in terms of public health and the environment", which Foratom says means nuclear complies with the requirements of the Taxonomy. It therefore asks the Commission "to take this scientific work seriously and not to discriminate against nuclear".

The full text of the letter is:

"We, the undersigned members of the European parliament, acknowledge the hard work that the Commission has put into completing the first delegated act of the Taxonomy Regulation. The European Union has committed itself to becoming climate neutral by the middle of the century. This requires great efforts from the Member States as well as the EU as a whole. No effort can be spared in this important work, neither from the EU nor from the Member States. The taxonomy regulation has the potential to be a decisive tool in this regard.

"We cannot afford to ignore any energy sources that have the prerequisites to make a positive contribution on the path towards climate neutrality. That nuclear power is such a kind of energy source is, to us, obvious. Therefore, those member states that for this reason choose to invest and wish to mobilize private capital towards nuclear installations should not be met with resistance, but encouragement, from the EU. We are very pleased to see three different expert reports from the Commission that points in a similar conclusion. Not the least the Commissions Joint Research Centre (JRC) report “Technical assessment of nuclear energy with respect to the ‘do no significant harm’ criteria of Regulation (EU) 2020/852”, published this March. Last week the results of two scientific boards - Article 31 report and the SCHEER report - were published by the Commission. Reports that mostly confirms the findings in the JRC report, that the existing legal framework provides adequate protection in terms of public health and the environment.

"We welcome the findings of the JRC and the two scientific boards, which specific environmental aspects where assessed scientifically by a committee with expertise in environmental science, nuclear safety and safe nuclear waste disposal. This means that the scientific review acknowledges key elements of the “do no significant harm” principle. If we, and the EU as a whole, are serious about facing the climate crisis with powerful tools, then we cannot reasonably discriminate against any fossil-free technology with as much potential as nuclear power objectively has.

"There are obvious political wills from Member states without nuclear power, or with nuclear power currently being phased out, to persuade the European Commission to ignore scientific conclusions and actively oppose nuclear power. We urge the Commission to be brave enough to disregard these calls and to choose the path that their scientific experts have now advised them to take, namely to include nuclear power in the taxonomy.

"The taxonomy regulation should be guided by the desire to achieve climate neutrality and by the principle of “do no significant harm”. In the past, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has pointed out nuclear power as a key in the fight against climate change. The European Commission's expert body has now reached similar conclusions. It is our hope that the European Commission is courageous enough to create EU regulations that do not actively generate disadvantages for investments in nuclear power, or any other fossil free technology."

One of the MEPs who signed the letter, Sweden's Sara Skyttedal, posted the letter on Twitter, urging the Commission "not to create EU regulations that actively generate disadvantages for investments in nuclear power. Europe needs more, not less, nuclear energy".

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

 

US-led initiative aims to lower advanced nuclear construction costs

08 July 2021

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is teaming up with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) and providing USD5.8 million in funding for a project to demonstrate how three construction technologies from other industries can be applied to advanced reactor designs, to improve the economics of bringing advanced reactors to market. The Advanced Construction Technology (ACT) Initiative aims to reduce cost overruns and schedule slippages.

(Image: NRIC)

The three technologies have been used successfully in other industries but have not yet been tested within the context of nuclear energy, the DOE said. Together, they could reduce the cost of new nuclear builds by more than 10%. They are:

• Vertical shaft construction, a best practice from the tunnelling industry that could reduce construction schedules by more than a year;
• 'Steel Bricks', modular steel-concrete composite structures, much like high-tech LEGO pieces, which could significantly reduce on-site labour requirements;
• Advanced monitoring, coupled with digital twin technology, which can create a digital replica of the nuclear power plant structure. 

"Construction costs and schedule overruns have plagued new nuclear builds for decades," said Acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff. "By leveraging advanced construction technologies, we can drive down costs and speed the pace of advanced nuclear deployment."

GEH's portfolio includes the BWRX-300 small modular reactor, currently under review by nuclear regulators in both Canada and the USA. "We know this funding will significantly benefit the commercialisation of SMRs and pave the way for other advanced reactors," the company's executive vice president, Jon Ball, said.

The GEH-led project team includes Black & Veatch, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Purdue University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the Tennessee Valley Authority, in addition to the UK's Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (Nuclear AMRC), of which EPRI is a member, and two UK companies, Caunton Engineering and Modular Walling Systems Limited. Modular Walling Systems is the developer of the Steel Bricks technology, which GEH earlier this year said it intends to use in the construction of the BWRX-300.

"In the nuclear industry, we don't have to invent everything ourselves. Being prudent about leveraging tech from other industries will accelerate advanced nuclear deployment," EPRI's Chief Nuclear Officer Rita Baranwal tweeted.

"The assurance of construction integrity is a vital consideration for advanced nuclear reactors, and we are seeing more reactor designs using below-ground construction to provide additional protection from natural or man-made hazards," Li Li, head of the Nuclear AMRC's controls & instrumentation group, said. "By applying sensor-based structural health monitoring and real-time condition monitoring techniques, we will help bring the digital replica alive to optimise the cost of construction, operation and maintenance, and to improve the safety of advanced reactors over decades of low-carbon power generation."

The work will be funded and managed through DOE's National Reactor Innovation Center and is to be carried out in two phases. The initial phase will focus on technology development and preparation for a small-scale demonstration, and pending the successful completion of the first phase and future appropriated funds, a second phase will carry out the demonstration within three years of the initial award.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

PROUDHON'S PEOPLES BANK

White farmers blocked a much-needed federal relief program for Black farmers.

 The saga proved Black farmers won't overcome racism unless they take their economic future into their own hands.

insider@insider.com (Cornelius Blanding) 

© Getty A Black farmer checks the condition of his soy bean field. Getty
In a historical step to redress racism, the USDA was poised to issue $4 billion in debt relief to farmers of color.

White farmers and banks pushed back, in an attempt to uphold the racist structures they've benefitted from for centuries.

Black farmers won't overcome racism until they take the levers of finance into their own hands and forge their own financial institutions.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

This month, in a historic step to redress racism, the United States Department of Agriculture planned to begin issuing $4 billion in debt relief to minority farmers around the country. The move follows a long and ugly record of discrimination, including by the USDA itself.


Depressingly but not surprisingly, a group of white farmers has sued the USDA over the relief program, which was passed as part of the American Rescue Plan back in March. These longtime beneficiaries of systemic racism now claim they are victims of reverse discrimination. On June 10, a US District court issued a temporary restraining order on the USDA's plan while it decides if the agency's program discriminates against white farmers. A judge in Florida also ruled against the program on June 24, throwing the future of the aid further into doubt.

More shocking, though, has been the reaction from banks. Three of the country's biggest banking trade groups are fighting to stop the debt relief. In a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, they issued a barely veiled threat to withhold credit from farmers of color if the USDA moves ahead with the initiative.

The three trade groups - the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the National Rural Lenders Association - collectively represent a huge swath of American financial institutions, including the very ones that spent much of the 20th century denying home and business loans to people of color. Their attack on an effort to correct the effects of their actions shows how acceptable blatant racism remains in America's most powerful institutions.

It also shows that ending financial discrimination against people of color will take more than a new federal program. We need strategies that enable people of color to take control of their economic fates.

A reparation

For years, financial institutions have used discriminatory practices to withhold credit from non-White farmers. The USDA - which plays a central role in farming through loans, grants, insurance, technical help, and other services - has also failed to help Black farms equally, as Vilsack recently acknowledged. As a result, they struggled and shrank as White-owned farms grew. Consider that, in 1920, 14% of the nation's farmers were black. By 2017, fewer than 2% were.

There have been efforts to remedy these injustices. In 1999, Black farmers won a major civil rights class action lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman, which alleged systemic race-based discrimination by the USDA.

But this victory was undermined by settlement terms that made it onerous for claimants to collect their due. For instance, some 60,000 otherwise legitimate claims were rejected for being filed late. And one rule demanded that claimants come up with "specifically identified, similarly situated white farmers" who had not faced discrimination - legal research that could take a whole law firm months to produce.

This supposed cure, in short, was just as racist as the disease.

Even today, agricultural policies disadvantage farmers of color. Take the $8.5 billion Trump-era farm subsidy known as the Market Facilitation Program. Though about 10% of US farmers are people of color, more than 99.4% of those funds went to non-Hispanic white farmers.

Still, the battle to stop aid for non-White farmers continues. Hoping to stir controversy, some have characterized the USDA debt relief program as a form of reparations for slavery - even though the program is intended for "socially disadvantaged farmers" as a group. About 4% of American farmers are Hispanic, 3% Native American, and 1% Asian or Pacific Islander.

In the banking groups' letter to Vilsack, they warned that, should debt relief move forward as planned, "the likely result will be less access to credit for those seeking USDA guaranteed loans in the future, including [socially disadvantaged] farmers/ranchers."

That sounds like intimidation from an industry determined to uphold racist structures. The banks complain that by repaying farmers' loans early, the USDA will deny them the chance to earn income from interest or by selling off the debt.

People of privilege pay off loans early every day without their banks complaining to the government and threatening to withhold future loans. But they aren't the Black farmers who financial institutions had hoped to keep in debt for the rest of their days.

If black farmers and other farmers of color are to ever overcome the financial sector's entrenched racism, they'll need to forge their own financial institutions - specifically, member-owned financial cooperatives. These organizations offer the same services as traditional banks, but unlike banks, are deeply invested in the financial well-being of their member-owners.

The Administration's debt relief program is a welcome move. But the ultimate solution for marginalized farmers is to take the levers of finance into their own hands.

Cornelius Blanding is the Executive Director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund.

Read the original article on Business Insider

 

How learning Braille changes brain structure over time

White matter reorganizes at specific time points to meet the needs of the brain

SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE

Research News

IMAGE: CHANGES IN MOTOR, VISUAL, AND LANGUAGE-RELATED WHITE MATTER AREAS OVER TIME. view more 

CREDIT: MOLENDOWSKA AND MATUSZEWSKI ET AL., JNEUROSCI 2021

Learning changes the brain, but when learning Braille different brain regions strengthen their connections at varied rates and time frames. A new study published in JNeurosci highlights the dynamic nature of learning-induced brain plasticity.

Learning new skills alters the brain's white matter, the nerve fibers connecting brain regions. When people learn to read tactile Braille, their somatosensory and visual cortices reorganize to accommodate the new demands. Prior studies only examined white matter before and after training, so the exact time course of the changes was not known.

Molendowska and Matuszewski et al. used diffusion MRI to measure changes in the white matter strength of sighted adults as they learned Braille over the course of eight months. They took measurements at five time points: before the training, three times during, and once after. White matter in somatosensory areas strengthened steadily over the course of the training. But white matter in the visual cortex did not reorganize until halfway through the training, the point where the Braille words start to take on semantic meaning. White matter in both regions went back to the pre-training level two and a half months after the training ended. These results demonstrate white matter reorganizes itself across regions and different timeframes to meet the brain's needs.

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Paper title: Temporal Dynamics of Brain White Matter Plasticity in Sighted Subjects During Tactile Braille Learning - a Longitudinal Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

About JNeurosci

JNeurosci, the Society for Neuroscience's first journal, was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.

About The Society for Neuroscience

The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide.

 

Symbionts sans frontieres: Bacterial partners travel the world

Some bacterial symbionts in travel the globe and are true cosmopolitans

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR MARINE MICROBIOLOGY

Research News

IMAGE: THIS IS WHERE THE INVESTIGATED CLAMS LIKE TO LIVE: LUCINID HABITAT CHARACTERIZED BY SANDY PATCHES WITHIN SEAGRASS (THALASSIA TESTUDINUM) BEDS IN BOCAS DEL TORO, PANAMA. view more 

CREDIT: LAETITIA WILKINS

The Lucinidae family, lucinids for short, comprises approximately 500 living species of bivalves. They are at least 400 million years old, according to fossil records, and have managed to colonize a wide variety of habitats, from beautiful beaches to the abyssal depths untouched by the sun over a kilometer below the sea surface. Their ability to thrive in a wide variety of habitats is made possible by their 'partner in crime', a sulfur-oxidizing bacterial symbiont that utilizes hydrogen sulfide, better known as 'rotten egg gas', as an energy source to power primary production. This process is not unlike photosynthesis used by plants, yet not dependent on sunlight, and generates enough sugars to feed both the symbiont and the lucinids themselves.

Striking up partnerships from near or far

Finding a suitable partner out in the wild is a matter of life and death for lucinids. They have to pick up their bacterial partners at a very early life stage when they settle in the sediment after their larval stage. From this time on, they rely on their bacterial symbionts for nutrition. However, bacterial cells are miniscule and the oceans are awash with a multitude of possible candidates. Typically, animals that rely so heavily on bacteria are expected to strike up partnerships with local residents. These microbes are likely to work best under the unique conditions of their local habitats. A new study based on metagenomic analyses of symbiotic bacteria in lucinids now reveals that this is not always the case: Some bacterial symbionts travel the globe and are true cosmopolitans.

CAPTION

Lucinids are the most species rich and widely distributed family of marine bivalves hosting bacterial endosymbionts. In this picture, a large specimen of Ctena imbricatula is checking out its environment with its foot that it can enlarge ten times its body size.

CREDIT

Laetitia Wilkins

Globally distributed symbionts

"Using state-of-art DNA-sequencing and genome assembling, we discovered that a single bacterial symbiont species was the most abundant symbiont in eight lucinid species spanning three oceans - the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans - across the tropics of both hemispheres," said Laetitia Wilkins from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, shared first author of the publication together with Jay Osvatic from the University of Vienna, Austria. "These symbionts are virtually all over the place." No other known symbiont is so successful at dispersal and establishing symbioses with lucinids, the researchers report. They named it Candidatus Thiodiazotropha taylori - "to acknowledge the wisdom of John Taylor from the Natural History Museum in London, who has devoted 25 years of his life to studying lucinid biology and taxonomy", as Osvatic pointed out.

"This unexpected finding challenges previous concepts that symbionts are acquired locally. It suggests that lucinid symbionts are much more mobile", Osvatic added. The remarkable flexibility in this partnership is advantageous to both host and symbiont, as it increases the likelihood of locating a compatible partner across diverse habitats all over the globe. Prior to this study, lucinid research has mainly been carried out in easily accessible locations. Now for the first time the team around Wilkins and Osvatic presents an expanded, global dataset that has led to and will continue to facilitate new discoveries and show how distant habitats might be connected.

Scientists collaborating to find collaborating organisms

Just like the relationships between symbionts and lucinid clams, this discovery would not have been possible without the scientists reaching out and forming collaborations across the world. "Our contacts (and now friends) across the world have given us access to an unprecedented diversity of lucinds, both direct from the beaches and from museums across the world", said Benedict Yuen from the University of Vienna, senior author of the paper. "We were given access to a wide variety of lucinid samples at the Natural History Museum in London through John Taylor. Samples were also collected personally by our team and collaborators Matthieu Leray in Panama, Yolanda Camacho in Costa Rica, Olivier Gros in Guadeloupe and Jan A. van Gils in Mauritania."

CAPTION

Fluorescence microscopy reveals that lucinid gills are packed with symbionts. Lucinids host them in specialized cells called bacteriocytes. Bacterial symbionts are labeled in green and magenta, host nuclei in gold.

CREDIT

Lukas Leibrecht

Also discovered: Two new species in cosy togetherness

Moreover, the extensive data collection of Wilkins, Osvatic and their team resulted in the discovery of two new lucinid symbionts, which have now been described and named after Miriam Weber and Christian Lott, both former researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. These symbionts - now known as Thiodioazotropha weberae and lotti - are found in the clam Loripes orbiculatus on the Italian island of Elba, where the symbionts peacefully co-exist in the gills of the same host. "Before genomic analyses were used, it was assumed that each clam hosts only one species of symbionts", Wilkins explained. "However, many clams on Elba harbor two symbiont species. Miriam and Christian discovered this clam population in the bay of Fetovaia and it is thanks to them that we could amass a very powerful dataset on this symbiosis."

Next, the researchers want to find out how the symbionts travel. "They leave their bivalve home to traverse the globe", added co-senior author Jillian Petersen. 'Both beneficial symbionts such as Candidatus T. taylori but also pathogens can disperse in the environment, but we usually don't know how.'

###

Original publication

Jay T. Osvatic†, Laetitia G. E. Wilkins†, Lukas Leibrecht, Matthieu Leray, Sarah Zauner, Julia Polzin, Yolanda Camacho, Olivier Gros, Jan A. van Gils, Jonathan A. Eisen, Jillian M. Petersen*, and Benedict Yuen* (2021): Global biogeography of chemosynthetic symbionts reveals both localized and globally-distributed symbiont groups. PNAS (July 12, 2021)

† shared first authorship

* shared last authorship

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2104378118

Participating institutions:

Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Germany
University of Vienna, Austria
University of California, Davis, USA
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Republic of Panama?
Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa Rica
Universite? des Antilles, Guadeloupe
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, The Netherlands

Sea-level rise solutions

Stanford researchers map how sea-level rise adaptation strategies impact economies and floodwaters

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: NEW RESEARCH MAPS HOW SEAWALLS AND OTHER TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO COMBATING SEA-LEVEL RISE CAN CREATE A DOMINO EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS FOR NEIGHBORING COMMUNITIES. view more 

CREDIT: DJPERRY/ISTOCK

Communities trying to fight sea-level rise could inadvertently make flooding worse for their neighbors, according to a new study from the Stanford Natural Capital Project.

The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how seawalls constructed along the San Francisco Bay shoreline could increase flooding and incur hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for communities throughout the region. The researchers emphasize how non-traditional approaches, like choosing to flood certain areas of land rather than build walls, are smarter, more sustainable solutions for the Bay Area and similar coastal bay communities.

"It's not practical to keep building taller and taller seawalls to hold back the ocean," said Anne Guerry, chief strategy officer and lead scientist at the Stanford Natural Capital Project and senior author on the paper. "Our goal was to show how the threat of sea-level rise is interconnected with the whole social-ecological system of the Bay Area. Communities need to coordinate their approaches to sea-level rise adaptation so we can find solutions that are best for the whole bay."

By 2100, sea levels are projected to rise by almost seven feet in the Bay Area. Millions of people live and work in buildings that are collectively worth hundreds of billions of dollars within the Bay Area's projected sea-level rise zone. As water levels increase, governments are looking for ways to protect their communities and economies.

Following the flow

The researchers used complex mathematical models to map how floodwaters - and the economic damages related to floods - would flow depending on where new seawalls were built. They found that blocking certain areas of the bay's shoreline would be particularly damaging to communities throughout the region. For instance, if a seawall were built along the San Jose shoreline, communities throughout the bay, from Redwood City to Napa and Solano counties, would face an additional $723 million in flood damage costs after just one high tide, according to the models.

Damages to buildings and homes aren't the only losses that could result from walling shorelines - it also can cut off habitat for important bird and fish species, limit the natural area available to store carbon and create water quality issues by destroying wetlands that naturally provide water treatment.

"You may be protecting your immediate community, but you may be creating serious costs and damages for your neighbors," said Robert Griffin, an economist at the Natural Capital Project and co-author on the paper. "When it comes to current sea-level rise planning, there's some incomplete cost-benefit accounting going on."

CAPTION

The researchers modeled what would happen if a seawall were to be built along different parts of the San Francisco Bay shoreline. This map shows the increase in flooding that would result throughout the Bay Area if a seawall were built in the San Jose region.

CREDIT

Michelle Hummel et al.

Guiding the flood

The researchers identified places where Bay Area communities could strategically choose to guide floodwaters, rather than holding them back with walls. These strategic flood areas would act as overflow zones, absorbing the increased water and avoiding damage to communities.

One example is along the Napa-Sonoma shoreline, where Highway 37 is under threat of impending sea-level rise. Decision-makers are trying to decide how to adapt the road to prevent flooding in the future: either by building a taller embankment to raise the road or by rebuilding it as a causeway that allows water to flow between the bay and marshlands on the other side. The researchers modeled what would happen if the Napa-Sonoma shoreline were blocked by a concrete embankment and found that it would worsen flooding for almost all the Bay Area communities studied, from Martinez to San Jose. Building a causeway, on the other hand, would provide a natural absorption area for extra water to flow.

A Bay-wide strategy

"It's critical to consider the regional impacts of local actions," said Michelle Hummel, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and lead author on the paper. "Studies like ours can identify actions that will have large impacts, either positive or negative, on the rest of the bay and help to inform decisions about how to manage the shoreline."

Not every city or county has a landscape suitable for strategic flooding, which requires wide plains or valleys where water will naturally flow. Therefore, the researchers say it's crucial that Bay Area communities work together to identify the places where nature-based solutions like flooding make the most sense.

The researchers also looked at demographic information in their models to better understand who would be affected by possible strategic flooding plans. They say avoiding adaptation plans that add more pressure to poor or otherwise overburdened communities - by forcing them to move or creating increased economic stress - is key.

To understand the broader impacts of climate resilience decisions, including investments in nature, the researchers plan to model how sea-level rise adaptation strategies are connected with infrastructure, employment, community dynamics and more.

"Our plans should be as interconnected as our ecosystems," said Guerry.

CAPTION

A seawall built in the San Jose region would cause an increase in economic damages due to flooding. This map shows the millions of dollars in damages that would result throughout the Bay Area.

CREDIT

Michelle Hummel et al.

Katherine Arkema, lead scientist at the Stanford Natural Capital Project, is an author on the paper. Anne Guerry is also a Senior Research Associate in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Robert Griffin is also a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

 

Ecosystem destruction endangers local soy agriculture in Brazil

New research: Agriculture-driven ecosystem destruction turns up local temperatures, eats up billions in soy revenue in Brazil

REPORT AUTHORS

Research News

Destroying tropical ecosystems and replacing them with soybeans and other crops has immediate and devastating consequences for soybeans, according to new peer-reviewed research in the journal World Development. With 35.8 million hectare currently under soy cultivation in Brazil, extreme heat--which adjacent tropical forests help keep in check--has reduced soybean income by an average of approximately US$100 per hectare per year.

The study, Conserving the Cerrado and Amazon biomes of Brazil protects the soy economy from damaging warming, shows that protecting the Amazon and Cerrado can prevent the sort of high temperatures that damages the productivity of crops--estimated to cost the sector US$3.55 billion.

Another recent study found annual agricultural losses associated with deforestation-driven declines in precipitation at US$1 billion. Taken together, the two estimates reveal the massive economic impacts of destroying ecosystems on Brazil's agricultural sector; the annual losses are likely to be even higher than $US4.55 billion, which is only a conservative estimate.

"Destroying forests and other ecosystems instantly turns up the heat and reduces precipitation in the immediate vicinity where the destruction takes place, scorching soybean plants and inflicting great harm on the sector's profitability," said Rafaela Flach, the study's lead author.

"The economic fallout is big--and getting bigger, with serious impacts on global and local economics and food security. It's a local problem with global ramifications, and it's happening in tropical regions worldwide."

The research comes as Brazil faces its worst drought in almost a century, while deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has also expanded dramatically, setting new records for each of the past three months. With the fire season fast approaching, the overall trend has been one of accelerated ecosystem destruction with scant protection offered by the government. In three years, the Bolsonaro Administration has weakened 57 environmental laws, slashing environmental fines for illegal operations by 70% from March 2020 to August 2020 alone.

Scientists already have a well-established understanding of how tropical deforestation contributes to global climate change through emitting carbon and reducing the ability of the world's forests to take more carbon out of the atmosphere. A new body of research is emerging, showing how tropical deforestation has climate impacts beyond carbon: Deforestation immediately increases extreme heat locally and decreases regional and local rainfall.

These cascading impacts parch soil and harm crops and livestock, threatening agriculture both nearby and far away--with billion-dollar ramifications, as the report shows.

"The economic impacts of deforestation on extreme heat and reduced rainfall taken in isolation are troubling. But when we look at the impacts together and include climate change, the total effect can be overwhelming to the economy," said Flach. "While the global impacts should not be underestimated, the damage from ecosystem loss already being done to the Brazilian economy alone is severe."

In the new research, scientists analyzed the value of native vegetation in providing extreme heat regulation for soy production using two complementary approaches: soy revenue lost from the destruction of forests and other ecosystems and soy revenue gained from the conservation of these ecosystems.

For the analysis focused on ecosystem loss, they estimated the increased exposure to extreme heat for the amount of vegetation that was removed. For the conservation analysis, they modeled the value of standing forests and other ecosystems based on estimated regulation of extreme heat.

Soybean cultivation has expanded dramatically in Brazil, which is now the world's largest producer with 37% of global market share. Brazilian farmers have increased crop yields per hectare--from 1.7 to 3.2 tons per hectare between 1990 and 2019--while also expanding the land being planted--from 11.5 to 35.8 million ha between 1990 and 2019.

By 2019, soy constituted 49% of Brazilian cropland area and 41% of agricultural revenues. The two new studies reveal that farmers would have increased yields even more if they had not deforested, which would have held extreme heat at bay and maintained rainfall.

"The good news is that there's a win-win here. In the past and even today a lot of land is cleared to the detriment of food production and the climate" said Dr. Michael Obersteiner, a study co-author and the Director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. "The soy sector has a powerful opportunity to reduce this risk by stopping deforestation. In so doing, they benefit their industry--to say nothing of the major contribution to slowing global climate change."

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 CAN YOU STAY FRIENDS AFTER THE BREAK UP

Two-thirds of romantic couples start out as friends, study finds

SOCIETY FOR PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Research News

Movies and television often show romance sparking when two strangers meet. Real-life couples, however, are far more likely to begin as friends. Two-thirds of romantic relationships start out platonically, a new study in Social Psychological and Personality Science finds.

This friends-first initiation of romance is often overlooked by researchers. Examining a sample of previous studies on how relationships begin, the authors found that nearly 75 percent focused on the spark of romance between strangers. Only eight percent centered on romance that develops among friends over time.

"There are a lot of people who would feel very confident saying that we know why and how people choose partners and become a couple and fall in love, but our research suggests that is not the case," says lead author Danu Anthony Stinson, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria, Canada. "We might have a good understanding of how strangers become attracted to each other and start dating, but that's simply not how most relationships begin."

The team analyzed data from nearly 1,900 university students and crowdsourced adults, with 68 percent reporting that their current or most recent romantic relationship began as a friendship. There was little variation across gender, level of education, or ethnic groups, but the rate of friends-first initiation was even higher among 20-somethings and within LGBTQ+ communities, with 85 percent of such couples beginning as friendships.

Among university students, "friends-first initiators" were friends for one-to-two years before beginning a romantic relationship. Researchers noted that the vast majority of these participants reported that they did not enter their friendships with romantic intentions or attraction. Stinson also noted that the average length of pre-romance friendships means it is likely that the couples were genuine, platonic friends before transitioning to romance.

Nearly half of the students reported that starting as friends was their preferred way of developing a romantic relationship, making it far and away more popular than other options presented, such as meeting at a party or online.

Given the prevalence of romantic relationships that begin platonically, Stinson would like to see further studies examining this kind of relationship initiation. She also hopes that this research will push people to revisit their preconceived notions about love and friendship. Stinson notes that we are often taught that romance and friendship are dissimilar types of relationships that form in different ways and meet distinct needs.

"Our research suggests that the lines between friendship and romance are blurry," says Stinson, "and I think that forces us to rethink our assumptions about what makes a good friendship but also what makes a good romantic relationship."

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Social Psychological and Personality Science (SPPS) is an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), the Association for Research in Personality (ARP), the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP), and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology (SESP). Social Psychological and Personality Science publishes innovative and rigorous short reports of empirical research on the latest advances in personality and social psychology.

About the University of Victoria

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Coastal ecosystems worldwide: 

Billion-dollar carbon reservoirs

Climate and ecosystem change lead to a global redistribution of wealth

GERMAN CENTRE FOR INTEGRATIVE BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH (IDIV) HALLE-JENA-LEIPZIG

Research News

 

According to the study, Australia, Indonesia and the USA provide the largest carbon storage potential with their coastal ecosystems. The team also calculated which countries benefit most from the coastal CO2 uptake worldwide. The different ways in which countries are affected by climate change are quantified by using the so-called social costs of carbon.

"If we take into account the differences in marginal climate damages that occur in each country, we find that Australia and Indonesia are clearly the largest donors in terms of globally avoided climate damages originating from coastal CO2 uptake, as they themselves derive comparatively little benefit from the high storage potential of their coasts," says Wilfried Rickels, who heads the Global Commons and Climate Policy Research Center at the Kiel Institute. "The U.S., on the other hand, also store a lot of carbon in their coastal ecosystems, but at the same time benefit the most from natural sinks behind India and China. In monetary terms, the three countries realize annual welfare gains of about 26.4 billion US dollar (India), 16.6 billion US dollar (China) and 14.7 billion US dollar (U.S.) thanks to global coastal ecosystems and the resulting lower climate impact costs."

The basis for the monetary calculations are the so-called social cost of carbon, which allow assessing the contribution of coastal carbon uptake in the "inclusive wealth" concept. 'Inclusive wealth' is defined as the totality of all natural and man-made capital stocks, valued with so-called shadow prices, i.e. the contributions to social welfare. Among other factors, the absolute scarcity of resources plays an important role for shadow prices. Atmospheric CO2 has a negative impact on welfare primarily through climate change. However, countries are differently affected by climate change and accordingly country-specific shadow prices are used in the study.

The analysis does not include other carbon sinks or emissions from energy and industry. When carbon emissions from energy and industry are also considered, only Guinea-Bissau, Belize, Vanuatu, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Guinea, Comoros, Samoa, Madagascar, and Papua New Guinea make a net positive contribution through their coastal ecosystems, since they store more CO2 in coastal ecosystems than they emit in total.

The study also emphasizes that carbon storage is only a small part of positive impacts of coastal ecosystems for humans. "Coastal ecosystems are an essential component of marine ecosystems and are therefore particularly important for marine biodiversity and for fisheries. At the same time, they contribute to flood and coastal protection and are therefore important for adaptation to climate change," emphasizes Martin Quaas, who heads the Biodiversity Economics research group at iDiv and UL.

In any case, there is currently still a very strong focus on afforestation on land when it comes to the challenges of achieving the Paris climate goals. "Marine CO2 uptake as well as its enhancement requires more attention in the debate on net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and net-negative CO2 emissions targets," Rickels points out. Especially a possible weakening of the marine carbon sinks would require even more significant mitigation and carbon dioxide removal efforts. "The coasts, with their numerous different user groups as well as possible conflicts of use, have a special role to play here."

The natural capital approach used in the study is suitable for assessing the redistribution resulting from CO2 emissions and CO2 sinks, which, unlike existing market-based assessments, is not influenced by the stringency of the underlying climate policy. The researchers plan to explore this question in further studies.

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Original publication:

Bertram, C., Quaas, M., Reusch, T. B. H., Vafeidis, A. T., Wolff, C., Rickels, W. (2021): The blue carbon wealth of nations. Nature Climate Change. DOI: 41558-021-01089-4

 

New research suggests explosive volcanic activity on Venus

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - Traces of the gas phosphine point to volcanic activity on Venus, according to new research from Cornell University.

Last autumn, scientists revealed that phosphine was found in trace amounts in the planet's upper atmosphere. That discovery promised the slim possibility that phosphine serves as a biological signature for the hot, toxic planet.

Now Cornell scientists say the chemical fingerprint support a different and important scientific find: a geological signature, showing evidence of explosive volcanoes on the mysterious planet.

"The phosphine is not telling us about the biology of Venus," said Jonathan Lunine, professor of physical sciences and chair of the astronomy department at Cornell. "It's telling us about the geology. Science is pointing to a planet that has active explosive volcanism today or in the very recent past."

Lunine and Ngoc Truong, a doctoral candidate in geology, authored the study, "Volcanically Extruded Phosphides as an Abiotic Source of Venusian Phosphine," published July 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Truong and Lunine argue that volcanism is the means for phosphine to get into Venus' upper atmosphere, after examining observations from the ground-based, submillimeter-wavelength James Clerk Maxwell Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile.

If Venus has phosphide - a form of phosphorous present in the planet's deep mantle - and, if it is brought to the surface in an explosive, volcanic way and then injected into the atmosphere, those phosphides react with the Venusian atmosphere's sulfuric acid to form phosphine, Truong said.

Lunine said their phosphine model "suggests explosive volcanism occurring," while "radar images from the Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s show some geologic features could support this."

In 1978, on NASA's Pioneer Venus orbiter mission, scientists uncovered variations of sulfur dioxide in Venus' upper atmosphere, hinting at the prospect of explosive volcanism, Truong said, similar to the scale of Earth's Krakatoa volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1883.

But, Truong said, "confirming explosive volcanism on Venus through the gas phosphine was totally unexpected."

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Funding for the research was provided by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.