Scientists say new climate law is likely to reduce warming

By SETH BORENSTEIN

Employees of NY State Solar, a residential and commercial photovoltaic systems company, install an array of solar panels on a roof, Aug. 11, 2022, in the Long Island hamlet of Massapequa, N.Y. Massive incentives for clean energy in the U.S. law signed Tuesday, Aug. 16, by President Joe Biden should reduce future global warming “not a lot, but not insignificantly either,” according to a climate scientist who led an independent analysis of the climate package.

(AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Massive incentives for clean energy in the U.S. law signed Tuesday by President Joe Biden should reduce future global warming “not a lot, but not insignificantly either,” according to a climate scientist who led an independent analysis of the package.

Even with nearly $375 billion in tax credits and other financial enticements for renewable energy in the law, the United States still isn’t doing its share to help the world stay within another few tenths of a degree of warming, a new analysis by Climate Action Tracker says. The group of scientists examines and rates each country’s climate goals and actions. It still rates American action as “insufficient” but hailed some progress.

“This is the biggest thing to happen to the U.S. on climate policy,” said Bill Hare, the Australia-based director of Climate Analytics which puts out the tracker. “When you think back over the last decades, you know, not wanting to be impolite, there’s a lot of talk, but not much action.”

This is action, he said. Not as much as Europe, and Americans still spew twice as much heat-trapping gases per person as Europeans, Hare said. The U.S. has also put more heat-trapping gas into the air over time than any other nation.

Before the law, Climate Action Tracker calculated that if every other nation made efforts similar to those of the U.S., it would lead to a world with catastrophic warming — 5.4 to 7.2 degrees (3 to 4 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial times. Now in the best case scenario, which Hare said is reasonable and likely, U.S. actions, if mimicked, would lead to only 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) of warming. If things don’t work quite as optimistically as Hare thinks, it would be 5.4 degrees (3 degrees Celsius) of warming, the analysis said.

Even that best case scenario falls short of the overarching internationally accepted goal of limiting warming to 2.7 degrees warming (1.5 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times. And the world has already warmed 2 degrees (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the mid-19th century.

Other nations “who we know have been holding back on coming forward with more ambitious policies and targets” are now more likely to take action in a “significant spillover effect globally,” Hare said. He said officials from Chile and a few Southeast Asian countries, which he would not name, told him this summer that they were waiting for U.S. action first.

And China “won’t say this out loud, but I think will see the U.S. move as something they need to match,” Hare said.

Scientists at the Climate Action Tracker calculated that without any other new climate policies, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 will shrink to 26% to 42% below 2005 levels, which is still short of the country’s goal of cutting emissions in half. Analysts at the think tank Rhodium Group calculated pollution cuts of 31% to 44% from the new law.

Other analysts and scientists said the Climate Action Tracker numbers makes sense.

“The contributions from the U.S. to greenhouse gas emissions are huge,” said Princeton University climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi. “So reducing that is definitely going to have a global impact.”

Samantha Gross, director of climate and energy at the Brookings Institution, called the new law a down payment on U.S. emission reductions.

“Now that this is done, the U.S. can celebrate a little, then focus on implementation and what needs to happen next,” Gross said.

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Scientists announce plans to resurrect extinct Tasmanian tiger


Colossal Biosciences announces it has started working to "de-extinct" the Tasmanian tiger, with plans to re-introduce the species within the next decade to its native Tasmania and Australia. Image courtesy of Colossal Biosciences

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Like something out of Jurassic Park, a Dallas-based genetics company announced Tuesday it is working to resurrect Australia's extinct Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, to slow biodiversity loss and climate change.

Colossal Biosciences, which is already using genetic engineering to "de-extinct" the woolly mammoth, announced Tuesday it has the DNA and $10 million in funding for its second de-extinction project with the Tasmanian tiger -- the world's largest carnivorous marsupial, before it died off almost a century ago.

The Tasmanian tiger, which was native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, appeared about 4 million years ago and went extinct as a result of hunting by humans. The last known thylacine died in 1936, with the species officially declared extinct in 1982.

Colossal's goal is to reintroduce a genetically-modified hybrid Tasmanian tiger, within the next decade, into parts of Australia to hunt non-native predators that prey on native herbivores in an attempt to re-balance the ecosystem.

RELATED Global extinction threat may be much higher than previously thought

Colossal's plan to de-extinct the woolly mammoth would reintroduce that ancient species to the Arctic to slow the permafrost melt.

"From a Colossal perspective, we are interested in pursuing de-extinction projects where the reintroduction of the restored species can fill an ecological void that was created when the species went extinct and help restore the degraded ecosystem," Ben Lamm, Colossal's co-founder, told Newsweek.

Colossal's other co-founder, George Church, is a renowned Harvard geneticist who has been dubbed the "father of synthetic biology."

RELATED  Wild bison back in Britain for 1st time in thousands of years to fight climate change

Church and Lamm are working with Andrew Pask, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Melbourne, who was the first to decode the thylacine genome in 2017.

Using the DNA, the scientists plan to take cells from a close-living relative, like the fat-tailed dunnart, and edit the differences to create a thylacine embryo.

"We're interrogating every single part of the thylacine genome," Pask said. "It's an expensive and time-consuming endeavor, but now we can figure out those essential DNA edits we need to make that thylacine."

While Pask says it starts with one Tasmanian tiger, the goal is to rewild the ecosystem.

"To bring a healthy population of thylacines back, you can't bring back one or five," Pask said. "You're looking at bringing back a good number of animals that you can put back into the environment."

Pask argues biotechnology is vital to speed the process of balancing the ecosystem, as current conservation techniques are not enough to save threatened species.

"We have to look at other technologies and novel ways to do that if we want to stop this biodiversity loss," Pask said. "We have no choice. I mean, it will lead to our own extinction if we lose 50% of biodiversity on Earth in the next 50 to 100 years."

Researchers propose plasma-based method of extracting oxygen on Mars


A team of researchers proposed using plasma reactors to extract oxygen from Mars' atmosphere in a study published Thursday.

 File Photo by NASA/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- A group of scientists have developed a plasma-based method of producing and separating oxygen on Mars, according to a study published Thursday.

The team of researchers from the University of Lisbon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sorbonne University, Eindhoven University of Technology and the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research shared a method that can harness and process local resources on Mars to produce oxygen and other products, according to the study in the Journal of Applied Physics.

The Martian atmosphere is primarily made up of carbon dioxide that can be split to produce oxygen using electron beams.

"By converting different molecules directly from the Martian atmosphere, plasmas can create the necessary feed-stock and base chemicals for processing fuels, breathing oxygen, building materials and fertilizers," the study's abstract states.

Scientists said the method could serve as a complementary approach to NASA's Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, presenting the potential to deliver high rates of molecule production while sending less instrumentation to space.

Vasco Guerra, a University of Lisbon physicist who authored the study, said that creating and accelerating a beam of electrons is much easier on Mars, where the air is about 100 times thinner than Earth's.

"There is an ideal pressure for plasma operation," he said. "Mars has precisely this correct pressure."

He added that there are two major hurdles to producing oxygen on Mars that the method seeks to reduce.

"First, the decomposition of carbon dioxide molecules to extract oxygen. It's a very difficult molecule to break," said Guerra. "Second, the separation of the produced oxygen from a gas mixture that also contains, for example, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. We're looking at these two steps in a holistic way to solve both challenges at the same time. This is where plasmas can help."

Michael Hecht, an experimental scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also noted that the plasma device would need a portable power source and a place to store the oxygen it provides but said the approach could develop to avoid the bulk with the right investment.

"There's nothing wrong with the plasma technique other than it's a lot less mature [than MOXIE]," he said.

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
Study: Tiny infants born to White mothers stand best chance of better care
By Judy Packer-Tursman


Very premature infants born to mothers of racial and ethnic minorities are less likely than their White counterparts to receive active medical interventions, such as antibiotic therapy, a new study says. 

Photo by Chief Warrant Officer 4 Seth Rossman/U.S. Navy

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- The rate of active medical interventions to save very premature infants increased significantly across the United States from 2014 to 2020, a new study says.

But such infants born to Asian/Pacific Islander, Black and Hispanic mothers were far less likely to receive this care at birth than their non-Hispanic White counterparts.

The researchers defined active treatment as interventions performed in an attempt to treat the infant, "including surfactant therapy, immediate assisted ventilation at birth, assisted ventilation more than six hours in duration and/or antibiotic therapy during the neonatal intensive care unit admission."

That's the gist of research led by Ohio State University published Tuesday in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study focused on extremely low birthweight infants, born before the third trimester of pregnancy, known medically as "periviable."

Only 4 of every 1,000 infants delivered in the United States in 2015 were born between 22 weeks, zero days and 25 weeks, six days gestation, the research paper said.

But these births accounted for roughly 40% of all neonatal deaths, the researchers said, and fully two-thirds of periviable infants were born to a mother who identified as either non-Hispanic Black or Hispanic in 2019.

The investigators reviewed data from the National Center for Health Statistics and found nearly 62,000 "periviable" babies, born alive and without congenital disorders between 2014 and 2020.

Of these births, 37% were Black, 34% white, 24% Hispanic and 5% Asian/Pacific Islander.

Overall, periviable births represented 0.2% of the nearly 27 million live births over the study's time period: 5% were Asian/Pacific Islander, 37% Black, 24% Hispanic and 34% White. And 14% were born at 22 weeks, 21% at 23 weeks, 30% at 24 weeks, and 34% at 25 weeks.

Just over half of these infants -- 52% -- received active medical treatment.

According to the researchers, there were regional differences in active medical treatment for these infants. For example, they pointed out that the rate of active treatment increased for all groups in the Midwest and South.

The researchers noted the inherent challenges in deciding whether to begin active life-saving treatment for such infants since, even if they survive, there is a high risk of potentially life-long adverse health outcomes.

They cited a recent meta-analysis of infants born at 22 weeks who received active treatment that found 29% of them survived, and only 11% survived without major complications.

The study's findings highlight the need for further research to understand the reasons behind such disparities in neonatal intervention "at the cusp of viability," Dr. Kartik Venkatesh, the study's lead author and a maternal-fetal specialist at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, said in a news release.

In fact, there may be more periviable births in the future, "and at earlier gestational ages, in light of recent changes to laws governing reproductive freedom and choice," said Venkatesh, who also is an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology.

He added that it is possible that "persistent racial and ethnic disparities that exist in maternal and neonatal care and outcomes could be worsened in this environment."

Venkatesh said he anticipates the study's findings will spur more clinical and public health strategies to address the problem.

The researchers noted their findings differ from a study of birth certificate data from California, Missouri and Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2005. This earlier data showed that periviable infants of Black and Hispanic individuals were actually more likely to be intubated compared with their White counterparts.

RIP
'Das Boot,' 'Perfect Storm' director Wolfgang Petersen dies

Wolfgang Petersen died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer. 

Photo by Laura Cavanaugh/UPI | License Photo


Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Director Wolfgang Petersen died Tuesday at age 81. His production company confirmed the news to Variety.

Deadline added that Petersen died of pancreatic cancer. He died in his Brentwood, Calif., home in his wife's, Maria Antoinette, arms.

After directing German film and television in the '60s and '70s, Petersen's 1981 film Das Boot brought him international acclaim. The story of a German U-Boat in WWII exists in a theatrical and director's cut, and a further extended TV miniseries version.

Petersen's next German production was the English-language family film The Neverending Story. The tale of a boy reading and interacting with the characters in a storybook brought Petersen to Hollywood.

Hollywood films like Enemy Mine and Shattered followed. Petersen directed Clint Eastwood's first starring role after his Unforgiven Oscar win with In the Line of Fire.

The film showed Eastwood as a Secret Service agent in his '60s. Having failed to stop John F. Kennedy's assassination, the agent gets a chance at redemption when he faces a new assassin (John Malkovich).

Petersen directed the hits Outbreak and Air Force One. The Perfect Storm was a blockbuster of the Summer of 2000, and pioneered visual effects that created the giant wave.

Petersen had another hit with the mythological epic Troy starring Brad Pitt as Achilles. Poseidon, a remake of The Poseidon Adventure, was his last Hollywood movie.

Petersen's last film was the 2016 German film Vier Gegen die Bank, or Four Against the Bank. It was his first German-language film since Das Boot.

Wolfgang Petersen, blockbuster filmmaker of ‘Das Boot,’ dies


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 German film director Wolfgang Petersen speaks during a press conference promoting his latest film "Poseidon," a remake of the 1972 film "The Poseidon Adventure," in Tokyo, on April 19, 2006. Petersen, the German filmmaker whose WWII submarine epic “Das Boot” propelled him into a blockbuster Hollywood career, died Friday at his home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 81. (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Wolfgang Petersen, the German filmmaker whose World War II submarine epic “Das Boot” propelled him into a blockbuster Hollywood career that included the films “In the Line of Fire,” “Air Force One” and “The Perfect Storm,” has died. He was 81.

Petersen died Friday at his home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood after a battle with pancreatic cancer, said representative Michelle Bega.

Petersen, born in the north German port city of Emden, made two features before his 1982 breakthrough, “Das Boot,” then the most expensive movie in German film history. The 149-minute film (the original cut ran 210 minutes) chronicled the intense claustrophobia of life aboard a doomed German U-boat during the Battle of the Atlantic, with Jürgen Prochnow as the submarine’s commander.

Heralded as an antiwar masterpiece, “Das Boot” was nominated for six Oscars, including for Petersen’s direction and his adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s best-selling 1973 novel.

Petersen, born in 1941, recalled as a child running alongside American ships as they threw down food. In the confusion of postwar Germany, Petersen — who started out in theater before attending Berlin’s Film and Television Academy in the late 1960s — gravitated toward Hollywood films with clear clashes of good and evil. John Ford was a major influence.

“In school they never talked about the time of Hitler -- they just blocked it out of their minds and concentrated on rebuilding Germany,” Petersen told The Los Angeles Times in 1993. “We kids were looking for more glamorous dreams than rebuilding a destroyed country though, so we were really ready for it when American pop culture came to Germany. We all lived for American movies, and by the time I was 11 I’d decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.”

“Das Boot” launched Petersen as a filmmaker in Hollywood, where he became one of the top makers of cataclysmic action adventures in films spanning war (2004′s “Troy,” with Brad Pitt), pandemic (the 1995 ebolavirus-inspired “Outbreak”) and other ocean-set disasters (2000′s “The Perfect Storm” and 2006′s “Poseidon,” a remake of “The Poseidon Adventure,” about the capsizing of an ocean liner).

But Petersen’s first foray in American moviemaking was child fantasy: the enchanting 1984 film “The NeverEnding Story.” Adapted from Michael Ende’s novel, “The NeverEnding Story” was about a magical book that transports its young reader into the world of Fantasia, where a dark force known as the Nothing rampages.

Arguably Petersen’s finest Hollywood film came almost a decade later in 1993’s “In the Line of Fire,” starring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent protecting the president of the United States from John Malkovich’s assassin. In it, Petersen marshalled his substantial skill in building suspense for a more open-air but just as taut thriller that careened across rooftops and past Washington D.C. monuments.

Seeking a director for the film, Eastwood thought of Petersen, with whom he had chatted a few years earlier at a dinner party given by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Eastwood met with Petersen, checked out his work and gave him the job. “In the Line of Fire” was a major hit, grossing $177 million worldwide and landing three Oscar nominations.

“You sometimes have seven-year cycles. You look at other directors; they don’t have the big successes all the time. Up to ‘NeverEnding Story,’ my career was one success after another,” Petersen told The Associated Press in 1993. “Then I came into the stormy international scene. I needed time to get a feeling for this work -- it’s not Germany anymore.”

Petersen considered the political thriller — which cast the heroic Eastwood as the tired but devoted defender of a less honorable president — an indictment of Washington.

“When John’s character says, ‘Nothing they told me was true and there’s nothing left worth fighting for,’ I think his words will resonate for many people,” Petersen told The Los Angeles Times. “The film is rooted in a profound pessimism about what’s unfortunately happened to this country in the last 30 years. Look around — the corruption is everywhere, and there’s not much to celebrate.”

After “Outbreak,” with Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman, Petersen returned to the presidency in 1997′s “Air Force One.” Harrison Ford starred as a president forced into a fight with terrorists who hijack Air Force One.

“Air Force One,” with $315 million in global box office, was a hit, too, but Petersen went for something even bigger in 2000′s “The Perfect Storm,” the true-life tale of a Massachusetts fishing boat lost at sea. The cast included George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg but its main attraction was a 100-foot computer-generated wave. With a budget of $120 million, “The Perfect Storm” made $328.7 million.

For Peterson, who grew up on the northern coast of Germany, the sea long held his fascination.

“The power of water is unbelievable,” Petersen said in a 2009 interview. “I was always impressed as a kid how strong it is, all the damage the water could do when it just turned within a couple of hours, and smashed against the shore.”

Petersen’s followed “The Perfect Storm” with “Troy,” a sprawling epic based on Homer’s Iliad that found less favor among critics but still made nearly $500 million worldwide. The big-budget “Poseidon,” a high-priced flop for Warner Bros., was Petersen’s last Hollywood film. His final film was 2016′s “Four Against the Bank” a German film that remade Petersen’s own 1976 German TV movie.

Petersen was first married to German actress Ursula Sieg. When they divorced in 1978, he married Maria-Antoinette Borgel, a German script supervisor and assistant director. He’s survived by Borgel, son Daniel Petersen and two grandchildren.

Bill Gates urges South Korea to be a leader in 'crisis moment for global health'


Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates called on South Korea to play a greater role in tackling infectious diseases and fighting a "global health crisis." The Microsoft co-founder addressed the National Assembly in Seoul on Tuesday. Photo by Yonhap

SEOUL, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates urged South Korea on Tuesday to step up in the international fight against infectious diseases, saying that the country is poised to play a leading role during "a crisis moment for global health."

Gates, who co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, addressed South Korean Parliament and praised the strides the country's health industry has taken, including "incredible vaccine manufacturing, incredible diagnostic manufacturing, R&D capabilities [and] diagnostic capabilities."

"Korea is poised to be a leader in this work," he said in his speech, which came on the second of a three-day visit to the country.

Gates highlighted South Korea's contributions to health initiatives, such as its $200 million contribution to the COVAX global vaccine-sharing program.

RELATED South Korea looks to tackle global vaccine inequality

The country is also positioning itself as a global biomanufacturing training hub, recently launching a series of initiatives to train people from low- and middle-income countries to produce their own vaccines in partnership with the World Health Organization.

Gates said his namesake foundation signed a new agreement with the South Korean government to address health inequality and infectious diseases in the developing world.

"This is a crisis moment for global health, so this is also a fantastic time for our foundation to strengthen the partnership with Korea," Gates said, calling on Seoul to level up its international aid contributions.

"As you increase that generosity to match your economic success as the 10th-largest economy, you will be able to have incredible impact, particularly with partnerships like our foundation and multilateral global health organizations."

Ahead of his address, Gates met with National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo and other members of parliament and asked South Korea to boost its international aid contribution to 0.3% of GDP.

"International health solidarity and cooperation, including the joint response to COVID-19, is essential for the survival of humanity," Kim said, according to a statement.

Lawmakers added that South Korea has agreed to increase its participation in the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a global foundation that works to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.

Later Tuesday, Gates met with executives from local firm SK Bioscience -- which has developed several products, including South Korea's first homegrown COVID-19 vaccine, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The 66-year-old billionaire was also scheduled to meet with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday.

Gates published the book How to Prevent the Next Pandemic in May and argued that COVID-19 could be the last pandemic if the world makes the requisite key investments.

Britain's Rwanda deportation flights grounded over political killings warning


Court documents reveal Britain's deportation plan to fly asylum-seekers back to Rwanda was canceled in June after government officials were warned about human rights violations, including torture and killings. File photo from Andy Rain/EPA-EFE.

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- The first flight to take asylum-seekers from Britain back to Rwanda was canceled in June after UK ministers were warned about human rights violations by Rwanda's government, including torture and killings, according to documents released Tuesday in Britain's high court.

The court is considering an application by a foreign office official to keep parts of the documents sealed over national security concerns, as several media outlets and some migrants argue the 10 comments are in the public interest.

According to the unnamed official, a public document on Rwanda and its human rights record was being updated as the flights were being planned. The official claimed Rwanda's updated "Country Policy and Information Note" said migrants would be "entitled to full protection under Rwandan law, equal access to employment and enrollment in healthcare and social care services."

The document was questioned after one reviewer grew skeptical over whether it gave an accurate depiction in the country.

RELATED Court blocks Britain's first deportation flight to Rwanda at last minute

"There are state control, security, surveillance structures from the national level down... political opposition is not tolerated and arbitrary detention, torture and even killings are accepted methods of enforcing control too," the official wrote in a covering email, according the High Court judge Lord Justice Lewis.

Jude Bunting QC argued Tuesday for the media organizations that want the information released.

"The public needs to understand the material that was available to the government at the time the decisions under challenge were taken, the evidence that is said to weigh against, as well as to justify, this flagship policy and the reasons why the government decided to proceed," Bunting said.

RELATED Britain's High Court allows deportation flight to Rwanda

A decision on whether the documents will be released could come as early as Wednesday.

The first deportation flight bound for Rwanda, carrying asylum seekers who entered Britain illegally, did not take off as scheduled June 14 after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights.

The flights would carry migrants who arrived in Britain, by what the government considers "illegal, dangerous or unnecessary" routes, back to Rwanda where they could claim asylum. So far this year, more than 13,000 asylum-seekers have crossed the English Channel in small boats from France.

RELATED Britain unveils plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda

A number of groups have criticized the flights claiming they are cruel. A full court hearing into the legality of Britain's deportation plan is scheduled for Sept. 5.

Gov. Wolf signs EO to ban conversion therapy in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order banning conversion therapy in the state. Tuesday Photo courtesy of Office of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf/Website

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order Tuesday effectively banning so-called conversion therapy in the state in an effort to protect its LGBTQ residents from the controversial practice that attempts to forcibly change one's sexual orientation.

The Democratic governor signed the executive order during a press conference that directs government agencies to discourage conversion therapy and to take steps to promote evidence-based best practices for LGBTQ people.

It also directs for government policies and procedures to be updated to support LGBTQ employees and for the departments of human services, insurance, state and others to ensure state funds, programs, contracts and other resources are not used in any way to support conversion therapy.

"Conversion therapy is a traumatic practice based on junk science that actively harms the people it supposedly seeks to treat," Wolf said in a statement. "This discriminatory practice is widely rejected by medical and scientific professionals and has been proven to lead to worse mental health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ youth subjected to it.

"This is about keeping our children safe from bullying and extreme practices that harm them."

With the signing of the executive order, Pennsylvania becomes the 21st state to ban conversion therapy, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank.

LGBTQ advocates have long pushed for conversion therapy to be banned as medical professionals see it as harmful to the LGBT community.

The American Medical Association has said it opposes the practice as it assumes that homosexuality or gender nonconformity are mental disorders and practitioners often employ "unethical" techniques including electric shock deprivation of food and liquid, chemically induced nausea and masturbation reconditioning to change one's sexual orientation.

"These practices may increase suicidal behaviors and cause significant psychological distress, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, internalized homophobia, self-blame, intrusive imagery and sexual dysfunction," the AMA said.

According to The Trevor Project, which seeks to end suicide among LGBTQ people, 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, 75% experienced symptoms of anxiety, 58% reported symptoms of depression and 36% reported having been physically threatened or harmed due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

RELATEDTexas lawsuit targets preventive care coverage for birth control, STD testing

Despite these concerns, 13% of LGBTQ youth nationwide reported being subjected to conversion therapy, with 83% stating it occurred when they were minors, according to a national survey on LGBTQ youth mental health conducted last year by The Trevor Project.

The executive order was signed as Republican-led states have pushed legislation that restricts the rights of LGBTQ persons.

The American Civil Liberties Union has listed dozens of what it describes as anti-LGBTQ bills that have been introduced into state legislatures this year alone, many of which target youth.

During the Tuesday press conference, Wolf said these efforts by "right-wing extremists" who use their power to "bully" LGBTQ youth are the impetus behind the executive order.

"This is despicable and it's causing immense harm to our communities," he said. "The anti-LGBTQ legislation, the phony moral outrage on the part of right-wing politicians has fed a very real and a very dangerous wave of discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ community."

Citing stats from the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project, Wolf said anti-LGBTQ mobilization, including demonstrations, violence and propaganda, increased by more than 400% last year compared to the year before with this year on track to be even worse.

"We have a crisis here, and it's unacceptable -- it is unacceptable for all of us. Political attacks on LGBTQ communities are not happening in a vacuum. They're happening in our towns and they are happening in our schools," he said.

"But there's something very simple that we each can do to help -- We can stand up," he said. "We can stand up and tell LGBTQ youth that we hear them, we accept them exactly as they are. They matter, they belong and we're going to protect them and we're going to look out for them."

The Trevor Project, which provided the state with data that aided in fashioning the bill, said it applauds Wolf for signing the executive order while calling on other states to follow his lead.

"Taxpayers' dollars must never again be spent on the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion 'therapy' -- which has been consistently associated with increased suicide risk and an estimated $9.23 billion economic burden in the U.S.," Troy Stevenson, senior campaign manager for advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, said in a statement.

"We urge the state legislature to pass comprehensive state-wide protections and for governors across the nation to follow the Keystone State's lead in ending this abusive practice."

'What a morning!' Huge waterspout churns offshore as lightning flashes

Wyatt Loy
Tue, August 16, 2022

At 6 a.m. CDT Tuesday, Boo Freeman filmed a massive waterspout off the coast of Destin, Florida, about 50 miles east of Pensacola, before most people had their first cup of coffee. "What a morning! Wow!" Freeman posted on Instagram.

Multiple videos and photos posted to social media showed the storm, Northwest Florida Daily News reported. Freeman told AccuWeather that the photogenic waterspout dissipated offshore. "I've seen many waterspouts; just last week we had another one pass by."

AccuWeather Senior Weather Editor Jesse Ferrell pointed out that this was not a typical waterspout. "It looks like this was a legitimate tornado over water formed by a supercell thunderstorm, not a weak waterspout spun up from a rain shower."


FL Waterspout Radar

A radar loop from 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 16, 2022, shows a line of thunderstorms offshore from Destin, Florida, indicated by the red dot.

Radar showed a strong thunderstorm formed just offshore and moved southeast. The National Weather Service issued a special marine warning for offshore waters shortly after the waterspout was sighted.

This is the fifth waterspout reported by the National Weather Service off the Florida Panhandle this summer. Data on how often waterspouts occur isn't well-updated, and most of them go unreported entirely, Ferrell said.


Summer 2022 Waterspouts

A total of five waterspouts have been reported by the National Weather Service office so far this summer.

Many of the waterspouts reported in northwest Florida this season have been off the coast near Tallahassee, and the one in Destin is the farthest west of the bunch so far.

  

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for WATERSPOUT 

Protection sought for rare butterflies at Nevada site



Rare Butterfly Geothermal Project

In this photo provided by the Center for Biological Diversity are the meadows at Baltazor Hot Spring in Humboldt County, Nev., Jan. 14, 2022. Conservationists who are already suing to block a geothermal power plant where an endangered toad lives in western Nevada are now seeking U.S. protection for a rare butterfly at another geothermal project the developer plans near the Oregon line. The Center for Biological Diversity is now petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the bleached sandhill skipper under the Endangered Species Act at the only place it's known to exist.

 (Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity via AP

SCOTT SONNER
Tue, August 16, 2022 

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Conservationists who are already suing to block a geothermal power plant where an endangered toad lives in western Nevada are now seeking U.S. protection for a rare butterfly at another geothermal project the developer plans near the Oregon line.

The Center for Biological Diversity is now petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the bleached sandhill skipper under the Endangered Species Act at the only place it's known to exist.

It says the project the Bureau of Land Management approved last year 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of Reno could ultimately lead to the extinction of the 2-inch-long butterfly with golden-orange wings.

“This beautiful little butterfly has evolved over millennia to thrive in this one specific spot, and no one should have the right to just wipe it off the face of the Earth,” said Jess Tyler, a scientist at the center who co-wrote the petition.

USFWS has 90 days to decide whether there’s enough evidence to conduct a yearlong review to determine if protection is warranted, so any formal listing is likely years away.

But the petition signals the potential for another legal fight all too familiar to Ormat Nevada, which wants to tap hot water beneath the earth to generate carbon-free energy the Biden administration has made a key part of its effort to combat climate change with a shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources. Opposition to those efforts in Nevada has come from conservationists, tribes and others who otherwise generally support greener energy supply.

“At a time when climate change is undisputedly one of the greatest threats to the planet, it is disappointing that the Center for Biological Diversity, a group with a mission to protect the environment, is attempting to stop the development of clean, renewable energy sources,” Ormat Vice President Paul Thomsen said in an email to The Associated Press.

The center and a Nevada tribe have been battling the Reno-based company in federal court since December over its other power plant scheduled to begin operation by Dec. 31 in the Dixie Meadows 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Reno.

USFWS declared the quarter-sized Dixie Valley toad endangered on a temporary emergency basis in April.

Ormat agreed in a joint court stipulation Aug. 1 to suspend construction at least until September and perhaps until the end of the year to consult with the government to ensure compliance with the act.

The butterfly's listing petition, filed Aug. 8, comes 10 years after the service rejected a similar bid from WildEarth Guardians, citing a lack of imminent threat to the insect's habitat.

But the center says the situation changed when the bureau approved Ormat's project at Baltazor Hot Springs near Denio.

The power plant would sit outside the butterfly’s habitat, a single alkali wetland of around 1,500 acres (607 hectares) created by discharge from the Baltazor Hot Springs.

But tapping the underground water likely would affect the flows that support the plants that host the larva that hatch from the butterfly’s eggs and provide nectar for adults, the petition says.

Thomsen said Ormat has a long history of working with the government “to ensure that all habitats and ecosystems, regardless of their federally protected status, co-exist safely with the renewable energy plants we develop.”

The bleached sandhill skipper is a subspecies of skippers stretching from Washington to Arizona and Colorado. Its small geographic range and specific habitat make it highly vulnerable to extinction, the petition says.

“Geothermal energy is an important part of our clean energy transition, but it can’t come at the cost of extinction.” said Patrick Donnelly, the center's Great Basin director.

The petition says there are no official government counts of the butterfly's population, but scientific surveys from 2014-19 indicate it's in decline, with estimates ranging from fewer than 10,000 to hundreds.

Thomsen said Ormat shifted its original blueprint away from butterfly habitat. He said the plan BLM approved after a thorough environmental review includes years' of monitoring and mitigation plans in the event any potential harm to the insect emerges.

The petition claims no mitigation would offset the likelihood the project would alter the spring's hydrology "with the potential to dry up the hot spring altogether.”

“In short, the drying of Baltazor Hot Springs and the meadow it supports would be unmitigable and would result in the extinction of the bleached sandhill skipper."