ONE RIG TO RULE THEM ALL

Big Oil Will Rule The Energy Transition

By Irina Slav - Aug 16, 2021

Big Oil and renewables look like polar opposites to many who follow the energy transition from a distance. After all, this transition is a response prompted by the decades-long polluting activity of Big Oil. And yet, there is a big chance that Big Oil will own this transition, as well as the renewable future that follows.

On one level, the reason for this is purely technical. One might think that the oil industry and the wind power industry have nothing in common, but in fact, they do, as Giovanni Corbetta from James Fisher Renewables wrote in a recent article for World Oil.

The installation of wind turbines in the sea, especially in deep waters, is pretty similar to installing oil platforms, especially floating platforms. Hinting that floating wind turbine technology would be impossible without floating oil platform technology, Corbetta points out that some technologies now utilized in the renewable energy sector originated in oil and gas.

This connection is evident in Big Oil's quick foray into wind power when pressure began to be felt about their carbon footprints. The supermajors simply felt most comfortable with wind, particularly offshore wind. The latest evidence of this deep connection between the two was BP's announcement last month that it planned to invest close to $14 billion (10 billion pounds) to turn Aberdeen, in Scotland, into its global offshore wind hub. And, according to the company, the wind hub is only the beginning.

"Through our bid we aim to do far more than only develop offshore wind – we believe it can help fuel Scotland's wider energy transition," said BP's Dev Senyal, executive VP for gas and low carbon, as quoted by Scottish Construction Now. "We want to harness the clean power from Scotland's offshore wind and use our capabilities as an integrated energy company to accelerate the country's EV charging network, build its hydrogen offering and strengthen its supporting infrastructure, including ports and harbours," Devyal also said.

Yet, technology is not the only connection between oil and gas, and renewables. There is also the business expertise that has made the oil industry a lucrative choice for investors for decades. This is now changing, thanks to the push for a green shift, and Big Oil is changing with it.

French TotalEnergies, for instance, recently closed a deal with Amazon to supply it with electricity produced from renewable sources. The French supermajor will provide the commodity through power purchase agreements in Europe and the United States. Plans are to later expand this agreement to the Middle East and the Asia Pacific.

One would think that the supply of renewable power should be—and would be—the prerogative of those who generate it. But, apparently, this is not the case. Big Oil has the experience and expertise to spot any opportunity for growth and profit and grab it while it's there. This is not to say that renewable energy companies are ignorant about business opportunities and how to take advantage of them. Big Oil has simply had more time to learn how to do it well. It also has more motivation with shareholders, banks, and governments breathing down its neck about emissions.

One other avenue of expansion for Big Oil into renewables is simple—M&A. Shell recently closed the acquisition of Inspire Energy Capital—a U.S. renewable energy retailer that supplies customers with renewable power under a variety of subscription plans and also offers incentives for better electricity use management.

"Our goal is to become a major provider of renewable and low-carbon energy, and this acquisition moves us a step closer to achieving that," said Shell executive VP for Renewable & Energy Solutions, Elizabeth Brinton.

"This deal instantly expands our business-to-consumer power offerings in key regions in the U.S., and we are well-positioned to build on Inspire's advanced digital capabilities to allow more households to benefit from renewable and low-carbon energy," she added.

Big Oil is not shy about its plans to own the energy transition. It does not have to be, not now, when it has the money to buy all the assets it wants to grow in renewables. In fact, oil and gas buyers of renewable assets are so generous, Bloomberg recently accused them of interfering with the profits of these assets' previous owners. Ironically, while Big Oil enjoyed the windfall of rising oil prices, the two largest wind farm developers in the world reported lower profits. But not because of Big Oil squeezing their profits. It was because of lower electricity output due to lower wind speeds.

The idea that Big Oil could come to dominate the energy transition would hardly be palatable to many who singularly place responsibility for the need for an energy transition on the fossil fuel industry. Yet this is one likely scenario: Big Oil has the means, the motive, and the opportunity to make the energy transition its own.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

LET'S CALL IT WHITE AMERICAN HISTORY

Colorado governor voids 1864 order to kill Native Americans

One of Evans’ orders deemed Native Americans “enemies of the state,” and the second called for Colorado citizens to kill and steal from them, Williams said.

DENVER (AP) — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday rescinded a 19th century proclamation that called for citizens to kill Native Americans and take their property, in what he hopes can begin to make amends for “sins of the past.”

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The 1864 order by Colorado’s second territorial governor, John Evans, would eventually lead to the Sand Creek massacre, one of Colorado's darkest and most fraught historic moments. The brutal assault left more than 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne people — mostly women, children and elderly — dead.

Evans' proclamation was never lawful because it established treaty rights and federal Indian law, Polis said at the signing of his executive order on the Capitol steps.

“It also directly contradicted the Colorado Constitution, the United States Constitution and Colorado criminal codes at the time," the Democratic governor said to whoops from the crowd.

Polis stood alongside citizens of the Southern Ute, Ute Mountain, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, many dressed in traditional regalia. Some held signs reading “Recognize Indigenous knowledge, people, land” and “Decolonize to survive.”

Ernest House Jr., who served as executive director of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs under former Gov. John Hickenlooper, said Polis' order is important to the state's government-to-government relations with tribes, the acknowledgment of history, and a movement toward reconciliation.

“I think there's oftentimes the general community think of American Indians as the vanishing race, the vanishing people. And I think it starts with things like this," said House, a citizen of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. "It gives us a place that we were important and that our lives were important.”

A broader push for reconciliation and racial reckoning has occurred across the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, including efforts to remove Confederate monuments and statues of slave traders, colonizers, conquerors and others. Some states, including Colorado, have banned Native American mascots in schools.

That movement coupled with renewed attention to Evans’ history also prompted Polis to create an advisory board to recommend name changes for the highest peak in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, known as “Mount Evans.” Discussions are taking place within the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs to choose “more culturally sensitive names,” said Alston Turtle, a councilman with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

Evans governed the territory of Colorado during three years of the Civil War, from 1862 to 1865. He resigned after the Sand Creek massacre happened under his order.

Col. John Chivington led the Nov. 29, 1864, slaughter. He and his soldiers then headed to Denver, where they displayed some of the victims’ remains.

The massacre is one of several long-ago terrible events that many Americans don’t know about, such as the Snake River attack in Oregon in 1887, where as many as 34 Chinese gold miners were killed. Others occurred within the lifetimes of many Americans living today, like the 1985 bombing by Philadelphia police of the house that headquartered the Black organization MOVE, killing 11 people.

Rick Williams, a Lakota and Cheyenne descendant who studies Native American history, found the original Evans’ order while researching the aftermath of the Fort Wise Treaty of 1861, in which U.S. government representatives met with Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders to establish a reservation along the Arkansas River in eastern Colorado. Williams said only 10 people signed the agreement.

“The next two years, it was hell for Indians because they didn’t sign the treaty, and they tried to kill as many of them as they could. And when that didn’t work, (Evans) issued an order to declare war,” Williams said.

One of Evans’ orders deemed Native Americans “enemies of the state,” and the second called for Colorado citizens to kill and steal from them, Williams said.

___

Nieberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Patty Nieberg, The Associated Press

Cross-border Salish Sea study finds key puzzle pieces of wild salmon die-off

For millennia, the Salish Sea — the shared body of water linking northwestern Washington state and southern B.C. and encompassing the Puget Sound, Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Strait of Georgia — was abundant with salmon.

The keystone species is the bedrock of the entire ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest. All seven species of Pacific salmon populated the Salish Sea — sustaining a host of other iconic animals, such as bald eagles, southern resident killer whales, and grizzlies, along with their surrounding aquatic and terrestrial environments and scores of Indigenous nations and cultures.

But beginning in the late 1970s, salmon survival, particularly for chinook, coho, and steelhead — which migrate to the ocean like salmon, but can spawn multiple times — began a mysterious downward slide, especially in the marine environment, said Isobel Pearsall, director of marine science at the Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF).

Some populations in Salish waters have plummeted as much as 90 per cent, and limiting fisheries, restoring habitat, and improving hatchery practices weren’t making significant differences, Pearsall said.

It’s clear juvenile fish are particularly vulnerable, and that there is something particular to the Salish Sea impacting survival of the three species, which aren’t facing the same pattern of decline in other regions, she said.

So, in partnership with Long Live the Kings, another non-profit foundation south of the border, PSF launched a five-year research initiative involving 60 different entities to understand what was driving some salmon stocks to extinction and what could be done to reverse it, she said.

Despite the dire situation salmon face, the key findings of the recently completed Salish Sea Marine Survival Project can act as a roadmap for priority action, research, and policy, said Pearsall, co-ordinator of the initiative.

“It’s very easy to get pulled down into the doom and gloom of what we’re seeing around salmon declines,” Pearsall said.

“But the (survival project) has highlighted the areas that we really want to focus on and that we know are crucial.”

The Salish Sea is weathering some significant changes due to the climate crisis, such as warming waters, increasing risk from harmful algae and pathogens, shifts in the marine food web, and the decimation of estuary and foreshore habitats, the study found.

Many of the changes impacting salmon are interlocked, Pearsall said.

“One might hope for a smoking gun and that there would be one major thing you could change to solve the whole issue, but that doesn't seem to be the case,” she said.

However, the initiative concluded that salmon food supply and predation of young salmon are two key contributors to the declines of chinook, coho, and steelhead when they first enter the marine environment.

Changes to the Salish Sea affect when, where and how much food is available for young chinook and coho, which influences their growth and mortality.

Drops in zooplankton and forage fish, especially herring, put young salmon at increasing risk, a situation compounded by the destruction of estuaries and nearshore habitat, which provide hiding spots and food for both the fish and their prey.

The finding suggests that protecting and restoring estuary and forage fish habitats on the foreshores of the coast should be a priority, Pearsall said.

As well, increased efforts to boost declining herring populations and study their distribution and movements are important.

Young salmon are also under pressure from a growing number of harbour seals in the Salish Sea, the project found.

While chinook and coho are a limited portion of the seals’ diet, the number of seals negatively impacts salmon survival rates, already under strain from human-caused climate change, Pearsall said.

The study doesn’t advocate for widespread culls, which would require the elimination of up to 50 per cent of the seal population, and the constant removal of a significant proportion every year after, to have any real effect on salmon, she said.

“It’s just untenable to make such a drastic move in an ecosystem that nobody fully understands,” Pearsall said, adding other pressures and changes are also at play since abundant salmon stocks existed alongside large seal populations in the past.

“I think we need to look at the anthropogenic changes that we've made that make the salmon more vulnerable to predation,” she said.

That could include removing infrastructure like log booms in estuaries where seals can hang out waiting for salmon without fear of being eaten themselves.

Or by changing hatchery practices, such as the release of large groups of juvenile fish upriver, often in low water, which make young salmon easy pickings for all sorts of creatures, including raccoons or herons.

Implementing solutions that could ensure higher river or stream flows to provide more cover and cooler water to young salmon would give them a fighting chance against predators and increase their survival, she added.

The holistic, collaborative nature of the Salish Sea project has resulted in a framework for stakeholders on both sides of the border to respond more effectively in a co-ordinated manner to make gains in restoring endangered salmon stocks, she said.

While the study tallies the range of pressures on salmon, it has also pointed out some practical action, Pearsall said.

“We’re letting people know that what they’re doing can have impacts, both negative and positive,” she said.

“There may be some things that are out of our control, but there are many immediate actions we can take.”

Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer

Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

WHO WANTS TO GLOW IN THE DARK?
Indigenous voices important in developing new low, intermediate nuclear waste strategy


Indigenous engagement for the development of a strategy for the storage of low and intermediate radioactive waste has been hampered by more pressing concerns, including the coronavirus pandemic and forest fires blazing in many regions of the country.

“I think it's been a difficult time for the Indigenous communities,” said Karine Glenn, strategic project director for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). “It’s just taking a little bit longer simply because of the other priorities they have in their communities.”

However, Glenn stresses those voices are important as the NWMO holds virtual engagement sessions that will inform their recommendations to the Natural Resources minister on a long-term strategy for the handling and storage of low and intermediate radioactive waste.

These consultations do not focus on used nuclear fuel, but instead on low-level waste, like mops, gloves, paper towels and other day-to-day tools of operations, and intermediate waste, such as the resins that filter the pool water.

“The Nuclear Waste Management Organization believes that Indigenous people have a really integral and important role to play. These kinds of projects cannot proceed without having Indigenous support,” said Glenn.

The NWMO has a reconciliation policy in which it recognizes the historical wrongs that have been perpetrated against Indigenous peoples in Canada and are “really committed to building a better future together with Indigenous communities,” said Glenn.

NWMO respects Indigenous treaty rights and incorporates Indigenous traditional knowledge into their projects, she adds.

Glenn points to a three-day NWMO-hosted Canadian radioactive waste summit in March, in which one-quarter of the 65 speakers, facilitators and panel members were Indigenous. Of the 500 registrants, 15 per cent self-identified as Indigenous.

On Aug. 26, NWMO will host a virtual engagement session in Alberta on the development of a federal integrated strategy for radioactive waste. However, it won’t be the only opportunity for Indigenous communities or organizations to take part, says Glenn.

NWMO is offering to work with any Indigenous community across the country who is interested in “having a dialogue” to set up forums or formats.

The discussions in Alberta are particularly timely as this past April the province joined New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan in signing a Memorandum of Understanding that commits them to collaborate in advancing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) as a source of clean energy. SMRs are nuclear reactors that produce 300 MW of electricity or less and are seen as an alternative to diesel-generated power in isolated and northern communities.

At this point, says Glenn, Alberta has no nuclear waste or nuclear generation.

“Moving forward with nuclear energy, if that was the path that Alberta would wish to move forward with, doesn't necessarily mean that they would host a disposal facility, so that's not necessary. But I think it's important that if you agree to in the future to having nuclear energy as part of your energy policy in the province, you also get an opportunity to participate in a dialogue about the long-term management of its waste,” she said.

There are numerous options for storing this level of radioactive waste:

This kind of radioactive waste, says Glenn, does not require a deep geological repository as does used nuclear fuel. Instead, it can be stored “just below (the surface) tens of metres deep,” according to the international best practice.

Regardless of the type of radioactive waste that is being stored, Glenn stresses that all facilities are designed to ensure public safety.

There are economic benefits to a community that hosts the waste site, she adds, including jobs during the construction phase and for operating and monitoring the facilities.

However, Glenn is quick to point out, this phase of the consultation does not involve the site of the repositories, and NWMO has not been tasked with recommending sites.

“We’re at the step before that. We are looking to say what kind of facility we should build and how many of them should be build,” she said.

Glenn does not anticipate the recently called federal election to delay the consultation process as NWMO’s work is funded by the waste owners and not the government. However, it will delay the final recommendations she had hoped to deliver to the minister by the end of 2021.

The government needs to revise its radioactive waste policy framework and that was supposed to be completed in early fall. However, Canadians will be going to the polls Sept. 20.

While the delivery of the recommendations will be delayed, Glenn is confident that the consultations will be valuable.

“There could be some policy direction that might limit the number of options that are available to us, if the government legislated specific technical options for instance. But it wouldn’t necessarily change a lot of what we're asking people… Those concerns and those considerations will be the same regardless of the policy direction,” she said.

To date, 10 community engagement sessions have taken place in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. Saskatchewan will follow the Alberta consultation.

The NWMO has met with the First Nations Power Authority, the Assembly of First Nations, the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan, and the Wolastoqey Nation of New Brunswick. A meeting is planned with the Pabineau First Nation, N.B., and workshops are being arranged with the Grand Treaty Council #3, the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians, Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, and Sagkeeng First Nation.

Workshops in all nine regions of the Métis Nation of Ontario are underway, and meetings are planned with the Historical Saugeen Métis and the Métis Nation—Saskatchewan.

Glenn says other Indigenous organizations have been contacted, as well as Treaty 6 chiefs, the Treaty 8 First Nations and the Métis Nation of Alberta.

Glenn expects engagements to conclude by October or November.

“When we’re talking about long-term management of waste we're talking into the hundreds and thousands of years. We want to make sure we get it right and we need to hear from as many people as possible,” said Glenn.

The Indian Resource Council (IRC) has not been approached about the virtual consultations, says Larry Kaida, assistant to the president.

IRC, headquartered in Tsuut’ina Nation, represents about 140 First Nations who have produced oil and gas in the past, are producing now or have the potential to produce.

“The IRC is now looking at all forms of energy so long as there are benefits/opportunities for First Nations. We would, of course, be very cognizant of environmental issues and impacts. We are well placed to coordinate meetings, provide the right information, but leave it to First Nations to decide if interested,” said Kaida in an email to Windspeaker.com.

Any Indigenous communities that wish to organize a workshop or forum, can reach out to info@radwasteplanning.ca.

Windspeaker.com

By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com, Windspeaker.com

OUTSTANDING SINCE 1877

Blood Tribe finalizing cattle, natural gas settlements in excess of $165M from feds

By Eloise Therien Global News
Posted August 17, 2021 

The Blood Tribe is in the process of finalizing two major settlements with the government of Canada pertaining to cattle and natural gas disputes dating back as far as 1877. Eloise Therien has the details on what still needs to be done before the tribe sees the money. SEE BELOW

The Blood Tribe says it has successfully negotiated two major settlements with the government of Canada, one of which still requires a referendum to be passed.

Cattle Claim

A $150-million cattle claim stems from the government’s failure to adhere to cattle agreements outlined in Treaty 7 in 1877, according to the Blood Tribe.

“The Blood Tribe was in a position to receive the Treaty Entitlement Cattle in 1882,” the Blood Tribe said in an overview of the settlement. “However, the promised cattle were never provided. Because Canada did not provide the cattle as promised, the Blood Tribe suffered economic damages.”

In 1997, the tribe filed a cattle claim, which was initially rejected in 2011.

After years of back-and-forth, the tribe proposed the $150-million amount in 2019, which was approved by the government of Canada in March 2021.

Now, 24 years later, they are poised to received the allotted amount, should a community vote go forward.

Blood Tribe members aged 21 and older are asked to vote electronically on Sept. 14 and 15 or at in-person voting stations on Sept. 16 between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Those will be located at the Kainai Multipurpose Building in Standoff, the Nakiska Ballroom in Calgary, and the Italian Canadian Cultural Center in Lethbridge.

In order for the settlement to be granted, at least 25 per cent of Blood Tribe members 21 years and older must vote, with a simply majority in favour.

An online information session is being held Wednesday for community members to attend prior to the referendum. The results are expected at the end of voting day.

If passed, each registered Blood Tribe member will receive $3,000.

The money will also be used for several capital projects, infrastructure, paying off the mortgage for the Kainai Market Place, placed into long-term investments, among other things.

Natural Gas Settlement

Another settlement has been reached, which doesn’t requite a community vote.

According to a release, the Blood Tribe submitted a claim to the federal government in September 2018 regarding the “wrongful deduction of royalties arising from the sale of natural gas extraction that was from reserve lands.”

“From 1977 to 1994, as a part of TOPGAS, (certain) industry costs were wrongfully calculated as part of deductions to royalty payments owing to First Nations that had natural gas production.”

Lance Tailfeathers, the communications consultant for Kainai Resources Inc., said it’s the due diligence and research of the tribe’s negotiation team that led them to the large settlement amount.

“The feds (were) wanting to settle at a $2.4-million offer,” he explained. “Then the tribe said: ‘Hey, wait a minute, we want to do some calculating that we actually missed out on.’

“The offer has been $17.6-million, which we’re just finalizing.”

Tailfeathers explained while plans have yet to be completed, the negotiating team has recommended the money go toward per capita distribution, additional housing, and long-term investments.

It is unclear exactly when that money will be received.

RELATED NEWS

Tiny homes bring big opportunities for Blood Tribe

City of Lethbridge, Blood Tribe to work together towards reconciliation

© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

 

Mounties to see their salaries soar as first collective agreement is ratified

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A constable could make up to $20K more

Catharine Tunney · CBC News · Posted: Aug 17, 2021 

Beyond its federal policing obligations, the RCMP operates as the provincial police in most provinces and as the local police service in 150 communities across the country. (Nic Amaya/CBC)

Thousands of Mounties are about to receive a massive pay increase.

For the first time ever, a union representing RCMP members has ratified a collective agreement with the federal government to cover nearly 20,000 members.

A tentative agreement with Treasury Board was announced earlier this summer. Following a ratification vote, it was signed digitally (due to pandemic restrictions) earlier this month, says the National Police Federation, the Mounties' union.

Before the new collective agreement, a constable could make up to $86,110, while a staff sergeant made between $109,000 and just over $112,000.

According to the RCMP, as of April 1, 2022 a constable will make up to $106,576 — a jump of $20,000. A staff sergeant will make between $134,912 and $138,657 next year. Constables account for more than half of the RCMP's ranks.

• Read the agreement here

• RCMP's union reaches tentative deal with Ottawa — a first in Mountie history

The deal also includes retroactive increases going back to 2017— the last time the RCMP updated its wages was 2016. According to the agreement, the rates of pay will change within 90 days of the signing of the collective agreement.

The pay boost will cause the public safety budget to balloon for the next federal government.

The deal covers all RCMP members from constables to staff sergeant majors, including special constables. According to the latest numbers published online, the RCMP employs 11,913 constables and 3,599 corporals — which means the raise could cost the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

• After pandemic delays, RCMP union's quest for salary bump resumes

• As calls to 'defund' police grow, some say it's time for the RCMP to do less

The salary increase comes as the RCMP struggles to recruit new members amid an international reckoning over police budgets, driven by in-custody deaths in the United States and investigations of Canadian police services' use-of-force policies.

RCMP members have been fighting for years to get to this stage. Until 2015, RCMP officers had been barred from forming a union since the 1960s, when other federal public servants gained the right to collective bargaining. It was one of the only police forces in Canada with that restriction.

BECAUSE IT WAS CLASSIFIED AS A MILITARY POLICING FORCE THEY FOUGHT IN THE BOER WAR AS NWMP

Municipalities eye impact of RCMP union contract with 23 per cent raise over six years

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First collective agreement between federal government, National Police Federation signed this month

Shane Magee · CBC News · Posted: Aug 17, 2021 4:15 PM AT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

The new collective agreement between thousands of Mounties and the federal government includes a wage increase of more than 23 per cent over six years. (Shane Magee/CBC)

RCMP members have ratified their first collective agreement, and it provides a salary increase of 23.7 per cent over six years — an increase that has New Brunswick municipalities calculating how much more they will be paying for policing.

The contract signed Aug. 6 between the federal Treasury Board and National Police Federation, the RCMP union, includes retroactive pay increases.

Dan Murphy, executive director of the Union of Municipalities of New Brunswick, said communities are just starting to get the details of the contract. He said the cost of policing has been among the top issues for municipalities after the province's planned reforms to local governance.

"It's kind of an issue that affects smaller municipalities as well as larger municipalities," Murphy said in an interview. "So everyone is kind of grappling with what this could mean, trying to make plans accordingly."

In Moncton, where Codiac Regional RCMP is the largest detachment in the province, $3.5 million had been set aside by the Codiac Regional Policing Authority to cover retroactive payments. The amount was based on an assumed 2.5 per cent annual wage increase, though the actual increase is higher.

"We think there's going to be a shortfall, we just do not know at this point what the amount is," Jacques Doucet, Moncton's chief financial officer, said in an interview Monday evening.

Jacques Doucet, Moncton's chief financial officer shown at a council meeting earlier this year, says they're awaiting information from the RCMP to determine whether enough money had been set aside to cover the wage increase. (Shane Magee/CBC)

Doucet said the details of the contract were received late last week, and its implications are still being analyzed by RCMP and the regional policing authority, which oversees the Mounties who police Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview. 

Doucet said they need to know who was on staff in the previous years, their rank, and who was on leave before a more complete accounting can be done. When that can be done will depend on the RCMP, which has the required payroll information.

The contract covers RCMP reservists and officers below the rank of inspector. It says pay rates will change within 90 days of the agreement being signed.

Union president Brian Sauvé has previously said that his goal was to bring Mountie pay in line with other police agencies. In a statement announcing the tentative agreement in June, Sauvé said RCMP pay "fell significantly behind municipal and provincial police counterparts."

In Fredericton, which has its own police force, a first class constable earned $87,008.66 in 2016, and $97,359.61 in 2020, according to their pay scale.

Under the RCMP's 2016 pay scale, a first class constable would earn $86,110. That rises to to $106,576 by next April. A corporal who made $94,292 in 2016 would see their pay rise to $116,703 next year.

• Mounties to see their salaries soar as first collective agreement is ratified

• RCMP's union reaches tentative deal with Ottawa — a first in Mountie history

Codiac RCMP Insp. Benoit Joliette, speaking to Moncton council Monday night, acknowledged the new contract and said the force is working to determine its impact. 

"We'll keep working with the three communities to see what the impact will be," Joliette said.

Under the policing contract, Moncton pays about 70 per cent of the $33 million Codiac RCMP budget, with Dieppe paying about 18 per cent and Riverview covering the rest. 

"It's been on our radar for a long time," Moncton Mayor Dawn Arnold said of the salary increase. "We've known it was coming. But as far as the precision of what the implications will be, we don't know those exactly right at this time."

The increase comes as the city has yet to make a decision on whether to go ahead with building a new Codiac RCMP station. The cost, once pegged at $46 million, has risen but the city has not made the new estimate public. 

 

Capturing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Transforming It Into Industrially Useful Materials

TOPICS:Atmospheric ScienceCarbon CaptureCarbon DioxideSalk Institute

By SALK INSTITUTE AUGUST 17, 2021

Scanning electron microscopy image of SiC petrified corn husks. Credit: UC San Diego

Salk scientists quantify process to permanently store plant-captured CO2 as SiC, a valuable material for electronics.

Plants are unparalleled in their ability to capture CO₂ from the air, but this benefit is temporary, as leftover crops release carbon back into the atmosphere, mostly through decomposition. Researchers have proposed a more permanent, and even useful, fate for this captured carbon by turning plants into a valuable industrial material called silicon carbide (SiC)—offering a strategy to turn an atmospheric greenhouse gas into an economically and industrially valuable material.

In a new study, published in the journal RSC Advances, scientists at Salk transformed tobacco and corn husks into SiC and quantified the process with more detail than ever before. These findings are crucial to helping researchers, such as members of Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative, evaluate and quantify carbon-sequestration strategies to potentially mitigate climate change as CO₂ levels continue to rise to unprecedented levels.

“The study offers a very careful accounting for how you make this valuable substance and how many atoms of carbon you’ve pulled out of the atmosphere. And with that number, you can start to extrapolate what role plants could play in mitigating greenhouse gases while also converting an industrial byproduct, CO₂, into valuable materials by using natural systems like photosynthesis,” says co-corresponding author and Salk Professor Joseph Noel.

SiC, also known as carborundum, is an ultrahard material used in ceramics, sandpaper, semiconductors, and LEDs. The Salk team used a previously reported method to transform plant material into SiC in three stages by counting carbons at each step: First, the researchers grew tobacco, chosen for its short growing season, from seed. They then froze and ground the harvested plants into a powder and treated it with several chemicals including a silicon-containing compound. In the third and final stage, the powdered plants were petrified (turned into a stony substance) to make SiC, a process that involves heating the material up to 1600 °C.

“The rewarding part was that we were able to demonstrate how much carbon can be sequestered from agricultural waste products like corn husks while producing a valuable, green material typically produced from fossil fuels,” says first author Suzanne Thomas, a Salk staff researcher.

Through elemental analysis of the plant powders, the authors measured a 50,000-fold increase in sequestered carbon from seed to lab-grown plant, demonstrating plants’ efficiency at pulling down atmospheric carbon. Upon heating to high temperatures for petrification, the plant material loses some carbon as a variety of decomposition products but ultimately retains about 14 percent of the plant-captured carbon.

The researchers calculated that the process to make 1.8 g of SiC required about 177 kW/h of energy, with the majority of that energy (70 percent) being used for the furnace in the petrification step. The authors note that current manufacturing processes for SiC carry comparable energy costs. So while the production energy required means that the plant-to-SiC process isn’t carbon neutral, the team suggests that new technologies created by renewable energy companies could bring down energy costs.

“This is a step towards making SiC in an environmentally responsible approach,” says co-corresponding author and Salk visiting scientist James La Clair.

Next, the team hopes to explore this process with a wider variety of plants, in particular plants like horsetail or bamboo, that naturally contain large amounts of silicon.

Reference: “Plant-based CO₂ drawdown and storage as SiC” by Suzanne T. Thomas, Yongsoon Shin, James J. La Clair and Joseph P. Noel, 27 April 2021, RSC Advances.
DOI: 10.1039/d1ra00954k

Embryo discovery shines light on dinosaur-era turtles: U of C researcher

The land tortoises, or nanhsiungchelyids, were the largest such creatures during the Cretaceous period with the fossilized egg dating back 75 to 90 million years

Author of the article: Bill Kaufmann
Publishing date: Aug 17, 2021 •

University of Calgary palaeontologist Darla Zelenitsky in a file photo from 2015. 

PHOTO BY LEAH HENNEL /Calgary Herald

They were giant turtles hunted by dinosaurs, but the lack of any embryo evidence limited our knowledge of them.

That changed in 2018 when a farmer in the central Chinese province of Henan discovered an egg between the size of a golf and tennis ball, and figured it should be analyzed by scientists.

Chinese researchers called on University of Calgary paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky and former Royal Tyrrell Museum researcher Dr. Don Brinkman to help determine the find’s significance.

“This is the first time a turtle embryo has been identified to belong to a specific type of turtle,” said Zelenitsky.

“They don’t usually have embryos encased in them.”

CT scans developed 3-D models of the egg’s contents — the skeleton of a baby turtle that would likely have grown to have a shell 1.6 metres in length.

The land tortoises, or nanhsiungchelyids, were the largest such creatures during the Cretaceous period, with the fossilized egg dating back 75 to 90 million years.

“These were giant, land-dwelling turtles that lived alongside the dinosaurs,” said Zelenitsky.

“The surprising part of this study was the size of these turtles.”

The tortoises also vanished with the dinosaurs, she noted.

But they managed to migrate from Asia to North America, though their cousins in places like Alberta seemed to have been smaller, said the paleontologist.

And discoveries of the significance of the ones made in China haven’t been replicated in Canada, said Zelenitsky, whose work along with that of Brinkman’s and Chinese researchers will be published next week in the Royal Society Journal.

“They lived in Alberta, too, but we just haven’t found those eggs yet,” she said, adding ancient turtle eggs have been unearthed in the Milk River area.

The find supplies a better glimpse of how the tortoises nested and reproduced — and how they might have survived the unwanted attention of hungry dinosaurs who would have been deterred by the turtles’ hard shell.

Their eggs wouldn’t have been easy to crack, with hard shells that were 1.88 mm thick and laid in considerable profusion — 15 to 30 at a time.

“But eggs and hatchlings were the worst off for predation,” said Zelenitsky.

Perhaps just as noteworthy as anything from the discovery is spreading awareness of the diversity of life that existed at that time on earth, said Zelenitsky.

“We’ve always known of dinosaurs as creatures living during the Cretaceous, but not many people know there were turtles as well,” she said.

Rare embryo from dinosaur age was laid by human-size turtle


By Laura Geggel - Editor 

The eggshell was incredibly thick.


An illustration of the Cretaceous period turtle (Yuchelys nanyangensis) hatching from its tennis ball-size egg. (Image credit: Masato Hattori)

About 90 million years ago, a giant turtle in what is now central China laid a clutch of tennis ball-size eggs with extremely thick eggshells. One egg never hatched, and it remained undisturbed for tens of millions of years, preserving the delicate bones of the embryonic turtle within it.

In 2018, a farmer discovered the egg and donated it to a university. Now, a new analysis of this egg and its rare embryo marks the first time that scientists have been able to identify the species of a dinosaur-age embryonic turtle.

This specimen also sheds light on why its species, the terrestrial turtle Yuchelys nanyangensis, went extinct 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaur-killing asteroid struck Earth. The thick eggshell allowed water to penetrate through, so clutches of eggs were likely buried in nests deep underground in moist soil to keep them from drying out in the arid environment of central China during the late Cretaceous, the researchers said.

While these turtles' unique terrestrial lifestyle, thick eggs and underground nesting strategy may have served them well during the Cretaceous, it's possible that these specialized turtles couldn't adapt to the cooler "climatic and environmental changes following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction," study co-researcher Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor of paleobiology at the University of Calgary in Canada, told Live Science.

Egg-cellent discovery

The farmer discovered the egg in Henan province, a region famous for the thousands of dinosaur eggs people have found there over the past 30 years, Zelenitsky said. But in comparison with dinosaur eggs, turtle eggs — especially those with preserved embryos — rarely fossilize because they're so small and fragile, she said.

The Y. nanyangensis egg, however, persisted because it's a tank of an egg.

At 2.1 by 2.3 inches (5.4 by 5.9 centimeters) in size, the nearly spherical egg is just a bit smaller than a tennis ball. That's larger than the eggs of most living turtles, and just a tad smaller than the eggs of Galápagos tortoises, Zelenitsky said.

The eggshell's 0.07 inch (1.8 millimeters) thickness is also remarkable. To put that in perspective, that's four times thicker than a Galápagos tortoise eggshell, and six times thicker than a chicken eggshell, which has an average thickness of 0.01 inch (0.3 mm). Larger eggs tend to be thicker, like the 0.08-inch-thick (2 mm) ostrich eggshell, but "this egg is much smaller than an ostrich egg," which average about 6 inches (15 cm) in length, Zelenitsky said.


An equation that uses egg size to predict the length of the carapace, or the top part of the turtle's shell, revealed that this thick egg was likely laid by a turtle with a 5.3-foot-long (1.6 meters) carapace, the researchers found. That measurement doesn't include the length of the neck or head, so the mother turtle was easily as long as some humans are tall.

Image 1 of 4

Other clutches from this turtle family had nests of 30 and 15 eggs. (Image credit: Masato Hattori)



An illustration of the turtle as a hatchling. (Image credit: Masato Hattori)



An illustration of what the turtle might have looked like after hatching. (Image credit: Masato Hattori)



Different views of what the turtle hatchling might have looked like. (Image credit: Masato Hattori)

Doomed egg

The researchers used a micro-CT scan to create virtual 3D images of the egg and its embryo. By comparing these images with a distantly related living turtle species, it appears that the embryo was nearly 85% developed, the researchers found.

Part of the eggshell is broken, Zelenitsky noted, so "maybe it tried to hatch," but failed. Apparently, it wasn't the only embryonic turtle that didn't make it; two previously discovered thick-shelled egg clutches from Henan province that date to the Cretaceous — one with 30 eggs and another with 15 eggs — likely also belong to this turtle's now-extinct family, known as Nanhsiungchelyid, the researchers said.

Image 1 of 2

The now-extinct nanhsiungchelyidae turtle family lived in North America and Asia. Here is a Nanhsiungchelyid turtle fossil that was found in Alberta, Canada. (Image credit: Royal Tyrrell Museum)

The fossil carapace of a turtle from the nanhsiungchelyidae family that was found in China. (Image credit: Don Brinkman)


Turtles in this family — relatives of today's river turtles — were very flat and evolved to live entirely on land, which was unique during that time, Zelenitsky said.


The study of the newfound egg is special for its virtual 3D analysis of the embryo, which helped lead to its species diagnosis, said Walter Joyce, a professor of paleontology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, who was not involved in the study. Furthermore, this study offers evidence that Nanhsiungchelyid turtles were "adapted to living in harsh, terrestrial environments, but laid their large, thick-shelled eggs in covered nests in moist soil," Joyce told Live Science in an email.

The study will be published online Wednesday (Aug. 18) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.