At United Nations, Afghan women appeal: don't let Taliban in


Former Afghan diplomat Asila Wardak, former Afghan politician and peace negotiator Fawzia Koofi, Afghan journalist Anisa Shaheed and former Afghan politician, Naheed Fareed speak to reporters outside the U.N. Security Council


Michelle Nichols
Thu, October 21, 2021

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A group of Afghan women urged the United Nations to block the Taliban from gaining a seat at the world body, calling for better representation for their country during a visit to the organisation's New York headquarters on Thursday.

"It's very simple," former Afghan politician and peace negotiator Fawzia Koofi told reporters outside the UN Security Council in New York. "The UN needs to give that seat to somebody who respects the rights of everyone in Afghanistan."

"We are talked a lot about, but we are not listened to," she said of Afghan women. "Aid, money, recognition - they are all leverage that the world should use for inclusion, for respect to the rights of women, for respect to the rights of everybody."

Koofi was joined by former politician, Naheed Fareed, former diplomat Asila Wardak and journalist Anisa Shaheed.

"When the Taliban took Afghanistan ... they said that they will give permission to women to resume their jobs, to go back to the school, but they didn't keep that promise," said Fareed.

Since seizing power in mid-August, Taliban leaders have vowed to respect women's rights in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law. But under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, women could not work and girls were banned from school. Women had to cover their faces and be accompanied by a male relative when they left home.

The United Nations is considering rival claims on who should represent Afghanistan. The Taliban nominated their Doha-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as UN ambassador, while Ghulam Isaczai - the UN envoy representing the government ousted by the Taliban - is seeking to remain in the country's seat.

UN member states are expected to make a decision by the end of the year.

Wardak urged countries to pressure the Taliban "to put their words in action" when it comes to women's rights, adding: "If you're going to give them a seat, there should be conditions."

The women spoke to reporters before addressing a UN event on support for Afghan women and girls, organized by Britain, Qatar, Canada, UN Women and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

The UN Security Council also met separately on Thursday to discuss women, peace and security.

"Women and girls in Afghanistan are pinning their hopes and dreams on this very council and world body to help them recover their rights to work, travel and go to school," Isaczai told the 15-member council. "It would be morally reprehensible if we do nothing and let them down."

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Ontario is running out of places to dump garbage, here's one company's solution

Isabella O'Malley
Fri, October 22, 2021

Ontario is running out of places to dump garbage, here's one company's solution

Nearly 15 million people live in Ontario, which is roughly 38 per cent of the entire Canadian population. With this comes a growing appetite for resource consumption, even though the province is running out of space to dump its waste.

Based on population growth projections and economic trends, the provincial government estimates that 16 new or expanded landfills will be needed by 2050 without improvements in waste reduction and resource recovery.

Stormfisher, a company that turns food waste into energy, says that they have the solution for diverting more waste from landfills. The company operates the largest private organic waste-to-energy biogas facility in North America with locations currently operating in both the U.S. and Canada.

“Ontario is a leader in regards to anaerobic digestion. There are about 30 plants that are working on farms as well as industrial facilities like ours,” Brandon Moffat, StormFisher’s Vice President of Development, told The Weather Network.

“We need a lot more of these in Ontario, we figure maybe 100 more of varying sizes and scales and so we think that municipalities and industrial facilities, as well as farms, can play a role in the production of renewable natural gas from organic waste,” Moffat said.

a woman putting food into the food garbage 
Decomposing organic waste in landfills contributes to the staggering methane emissions. (Vesnaandjic/ E+/ Getty Images)

HOW FOOD GARBAGE TURNS INTO ENERGY

Energy is created when discarded organic waste is placed in a digester that is absent of oxygen and filled with bacteria. The bacteria release methane as they consume the organic matter, which can be used as-is or can be upgraded to a quality equivalent to natural gas that is extracted from the earth.

“We can make a pipeline-quality gas that is renewable in nature that we can then sell to natural gas utilities, corporations, institutions, and municipalities,” explained Moffat. The prospective biogas applications include anything that currently uses natural gas, such as home furnaces and heavy-duty trucks.

When methane is burned as a fuel it turns into water and carbon dioxide. This differs from the methane emissions that are released directly into the atmosphere without being burned, which occurs from conventional landfills, fossil fuel usage, and livestock farming.

Methane emissions are a notorious pollutant because they capture significantly more heat than carbon dioxide on multi-decadal timescales, and a growing number of scientists and policymakers are calling for drastic reductions of this greenhouse gas.

Although biogas is not a carbon-free energy source, it is regarded as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, which release staggering levels of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. According to IEA Bioenergy, the turnover time between carbon in plants and in the atmosphere is only a few hundred years, whereas the turnover time between carbon and fossil fuels is over 10,000 years.

In addition to the sustainable impacts, Moffat commented that the economic development and employment perspectives are some of the perks of what StormFisher does.

“The circularity of what we do is really great from the environmental side but there is also the economic side. We provide good-paying jobs for the staff that work in our facilities but also the indirect jobs for the trucking groups, mill rights, and electricians that support our type of infrastructure,” Moffat said.

“Just because it's circular people always think it costs more, when in fact we’re lower cost than most landfills in terms of our processing fees and we are able to put those fees back into the community in terms of the operating expenses to run our facilities day in and day out.”

Thumbnail credit: ugurhan/ E+/ Getty Images

Bourbon maker reaches tentative deal with striking workers

Kentucky Bourbon Producer-Strike

FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2021 file photo, members of Local 23D Union picket in front of Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown, Ky. Heaven Hill, one of the world's largest bourbon producers, announced a tentative contract deal Friday, Oct. 22, with striking union workers, just days after signaling it intended to start hiring permanent replacement employees for bottling and warehouse operations in Kentucky.(Silas Walker/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP, File)More

BRUCE SCHREINER
Fri, October 22, 2021, 

Heaven Hill, one of the world's largest bourbon producers, announced a tentative contract deal Friday with a union representing striking workers, just days after signaling it intended to start hiring permanent replacement employees for bottling and warehouse operations in Kentucky.

About 420 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23D went on strike about six weeks ago, forming picket lines at Heaven Hill’s operations in Bardstown after rejecting a previous contract proposal. The workers will vote Saturday on the latest five-year contract offer.

The dispute revolved around health care and worker scheduling issues. Wrangling over scheduling was a sign of the bourbon industry’s growing pains as it tries to keep up with global demand.

“The agreement continues Heaven Hill’s long-standing commitment to its team members with industry-leading health care, wage growth and increased schedule flexibility,” Heaven Hill said in a statement Friday.

Neither Kentucky-based Heaven Hill nor union officials provided details Friday about the tentative contract deal. Local union President Matt Aubrey said the union reached a “fully recommended tentative agreement” with the company.

“With the strong support of the Bardstown community, these hardworking men and women have been standing together for more than a month to protect these good Kentucky jobs that their families have counted on for generations,” Aubrey said in a statement. "Heaven Hill workers will make their voices heard tomorrow when they vote on this tentative agreement.”

 

Family-owned and operated Heaven Hill produces Evan Williams, one of the world’s top-selling bourbons. The spirits company's other brands include Elijah Craig, Henry McKenna, Old Fitzgerald, Larceny and Parker’s Heritage Collection.

On Monday, Heaven Hill announced the contract talks had reached an impasse. The company said it would begin the process of hiring permanent replacement workers. Union leaders responded that they were willing to continue negotiations and accused the company of wanting to replace the striking employees with non-union workers.

But the public acrimony did not permanently derail the negotiations. The two sides resumed bargaining Thursday, resulting in the tentative agreement announced a day later.

Workers often spend long careers at Kentucky bourbon distilleries, and the jobs often attract multiple generations of families. Disputes flare up occasionally, and other strikes occurred in recent years at Jim Beam and Four Roses — other iconic names in the bourbon sector.

The bourbon industry has been on a long upward trajectory.

Combined U.S. sales for bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey rose 8.2%, or $327 million, to $4.3 billion in 2020, despite plunging sales from bars and restaurants because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States reported early this year.

Kentucky distilleries produce 95% of the world’s bourbon supply, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

US Fossil fuel executives to testify at "landmark" hearing focused on climate disinformation



Noah Garfinkel
Fri, October 22, 2021

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced on Friday it will hold a "landmark" hearing next week with fossil fuel executives focused on the industry's role in spreading climate disinformation.

Why it matters: This is the first time oil company CEOs, and the head of their main trade group, will testify under oath about their knowledge of the link between burning fossil fuels and climate change, per Axios' Andrew Freedman.

Details: The hearing will take place on October 28th and top executives from ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron, and Shell Oil are slated to appear, as are trade group execs from the American Petroleum Institute and President and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"We are deeply concerned that the fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits for decades while contributing to climate change that is devastating American communities, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and ravaging the natural world," committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and subcommittee chair Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote in September. "We are also concerned that to protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change."

The committee will also focus on efforts to block reforms and lobby against potential climate change action.

This hearing comes ahead of the the COP26 climate summit, slated to begin October 31 in Glasgow.

The big picture: Oil giants, under increasing pressure from activists and investors, have in recent years been stepping up their own climate efforts and investments in cleaner technologies. But oil and gas remain the dominant business lines, per Axios' Ben Geman.

OMG! BLASPHEMY! IS FREE SPEECH

Antifa protesters disrupt Texas college campus pro-life prayer vigil: 'F--- your God!'


Jon Brown

FOX NEWS IS OUTRAGED,OUTRAGED I SAY
Thu, October 21, 2021, 


EXCLUSIVE: Antifa protesters disrupted a pro-life candlelight prayer vigil Monday night on the campus of the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton.

The protesters, who reportedly numbered in the hundreds, chanted blasphemous slogans and attempted to drown out the small group of students gathering to demonstrate against abortion, as seen in video obtained by Fox News Digital.

The vigil had been organized by the UNT chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT), a student group that has existed in some form since 1980.


Kelly Neidert, who founded the UNT chapter of YCT and has chaired it since 2019, is unsure where all of the protesters came from but speculated they might have been summoned by an advertisement that circulated on social media earlier in the day. The ad was emblazoned with the three-arrow insignia of Antifa.

"Fascists are organizing in your area," read a release apparently directed to members of Antifa in the area of the university, which is approximately 40 miles north of Dallas. "Tonight the young conservatives have invited groyper influencers & white nationalists such as Lance Johnston to a pro life 'vigil' in supporting christo-fascist abortion legislation."

Explaining they were expecting only 10 or 20 protesters, Neidert told Fox News that she and her fellow demonstrators were caught off-guard by the size of their opposition.

"They harassed us, they were throwing things at us," she said. "They were chanting things. They brought all sorts of instruments that they were playing to drown out whatever we were saying. They brought their megaphones, they brought whistles."

Neidert said some of the protesters tried to pick fights with the pro-life students, told them to kill themselves, and followed them to their cars to harass them.

In one of the videos obtained by Fox News, the pro-life students chant, "Christ is king!" to which a protester responds by chanting, "F*** your God!"

In another video, a protester screams through a megaphone that she "loves sacrificing children."

Neidert noted that some protesters also expressed hatred for Gov. Gregg Abbott, R-Texas, who recently signed a controversial law banning abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.

UNT spokesperson Leigh Anne Gullett told Fox News in a statement: "A few hundred students with opposing views gathered on campus Monday evening to exercise their free speech rights. The gathering ended without incident."

Demonstrations by YCT against abortion have been repeatedly vandalized. In March 2020, the group placed 1,000 pink flags on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, each flag representing approximately 60,000 of the babies aborted each year in the United States. Within 12 hours, all the flags had been removed.

In October 2020, video captured students plucking up flags from a similar display at UNT.

Neidert has come to fear for her safety on campus, where she said other students often recognize her and flip her off.

"I think they just really hate anybody who doesn't agree with everything that they believe," she said of her opponents. "And they just really don't know how to cope with other people who have different beliefs. So they want to silence us and say that we're wrong, because they just don't understand that some people believe differently."

In July 2020, alleged practitioners of witchcraft sent Neidert direct messages on Twitter that threatened her with hexes and references to the devil.

The threats came in response to an initiative by which YCT encouraged students to celebrate National Coming Out Day by "coming out" as conservatives. They also made a point about affirmative action by holding a bake sale that charged different prices based on the customer’s ethnicity.

Neidert, a Christian, described the threats as "pure evil, especially when they make references to Satan and they think it’s funny.

"It’s not funny, and I’m definitely more concerned for them than I am for myself, if they think that’s okay," she added.

COP26: A climate solution lies right under our feet but it may not be on the agenda

By Lauren Kent, CNN Photographs by Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou, CNN 18 hrs ago

Forests have long been celebrated as the natural heroes in the fight against the climate crisis. They are so good at absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, a consortium of environmental groups are calling on the world to plant one trillion trees over the next decade.

© Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN

 Ben Sweeney is working to restore species-rich grasslands at Plantlife's Ranscombe Farm nature reserve.

But while we are looking up at the treetops for climate solutions, some campaigners are urging the world to look down, where another answer lies -- right under our feet.

Forests, peatlands, deserts and tundra can all absorb and hold stocks of carbon-dioxide (CO2). Of all the carbon held in land-based ecosystems, around 34% can be found in grasslands, data from the World Resources Institute show. That's not much less than the 39% held in forests.

"Whether you look at the Serengeti, the Cerrado in Brazil, whether you look at what's left of the prairies in North America or the steppes of Mongolia -- every single one of our major, iconic grassland habitats is under threat at the moment," Ian Dunn, chief executive of the British conservation organization Plantlife, told CNN.

There's also plenty of it in the United Kingdom, which will host world leaders and climate negotiators in just over a week at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland. Among several items on the agenda is how to protect forests and plant more trees to help slash global emissions.

But Plantlife, among other groups, is campaigning for grasslands to be protected at an international level and part of any deal that emerges in Glasgow.

While leaders meet in the Scottish city, Plantlife is working to restore more than 100,000 hectares of meadows, including one on the other side of the United Kingdom, in the southern English county of Kent.

The Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve looks just like your typical patch of English countryside, with its soft rolling hills and grazing cattle. The grass here looks ordinary, browned in patches from the autumn weather. But come spring, the rare orchids, bellflowers and rock roses will bloom in a celebration of this grassland's biodiversity.

Restoring species-rich ecosystems like this takes time, said Ben Sweeney, Ranscombe Farm's manager, who has been working on this grassland since 2010.

"It will take a couple of decades," he said.

Ranscombe Farm protects not only grasslands but also woodlands, rough grazing pastures and crop fields for rare plants.

Sweeney explains that just like with an animal sanctuary, Ranscombe Farm nurtures rare plants in small sections of the reserve, where they are thriving, and can hopefully grow and spread out into bigger habitats soon.

© Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN 

Ben Sweeney walks through one of the carbon-storing grasslands Plantlife has been working to restore.

But even after years of careful management, rangers have not been able to reverse all the impacts that farming and land degradation have had on the site.

In the UK, these vital habitats have been slowly disappearing as a consequence of decades of intensive agriculture, housing development, and infrastructure build-up over the last century. The UK has lost more than 2 million acres of grasslands as urban and woodland areas expand, according to the UK Center of Ecology & Hydrology.

That concerns activists, because grasslands not only store carbon but also serve as a buffer for extreme weather and help prevent soil erosion. Their roots hold together light soil, and the ground cover prevents erosion from wind and water. These habitats help with natural flood management by holding water after extreme weather events, then releasing it gradually.

© Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN

 Cows grazing at Plantlife's Ranscombe Farm Reserve help stimulate plant growth.

The loss of grasslands also threatens the important species that rely on them, like bees, butterflies and other pollinators.

A recent study published by the University of Manchester revealed the UK's grasslands store more than 1.8 billion metric tons of carbon. That's the equivalent of storing the yearly emissions from about 400 million cars.

"But they are pretty much ignored or have been ignored in many sustainability policies," said soil expert and ecology professor Richard Bardgett, the study's lead researcher.

Another study, published in 2018 in IOP Science, concluded that grasslands in California could play a bigger role than forests as carbon sinks, as they are less vulnerable to fires and drought, which parts of the world will experience more of as the Earth continues to warm. That's because grasslands keep most of their carbon locked in their roots underground -- even during drought and fire -- unlike forests, in which carbon is spread up and throughout trees.

Your diet could be linked to grassland destruction

When managed poorly, grasslands can become a net source of emissions, rather than a sink to remove them. Rearing livestock on grassland, too, plays a major role in methane emissions, which is also contributing to the climate crisis.

A global increase in demand for meat and dairy products, as well as soy, is putting pressure on grasslands.

The world's most biodiverse savanna, the Cerrado in Brazil, has been reduced to around half its original size, mainly for the expansion of beef and soy production, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which says the Cerrado loses an area equivalent to the size of São Paulo every three months.

In China, vast expanses of grasslands are in a "state of ecological crisis," according to scientists, caused by overgrazing of the land. Meanwhile, in the United States, the expansion of farmland has led to the prairies of the Great Plains losing an average four football fields every minute, according to a WWF report published in 2020.

While grassland protection is a global concern, there are growing expectations for the UK to show climate leadership ahead of COP26.

Campaigners are disappointed with the omission of grasslands as a nature-based solution in the government's Net Zero Strategy, which is being seen as a potential blueprint for other nations' climate roadmaps.

"The importance of grasslands in carbon capture, improved biodiversity, sustainable food production, water management and societal wellbeing continues to be missed in this report and in government policy," Dunn said.

"We need to be working on a mosaic of habitats."

Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, said that the government's Net Zero Strategy had significant gaps and that its authors, from the government, "don't seem to have fully recognized the role that nature can play."

There's little new for nature in the strategy, he said.

"Instead, old policies are being recycled -- and it's not enough."

The land restoration policies will rely on a modest $880 million (£640 million) Nature for Climate fund, which had already been announced in the Conservative government's election manifesto, Bennett points out.

A Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) spokesperson told CNN it was protecting grasslands at some reserve sites in England, launching a pilot scheme for more sustainable farming practices, and giving more than $55 million (£40 million) in grants for nature recovery projects.

"Biodiversity loss and climate change are global problems requiring global solutions," the spokesperson said.

But Defra did not comment when asked whether grasslands would be discussed at COP26 and sent quotes around the importance of ending illegal logging in forests as a nature-based climate solution.

A group of 38 British lawmakers are also calling for international recognition and protection for grasslands at COP26. In a motion, they want parliament's House of Commons to recognize the role of grasslands for its ability to reduce emissions, reduce flood risk and act as critical ecosystems for pollinators.

They urge "government ministers to use the opportunity of COP26 in Glasgow to seek international recognition and protections for species-rich grasslands, to lead by example in taking action to mitigate the effects of climate change and increase biodiversity and to ensure that those areas of natural beauty are preserved for future generations to enjoy."




 © Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN
The loss of grasslands threatens the region's biodiversity.

APPARENTLY NOT AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

Climate change disrupting natural cycles at drier Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe Climate Change

Water flows have slowed to a trickle on the Truckee River flowing out of Lake Tahoe from Tahoe City, Calif. a few miles upstream from Truckee, Calif. Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021. Drought fueled by climate change has dropped Lake Tahoe below its natural rim and halted flows into the Truckee River, an historically cyclical event that's occurring sooner and more often than it used to _ raising fears about what might be in store for the famed alpine lake. (AP Photo/Scott Sonner).More

SCOTT SONNER
Fri, October 22, 2021

TAHOE CITY, Calif. (AP) — Drought fueled by climate change has dropped Lake Tahoe below its natural rim and halted flows into the Truckee River, an historically cyclical event that’s occurring sooner and more often than it used to — raising fears about what might be in store for the famed alpine lake.

Scientists are concerned that the growing frequency of low-water extremes may become the new normal.

They point to seasonal shifts in weather patterns causing precipitation that historically falls as snow to arrive in the form of rain atop the Sierra along the California-Nevada state line.

“Our summers are lasting longer. Springs are coming sooner,” said Gregory Schladow, a water resource and environmental engineering professor who is the founding director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.

“The water level has always gone up and down,” he said this week. “It’s always occasionally gone below the rim. But the frequency of the changes is increasing.”

Over the past century, the amount of precipitation falling as snow has declined from 52% in 1910 to 33% in 2020 and is projected to drop below 20% by the end of the century, according to experts at the research center in Incline Village, Nevada.

Rain runs off the mountains instead of pilling up as snow on mountaintops for safe storage until it is most needed in late spring and summer — the high Sierra equivalent of somebody leaving the freezer door open at the top of the refrigerator.

Since summer, boat ramps have been closed. Docks sit precariously above the receding lake’s dry bottom. Boat and kayaking rentals have fallen, and river rafting operations on the Truckee River had to end early.

“Our season was short, and we fear there may not be one next summer,” said Toni Rudnick of the Truckee River Raft Company.

“It all depends on the snowpack,” she said. “In 2015, didn’t open at all when the Truckee River was a series of puddles ... In 2016, we had a 15-day season.”

The U.S. Forest Service canceled this month’s annual kokanee salmon festival at South Lake Tahoe because low water levels have all but cut off their migration route to spawn in Taylor Creek.

Deborah Grant Hanna is no scientist, but she’s witnessed decades of ups and downs in water levels during 42 years at the lake. She manages the Gatekeeper Museum/Gift Store next to the dam in Tahoe City where the dry lake bed now extends 200 yards (183 meters) off the normal shoreline.

“The water usually gets the lowest in mid-November. It was lower than now in 2015-16,” she said. “The problem with the rain now is it goes away from the mountain and causes flooding rather than storing snowpack. And as far as the local economy goes, the rain falls on the snow at the ski resorts.”

The lake dropped below the natural rim at an elevation of 6,223 feet (1,897 meters) twice in the 1920s after the dam was completed in 1913 and created the capacity to store up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) of water above the lake’s natural surface.

The level fell below the rim a half dozen times during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, but not again until 1961, followed by 1977 and 1988. Since then, it’s happened nine times — six since 2004.

Sarah Muskopf, a Forest Service aquatics biologist, said the drop in water occurs every year, but with varying degrees of intensity.

“Obviously, the changing climate is making this a more serious problem as aquatic habitat starts the season with less water, the system dries earlier, and water temperatures reach levels that do not support life cycle needs annually and earlier depending the water year,” she explained.

Tahoe’s water last reached its peak level in July 2019, but since then has generally fallen. The usual increase due to snowmelt in May and June was largely absent in 2021, the Tahoe Environmental Research Center said in a bulletin update this month.

Winter likely will arrive in the next few months and the lake will rise above the natural rim again, it said.

“But if the 2021-22 winter turns out to be below average” — as most models predict — “next year the lake will fall below the natural rim much sooner and likely stay there for most of 2022,” it said.

“This will impact recreation in 2022, as many docks and boat ramps will be further away for the shoreline. The growth and the washing up of filamentous algae on the very wide beaches will increase,” it said.

In the southwest corner of the lake, silt could build up across the mouth of the 12-foot (3-meter) deep Emerald Bay, cutting it off from the lake itself for the first time in recorded history, the center said. The same might happen at the mouths of many streams, "cutting off access to spawning kokanee salmon next fall."

Researchers at Lake Tahoe are better armed than most with scientific knowledge since then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore hosted an environmental summit at the lake in 1997. It paved the way for hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in new studies there over the next two decades.

Back then, the focus was on a decline in Tahoe’s famed clarity. Initial concerns centered on air emissions from increased traffic, use of fertilizers and shoreline development that fuels erosion and sends fine particles into the lake.

Schladow, the research center director, said that was followed by a better understanding of invasive species, like the Mysis shrimp, which were introduced into Tahoe in the 1960s as a food source for native trout but have been devouring the native zooplankton that historically helped keep the lake clear.

“And while all this was happening, the planet was changing,” Schladow said. “The dominant processes in the lake are very different than they were 25 years ago. It doesn’t mix as often. It starts out warm earlier. Temperatures are at higher levels.”

“It’s a very complex system — a great analogue for every other lake in the West.”

Less Than 50 Percent of Americans Back Climate Proposals to Substantially Cut Emissions

Jason Lemon 

As Democrats negotiate over climate change provisions intended to be included in President Joe Biden's Build Back Better reconciliation package, new polling shows that less than half of Americans support proposals that would substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions

.

© Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images 

Climate activists protest from the side of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after scaling the building on October 14 in Washington, D.C.

Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has opposed significant climate change provisions included in the initially $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" package. The White House reportedly has been scrambling to address his concerns and find other ways to combat climate change. Meanwhile, less than 50 percent of Americans appear to support efforts to significantly address the crisis.

Polling conducted from October 19 to 21 by Yahoo News/YouGov found that only 48 percent of Americans favor cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. Meanwhile, more than a quarter (27 percent) are opposed to the idea.

Similarly, the survey results showed that just 48 percent back limiting greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline-powered cars and coal-fired power plants. Nearly a third (30 percent) opposed the proposals altogether.

Even less—just 43 percent—support a proposal to decrease emissions by rewarding power utilities that switch to renewable energy while requiring utilities that continue to burn coal and oil to pay fines over time. Only 45
 percent approve of "a program that requires polluters to pay a fee for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit" that also includes "a rebate for families making less than $400,000 per year" to counter possible price hikes on "gasoline, electricity or home heating fuel."

Only half (50 percent) of Americans surveyed view climate change as an "existential threat" despite the dire warnings from scientists for years. While a substantial majority of Democrats (78 percent) view the climate crisis as an "existential threat," just 45 percent of independents and less than a quarter (24 percent) of Republicans polled see it that way.

Climate scientists have repeatedly warned for decades of the growing crisis caused by manmade pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Back in 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that major reforms worldwide were necessary within just over a decade to prevent the worst impacts of the crisis.

More than 99 percent of scientific research on climate change confirms that the crisis is being caused by human activity, according to a review published this week. However, 45 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of independents and 4 percent of Democrats continue to deny the role humans play in causing climate change, according to the new polling data.

Meanwhile, the future of Biden's and Democrats' major climate change proposals remains uncertain due to Manchin's opposition. Progressive Democrats have slammed the moderate lawmaker for his stance on the issue, noting that he directly profits from the coal industry. Last year, Manchin garnered about $500,000 in earnings from a coal brokerage he founded, which is now managed by his son.

"Senator Joe Manchin has veto power over the country's transition to a clean energy economy. The tyranny of Joe Manchin is a tragedy for the rest of us," Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, tweeted last Friday.

"We have a moral obligation and a governing mandate to pass policy that addresses climate change," the official Twitter account of the Congressional Progressive Caucus posted on Saturday. "Inaction is not an option. Progressives in Congress are fighting for policies that address the scope of the crisis."

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CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M BIG PHARMA BIOTECH
Jury gets chance to hear Elizabeth Holmes’ bold promises


 In this Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021, file photo, Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos, arrives at the federal courthouse for jury selection in her trial, in San Jose, Calif. A jury weighing the fate of fallen Silicon Valley star Holmes got its first chance Friday, Oct. 22, to listen to recordings of her boasting to investors about purported breakthroughs in a blood-testing technology. (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File)

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A jury weighing the fate of fallen Silicon Valley star Elizabeth Holmes got its first chance Friday to listen to recordings of her boasting to investors about purported breakthroughs in a blood-testing technology.

The technology heralded as a quantum leap in blood testing, however, later dissolved into a scandal that now threatens to send her to prison.

The drama unfolded in a San Jose, California, courtroom with federal prosecutors playing a series of recordings from a December 2013 conference call that Holmes held with investors in Theranos, the company she started in 2003 after dropping out of college at 19 in hopes of becoming a revered visionary in the mold of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

The audio clips of Holmes capped the sixth week of a high-profile trial revolving around allegations that Holmes duped sophisticated investors and major retailers with bogus promises about a Theranos device dubbed Edison. The company’s machine was supposed to be able to quickly scan for hundreds of potential health problems with a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

In the recordings, Holmes — speaking in a husky voice that some critics said she adopted to sound more authoritative — boasted about partnerships with big pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer that evidence in the trial has revealed didn’t pan out. She also mentioned contracts that never materialized because Theranos couldn’t get the Edison to work properly. The device’s repeated failures disillusioned former U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, a former Theranos board member ally who testified earlier in the trial.

“We could establish what has the opportunity to be the largest lab in the country,” Holmes told investors in one of the clips played Friday. She laid out that ambition just a few months after Theranos had struck a deal to set up blood-testing “wellness centers” in Walgreens stores across the country.

But Theranos wound up in only 40 Walgreens stores. After investing $140 million in Theranos, Walgreens wound up ending the Theranos alliance in 2016, not long after a series of explosive articles in The Wall Street Journal and regulatory audits exposed chronic flaws in the blood-testing technology.

Before everything blew up, Holmes raised hundreds of millions of dollars from a list of investors that included billionaires such as media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family behind Walmart, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The clips played Friday were recorded by Bryan Tolbert, an adviser to Dallas real estate developer Carl Hall, who invested $7 million in Theranos.

The flurry of investments at one point valued privately held Theranos at $9 billion, including a $4.5 billion stake owned by Holmes. Now she is facing up to 20 years in prison if she is convicted in a trial that is scheduled to continue until late this year.

As she has done throughout the trial, Holmes on Friday sat stoically alongside her lawyers while her voice filled the courtroom. She has yet to have a reason to speak during the trial, though her attorneys have signaled she make eventually take the witness stand to defend her actions as Theranos’ CEO.

Holmes, 37, has denied any wrongdoing, and blamed any misconduct on her former boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Bulwani, who was Theranos’ chief operating officer. In court documents, Holmes’ lawyers have asserted she was manipulated by Bulwani, a charge his lawyer has vehemently denied. Bulwani faces a separate trial next year.

The jury that listened raptly to the recordings of Holmes was whittled down Friday when U.S. District Judge Edward Davila dismissed one member for an undisclosed reason. Originally composed of 17 people, including five alternates, the jury is now down to 10 men and four women.

Elizabeth Holmes trial Week 7 recap: a $1 billion IPO plan, and a former staffer testifies he was told to change numbers to make test results seem normal

Sarah Jackson

Fri, October 22, 2021

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans leaves the Robert F. Peckham U.S. Courthouse after the delivery of opening arguments in her trial, in San Jose, California, U.S., September 8, 2021. Peter DaSilva/Reuters

• The seventh week of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' fraud trial has come and gone.

• It featured revelations on plans for a $1 billion IPO and ways staff tried to skirt testing issues.

• Here's everything that happened in the trial in its seventh week.

How Theranos tried to make unusual test results seem normal

Daniel Edlin, a college friend of Elizabeth Holmes' brother, Christian, and Theranos' former senior product manager, was pressed on his previous testimony about measures taken when guests like investors or business partners wanted to see the devices in action.

He spoke of a "demo app" that hid Theranos machine errors from view during demonstrations, as well as "null protocol," which meant the machines didn't actually analyze the samples, according to The New York Times. Edlin testified that, from there, Theranos staff would tell the guests their samples needed further analysis, and the blood would be sent to a lab, as Insider's Adam Lashinsky reported.

Jurors also saw emails from 2013 between Edlin, Holmes, former Theranos vice president Daniel Young, and former Theranos COO and president Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani.

In one email, Edlin pointed out a discrepancy in test results. Holmes replied, "The discrepancy will be a problem. We need to see if we can correct for it." Young asked Edlin to change the reference ranges on some of the results, which made results appear to fall within the normal range when they were actually abnormal.

Plans for a $1 billion IPO

Bryan Tolbert, the vice president of finance at investment firm Hall Group, which had invested $5 million in Theranos in 2013, testified that he had gathered from a meeting with Holmes that Theranos had raised $16 million in its first round, according to Law360 reporter Dorothy Atkins. His meeting notes also showed Theranos expected to raise $30 million in a second funding round with an eventual plan to go public in 2008 via an IPO valued at $1 billion.

Former Pfizer scientist unsure who approved Theranos' use of logo

Shane Weber, a former director of diagnostics at Pfizer, testified that he discouraged any deals with Theranos in a report about the now-defunct startup.

"Theranos unconvincingly argues the case for having accomplished tasks of interest to Pfizer," he wrote, according to The Wall Street Journal. Holmes' attorneys had repeatedly asked Judge Edward Davila to keep jurors from seeing the report, but Davila ultimately allowed prosecutors to present it.

Weber also wrote that Theranos was "non-informative, tangential, deflective or evasive" in its answers to due diligence questions.

Jurors also heard about Theranos' use of Pfizer's logo in a company report, implying that Pfizer had validated and supported Theranos' technology. The report boasted about Theranos machines' "superior performance," but Weber said he had never authorized the Pfizer logo use, and he didn't know of anyone at Pfizer who had, according to the East Bay Times. The report was later shared with Walgreens and other investors.

Theranos technology put to the test for possible use in the military

Some Theranos machines were sent to Africa to see if they could withstand high temperatures common in combat. Theranos had been having discussions with the Defense Department about possible uses of the company's machines in the military.

Theranos employees' emails, however, said the machines "did not have a way to cool down" and might run into performance issues if they operated outside of the range between 72 and 82 degrees, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A third juror departs

Yet another member of the 12-person jury has been dismissed. On Friday, a juror was excused and replaced with an alternate. This is the third juror to depart the trial; two of five alternates now remain with the case at roughly its halfway point. Judge Davila said there was "good cause" to excuse the juror but didn't provide a specific reason, according to CNBC. Each departure raises concerns about a possible mistrial.

You can catch up on Week 1 here, Week 2 here, Week 3 here, Week 4 here, Week 5 here, and Week 6 here. You can read how Holmes wound up on trial here and see the list of potential witnesses here. Everything else you need to know about the case is here.

Condoleezza Rice’s CRT stance proves she’s a foot solider for white supremacy

Touré
Fri, October 22, 2021

OPINION: Touré writes we are debating about whether we should teach our children real American history or if we should lie to them and protect their fragile white hearts.

Condoleezza Rice’s recent appearance on The View was offensive and disgusting for many reasons but she was who we thought she was: a soldier for white supremacy. Her thoughts on Critical Race Theory are completely white centric, as in, they revolve around the thoughts and needs of white people.

Her primary argument against Critical Race Theory is that history should not be taught in a way that makes white kids feel bad. What? We should whitewash U.S. history to protect the feelings of white children? Excuse me, I misspoke — we should whitewash U.S. history even more than we already do in order to protect the feelings of white children?



First of all, what about the feelings of Black children? What would their feelings be if they knew they were being taught a version of American history that was distorted to protect white kids? What message does that send to them? And what about the feelings they have when learning about the real American history?

Also this — white children and adults should absolutely feel bad about the past atrocities committed by white Americans. They should feel guilty. They should cringe at what their ancestors did. They should also understand that modern white power is directly related to those atrocities. White people gained economic and institutional advantages from slavery and segregation and the long-term subjugation of Black people that continue to help them to this day.

(Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

White people should know that American history is rated X and their relatives are the one who Black people had to fear. They didn’t arrive and have a nice dinner with the natives and buy Manhattan for a few trinkets.

The Europeans who settled early America made treaties with American Indians and then violated those treaties and slaughtered the natives as rapidly as possible. They didn’t merely own slaves and treat them kindly. They had a cruel and peculiar institution that kidnapped and human trafficked and then beat and raped and subjugated humans for generations.

Slavery was far more cruel and frightening than most people even know unless you read diaries written by former slaves. And the past is not done with us — slavery created the economy and the wealth that led to America becoming a global economic power. You didn’t have to own slaves in order to participate in that wealth-building but all of the wealth derived from it went to white people and was thus stolen from Black people.


In this Aug. 18, 2017, photo, a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest sits in a park in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Adrian Sainz, File)

American history is a series of cycles where white people grow more powerful because of the legalized oppression of Black people. American history is a series of stories where white people knock us down and stand on our necks and then ask why we’re on the ground. If we don’t know history we don’t understand reality and how it was constructed. I really don’t care if learning this makes white kids feel bad — and if it doesn’t then they are too heartless.

Also this — yes the teaching of American history can sometimes make people feel bad. Terrible things happened and it’s traumatizing. We should not hide the truth from our kids; we should aim to teach them what happened and then, together, deal with how we feel about it. Because even if the history initially makes you feel bad, that’s not enough of a reason to not teach it.

I recall many days where I learned more about slavery or segregation or Jim Crow or lynchings, days in grade school or in college where I was a Black Studies major. I often walked out of a classroom in a rage, thinking about the indignities visited upon my ancestors. But when I calmed down I realized those lessons had filled me with a sense of purpose —knowing what my people had gone through from slavery to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements made me feel like I had to do something valuable with my life in order to honor the fights and the sacrifices they had made.

(Photo: Adobe Stock)

I could feel the shoulders that I was standing upon to reach up for the life that I had and I owed it to them to use my life in a way that might honor them and make them proud.

On The View, Rice suggests that learning about America’s racial history could make Black children feel disempowered by race but it had the exact opposite impact on me. Just because the stories are hard to hear does not mean that it will damage the listeners.

Our classrooms should not be another example of white privilege, they should reflect the ugly reality of American history. But really the whole discussion is bizarre — we are debating about whether we should teach our children real American history or if we should lie to them and protect their fragile white hearts.

I cannot accept a country that contorts itself to avoid causing white pain. I’m not here to help comfort white people. And Lord knows I am never, ever going to center them.

Touré, theGrio.com
Touré is the host of the podcasts Toure Show and Democracyish and the podcast docuseries Who Was Prince? He is also the author of six books.