It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, October 10, 2021
The genetic basis of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes
The evolution of primate species are divided into hominoids — a group of tail-less primate species that includes gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans — and nonhominoids, which have tails and are more distant primate relatives of humans. The measure of each species’ evolution is measured in “mya,” or million years ago. Credit: NYU Tandon School of Engineering
NYU researchers at the Tandon School of Engineering and the Grossman School of Medicine are trying to understand an age-old question that bedeviled most of us at some point: Why do all the other animals have tails, but not me? The loss of the tail is one of the main anatomical evolutionary changes to have occurred along the lineage leading to humans and to the "anthropomorphous apes." The loss of tails has long been thought to have played a key role in bipedalism in humans
This curiosity-based question was addressed by using bioinformatics tools to look at differences between the genomes of humans (and the other apes, which all lack tails) and monkeys (which all have tails, like most other mammals).
Bo Xia, a Ph.D. candidate studying this problem in the labs of Jef Boeke and Itai Yanai, looked at sequence alignments of all genes known to be involved in tail development and discovered a movable piece of DNA called a retrotransposon inserted in the TBXT gene, which is a developmental regulator crucial for tail development. The reason it had not been spotted before was due its placement in noncoding (intron) DNA, where most people would not look for mutations.
Examination of the gene, which carried other copies of the Alu retrotransposon, led to a model for how the Alu might disregulate splicing of TBXT RNA. The researchers engineered a mouse model to test this hypothesis and found that indeed, many mice with a suitably altered genome lacked a tail. They also found that the mice without tails also suffered from spinal cord malformations. It's possible our ancestors who lost their tails also had this side effect, which may contribute to some health problems even today.
‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song’ Review: A Unique and Gratifying Pop-Music Documentary
It tells the story of Leonard Cohen, and of how his "Hallelujah" became the world's "Hallelujah."
By Owen Gleiberman “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song” is a documentary about the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah,” and if that sounds like a lot of movie to devote to one song — well, “Hallelujah” is a lot of song. The way we think of it now, it’s epic and lovely and trancelike: a hymn cast in a pop idiom. You might call it a feel-good hymn for a secular society, because the word “hallelujah” has obvious religious connotations, and part of the reason that people feel so good listening to “Hallelujah,” or singing along with it in oversize stadiums, is that the song says to its audience: If you find this beautiful (and really, who doesn’t?), then you’re a spiritual person.
The documentary, which was directed, written, photographed, and co-edited by the team of Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, is also a portrait of Leonard Cohen, who in a career that spanned half a century (he died in 2016) may have been the ultimate idiosyncratic pop-star-who-wasn’t-really-a-pop-star-except-that-he-so-was. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in a suburb of Montreal, he started off as a poet, and remained one. Yet when he began to set his words to music, he made them sing with a flukier magic than Bob Dylan. Cohen’s voice was a low-pitched drone, a stranger to any kind of vibrato, direct and becalmed; it seemed to scrape the bottom of the ocean and get to the heart of things. Songs like “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy” cast a gravely tuneful and radiant spell, and Cohen himself was sexy in a rapt Canadian Pacino-meets-Serge Gainsbourg way — a clean-cut troubadour, a professor of lyric enchantment.
When he began to work on “Hallelujah,” he kept writing verses, filling notebooks with perhaps 180 of them, and the song literally took years to complete. Cohen didn’t do this with other songs. It’s as if he knew that with “Hallelujah” he wasn’t just writing a song but birthing it. Yet part of the alchemy of “Hallelujah” is that, over time, the song it turned into isn’t the one that it started out as. The song took a journey — changing, becoming, acquiring layers of soul and enchantment. And I’m far from alone in having experienced that evolution in a strange kind of reverse order.
To state the obvious: A great many people got to know “Hallelujah” from “Shrek,” the 2001 DreamWorks animated fairy tale where it was used to lend a surprisingly wistful and melancholy dimension to the story of a cantankerous green ogre. (In the film, “Hallelujah” expresses the thawing of his heart.) The version of the song heard in “Shrek” is by John Cale, the former member of the Velvet Underground (though the soundtrack version, for synergistic corporate reasons, is by Rufus Wainwright, who directly imitated Cale’s version). A Cale rendition of the song had appeared on his 1992 live solo album “Fragments of a Rainy Season” (one of my favorite records), but even as Cale was performing it in concert to spellbound audiences, it remained, in the larger world, a well-kept secret.
Then Jeff Buckley got ahold of it. He began to perform it at Siné, the cave-in-the-wall East Village coffeehouse that Buckley, accompanying himself on a Fender Telecaster, made into a cozy cult venue. His version of the song was even slower and dreamier: a meditation that allowed Buckley’s voice to soar into the heavens. Buckley died in 1997, the victim of a tragic drowning accident, and it’s the documentary’s contention — presented not insensitively but simply as what happened — that his death played a key role in elevating “Hallelujah.” Buckley, who had the look of an indie-rock Jim Morrison and the voice of a tremulous angel, had been on the cusp of becoming a major star, and partly because so many of his fellow musicians revered him, new attention was paid to “Hallelujah.” It began to be covered almost in homage to Buckley, and the song now took on the quality of an anthem. Which may well have led to its use in “Shrek.”
But what about, you know, the original version by Leonard Cohen? The film captures how he sweated over the lyrics, with their waltz-like rhythm and mystery (‘I’ve heard there was a secret chord,/That David played and it pleased the Lord,/But you don’t really care for music, do ya?”). It also chronicles how, after a long break with the composer and producer John Lissauer (the two were in the middle of writing an album together when Cohen took off on a whim and ghosted him for eight years), Cohen then reunited with Lissauer to record “Various Positions,” the 1984 album with “Hallelujah” on it.
In the 2000s, after “Hallelujah” had become a thing, I was someone who owned a handful of Leonard Cohen albums, two of which I thought of as soundtracks: his first, the great “Songs of Leonard Cohen” (1967), which was used with tranquil majesty in Robert Altman’s “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” and “The Future” (1992), several tracks of which carved out a majestic layer of pop gravitas in Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers.” Yet I’d never encountered “Various Positions,” so I got a copy of it, eager to hear the version of “Hallelujah” performed by Cohen, the man who wrote it.
It was one of the biggest letdowns of all time.
John Lissauer is interviewed in the documentary, and he seems like a hale fellow, but I’m sorry, his arrangement and production of “Hallelujah” is lurchingly bombastic and unlyrical. You can listen to it countless times and it never acquires the magic we associate with the song. When Walter Yetnikoff, the head of Columbia, first heard the album, he disliked it so much that he refused to release it in the U.S. That became an infamous decision, and the film recounts a legendary anecdote in which Yetnikoff told Cohen, “Look, Leonard, we know you’re great. But we don’t know if you’re any good.” Yet though the album should by all means have been released, there was a gut instinct to Yetnikoff’s judgment. “Various Positions,” unlike Cohen’s best work, didn’t have a sound to match its vision. It really was John Cale who co-created the “Hallelujah” we know, using simple rolling piano chords and plaintive vocals to invest it with a mystic shimmer.
In “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song,” we hear a lot of good Leonard Cohen anecdotes, like one about how he was pressured to change his last name, and almost did (to Leonard September), but realized: Why should he be anyone but himself? Composing those endless lyrics to “Hallelujah,” he wound up in his underwear in a “shabby hotel room” at the Mayflower banging his head on the floor and saying, “I can’t do it anymore.” The creation of “Death of a Ladies Man,” the 1977 album that Cohen made with Phil Spector, becomes a fascinating lesson in how everything that shouldn’t go wrong can. And there are lively observations from the world-class raconteur Larry “Ratso” Sloman, who got to know Cohen when he profiled him for Rolling Stone, and Judy Collins, who knew him early on (in a clip from 1966, we hear her perform “Suzanne,” and it’s stunning). The documentary follows Cohen on his haphazard odyssey of a life — the tales of womanizing, the way he lost his money, the years he spent living in a Buddhist monastery, and his comeback as a graying legend in a fedora, playing to huger audiences than he’d ever had.
By the end of his life, the song “Hallelujah” had become such a sensation that a tiny part of you may almost wish it hadn’t. Yet there’s a glory to this tale. For years, Leonard Cohen toiled like a monk on a modern hymn, which was released into utter obscurity, then grew into a very different song — becoming, just maybe, the song it always was. “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey…,” which premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival, is still looking for a distributor, and it deserves one. There’s totally an audience for a music doc this rich (though it could use a catchier title), one about how a quiet artist, without planning to, created a song heard round the world.
‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song’ Review: A Unique and Gratifying Pop-Music Documentary Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), Sept. 4, 2021. Running time: 115 MIN. Production: A Geller/Goldfine Productions production. Producers: Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine. Executive producers: Jonathan Dana, Morgan Neville. Crew: Directors, screenplay: Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine. Camera: Daniel Geller. Editors: Dayne Goldfine, Bill Weber, Daniel Geller. Music: Leonard Cohen, John Lissauer. With: Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, John Lissauer, Brandi Carlile, Eric Church, Sharon Robinson, Rufus Wainwright.
Major exhibition of Yoko Ono's works opening at Vancouver Art Gallery
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Show features collaborative projects the artist undertook with late husband John Lennon
CBC News ·
John Lennon and Yoko Ono are flanked by journalists in Room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal in 1969. The couple spent two weeks in the hotel room in bed in a performance art protest to promote peace during the Vietnam War. This collaboration between the couple and others are part of a survey exhibition of Ono's works opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Oct. 9. (Jacques Bourdon/Le Journal de Montreal/Montreal Museum of Fine Arts)
Vancouverites can celebrate the late John Lennon's birthday this Saturday at the launch of a new art exhibition featuring collaborative works the Beatles star worked on with Yoko Ono, the world-renowned artist and love of his life.
Organized into two parts, the first section invites viewers to participate in the creative process by following text instructions provided by Ono and, in a way, collaborate with her on some of her famed pieces.
This includes mending broken ceramics (Mend Piece,1966/2021), hammering nails into a canvas (Painting to Hammer a Nail, 1966/2021) and writing about their mothers on a sticky note and attaching it to the gallery wall (My Mommy is Beautiful, 2004/2021).
Mend Piece is one of the participatory works visitors will experience at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The image shown is from a similar show of Yoko Ono's work exhibited in Montreal in 2019. (Galerie Lelong/Art Basel)
The second part of the show features collaborative work by Ono and Lennon on the subject of peace, including Bed-ins for Peace, which were filmed non-violent protests against war undertaken by the couple in 1969.
As the Vietnam War raged, the duo held two week-long performances where they sat in bed together. Derived from the idea of peaceful sit-in protests, the first was held in Amsterdam and the second in Montreal.
"The one thing that brought them together ... was to work for peace," said co-curator Cheryl Sim.
The exhibition is a dream come true for Sim, who contacted Ono with a written note in 2017 asking if the artist would be interested in having such a show staged in Vancouver. She was game.
"It's just all come together in a beautiful way," said Sim.
Two other installations connected to the exhibition include Arising and Water Event.
The former is an invitation from Ono to women to submit a picture of their eyes and a written testament about harm they have endured because of their gender.
The latter involves a number of local Indigenous artists invited by Ono to create a vessel that can hold water. According to Sim, Ono requested to work with these artists to reflect the significance of water to these communities.
Growing Freedom: The instructions of Yoko Ono / The art of John and Yoko runs until May 1.
Photos of John Lennon, Yoko Ono's Bed-in
for Peace protest part of Vancouver gallery
exhibit
Nafeesa KarimAnchor / Multi-skilled Journalist, CTV News Vancouver
VANCOUVER -- On the eve of what would have been John Lennon's 81st birthday, the Vancouver Art Gallery will be opening a major exhibition of works by his wife, Yoko Ono.
Among the pieces on display Sunday will be a collection of photographs, owned by a Victoria woman, that document an iconic week in pop culture history.
In 1969, as the Vietnam War was raging, newlyweds Lennon and Ono spent eight days in Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel as part of a peaceful protest against the conflict, which they labelled "Bed-in for Peace."
Only one photographer was in the room during the protest, Brooklyn-born Gerry Deiter, who was on assignment for Life Magazine.
"The love, the intimacy in those photos..." Joan Athey, owner of the photos, told to CTV News. "Even though there were always at least 20 people in the room."
The photos never ended up being published. Deiter packed them away and eventually settled in Victoria where he made a friend in Athey, whom he showed the pictures.
"They were in love," she described of Lennon and Ono in the photos. "They were inspired."
After the 9/11 attacks, Deiter decided the world needed to see the photos and their message of peace.
"He wanted to rekindle the spirit of 'Give Peace a Chance,'" Athey said, referring to one of Lennon and Ono's most prominent music tracks.
Five days after the photos went on display at the Royal BC Museum, however, Deiter died of a heart attack. Athey bought his collection and has taken it upon herself to tell the story of the Bed-in for Peace, which she said carries a message that still resonates.
"You just have to look around," she said. "You can see the world is still in terrible turmoil."
Twenty-four of the photos will be displayed as part of Ono's "Growing Freedom" exhibit, which will run until May 1, 2022.
In this April 18, 1972 file photo, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, leave a U.S. Immigration hearing in New York City. (AP Photo, FIle)
China’s power crisis: Outrage over power outages may affect Xi’s green initiatives
If China continues to undergo a major energy crunch, its green policy might be under jeopardy
The recent restrictions on power consumption in China disrupted manufacturing activities, and a cloud hangs over technology supply chains. In addition to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to rein in the real estate sector, electricity woes pose a new challenge to the country’s fledgling economic growth and CCP’s ambitions in the field of global climate governance.
In addition to 20 provinces, China’s showcase cities—Beijing and Shanghai—that are home to nearly 22 million and 26 million inhabitants respectively, have experienced power outages. On average, mercury dips till -6°C in the capital, this increases demand for heating, and worries are abound about whether the power crunch will extend into winter.
A part of the problem stems from the steadily climbing coal prices. Around September 2020, coal prices hovered around US $50 per tonne, but it soared to US $177.5 last month—the highest it has climbed to in more than a decade (see graphic).
Source: Asia Nikkei
Coal imports have also been hampered by geopolitical tussles. China uses more than 3 billion tonnes of thermal coal each year; nearly 2 percent of China’s total consumed thermal coal came from Australia due to its reasonable price and superior quality. But the People’s Republic prohibited import of coal from Australia after it sought for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.
Usually, power generation groups fill their coal stocks in September ahead of the winter months. However, according to Sinolink Securities, this year’s September stockpile of thermal coal by six major power-generation groups was only enough to meet a fortnight’s requirement. With the price of coal rising, power generation firms are reluctant to produce sufficient electricity to meet demand; since tariffs are capped, the revenue accrued is not enough to cover costs. In China, more than half of all power is generated from coal. Coal is the single biggest contributor to climate change. The burning of coal accounts for 46 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally, and over 70 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions are from the electricity sector. China tops the chart of polluters accounting for nearly 27 percent of global emissions. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, a landmark international treaty on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, China agreed to achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, and to increase the proportion of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20 percent.
How nations fare on pollution RANK NATION GLOBAL EMISSIONS (% in ’17) 1 China 27.2 % 2 US 14.6% 3 India 6.8% 4 Russia 4.7% 5 Japan 3.3% Source: World Economic Forum
Climate change has been influenced not just by the vagaries of rising emissions, but also partisan politics. The Paris deal, which was seen as then US President Barack Obama’s political legacy, was reviewed by his successor. Within months of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US President in 2017, his administration rolled back the previous ban on mining coal in the nation. He later announced that the US was pulling out of the covenant, citing that permitting China and India to use fossil fuels under the treaty while America had to curb its carbon was unfair. Coincidentally, the withdrawal came into effect amidst the counting of votes in the contentious 2020 Presidential election, which Trump lost. Under incumbent President Joe Biden, climate governance is a top priority. In February, America re-joined the Paris Agreement. The appointment of a heavyweight like former Secretary of State, John Kerry, as special envoy on climate change signals the new American administration’s aim of reasserting its lead in the fight to combat global warming.
The significance of the US walking out of the Paris deal has not been lost on China. The Trump interlude gave China a good opening to pose as a responsible stakeholder in the effort to tackle climate change and pollution. At the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity in September 2020, Xi announced his ‘green’ plan for China to become carbon neutral by 2060.
The significance of the US walking out of the Paris deal has not been lost on China. The Trump interlude gave China a good opening to pose as a responsible stakeholder in the effort to tackle climate change and pollution. At the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity in September 2020, Xi announced his ‘green’ plan for China to become carbon neutral by 2060.
In April, Biden called the heads of nations responsible for nearly 80 percent of global emissions to a virtual summit, seeking pledges to lowering emissions. State-run media in China portrayed this move as an effort to establish a climate-cooperation clique centred around the US to boost its leadership on international issues. In turn, China invited Kerry to discuss climate issues, around the same time it began vociferously opposing Japan’s plan to release radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean. It slammed the US for supporting Japan and accused it of double standards on the issue of environmental protection. Through this episode, China demonstrated its ambition to steer international climate governance, and not be an adjunct to an American-led initiative.
With America back in the game, China increased its stakes in this one-upmanship. Due to Xi’s focus to claim the green mantle, the National Energy Administration (NEA) sought to cut coal use to 56 percent of total energy consumption in 2021, down from 57 percent. In line with Xi’s commitment to reach a peak in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, the guidelines issued in April laid emphasis on meeting nearly 11 percent of the country’s electricity consumption through wind and solar power. Xi was betting big on e-vehicles, but charging stations for new energy vehicles suspended operations in parts of China in the wake of the outages. These developments may in future put the brakes on the decisions of some buyers to switch to new energy vehicles.
China is feeling the pinch with factory activity contracting in September due to curbs on electricity use and increased input prices. The manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index—an indicator of business activity—plummeted to 49.6 in September from 50.1 in the previous month. While the crisis was unfolding, Xi visited a ‘green’ industrial unit in Shaanxi that uses coal to produce chemical products like methanol to polyolefins without generating much waste water. In his address there, he highlighted the need for environmental protection. Grandstanding notwithstanding, he faces tough choices. First, loosening controls on electricity tariffs may have a bearing on production costs that will ultimately hit Chinese buyers and affect national competitiveness. Second, lifting the ban on Australian coal may cause Xi to lose face ahead of the key 2022 National Congress. The bumpy ride to clean energy may thus force Xi to put his green policy on the backburner.
In a World Fighting Climate Change, Fossil Fuels Take Revenge
Javier Blas Sun., October 10, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- With its chimneys towering 200 meters above the industrial heartland of England, West Burton A power station is a relic of the fossil fuel age. When fired up, its boilers burn thousands of tonnes of coal each day, spewing out the carbon dioxide that’s warming up the planet.
After more than 50 years of operation, it will close next year, part of a global transition into green energy sources like wind and solar. It’s only rarely used, but for several days in September, it was this old, polluting facility that kept the lights on in the U.K.
West Burton isn’t an oddity. Across the world, fossil fuels are making a remarkable comeback as a super-charged recovery from the pandemic boosts demand. For all the green energy promises and plans, that transition is in its infancy, and the world still leans heavily on fossils. It’s an addiction built up over two and a half centuries, and it runs deep.
In Europe, where electric vehicles are becoming ever more popular, gasoline sales are booming, reaching a 10-year high in some countries. In the developing world, from Brazil to China, natural gas consumption is stronger than ever. The global hunger for energy has collided with constrained supply, itself the result of a tangle of factors, sending power prices surging in many countries.
Adding it all up, fossil fuel demand is already flirting with pre-pandemic levels, which means emissions are on the rise too. On current trends, the combined consumption of coal, natural gas and oil is likely to hit an all-time high by mid-2022.
“This is the revenge of the fossil fuels,” said Thierry Bros, an energy expert and professor at Sciences Po in Paris.
The situation points to a daunting new phase for the energy transition, with growing tensions among the disparate policy objectives of simultaneously reducing emissions, keeping prices low, and guaranteeing security of supply. The pace of the effort could even be at risk if soaring prices dent public support for climate policies.
It’s a dark backdrop just days ahead of the start of a United Nations summit in Glasgow, COP26, which many believe is the last opportunity to avert catastrophic climate change.
“The climate crisis is real, and energy transition is a necessity, and we must accelerate it — but it’s not a flick of a switch,” said Amos Hochstein, U.S.’s top energy diplomat. “If we want to solve climate change we need to do so while at the same time insulating the global economy from extreme energy shocks.”
Governments can’t ignore the price squeeze, and many have stepped in to cushion the impact with subsidies and tax cuts. But with constant warnings about irreparable damage to the planet, few see officials rolling back from their emissions commitments.
More than 70% of people around the world are worried that climate change will harm them personally at some point, according to the Pew Research Center. The figure is lower in the U.S., though still at 60%. In Germany, the Green party just had its best ever result in an election, and is likely to form part of the next government.
For several years, the world has grown complacent about fossil fuel consumption. From oil to coal, peak demand has been the buzzword, always about to happen, but never actually materializing. Then many assumed that some of the drop in consumption during the pandemic was structural, driven by social changes like work-from-home and the hope of a greener recovery.
But outside jet-fuel, still hamstrung by travel restrictions, oil demand is today higher than it was in 2019. The car has returned to city centers as people avoid public transport. Many countries are desperate for gas as it’s become the swing fuel that offsets the ups-and-downs of solar and wind in electricity generation. Coal is on the up too, even if the medium-term outlook for the dirtiest fossil fuels remains decidedly somber.
Under the short-term cyclical factors — the super-fast rebound and supply constraints — a bigger longer-trend is also shaping the market. As governments work to reduce emissions, investors are pulling out of dirty businesses, and companies are cutting spending and closing facilities. With cleaner energies not fully ready to take up the slack, that’s created an imbalance, as well as volatile prices.
“We’re at a fairly critical junction,” said Russell Hardy, the head of Vitol Group, the world’s largest independent oil trader. “The hydrocarbon industry is going to suffer a bit of under-investment as we go forward as people focus their capital on greener projects.’’
The market is already flashing red. The cost of coal has surged above $200 a tonne, surpassing the 2008 peak during the last commodity boom, and natural gas in Europe and Asia is at an all time high. U.K. benchmark electricity prices last month surged at one point to more than 400 pounds per megawatt hour, about 10 times normal, prompting West Burton A to come into action.
The demand surge has challenged many assumptions about how quickly the world would decabornize. Faced with an energy crisis, many consuming nations zoned in on older fuels. The White House urged the OPEC cartel to increase oil production fast, and the International Energy Agency asked Russia to pump more gas. China ordered banks to prioritize loans to coal miners to boost supplies.
“I’m concerned hydrocarbon demand is not falling fast enough to match the potential under investment in fossil fuels,” said Jason Bordoff, dean of the Columbia Climate School and a former senior energy official in the Obama administration.
Coal is paradigmatic. For nearly a decade, it appeared in terminal decline as investors shunned miners and European countries shut down coal-fired power plants.
And yet, the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel won’t go away. Global consumption peaked in 2014, but rather than fall rapidly, as many expected, it stabilized in a gentle plateau. And now, just as the fight against climate change intensifies, it’s growing again, with the resurgence largely driven by China.
Oil is another case where hopes of an early peak in demand are quickly fading. In 2020, Bernard Looney, the head of British oil giant BP Plc, said it was possible that Covid marked the moment of peak oil. That view has since shifted, with BP predicting in August that demand will reach pre-Covid levels in the second half of 2022.
All of this means carbon dioxide emissions are rising too. The IEA estimates that they’ll post their second largest annual increase ever this year, reversing most of the decline during the lockdowns of 2020. On current trends, emissions will hit a fresh record in 2022 despite all government pledges bring them down, and quickly.
According to the IEA, about $750 billion will be spent on clean energy and efficiency worldwide in 2021, “far below what is required” to meet decarbonization targets. Total energy investment, including green and fossil fuels sources, will hit $1.9 trillion.
As political leaders prepare for COP26, the energy price spike has polarized views about the green transition, already an enormous challenge that involves rewiring the whole global economy. Climate change deniers and fossil fuel industry lobbyist have seized on it to campaign against green energy. On the other side, some climate activists say it shows the need to go even faster.
“Inevitably, it wasn’t going to be a transition without tension,” said Morgan Bazilian, an energy expert and professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines. “The balancing act politically is becoming a lot harder.”
Why is Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall obsessed with the origin of COVID-19?
Daniel Desrochers Sat, October 9, 2021
Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall likes people to know he’s a doctor. His staff call him “Doc.” He petitioned, when running for U.S. Senate in 2020, to get the nickname on the ballot. The state board of elections ruled against him. He won the race anyway.
He’s vaccinated. His wife is vaccinated. Both his parents are vaccinated and he says they’ll be getting booster shots.
But Doc Marshall is also a politician and a significant chunk of his base doesn’t feel so certain about the pandemic.
Many Kansas Republicans have refused to get vaccinated — Marshall says he thinks vaccines are a personal choice and has tried to fight against federal vaccine mandates. Many Kansas Republicans don’t like mask mandates either — Marshall has publicly said he doesn’t think mask mandates work and doesn’t wear a mask around the Capitol, despite the Capitol physician’s recommendation.
So how does a physician turned first-term senator navigate the politics around a polarized global pandemic while drawing attention for being tough on China and carrying the torch of a relatively popular issue Trump once championed? He focuses on how it even happened in the first place.
In August, after raising the issue for months, Doc Marshall put on his white lab coat and scrubs and stood in front of a green screen. He spent 12 minutes and 49 seconds trying to explain the uncertain origins of COVID-19 on YouTube.
“There are many reasons why we need to get to the bottom of this virus’ origin,” Marshall says as a picture of the coronavirus looms behind him. “As a physician, I think we always need to know what, where, how and perhaps why whenever any infectious disease outbreak occurs.”
Politicians often gain credibility based on whatever they did before entering politics, regardless of whether it’s outside of their professional area of expertise. Military veterans have it on foreign policy issues. Doctors, like Marshall, get credibility on issues like healthcare.
As other members of the Congress have focused on different areas of the pandemic like vaccine mandates, eviction moratoriums and the economy, Marshall has pursued COVID’s origins obsessively, issuing an 8-point plan to excavate how COVID came to exist.
He smiled when he was asked whether there was a political advantage to continuing to focus on the origins of COVID-19.
“I’m sure there is, but until you mentioned it right now, the thought never really crossed my mind,” Marshall said.
The first is that the virus was caused naturally. It came from a bat, which gave it to an animal sold at a market, which gave it to humans.
The second theory says scientists were studying the virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology when some sort of accident occurred that infected scientists, who then spread it to the community.
The third theory is basically the second theory. But instead of a natural virus, it’s a virus scientists changed to make it slightly more transmissible for research purposes that leaked from the lab.
Scientists have not yet been able to definitively say which theory is correct. Most think the virus spread from animals to humans naturally, the one they’ve pointed to all along. But, because they have not been able to pinpoint the exact path the virus took, they haven’t ruled out the possibility that it came from the virology lab.
While global politics could make it more difficult to get a definitive answer on the origins of COVID-19, the national politics appear to be in Marshall’s favor.
Taking a popular stand? Check. Loyalty to Trump? Check. Looking tough on China? Check. Getting the attention of national conservative media? Check. Looking tough on the CDC, the agency some Republicans fault for upending their world? Check.
Few people took the lab leak theory seriously in the beginning of the pandemic, but it had two major proponents — Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Both went on television and claimed the U.S. had evidence the virus leaked from a lab, part of the “tough on China” posture the Trump administration had taken on during his term.
Public opinion has shifted over time. A slight majority of Americans, 52%, now believe that the virus leaked from a lab in China, according to a recent poll by Politico and the Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health. The shift came after Biden said the intelligence committee would look into whether the virus leaked from the lab and Dr. Fauci said scientists shouldn’t rule out the possibility.
The same poll also showed that 82% of Americans think it’s important for the U.S. government to investigate the origins of COVID-19, with Democrats and Republicans both thinking its important.
“I think the broader public interest is… if it’s preventable, they don’t want this to happen again,” Robert Blendon, a professor of public health and policy at Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health.
‘America deserves to know’
Marshall is most focused on the theory that the virus was created in a lab.
That would bolster his argument to stop something called “gain-of-function” studies. These are experiments in which scientists change a biological agent (like a virus) to either give it new or enhanced abilities.
Often, the point of these experiments is so scientists can be better prepared to stop future outbreaks. But they can be very dangerous. If something goes wrong in the lab and the scientists are infected, it could trigger a pandemic.
In 2011, there was controversy over this type of research because of its potential danger. The National Institutes of Health created a committee to weigh whether or not these experiments should be funded. Some scientists have criticized the process for a lack of transparency.
Meanwhile, politicians have latched onto the idea that gain-of-function research could have led to COVID-19. In a Senate hearing earlier this year, Sen. Rand Paul, accused the NIH of funding a gain-of-function experiment at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect, that the N.I.H. has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded.
Marshall said he doesn’t trust the CDC or scientists to review proposed gain-of-function research. He thinks Congress should step in to block it.
“I am really, in my heart, am worried that viral gain-of-function with studies that started here in the United States and then with United States funding led to this virus,” Marshall said. “So I think America deserves to know.”
It is unlikely that Marshall, or the Senate, will be able to answer that question. It’s also uncertain that scientists studying the virus will be able to quickly answer the question.
It took until the 1930s for scientists to figure out that the influenza pandemic that spread across the world in 1918 was a virus and not bacteria. HIV spread silently through the 1970s and then, once discovered, it took years before researchers could figure out a way to reliably test for the virus.
“We’re in a very recent moment in terms of the ability of an interconnected, international scientific community to be able to even pursue options that have the potential to be satisfactory,” said Richard McKay, a historian at the University of Cambridge who studies epidemics.
The involvement of politicians like Marshall is likely not helping. As the U.S. and other countries have questioned whether the virus was leaked by a lab it has created a standoff with China, where it’s difficult to get the information necessary to rule out the scenario. Causation and blame
For as long as we have known about diseases, there have been people trying to figure out where they came from. It was as true in 430 BC, when Athenians thought their enemies in the Peloponnesian war, the Spartans, were spreading a poison, as it was in the 14th century, when Jews were falsely blamed for the Black Death and massacred, as it was in the 1980s and 1990s when a French-Canadian flight attendant was falsely accused of being the person who introduced HIV to North America.
“It’s nothing new,” McKay said. “I think it touches on how we as human beings think about causation.”
And, McKay points out, there is a fine line between looking at causation and placing blame.
Right now, Marshall is blaming China.
Not necessarily for starting the pandemic, at least not yet. His argument is that China has not provided as much information as he thinks scientists need in order to find out where the virus came from.
“I think this is one more piece of that puzzle of why we have to be tough on China,” Marshall said.
Last week, Marshall filed a bill called the Chinese Communist Party Accountability Act of 2021, which would impose sanctions on China’s minister of the National Health Commission and the director of the China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s unlikely his bill will pass, as Democrats control Congress. But it’s part of his eight steps for investigating the origins of COVID-19. Other potential steps include holding up nominations to posts in the Biden Administration and forming bipartisan investigations across multiple committees.
The broader public interest has also enabled Marshall to get bipartisan support for a deeper investigation into the origins of the virus. In August, he worked with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, to pass a resolution calling for an inquiry into the outbreak.
“It really does help if you appear and you’re a conservative on Fox News,” Blendon said. “You have a very broad constituency who at least lean that way and you get an incredible amount of recognition for that.”
Marshall, when asked if getting on Fox News was important to his base, said it’s important for him to communicate to “all the people of Kansas.”
WHITE POWER IN THE STREETS OF AMERIKA
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene encouraged her Twitter followers to donate to a fundraiser for Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse
Yelena Dzhanova Sat, October 9, 2021, 9:08 AM·2 min read Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted a fundraising link for Kyle Rittenhouse.
Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people during a Black Lives Matter protest in August 2020.
He has since become a symbol for right-wing gun-rights advocates.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Saturday tweeted a fundraiser link for Kenosha, Wisconsin, shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, encouraging her followers to donate to his legal defense.
Rittenhouse, at 17 years old, was accused of killing two people during a Black Lives Matter protest in August 2020.
"This is where Kyle Rittenhouse's donations should be made so this young man can afford his legal defense when jury selection starts in just a few weeks," Greene wrote in the tweet.
Earlier Friday, the GOP lawmaker asked her followers to "remember" Rittenhouse.
"Democrats seeded chaos and stoked violence in cities all over the country for a year," she wrote on Twitter. "Billions in damage, devastating communities, lawlessness & the media cheered it on. A boy stepped forward when most grown men stayed home."
That post was flagged by Twitter as one "glorifying violence." The tweet, however, is still up because "Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible."
Greene's office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, injuring Gaige Grosskreutz, and being a minor in possession of a dangerous weapon. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His trial is set for November.
Rittenhouse’s defense argues weapon used to kill BLM protesters justified by hunting laws
Ny Magee
THE GRIO Fri, October 8, 2021,
Teen’s legal team claims he shot two individuals and wounded another in self-defense
Attorneys for Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager who fatally shot two people during a protest in Wisconsin last year, are trying to get the misdemeanor charge for possession of a deadly weapon dismissed by invoking hunting laws.
Rittenhouse’s murder trial begins in less than a month. On Tuesday, his attorneys tried to get the misdemeanor charge dismissed. They cited a Wisconsin hunting statute that allowed the teen to carry an assault rifle on the night he traveled from Illinois to Kenosha where he fatally shot two people and injured a third, NBC News reports.
“There appears to be an exception for 17-year-olds,” defense attorney Corey Chirafisi said, per the Chicago Tribune.
Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger encouraged the defense to tell a jury that Rittenhouse was hunting on the night he shot two Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
“They can submit evidence that the defendant had a certificate to hunt and he was engaged in legal hunting on the streets of Kenosha that night,” Binger said, according to the newspaper.
Kyle Rittenhouse (Photo: ABC News 18)
As previously reported by theGrio, the teenager from Antioch, Illinois traveled across state lines, armed with what has been described as a “long gun,” purportedly to help support law enforcement and protect public property amid protests over Jacob Blake. Blake was an unarmed Black man who was shot in the back by police.
Several other popular crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe and Fundly opted to deactivate campaigns attempting to raise money for the teen following his arrest last August, according to Newsweek.
Rittenhouse’s legal team claims he shot two individuals in self-defense as they were trying to disarm him. Witnesses have alleged that he was stalking the city and threatening people with his weapon.
As reported by The Associated Press, prosecutors say they have infrared video from an FBI surveillance plane that shows Rittenhouse followed and confronted the first man he shot.
A judge ruled last month that prosecutors can’t argue that Rittenhouse is affiliated with the Proud Boys or that he attacked a woman months before the shootings, bolstering his position as he prepares for a politically charged trial.
Rittenhouse shot Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, Anthony Huber, 26, and Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle, killing Rosenbaum and Huber and wounding Grosskreutz. Conservatives across the country have rallied around Rittenhouse, raising $2M to cover his bail. Black Lives Matter supporters have painted him as a trigger-happy racist.
Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder refused to dismiss the misdemeanor weapons charge on Tuesday, stating that a review of the state statutes was necessary, according to the report.
“I don’t feel comfortable making a ruling,” he said. “The basic concept is the rule … has to be clear to ordinary people.”
Jury selection is set to begin Nov. 1 and the trial is expected to last up to two weeks.
