Saturday, September 25, 2021

Climate change: Whisper it cautiously... there's been progress in run up to COP26

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With just five weeks left until world leaders gather in Glasgow for a critical climate summit, the BBC's Matt McGrath and Roger Harrabin consider progress made at this week's UN gathering and the outstanding issues that remain.

Climate change was the dominant theme at this year's UN General Assembly (UNGA) as countries recognised the seriousness of the global situation.

All across the planet, the hallmarks of rising temperatures are being keenly felt with intense wildfires, storms and floods taking place on scales rarely seen.

Against this backdrop, Boris Johnson told the UN it was "time to grow up" on the climate issue.

The prime minister fought to bring November's UN climate summit to Britain, and it's clear he sees himself and the UK as global leaders in tackling this planetary threat.

His bizarre if powerful speech at the UN harnessed the Greek tragedian Sophocles and TV's Kermit the Frog to accuse some other leaders of behaving like adolescents waiting for someone else to tidy up their mess.

Britain's prime minister addressing the UN this week

Did it encourage or annoy them? That's not yet clear.

But how's Mr Johnson faring with his own policies?

Well, even the most grudging environmentalist would give him high marks for target-setting. The UK pledges to cut 78% of its emissions by 2035 - that's from a 1990 baseline.

That doesn't include emissions created abroad in the process of manufacturing the goods bought in the UK - but leave that to one side for the moment, because Britain is not on course for that 78% target anyway.

A report showed its current plans are projected to deliver less than a quarter of the cuts needed to meet the goal. The government didn't deny that.

It warned little progress has been made recently in areas such as agriculture, power, and waste (a major source of emissions).

The government has promised to put effective policies in place before the November conference, known as COP26, is held in Glasgow. But it's had policy rows over gas boilers, farm subsidies, aviation - and especially over how the zero-carbon revolution will be funded.

What's more, several of Mr Johnson's current policies will send emissions up, not down.

He's not opposing a coal mine in Cumbria or oil drilling off Shetland; he's cutting taxes on flying; and he's building new roads and the HS2 railway despite the massive amount of CO2 created to make the infrastructure.

Environmentalists warn these will prove embarrassing during the Glasgow summit.

What did major emitters China and the US say?

Both the US and China used the UN platform to take important steps forward.

President Biden underlined his commitment to a multilateral approach to climate change by announcing a significant increase in the US financial contribution to climate aid.

The US will in future pay $11.4bn per annum in climate finance, doubling the amount they previously committed to at a leader's summit in April.

"It's welcome but not sufficient," said Jennifer Tollman, who's with E3G, a climate change think tank.

POOLimage captionFor the second year in a row, China's President Xi used the UN meeting to make a major climate announcement

"This still needs to get through Congress. And even if that happens, the doubling wouldn't actually be happening until 2024."

The other big climate story was China's statement that it would not build any more coal plants overseas.

It's the second year in a row that China's President Xi Jinping has used the forum to announce significant climate policy.

While critics have pointed out that China was already in the process of slowing down these projects, there has been a general welcome for the step.

"China's overseas moratorium is a big deal," said Li Shuo from Greenpeace.

"Beijing has been the last man standing in supporting coal projects across the developing world. Its ban on these projects will significantly shape the global energy landscape in the years to come."

There are still no details on what the new commitment will mean, or when it comes into force and what exactly it . But analysis suggests that it would result in the cancellation of 11 coal projects across eight countries in Africa alone.

While applauding the move, many experts said they wanted more clarity from China on reducing its domestic reliance on coal.

China's dependence on coal is such that the country has increased its share of global coal-fired power generation to 53% in 2020.

"The main event is for China to pledge a major cut in its emissions now, in this decade, as US, EU and others have," tweeted former US climate envoy Todd Stern.

"China counts for 27% of global CO2 emissions. No chance to keep 1.5C alive unless China steps up for real," he wrote, referring to the key temperature threshold that scientists believe is the threshold of highly dangerous warming.

Where else was there progress?

Whisper it cautiously, but there were a few announcements at UNGA that suggest progress is being made.

According to analysis carried out by E3G, some of the highlights included:

The US, EU and others pledging to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030
Denmark and Costa Rica launching a Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance to phase out fossil fuels.
Turkey committing to ratify the Paris Agreement and is said to be working on a carbon cutting plan.
Brazil indicating it would not block negotiations in Glasgow on carbon markets, one of the stickiest of the outstanding issues from the Paris agreement.
India is said to be moving towards submitting a new NDC before Glasgow.

What main challenges lie ahead?

Despite the cautious sense of progress at the UN meeting, some major questions remain.

Many countries including China and India haven't yet submitted new carbon cutting plans, as they are expected to do before the summit.

Just as important, the developed world is still scrambling to come up with the $100bn per annum that's meant to flow to the developing world from 2020.

With just five weeks left until Glasgow, diplomats are working hard to try and secure a figure that has become a symbol of trust between rich and poor nations.

To get to the key number may require some creative accounting.

"One of the things that is floating around but is by no means certain to land, is this idea of $500bn over five years," Jennifer Tollman told BBC News.

image captionClimate change is a key issue in the German federal election

"It's something I've heard come up more and more frequently, it's not going to be $100bn in 2021, but maybe that needs to be $120bn by 2022."

Coal is one of the other major questions.

It will be part of the discussions next week in Milan at what is termed the Pre-COP meeting. But critically it will also be on the agenda when the heads of the G20 group of countries gather in Rome, just days before Glasgow.

The G20 nations represents 80% of global emissions - if they can agree a strong statement that signals that coal has no future, this will be a major boost for COP26.

"The next 5 weeks are key," said Laurence Tubiana, from the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris agreement.

"In particular we need G20 countries to deliver when they meet in Rome, and for those countries yet to submit stronger plans to do so - now!"

MORE 'MAYBE' TECH

Germany Uses Converted Tesla Model Y To Showcase 'Green Hydrogen'

Sadly, the Model Y is already much more efficient than it is once converted to a 'Hyber Hybrid.'

Sep 24, 2021
By: Steven Loveday

A converted version of the Tesla Model Y was recently shown off in Germany as part of efforts to promote "green hydrogen." The crossover was referred to as a "hyper hybrid" by those involved in the project. Teslas are the most popular EVs across the globe, so using one to highlight something is advantageous. However, using the Tesla brand to promote hydrogen is highly questionable.

It's well-known that Tesla CEO Elon Musk is an advocate against hydrogen, primarily due to its lack of efficiency compared to battery-electric vehicles. The Model Y in its unmodified configuration is one of the most efficient EVs on the market, and converting it to a hydrogen vehicle would make it much less efficient, and thus, not as good for the environment.

Accord to a report by Teslarati, based on information from BMBF (@BMBF_Bund), German Federal Research Minister Anja Karliczek revealed the hydrogen-powered Tesla Model Y, which is powered by synthetic methanol based on green hydrogen.

According to Google Translate, the above tweet reads:

"Federal Minister Anja Karliczek presented the prototype of a car in Berlin today that can be powered by the synthetic fuel methanol. For this purpose, according to #Karliczek, CO2 exhaust gases from the steel industry were "recycled" into fuels."

The end goal here is to produce and promote the most efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles possible. However, converting the highly efficient Model Y to a car with a synthetic methanol engine seems to go against that goal. Moreover, the project uses a Tesla vehicle to draw attention to hydrogen, which some people may see as bad judgment.

In the tweet below, which was added as a reply to the above tweet, "Robert Schlögl explains how the methanol car presented today works & what opportunities the technology offers for a climate-neutral future."

The professor shares via Teslarati:

“The urgency of climate protection requires a rapid and comprehensive entry into renewable energy. In a global market for renewable energy, carbon-based energy sources such as methanol are key building blocks. The serial hybrid drive concept presented here combines the advantages of the efficient electric drive and the energy-dense and easily accessible synthetic fuel methanol. This concept must be further optimized by the research project presented here."

More Hydrogen News:
⠀

Genesis Outlines Its Dual Electrification Strategy
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Toyota Won't Commit To EVs, Debuts Hydrogen-Burning Engine

Check out all of the details and then let us know what you think of this news. Are you on board with hydrogen? Should Germany have used the Tesla Model Y to promote the fuel?

Source: BMBF via Teslarati

GERMAN RESEARCHERS CONVERTED A TESLA MODEL Y INTO A HYDROGEN CAR

THERE'S A LOT TO UNPACK HERE.

CRAVENTURE / FUTURISM

Tesla Motors

On Wednesday, German Federal Research Minister Anja Karliczek revealed an automotive Frankenstein creation: A Tesla Model Y that had been converted into a hydrogen vehicle that she called a “hyper hybrid.”

The goal was to demonstrate the future of clean transportation. But as Teslarati notes, the decision to modify a Tesla — perhaps the most well-known electric vehicle out there — rather than a gas-burning car is somewhat baffling.

Fool Cells

It’s not clear whether Tesla was involved in the project to take a Model Y and make it run on synthetic methanol, which Teslarati reports costs about $10 million. But the odds aren’t great, given Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s distaste for hydrogen fuel cell technology.

During a public spat last year with Trevor Milton, the now-disgraced CEO of the hydrogen automaker Nikola Motors, Musk referred to hydrogen fuel cells as “fool cells” and called the technology “staggeringly dumb.”

Model Unit

The actual “hyper hybrid” Tesla was meant to represent the concepts behind hydrogen fuel more so than to become a street-ready vehicle. The Carbon2Chem initiative, which aims to decarbonize the steel industry, designed the car to demonstrate new ways to save energy and recycle fuel, according to Teslarati.

“Today we are building a very interesting bridge between these two points: The use of methanol from ‘recycled’ CO2 from industry as a fuel in road transport,” Karliczek said at the Wednesday announcement. “But the methanol car itself is also an ‘innovation showcase’ for low-emission, resource- and energy-efficient mobility of tomorrow.”

READ MORE: Tesla Model Y converted into green hydrogen car to show “Hyper Hybrid” innovations [Teslarati]

More on Tesla and Hydrogen: A Brief History of Elon Musk’s Festering Feud With Rival Automaker Nikola

Union protesting at Nanaimo hotel in midst of contract negotiations

Carla Wilson / Times Colonist
SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Coast Bastion Inn in Nanaimo. GOOGLE STREET VIEW

CARLA WILSON
Times Colonist

A protest is planned for late afternoon today outside the Coast Bastion Hotel in Nanaimo to support union workers who lost their jobs in the wake of the pandemic.

The action comes as UNITE HERE Local 40 and the hotel at 11 Bastion St. are in the midst of contract negotiations.

Last year, 42 union employees were laid off after the pandemic arrived in spring 2020, leaving 50 other union members on the job, Stephanie Fung, Local 40 spokesperson, said Thursday.

Workers served guests, cleaned guest rooms, greeted visitors at the front desk, cooked and served meals in the restaurant. Many were longtime hotel employees, she said.

The collective agreement allowed for nine months in terms of recall rights for those jobs, Fung said. A recall right means that a laid-off employee would have the right to be called back to work by an employer.

In December, the workers who were laid off were terminated permanently and paid out, she said.

Since then, between 10 to 15 new employees have been hired. They were not among staff laid off last year, Fung said.

The collective agreement between the hotel and union ran from May 1,2018 to April 30 this year.

Parties have been talking, and the next bargaining day is Sept. 27.

The union is seeking unlimited recall rights, Fung said.

“The hotel is looking to get rid of hard-won economic gains workers have made over decades, including increasing housekeeping workload, reducing pay, eliminating the severance plan, and job security,” Fung said.

Jodi Westbury, director of marketing and communications for Coast Hotels, said the hotel group is in active bargaining with the union.

“We are meeting, exchanging proposals and making a sincere attempt to reach an agreement and will continue to keep bargaining at the bargaining table.”

The hospitality sector, along with the rest of the tourism industry, has been hard-hit by the impact of COVID-19. Months of restrictions on travelling, border closures and fewer travellers have damaged the accommodation sector’s bottom line.

“The industry and the hotel continue to be severely negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the only place to resolve these issues is at the bargaining table,” said Wesbury.

cjwilson@timescolonist.com

Worker shortage? Or poor work conditions? Here’s what’s really vexing Canadian restaurants

A waitress wears a mask while carrying drinks for guests inside the Blu Martini restaurant in Kingston, Ont., in July 2021.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg

September 22, 2021

Restaurant operators across Canada are struggling to find enough staff to run their operations. This labour crisis has been highly publicized by Canadian media as a “labour shortage.”

A recent survey by Restaurants Canada found that 80 per cent of food service operators were finding it difficult to hire kitchen staff and 67 per cent were having trouble filling serving, bar-tending and hosting positions.

Prior to the pandemic, Canada’s food service sector employed 1.2 million people, and according to Statistics Canada it currently needs to fill 130,000 positions to reach pre-pandemic levels. That said, the Canadian restaurant industry has been struggling with hiring and retention problems for many years.

Should the chronic hiring struggles of Canadian restaurants be referred to as a labour shortage, or can it be more accurately portrayed as a retention issue fuelled by a lack of decent work? Does the use of the term labour shortage take the onus off of restaurant operators for creating these shortages, and instead place it on Canadian job-seekers?

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First job for many Canadians

A 2010 Canadian Restaurant and Foodservice Association report found that 22 per cent of Canadians worked in a restaurant as their first job — the highest of any industry. The study also found that 32 per cent of Canadians have at one point worked in the restaurant industry.

These statistics show that millions of Canadians have been introduced to restaurant work and the industry has enjoyed a seemingly endless supply of labour for decades. So why is it that the restaurant industry is burning through so many people?

Our research on restaurant work conditions shows that working in a restaurant is difficult, requiring the sacrifice of work-life balance due to long hours and unpredictable schedules. While restaurant work can be rewarding and fun, it can also be low-paying, stressful and physically demanding, all of which can have a negative impact on mental health.

A waiter wearing protective equipment collects the bill at a restaurant in Saint-Sauveur, Que.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

Many restaurant workers spend at least eight hours a day on their feet with no time for breaks or meals. Workers are also required to forgo their social and family life by having to work late nights, weekends and holidays.

Many restaurant workers almost never know precisely when their shifts will end, and tend to be placed on unpredictable split shifts or “on call” shifts to save labour costs.
Toxic work environment

The restaurant industry has also been rampant with sexual harassment, abuse and toxic work environments.

A Statistics Canada study found that hospitality workers have the worst job quality out of any industry. This was largely due to low earnings, the inability to take time off, no paid sick leave, a lack of training opportunities and no supplemental medical and dental care.

This same study found that 67 per cent of hospitality workers work in jobs with work conditions that fall below decent work levels.

So what exactly is “decent work?” It’s a concept established by the International Labour Organization and is linked to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Decent work establishes universal conditions of work that are central to the well-being of workers.

These conditions are considered to be minimum labour standards that include living wages, work hours that allow for free time and rest, safe working environments and access to health care. Decent work is considered a human right but based on the conditions of restaurant work, it appears the Canadian restaurant industry is struggling to provide it to all of its employees.

Bartenders and wait staff wait for the lunch hour rush as patrons sit on the patio of a Toronto restaurant.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Exodus of workers from the industry

Through our research on restaurant work, and via conversations with many restaurant employees across the country, we’ve learned that many are fleeing the industry because the work is a grind. What’s more, they don’t see any future in a job that will continue to hinder their well-being.

The pandemic allowed workers time to find jobs in other industries that provide more stability and feature regular work schedules, vacation time, higher pay and benefits.

These workers often felt neglected, and that their employers did not believe they were worth investing in.

While there are certainly good restaurant employers, the industry as a whole has failed to improve working conditions because historically, there were always new people to fill roles.

That raises the question: Could the continuous reference to a labour shortage in the restaurant industry actually be creating a lack of urgency in addressing longstanding issues of work quality?

WHO IS NOT WEARING A MASK IN REPUBLICAN ALBERTA

A waitress serves patrons at a restaurant in Carstairs, Alta.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

If restaurants want to operate at full staff in the post-pandemic future, they need to invest in their employees because, after all, it’s impossible to run a restaurant without people working in it.

The restaurant industry has always spent money, time and resources to attract customers and increase revenues. It’s long past time for restaurant operators to consider their employees internal customers, and put as much effort into providing great experiences for them as they do for their external customers.

A good place for operators to start is by providing decent and dignified work for all that provides decent wages, benefits and healthy working conditions

Authors

Bruce McAdams
Associate Professor in Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management, University of Guelph

Rebecca Gordon
Graduate Student, University of Guelph
Disclosure statement
Rebecca Gordon is a volunteer with the Canadian Restaurant Workers Coalition.

NASA adviser blasts lack of congressional action on space traffic dangers

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida carrying 60 Starlink satellites on May 26. Photo courtesy of SpaceX

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 23 (UPI) -- The chair of NASA's independent safety panel blasted Congress on Thursday for not designating a federal agency to spearhead space traffic management.

Chairwoman Patricia Sanders, a former Department of Defense senior executive, said NASA's Safety and Advisory Panel has called on Congress to increase oversight of growing space traffic for years, but to no avail.

"We noted during this week that SpaceX is seeking to launch an additional 30,000 Starlink satellites," Sanders said in a quarterly, virtual meeting of the panel held online Thursday afternoon.

"We have no position on the advisability of that action, but it does underscore our persistent concern with the lack of a formally designated and resourced lead agency for space traffic management."

U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., chairman of the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, said late Thursday that he and others in Congress are working on the issue.

"They're right that this has to be done quickly because we're going to see a lot more traffic soon," Beyer told UPI. "We are scheduled take this up in October, and the hope is that we will have a bill by the end of the year."

Space traffic has grown with more frequent launches in the past few years, but the government's regulation of such traffic has been slow to change.

RELATED USAF, FAA collaborate on commercial space regulations

The Federal Aviation Administration oversees licensing and regulation for space launches, while the Federal Communications Commission issues permits for communication satellite networks like SpaceX's Starlink.

The FAA falls under the Department of Transportation, while Congress oversees the FCC directly.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has launched more than 1,600 Starlink broadband satellites and plans to offer regular, global commercial service in October after over a year in testing mode.

British firm OneWeb has about 300 communications satellites in orbit, while Amazon's Kuiper Project also plans to launch thousands of satellites.

Sanders and other observers have said that potential problems include satellite collisions and launch delays if spacecraft are traveling through a launch corridor.

SpaceX has included automatic collision avoidance features, but Sanders and others are not convinced that's enough to address all possible risks.

"This continues to be a critical safety concern, a growing safety concern, that remains unaddressed by the Congress, and it's well overdue to be acted on," Sanders said.

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine testified at length before a Senate subcommittee last year regarding risks of growing space debris, which has come from a variety of space missions by many nations over the past several decades.

For example, the European Space Agency said in 2019 it moved one of its Earth science satellites to avoid a potential collision with a Starlink satellite, after attempts to communicate with SpaceX failed.

Orbiting debris also poses a problem for space traffic. The space station has fired thrusters many times in recent years to avoid the path of known space debris.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency discovered in May a small hole from a tiny debris strike on the covering of the space station's robotic Canadarm2. The structure is used to maneuver components and science experiments outside the orbiting laboratory.

Sanders said she and the panel have communicated about the issue regularly with the House and Senate space-related committees, but no formal action or legislation has emerged.

Strange mathematical term changes our entire view of black holes

Black holes keep getting weirder.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

By Paul Sutter 2 days ago

Black holes are getting weirder by the day. When scientists first confirmed the behemoths existed back in the 1970s, we thought they were pretty simple, inert corpses. Then, famed physicist Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes aren't exactly black and they actually emit heat. And now, a pair of physicists has realized that the sort-of-dark objects also exert a pressure on their surroundings.

The finding that such simple, non-rotating "black holes have a pressure as well as a temperature is even more exciting given that it was a total surprise," co-author Xavier Calmet, a professor of physics at the University of Sussex in England, said in a statement.

Related: 8 ways we know that black holes really do exist

Calmet and his graduate student Folkert Kuipers were examining quantum effects near the event horizons of black holes, something that is fiendishly hard to pin down. To tackle this, the researchers employed a technique to simplify their calculations. As they were working, a strange term appeared in the mathematics of their solution. After months of confusion, they realized what this newly discovered term meant: It was an expression of the pressure produced by a black hole. Nobody had known this was possible before, and it changes the way scientists think about black holes and their relationships with the rest of the universe.

(Image credit: Science Photo Library - MARK GARLICK via Getty Images)

Hawking's engine

In the 1970s, Hawking became one of the first physicists to apply quantum mechanics to try to understand what happens at the event horizon — the area around a black hole beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape. Prior to this work, everyone had just assumed that black holes were simple objects. According to general relativity, the theory of gravity that first suggested black holes could exist, there is nothing at all remarkable about the event horizon. The event horizon is the "boundary" of a black hole, defining the region where exiting the black would require traveling faster than light. But it was just an imaginary line in space — if you happen to cross it, you wouldn't even know you did, until you tried to turn around and leave.

Related: 8 ways you can see Einstein's theory of relativity in real life

Hawking changed all that. He realized that quantum foam, which refers to a sea of particles constantly popping into and out of existence in the vacuum of space-time, can affect that simplistic view of the event horizon. Sometimes pairs of particles appear spontaneously from the empty vacuum of space-time, then annihilate each other in a flash of energy, returning the vacuum to its original state. But when this happens too close to a black hole, one of the pair can get trapped behind the event horizon and the other escapes. The black hole is left holding the energy bill for the escaped particle, and so it has to lose mass.

This process is now known as Hawking radiation, and it's through these calculations that we discovered that black holes aren't entirely, 100% black. They glow a little. This glow, known as "blackbody radiation," means they also have heat and entropy (also called "disorder") and all the other terms we usually apply to much more mundane objects like refrigerators and car engines.

An effective technique

Hawking focused on how quantum mechanics affected the vicinity of a black hole. But that's not the entire story. Quantum mechanics doesn't include the force of gravity, and a complete description of what's going on near event horizons will have to include quantum gravity, or a description of how strong gravity acts at teeny tiny scales.

Since the 1970s, various physicists have tried their luck both at developing a theory of quantum gravity and at applying those theories to the physics of the event horizon. The latest attempt comes from this new study by Calmet and Kuipers, published in September in the journal Physical Review D.

"Although the pressure exerted by the black hole that we were studying is tiny, the fact that it is present opens up multiple new possibilities, spanning the study of astrophysics, particle physics and quantum physics."Xavier Calmet

"Hawking's landmark intuition that black holes are not black but have a radiation spectrum that is very similar to that of a black body makes black holes an ideal laboratory to investigate the interplay between quantum mechanics, gravity and thermodynamics," Calmet said.

Without a full theory of quantum gravity, the duo used an approximation technique called effective field theory, or EFT. This theory assumes gravity at the quantum level is weak — an assumption that allows you to make some progress in the calculations without everything falling apart, as happens when gravity in the quantum regime is modeled as extremely strong. While these calculations will not reveal the full picture of the event horizon, they may deliver insights around and inside the black hole.

"If you consider black holes within only general relativity, one can show that they have a singularity in their centres where the laws of physics as we know them must break down," explained Calmet. "It is hoped that when quantum field theory is incorporated into general relativity, we might be able to find a new description of black holes."

Here comes the pressure

Calmet and Kuipers were exploring the thermodynamics of black holes using EFT in the vicinity of the event horizon when they noticed a strange mathematical term pop up in their equations. At first, the term completely stumped them — they didn't know what it meant or how to interpret it. But that changed during a conversation on Christmas day, 2020.

They realized that the term in the equations represented a pressure. An actual, real pressure. The same pressure that the hot air exerts inside of a rising balloon, or pressure on a piston inside the engine of your car.

"The pin-drop moment when we realised that the mystery result in our equations was telling us that the black hole we were studying had a pressure — after months of grappling with it – was exhilarating," recalled Kuipers.

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That pressure is almost absurdly tiny, less than 10^54 times smaller than standard air pressure on the Earth. But it's there. They also found that the pressure can be positive or negative, depending on the particular mix of quantum particles near the black hole. A positive pressure is the kind that keeps a balloon inflated, while a negative pressure is the tension you feel in a stretched rubber band.

Their result extends the idea of black holes as thermodynamic entities that have not just temperature and entropy, but also pressure. Because their work only models weak quantum gravity and neglects strong gravity, it can't completely explain the behavior of black holes, but it's an important step.

"Our work is a step in this direction, and although the pressure exerted by the black hole that we were studying is tiny, the fact that it is present opens up multiple new possibilities, spanning the study of astrophysics, particle physics and quantum physics," Calmet concluded.

Originally published on Live Science.

“We are unstoppable!” Some of the lessons from Occupy Wallstreet, 10 years later

“One of the main contributions of Occupy was ‘the 99 percent.’”

Derek Royden

September 24, 2021

SOURCENationofChange

For many, it began as a meme. A picture of a dancer perched on top of the statue sometimes called the Bowling Green Bull located on Broadway within New York’s financial district. The poster bore the message, “What is our one demand?” above the image and, “Occupy Wallstreet, September 17th, Bring tent”, below it. The poster was created by Adbusters Magazine on Canada’s west coast and spread widely online and on growing social media platforms along with the hashtag, #OccupyWallStreet, which began to circulate in July of 2011.

When the day arrived, dozens of activists found the area around the bull and One Chase Plaza had been barricaded by authorities so they set up close by, in Zuccotti Park. Over the coming days their numbers grew so much that they could no longer be ignored by corporate media, although many did their best to dismiss or belittle the protesters, focusing especially on the occupiers insistence that the movement was and would remain leaderless. It then spread to other cities and across borders, an American Autumn following the Arab Spring that had created so much, unfortunately unrealized, hope for change in that part of the world.

Somewhat ironically, the one demand referenced in the poster would never be made clear. Instead, a variety of causes from ending economic inequality, addressing America’s student debt crisis, stopping foreign interventions and many others would become part of the conversation as people gathered at the encampments that sprang up until police in New York ended the experiment a little less than two months later on November 15th. Most other encampments both inside and outside of the country were closed with varying levels of police violence soon after.

During those weeks at least 100 working groups were formed at Zuccotti to look at the issues and General Assemblies took place using the formal consensus model in the hope of giving every participant a voice. Denied the use of amplification, activists created the ‘human microphone’, which had listeners loudly repeat a speakers’ words so that all would hear them, another innovation adopted widely as the movement spread.

The use of formal consensus, especially when almost complete unanimity was called for as it was in some places, created its own problems, not the least of which was the willingness on the part of some to hijack the proceedings for their own purposes or amusement. Then there was the constant drumming, which seemed to be an especially big problem at Zuccotti, where the voices of other Occupiers were drowned out and those living close by were driven to distraction by the noise that began early most mornings and lasted far into the night.

Nonetheless, in reading reminiscences of the weeks before the encampments were dismantled I was reminded of the feelings of hope and community I felt here at Occupy Montreal and in streams that were coming out of encampments far and wide. It was an experience that has colored my approach to life and politics ever since. It even created new media spaces like this one and gave energy (and a slogan) to the first real progressive challenger to the status quo in American politics in generations, Bernie Sanders, many of whose most enthusiastic staffers and volunteers in 2016 had been Occupiers themselves.

While the Occupiers produced many powerful slogans, organizer Yotam Marom made a good argument in The Nation about which has had the biggest impact in the years since, “One of the main contributions of Occupy was “the 99 percent.” That was one of the major gifts. It was the first time, in my life at least, that class was being put on the table, front and center, without any equivocation, and that was a huge gift to the left, that it became popular and clear and simple. A bunch of things that got replicated and spread were incredible.”

For a leaderless movement, Occupy produced many leaders that have gone on to find their niches on the progressive left in the United States and abroad, including one of the founders of the Sunrise Movement and many of those in the Justice Democrats and the growing Democratic Socialists of America who have helped bring new voices like Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush into the country’s congress.

Despite the successes, the movement also failed in some ways. Outside of large encampments like those in New York, Washington D.C., Oakland and London, England, Occupy wasn’t as diverse as many hoped. Having said this, attempts were made to center marginalized groups like using what was called the ‘progressive stack’ to ensure that these voices would be heard.

As activists faced police repression there seemed to be a growing awareness that this was part of everyday life for marginalized groups and this has led many former Occupiers to join these struggles in the years since, something that was evident at Standing Rock a few years later.

While the right painted the Occupiers as ‘communists’ and ‘anarchists’, the faux populists who have since taken over many conservative parties in wealthier countries seem to have learned more from the movement than the moderates and self described liberals who were so quick to dismiss it. Although clearly insincere, leaders like Steve Bannon helped fashion a message about a forgotten working class and forever wars that could have come out of Occupy.

As Michelle Crentsil recently told Jonathan Smucker of the Intercept, “When Occupy named the crisis, the Democratic Party didn’t do anything to translate that into building power. They got scared and were like, ‘Oh, what if this gets too out of control? Oh no, the socialists are out.’ But the right was figuring out how to use it to catapult themselves into power.”

One aspect of the occupations that has mostly been forgotten is the way that law enforcement responded, especially in the United States, where federal authorities worked not only with state and local police as we might expect, but in New York especially, with corporate security whose bosses clearly had their own reasons for wanting to see the encampment and almost daily protest marches brought to an end.

After leaked FBI files showed the scope of the cooperation, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund explained, “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The links between these private security forces and police at all levels would become even more obvious during Standing Rock, which had its own encampments. Worse, a private security company, Tigerswan, put their own undercover agents at some of the camps and described peaceful protesters as dangerous terrorists internally according to documents obtained by the Intercept.

More recently, at least in part as a response to short lived encampments used as a tactic by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion in the UK, Boris Johnson’s government has banned them as part of their Police,Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Intentional or not, this has also criminalized the lifestyle of the country’s Roma and Traveller communities.

I took the title for this story from a chant featured in a documentary I watched recently, “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!” At the time this seemed true and it still echoes today in the movements and voices of progressive politicians that have come after Occupy, a movement that in the end succeeded much more than it failed.

Nuclear waste interaction in the environment may be more complicated than once thought

by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators proposed a new mechanism by which nuclear waste could spread in the environment.

The new findings, that involve researchers at Penn State and Harvard Medical School, have implications for nuclear waste management and environmental chemistry. The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"This study relates to the fate of nuclear materials in nature, and we stumbled upon a previously unknown mechanism by which certain radioactive elements could spread in the environment," said LLNL scientist and lead author Gauthier Deblonde. "We show that there are molecules in nature that were not considered before, notably proteins like 'lanmodulin' that could have a strong impact on radioelements that are problematic for nuclear waste management, such as americium, curium, etc."

Past and present nuclear activities (energy, research, weapon tests) have increased the urgency to understand the behavior of radioactive materials in the environment. Nuclear wastes containing actinides (e.g. plutonium, americium, curium, neptunium...) are particularly problematic as they remain radioactive and toxic for thousands of years.

However, very little is known about the chemical form of these elements in the environment, forcing scientists and engineers to use models to predict their long-term behavior and migration patterns. Thus far, these models have only considered interactions with small natural compounds, mineral phases and colloids, and the impact of more complex compounds like proteins has been largely ignored. The new study demonstrates that a type of protein that is abundant in nature vastly outcompetes molecules that scientists previously considered as the most problematic in terms of actinide migration in the environment.

"The recent discovery that some bacteria specifically use rare earth elements has opened new areas of biochemistry with important technological applications and potential implications for actinide geochemistry, because of chemical similarities between the rare earths and actinides" said Joseph Cotruvo Jr., Penn State assistant professor and co-corresponding author on the paper.

The protein called lanmodulin is a small and abundant protein in many rare earth-utilizing bacteria. It was discovered by the Penn State members of the team in 2018. While the Penn State and LLNL team has studied in detail how this remarkable protein works and how it can be applied to extract rare earths, the protein's relevance to radioactive contaminants in the environment was previously unexplored.

"Our results suggest that lanmodulin, and similar compounds, play a more important role in the chemistry of actinides in the environment than we could have imagined," said LLNL scientist Annie Kersting. "Our study also points to the important role that selective biological molecules can play in the differential migration patterns of synthetic radioisotopes in the environment."

"The study also shows for the first time that lanmodulin prefers the actinide elements over any other metals, including the rare earth elements, an interesting property than could be used for novel separation processes," said LLNL scientist Mavrik Zavarin.

Rare earth element biochemistry is a very recent field that Penn State and LLNL have helped to pioneer, and the new work is the first to explore how the environmental chemistry of actinides may be linked to nature's use of rare earth elements. Lanmodulin's higher affinity for actinides might even mean that rare earth-utilizing organisms that are ubiquitous in nature may preferentially incorporate certain actinides into their biochemistry, according to Deblonde.

New sensor detects valuable rare earth element terbium from non-traditional sources

More information: Gauthier J.-P. Deblonde et al, Characterization of Americium and Curium Complexes with the Protein Lanmodulin: A Potential Macromolecular Mechanism for Actinide Mobility in the Environment, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2021). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c07103

Journal information: Journal of the American Chemical Society

Provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The never ending cycle of nuclear insanity

Please repeat after me: No excuses. No compromise. No fear.

John Rachel

September 24, 2021

SOURCENationofChange

Amidst all of the sensible and sane cries to eliminate nuclear weapons, we are caught in a self-sustaining, self-reinforcing feedback loop. Call it the Death Spiral of Human Annihilation.

Yes, the U.S. throughout its history, despite official denials even among historians who should know better — maybe they do but prefer being manufacturers of myth rather than chroniclers of history — has been territorial, possessive and aggressive. The Monroe Doctrine declared the entire Western hemisphere as America’s backyard. The U.S. was hardly shy about grabbing as much as it could from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War, lands as far away as the Philippines. Through treaties and hard-headed diplomacy, it has effectively turned most European nations, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan into vassal states, which promote and serve the interests of the U.S., including using their military assets and personnel to take to the battlefield in undeclared wars and provocations against those countries the U.S. perceives as enemies or obstacles to its imperial rule.

This is not particularly extraordinary or surprising. Competition defines and drives much of what goes on between countries, each nation vying for advantage and improvements in its own standing and accumulation, regardless of what hardships it might impose on other countries and their populations. Thus U.S. adventurism and colonization was pretty much business-as-usual for much of its history, as it was for every other ambitious nation on the rise.

However, beyond predictable overt aggressiveness, it was at the end of and immediately after WWII that a seismic change occurred in Washington DC that has elevated our country to become the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and propelled the entire planet toward the unstable, chaotic mess we now find ourselves in.

Politically there was the marginalization of Henry Wallace, and the installation of Harry Truman as president. Institutionally it was the creation of the extremely independent security organization, the CIA, as successor to the OSS (Office of Security Services). Programmatically, it was bringing 1600 Nazi scientists into the U.S. under Operation Paperclip. Economically, it was the continuation of a war economy and the expansion of the MIC — the military industrial complex — cementing in place the core elements of “forever war” even in times of peace. Dwight D. Eisenhower saw what was happening and in January 1961 warned the country of the dangers of this in his farewell speech.

The U.S. pursuit of empire and global hegemony now had the mechanisms, the funding, the know-how, the institutional momentum, the “right stuff”, to take the world stage. All of the toxic premises and preconditions were now circulating in the bloodstream of the military and diplomatic channels, a cocktail of pathogens for the madness that infected and captivated those in power, and still does to this day.

This virulence culminated in the 90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. turned its back on an unprecedented historical opportunity, the chance for peace and cooperation on a global scale, one that had the potential of initiating a millennium where wars were the rare exception, and the colonial power struggle paradigm would be consigned to history books. Instead, it embraced the “end of history”, a baseless claim of ultimate superiority and entitlement based on America’s victory over the world’s only other superpower.

By the late 90s the U.S. pulled out all of the stops. It would leave no technology untapped, no opportunity unexploited, no promise or treaty unbroken, UN resolutions and world opinion be damned, international law deemed irrelevant. The trajectory we are now on was set in stone. It’s our way or bombs away.

Let’s not get distracted or deluded by claims of noble intent and appeals to the twisted logic of empire.

And our mental discipline starts with our never ever forgetting who started this mess. And thus who must take the lead in fixing it.

Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan sent a message to the world, particularly the Soviet Union.

“We have the ultimate weapon and we will use it. Don’t mess with us, don’t doubt our resolve, no one can stop us.”

The Soviet Union had no choice. Either develop a sufficient nuclear potential to counter that of the U.S. or be held hostage to bullying and coercion.

That unfortunate dynamic unleashed a nuclear arms race that at one point saw enough nuclear weaponry in the stockpiles of the U.S. and the USSR, to destroy the planet 50 times over. This madness has been tempered slightly with treaties but it’s still insanity by any rational measure. Russia and the U.S. still have over 13,000 nuclear weapons — much more powerful and “usable” than when they were at peak numerical levels — and other nuclear nations add another 1,125 to the mix. This is an improvement. The same improvement we could claim if a person only got shot 14 times instead of 50 times. The coroner’s work reconstructing the body for viewing might be a little easier. Should we count our blessings?

Listen, folks. It’s on us! Both the U.S. as a nation and the U.S. as citizens. There’s no passing the buck here, not when the survival of life on Earth is at stake.

Until the U.S. steps forward and leads the effort, nuclear warfare will always be with us. And annihilation of the human species will always hover over us as a real, increasingly probable result.

Moreover, please never forget: Those now in power will never backtrack on this suicidal course. It is what defines them, drives them. It’s as much a part of them as their hearts and brains and the void where their souls would be if they weren’t morally bankrupt, sociopathic mutants.

The only way we’ll have peace is if we REMOVE FROM POWER every single one of the warmongers.

No excuses. No compromise. No fear.

I recommend a massive awakening of 150-200 million U.S. citizens as to the personal costs of war, the inevitable product of: our military adventurism and expansion; our endless, unnecessary, illegal, immoral wars; our completely wasteful procurement of unneeded weapon systems, upgrading our nuclear arsenal, now putting weapons is space in violation of existing treaties; a commitment without the approval of the citizenry to “full- spectrum dominance”, i.e. world rule by an unchallengeable empire.

For decades the DOD and their rah-rah imperialists in office have had a blank check. And like anyone with a blank check, they’ve spent OUR MONEY with wild abandon. THIS is a strategy for defunding the military just enough so that it can properly defend our nation and its people, but no longer use everyday citizens as an ATM machine for its delusional, monomaniacal pursuit of hegemony over the entire planet. We the people never voted for this psychopathic agenda, one which smacks of master race conquest. THIS MECHANISM will sufficiently drain the Treasury so that unnecessary DOD spending is impossible, and most importantly, extricate the crazies from the toxic dump they’ve turned our once-democratic institutions into.