It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Union has yet to issue strike notice against CP in Canada (updated and corrected)
Teamsters Canada Rail Conference must provide 72-hour notice before walkout
An empty Canadian Pacific grain train delivers hoppers to the Pioneer and Cargill elevators at Carsland, Alberta, on June 7, 2021. The Canadian agriculture industry is concerned about the impact of a potential strike. (Jerry Clement)
CALGARY — While Canadian Pacific workers in Canada have authorized a strike that could have begun as soon as tonight, their union has yet to provide the 72-hour notice necessary before walking out.
Canadian agriculture and industry remain concerned about the potential impact of a walkout, and the railroad says on its website that a strike “will impact virtually all commodities within the Canadian supply chain, thereby crippling the performance of Canada’s trade-dependent economy.”
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference said earlier this month that 96% of its members had voted to authorize a strike, and at the time said union members should be prepared for a walkout as soon as 12:01 a.m. on March 16 [see “Teamsters Canada vote approves strike …,”Trains News Wire, March 3, 2022]. The union represents more than 3,000 CP engineers, conductors, crew members and yard personnel.
The union had requested mediation in December and filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Canadian Industrial Relations Board in January. Mediation is ongoing, the website Western Producer reports.
The last three negotiations with the Teamsters have resulted in work stoppages, most recently in 2018, when an agreement was reached hours after the walkout began. CP says it has not had a strike involving any other union since 2011.
The Canadian Press reports that Fertilizer Canada, a trade group representing manufacturers and wholesale and retail distributors of fertilizer, says a strike could be “crippling” during farmers’ spring seeding season. Some 75% of fertilizer used by Canadian farmers is shipped by rail, and no transportation option has the capacity or can pick up the rail share on short notice.
Cattle producers are also saying they face a feed shortage as a result of a drought that led to reduced crop yields last summer, and have been relying on CP for shipments of corn from the U.S.
The president of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters association says 90% of its members have experienced supply-chain issues over the last 12 months and cannot afford another interruption.
Even U.S. legislators are asking the Canadian government to act. In a letter today to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) has asked Trudeau and his cabinet to block the strike, citing both the fertilizer issue and CP’s business moving crude oil from Alberta to U.S. refineries. “Shutting down North America’s essential rail supply chain would create a capacity crisis … that will have a profound impact on our nation’s agriculture and energy industries.”
The letter was cosigned by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and John Hoeven (R-N.D.)
— Updates and corrects to note strike cannot begin tonight; additional details added at 11:55 a.m. CDT.
In Hay River, pond hockey reflects a climate crisis
An Edmonton Oilers mainstay of the 1980s, Craig MacTavish grew up playing pond hockey in London, Ontario, where he honed his skills and developed a love for the sport.
Hockey players at the 2022 Polar Pond Hockey tournament in Hay River.
Emily Blake/Cabin Radio
MacTavish’s route into the game may not exist much longer. As the climate changes, Canada’s ability to sustain outdoor hockey is measurably decreasing. (Environmental scientists even track conditions at hundreds of backyard rinks.)
“That’s how you get good,” MacTavish, now 63, said of outdoor makeshift rinks as he attended Hay River’s Polar Pond Hockey this past weekend.
“You’re handling the puck, you’re outdoors, there’s lots of camaraderie, lots of competition … It’s something really deeply rooted in the fabric of Canadians.”
The disappearance of outdoor rinks is of such concern in Canada that a program part-funded by the federal government, the Climate and Sport Initiative, has begun backing Save Pond Hockey events devoted to educating people about the climate crisis through sport. Though Polar Pond Hockey has existed in its own right for years, this year’s event also carried the Save Pond Hockey banner.
Bruce Dudley, representing the Climate and Sport Initiative, recalled a conversation with Wayne Gretzky about backyard rinks.
“He spent the entire time talking about when he was a kid and what it meant to him and his dad,” Dudley said.
“It was relationship-building, it was social skills-building and it was hockey skills-building.”
Craig MacTavish in Hay River. Emily Blake/Cabin Radio
A Zamboni clears the ice at Polar Pond Hockey. Emily Blake/Cabin Radio
A photo posted to Facebook by Polar Pond Hockey organizers in March 2019, when warm weather melted the ice and forced the tournament’s abandonment.
Outdoor rinks occupy a nostalgic place in Canadian hearts. They look good. They are central to the nation’s winter-sports narrative. But Dudley argues they’re also community hubs that help kids whose families can’t afford access to other recreational sport, or who live in rural areas without facilities.
“We’re concerned that our children, or our children’s children, aren’t going to enjoy the same benefits from outdoor hockey that we did,” he said.
In Hay River, Polar Pond Hockey was cancelled by unseasonably warm weather in 2019. This year, the Arctic Energy Alliance – an NWT not-for-profit that helps residents and businesses reduce emissions and access clean-energy rebates – ran a climate and energy fair and hosted a tour of nearby energy projects.
“The North is going to see climate change first-hand,” said Terry Rowe, organizer of the tournament.
Save Pond Hockey began in Finland seven years ago and now coordinates pond hockey tournaments across the globe, donating a share of profits from each event to climate action.
Two other Save Pond Hockey tournaments scheduled for other parts of Canada earlier this year were cancelled because of Covid-19, making Hay River’s event the first to be held in the country.
Funds raised in Hay River will help to pay for an electric Zamboni at the town’s recreation centre.
From Helsinki to Hay River, N.W.T., a pond hockey tournament with a global goal
A pond hockey tournament that originated in Helsinki, Finland, raises money for organizations counteracting climate change. Its first Canadian iteration will take place in Hay River, N.W.T.
PETER MARTEN SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAILPUBLISHED MARCH 13, 2022 From coast to coast, TO COAST, pond hockey is a winter tradition for Canadians.
NATHAN DENETTE/THE CANADIAN PRESS
It’s an inspiring scene: In Helsinki, Finland, on an ice sheet the size of a football field, nine different four-on-four hockey games are happening.
The sounds echo on a cold, sunny morning: the clack of sticks on pucks, the swish of skaters turning. From atop a mountain of plowed snow from a recent storm, you can see all the action. This is a Save Pond Hockey tournament, one of several in Finland this season.
Founded in 2015, the Save Pond Hockey concept sees its breakthrough in Canada this year, in a collaboration with the Polar Pond Hockey tournament in Hay River, N.W.T., with the finals on Sunday, March 13. The Canadian organization, like its Finnish counterpart, aims to raise money and awareness of the fight against climate change. Save Pond Hockey was already a Canadian-Finnish joint venture of sorts; the co-founders are Svante Suominen of Finland and Steve Baynes of Vancouver.
Back in 2011, Suominen was a university student in Helsinki. He’d played competitive hockey as a teenager, but eventually quit. Wanting to get some exercise, he now mobilized a few buddies to play shinny at an outdoor rink.
“I started inviting all my friends and friends of friends,” he said. “We went every Monday evening, and I realized there were more people coming all the time.”
He calls it “a new start for my relationship with hockey.” He enjoyed the easygoing atmosphere of pond hockey – a term for any informal outdoor hockey, whether or not it involves a lake.
“We had so many different types of people playing together,” he said. “There was something really magical about it.”
Baynes, a stay-at-home dad at the moment, arrived in Helsinki in 2012 after two years studying corporate sustainability in Jyväskylä, in central Finland. A former classmate invited him to join the Monday games.
The players used to discuss how climate change was shortening the outdoor hockey season. Baynes had studied climate issues, and some of the others also got interested. Many remembered longer, colder winters from their childhoods – it seemed obvious that winter was changing.
They started wondering how hockey players could help fight climate change. The result emerged in 2015, when they held the first Save Pond Hockey tournament in Helsinki, aiming to make some noise about climate issues.
The President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, plays ice hockey at the Save Pond Hockey tournament in Helsinki, Finland on Feb. 15, 2020.MIKKO STIG/GETTY IMAGES
Participation has since multiplied and nine cities around the country have hosted tournaments. In 2022, the Helsinki edition boasted 39 teams in three divisions: casual, competitive and company.
The tournaments’ profits, a grand total of more than $101,000 dollars since 2015, go to organizations counteracting climate change – everything from carbon-offset programs to wetlands restoration projects.
To attract audiences and further boost climate awareness, each Save Pond Hockey tournament opens with an exhibition game featuring hockey heroes such as former NHL players and stars from the women’s and men’s national teams. Niklas Hagman and Esa Tikkanen played this year in Helsinki, and others have included Jari Kurri and Saku Koivu. Canadian embassy staff has also joined the exhibition games.
The president of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, has participated several times. In February, 2012, shortly after he was elected to his first term, he went skating at the rink where Suominen and his friends were playing their weekly shinny.
“I was like, what, is that the president?” said Suominen. “I just went over and asked, ‘Hey, Mr. President, would you like to join our game?’ He replied, ‘Yeah, okay. Let’s play.’” People play pond hockey on Brown's Inlet in Ottawa, on Christmas Day 2021.JUSTIN TANG/THE CANADIAN PRESS
When Save Pond Hockey held its first tournament, Suominen invited Niinistö, reminding him that they had played together. “I love living in a country and a city where that is possible,” said Suominen.
Baynes often refers to Save Pond Hockey as a movement. “Everybody’s welcome to come out and play,” he said.
Päivi Antila has been a regular at Save Pond Hockey’s Monday sessions ever since she happened to join one of their games last winter. “They’re a friendly bunch,” she said. “They consciously try to make people feel welcome.”
She’d seen them once at a climate demonstration, waving signs attached to hockey sticks, of course.
Another player is Paul Mélois, whose mother is from Montreal and whose father is French. He grew up in southern France but remembers skating outdoors during his family’s visits to Canada.
One January evening, Mélois could be found helping Baynes clear a rink on the sea ice beside the Finnish capital. Most outdoor rinks in Helsinki are artificially cooled, but during a long cold spell, connoisseurs venture out to make an all-natural playing surface.
After hours of shovelling, scraping and flooding, they finished the rink in the wee hours of the morning. About 20 friends came to play the next afternoon. “I could barely play because I was so sore [from the shovelling],” said Baynes, “but it was still super-fun.”
People play pond hockey at Vanier Park in Vancouver, after unseasonably cold temperatures caused the pond to freeze over in December 2021.
DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS
People crossing a nearby pedestrian bridge got a great view. Within a few days, the temperature fluctuated and the window of opportunity for playing on natural ice was over. “Those windows used to be much larger in the past,” said Baynes.
Hay River, N.W.T., the first Canadian location to hold a tournament connected with Save Pond Hockey, rarely experiences such challenges. The town first organized Polar Pond Hockey in 2008, but one year, 2019, was unseasonably warm, reaching 13 degrees in March. “We had to cancel the event,” said Terry Rowe, head of the Polar Pond Hockey organization, “which was obviously [due to] some sort of climate change.” This year he expects about 35 teams, ten of them in the women’s division.
Save Pond Hockey and Hay River connected through Canada’s Climate and Sport Initiative, which took applications from Canadian towns seeking to host Save Pond Hockey events. Penticton, B.C., and Stonewall, Man., were also slated for this winter, but had to cancel because of COVID-19 restrictions.
For Polar Pond Hockey, adding Save Pond Hockey to its event means greater emphasis on climate. Proceeds from an auction and a climate change and energy fair will help Hay River purchase an electric Zamboni.
Just like their Finnish counterparts, they’re holding an exhibition all-star game to raise awareness. The roster includes Meghan Agosta, Craig MacTavish, Andrew Ference and Curtis Glencross, along with locally known players.
Sea ice that slowed the flow of Antarctic glaciers abruptly shatters in three days
Remnants of the Larsen-B ice shelf, filled in with seasonal ice in January 2016. Until January 2022, sea ice helped to buttress the nearby glaciers, slowing their flow into the sea. Credit: O.V.E.R.V.I.E.W.
In just three days in late January, a mass of ice the size of Philadelphia fragmented from the Larsen-B embayment on the Antarctic Peninsula and floated away, after persisting there for more than a decade. NASA satellites captured the break-up between January 19 and 21, and with it saw calving of icebergs from Crane Glacier and its neighbors as the sea ice no longer buttressed their fronts. Now more vulnerable to melting and acceleration into the ocean, the glaciers that line the Antarctic Peninsula could add directly to sea level.
The Larsen Ice Shelf is situated along the northeast part of the Antarctic Peninsula, in the Weddell Sea. It is divided into four regions that occupy distinct embayments along the coastline, termed Larsen A, B, C and D running north to south, each of which has undergone its own changes in the last few decades. The great mass of the ice shelf holds back the flow of many glaciers from the steep mountains towards the sea, where they contribute to sea level rise. Larsen-A was the first to disintegrate in 1995, followed by the abrupt partial collapse of Larsen-B in 2002. Larsen-C was the fourth largest Antarctic ice shelf as of July 2017, when a giant iceberg, named A68, calved from it, drawing worldwide attention to the region. Being furthest south, and hence least subject to warming, the only portion to be considered relatively stable is Larsen-D.
The loss of 3,250 square kilometers of ice from the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 has been blamed on warmer ocean waters that melted it from below, and on the presence of meltwater on its surface, which also accelerated the loss of ice. With only a remnant portion left behind following the collapse, this section was much less stable and vulnerable to further disintegration. It grew thinner, which allowed glaciers on the landward side to flow faster. Sea ice formed in the newly opened area each winter, but it was not until 2011 that the sea ice remained year round, and did not melt the following spring. Between 2011 and 2022, the glaciers were somewhat stabilized because the remnant ice-shelf and sea ice that was permanent and attached, fast to the land, blocking their path into the ocean. But this large expanse shattered within three days in January, captured by NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.
Stef Lhermitte, a professor at TU Delft, who specializes in geoscience and remote sensing, explained to GlacierHub that "[it's] difficult to tell what actually caused the disintegration as the sea ice was already showing cracks prior to the breakup." Others have suggested warmer summer temperatures and foehn winds that carried warm and wet air to the region are partly responsible. The breakup of annual sea ice also occurred earlier than usual this year, which would have also helped destabilize the ice. Nonetheless, "such rapid breakups are often typical for fast ice, as fast ice is often a frozen collection of loose sea ice segments. Once this breaks, it quickly disintegrates," Lhermitte added.
The recent break-up of ice in the Larsen-B embayment is important because the large glaciers that were buttressed by the ice are now exposed to the sea. Unlike sea ice and melt from an ice shelf, glaciers add directly to sea level. Although sea ice frozen to land is not as effective as holding back the flow of glaciers than the original ice shelf that was once present in the Larsen-B embayment, it has played a role in minimizing contributions to sea level rise from the Antarctic Peninsula over the last decade.
At the same time as scientists watched the breakup at Larsen-B, a new study was published that details the life cycle of the huge iceberg that calved from Larsen-C in 2017, A68. It was the sixth largest iceberg ever documented by satellite observations, comparable to the size of Delaware when it first broke from the ice shelf. A68 ceased to exist after three-and-a-half years, when it underwent rapid disintegration near the South Georgia Islands east of the southern tip of South America in January 2021.
The path of the A68 iceberg between July 2017 and March 2021. As it drifted in the vicinity of the South Georgia islands, it is estimated to have dumped 152 billion tonnes of fresh water and nutrients into the surrounding ocean. (As seen in Figure 1). Credit: Laura Gerrish
Study lead author, Anne Braakmann-Folgmann, who has researched A68, explains that concerns were raised when it calved because "it reduced the remaining ice shelf area by a significant amount [and] Larsen-A and -B had already disintegrated." Iceberg calving is known to influence the stability of the parent ice shelf that it leaves behind, but since 2017, what is left of Larsen-C has remained stable.
With warming temperatures and changing climatic patterns, notable events along the Larsen ice shelf are predicted to occur more frequently. Scientists are able to track each section of the Larsen Ice Shelf closely, documenting ice shelf collapse, growth of sea ice and the long survival of giant icebergs which threaten distant areas. As warming continues, questions prevail over how long the Larsen-D portion will remain stable. Its location closer to the South Pole has protected it from the impacts of climate change—so far. Reducing emissions is not only important for ice on the Antarctic Peninsula, but for the larger East and West Antarctic ice sheets, too.
More information:A. Braakmann-Folgmann et al, Observing the disintegration of the A68A iceberg from space,Remote Sensing of Environment(2022).DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2021.112855
New satellite data has revealed the Arctic is melting at a "frightening rate" due to the excess heat caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.
End-of-season Arctic multiyear sea ice – the ice that persists over several years – was roughly 50 centimeters (1.6 feet) thinner in 2021 than it was in 2019, the figures show, a drop of around 16 percent in just three years. It's being replaced by less permanent seasonal sea ice that melts completely every summer.
Over the past 18 years, Arctic Ocean winter sea ice has lost one-third of its volume – a staggering figure that may have been underestimated in the past, says the research. It's the first study to use years of satellite data to estimate both ice thickness and the depth of snow on top.
"Arctic snow depth, sea ice thickness and volume are three very challenging measurements to obtain," says polar scientist Ron Kwok, from the University of Washington.
"The key takeaway for me is the remarkable loss of Arctic winter sea ice volume – one-third of the winter ice volume lost over just 18 years – that accompanied a widely reported loss of old, thick Arctic sea ice and decline in end-of-summer ice extent."
The data comes from the ICESat-2 and radar CryoSat-2 satellites orbiting Earth.
What makes the study important is the way it combines the LiDAR technology of ICESat-2, which was launched three years ago, and the radar technology of CryoSat-2. While LiDAR uses laser pulses and radar uses radio waves, they're both detecting objects (in this case snow and ice) based on the reflections being bounced back at them.
Without this data, judging ice thickness is tricky, because of the way that snow can weigh ice down and change how it floats in the ocean. By using climate records to estimate snow depth in the past, scientists have been overestimating sea ice thickness by up to 20 percent or 20 centimeters (0.7 feet), the study suggests.
Multiyear ice is known to be thicker and therefore more resistant to melting than seasonal ice – you can think of it as sort of a reservoir for the Arctic.
As it becomes depleted and gets replaced by seasonal ice, the overall thickness and volume of Arctic sea ice is expected to quickly decrease as well.
"We weren't really expecting to see this decline, for the ice to be this much thinner in just three short years," says polar scientist Sahra Kacimi, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
Combining previous records from the older ICESat satellite to look back 18 years, the researchers estimate that around 6,000 cubic kilometers (1,439 cubic miles) of winter ice volume has been lost across that time span.
That the last three years has seen a sharp drop is also concerning. Less ice means massive disruption for ecosystems. It could eventually alter the pivotal ocean currents we all rely on, and most likely also accelerate the climate change that's happening all around us.
Meanwhile, it's promising that the newer ICESat-2 satellite, launched in 2018, is working as intended, and we're getting more data back about Arctic ice levels than ever before – even if it makes for grim reading.
"Current models predict that by the mid-century we can expect ice-free summers in the Arctic, when the older ice, thick enough to survive the melt season, is gone," says Kacimi.
Indigenous communities ink Coastal GasLink option deals with TC Energy
By Amanda Stephenson The Canadian Press Posted March 9, 2022 A number of First Nations have become part-owners of a controversial pipeline in Northern B.C.. The equity stake in the Coastal GasLink project could be worth millions. But as Ted Chernecki reports, this still doesn't ensure clear-sailing for the energy project.
Sixteen Indigenous communities along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route have signed option agreements with TC Energy Corp. for an equity stake in the project, a move that one Indigenous leader hopes will set a precedent for future energy infrastructure projects in Canada.
In an interview Wednesday, Chief Corinna Leween of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation — whose traditional lands are located northwest of Prince George, B.C., along the pipeline’s corridor — said the agreements are an “historic milestone” for Indigenous communities.
Coastal gaslink indigenous communities agreement
“This is what we’ve been striving for, to finally have a say and make informed business decisions that will benefit our communities back home,” said Leween.
“A lot of our Nations are still living in poverty, Third World poverty, and not having access to capital or the infrastructure dollars that are needed to do the development of our communities. We are hoping that this will help alleviate it.”
The signing of the agreements was announced Wednesday by TC Energy, the Calgary-based company currently constructing the Coastal GasLink pipeline. In all, 16 communities — represented by two groups, the CGL First Nations Limited Partnership and the FN CGL Pipeline Limited Partnership — have signed on for the option of a 10 per cent equity stake in the project.
Financial terms of the agreements were not disclosed. The equity options are exercisable once the pipeline begins commercial service, with a target date of 2023.
RCMP could have at least two suspects in violent attack on Coastal GasLink employeesRCMP could have at least two suspects in violent attack on Coastal GasLink employees – Feb 23, 2022
Tiffany Murray, director of Indigenous relations for Coastal GasLink, said the equity option was offered to all 20 First Nations along the pipeline route with which TC Energy currently has existing project agreements.
The existing agreements provide for various long-term benefits for Indigenous communities, such as employment and contracting opportunities for the life of the project.
“When we negotiated the agreements initially, that was sort of the intent of what the overall benefits would be,” Murray said. “But when we went through the process to sell down equity back in 2019, we heard from these communities that they had interest in being equity owners as well.”
Global investment firm KKR and the Alberta Investment Management Corp., as well as TC Energy, are the other equity owners of Coastal GasLink. KKR and AIMCO acquired their combined 65 per cent stake in late 2019.
The Coastal GasLink pipeline, which is currently more than 60 per cent complete, will carry natural gas across 670 kilometres from the Groundbirch area west of Dawson Creek, B.C., to a liquefied natural gas export facility being constructed by LNG Canada and its partners near Kitimat, B.C.
While many Indigenous people support the project, Coastal GasLink has been strongly opposed by others.
In early 2020, opposition by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs over the pipeline being built in their territory in northwestern B.C. set off Canada-wide rail blockades by their supporters that stalled parts of the country’s economy.
“We continue to really seek to engage with Wet’suwet’en, and seek those opportunities to better understand concerns and interests as it relates to the project,” Murray said. “I would say it continues as a work in progress . . . to find ways to come to solutions or address concerns as best we can.”
UK
Carbon dioxide will have to be removed from air to achieve 1.5C, says report
Offset markets have important role as switching to renewable energy alone not enough, according to thinktank
Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission thinktank, says carbon offset markets should not be shunned because of earlier mismanagement.
Removing carbon dioxide from the air will now be essential if there is to be any chance of meeting global climate targets, a thinktank has warned.
Carbon offset markets will need to be tidied up and managed properly, as offsets will form a critical route to limiting global heating to 1.5C in line with scientific warnings, according to the Energy Transitions Commission, as switching to renewable energy alone will not produce enough carbon savings. Other methods, such as tree planting and carbon capture and storage, will also be critical.
Lord Adair Turner, the former head of the CBI and ex-chair of the UK government’s Committee on Climate Change and now chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, said carbon offsets and carbon markets were viewed with suspicion as they had been subject to mismanagement and abuse, but that well-functioning markets were possible.
“We would encourage the tidying up of what has been an area with loose standards and loose claims,” Turner said. “It would be very unfortunate to take the past problems of the carbon markets and use that to say we should not use them at all. This is potentially a very large flow of money. So we should try to make sure that financial flow, which is valuable, is provided.”
The Guardian and others have uncovered numerous instances of questionable benefits from carbon offsets offered for sale on the voluntary carbon markets, so-called because they are not formally regulated by governments.
The Energy Transitions Commission report, entitled Mind the Gap: How Carbon Dioxide Removals Must Complement Deep Decarbonisation to Keep 1.5°C Alive, examined ways of removing carbon from the air after it is emitted, in contrast to renewable energy which removes the need to emit carbon dioxide in the first place. Technologies to remove carbon dioxide, such as carbon capture and storage which requires liquefying the gas and pumping it into underground caverns, and direct air capture, using chemicals to suck carbon from the air, are still expensive.
Turner warned that these technologies should not be seen as a “get out of jail free card”, which companies and others could rely on to avoid having to switch to renewable energy or finding other ways of cutting their greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon removal could not be enough on its own, but would be needed to supplement green energy, he said.
A carbon capture and storage facility in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada. Photograph: Todd Korol/Reuters
An alternative to using these technologies is to grow trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the air as they grow, and which scientists have said must form a key part of any strategy to tackle the climate crisis. Funding to grow forests will be hard to achieve without the use of carbon offsets, Turner said.
The ETC report found that more than $200bn (£183bn) a year in total funding would be needed to remove enough carbon to stay within 1.5C, which over the next three decades would amount to about 0.25% of global GDP.
The markets for carbon offsets today reduce global emissions by only about 0.1%, according to the ETC. Companies alone would be unlikely to fund the removals needed, and government assistance would also be needed, the report found.
Turner said carbon markets should be better regulated, to ensure that the cash they can generate is directed towards projects that provide genuine reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. That could be achieved by modelling the markets on existing financial trading, and by using modern monitoring techniques such as satellites to verify that emissions reductions have taken place, or that trees and forests were still standing.
The next instalment of the landmark four-part report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists, is to be published next month. That section of the sixth assessment report, the latest comprehensive update of human knowledge of the climate crisis, drawing on the work of thousands of scientists over the past eight years, will contain sections examining carbon removal technologies and the potential for all carbon-cutting methods, from renewable energy to tree-planting.
New sabre-tooth predator precedes cats by millions of years
ANOTHER AMAZING FIND FROM THE MUSEUM STORAGE ROOM
Dr. Ashley Poust, a post-doctoral researcher at The Nat, has just described what is now the earliest known cat-like predator in North America, west of the Rocky Mountains. The fossil in his hand belonged to Diegoaelurus, a bobcat-sized carnivore that lived around 42 million years ago. Diegoaelurus was much smaller than the commonly known Smilodon, or sabre-tooth cat, seen in the background. Smilodon evolved roughly 40 million years after Diegoaelurus went extinct, but both animals were saber-toothed, hyper-carnivorous predators, meaning their diets consisted almost entirely of meat. Diegoaelurus and its few relatives, from Wyoming and China, were the first predators to evolve sabre-teeth, though several other unrelated animals developed this adaptation much later in time. Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum.
The fossil, housed in the San Diego Natural History Museum's paleontology collection, offers a window into what the Earth was like during the Eocene Period, more than 40 million years ago. The specimen includes a lower jaw and well-preserved teeth, giving us new information about the behavior and evolution of some of the first mammals to have an exclusively meat-based diet.
"Today, the ability to eat an all-meat diet, also called hypercarnivory, isn't uncommon. Tigers do it, polar bears can do it. If you have a house cat, you may even have a hypercarnivore at home. But 42 million years ago, mammals were only just figuring out how to survive on meat alone," said Dr. Ashley Poust, postdoctoral researcher at the San Diego Natural History Museum (The Nat). "One big advance was to evolve specialized teeth for slicing flesh—which is something we see in this newly described specimen."
This early meat-eating predator is part of a mysterious group of animals called Machaeroidines. Now completely extinct, they were not closely related to today's living carnivores. "We know so little about Machaeroidines, so every new discovery greatly expands our picture of them," said coauthor Dr. Shawn Zack of the University of Arizona College of Medicine. "This relatively complete, well-preserved Diegoaelurus fossil is especially useful because the teeth let us infer the diet and start to understand how Machaeroidines are related to each other," said Zack.
Zack, Poust, and their third coauthor Hugh Wagner, also from The Nat, named the predator Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae. The name honors San Diego County where the specimen was found and scientist Blaire Van Valkenburgh, past president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, whose foundational work on the evolution of carnivores influenced this research.
Diegoalerus with fossil. All photos should be credited to San Diego Natural History Museum. Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum
About the discovery
D. vanvalkenburghae was about the size of a bobcat, but with a downturned bony chin to protect its long upper sabre teeth. It would have been a powerful and relatively new kind of hunter.
"Nothing like this had existed in mammals before," said Poust. "A few mammal ancestors had long fangs, but Diegoaelurus and its few relatives represent the first cat-like approach to an all-meat diet, with sabre-teeth in front and slicing scissor teeth called carnassials in the back. It's a potent combination that several animal groups have independently evolved in the millions of years since."
This animal and its relatives represent a sort of evolutionary experiment, a first stab at hypercarnivory—a lifestyle that is followed today by true cats. With only a handful of fossil specimens from Wyoming and Asia, the machaeroidines are so poorly understood that scientists weren't even sure if there were multiple species living within the same time period. "This fossil finding shows that machaeroidines were more diverse than we thought," says Zack. "We already knew there was a large form, Apataelurus, which lived in eastern Utah. Now we have this smaller form, and it lived at approximately the same time. It raises the possibility that there may more out there to find."
In addition to this overlapping existence, Poust points out they may have coexisted with other sabre-toothed animals. "Diegoaleurus, though old, is the most recent of these machaeroidine predators. That puts it within striking distance of the time that the next cat-like animals arrived in North America, the nimravids or sabre-tooth false-cats," he said. "Did these groups ever meet, or even compete for space and prey? We don't know yet, but San Diego is proving to be a surprisingly important place for carnivore evolution."
The Diegoaelurus jawbone fossil has been in The Nat's collection since 1988. It was recovered from a construction site in Oceanside by the museum's PaleoServices team. When this carnivorous animal was alive 42 million years ago, San Diego was covered in rainforests populated by many small, unusual rodents, marsupials, primates and hooved mammals. Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum
About the Santiago Formation
The fossil comes from San Diego County in southern California, at a location first discovered in the 1980s by a local 12-year-old boy. Since then, "Jeff's Discovery Site" has become an important fossil bed within a larger group of rocks called the Santiago Formation. Fossils of an entire ecosystem have been discovered in these 42 million-year-old rocks, painting a picture of a very different San Diego than the one we know today. Though largely inaccessible, these important fossil beds are occasionally exposed by construction projects and road expansions, allowing scientists from The Nat to keep digging for evidence of California's ancient, tropical past.
"Not only was San Diego further south due to tectonic plate movements, but the Eocene was a wetter, warmer world," said Poust. "The Santiago Formation fossils show us a forested, wet California where tiny rhinos, early tapirs, and strange sheep-like, herbivorous oreodonts grazed under trees while unusual primates and marsupials clung to the canopy above. This richness of prey species would have been a smorgasbord for Diegoaelurus, allowing it to live the life of a specialized hunter before most other mammals."
The article, "Diegoaelurus, a new machaeroidine (Oxyaenidae) from the Santiago Formation (late Uintan) of southern California and the relationships of Machaeroidinae, the oldest group of sabertooth mammals," is published in PeerJ.
About the 3D model
The jaw of the newly named meat-eater is available to view in 3D for free on the San Diego Natural History Museum's website.
More information:Shawn P. Zack et al, Diegoaelurus, a new machaeroidine (Oxyaenidae) from the Santiago Formation (late Uintan) of southern California and the relationships of Machaeroidinae, the oldest group of sabertooth mammals,PeerJ(2022).DOI: 10.7717/peerj.13032
An unidentified fossil collected more than three decades ago was actually a mysterious species of saber-toothed carnivore that once stalked prey through the ancient rainforests of Southern California.
The fossil includes a near-complete lower jawbone and a set of well-preserved teeth, according to a new study, published Tuesday (March 15) in the journal PeerJ. Paleontologists at the San Diego Natural History Museum (The Nat) originally collected the specimen in 1988 from a site known as the Santiago Formation in Oceanside, a city in San Diego County, California. The geological formation is estimated to be about 42 million years old, so fossils from the site date back to the Eocene epoch (55.8 million to 33.9 million years ago), according to the American Museum of Natural History.
When the fossilized jawbone was initially discovered, "it had been very properly identified as a meat-eating animal," said study co-author Ashley Poust, a postdoctoral researcher in vertebrate paleontology at the Nat. The specimen bears "big, slicing, scissoring teeth" that are ideally suited for shredding fresh meat, rather than for crunching through nuts or gnawing on bones, for instance, Poust said. Sponsored Links
The museum paleontologists originally thought these formidable teeth might belong to a nimravid, a type of cat-like hypercarnivore, an animal whose diet consisted mostly of meat. The nimravids are often called "false saber-toothed cats," as they resemble the famous felines but don't belong to the Felidae family as true cats do, Live Science previously reported.
However, study co-author Hugh Wagner, a paleontologist at the Nat, later suggested that the jawbone might belong to a more mysterious group of hypercarnivores with scant representation in the fossil record: the machaeroidines. Remains of these strange beasts have been uncovered only at select sites in Asia and North America, and prior to the new study, only 14 specimens had ever been found, according to the PeerJ report. The now-extinct group includes the earliest known saber-toothed mammalian carnivores, which are not closely related to any living carnivores.
Two of these specimens — a partial skeleton and a jawbone — were discovered in Wyoming and Utah and described in priorpapers by the study's co-first author Shawn Zack, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and an expert in ancient carnivores. For the new paper, Zack, Poust and Wagner teamed up to reexamine the perplexing carnivore jawbone in the Nat's collection and determine, once and for all, whether it belonged to a machaeroidine.
The team snapped photos of the fossil from many angles in order to construct a detailed 3D model of the bone and teeth, and after a thorough examination, they confirmed that the specimen was not only a machaeroidine, but a never-before-seen genus and species of machaeroidine.
They named the newfound creature Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae in honor of San Diego County, where the specimen was found, and scientist Blaire Van Valkenburgh, a past president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology whose work greatly influenced scientists' understanding of carnivore evolution.
"Finding this particular group was pretty surprising," because no other machaeroidine specimens in the U.S. had been found west of the Rocky Mountains, Poust told Live Science. "We didn't know that these occurred out here at all."
Based on the size of the jawbone, the researchers determined that D. vanvalkenburghae was about the size of a bobcat, according to the study. The animal carried blade-like, slicing teeth in the back of its mouth and had "sort of reduced teeth in the front — it's totally lost the first [tooth] behind its lower canine," Poust said. Modern cats also have this gap behind their lower canines, to make space for their large upper canines to bite down, he noted. In addition to this gap, D. vanvalkenburghae had a downturned, bony chin that also would have helped to accommodate its impressive saber teeth.
About 42 million years ago, D. vanvalkenburghae would have lived in a very different environment than can be found in San Diego County today, Poust noted.
The Eocene kicked off with a period of extensive warming, which fueled the growth of hot, humid rainforests around the world, according to the American Museum of Natural History. Fossils recovered from Santiago Formation suggest that the lush rainforests of ancient Southern California were once home to lemur-like primates, marsupials, boar-size tapirs and tiny rhinos. In theory, D. vanvalkenburghae may have preyed on these animals, although the predator's exact diet is unknown, Poust said.
The new species helps fill out the sparse machaeroidine fossil record, but it also raises new questions about the cat-like predators, Poust said.
For example, did D. vanvalkenburghae ever coexist and compete for prey with nimravids? The oldest nimravid remains found in the U.S. are roughly 5 million years younger than the newly identified D. vanvalkenburghae fossil, so it would partially depend on when the machaeroidine went extinct. The exact timing and reason for this extinction also remain mysterious, although it's clear that machaeroidines died out many millions of years before the emergence of true saber-toothed cats (Smilodon), Poust noted.
Originally published on Live Science.
The spectre of Donald Trump hangs over the federal Conservative leadership race
The spectre of Donald Trump hangs over the federal Conservative leadership race
Two vastly different ideological camps have emerged among the frontrunners, with the party more divided than ever
Which brings us to the Conservative party’s current leadership race.It is pretty clear that the party is as divided as ever. It’s equally evident where the main combatants intend to fish for votes: Pierre Poilievre is casting his line in waters occupied by the more right-wing elements of the party, in many respects the CPC’s base, while former federal Conservative party leader Jean Charest and Brampton, Ont., Mayor Patrick Brown intend to look for votes among moderates. (Yes, there are others in the race but unless another big name enters the fray, these are the three we will most likely be talking about until the vote on Sept. 10).
Already, Mr. Poilievre and his campaign team have signalled they have come to play, with hard-hitting ads that attempt to define both Mr. Charest and Mr. Brown as policy flip-floppers who will betray the party grassroots. It’s a charge that detractors of Erin O’Toole used effectively to undermine and ultimately end his leadership. It may be a deadly weapon for Mr. Poilievre as well.
Ultimately, it will come down to what type of person party supporters want as their flag-bearer: a centrist conservative such as Mr. Charest or Mr. Brown? Or a slick, take-no-prisoners, loose-with-the-facts populist like Mr. Poilievre, who will move the party to the ideological right?
Make no mistake: Mr. Poilievre is going after those CPC supporters who would pick a Trump ticket over a Biden one. If you’re looking for them, many can be found at any of these pop-up “freedom” rallies you see across the country. They were the ones flying Trump flags at the trucker convoy that squatted in the city of Ottawa for three weeks before being forced out. It’s why Mr. Poilievre reached out to them to offer his encouragement and support at the time, despite the havoc and hardship they were causing to residents of the capital.
A large percentage of these folks can be found in Alberta and Saskatchewan, two provinces Mr. Poilievre hopes to own come the convention. He likely will. His angry, divisive style of politics sells well on the Prairies, where hatred for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau runs high. Mr. Poilievre is happy to stoke and foment that dissent even if it entails propagating ridiculous conspiracy theories – another page he’s ripped out of the Trump playbook.
Mr. Poilievre’s latest is spreading spurious claims about the World Economic Forum (which Mr. Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland have attended), characterizing it as a cabal of elites conjuring a world in which the little people own nothing and learn to be happy with it.
“Maybe that’s why the [federal] government is inflating home prices,” Mr. Poilievre suggests in a campaign video.This is not only dishonest, it’s also dangerous – these tactics are precisely why we see the rage that we do in many parts of the country. headtopics.com
Given the starkly different views that the two main camps in this race represent (Brown/Charest vs. Poilievre) it’s difficult to say what the CPC will look like once the dust settles. Are the more mainstream, temperate party members going to be okay with someone like Mr. Poilievre, who seems increasingly comfortable resorting to the type of dishonest, coercive methods for which Republicans south of the border have become known?
The choice in this leadership contest is so stark it’s reasonable to ask: can the CPC survive once it’s all over?
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