Kenney’s ‘maverick’ pandemic stance puts him at odds with most Albertans

GS

By Gillian StewardContributing Columnist

Mon., Aug. 9, 2021timer3 min. read

Some Albertans love to think of themselves as “mavericks.”

Perhaps that’s why, when compared to other provinces, so many people here refuse to get vaccinated — they don’t like other people telling them what to do even when it might be good for them and everyone else.

And clearly, throughout the pandemic Premier Jason Kenney has positioned himself as the heroic maverick who is sure he can beat the coronavirus by blazing his own trail. No sissy stuff for him. He’d rather live it up at the Calgary Stampede, no matter the consequences.

Kenney is so sure he has vanquished the virus that by the middle of August he says we won’t even need readily available testing or contact tracing. Heck, if anyone is actually infected they can simply go wherever they want — school, live concerts, grocery stores — because by then everyone should be tough enough to just deal with it.

That’s the plan outlined last week by Deena Hinshaw, the chief medical officer of health, and staunchly defended by Kenney, even though Alberta now has the highest rate of active COVID-19 cases in the country — four times the Ontario rate.

But according to Kenney, anyone who suggests this plan is putting people, especially unvaccinated kids, in harm’s way is simply “fear mongering.” What else would a maverick-kind-of-guy say?

The original “mavericks” were actually unbranded calves that wandered about blazing their own trails. They were named after Samuel Maverick, a 19th century Texas lawyer, slave holder, and owner of vast rangelands, who acquired 400 cattle as settlement of a debt but was too busy to organize a branding crew.

In 2001, “Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta” by Calgary author Aritha van Herk was published and many Albertans revelled in the notion of themselves as “people who step out of bounds, refuse to do what we are told, take risks and then laugh when we fall down and hit the ground.”

Van Herk also wrote that since the original maverick calves could be poached by cowboys or butchered for their meat, mavericks, just like Albertans, “were resistant to being caught, owned, herded, taxed or identified.”

Since she wrote the book on mavericks, I asked her if she attributed the recalcitrance of the unvaccinated and Kenney’s stance on the pandemic to Albertans’ “maverick” nature.

She definitely does not.

“My definition of mavericks has nothing to do with this vaccine-resistant, separatist-directed, grievance mongering attitude currently exerting itself. It was about the wish to help others and to get ahead, and the retrograde behaviour now relates to that not at all,” she replied via email.

“Masking and vaccination and science-informed decisions have been politicized by the right to an extent that people now believe they are exercising a political choice when they decline or refuse or demonstrate skepticism about health and vaccination. It is a sign of the extent to which Trumpian politics have infiltrated Alberta. I am, to be honest, disgusted.”

If, as van Herk says, real mavericks aren’t simply recalcitrant loners but people who take risks to help others, then the title is more apt for all the physicians, nurses, epidemiologists, teachers, parents, and students who have spoken out or joined public demonstrations demanding that the government continue testing, contact tracing and isolation of infected individuals.

Professional organizations including the Alberta Medical Association, the Alberta College of Family Physicians and the Canadian pediatric Society have added their voices.

They are not asking for lockdowns or tighter restrictions. They simply want the government to keep close track of COVID-19 and share the information so everyone can do what they need to do to protect themselves.

Given all the resistance from both inside and outside Alberta and the rising number of COVID-19 cases, Kenney may have to back track. He’s certainly done that before when rapidly rising cases, hospitalizations and deaths confirmed that his approach wasn’t working.

Or he just might double down, determined to prove that lifting all restrictions on July 1 and then encouraging everyone to party it up at the Calgary Stampede cast him as a trail blazer, a real maverick.

Trouble is, given Kenney’s plummeting popularity most Albertans don’t see him that way. The sooner he realizes that the better for everyone.

GS

Gillian Steward is a Calgary-based writer and freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @GillianSteward

COVID-19: Alberta advocates take fight for health measures in schools to federal government

By Heide Pearson Global News
Posted August 10, 2021 

A group including several Alberta health experts is bypassing the province and directly asking the prime minister for funding to make schools safer amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Lauren Pullen reports.

Alberta advocates fighting for stronger public health measures as children return to school amid what officials call a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections are taking their battle to the federal government.

In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and posted to Twitter on Tuesday, 24 voices called upon the federal government to step in where they claim the Alberta government is failing.

READ MORE: As Alberta schools wait for provincial COVID-19 guidance, some keep previous measures in place

“Despite clear evidence showing that ventilation, filtration, masks and other basic health measures can reduce transmission of (COVID-19) when used together, the Alberta government is unwilling to spend the money required to enact such measures,” the letter states.

The government has yet to announce what, if any, public health measures will be implemented in Alberta classrooms this fall, however, in July, Premier Jason Kenney assured parents students would be heading back in-person, and to “near-normal learning.”

Risks for children posed by COVID-19 are extremely low’: Kenney on children returning to school after removing health measures – Aug 3, 2021

Late last month, the UCP announced it was eliminating more public health measures over the coming weeks, including asymptomatic testing, contact tracing and the requirement that anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 to isolate.

Doctors, advocates, parents and other officials have expressed their concern over Alberta’s approach to easing restrictions, however, Kenney and Health Minister Tyler Shandro have defended the government’s decision making and chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw’s advice.


READ MORE: ‘This is a travesty’: Albertans protest COVID-19 rule rollback for second day

Now, a coalition of those voices is asking the federal government to step in and give Alberta school boards $80 million to ensure proper ventilation in classrooms, air quality testing and masks are in place before the school year begins.

“Given the track record of the Alberta government in failing to pass along federal funding, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, we implore the federal government to directly fund Alberta school boards to help make classrooms safer,” the letter reads

The coalition, made up of doctors, union representatives, parent advocates and academics, says providing HEPA filters for K-6 classrooms — where children aren’t of age to be vaccinated — would cost approximately $65 million, providing masks for students in grades K-6 will cost $9.6 million and providing CO2 monitors for every classroom for real-time air quality testing would cost $6 million.

Alberta parents concerned as province lifts COVID-19 protocols weeks before school resumesAlberta parents concerned as province lifts COVID-19 protocols weeks before school resumes – Jul 29, 2021

“Schools, already grappling with significant funding shortages and over-full classrooms where physical distancing is not possible, are unable to pay for the necessary upgrades,” the letter said.
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The group went on to point out that “almost every expert in the country” has raised questions about Alberta’s plan forward, particularly as cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19 continue to rise across the globe.

“Our children will pay the price for this enormous gamble, and while they may not overwhelm the health-care system, they will face the consequences of increasing hospitalizations as well as the unknown long-term repercussions when COVID-19 runs rampant through an unvaccinated population.”


READ MORE: Alberta plan to remove COVID-19 measures is ‘risky gamble,’ fed health minister tells Shandro

On Monday, Kenney said the education and health ministries are working on the “critically important” plan for a safe return to school.

“Vaccines are not available to children under the age of the 12, but we also know that COVID-19 does not represent a greater threat for severe outcomes to younger children than the regular seasonal flu,” he said.

“I know that Dr. Hinshaw and her team are understandably concerned of a resurgence of more conventional respiratory virus and diseases this autumn, including various kinds of flus and colds, and want to have the resources to address all of those challenges safely within the school system.”

Jason Kenney responds to criticism over lifting more COVID-19 rules – Aug 3, 2021

In an emailed statement, Ministry of Education spokesperson Nicole Sparrow said “we are confident that all school authorities have been provided the supports they need to provide a safe, world-class education to their students.

“We know that many parents and teachers have questions and an additional guidance document is being finalized and will be released in mid-August to support return to school. Alberta’s government will continue to follow the expert advice of Alberta’s chief medical officer of health,” she said.

Sparrow outlined that through the course of the pandemic, the government made $1 billion available to Alberta school boards, including a $120-million operating fund boost, $10 million for PPE and $262 million which came from the federal government. She added the government also gave schools $250 million in maintenance spending for mechanical upgrades, of which $44 million was used for HVAC and ventilation.

READ MORE: Alberta announces new funding for school maintenance, no word yet on fall return

“While the letter falsely claims that Alberta’s government withheld federal supports for school divisions during the pandemic, every dollar of funding received through the Safe Return to Class Fund was immediately allocated to school authorities once it was is received from the federal government,” Sparrow said.

When asked if directly giving Alberta school boards money was something the federal government would consider, press secretary for the federal Department of Intergovernmental Affairs Jean-Sebastien Comeau said the Liberals have already given money to provinces and territories to help with the costs of keeping classrooms safe.

“The (Safe Return to Class) Fund helped provinces and territories work alongside school boards to meet the needs of their students and staff by providing funds to support adapted learning spaces, improved air ventilation, increased hand sanitation and hygiene and purchases of personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies,” Comeau said.

“Provinces and territories had the flexibility to spend funding according to their priorities.”

Physicists Detect Strongest Evidence Yet of Matter Generated by Collisions of Light


(sakkmesterke/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

MICHELLE STARR
10 AUGUST 2021

According to theory, if you smash two photons together hard enough, you can generate matter: an electron-positron pair, the conversion of light to mass as per Einstein's theory of special relativity.

It's called the Breit-Wheeler process, first laid out by Gregory Breit and John A. Wheeler in 1934, and we have very good reason to believe it would work.

But direct observation of the pure phenomenon involving just two photons has remained elusive, mainly because the photons need to be extremely energetic (i.e. gamma rays) and we don't have the technology yet to build a gamma-ray laser.

Now, physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory say they've found a way around this stumbling block using the facility's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) - resulting in a direct observation of the Breit-Wheeler process in action.

"In their paper, Breit and Wheeler already realized this is almost impossible to do," said physicist Zhangbu Xu of Brookhaven Lab.

"Lasers didn't even exist yet! But Breit and Wheeler proposed an alternative: accelerating heavy ions. And their alternative is exactly what we are doing at RHIC."

But what do accelerated ions have to do with photon collisions? Well, we can explain.

The process involves, as the collider's name suggests, accelerating ions - atomic nuclei stripped of their electrons. Because electrons have a negative charge and protons (within the nucleus) have a positive one, stripping it leaves the nucleus with a positive charge. The heavier the element, the more protons it has, and the stronger the positive charge of the resulting ion.

The team used gold ions, which contain 79 protons, and a powerful charge. When gold ions are accelerated to very high speeds, they generate a circular magnetic field that can be as powerful as the perpendicular electric field in the collider. Where they intersect, these equal fields can produce electromagnetic particles, or photons.

"So, when the ions are moving close to the speed of light, there are a bunch of photons surrounding the gold nucleus, traveling with it like a cloud," Xu explained.

At the RHIC, ions are accelerated to relativistic speeds - those that are a significant percentage of the speed of light. In this experiment, the gold ions were accelerated to 99.995 percent of light speed.

This is where the magic happens: When two ions just miss each other, their two clouds of photons can interact, and collide. The collisions themselves can't be detected, but the electron-positron pairs that result can.

However, it's not enough to just detect an electron-positron pair, either.

Diagram showing how the near-miss of gold ions produces photon collisions. (Brookhaven Lab)

That's because the photons produced by the electromagnetic interaction are virtual photons, popping briefly in and out of existence, and without the same mass as their 'real' counterparts.

To be a true Breit-Wheeler process, two real photons need to collide - not two virtual photons, nor a virtual and a real photon.


At the ions' relativistic speeds, the virtual particles can behave like real photons. Thankfully, there's a way physicists can tell which electron-positron pairs are generated by the Breit-Wheeler process: the angles between the electron and the positron in the pair generated by the collision.

Each type of collision - virtual-virtual, virtual-real and real-real - can be identified based on the angle between the two particles produced. So the researchers detected and analyzed the angles of over 6,000 electron-positron pairs generated during their experiment.

They found that the angles were consistent with collisions between real photons - the Breit-Wheeler process in action.

"We also measured all the energy, mass distributions, and quantum numbers of the systems. They are consistent with theory calculations for what would happen with real photons," said physicist Daniel Brandenburg of Brookhaven Lab.

"Our results provide clear evidence of direct, one-step creation of matter-antimatter pairs from collisions of light as originally predicted by Breit and Wheeler."

The argument could be very reasonably made that we won't have a direct first detection of the pure, single photon-photon Breit-Wheeler process until we collide photons approaching the energy of gamma rays.

Nevertheless, the team's work is highly compelling stuff - at the very least, it shows that we are barking up the right tree with Breit and Wheeler.

We'll be continuing to watch this space, avidly.

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

Scientists detect characteristics of the birth of a major challenge to harvesting fusion energy on Earth

Date:August 10, 2021

Source:DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Summary:Novel camera detects the birth of high-energy runaway electrons, which may lead to determining how to prevent damage caused by the highly energetic particles.


A key challenge for scientists striving to produce on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars is preventing what are called runaway electrons, particles unleashed in disrupted fusion experiments that can bore holes in tokamaks, the doughnut-shaped machines that house the experiments. Scientists led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have used a novel diagnostic with wide-ranging capabilities to detect the birth, and the linear and exponential growth phases of high-energy runaway electrons, which may allow researchers to determine how to prevent the electrons' damage.

Initial energy

"We need to see these electrons at their initial energy rather than when they are fully grown and moving at near the speed of light," said PPPL physicist Luis Delgado-Aparicio, who led the experiment that detected the early runaways on the Madison Symmetric Torus (MST) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The next step is to optimize ways to stop them before the runaway electron population can grow into an avalanche," said Delgado-Aparicio, lead author of a first paper that details the findings in the Review of Scientific Instruments.

Fusion reactions produce vast amounts of energy by combining light elements in the form of plasma -- the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei that makes up 99 percent of the visible universe. Scientists the world over are seeking to produce and control fusion on Earth for a virtually inexhaustible supply of safe and clean power for generating electricity.

PPPL collaborated with the University of Wisconsin to install the multi-energy pinhole camera on MST, which served as a testbed for the camera's capabilities. The diagnostic upgrades and redesigns a camera that PPPL had previously installed on the now-shuttered Alcator C-Mod tokamak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is unique in its ability to record not only the properties of the plasma in time and space but its energy distribution as well.

That prowess enables researchers to characterize both the evolution of the superhot plasma as well as the birth of runaway electrons, which begin at low energy. "If we understand the energy content I can tell you what is the density and temperature of the background plasma as well as the amount of runaway electrons," Delgado Aparicio said. "So by adding this new energy variable we can find out several quantities of the plasma and use it as a diagnostic."

Novel camera

Use of the novel camera moves technology forward. "This certainly has been a great scientific collaboration," said physicist Carey Forest, a University of Wisconsin professor who oversees the MST, which he describes as "a very robust machine that can produce runaway electrons that don't endanger its operation."

As a result, Forest said, "Luis's ability to diagnose not only the birth location and initial linear growth phase of the electrons as they are accelerated, and then to follow how they are transported from the outside in, is fascinating. Comparing his diagnosis to modeling will be the next step and of course a better understanding may lead to new mitigation techniques in the future."

Delgado-Aparicio is already looking ahead. "I want to take all the expertise that we have developed on MST and apply it to a large tokamak," he said. Two post-doctoral researchers who Delgado-Aparicio oversees can build upon the MST findings but at WEST, the Tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak operated by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Cadarache, France.

"What I want to do with my post-docs is to use cameras for a lot of different things including particle transport, confinement, radio-frequency heating and also this new twist, the diagnosis and study of runaway electrons," Delgado-Aparicio said. "We basically would like to figure out how to give the electrons a soft landing, and that could be a very safe way to deal with them."


Story Source:

Materials provided by DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Original written by John Greenwald. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
L. F. Delgado-Aparicio, P. VanMeter, T. Barbui, O. Chellai, J. Wallace, H. Yamazaki, S. Kojima, A. F. Almagari, N. C. Hurst, B. E. Chapman, K. J. McCollam, D. J. Den Hartog, J. S. Sarff, L. M. Reusch, N. Pablant, K. Hill, M. Bitter, M. Ono, B. Stratton, Y. Takase, B. Luethi, M. Rissi, T. Donath, P. Hofer, N. Pilet. Multi-energy reconstructions, central electron temperature measurements, and early detection of the birth and growth of runaway electrons using a versatile soft x-ray pinhole camera at MST. Review of Scientific Instruments, 2021; 92 (7): 073502 DOI: 10.1063/5.0043672


Cite This Page:
DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. "Scientists detect characteristics of the birth of a major challenge to harvesting fusion energy on Earth." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 10 August 2021. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210810161346.htm>.

 

New study analyzes role of scent compounds in the co-evolution of bats and pepper plants

by Burke Museum

An infographic summarizing the results of the study, including how the scent preferences of short-tailed fruit bats relate to scent chemical evolution. Credit: Burke Museum

A new study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B by researchers at the University of Washington (UW), Burke Museum, and Stony Brook University, finds important clues on how bats and Piper (pepper) plants in Central America have co-evolved to help each other survive.

Specifically, the team studied the complex mixture of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) that Piper fruits produce when they are at prime ripeness, and how these VOCs may have evolved to attract scent-oriented short-tailed fruit bats (the Carollia genus) who then eat the fruits and excrete the seeds into the landscape. Plant-animal interactions have captured the attention of biologists for centuries, and are key to maintaining the biodiversity of tropical ecosystems. The dispersal syndrome hypothesis—an explanation of how mutually-beneficial relationships between plants and frugivores may lead to co-evolution—proposes that when animals are effective seed dispersers, they may select for fruit traits (e.g., size, color, odor) that match their sensory abilities (e.g., vision, olfaction), and vice versa. However, few studies have tested this hypothesis for complex traits like fruit scents. This study provides one of the first tests of bat-driven, fruit scent evolution.

The study is based on data collected during fieldwork at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica. There, Piper is highly diverse with over 50 recognized species. It is also a location where three Carollia species (C. castanea, C. sowellii, and C. perspicillata) are some of the most abundant bats year-round and coexist with approximately 62 other bat species.

The team spent hundreds of hours searching and collecting ripe fruits from Piper to extract and quantify the VOCs that make up their fragrant scent. Concurrently, they collected fecal samples from live bats and then released them back into the wild to determine which Piper species the bats were eating and how much. The researchers also conducted behavioral experiments with wild bats where they offered options of unripe fruits enhanced with the most-common VOCs found in local Piper plants. Video cameras and microphones recorded the bats' feeding behaviors and echolocation calls.

The team found Piper fruit scent bouquets were complex and diverse. They identified and quantified 249 VOCs in ripe fruit scents across 22 Piper species. Some compounds were found in the fruit scent of most species—like alpha-caryophyllene, which has a spicy scent like cinnamon or cloves. Others, like 2-heptanol, were only found in a few Piper species. The diet studies showed that, while the three Carollia species varied in their reliance on Piper as a food source, all consumed a lot of a few Piper species, and a little of many others. Surprisingly, this was not related to how abundant the Piper species are at La Selva, so the bats must choose Piper fruits based on other characteristics and not just how well represented they are across the landscape. The team's behavioral experiments provided some clues to what might be happening: Bats preferred samples spiked with 2-heptanol, a VOC found in the fruit scents of the Piper species they eat the most.

"These findings suggest bats use specific chemicals in the fruit scent bouquet not only to select ripe fruits, but to find the specific Piper species that make up the bulk of their diet." Dr. Sharlene Santana, UW Biology department professor and Burke Museum mammal curator said. "By helping them communicate with the bats, these chemical signals are likely a component of a dispersal syndrome in these plants."

Through advanced statistical and evolutionary analyses of the fruit scent chemistry and bat diet data, the team further demonstrated that the evolutionary patterns of chemical diversity and the presence of specific compounds in Piper fruit scents is associated with greater bat consumption and scent preferences. This highlights the potential effect of bat frugivory on the evolution of fruit chemistry, a relationship that contributes to the extreme diversity of tropical fruiting plants worldwide.

"Flying in the dark means bats cannot find ripe fruit by sight, but rely on olfaction instead," said Dr. Liliana Dávalos, Stony Brook Ecology and Evolution department professor. "Olfaction is the bridge between the plant signal and bat fruit consumption, and finding the specific VOCs bats respond to opens the door to matching olfactory receptor genes to important VOCs, which has been impossible until now."

A short-tailed fruit bat, Carollia castanea, a Piper specialist. Credit: David Villalobos Chaves

Understanding the relationship between bats and pepper plants not only contributes to knowledge about co-evolution of these species, but also has benefits for rainforest habitat conservation. Piper are some of the first plants to grow in forest gaps and edges, and Carollia—as key dispersers of Piper seeds—can help restore plant life in logged areas.

"Our current and future work is identifying the odorant receptors that allow the bats to detect the fruit scents. This will allow us to link the ecology and evolution of these relationships with the physiological mechanisms," said Jeffrey Riffell, UW Biology department professor.

How chemical diversity in plants facilitates plant-animal interactions

More information: Sharlene E. Santana et al, Fruit odorants mediate co-specialization in a multispecies plant–animal mutualism, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.0312

Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B 

Provided by Burke Museum

Science of smell: The first molecular images of odor receptors at work
By Michael Irving
August 11, 2021

A new study examines how olfactory receptors respond to odor molecules
Yaruta/Depositphotos

Our sense of smell seems to be the most complicated, and as such it’s the least understood. To help shed some light on the system, researchers at Rockefeller University have taken the first cryo-electron microscope images of an olfactory receptor at work in the simple system of an insect.

Receptors are key structures that help us understand the world around us through our five senses. There are touch receptors in the skin, photoreceptors in the retina, taste receptors on the tongue, sound-sensitive receptors in the inner ear, and olfactory receptors in the nose. They all respond to different stimuli, opening ion channels to transmit signals to the brain to interpret what we’re experiencing.

But the olfactory receptors are the most mysterious of all. While we only need three types in the eyes to see and six in the ear to hear, it takes over 400 receptors to smell – and even these pull double duty to detect the millions of different odorant molecules. A specific smell like coffee or roses is made up of hundreds of chemical components that stimulate different arrangements of receptors, and this precise activation pattern helps the brain decode what exactly it’s smelling.

An illustration of an olfactory receptor in its unexcited state (blue) and when it's been activated (pink) by an odor molecule. When activated, an ion channel in the center dilates, sending a message to the brain that the receptor has been activated.
The Rockefeller University

“The olfactory system has to recognize a vast number of molecules with only a few hundred odor receptors or even less,” says Vanessa Ruta, corresponding author of the study. “It’s clear that it had to evolve a different kind of logic than other sensory systems.”

So for the new study, the team set out to study that complex logic. The main question they wanted to answer was how a single receptor is able to recognize different chemicals, despite those molecules having different sizes and shapes.

To find out, they used a technique called cryo-electron microscopy, which involves firing a beam of electrons at a frozen sample to produce a 3D image of its tiny molecular structures. This was performed on the olfactory receptors of an insect called a jumping bristletail, which has a relatively simple odor-sensing system containing only five types of receptors.


Of these, the team chose one called OR5, which responded to 60 percent of the odor molecules they tested it on. Then they studied the structure of the OR5 receptor when it was alone, and when it was bound to one of two odorant molecules – eugenol (or clove oil), and the insect repellent DEET.

“We learned a lot from comparing these three structures,” says Ruta. “One of the beautiful things you can see is that in the unbound structure the pore is closed, but in the structure where it’s bound with either eugenol or DEET, the pore has dilated and provides a pathway for ions to flow.”

Next, the researchers examined where exactly the molecules were binding to the receptor. Despite being very different, the two molecules appeared to be binding at exactly the same location, within one pocket on the receptor. That actually goes against the two leading hypotheses – that receptors bind to a specific part of a molecule that may be common to a large group of odors, or that the receptors use different pockets to hold different molecules. Weirder still, the receptor and molecule pairs were only binding weakly.

“These kinds of nonspecific chemical interactions allow different odorants to be recognized,” says Ruta. “In this way, the receptor is not selective to a specific chemical feature. Rather, it’s recognizing the more general chemical nature of the odorant.”

The team says that this observation helps explain how receptors are able to bind to large swathes of odor molecules, but not all. That helps smaller numbers of receptors build into an olfactory system that can recognize millions of different chemicals.

They also found that it only takes one mutation in the amino acids of the binding site to change which molecules will stick. That in turn can explain how so many varieties of odor receptors have evolved in insects. The general principle behind this likely also occurs in other animals, including humans, the team concludes.


The research was published in the journal Nature.

Source: Rockefeller University

Scientists discover common flower is carnivorous

“We had no idea it was carnivorous,” 

one of the study’s authors said.

Story at a glance

A new study found that a common flower is actually carnivorous.

The flower, the western false asphodel, is a white flower common in the Pacific Northwest.

Researchers found that tiny hairs along the flower’s stem produce a digestive enzyme other carnivorous plants use to trap and eat insects.


A new study has discovered that what was previously considered a common flower is carnivorous.



(Courtesy of UBC and Qianshi Lin)

By Jenna Romaine | Aug. 11, 2021 | NPR

“We had no idea it was carnivorous,” Sean Graham, a botanist with the University of British Columbia and one of the study’s authors, told NPR.

Published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, researchers found that the western false asphodel, a white flower common in the Pacific Northwest and first discovered in 1879, has a genetic deletion, or loss of segment of DNA, as well as features other carnivorous plants have to trap food.

“They have these sticky stems,” Graham said. “So, you know, it was kind of like, hmm, I wonder if this could be a sign that this might be carnivorous.”

The researchers found that tiny hairs along the flower’s stem produce a digestive enzyme other carnivorous plants use to trap and eat insects.

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There are fewer than 1,000 carnivorous plant species, and the new classification is the first carnivorous plant to be discovered in 20 years.

However, given the latest discovery, Graham believes there may be more common plants out there that are actually carnivorous.

“I suspect,” Graham said, “that there might be more carnivorous plants out there than we think”

What are carnivorous plants? 

New meat-eating plant discovered

11 Aug 2021

DANILO LIMA.

Scientists have found a new carnivorous plant in North America.

The white flower might look pretty but botanists discovered that it traps prey with the sticky hairs on its stem.

The plant that traps small insects, is called triantha occidentalis, and is the first carnivorous plant to be identified in 20 years.

What are carnivorous plants?

Carnivorous plants attract, trap and digest animals for their nutrients
There is around 630 species

Most meat-eating plants eat insects but there are some larger plants that can eat reptiles and small mammals

Venus flytrap is one of the most well known carnivorous plants. Their leaves snap shut when prey lands

DR. QIANSHI LIN
The flower traps prey with the sticky hairs on its stem

The meat-eating flower grows in boggy areas on the west coast of North America from California to Alaska.

They are found in major urban cities and the innocent-looking white flower might not be alone in its meaty ways.

It's thought that there may be many more carnivorous plants to be discovered.

Co-author of the study, Dr Sean Graham said: "Carnivorous plants have fascinated people since the Victorian era because they turn the usual order of things on its head: this is a plant eating animals.

"We're thrilled to have identified one growing right here in our own backyard on the west coast."

DANILO LIMA
Triantha occidentalis is the first new carnivorous plant identified by botanists in 20 years

"What's particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers," said lead author Dr. Qianshi Lin.

"On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don't want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce," he added.

The researchers found that although the hairs on the stem are sticky, they only trap midges and other small insects.

Which means larger bees and butterflies are not captured and they can pollinate the flowers as they pass from plant to plant unharmed.

NEW CARNIVOROUS PLANT SPECIES IDENTIFIED IN NORTH AMERICA
by Matthew Hart
Aug 11 2021 • 9:26 AM

Triantha occidentalis, a flowering plant that thrives in wetlands from Alaska all the way down through California, is common. Even around major cities along the West Coast and inland through Montana. But, like Dexter during daytime, the harmless-looking creature is hiding a deadly secrete: it kills bugs for sustenance. Placing it firmly in the little shop of horrors that consists of real-life carnivorous plants.

Gizmodo reported on the discovery, which a team of botanists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of British Columbia outlined in a study recently published in the journal PNAS. Sean Graham, a botanist at UBC, previously led an analysis of the genomes of Alismatales—a group of largely aquatic flowering plants—when his team noticed that Triantha had lost a gene often missing in carnivorous plants. Combined with its tendency to trap insects, this tipped Graham off to the idea the plant species may be carnivorous

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Danilo Lima

The study’s lead author, Qianshi Lin, a doctoral student at UBC, performed experiments to determine if T. occidentalis is indeed carnivorous. He and his team did so by labeling fruit flies with the stable isotope, nitrogen-15; a non-radioactive isotope that’s able to act as a tracer, in turn allowing scientists to model chemical and biochemical systems. Lo and behold, the team found that the unassuming plant devoured and processed the nutrients from the bugs it’d trapped.


“What’s particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers,” Lin said in a press release. “On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don’t want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce.”


T. occidentalis has managed to thrive with thus duality, however. And the species now stands as the 12th independent evolution of carnivory in the plant kingdom scientists are aware of. As well as the first time they’ve discovered the trait in the Alismatales order. Athough we’re still not sure if Audrey II should be counted as a 13th lineage.

via GIPHY

UBC researchers discover first new carnivorous plant in 20 years

It looks pretty but sucks nutrients from dead insects, too. 😵

a day ago By: Elana Shepert

The plant is called Triantha and it is the first new carnivorous plant to be identified by botanists in 20 years. UBC researchers explain the study. Photo via UBC

It may look like a delicate, pretty white flower — but this newly discovered plant packs a stealthy bite.

The aforementioned flower is a new finding by University of British Columbia and University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Insects get trapped in the flower's sticky hairs and the carnivorous plant sucks nutrients from the dead corpses.

The plant is called Triantha – a species of false asphodel – and it is the first new carnivorous plant to be identified by botanists in 20 years, explains a news release. It is notable for the unusual way it traps prey with sticky hairs on its flowering stem.

“Carnivorous plants have fascinated people since the Victorian era because they turn the usual order of things on its head: this is a plant-eating animal,” said co-author Dr. Sean Graham, a professor in the department of botany at UBC. “We’re thrilled to have identified one growing right here in our own backyard on the west coast.”

Where does it grow?

Triantha grows in "nutrient-poor, boggy but bright areas" along the west coast of North America, from California to Alaska. For the study, the researchers investigated specimens growing on Cypress Mountain in North Vancouver.

“What’s particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers,” said lead author Dr. Qianshi Lin, a PhD student at UBCbotany at the time of the study. “On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don’t want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce.”

“We believe that Triantha is able to balance carnivory with pollination because its glandular hairs are not very sticky and can only trap midges and other small insects, so that the much larger and stronger bees and butterflies that act as its pollinators are not captured,” said co-author Dr. Tom Givnish, a professor in the department of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UBC notes that the research builds on work done previously in Graham's lab, which found that "Triantha lacked a particular gene that is often missing in other carnivorous plants."

Isotopic analysis of Triantha

To find out if the plant was "eating" insects, Lin attached fruit flies labelled with nitrogen-15 isotopes to its flowering stem. The label acted as a tracking device that allowed him to trace changes in nitrogen uptake by the plant.

He then compared the results with those from similar experiments on other species that grow in the same area, including a recognized carnivorous plant (a sundew) and several non-carnivorous plants as controls.

Isotopic analysis showed significant uptake of nitrogen by Triantha, which obtained more than half its nitrogen from prey –comparable to sundews in the same habitat, and other carnivorous plants elsewhere.

The study also found that the sticky hairs on the Triantha flower stalk produce phosphatase, a digestive enzyme used by many carnivorous plants to obtain phosphorous from prey.

The proximity of Triantha to major urban centres in western Canada and the Pacific coast in the United States suggests that other carnivorous plants – and many other ecological surprises – remain to be discovered, even in well-studied ecosystems.

But if you’re tempted to recreate the film Little Shop of Horrors or bring Triantha home to deal with pesky summer fruit flies, the researchers warn the plant doesn’t do well outside of its natural environment and advise admiring its quirks from a distance.

The full paper, “A new carnivorous plant lineage (Triantha) with a unique sticky-inflorescence trap,” will be published on Aug. 13 in PNAS.

North Shore bog plant is a meat eater, UBC study finds
Brent Richter 

Tiny bugs are trapped in the sticky hairs of carnivorous Triantha occidentalis.▲

The flower of Triantha occidentalis may be beautiful but the stem is deadly to small bugs▲

Six-leggeds beware: UBC scientists have discovered a plant common in the bogs of the North Shore Mountains that traps and digests insects.

“It’s a big surprise. Many people who hike in Vancouver or B.C. will be familiar with this plant,” said Sean Graham, UBC professor and co-author of a newly published study. “No one ever thought that it was a carnivore. This is the shocking thing about it.”

Like other carnivorous plants, Triantha occidentalis, tends to live in boggy areas where the soil lacks important nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous.

The UBC researchers had a suspicion it may be a meat-eater after a previous genetic survey found Triantha occidentalis is missing a gene that often is absent in carnivorous plants. To test out the theory, the study’s lead author Qianshi Lin designed an experiment using fruit flies that had been raised in an environment full of nitrogen-15 isotopes. The flies were then humanely killed and attached to tiny hairs on the plants’ stems, which exude a sticky secretion that traps bugs.

“If the plant is carnivorous and digests the insect, which it appears to do, you can track to see if that nutrient-level nitrogen flows into the plant,” he said. “And indeed it does.”

They estimate as much as half or two-thirds of the Triantha occidentalis’ intake of nitrogen, which is a necessity for making proteins and DNA, comes from bugs, not the soil.

This is the first time a plant has been discovered to be carnivorous in 20 years. In Canada, there are now only 19 confirmed carnivorous species, and around the world, there are about 600 – a tiny proportion of our overall fauna.

“It's not every day that you have a completely new sort of instance of a carnivorous plant. This probably has evolved independently of other ones,” Graham said.

“Carnivorous plants” may call to mind David Attenborough narrating as small rodents disappear into the gaping maw of a tropical pitcher plant, or perhaps Little Shop of Horrors, a dark musical comedy about an extraterrestrial plant named Audrey II that demands human blood for its survival.

But the ones on the North Shore and other bogs along the West Coast are unlikely to devour anything bigger than a midge. The hairs on the stem simply aren’t big enough to trap larger bugs like bees or butterflies, which is likely an evolutionary strategy as the plant relies on those species for pollination.

Carnivorous plants have been a point of fascination for Western botanists and horticulturalists since the Victorian era, Graham said.

“Frankly they're a bit creepy. I mean it’s kind of ghoulish to have a plant that eats animals right?” he said. “I think that’s what gathers the attention of the public – the idea that the tables can be turned sometimes.”

While it’s anyone’s guess whether the discovery will have applicability outside botany, it will open the door to more research into the “extreme adaptations” of plants.

“We’re hoping that by looking into the genome in the future, we can actually see some of these changes and answer the question of what does it take to be a meat-eating plant?” Graham said.

Lin and Graham’s paper will be published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal this month.

“I hope it inspires other people to think about plants more and the fact that we found this basically living in Vancouver. It's pretty remarkable,” Graham said.

New Lineage of Carnivorous Plants Discovered

Aug 10, 2021 by News Staff / Source

The newly-identified lineage of carnivorous plants is represented by the western false asphodel (Triantha occidentalis), a species of flowering plant from North America; its trap is unique among carnivorous plants and, unexpected based on theory, in placing all of its prey-capture sites next to its insect-pollinated flowers.

Flower of the western false asphodel (Triantha occidentalis) at Cypress Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. Image credit: Danilo Lima.

“Carnivorous plants have fascinated people since the Victorian era because they turn the usual order of things on its head: this is a plant eating animals,” said Professor Sean Graham, a researcher in the Department of Botany and the Botanical Garden at the University of British Columbia.

“We’re thrilled to have identified one growing right here in our own backyard on the west coast.”

Triantha occidentalis can be found in the wetlands and bogs from Alaska to California and inland to Montana.

In the summer, it shoots up tall flowering stems coated with sticky hairs that trap small insects like gnats and midges.

“What’s particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers,” said Qianshi Lin, a doctoral student in the Department of Botany and the Botanical Garden at the University of British Columbia.

“On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don’t want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce.”

“However, the plant appears to be capable of sorting out friend from food.”

“We believe that Triantha occidentalis is able to do this because its glandular hairs are not very sticky, and can only entrap midges and other small insects, so that the much larger and stronger bees and butterflies that act as its pollinators are not captured,” said Professor Tom Givnish, a researcher in the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In their study, the reseachers discovered that Triantha occidentalis acquires more than half of its nitrogen (N) by digesting these ensnared insects, a welcome treat in its nutrient-poor habitat.

“We tested the hypothesis that Triantha occidentalis is carnivorous by doing a field experiment with 15N-labeled insects to demonstrate nutrient uptake,” they said.

“We demonstrated significant N transfer from prey to Triantha, with an estimated 64% of leaf N obtained from prey capture in previous years, comparable to levels inferred for the cooccurring round-leaved sundew, a recognized carnivore.”

“N obtained via carnivory is exported from the inflorescence and developing fruits and may ultimately be transferred to next year’s leaves.”

“Glandular hairs on flowering stems secrete phosphatase, as seen in all carnivorous plants that directly digest prey.”

This is the 12th known independent evolution of carnivory in the plant kingdom.

It is the first time the trait has been discovered in the Alismatales order, a group of largely aquatic flowering plants.

It is also just the fourth established instance of carnivory in the monocots, one of the major groups of flowering plants.

Some other species in the Triantha genus also have sticky hairs that trap insects. The authors plan to study these species to see how widespread carnivory might be in the genus.

“It seems likely that there are other members of this group that will turn out to be carnivorous,” Professor Givnish said.

“The fact that Triantha’s carnivorous lifestyle escaped notice for so long despite the plant’s abundance and its growth near large cities suggests that more carnivorous plants are waiting to be discovered off the beaten path.”

The team’s paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

_____

Qianshi Lin et al. 2021. A new carnivorous plant lineage (Triantha) with a unique sticky-inflorescence trap. PNAS 118 (33): e2022724118; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2022724118

PHOTO ESSAY

The Apache community running to rescue its holy mountain

Indigenous spiritual leaders say the Vatican’s observatory is searching for something it doesn’t understand.

Molly Peters

Image credit: Molly Peters

PHOTOS Aug. 10, 2021


Dził Nchaa Si’an in present-day Arizona is a mountain where the deities live. That means it must be approached through the proper corridors, geographically and mentally. Elders teach younger generations to approach prayerfully, through suffering, remembering the ancestors. Wendsler Nosie Sr., who is Chiricahua Apache and enrolled in the San Carlos Apache Tribe, says the mountain is a fixture in Apache religion. “If we were to write the Bible,” he said, “this would be in there.”

Mount Graham, the colonial name for Dził Nchaa Si’an, was part of the San Carlos Apache Reservation until 1873, when the federal government seized it by presidential executive order, deeming it public lands and subsequently placing it under the management of the U.S. Forest Service. Access to the mountain, however, fell under the control of the University of Arizona. In 1990, George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory in Italy, who was at the time also a professor at the university, broke ground for a new observatory on Mount Graham. Neither the Vatican, the Forest Service, the university, nor any of the observatory’s other collaborators ever sought the Apache people’s approval. Coyne himself was dismissive of the objections that were made.



Portrait of Wendsler Nosie Sr. at Treasure Park on Mt. Graham. Nosie said, “It’s always amazing when I’m on Mt. Graham to think about the history of our people and what they knew as freedom, remembering over 30 years of this particular struggle against religious discrimination. Knowing in this current generation that we’re coming home to what is holy and sacred, our church, is powerful.”
Molly Peters

"After extensive, thorough investigations by Indian and non-Indian experts,” Coyne wrote in a statement, “there is to the best of our knowledge no religious or cultural significance to the specific observatory site.”

In response, starting in 1991, Nosie and about a dozen others, including his daughter, Vanessa Nosie, ran to Dził Nchaa Si’an from the San Carlos Reservation — a distance of more than 100 miles. The runners took turns, relaying the distance, to protest the desecration of the holy mountain. They’ve been running every year since.




Wendsler Nosie Sr sits in the back of his truck on the San Carlos Apache Reservation following one of his daily runs to train for the Mt. Graham Sacred Run, with smoke in the air from the Mescal Fire raging nearby.
Molly Peters

Nosie Sr. says the Vatican won’t leave because it has tapped into something. “They found something spiritual there that they don’t quite understand yet,” he said. “We Apaches already know what it is.”

This July was the 30th anniversary of the original Dził Nchaa Si’an run. It was also the first year Vanessa led the event, under her father’s guidance. Starting before dawn, the runners completed one-mile stretches, followed by a truck carrying water and the relief runners. After nine hours, the team reached Dził Nchaa Si’an. There, they rested, prayed and drank the holy spring water, which Nosie Sr. likens to “the breast of the mother.”
“The one thing that we don’t want to ever give them is our spirit.”

They run along the highway rather than on trails for greater visibility. “In order to educate the people, we’ve got to be seen,” said Nosie Sr. “Physically, we are all captives of America,” he added, speaking not just of the Apache community but of other Natives and non-Natives alike. “The one thing that we don’t want to ever give them is our spirit.”

The run is a way to heal, to teach the youth religion, and to tell the truth about what’s happened. “All people need this,” says Vanessa Nosie, who is carrying on the three-decade tradition for the children, including her 10-month-old daughter. “Will there be change in her favor?” she wondered. “Our future generations have a right to live and a right to pray.” – Brian Oaster (they/them) is an editorial intern at High Country News and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.


Waya Brown, who is Apache and Pomo, runs towards the Bylas district of the San Carlos Apache Reservation. It was his fourth time running to Mt. Graham. His first time participating in the sacred run was when his cousin, Baase Pike, had her sunrise dance on Mt. Graham following the run that year. Baase was only the second Apache girl, after her older sister Naelyn, to have her sunrise dance on their sacred mountain in over 150 years.
Molly Peters


Molly Peters is a Los Angeles-based photographer and visual storyteller whose work often deals with spirituality, memory and human connection to the natural world. She completed a BA in photography and Italian studies at Bard College in 2010, and she earned an MFA in photography from the Hartford Art School in 2018.

The Biggest U.S. Electrical Grid Braces for Green Energy

David R Baker and Naureen Malik
Tue., August 10, 2021


(Bloomberg Markets) -- The decision that could open the floodgates to renewable power across much of the eastern U.S. came in early July after months of closed-door haggling within an organization many Americans don’t know exists.

PJM Interconnection LLC runs the country’s biggest electricity grid, a vast web of wires spanning parts of 13 states from the Jersey Shore to the Mississippi River and covering much of coal country. Its low profile is a measure of its success. PJM prides itself on keeping the lights on at a time when blackouts have plagued power grids in California and Texas, sometimes with deadly results.

That reliability comes at a cost. Critics say PJM’s capacity auctions, which require utilities to secure power three years in advance as a type of blackout insurance, have propped up inefficient fossil fuel energy suppliers and led to billions of dollars in excess costs for customers. The switch to clean energy transforming other U.S. grids has barely touched PJM—it gets only 6% of its power from renewable sources such as wind and solar, compared with more than 40% in California and more than 25% in Texas. That disparity is likely to get more attention after climate scientists warned this week that the planet is likely to warm by 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next two decades, with more severe heating to follow if the world doesn’t take drastic measures to cut fossil fuel use.

Hundreds of electric utilities, power plant operators, and energy traders who belong to PJM and vote on its decisions have been fighting over renewable power for years. Some, serving states with ambitious climate change goals, want to push forward on solar, wind, and batteries. Others want to keep their old gas- and coal-burning power plants alive as long as possible.

But the July decision, aided by the Biden administration’s regulatory support, looks set to give the climate advocates a boost. The result could be a massive buildout of offshore wind on the Atlantic Coast, from Virginia north. That would not only revamp PJM’s entire system, but it could also dethrone natural gas as the country’s No. 1 power plant fuel by 2028, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd. About 27,000 megawatts of offshore wind—roughly the capacity of 27 nuclear reactors—are being planned, and 33% of that is in PJM territory, he says. Renewables’ share of U.S. power production will go from 10% this year to 27% by 2030.

“More states want to take control of their destiny and achieve a certain mix of power plants, with the whole goal of decarbonizing,” Byrd says. “They are going to do that, plow through regardless of the market rules, and it’s clear they have that legal right to do that.”

PJM’S PRIMARY MISSION is straightforward enough: keep electricity flowing, without fail, to 65 million people—one-fifth of the U.S. population. The ways it does so can be incredibly complex, and not all of them are open to public view.

Day and night, PJM orchestrates the flow of electrons over 85,100 miles of high-voltage cables connecting the Illinois prairie, the Rust Belt cities of Ohio, Appalachia’s coal and shale gas country, Washington, D.C., the New Jersey suburbs, and the northern edge of North Carolina. Some 1,400 generators supply the energy, all of it tracked on walls of video screens in a control room at PJM’s Valley Forge, Pa., headquarters. Each state can help supply the others. Contrast that with Texas, which has largely blocked off its grid from its neighbors. The Lone Star State paid the price for its isolation in February, when a deep freeze plunged millions of customers into the dark and cold for nearly a week, causing at least $20 billion in economic damage and leaving more than 200 people dead.

Managing the grid isn’t the only way PJM keeps the lights on. The organization also runs markets in which its 1,000-plus members buy and sell electricity. In 2007, PJM created a capacity market for utilities to buy contracts that ensure the delivery of power even during peak demand and supply disruptions. Texas has nothing like it. But consumer advocates say PJM’s obsession with always having more than enough juice jacks up homeowners’ monthly bills. One estimate, from Wilson Energy Economics, pegs the overspending at as much as $4.4 billion a year. (A PJM spokesperson disputes that figure, saying it fails to account for savings that result from the extra capacity and adds that PJM is working with stakeholders to address their concerns about procurement.)

FOR PJM, THE MARKETS CAME FIRST. The organization was born as a cross-border experiment at a time when electricity grids were still spreading across the nation. In 1927 three utilities—one in New Jersey and two in Pennsylvania—formed a joint power pool in which each company could buy electricity from the others’ plants. The world’s first such venture, it meant that those plants able to supply power at the lowest price would be tapped first, cutting costs for all three utilities. The experiment proved a success and began to expand. Baltimore’s utility signed up in 1956, and with it, the arrangement became the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection: PJM.

Curiously, for most of its existence, PJM was operated by a department of just one of its member utilities. It wasn’t until 1997 that it became fully independent, the same year it opened its first bid-based energy market and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved it as the nation’s first independent system operator, or ISO. In 2002, after a series of new regulations intended to encourage increased competition in power markets, FERC would dub PJM the country’s first regional transmission organization, or RTO.

Think of the RTOs and ISOs (there are seven, total) as the nation’s Grid Keepers: They oversee everything from trans mission of electricity to the markets and auctions that set prices, and even the regional advanced planning for estimated power use (and distribution) in the years ahead. They decide who’s in and who’s out when it comes to supplying our electricity. No new plant, whether powered by sunshine or coal, can plug into the grid without the grid operator’s permission.

PJM has since grown into an odd hybrid. It’s technically a private corporation, but it functions as a membership organization. Its more than 500 voting members can set policy through votes on internal committees, but it also has a staff and governing board that make their own decisions. Member companies often have wildly divergent interests, and their debates—sometimes held in private—can get heated. One participant described it as having not just one 800-pound gorilla in the room, but a dozen, each used to getting its way.

“Every now and again, you’ll get some really passionate advocacy in those settings,” says Asim Haque, PJM’s vice president for state policy and member services. “They can yell at each other and then go eat lunch together. I’ve seen that happen multiple times.”

PJM’s geographic expanse has long been one of its biggest strengths. But now states with conflicting agendas are jockeying for position. Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia—coal country states—are often at odds with Maryland, New Jersey, and other places that see offshore wind farms as big new job generators.

“Unfortunately with PJM, what they have probably done is sunk to the lowest common denominator, to only having to meet the needs of the least aggressive state in their footprint” in terms of adding renewables, says Jon Wellinghoff, FERC’s chairman under President Barack Obama.

That tension finally came to a head in 2018 over the capacity market’s “minimum offer price rule,” known by the dismal acronym of MOPR. The rule set a price floor on power plants that receive state support, to prevent them from gaining an unfair advantage against unsubsidized plants in the capacity auction bidding.

First implemented more than a decade ago, MOPR was designed to prevent large energy companies from artificially depressing prices in the market, and it specifically targeted new natural-gas-fired power plants being built across the mid-Atlantic at the time. In 2016 several power plant operators petitioned FERC to expand MOPR to counter the potential advantage gained by nuclear plants that were receiving subsidies from Ohio and Illinois. In 2018, PJM pitched its own MOPR overhaul to FERC to include the increasing number of state-subsidized plants—particularly nuclear plants. But that proposal specifically exempted renewable power plants that were being built to meet state climate goals. A few months later, in June 2018, FERC ordered PJM to extend the MOPR price floors to renewable power such as wind and solar.

Clean power advocates said the move was an attempt by Trump appointees to block new renewable projects from the capacity market. Incensed, officials in Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey threatened to pull out of that market. Some members grumbled that PJM was propping up coal plants and picking a pointless fight with the states. The fight proved so contentious that, after FERC granted approval to the revised MOPR rule in 2019, PJM’s annual capacity auction was delayed for two years as members quarreled over it. Virginia’s utility, Dominion Energy, did actually exit PJM’s capacity market before the delayed auction was finally held in May.

“Instead of using the last five years to try to find a way to use the markets to assist the states—and really the planet—in making a dent in carbon pollution, we’ve been working on ways to make clean energy more expensive,” Kathleen Barrón, executive vice president for government affairs and public policy at power plant company Exelon Corp., said at a March meeting with FERC about the rule.

The backroom fight included not just Exelon, with its large fleet of nuclear plants, but American Electric Power, Calpine, FirstEnergy, NRG Energy, Public Service Enterprise Group, Vistra, and other power giants—which were all looking to protect their own plants and plans.

Neil Chatterjee, who served as FERC chairman under President Trump, defends the rule as an important means of maintaining PJM’s prized reliability. He says California—whose grid now veers close to blackouts when the sun sets on its solar power plants during heat waves—shows what can happen when a state government pushes the switch to renewables too quickly. “What is happening in California in particular you could very easily see happening in PJM if politicians make decisions about PJM’s future resources,” Chatterjee says.

And, in fact, the one auction held under the expanded MOPR wasn’t so bad for renewable power after all. Overall auction prices plunged. Nuclear plants suffered as expected, with some operators saying they might have to close reactors. Renewable power generators fared better than predicted, and the low prices did little to help coal. Chatterjee says the results disprove “some of the ‘sky is falling’ rhetoric” from MOPR opponents. “I find it very difficult to justify a wholesale market change in the immediate aftermath of an auction that quite frankly didn’t reflect those concerns,” he says.

But Richard Glick, the new FERC chairman, says the impact of MOPR on new renewable power generators, especially offshore wind, would become evident in future auctions if it isn’t changed. Fixing the rule now “matters a lot,” he says. States won’t be able to achieve their climate goals “if FERC keeps on adopting barriers to markets in terms of achieving greenhouse gas emissions reductions.”

ONE VOICE GENERALLY not in those internal PJM debates? State governments. They do have some say within PJM’s decision- making system, but it’s largely advisory. Each state has a consumer advocate who can cast a vote, but they’re easily drowned out by the hundreds of companies. An association of state utility regulators, the Organization of PJM States, acts as a liaison to the various capitals, but it has no formal power.

That grates on lawmakers like Lorig Charkoudian, a member of Maryland’s state legislature who serves on the public utilities subcommittee. She promised her voters action on clean power. But PJM answers to only one government agency—FERC—and not to her or her colleagues. “What they keep saying is, ‘We’re neutral on state policies,’ and technically, that’s accurate,” Charkoudian says. “But it’s obviously undermining our policies.”

Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., one of PJM’s three founding members, is trying to build a 1,100MW wind farm 15 miles off the coast of New Jersey’s southern tip. Under MOPR, that farm and others planned nearby wouldn’t be able to compete in the capacity market, says PSEG Chief Executive Officer Ralph Izzo. They’d lose an important source of income. Plus, the state’s utilities would still have to buy capacity contracts from other power plants to meet PJM’s reserve requirements, even though they wouldn’t actually need those contracts, because they’d be getting their power from the wind farms.

“It’s structured to ignore offshore wind, as if it’s not there,” says Izzo, who doesn’t like being at odds with an organization his own company helped create. “New Jersey will end up paying twice for that capacity.”

President Joe Biden’s election—and his administration’s commitment to a carbon-free grid by 2035—altered the conversation. Leadership of FERC passed to Glick, who didn’t agree with MOPR in the first place. “The fact is, we have to figure out if the commissioners believe the current approach is just and reasonable, and if not, we have to change it,” Glick says. “My opinion is that it’s probably not.”

It became clear that regulators would change PJM’s rule if PJM didn’t do it first. So in a series of votes in June and July, PJM’s members and board gutted the rule.

If approved by FERC, the decision could end up driving many coal plants out of business and pave the way for row after row of offshore wind turbines along the mid-Atlantic shore, creating a whole new industry for coastal states.

There are still hurdles. PJM’s process for vetting new power plants that want to connect to the grid was designed for a time when it would receive maybe 250 connection requests in a year, almost all for plants burning natural gas, says Ken Seiler, PJM’s vice president for planning. Now the number has jumped to almost 1,000 projects per year, 93% of them renewable, he says. Many don’t have financing yet and may never get built. The company is looking for ways to streamline the process, perhaps analyzing projects in batches.

“You don’t quadruple a queue and expect to turn out the same results as quickly,” Seiler says. “I would argue yes, it takes more time, but we usually get the answers right.”

And another fight is already brewing within PJM over who will get to build the transmission lines serving all these new clean power facilities, where they’ll get built, and how they’ll be paid for. Many states that rely on PJM’s grid have grand plans for carbon-free power, and they’ll need PJM’s cooperation, like it or not. “Your average person who cares deeply about these issues doesn’t know that there’s this almost shadow government—this shadowy body that has all this authority,” says Maryland’s Charkoudian.

Some state officials say that under new CEO Manu Asthana, who took over last year, the company is making more of an effort to work with states. PJM has formed a partnership with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to plan and approve transmission lines linking some of those wind farms to the grid. It’s also created an office of state policy solutions, under Haque.

“They obviously have a different philosophy than the previous administration,” says Joseph Fiordaliso, president of New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities. “It’s much more conducive to team play.”

Baker and Malik cover power and renewable energy for Bloomberg News in San Francisco and New York, respectively.

(Corrects 13th paragraph to say the meetings are sometimes held in private.)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

CODE RED REDUX

UN report 'must sound death knell' for fossil fuels as Canada faces climate urgency

Christopher Reynolds
The Canadian PressStaff
Monday, August 9, 2021

OTTAWA -- The secretary-general of the United Nations says a new report "must sound the death knell for coal and fossil fuels," raising renewed questions about Canada's climate plan and the long-term viability of its traditional energy sector.

The UN scientific paper says Earth is heating up so quickly due to human activity that temperatures in about a decade will blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent.

Released Monday, the landmark study amounts to a "'code red' for humanity" as increasingly extreme heat waves, droughts, flooding and wildfires threaten the globe, said UN chief Antonio Guterres.

Federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson acknowledged that parts of Western and Northern Canada are warming at three times the global average, with the ramifications playing out in a cycle of floods and wildfires in British Columbia and elsewhere.

The Liberal government has taken "aggressive climate action" through carbon pricing and a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, he said in a statement.

Amara Possian, Canada campaign director for 350.org, said the report is a "clarion call" that the country's climate plan falls far short.

"With an election around the corner and climate-fuelled wildfires still raging across this country, the real question is if our politicians are listening and if any of them will step up and be the climate champions that we need," she said in a statement.

The advocacy group (named for a "safe" level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) is demanding a moratorium on fossil-fuel expansion and a halt to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

The Petroleum Services Association of Canada sought to dampen any echoes of a death knell.

"At the end of the day we cannot go to renewables overnight, and the world still needs fossil fuels," Gurpreet Lail, head of the Calgary-based trade group, said in an email.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney pointed to carbon-capture technology as helping ring in a cleaner oilpatch, but deemed the idea of abandoning hydrocarbons "utopian."

"The flick of a switch is patently unrealistic," he told reporters Monday. "The cost to human life would be incalculable."

The authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which calls climate change clearly caused by humans and "unequivocal," makes more precise and warmer forecasts for the 21st century than it did last time it was issued in 2013.

Each of five scenarios for the future, based on how much carbon emissions are cut, passes the more stringent of two thresholds set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. World leaders agreed then to try to limit warming to 1.5 C above levels in the late 19th century because problems mount quickly after that. The world has already warmed nearly 1.1 C since then.

Under each scenario, the 3,949-page report said, the world will cross the 1.5-C warming mark in the 2030s, earlier than some past predictions. Warming has ramped up in recent years, data shows.

Canada, along with the United States and Australia, is among the top three biggest carbon-dioxide emitters per capita in the world.

Eddy Perez from Climate Action Network said the report shows that limiting global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels is "simply not negotiable."

"It is the only choice for a safe and healthy future, and it's still possible. We need to fight to restore our broken relationship with nature and with ourselves; we need to fight back against any delays to urgent climate action."

Opposition leaders weighed in Monday, with a stress on green jobs as a path to emissions reductions and economic stability.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole sidestepped a question on whether the bell tolls for fossil fuels and coal, but called climate change an "urgent threat" for Canada.


"We will meet our Paris targets, we will reduce emissions, but we will also get people working," he told reporters.

O'Toole cited the Tories' carbon-price policy on fuel -- announced in April, after Conservative MPs spent years fighting a so-called carbon tax -- stating that their climate plan will cut emissions by the 30 per cent committed to under the Paris Agreement while supporting more jobs.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of letting big polluters off easy, referring to the government's decision in 2018 to relax proposed carbon-price limits on large emitters.

"That price on pollution exempts the biggest polluters. People are asking, what's the point of that?" Singh said.

"The only way forward is to make sure workers are the heart of the solution," he added, citing building retrofits, electric vehicles and public transit.

Under the federal climate plan, the number of jobs in clean energy is expected to grow by nearly 50 per cent to 639,200 by 2030, in step with a sector GDP jump of 58 per cent, according to a June report from Clean Energy Canada.

Green party Leader Annamie Paul called the UNreport's results "frightening" and "sad," but said she hopes it will firm up Canadians' resolve on climate change.

"It's not just altruism or a concern for the planet that is moving the EU and the U.S. and China and all other major economies towards a green economy. What's moving them toward that is the competitive advantage that is going to give them, the jobs that is going to create," she said in a phone interview.

Paul also said Canada has failed to hit a single climate target and seen its greenhouse gas emissions rise each year since 2015. The Liberal goal of up to 45 per cent reduction by 2030 falls short of the 60 per cent she has her sights on.

"The top note of the report is really that climate change is here, its impacts are already being felt. And the question now is, how bad do we want it to get?"

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 9, 2021.

UN report 'must sound death knell' for fossil fuels as Canada faces climate urgency | CTV News

-- With files from The Associated Press