We have to pay the price’: Oslo’s plan to turn oil wealth into climate leadership

The mayor of the Norwegian capital argues that the ‘moral’ duty to cut emissions from burning waste can be met by carbon capture

The Fortum Oslo Varme incinerator burns 400,000 tonnes of waste a year. 

Photograph: Einar Aslaksen


Jillian Ambrose

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 28 Jul 2021 


The city of Oslo was built on wealth generated by the North Sea, which for decades has produced billions of barrels of oil and gas. But Oslo now hopes to lead Norway’s transformation from one of the world’s largest exporters of fossil fuels to a global green pioneer.

For Raymond Johansen, Oslo’s governing mayor, helping to lead global efforts to tackle the climate cisis is both a pragmatic economic response to Norway’s declining fossil fuel industries, and a moral obligation to provide solutions for a crisis it helped to create.

At the heart of Johansen’s plan stands an otherwise unassuming industrial waste incinerator. The Oslo Varme plant, on the outskirts of the capital, generates heat and electricity by burning rubbish and is by far Oslo’s biggest carbon polluter. But the plant was shortlisted earlier this year among schemes competing for €1bn in support from the EU’s low-carbon innovation fund. Johansen says Oslo wants to turn the incinerator into a blueprint for how cities across Europe can cut carbon emissions while tackling their waste.

“It is one of my biggest ambitions as the leader of Oslo,” says Johansen. “We are small enough and big enough at the same time to provide a test bed for western Europe.”

The city’s plan is to retrofit the waste plant with carbon capture technology to trap its emissions before they can enter the atmosphere and contribute to global heating. The plant burns 400,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste a year, of which between 50,000 to 100,000 tonnes comes from the UK’s household rubbish. Incinerators make up 15% of Oslo’s carbon emissions.

Raymond Johansen, governing mayor of Oslo. 

Photograph: City of Oslo/Oslo municipality

If it succeeds the project could play a major role in Oslo’s goal to cut its carbon emissions by 95% by 2030 compared to levels in 2009, says Johansen. But it could also be the first step in developing the technology for deployment at similar waste-to-energy plants across Europe. At its most ambitious the project hopes to provide a foothold for Norway’s wider plan to create a full-scale carbon capture chain, capable of storing Europe’s emissions permanently under the North Sea.

“From both an ethical and a moral point of view, I think it’s important that we are willing to contribute [to climate efforts] on a more advanced scale and develop the new technologies we need,” Johansen says.

Norway believes that it can build on its half-century legacy of piping fossil gas from the North Sea to Europe by doing the same in reverse for carbon emissions. The Northern Lights carbon capture project plans to ship liquid CO2 from industrial sites fitted with carbon capture technology to an onshore terminal on the Norwegian west coast. From there, the liquified carbon will be transported by pipeline to a storage location under the North Sea, where it will be stored permanently.

“A rich oil- and gas-dependent country like Norway is to some extent obliged to develop such technology and make it more available to the rest of Europe. We have to do that. We have to pay that price,” Johansen says.

The €700m cost of the Oslo Varme incinerator carbon capture project would require EU funding of €300m, in addition to investments from the Norwegian government and the plant’s joint owners, the Oslo municipality and utility company Fortum. Beyond the cost, there are concerns over its climate credentials too.

Johansen says some of the scepticism derives from fears that carbon capture will make governments “more lazy when we come to recycling waste, reusing materials”. Others fear that relying on carbon capture technology – which typically traps 80-95% of emissions – will give a licence to maintain the world’s carbon-intensive status quo at the expense of pursuing cleaner alternatives.

Friends of the Earth Europe has called Norway’s carbon capture and storage plans “a spoke in the wheel of the energy transition” and warned that relying on the technology could delay a full-scale commitment to energy efficiency and renewables.

Johansen says both waste incineration and carbon capture will still be needed as “last resort” approaches to tackling pollution – even after rigorous efforts to opt for renewable and recycled materials while consuming less overall. The mayor claims that between 20% and 25% of Europe’s waste would be destined for landfill even after “quite advanced recycling”, where it would create far more carbon emissions than in an incineration plant.

For Johansen, the inevitable criticisms are dwarfed by the scale of the potential benefits in tackling the twin challenges of waste pollution and rising carbon emissions. It does not, he insists, mean that Norway can ignore the need for a more fundamental economic shift away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable growth.

“From a long-term perspective we must dismantle our own oil and gas industry,” he says. “It will take a lot of time because we are so dependent on the industry for labour. So many people work in the fossil fuel industry that it means many traditional working-class people are more and more sceptical about some of the green parties’ arguments because they feel they are taking away their jobs.”

The new industrial opportunities presented by carbon capture offer what the Johansen refers to as “normal jobs, for normal people”, which are within reach without the need for a university degree.

Johansen trained as a plumber before going into politics for Norway’s Labour party. “One of the most important things for me is to avoid the shift to green becoming a middle-class project,” he says. “We need to get all people on board, and they need to see that there is a prosperous future for them as well. It’s a new kind of industrialisation.”

Planet's Vital Signs Are Reaching Dangerous 'Tipping Points' Amid Climate Crisis, Scientists Warn

"We need to stop treating the climate emergency as a stand-alone issue—global heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system."

Human activity may be pushing the climate beyond dangerous 'tipping points,' say 14,000 scientists. As the extreme drought emergency continues in California, historically low water levels are visible at Lake Oroville on July 22, 2021 in Oroville, California. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY

July 28, 2021

More than a year after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down economies around the world and sharply reduced worldwide travel—sparking speculation among some that emissions would plummet as a result—a coalition of scientists said in a paper published Wednesday that the planet is nonetheless reaching multiple "tipping points," with levels of sea ice melt, deforestation, and other markers revealing that urgent action is needed to mitigate the climate emergency.

"The extreme climate events and patterns that we've witnessed over the last several years — not to mention the last several weeks — highlight the heightened urgency with which we must address the climate crisis," said Philip Duffy, co-author of the study and executive director of the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts.

The "World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021" which was published in the journal BioScience, states that 18 out of 31 planetary vital signs have hit record-breaking high or low points in recent years.

"A major lesson from Covid-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and consumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required."
—William Ripple, Oregon State University

The paper detailed how despite fossil fuel use dipping slightly in 2020, levels of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide "have all set new year-to-date records for atmospheric concentrations in both 2020 and 2021." The authors emphasized, however, that fossil fuel emissions and the global heating with which they're associated are far from the only indicator that the planet is in danger.

The researchers recorded other tipping points or near-tipping points in levels of ocean heat; ice mass; the deforestation of the Amazon, which serves as a vital carbon sink; ocean acidification, and the amount of ruminant livestock, which now number more than four billion and are a significant source of planet-warming gases.

"We need to stop treating the climate emergency as a stand-alone issue—global heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system," William Ripple, a distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University's College of Forestry and a co-author of the report, said in a statement.

The research was released two months after researchers in Germany and Norway released a study showing Greenland's ice sheet was "at the brink" of reaching a "tipping point," with trillions of tons of ice having flown into the sea.

The paper published Wednesday showed the rate of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon reached a 12-year high of 1.11 million hectares deforested last year and that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 416 parts per million in April 2021—"the highest monthly global average concentration ever recorded," according to The Guardian.

The tipping points recorded in the analysis are all the result of "human overexploitation of the planet," Ripple said.

While emissions from people commuting to work and plane travel went down in 2020 as a result of stay-at-home measures for some, the report still showed "the consequences of unrelenting business as usual," he added.

"A major lesson from Covid-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and consumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required," Ripple said.

To mitigate the rapidly worsening crisis, the authors said, global policymakers must set "a significant carbon price" and link it to financing adaptation measures in the developing world and climate action policies; begin a phase-out of fossil fuel extraction and move towards a ban; and pass policies aimed at restoring and maintaining carbon sinks and natural habitats that support biodiversity, like the Biden administration's recent decision to restore protections like the Tongass National Forest.

"Policies to alleviate the climate crisis or any of the other threatened planetary boundary transgressions should not be focused on symptom relief but on addressing their root cause: the overexploitation of the Earth," the researchers wrote.

One climate action organizer in Minnesota linked the findings to the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, which the Biden administration has so far permitted to continue.

"It’s not too late to stop Line 3 and enact a just climate transition," said Andrew Ulasich of the faith-based initiative Isaiah. "But time is short. Now is the time for action."

The paper noted some positive developments, including record-high levels of fossil fuel divestment by cities, financial institutions, universities, and other entities, and a record low level of fossil fuel subsidies.

The research was published as a follow-up to a 2019 paper in which thousands of experts declared the climate emergency, named the planet's vital signs, and called for six courses of action to mitigate the crisis: eliminating fossil fuels, slashing pollution, restoring ecosystems, shifting to plant-based diets, transitioning away from economies that prioritize indefinite growth, stabilizing the human population.

"We're going to have, as we're witnessing, significant human suffering, but if we make the big changes soon, we can limit that suffering," Ripple told Fast Company on Wednesday. "We want to give an update with these vital signs, but we also want to emphasize the importance of moving fast at this point, and thinking big."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Critical measures of global heating reaching tipping point, study finds

Carbon emissions, ocean acidification, Amazon clearing all hurtling toward new records

Vast areas of the Amazon rainforest are being burned and cleared for grazing cattle — a double blow to global warming, as cattle produce methane and cleared forests release carbon into the atmosphere. 

Photograph: Florian Kopp/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock

Katharine Gammon

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 28 Jul 2021

A new study tracking the planet’s vital signs has found that many of the key indicators of the global climate crisis are getting worse and either approaching, or exceeding, key tipping points as the earth heats up.

Overall, the study found some 16 out of 31 tracked planetary vital signs, including greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat content and ice mass, set worrying new records.

“There is growing evidence we are getting close to or have already gone beyond tipping points associated with important parts of the Earth system,” said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who co-authored the new research, in a statement.

“The updated planetary vital signs we present largely reflect the consequences of unrelenting business as usual,” said Ripple, adding that “a major lesson from Covid-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and consumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required.”

While the pandemic shut down economies and shifted the way people think about work, school and travel, it did little to reduce the overall global carbon emissions. Fossil fuel use dipped slightly in 2020, but the authors of a report published in the journal BioScience say that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide “have all set new year-to-date records for atmospheric concentrations in both 2020 and 2021”.

In April 2021, carbon dioxide concentration reached 416 parts per million, the highest monthly global average concentration ever recorded. The five hottest years on record have all occurred since 2015, and 2020 was the second hottest year in history.

The study also found that ruminant livestock, a significant source of planet-warming gases, now number more than 4 billion, and their total mass is more than that of all humans and wild animals combined. The rate of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon increased in both 2019 and 2020, reaching a 12-year high of 1.11 million hectares deforested in 2020.

Ocean acidification is near an all-time record, and when combined with warmer ocean temperatures, it threatens the coral reefs that more than half a billion people depend on for food, tourism dollars and storm surge protection.

However, there were a few bright spots in the study, including fossil fuel subsidies reaching a record low and fossil fuel divestment reaching a record high.

In order to change the course of the climate emergency, the authors write that profound alterations need to happen. They say the world needs to develop a global price for carbon that is linked to a socially just fund to finance climate mitigation and adaptation policies in the developing world.

The authors also highlight the need for a phase-out and eventual ban of fossil fuels, and the development of global strategic climate reserves to protect and restore natural carbon sinks and biodiversity. Climate education should also be part of school curricula around the globe, they say.

“Policies to alleviate the climate crisis or any of the other threatened planetary boundary transgressions should not be focused on symptom relief but on addressing their root cause: the overexploitation of the Earth,” the report says. Only by taking on this core issue, the authors write, will people be able to “ensure the long-term sustainability of human civilization and give future generations the opportunity to thrive”.

As scientists finalize a long-awaited update on global climate research, recent extreme weather events across the globe have been startling: Historic rains and deadly flooding in central China and Europe. Dramatic heatwave in Canada, and tropical heat in Finland and Ireland. The Siberian tundra ablaze. Monstrous U.S. wildfires, along with record drought across the U.S. West and parts of Brazil.

 While climate modeling has evolved over the decades, scientists are still trying to determine how climate change will manifest in the years to come. Dr. Sharon George, Lecturer on Environment and Sustainability at Keele University, explains that we're already witnessing, in real time, "what climate change looks like."

 Dr. George points out that for years "scientists around the world have warned" of the impending dangers of climate change across the globe, and now "the frequency of these (severe weather) events is increasing and the severity is increasing as well." 

And while we're making strides, transitioning to cleaner forms of energy, Dr. George warns that "we need it to happen faster: every single molecule of CO2 that we put into the air will stick around for 100 years, doing its damage. Every day that we waste, talking about these things and not taking action is going to have a long-term effect. So we need fast action." Dr. George strikes an optimistic tone in her belief that we all have reason to be hopeful for our capacity to come together and rise to this global challenge. The worldwide response to Covid-19 has "shown us that we can adjust our behavior on a massive scale very quickly... whole nations changed their whole working patterns and behaviors to deal with a global combined problem to find a solution. And I think that gives us hope."

AFP

How many years until we must act on climate? Zero, say these climate thinkers:

Jennifer Francis , Michael Mann , Holly Jean Buck 

and Peter Kalmus

We asked a panelist of experts on when we need to start changing our economies and ways of consuming and producing. Their answer: now

‘Phasing out fossil fuels, and supporting other countries in exiting fossil fuels, is the best bet for a peaceful future.’

Photograph: Barry Lewis/In Pictures/Getty Images

Wed 28 Jul 2021


Peter Kalmus: ‘Zero years’

We have zero years before climate and ecological breakdown, because it’s already here. We have zero years left to procrastinate. The longer we wait to act, the worse the floods, fires, droughts, famines and heatwaves will get.

Don’t blame men for the climate crisis – we should point the finger at corporations

The primary cause of these catastrophes is burning fossil fuel. Therefore, we must shut down the fossil fuel industry as quickly as we can. Fossil fuel subsidies must end today. New fracking wells, pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure can no longer be built; that we continue on this path is collective insanity. Fossil fuel must be capped and rationed, and diverted to necessities as we transition to a zero-carbon civilization. If we fail, the planet will continue to heat up, creeping past 1.5C, then 2C, then 3C of global heating as we keep squandering precious time. With every fraction of a degree, the floods and fires and heat will get worse. Coastal cities will be abandoned. Ocean currents will shift. Crops will fail. Ecosystems will collapse. Hundreds of millions will flee regions with humid heat too high for the human body. Geopolitics will break down. No place will be safe. These disasters are like gut punches to our civilization.

There are tipping points lurking in our future, but it’s impossible to know when they will be triggered. What’s certain is that every day we fail to act brings us closer. Some, like the loss of the Amazon rainforest, may already have been passed.

Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab. He is the author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution

Jennifer Francis: ‘We cannot wait’

We need to immediately stop subsidizing all aspects of the fossil fuel industry. According to this report, the fossil fuel industry received $66bn in 2016, while renewables (excluding nuclear) only received $9.5bn. We should instead use those billions of subsidy dollars to ramp up the renewable energy industry: generation (wind, solar, nuclear), distribution (smarter grid), storage and electric transportation.

If we do not succeed in changing our destructive behavior, the increasing trends in extreme weather, sea levels, government destabilization and human misery will continue and worsen.

Extreme heatwaves, drought, wildfires and flooding events like those we’ve seen in recent summers will become commonplace. Many coastal cities and communities around the globe will be increasingly inundated by high tides and storm surges. Longer, more intense droughts will destroy cropland and force agricultural communities to uproot their families in search of a better life. The devastation of coral reefs around the world will worsen, wiping out fisheries that provide staple protein for millions of people. All of these impacts are happening now. If we don’t act fast, many communities, cultures and species will cease to exist.

Jennifer Francis is senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center

Michael Mann: ‘Strictly speaking, zero’

How many years do we have to act? Strictly speaking, zero – which is to say, that we must act, in earnest, now. We have a decade within which we must halve global carbon emissions. As I argue in The New Climate War, this requires dramatic systemic change: no new fossil fuel infrastructure, massive subsidies for renewables, carbon pricing and deploying other policy tools to accelerate the clean energy transition already under way.

We are seeing unprecedented public awareness, renewed leadership from the US and diplomatic progress with China, the other of the world’s two largest carbon polluters. There is reason for cautious optimism that we can rise to the challenge. But there is much work to do, and precious little time now to do it. We must now choose between two paths as we face our future. One leads to massive suffering and collapse of our civilizational infrastructure. The other leads to a prosperous future for us, our children and grandchildren. But it requires that we leave fossil fuels behind. The choice is ours.


Michael E Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. He is author of the recent book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back our Planet

Holly Jean Buck: ‘We need action now’

We need to ramp up action now in order to transform all of our major systems by 2050: energy, transportation, industry, agriculture, waste management. We’ll need to eat less meat, farm in ways that store more carbon in the soils, reforest degraded or abandoned land and restore wetlands.

We need to force companies to outfit cement plants and other industrial facilities with carbon capture technologies. When it comes to energy, we need to electrify everything. This means replacing gas-fired heating systems with an electric heat pump in your home and swapping out gas-fired stoves. It means inventing new types of energy storage for those times when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, and getting used to responding to the grid – for example, turning down your air conditioning when the power company says there isn’t enough power (or letting them control your thermostat).

It means shutting down fossil fuel power plants and ramping up wind, solar, geothermal and probably nuclear, as well as building new transmission lines. Our targets should be 60% renewable electricity by 2030, and 90% by 2050. This means tripling renewable installations by 2030, or installing the equivalent of the world’s largest solar farm every day. If those power lines and solar panels look like they are industrializing the landscape, just think about the less visible but deadly costs of the old infrastructure. Fossil fuel combustion was responsible for 8.7m deaths in 2018.

Fossil fuels need to be phased out around the globe. What will people in those industries do? We will need entire new industries in hydrogen and carbon management, industries that turn captured carbon dioxide into fuels and other products as well as store it underground. We can’t just let fossil fuel companies pivot to becoming petrochemical companies, and find ourselves awash in more plastic. We can recycle, use products made from carbon, and innovate new bioproducts. It’s not just an energy transition, it’s a materials transition.

And it needs to be global. If we don’t succeed in transitioning away from fossil fuels globally, we could face an uneven world where a few rich countries congratulate themselves for going green, and a few oil producer nations are supplying the rest of the world with dirty fuel, which they use because they don’t have alternatives. In that world, greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising. Climate change exacerbates the risk of war and conflict. It’s hard to measure or model this for exact quantitative projections, but it’s a serious concern. Phasing out fossil fuels, and supporting other countries in exiting fossil fuels, is the best bet for a peaceful future.


Holly Jean Buck is a postdoctoral research fellow at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. She is the author of After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration

Sexy secret life of basking sharks uncovered in Hebrides

Scientists record fin-to-fin contact in gentle giants, most likely part of courtship, for first time




Fin-to-fin synchronised swimming recorded in basking sharks for first time – video


Damian Carrington 

Environment editor
THE GUARDIAN
Wed 28 Jul 2021 


Fin-to-fin synchronised swimming, thought likely to be part of courtship, has been seen in groups of basking sharks for the first time. Video cameras attached temporarily to the sharks gave scientists an unprecedented view of their hitherto secret underwater world.

The gentle giants are usually solitary creatures and virtually nothing is known about their breeding behaviour. The researchers also recorded one shark shooting out above the water, the first time a full breaching has been captured from the shark’s point of view. This may also be part of wooing a mate, perhaps by showing off the fish’s size.


Basking sharks are found in temperate water around the world, but are endangered, after being hunted in the past for the oil in their huge livers. They are the second largest fish in the ocean, with adults usually reaching 8 metres in length.

The scientists carried out their study in the Sea of the Hebrides, off the Scottish islands of Coll and Tiree. The site was known to attract the fish to feed in the summer and in December was declared a marine protection area, the first in the world to be designated specifically to protect basking sharks.

“One of the most exciting times in my career on basking sharks was seeing that footage of them all grouped together on the seabed,” said Matthew Witt, of the University of Exeter, in south-west England. “It was utterly phenomenal – you just don’t think of them doing that.”

“It’s been really fascinating to have this incredible insight,” said Jessica Rudd, also at the University of Exeter and who led the fieldwork. “It feels like a privilege to get a shark’s eye view into what they get up to. There were large congregations of the sharks, just swimming very slowly, side by side, or on top of each other, or nose-to-tail swimming, their fins touching, and in groups of up to 13.”

Video cameras attached temporarily to the sharks gave scientists an unprecedented view of their hitherto secret underwater world. 

Photograph: University of Exeter and NatureScot

Copulation was not captured on camera but Witt said that, based on behaviours seen in other sharks, these congregations and social behaviours are often what precedes mating.

“It could be that feeding in these [food] hotspots also gives the opportunity for these solitary sharks to meet other sharks,” said Rudd. Scientists have been tagging animals for a long time, she said, but usually data is recorded once a day or only when a satellite tag breaks the surface.

“With video cameras, it is essentially around the clock,” she said. This means scientists cannot only determine where a shark is but also why it is there.

Breaching uses a lot of energy, especially for giants like basking sharks. Various reasons have been suggested for the behaviour, such as dislodging parasites or even just for fun, but courtship is another explanation.

“It’s a really eerie video, where the shark emerges from a depth of 77 metres and then reaches the surface in 70 seconds and breaches,” said Rudd. “We can see it fully out of the water and these are sharks that reach up to over a tonne in weight.”

Other research by the group, using Fitbit-like tags, showed basking sharks can breach four times in 45 seconds.


Is it time to begin rewilding the seas?

The researchers were also surprised to find the sharks spent up to 88% of daylight hours near the seabed, rather than near the surface where they mostly fed. Such information could be useful when considering whether to restrict fishing activity such as bottom trawling.

The research was published in the journal Plos One and followed six sharks for a cumulative total of 123 hours. The cameras were attached to the sharks using a darting pole and weighed just 300g in the water. The sharks quickly resumed normal activity within minutes and the cameras automatically detached and floated to the surface after a few days. More cameras will be attached to the sharks this summer.

Suz Henderson, at NatureScot, said: “The group behaviours described in this work, as well as the habitats the behaviours are associated with, could well be important in answering the key conservation question of where these sharks breed.”

Ancient Roman ship laden with wine jars discovered off Sicily

Submarine robot takes photos of vessel and cargo of amphorae dating back to second century BC

The discovery was described by the Sicilian authorities as one of the most important archaeological finds of recent years. 

Photograph: Soprintendenza del Mare Regione Sicilia


Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo
THE GUARDIAN
Wed 28 Jul 2021

An ancient Roman vessel dating back to the second century BC has been discovered in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Palermo.

The ship lies 92 metres (302ft) deep in the ocean, near Isola delle Femmine, and from the first images taken by a submarine robot it was carrying a copious cargo of wine amphorae.

“The Mediterranean continually gives us precious elements for the reconstruction of our history linked to maritime trade, the types of boats, the transport carried out,’’ said the superintendent of the sea of the Sicilian region, Valeria Li Vigni, who launched the expedition. “Now we will know more about life on board and the relationships between coastal populations.’’

The discovery was described by the Sicilian authorities as one of the most important archaeological finds of recent years.

A few weeks ago, Sicilian archeologists discovered another wreck: an ancient Roman ship about 70 metres deep near the island of Ustica. That ship also carried a huge load of amphorae, containing wine dating back to the second century BC.

The findings will shed light on Rome’s trade activity in the Mediterranean, where the Romans traded spices, wine, olives and other products in north Africa, Spain, France and the Middle East.

There are numerous wrecks of Roman ships throughout the Mediterranean, such as the almost intact Roman ship from the second century BC found in 2013 off the coast of Genoa. The vessel, which contained roughly 50 valuable amphorae, was spotted by police divers, roughly one mile from the shore of Alassio, 50 metres underwater.

In that case, police were tipped off about the whereabouts of the boat during a year-long investigation into purloined artefacts sold on the black market in northern Italy.

Every year, hundreds of ancient Roman amphorae, taken illegally, are found by the Italian police in the homes of art dealers.

In June, Italian authorities recovered hundreds of illegally gathered archeological finds from a Belgian collector, dating as far back as the sixth century BC and worth €11m (£9.4m).

The nearly 800 pieces “of exceptional rarity and inestimable value”, including stelae, amphorae and other items, came from clandestine excavations in Puglia, in Italy’s south-eastern tip, according to the carabinieri in charge of cultural heritage. The collector is awaiting trial.

Caffeine may help bumblebees pollinate more effectively, study shows

Experiment using caffeine concoction on bees’ nests 

may help farmers ensure crops are pollinated

Researchers were keen to see whether bumblebees are attracted to flowers that smell similar to caffeine concoction Photograph: Peter Devlin/Alamy


Natalie Grover 

Science correspondent
THE GUARDIAN
Wed 28 Jul 2021 

The caffeine in the morning coffee that primes many humans for the day appears to inject bumblebees with a similar dose of purpose, helping them pollinate more effectively, a study has found.

The impact of the climate crisis, habitat loss and pesticide use has strained wild pollinator populations, including bees, moths, wasps, butterflies, beetles and birds. As a result, some fruit growers have resorted to relying on “managed pollinators” such as commercial bumblebee colonies to pollinate their crops.

But these handy helpers aren’t quite as efficient as the farmers would like – some do not leave the nest, while others are easily distracted by other flora in the vicinity – which means the crop is not fully tended to.

The study was designed to evaluate whether the bees could be primed to target specific odours.

In order to do this, the researchers concocted a special blend of caffeine, sugar and the specific “target flower” smell (the scent of strawberry flowers) they wanted their bees to find, and wafted it through the nest.

The bees were then let loose in the lab where robotic flowers were either doused in the target odour or the soft, citrusy notes of linalool, a compound not present in strawberry flowers. “We were interested in seeing whether the bees would go for all of the flowers equally since they were all equally rewarded, or whether they go for the flowers that smell like the ones that they been kind of trained on in the nest,” said the study author, Dr Sarah Arnold of the natural resources institute at the University of Greenwich.

The bees that had trained using the caffeine concoction were far more interested in the target flowers with the strawberry odour than the distractor flowers, the authors said, adding that the experiment did not appear to be toxic because there was no impact on the bees’ lifespans.

The study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Biobest (a supplier of bumblebees to fruit farms) and Berry Gardens (a fruit growers’ production and marketing group).

Previous research designed to alter bee behaviour involved putting caffeine directly on to the flowers to attract them, which is impractical on a large scale.

This experiment, however, could be a good start to making it easier for farmers to ensure their crop is pollinated, Arnold said. “In a field situation … the bees would have to deal with different weather conditions, they would have further to fly and other challenges,” she cautioned, noting that it would take a successful field-scale trial before this approach could be used in the real world.

If the results are replicated, then everyone stands to benefit, she added. “The growers get more value for money out of their commercial bumblebees, the wild bees potentially get a bit less competition for their natural food resources. And, as consumers, hopefully, we also get more fruit.”

‘Wiggly’ fossils found in Canada may be oldest known sign of animal life


Scientists believe the unusual tubular structures may be the remnants of prehistoric sponges

A fragment of the skeleton of a modern keratose sponge (a bath sponge from Greece – Spongia officinalis), highlighting its 3D meshwork. Photograph: EC Turner


Ian Sample Science editor

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 28 Jul 2021 

Intricate patterns of tubular structures discovered in giant ancient reefs may be the remnants of prehistoric horny sponges and the oldest known fossils of animal life on Earth.

Researchers found the unusual features in vast reefs that were built by bacteria 890m years ago and then pushed up by geological processes to form part of the Mackenzie Mountains in north-western Canada.

Examined under a microscope, a small number of rock samples revealed tubules about half the width of a human hair that branch and reconnect to form 3D structures that are strikingly similar to those seen in fossils of bath sponges.

“Initially, when you look at these features they look like a bunch of wiggles, but when you try to follow each of the strands, you realise that even in thin sections they form complicated 3D meshworks,” said Prof Elizabeth Turner, at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.

Prof Elizabeth Turner on northern Baffin Island, Nunavut. 

Photograph: C Gilbert

“Thanks to the wonderful work of others, younger examples of the same microstructures have been found in sponge body fossils and these structures have been compared to the skeletons of a variety of keratose, or horny, sponges,” she added.

While modern reefs are built by corals and algae, in Earth’s distant past communities of photosynthetic cyanobacteria created enormous carbonate reefs measuring many kilometres wide and hundreds of metres thick.

Prof Turner first spotted the weird tubules in a handful of thin sections of rock she gathered as a PhD student during field work at the site. Two decades on, she has built up the collection and discovered more examples of the features in the rocks.

Writing in the journal Nature, Turner describes how the fossils may have formed when putative sponges, measuring a few millimetres to a centimetre across, became mineralised. The soft tissue is first to fossilise, encasing the 3D network of collagen-like fibres that form the sponge’s skeleton. Over time, these skeletal fibres decay, leaving hollow tubules that fill up with calcite crystals.

If the structures are confirmed as early sponge fossils, they would predate the next-oldest undisputed sponge fossils by about 350m years.


558m-year-old fossils identified as oldest known animal

According to previous studies, sponges are some of the earliest animals on Earth and emerged during the early Neoproterozoic era one billion to half a billion years ago. However, the exact timing is uncertain. Other research suggests that oxygen levels were too low for animals to thrive until they rose in the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event between 800m and 540m years ago.

But even on an oxygen-starved Earth, early sponges may have found a way to survive in the nooks and crannies of microbial reefs if the photosynthetic bacteria that smothered the reefs released enough oxygen into the water. “These possible sponges, or whatever they were, were living in a reef that was an oxygen factory, it was nirvana,” said Prof Turner. For food, they could have consumed the polysaccharide slime that sloughed off the microbial mats into the surrounding ocean.

“If I’m right about the interpretation of this material, then the earliest animals may not have had the same oxygen requirements that we have assumed so far. It’s possible that we had early sponges emerge some time ago, and certainly by 890m years ago, living in a comparatively low oxygen world, but the more complicated animals had to wait a while,” she added.

Far more work is now needed to see whether other rocks of a similar age contain traces of early animal life. “We have to approach it with a much more open mind,” said Prof Turner. “We have to think about what we should expect from early animals. Anything we think of as animal may be too complicated. We want to look for something that expresses the essence of animals, without being too conspicuously familiar.”

Sponge structures may be Earth's oldest animal life



Issued on: 28/07/2021

Genetic evidence from modern sponges suggests they could have been 

around for up to 1 billion years IBRAHIM CHALHOUB AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Fossilised structures discovered in northwestern Canada may be from sponges that lived in oceans as long as 890 million years ago, making them the earliest known animal life on Earth, research showed on Wednesday.

The findings also challenge the long-held idea that animals did not arise on Earth until after a major infusion of oxygen into the atmosphere and oceans.

Sponges are simple animals with an ancient history. Genetic evidence gathered from modern sponges has shown they likely emerged between 1 billion and 500 million years ago.

But until now there has been no evidence of fossilised sponge bodies from this period, known as the early Neoproterozoic era.

Elizabeth Turner, a professor at Canada's Laurentian University's Harquail School of Earth Sciences, looked for evidence of sponges in 890-million-year-old reefs that were constructed by a type of bacteria that deposited calcium carbonate.

She found networks of tiny tube-shaped structures containing crystals of the mineral calcite -- suggesting they were contemporaneous to the reef -- that closely resemble the fibrous skeleton found within some modern sponges.

If her structures Turner identified end up being verified as sponge samples, they will outdate the current oldest known sponge fossils by 350 million years.

Although the implications of her possible discovery, published in the journal Nature, Turner said she was not getting carried away.

"The earliest animals to emerge evolutionarily were probably sponge-like. This too is not surprising, given that sponges are the most basic animal in the tree of animal life," she told AFP.

"The nature of the material is familiar from the bodies of much younger body fossils of sponges," Turner said.

She said the possible sponges were around one centimetre across, and "would have been tiny and inconspicuous, living in shadowy nooks and crannies below the upper surfaces of the reefs"

If the structures do turn out to be confirmed as sponge specimens, that means they would have lived roughly 90 million years before Earth's oxygen levels reached levels thought to be necessary to support animal life.

Turner said that if confirmed to be sponges, she believed that they lived before the Neoproterozoic oxygenation event, during which oxygen levels increased, subsequently leading to the emergence of animal life.

"If I am correct in my interpretation of the material, the earliest animals appeared before that event and may have been tolerant of comparatively low oxygen levels, relative to modern conditions," she said.

"It is possible that the earliest animals were tolerant of low oxygen -- some modern sponges are -- but that more complex animal types that require a higher oxygen level did not appear until after the Neoproterozoic oxygenation event," Turner added.

© 2021 AFP

Morocco team hails stone age tool site dating back 1.3m years

Find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years start of stone-tool industry associated with Homo erectus

The excavations took place at a quarry on the outskirts of Casablanca, Morocco. Photograph: D Lefèvre


Agence France-Presse in Rabat
Wed 28 Jul 2021 

Archaeologists in Morocco have announced the discovery of north Africa’s oldest stone age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3m years, an international team has reported.

  

TOOL MAKING TECHNOLOGY, INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION FOR ITS AGE*

The find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in north Africa of the Acheulian stone-tool industry, associated with the human ancestor Homo erectus, researchers told journalists in Rabat on Wednesday.

The discovery was made during excavations at a quarry on the outskirts of Morocco’s economic capital, Casablanca.

This “contributes to enriching the debate on the emergence of the Acheulian in Africa,” said Abderrahim Mohib, the co-director of the Franco-Moroccan prehistory of Casablanca programme.

Discoveries from the Thomas Quarry I site outside Casablanca.

 Photograph: R Gallotti

Previously, the presence in Morocco of the Acheulian stone-tool industry was thought to date back 700,000 years. The discoveries at the Thomas Quarry I site, made famous in 1969 when a human half mandible was discovered in a cave, mean the Acheulian there is almost twice as old.

The 17-strong team behind the discovery comprised Moroccan, French and Italian researchers, and their findings are based on the study of stone tools extracted from the site.

The Moroccan archaeologist Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer called the news a “chronological rebound”. He said the beginning of the Acheulian in Morocco is now close to the south and east African start dates of 1.6m and 1.8m years ago respectively.

Earlier humans had made do with more primitive pebble tools, known as Oldowan, after their east African-type site. Research at the Casablanca site has been carried out for decades, and has “delivered one of the richest Acheulian assemblages in Africa”, said Mohib. “It is very important because we are talking about prehistoric time, a complex period for which little data exists.”

Mohib said the study also made it possible to attest to “the oldest presence in Morocco of humans” who were “variants of Homo erectus”.

In 2017, the discovery of five fossils estimated at 300,000 years old 100km west of Marrakesh at Jebel Irhoud, overturned evolutionary science when they were designated Homo sapiens.

The Moroccan fossils were much older than some with similar facial characteristics excavated from Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dating back about 195,000 years.

1. *The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man

   https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/...

   This was the decisive step in the transition from ape to man. All extant anthropoid apes can stand erect and move about on their feet alone, but only in case of urgent need and in a very clumsy way. Their natural gait is in a half-erect posture and includes the use of the hands. The majority rest the knuckles of the fist on the ground and, with legs drawn up, swing the body through their long ...

Scientists in Morocco unearth Stone Age hand-axe site dating back 1.3 million years

Issued on: 28/07/2021 -

These Stone-Age tools belong to the same archaeological period as a hand axe, which was unearthed in Morocco in July 2021, and dates back 1.3 million years. © Musée de Toulouse, Creative Commons

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Archaeologists in Morocco have announced the discovery of North Africa's oldest Stone Age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3 million years, an international team reported Wednesday.

The find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in North Africa of the Acheulian stone tool industry associated with a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, researchers on the team told journalists in Rabat.

It was made during excavations at a quarry on the outskirts of the country's economic capital Casablanca.

This "major discovery ... contributes to enriching the debate on the emergence of the Acheulian in Africa," said Abderrahim Mohib, co-director of the Franco-Moroccan "Prehistory of Casablanca" programme.

Before the find, the presence in Morocco of the Acheulian stone tool industry was thought to date back 700,000 years.

New finds at the Thomas Quarry I site, first made famous in 1969 when a human half mandible was discovered in a cave, mean the Acheulian there is almost twice as old.

The 17-strong team behind the discovery comprised Moroccan, French and Italian researchers, and their finding is based on the study of stone tools extracted from the site.

Moroccan archaeologist Abdelouahed Ben Ncer called the news a "chronological rebound".

He said the beginning of the Acheulian in Morocco is now close to the South and East African start dates of 1.6 million and 1.8 million years ago respectively.

Earlier humans had made do with more primitive pebble tools, known as Oldowan after their East African type site.

Research at the Casablanca site has been carried out for decades, and has "delivered one of the richest Acheulian assemblages in Africa", Mohib said.

"It is very important because we are talking about prehistoric time, a complex period for which little data exists."

Mohib said the study also made it possible to attest to "the oldest presence in Morocco of humans" who were "variants of Homo erectus".

In 2017, the discovery of five fossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, estimated at 300,000 years old, overturned evolutionary science when they were designated Homo sapiens.

The Moroccan fossils were much older than some with similar facial characteristics excavated from Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dating back around 195,000 years.

(AFP)