Climate change impact apparent in most weather-linked fluctuations on Earth

The effects of climate change can be seen in nearly all weather-related fluctuations in the atmosphere and on Earth, researchers say. File Photo by Martin Truffer/UAF/NASA/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The impact of climate change is apparent in nearly all aspects of weather-related fluctuations in the atmosphere and ecosystem, an analysis published Thursday by the journal Earth Systems Dynamics found.

This climate variability caused by global warming can be seen in events such as temperature and precipitation extremes over land, the increased number of fires in California and changes in bloom amplitude for phytoplankton in the North Atlantic Ocean, among others, the researchers said.

Each of these changes has important impacts for sustainable resource management, they said.

For example, extreme precipitation events between 2000 to 2009 and 2090 to 2099 are expected to become more commonplace over many regions worldwide, the data showed.

"In addition to large-scale changes in extreme events, our study also identified large-scale changes in the structure of the seasonal cycle over the 21st century," co-author Keith Rodgers said in a press release.

Modeling shows "an enhanced growing season length over the continental regions north of 50 degrees north latitude," said Rodgers, a senior research fellow at the IBS Center for Climate Physics in Pusan, South Korea.

Primarily due to mean warming and ensuing changes in the timing of the retreat and advance of winter snow cover, growing season length is projected to increase by three weeks by the end of the 21st century, he said.

It has been predicted that climate change will cause fluctuations in mean temperatures and precipitation for the rest of the 21st century.

In addition, it will likely also result in the occurrence of more pronounced extreme events and more variability in the Earth's environment, the researchers said.

These changes could have significant impacts on vulnerable ecosystems in both terrestrial and marine habitats, they said.

For this study, the researchers conducted a set of 100 global Earth system computer model simulations covering the period between 1850 and 2100, working with a "business-as-usual" scenario for relatively strong emissions of greenhouse gases over the 21st century.

The modeling experiments were given different initial conditions and, by virtue of the butterfly effect, the researchers were able to represent a wide range of possible climate states during the 250-year period.

The butterfly effect refers to the property of chaotic systems, such as the Earth's atmosphere, in which small changes in initial conditions can lead to large-scale and unpredictable variation in its future state.

The approach enabled the team to conduct sophisticated analyses of changes in the variability of the Earth system over time, they said.

The project required approximately 80 million hours of time on the IBS Center for Climate Physics' supercomputer, called Aleph, and approximately 5 Petabytes of disc space, or the equivalent of 5,000 normal hard discs, were needed for storage of the model output.

The computer simulations revealed that across the planet widespread changes in climate variability can be expected over the rest of the 21st century, including severe storms, fluctuations in seasons to alterations in El Niño cycles.

The findings have already motivated a number of more specialized scientific investigations designed to assess marine ecosystem impacts as well as cyclical changes that affect water supply, the researchers said.

"An important step moving forward will be to identify more fully the potential societal impacts," co-author Gokhan Danabasoglu said in a press release.

Researchers will then need "to communicate the implications for adaptation strategies," said Danabasoglu, senior scientific head of the Climate and Global Dynamics Lab at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

THEY ALREADY ARE

Hurricanes in 100 years could be far more devastating, study finds

By Mark Puleo, Accuweather.com

Cars are left stranded on the Long Island Expressway due to flooding from a massive downpour of rain from Hurricane Ida at the 2021 U.S. Open Tennis Championships in New York City on September 1. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Our understanding of hurricane formations and tracks has changed dramatically in the past century, but what do we know about the next century of storms?

A team of climate scientists from Rowan University in New Jersey set out to answer that question, using more than 35,000 computer simulations to study the evolution of storm tracks and better understand storm behaviors in the future. The scientists' findings were particularly concerning for one specific region of the United States.

Andra Garner, the study's lead researcher, told AccuWeather the climate models she used to analyze storm behavior evolution show that storm systems will only become more unforgiving in the decades to come."A couple of key things we found were that, over time, hurricanes seem like they're forming closer to the U.S. southeast coast, which means less time for those northeast cities to prepare for those storms to arrive," she told AccuWeather. "The other thing that happens is that over time, we see hurricanes moving their slowest when they're along the U.S. East Coast, which means that those communities being impacted by them see a longer duration of the storm impacts."


Garner said her team was motivated for years to study specifically the future of hurricane-influenced flooding in New York City. This was long before Ida, which had transitioned from a hurricane at landfall on the Gulf Coast to a tropical rainstorm as it traveled north, tearing through the eastern United States and New York City in August and September.

The study's main findings show that future hurricanes won't be a worry just in historically susceptible areas.

Using storm tracks from the pre-industrial era (850-1800) and the modern era (1970-2005), the team simulated the future tropical scenario (2080-2100) under a very high-emissions scenario to simulate the future climate.

In a future high-emissions scenario, as used by the study, the output of greenhouse gases caused by the heavy use of fossil fuels continues to add additional warming to the climate.

A building in downtown New Orleans is destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on August 30. File Photo by AJ Sisco/UPI | License Photo

"Tropical cyclone (TC) track characteristics in a changing climate remain uncertain," the study's abstract reads.

Although Garner said her team's initial motivations were to study the future tropical impacts on New York City, the findings revealed that a few East Coast cities should also be concerned.

"As the climate warms, TCs also form closer to the U.S. southeast coast, reach their slowest forward speed along the U.S. Atlantic coast and persist farther north and east in the Atlantic basin," the study said. "The time required for TCs to reach cities such as Boston, Norfolk and New York City is reduced, and the typical duration of TC conditions increases at each of these locations."

It may soon be time for those in the Northeast to call up their Gulf Coast friends and family to ask for some safety tips. However, the future changes will require more adaptations than simply boarding up windows and filling sandbags.

Garner said her findings should also influence the way these East Coast cities plan for the future. Simply put, the current setup may not fly.

"We're really living in a society that has been developed and adapted for a climate state that maybe is no longer the case, and we're now dealing with this rapidly changing climate," she said, adding that tropical systems like Hurricane Ida showed just how hard it is to prepare for something people haven't seen before. "It's definitely something we need to be thinking about -- How we can adapt our communities?"



As Ida painfully highlighted in August and September, rethinking community infrastructure is a matter of life or death.

For cities like New York and Philadelphia, where flooded-ravaged subways and buildings turned into death traps from Ida's intense rainfall, Garner said her study's findings should send a clear message about the urgency of strengthening coastal infrastructure ahead of these future storms.

"We need to be thinking about that now and coming up with ways that we can make those communities more resilient," she said. "Protecting against things like sea-level rise and storm surge, updating our infrastructure like with some of the problems we consistently see in New York City with the subways flooding and things like that. We need to be thinking about those kinds of issues."


4 / 5A man walks past a giant live oak tree that was blown down in the Mid-City area of New Orleans during Hurricane Ida, Tuesday, August 31, 2021. Photo by AJ Sisco/UPI | License Photo

On top of simply forecasting the future with her simulation models, Garner said, her research shows how we've already seen great changes from the pre-industrial era to the present.

"We absolutely need to be taking those steps now to try to make our communities more resilient and able to handle those kinds of impacts."

Garner told AccuWeather the study highlighted three key locations for future storm scenarios -- The Battery (NYC), Norfolk, Va., and Boston.

"Where the colors are warmer," Garner said, noting the red, yellow and pink parts of the map seen above, "there are more storm tracks in the future compared to the pre-industrial era." The parts of the map where the colors are cooler, with shades of blue denoted that there will be "fewer storm tracks in the future compared to the pre-industrial era."


Rather than curving into the Big Apple, she said, the models show storms lingering out at sea and presenting bigger worries for cities like Boston. On top of that, she continued, her team was also surprised not only by the destination of these storms but also by the areas of formation and the speed of trajectory.

According to Garner, the study found storms moving along the East Coast are likely to slow down, or even stall, in their forward progress, allowing even heavier loads of tropical rain and storm surge to inundate communities.

The researcher also told AccuWeather that the study focused mainly on the evolution of tropical cyclone tracks and not any changes to the intensity of those future storms, changes in the frequency of those storms or the distribution of storms between hurricanes and tropical storms.

However, she did add that their findings could signal danger to the projected cities like Norfolk and Boston because of how near the storms could form to the U.S. coast.

"The proportion of storms forming farther west and closer to our coastline seems to be increasing, and the number of storms we have forming there is going up," she said. "It needs to be a warning to us to be ready to, perhaps, prepare more quickly and have those warning systems in place and good communication in the event that a storm does develop near our coast."

All confidence in a safe future doesn't need to be cast away, however. Although the data may seem full of despair, the hope lies in an altered scenario.

According to Garner, the future studies simulations were conducted using a "very high future emissions scenario." In the decades to come, she said, communities need to work to lower greenhouse gas emissions so that we can limit how bad the impacts of the storms become in the future.

"I always like to remind people that I think there's a lot of hope for the future, too," she said, striking an optimistic tone. "We know that we are the cause of climate change. We didn't get a chance to look at lower emission scenarios, but I think there's a good chance that if we did look at those lower emission scenarios, perhaps we see less drastic changes in storms. That's something we should all be working toward, working to take those larger-scale actions to lower our emissions so that we can avoid some of the worst-case future scenarios."

Hurricanes in the North Atlantic are increasing in frequency, says study

Scott Sutherland
Thu., December 9, 2021

New research confirms what historical records have been telling us — that hurricane activity in the North Atlantic has been increasing over the past 150 years.

Today, with the array of satellites we have in space, no hurricane, typhoon, or tropical cyclone escapes our attention. Detailed imagery from orbit, along with data collected via ocean buoys, ships, ground stations, and aircraft reconnaissance, give scientists unparalleled insights into the frequency and strength of these storms.

However, going through the full historical record of hurricanes, researchers point out a noticeable trend.

"As you go back in time, the observations become more and more sparse," Dr. Kerry Emanuel, a meteorologist and climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained to Reuters.

Regular observations of hurricanes via satellite began in the 1970s, and since the 1940s aircraft have been making dedicated reconnaissance flights into storms. Unfortunately, prior to that, records only came from ships, or from islands that the storms passed over. So, for roughly the first century of the historical record, collecting data on hurricanes essentially depended on luck.

Therefore, a storm that did not cross any of the established shipping lanes of the time, or that followed a track which avoided all islands, would not show up in the historical record.

"Undoubtedly, we missed some storms," Emanuel concluded.

Now, Emanuel is the author of a new study published in Nature Communications, in which he used climate simulations to reconstruct hurricane activity over the past 150 years.

Hurricane Laura 2020-08-26 2300Z NOAA

2020's Hurricane Laura reached its peak intensity off the US East Coast on August 26, as seen here in imagery from the GOES-16 geostationary weather satellite. Credit: NOAA

Looking at the full record from 1851 to the present day, there is a noticeable uptick in the frequency of hurricanes in the North Atlantic Ocean. With the apparent sparsity in the first century of the record, though, climate researchers have avoided using this trend when trying to determine the impact of global warming on hurricane activity.

"Nobody disagrees that that's what the historical record shows," Emanuel stated in an MIT press release. "On the other hand, most sensible people don't really trust the historical record that far back in time."

There have been attempts to fill the gaps in the earliest parts of the record, of course.

Studies have compared modern storm tracks to old shipping routes, to see if there were ones that would have been missed in those early years. While these studies did suggest that hurricane activity may not have increased, Emanuel considered there to be two key issues with this approach. Firstly, there's no telling if hurricanes back in the late 1800s and early 1900s would have followed the same tracks that they do in modern times. Indeed, recent research has found that Atlantic hurricanes are reaching their peak strength farther north, so there may be significant differences in their tracks, today, compared with 100 to 150 years ago. Secondly, some of the oldest shipping routes are still not yet digitized into the record. If those routes were added to the studies, their conclusions may have changed.

So, instead of relying on the historical records, Emanuel chose to instead reconstruct the past using climate simulations. This method — known as 'reanalysis' — is when real data is fed into a climate model to simulate the past, rather than the future. This has been very successful, in general, because model results can be directly compared to the weather conditions that actually occurred.

For this study, in particular, Emanuel left out aircraft and satellite data, and only fed surface observations from ships and islands into his reanalysis models. This kept the type of records consistent and gave an accurate account of the weather and sea surface conditions for the full span of the historical data. Into those models he then scattered hurricane 'seeds' — the basic conditions that can cause a hurricane to form — and watched what happened.

Across the three climate simulations that he used, they all revealed the same thing. While there was no noticeable increase in hurricane activity on the global scale over the past 150 years, there was a definite increase in activity specifically for hurricanes in the North Atlantic.

The overall number of hurricanes increased over time, the number of major hurricanes increased, and the number of landfalls also went up.

North Atlantic Hurricanes climate reanalysis - Emanuel, Nature Communications

These graphs show the results from all three models used in the study. Each graph contains the actual historical hurricane records from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) database (blue line), which produce a positive trend (blue dashed line). The red line in each represents the results from Emanual’s MIT study, which also reveal a positive trend (red dashed line) for hurricanes, for major hurricanes, and for hurricane landfalls. Credit: Emanuel, 2021/Nature Communications

As shown in the graphs above, the simulations did "find" a significant number of missed North Atlantic hurricanes, with some of those likely becoming major hurricanes. The models also accurately reproduced a noticeable 'peak' in hurricane activity seen in the 1940s, and the 'hurricane drought' that was experienced in the 1970s and 1980s. Emanuel's research group attributes this drought to the cooling effects of sulfate aerosols from fossil fuel burning. The presence of these sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere would have meant more sunlight being reflected back into space, thus cooling the surface and limiting the impacts of global warming. As regulations were put into place to limit sulfur dioxide emissions (due to the public health risk they posed), this cooling effect was removed.

"The general trend over the last 150 years was increasing storm activity, interrupted by this hurricane drought," Emanuel stated in the MIT press release.

Given that these simulations showed no overall increase in the global trend of tropical cyclone activity, it is difficult to make broad assumptions about the cause of the specific uptick in activity in the North Atlantic.

From the study, Emanuel stated that "most of the variability of North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity over the last century was directly related to regional rather than global climate change."

Thus, rather than being driven by the overall impacts of global warming, it may be the smaller scale impacts — changes in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, and changes in the strength and position of ocean currents — that are driving this increased activity.

"That is still a mystery," Emanuel noted, "and it bears on the question of how global warming might affect future Atlantic hurricanes."

PRO LIFE; END THE DEATH PENALTY
Oklahoma executes Bigler Stouffer for 1985 slaying of teacher

AFTER PROMISING NOT TO

Bigler Stouffer was executed Thursday for the 1985 slaying of Putnam City teacher Linda Reaves. File Photo courtesy of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections

Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Oklahoma executed death row prisoner Bigler Jobe "B.J." Stouffer on Thursday morning after the Supreme Court declined to issue a stay in the case.

Stouffer, 79, was sentenced to death for the murder of Putnam City teacher Linda Reaves in 1985. He also shot Doug Ivens, who survived the attack but died in 2016.

"The state's execution of Bigler Stouffer was carried out with zero complications at 10:16 this morning," a statement from Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor said. "Justice is now served for Linda Reaves, Doug Ivens and the people of Oklahoma."

Stouffer had asked the Supreme Court to halt his execution Tuesday, one day after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a stay request. The Supreme Court ruled against the stay Thursday morning

.
RELATEDJudge issues stay of execution for Oklahoma death row inmate Wade Lay

His lawyers sought to delay the execution in response to a lawsuit by a group of death row inmates challenging Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol. In their motion to the Supreme Court, the lawyers said former Attorney General Mike Hunter promised not to carry out executions while the case was playing out in the courts.

"Less than three months ago the state of Oklahoma decided to disregard its longstanding, clear and unambiguous promise not to schedule executions in Oklahoma until challenges as to the constitutionality of legal injection protocol had been resolved," the court filing read.

The state announced Feb. 13, 2020, that it planned to resume executions nearly six years after the use of an incorrect drug led to the botched execution of a convicted murderer.

Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol came under scrutiny in 2014 when Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack amid complications during his execution.

Autopsy reports released a year later indicated Oklahoma corrections officials used the wrong drug -- potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride -- during the process. Lockett complained of a burning sensation and attempted to raise his head and speak after doctors declared he was unconscious.

The same incorrect drug was delivered to corrections officials for use in the planned 2015 execution of Richard Glossip. Former Gov. Mary Ballin called off Glossip's execution with a last-minute, indefinite stay after she learned of the discrepancy.

Oklahoma carried out only one other execution after Lockett's -- that of Charles Warner in January 2015 -- before undergoing six-year hiatus as it attempted to secure a supply of lethal injection drugs. Oklahoma uses a three-drug cocktail of midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

Oklahoma has carried out two executions since its hiatus, that of John Grant on Oct. 28 and Stouffer.

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board in November recommended clemency for Stouffer over questions about the lethal injection protocol, but Gov. Kevin Stitt denied the recommendation Friday.

Executions in the United States have undergone changes in recent years after states started running out of the essential lethal injection drug pentobarbital. The European Union in 2011 voted to prohibit the sale of the drug and seven other barbiturates to the United States for use in torture or executions. Other pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell drugs for lethal injection purposes outright, and some will only sell if their name is kept confidential.

Now states are being forced to use new drug cocktails, scramble to restock their stores of drugs and review their lethal injection policies.

Birds Aren't Real, or Are They? Inside a Gen Z Conspiracy Theory.


Taylor Lorenz
Thu., December 9, 2021

Peter McIndoe, the 23-year-old creator of the Birds Aren't Real movement, with his van in Fayetteville, Ark., on Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021. (Rana Young/The New York Times)

In Pittsburgh; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, “Birds Aren’t Real.”

On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren’t Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral.

Last month, Birds Aren’t Real adherents even protested outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo.

The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits that birds do not exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans. Hundreds of thousands of young people have joined the movement, wearing Birds Aren’t Real T-shirts, swarming rallies and spreading the slogan.

It might smack of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by an elite cabal of child-trafficking Democrats. Except that the creator of Birds Aren’t Real and the movement’s followers are in on a joke: They know that birds are, in fact, real and that their theory is made up.

What Birds Aren’t Real truly is, they say, is a parody social movement with a purpose. In a post-truth world dominated by online conspiracy theories, young people have coalesced around the effort to thumb their nose at, fight and poke fun at misinformation. It is Gen Z’s attempt to upend the rabbit hole with absurdism.

“It’s a way to combat troubles in the world that you don’t really have other ways of combating,” said Claire Chronis, 22, a Birds Aren’t Real organizer in Pittsburgh. “My favorite way to describe the organization is fighting lunacy with lunacy.”

At the center of the movement is Peter McIndoe, 23, a floppy-haired college dropout in Memphis, who created Birds Aren’t Real on a whim in 2017. For years, he stayed in character as the conspiracy theory’s chief believer, commanding acolytes to rage against those who challenged his dogma. But now, McIndoe said in an interview, he is ready to reveal the parody, lest people think birds really are drones.

“Dealing in the world of misinformation for the past few years, we’ve been really conscious of the line we walk,” he said. “The idea is meant to be so preposterous, but we make sure nothing we’re saying is too realistic. That’s a consideration with coming out of character.”

Most Birds Aren’t Real members, many of whom are part of an on-the-ground activism network called the Bird Brigade, grew up in a world overrun with misinformation. Some have relatives who have fallen victim to conspiracy theories. So for members of Gen Z, the movement has become a way to collectively grapple with those experiences. By cosplaying conspiracy theorists, they have found community and kinship, McIndoe said.

“Birds Aren’t Real is not a shallow satire of conspiracies from the outside. It is from the deep inside,” he said. “A lot of people in our generation feel the lunacy in all this, and Birds Aren’t Real has been a way for people to process that.”

Cameron Kasky, 21, an activist from Parkland, Florida, who helped organize the March for Our Lives student protest against gun violence in 2018 and is involved in Birds Aren’t Real, said the parody “makes you stop for a second and laugh. In a uniquely bleak time to come of age, it doesn’t hurt to have something to laugh about together.”

McIndoe, too, marinated in conspiracies. For his first 18 years, he grew up with seven siblings in a deeply conservative and religious community outside Cincinnati, then in rural Arkansas. He was home-schooled, taught that “evolution was a massive brainwashing plan by the Democrats and Obama was the Antichrist,” he said.

He read books like “Remote Control,” about what it said were hidden anti-Christianity messages from Hollywood. In high school, social media offered a gateway to mainstream culture. McIndoe began watching Philip DeFranco and other popular YouTubers who talked about current events and pop culture, and went on Reddit to find new viewpoints.

“I was raised by the internet, because that’s where I ended up finding a lot of my actual real-world education, through documentaries and YouTube,” McIndoe said. “My whole understanding of the world was formed by the internet.”

By the time McIndoe left home for the University of Arkansas in 2016, he said, he realized he was not the only young person forced to straddle multiple realities.

Then, in January 2017, McIndoe traveled to Memphis to visit friends. Donald Trump had just been sworn in as president, and there was a women’s march downtown. Pro-Trump counterprotesters were also there. When McIndoe saw them, he said, he ripped a poster off a wall, flipped it over and wrote three random words: “Birds Aren’t Real.”

“It was a spontaneous joke, but it was a reflection of the absurdity everyone was feeling,” he said.

McIndoe then walked around and improvised the Birds Aren’t Real conspiracy lore. He said he was part of a greater movement that believed that birds had been replaced with surveillance drones and that the cover-up began in the 1970s. Unbeknown to him, he was filmed, and the video posted on Facebook. It went viral, especially among teenagers in the South.

In Memphis, “Birds Aren’t Real” graffiti soon showed up. Photos of the phrase’s being scrawled on chalkboards and the walls of local high schools surfaced. People made “Birds Aren’t Real” stickers.

McIndoe decided to lean into Birds Aren’t Real. “I started embodying the character and building out the world this character belonged to,” he said. He and Connor Gaydos, a friend, wrote a false history of the movement, concocted elaborate theories and produced fake documents and evidence to support his wild claims.

“It basically became an experiment in misinformation,” McIndoe said. “We were able to construct an entirely fictional world that was reported on as fact by local media and questioned by members of the public.”

Gaydos added, “If anyone believes birds aren’t real, we’re the last of their concerns, because then there’s probably no conspiracy they don’t believe.”

In 2018, McIndoe dropped out of college and moved to Memphis. To build Birds Aren’t Real further, he created a flyer that shot to the top of Reddit. He hired an actor to portray a former CIA agent who confessed to working on bird drone surveillance; the video has more than 20 million views on TikTok. He also hired actors to represent adult bird truthers in videos that spread all over Instagram.

That same year, McIndoe began selling Birds Aren’t Real merchandise. The money, totaling several thousand dollars a month, helps McIndoe and Gaydos cover their living expenses.

“All the money from our merch lineup goes into making sure me and Connor can do this full time,” McIndoe said. “We also put the money into the billboards, flying out members of the Bird Brigade to rallies. None of the proceeds go to anything harmful.”

To adults with concerns about McIndoe’s tactics, researchers said any harms were most likely minimal.

“You have to weigh the potential negative effects with any of this stuff, but in this case it is so extremely small,” said Joshua Citarella, an independent researcher who studies internet culture and online radicalization in youth. “Allowing people to engage in collaborative world building is therapeutic because it lets them disarm conspiracism and engage in a safe way.”

McIndoe said he kept the concerns top of mind. “Everything we’ve done with Birds Aren’t Real is made to make sure it doesn’t tip into where it could have a negative end result on the world,” he said. “It’s a safe space for people to come together and process the conspiracy takeover of America. It’s a way to laugh at the madness rather than be overcome by it.”

The effort has been cathartic for young people including Heitho Shipp, 22, a Pittsburgh resident.

“Most conspiracy theories are fueled by hate or distrust or one powerful leader, but this is about finding an outlet for our pain,” she said. She added that the movement was “more about media literacy.”

Birds Aren’t Real members have also become a political force. Many often join up with counterprotesters and actual conspiracy theorists to de-escalate tensions and delegitimize the people they are marching alongside with irreverent chants.

In September, shortly after a restrictive new abortion law went into effect in Texas, Birds Aren’t Real members showed up at a protest held by anti-abortion activists at the University of Cincinnati. Supporters of the new law “had signs with very graphic imagery and were very aggressive in condemning people,” McIndoe said. “It led to arguments.”

But the Bird Brigade began chanting, “Birds aren’t real.” Their shouts soon overpowered the anti-abortion activists, who left.

McIndoe now has big plans for 2022. Breaking character is necessary to help Birds Aren’t Real leap to the next level and forswear actual conspiracy theorists, he said. He added that he hoped to collaborate with major content creators and independent media like Channel 5 News, which is aimed at helping people make sense of America’s current state and the internet.

“I have a lot of excitement for what the future of this could be as an actual force for good,” he said. “Yes, we have been intentionally spreading misinformation for the past four years, but it’s with a purpose. It’s about holding up a mirror to America in the internet age.”

© 2021 The New York Times Company

THEY SURE LOOK REAL

Trump-allied lawyer Rudy Giuliani 

baselessly claims that he has '900 death certificates' on hand to prove that thousands of dead people voted in the  2020 election

Cheryl Teh

Thu., December 9, 2021, 

Trump-allied lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani claims that he has 900 death certificates that prove the conspiracy theory that dead people voted in the 2020 presidential election.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Rudy Giuliani made an unsubstantiated claim that he has proof to validate the conspiracy theory that dead people voted in the 2020 election.

• Giuliani said he possesses 900 death certificates of people who died in 2000 but voted in 2020.

• However, Giuliani has not produced the evidence or said where he obtained the death certificates.

Trump-allied lawyer Rudy Giuliani is once again saying that he possesses evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, claiming on Thursday night he had "900 death certificates" that prove dead people voted.

Appearing on "The Lindell Report," a program usually hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Giuliani told guest host Brannon Howse about the death certificates.

"Let's look at Georgia for a moment, Raffensperger, the Secretary of State, who until recently, was saying that it was a perfect election," Giuliani said, referencing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. "The idiot said to the president, it was a perfect election. He said to the president, you know, we looked and we couldn't find any dead people who voted."

"I found 900 people whose death certificates I had, they all died in 2000, before the election," Giuliani said. "I think the actual number our expert estimated was more in the range of about four or five or six thousand. But I had 900 death certificates. They're people who voted!"

"Don't tell me it was a perfect election, then I know you're a damn liar," Giuliani added.

During an earlier segment of the broadcast, Giuliani told Howse: "You can't let 300 dead people vote, much less 6,000!"

Giuliani did not display the death certificates on-air and did not reveal where he had obtained them. Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

Other right-wing figures have also floated the conspiracy theory that dead people voted in the 2020 elections. Lindell, for instance, claimed without evidence in October that 23,000 dead people voted using a prison address.

During his appearance on "The Lindell Report," Giuliani also continued to push a variety of unsubstantiated election fraud theories. For one, Giuliani claimed that he had "400 affidavits" from people who witnessed election fraud. He cited the example of an unnamed "very religious woman" in Detroit, who he says told him that she witnessed election fraud. The former mayor of New York City also said, without substantiation, that he saw a video of people "casing the joint" at a vote-counting center in Georgia, likening it to videos he used to see when he used to "prosecute bank robbers."

Since the 2020 election, Giuliani has consistently pushed and parroted baseless election fraud claims. This kicked off at a now-infamous press conference in November 2020 outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Pennsylvania, where Giuliani told reporters the Trump campaign planned to challenge the election in court while making baseless claims of election fraud.

Giuliani was suspended from practicing law in New York in June, after a court found that there was "uncontroverted evidence" that he made "demonstrably false and misleading" statements on election fraud.

He has also admitted under oath that he did not verify some of the election fraud claims that he parroted, and got the "evidence" from social media. Separately, Giuliani also told a Dominion Voting Systems lawyer that he "didn't have the time" to verify voter fraud claims about the 2020 election after he heard about them.

Dominion is suing Giuliani and others who peddled baseless claims saying that the electronic voting company rigged the 2020 election in favor of President Joe Biden.

FOR PROFIT MEDICINE

Study: More than half of U.S. hospitals don't follow pricing disclosure rules

Just over half of all hospitals nationally are not in compliance with new pricing disclosure rules, according to a new study. File Photo by Francesco83/Shutterstock


Dec. 9 (UPI) -- More than half of all hospitals in the United States did not comply with new pricing disclosure rules in the first five months since they were implemented, a study published Thursday by the Journal of General Internal Medicine found.

The rules require hospitals to publicly disclose prices for care found wide fluctuations across states, with some states achieving 75% or higher compliance and others coming in at 25% or below, the data showed.

Across all 50 states, 55% of hospitals did not comply with the new federal rule that went into effect on Jan. 1, the researchers said.

"The findings suggest that hospitals do not make decisions in isolation. Rather, their decisions reflect market pressure from their peers," study co-author Ge Bai said in a press release.

"If the average compliance status in the same region is high, a hospital is more likely to comply," said Bai, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

The Hospital Price Transparency Rule, which is enforced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, requires hospitals to provide clear pricing information online about services provided.

The information must be posted in a machine-readable file format that can be imported or read into a computer system, the agency says.

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Hospitals also must include standard pricing for at least 300 services, ranging from colonoscopies to CAT scans, though they not required to disclose prices for emergency services.

The rule is intended to allow consumers to compare prices and estimated cost of services. Bai and her colleagues said it also could help patients make more informed decisions about care and potentially drive down costs through competition.

Non-compliant hospitals can face steep penalties of up to $2 million a year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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For this study, the researchers ranked publicly available Hospital Price Transparency Rule compliance information for all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and 305 geographic regions in the United States.

The researchers based their analysis on files from more than 3,500 U.S. hospitals in the first five months of 2021, from Jan. 1 through June 1.

Using data from Turquoise Health, a data service company that collects hospital pricing information, the team analyzed a nationally representative sample of machine-readable files from 3,558 general acute hospitals, or 88% of such hospitals nationally.

Hospitals were categorized based on "compliance," or a hospital that posted a machine-readable file with negotiated prices for at least one health insurance plan, and "non-compliance," or a hospital that had not posted a machine-readable file and no negotiated prices.

At least 75% of hospitals were compliant with the Hospital Price Transparency Rule in Hawaii, Rhode Island, Indiana, Michigan and Washington, D.C., the data showed.

But, at most, 25% of hospitals were compliant with the rule in Delaware, Maryland, Washington and Louisiana.

Additionally, a hospital was 42% more likely to be compliant with the Hospital Price Transparency Rule if all other hospitals in the same geographic region were compliant as well.

Within the country's 305 referral regions, in 194, or 64%, more than half of hospitals were not compliant with the new disclosure requirement, the data showed.

All hospitals in 20 referral regions, including those in Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia, were compliant with the rule.

However, all hospitals in 26 regions, including regions in Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia, were non-compliant with the Hospital Price Transparency Rule.

A hospital's health information technology preparedness, defined as the proportion of its fixed assets devoted to health IT, is also associated with greater compliance, as were for-profit hospitals, system-affiliated hospitals and non-urban hospitals, according to the researchers.

"Interestingly, hospitals that have invested more in health IT are more likely to post their pricing information online," Bai said.

"This could be because they have more financial resources and personnel to mitigate the cost for implementing the Price Transparency Rule," she said.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Italian regulators fine Amazon $1.3 billion for violating competition rules
By UPI Staff

Italian regulators noted that Amazon denies vendors access to its Prime loyalty program, saying that the practice has an anti-competitive impact. 

File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Italian regulators on Thursday ordered retail giant Amazon to pay more than $1 billion for violating European Union antitrust rules, which is one of the largest fines ever imposed against the company in Europe.

The AGCM, Italy's antitrust regulator, said Amazon breached EU rules by exploiting its dominant market position to outperform independent sellers on its website.

Specifically, regulators said, Amazon required third-party sellers to use its logistics service, called "Fulfilled by Amazon," to the detriment of competitors.

Officials noted that Amazon also denies vendors access to its Prime loyalty program, saying it has an anti-competitive impact.

For the purported violations, the AGCM fined Amazon nearly $1.3 billion.

Amazon responded by saying that it "profoundly" disagreed with the penalty, which it called "unjustified and disproportionate." The company said it would appeal.

The AGCM fined Apple and Amazon $230 million last month after finding that Amazon resold certain Apple products and blocked other resellers.

NHL's Arizona Coyotes pay tax debts, avoid arena eviction
By Alex Butler & Connor Grott

Employees from the NHL's Arizona Coyotes could have been locked out of Gila River Arena in Glendale, Ariz., if the team didn't settle city and state tax debts. Photo by Kyvuh/Wikimedia Commons

Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The Arizona Coyotes avoided eviction from Gila River Arena after making good on delinquent tax bills and other unpaid facility charges.

On Wednesday, city officials announced they would revoke the team's business license and lock the Coyotes out of their Glendale, Ariz., arena if the franchise didn't pay its debts to the state, the city and ASM Global -- the arena management company that operates Gila River Arena -- by Dec. 20.

The Arizona Department of Revenue filed a tax lien notice in excess of $1.3 million against the hockey organization for the unpaid state and city taxes. Officials said the city of Glendale is owed $250,000 of that debt balance.

On Thursday, Coyotes spokesperson Rich Nairn told the Arizona Republic and ESPN that the team had squared away the overdue bills.

"The Coyotes are current on all bills and tax liabilities," he said.

In a statement released Wednesday night, the Coyotes attributed the delinquent payments to possible human error.

"We have already launched an investigation to determine how this could have happened and initial indications are that it appears to be the result of an unfortunate human error," the Coyotes said. "Regardless, we deeply regret the inconvenience this has caused.

"We will make sure that by [Thursday] morning, the Arizona Coyotes are current on all of our bills and owe no state or local taxes whatsoever. And we will take immediate steps to ensure that nothing like this can ever possibly happen again."

The Coyotes started play at Gila River Arena in 2003. In August, the city of Glendale informed the team of plans to opt out of its joint lead agreement for the arena. The 2021-22 season is scheduled to be the team's final season at the facility.

The Coyotes host the Florida Panthers at 9 p.m. EST Friday at Gila River Arena. They also play in Glendale on Saturday, Wednesday and Dec. 23, three days after the deadline.

DIRECT ACTION GETS THE GOODS

Indian farmers end a year of protests after government drops controversial laws
By Simon Druker

Farmers in India on Thursday, ended more than a year of protests over new laws governing the country's farming industry. The laws were introduced in September 2020, but repealed last month by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. File Photo Pal Singh/EPA-EFE

Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Indian farmers on Thursday, ended more than a year of protests related to a set of laws introduced last September, meant to overhaul and modernize the country's farming industry.

The decision to stop the protest came after the government also agreed to listen to demands including guaranteed prices for produce and dropping criminal cases against protesting farmers.

The laws gave corporations the ability to control the country's farming industry, with smaller producers worried about being left out of the supply chain. They also did away with the minimum support price (MPP) which was set by the government on certain produce. The loosened restrictions opened the industry to the free market, which farmers had been protected from for years.

Last month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew the agriculture laws, during a live, nationally televised announcement.

RELATEDIn surprise move, India PM Narendra Modi pulls unpopular farming laws

The movement eventually became one of the largest political challenges for Modi and his government.

Local protests began shortly after the laws were initially passed. Support quickly gathered to include tens of thousands of farmers in India, with an official movement starting approximately two months later. The movement also garnered international support, with supporters demonstrating in a number of other countries around the world.

Leaders say ending the protests is contingent on the government following through with its promises. Farming unions will meet in January to ensure Modi keeps his word.

"Farmers have decided to suspend this agitation for now, but the movement will not end. The fight for farmers' rights will continue," senior Punjab leader Balbir Singh Rajewal told local media.

DEC 10 UN HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

Palestinians freed after hunger strikes have lifelong damage

By JACK JEFFERY

Former Palestinian prisoner Maher al-Akhras, poses for a photo, a year after being released from an Israeli prison following a 103-day hunger strike, at his house in the West Bank village of Silat Al-Dahar, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. Palestinian prisoners have long used hunger strikes to pressure Israel to improve the conditions of their detention or to secure their release after being held without charges for months or years under a policy known as administrative detention. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)


SILAT AL-DHAHR, West Bank (AP) — A year after being released from an Israeli prison following a 103-day hunger strike, Maher al-Akhras is barely able to walk. Frequent bouts of dizziness and sensitivity to noise mean he can neither enjoy social occasions nor return to work on his ancestral farm in the occupied West Bank.

Back home, he is seen as a hero of the Palestinian cause, one of a small group of hunger strikers who have secured release from Israeli detention. But the mental and physical damage from the prolonged hunger strike has left him and others like him unable to resume normal lives, and reliant on long-term medical care.

“My balance is gone,” said al-Akhras. “I can’t walk among the cows, I can’t hold them, I can’t milk them.”

Palestinian prisoners have long used hunger strikes to pressure Israel to improve the conditions of their detention or to secure their release after being held without charges for months or years under a policy known as administrative detention.

Israel is currently holding some 4,600 Palestinians, including hardened militants who have carried out deadly attacks, as well as individuals arrested at protests or for throwing stones. Around 450 Palestinians are currently being held in administrative detention, and in the last two years at least 11 have used prolonged hunger strikes to secure early release.

Israel says administrative detention is needed to prevent attacks or to keep dangerous suspects locked up without sharing evidence that could endanger valuable intelligence sources. Al-Akhras has been tried and convicted twice in military courts for his involvement with the Islamic Jihad militant group, which Israel and Western countries consider a terrorist organization.

Palestinians and rights groups say administrative detention denies prisoners the right to due process, allowing them to be held indefinitely without seeing the evidence against them or even getting a trial in military courts. The 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, even those in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, live under Israeli military rule.

Lengthy hunger strikes draw international attention and stoke protests in the occupied territories, putting pressure on Israel to meet the prisoners’ demands. The death of a hunger striker in custody would likely spark wider unrest and demonstrations among Palestinians.

“Hunger strikes are particularly effective in the case of administrative detainees because this is a detention completely outside of the judicial process,” said Jessica Montell, director of HaMoked, an Israeli human rights group.

As hunger strikers’ health deteriorates, they are transferred to Israeli hospitals under guard. They drink water, and medics encourage them to take vitamins, but many, like al-Akhras, refuse. No Palestinian in Israeli detention has died as a result of hunger strikes, but doctors say prolonged vitamin deficiency can cause permanent brain damage.

“If a person has severe vitamin B deficiency, they can develop chronic neurological problems including vertigo, dizziness, sluggish thinking, and severe memory problems,” said Dr. Bettina Birmanns, a neurologist and the director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a local rights group. Prolonged periods of starvation will also cause the body to eat away at proteins from the skeleton and heart, she said.

A year after his release from administrative detention, al-Akhras says he has regained all the weight he lost but struggles to read or walk in a straight line.

Ahmed Ghannam, a former car dealer from the southern West Bank, went on a nearly 100-day hunger strike in 2019 to protest against his fourth stint in administrative detention. He had previously been convicted twice for his involvement with the Islamic militant group Hamas. After his release, he was diagnosed with weakened heart muscle and the early stages of type 2 diabetes.

Critics say Israel is careful to ensure that the hunger strikers do not become martyrs, either by giving into their demands once they are incapacitated or by taking emergency measures that can include force-feeding. Force-feeding patients who are mentally sound is widely seen by medical professionals as a violation of patient autonomy akin to torture.

Former Palestinian prisoner Maher al-Akhras, poses for a photo, a year after being released from an Israeli prison following a 103-day hunger strike, at his house in the West Bank village of Silat Al-Dahar, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. Palestinian prisoners have long used hunger strikes to pressure Israel to improve the conditions of their detention or to secure their release after being held without charges for months or years under a policy known as administrative detention. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

During the 1970s and 1980s, several Palestinian hunger strikers died after being force-fed by the Israeli authorities, resulting in the practice being outlawed. However, an Israeli law passed in 2015 over the objections of the medical community allows a judge to sanction force-feeding in some circumstances. It’s unclear if the law has ever been invoked.

Shany Shapiro, the spokeswoman for Israel’s Kaplan hospital, said force-feeding has never been used on any hunger strikers that have been transferred there and that other life-saving treatments are preferred, such as infusions.

“Before any form of intervention is undertaken, there is an ethics committee that takes into account the wants of the prisoner,” she said.

Before reaching that point, former prisoners say agents from Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, visited their hospital rooms and pressed them to end their strikes. Ghannam and al-Akhras say agents tempted them with food and threatened them with home demolitions or travel restrictions for family members.

The Shin Bet did not respond to a request for comment.

Marathon hunger strikers receive a hero’s welcome back home, where they are seen as icons of resilience in the face of a 54-year occupation with no end in sight. Kayed Fasfous, who led a five-man hunger strike and was released last month, has since done a string of TV interviews.

Al-Akhras also became a local celebrity. “People stop me in the street and ask for pictures,” he said.

But for most hunger strikers, the fame quickly fades while the health consequences linger.

Anani Sarahneh, the spokeswoman for the Palestinian Prisoners Club, which represents former and current prisoners, said it is providing support for around 60 former hunger strikers with various psychological and medical ailments.

Ghannam, who was released in 2019, said he has struggled to find steady employment to support his wife and two young sons, alongside his mounting medical bills.

“I don’t regret my decision, but I regret the other problems it has caused,” he said.

UN HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

Four decades after massacre, El Mozote residents still mourn

EL SALVADORS WAR AGAINST FARC

Miriam Nunez lost 15 of her in-laws in the massacre

 (AFP/Marvin RECINOS)

Carlos Mario MARQUEZ

Thu, December 9, 2021

Twenty-nine years ago, as she was preparing the ground to rebuild her family home in El Mozote, El Salvador, Miriam Nunez found the bones of her in-laws scattered all over the property.

They were among the nearly 1,000 people -- half of them children -- massacred ten years earlier by government soldiers who accused the village of aiding leftist guerillas in El Salvador's bloody 1980-1992 civil war.

"I had to collect all the teeth of the little girls, small bones... fingers... and put them in a bag," Nunez told AFP, forty years after the massacre for which no one has yet been held accountable.

The El Mozote massacre, which took place over five days in December 1981, was one of the deadliest in Latin American history.

Nunez, now 63, recalled coming across the bloodied dress of a little girl called Yesenia, then 18 months old, who would have become her sister-in-law, as well as the dentures of her mother-in-law.

In all, Nunez's husband Orlando Marquez lost 15 family members in the mass killing -- the worst episode of El Salvador's internal conflict, which in total left more than 75,000 dead and more than 7,000 people missing.

Three of Marquez's murdered relatives were children.

In 1981, the residents of El Mozote were living a peaceful life in the midst of war, raising beans, corn, sugar cane and cows among green hills. Then the soldiers came (AFP/Marvin RECINOS)

- Children slashed -

In 1981, the residents of El Mozote were living a peaceful life in the midst of war, raising beans, corn, sugar cane and cows among green hills some 200 kilometers (124 miles) east of the capital San Salvador.

Unbeknownst to many, a leftist rebel guerilla group was operating in the area.

Then on December 9, the country's military arrived in the region. Five days of bloodshed followed.

The deadliest day was the 11th, in El Mozote.

Soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion -- a counter-insurgency command trained by the United States -- burnt homes, raped women and killed all the villagers they could find.

Some children were thrown in the air and slashed with machetes, according to survivor accounts.

At the time, Miriam Nunez lived in Lourdes, near San Salvador, and her husband survived as he was away, studying in the capital.

Another survivor, Maria de la Paz Chicas, who was 11 at the time, was visiting a nearby village with her father.

When they tried to return home, "they (soldiers) would not let us enter. This is what saved us."

Chicas, now 51, lost six brothers and 17 cousins.

- No verdict yet -

In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights blamed the Salvadoran government for the El Mozote massacre and ordered reparations.

Four years later, the country's Supreme Court ruled that a blanket amnesty for people accused of war crimes during the conflict was unconstitutional.

Charges were brought against soldiers accused of involvement, but no verdicts have yet been passed.

The long-dragging trial suffered another setback this year, when presiding judge Jorge Guzman resigned in solidarity with colleagues who were fired in a controversial judicial reform.

Ovidio Gonzalez, a lawyer for the victims, accuses the government and army of seeking "to delay the process and prevent the conviction of the soldiers responsible."

"Forty years later, we want to tell the Salvadoran state: 'look, enough of continuing to want to cover up this case'," added Leonel Tobar Claros, president of the Association of Victims of El Mozote.

Now 43, he lost two dozen family members as a toddler.

Bullet holes still mark homes in El Mozote, scene of one of Latin America's worst massacres (AFP/Marvin RECINOS)More

- 'Collecting skulls' -

Nunez and her husband returned to El Mozote a decade after the massacre, at the end of the civil war in 1992, to rebuild the family home.

Chicas returned at about the same time, and recalls that the once-happy village had become an overgrown refuge for coyotes.

"When we got there we started collecting skulls, bones.... we kept them," and later gave the body parts to forensic investigators, she said.

Bones were found all over the town.

"My sister, we found in the convent. She was six months pregnant" when she was killed aged 27, next to her four-year-old son, said Chicas.

"She never let go of the boy." He was also killed.

The residents of El Mozote are now trying to build a new life on a foundation of pain.

As part of reparations, the government has paved roads and built a memorial near a cemetery for the victims.

The site includes a mural decorated in mosaic tiles, which Chicas said reminds her of "hearts shattered to pieces."

A monument has been erected in memory of the victims of the 1981 El Mozote massacre 

(AFP/Marvin RECINOS)

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