No one in physics dares say so, but the race to invent new particles is pointless

In private, many physicists admit they do not believe the particles they are paid to search for exist – they do it because their colleagues are doing it

‘The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) hasn’t seen any of the particles theoretical physicists have hypothesised, even though many were confident it would.’ A technician works on the LHC, near Geneva, Switzerland. Photograph: Laurent Gilliéron/AP

Sabine Hossenfelder

THE GUARDIAN
Mon 26 Sep 2022

Imagine you go to a zoology conference. The first speaker talks about her 3D model of a 12-legged purple spider that lives in the Arctic. There’s no evidence it exists, she admits, but it’s a testable hypothesis, and she argues that a mission should be sent off to search the Arctic for spiders.

The second speaker has a model for a flying earthworm, but it flies only in caves. There’s no evidence for that either, but he petitions to search the world’s caves. The third one has a model for octopuses on Mars. It’s testable, he stresses.

Kudos to zoologists, I’ve never heard of such a conference. But almost every particle physics conference has sessions just like this, except they do it with more maths. It has become common among physicists to invent new particles for which there is no evidence, publish papers about them, write more papers about these particles’ properties, and demand the hypothesis be experimentally tested. Many of these tests have actually been done, and more are being commissioned as we speak. It is wasting time and money.

Since the 1980s, physicists have invented an entire particle zoo, whose inhabitants carry names like preons, sfermions, dyons, magnetic monopoles, simps, wimps, wimpzillas, axions, flaxions, erebons, accelerons, cornucopions, giant magnons, maximons, macros, wisps, fips, branons, skyrmions, chameleons, cuscutons, planckons and sterile neutrinos, to mention just a few. We even had a (luckily short-lived) fad of “unparticles”.

All experiments looking for those particles have come back empty-handed, in particular those that have looked for particles that make up dark matter, a type of matter that supposedly fills the universe and makes itself noticeable by its gravitational pull. However, we do not know that dark matter is indeed made of particles; and even if it is, to explain astrophysical observations one does not need to know details of the particles’ behaviour. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) hasn’t seen any of those particles either, even though, before its launch, many theoretical physicists were confident it would see at least a few.

Talk to particle physicists in private, and many of them will admit they do not actually believe those particles exist. They justify their work by claiming that it is good practice, or that every once in a while one of them accidentally comes up with an idea that is useful for something else. An army of typewriting monkeys may also sometimes produce a useful sentence. But is this a good strategy

Experimental particle physicists know of the problem, and try to distance themselves from what their colleagues in theory development do. At the same time, they profit from it, because all those hypothetical particles are used in grant proposals to justify experiments. And so the experimentalists keep their mouths shut, too. This leaves people like me, who have left the field – I now work in astrophysics – as the only ones able and willing to criticise the situation.

There are many factors that have contributed to this sad decline of particle physics. Partly the problem is social: most people who work in the field (I used to be one of them) genuinely believe that inventing particles is good procedure because it’s what they have learned, and what all their colleagues are doing.

But I believe the biggest contributor to this trend is a misunderstanding of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, which, to make a long story short, demands that a good scientific idea has to be falsifiable. Particle physicists seem to have misconstrued this to mean that any falsifiable idea is also good science.

In the past, predictions for new particles were correct only when adding them solved a problem with the existing theories. For example, the currently accepted theory of elementary particles – the Standard Model – doesn’t require new particles; it works just fine the way it is. The Higgs boson, on the other hand, was required to solve a problem. The antiparticles that Paul Dirac predicted were likewise necessary to solve a problem, and so were the neutrinos that were predicted by Wolfgang Pauli. The modern new particles don’t solve any problems.

In some cases, the new particles’ task is to make a theory more aesthetically appealing, but in many cases their purpose is to fit statistical anomalies. Each time an anomaly is reported, particle physicists will quickly write hundreds of papers about how new particles allegedly explain the observation. This behaviour is so common they even have a name for it: “ambulance-chasing”, after the anecdotal strategy of lawyers to follow ambulances in the hope of finding new clients.

Ambulance-chasing is a good strategy to further one’s career in particle physics. Most of those papers pass peer review and get published because they are not technically wrong. And since ambulance-chasers cite each other’s papers, they can each rack up hundreds of citations quickly. But it’s a bad strategy for scientific progress. After the anomaly has disappeared, those papers will become irrelevant.

This procedure of inventing particles and then ruling them out has been going on so long that there are thousands of tenured professors with research groups who make a living from this. It has become generally accepted practice in the physics community. No one even questions whether it makes sense.

 At least not in public.

I believe there are breakthroughs waiting to be made in the foundations of physics; the world needs technological advances more than ever before, and now is not the time to idle around inventing particles, arguing that even a blind chicken sometimes finds a grain. As a former particle physicist, it saddens me to see that the field has become a factory for useless academic papers.



Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. She is author of Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions and creator of the YouTube Channel Science Without the Gobbledygook.

INSIGHT-Coal rush! Energy crisis fires global hunt for polluting fuel




* Tanzania expects thermal coal exports to double this year

* European buyers prepared to pay top dollar, miners say

* Loss of Russian energy leads to rush for polluting coal

* Landlocked Botswana also exports to Europe as prices surge

By Sudarshan Varadhan, Helen Reid, Nuzulack Dausen, Jonathan Saul and Nina Chestney

DAR ES SALAAM, Sept 20 (Reuters) - The sleepy Tanzanian port of Mtwara mainly dealt in cashew nuts until late last year. Now it bustles with vessels loading up with coal, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drives a worldwide race for the polluting fuel.

Tanzania traditionally exports thermal coal only to neighbouring countries in east Africa; sending it further afield was out of the question, as it required trucking the material more than 600 km from mines in its southwest to Mtwara, the nearest Indian Ocean port.

Europe’s crippling energy crisis has changed all that.

Prices for thermal coal, used to generate electricity, have leapt to record levels as a result of the war, which has led to many European countries losing access to vital supplies of natural gas and coal from their top provider Russia.

Buyers in Europe and beyond are now vying to pay top dollar for coal from often remote mines in places such as Tanzania, Botswana and even potentially Madagascar. The resurgent coal demand, driven by governments trying to wean themselves off Russian energy while keeping a lid on power prices, clashes with climate plans to shift away from the most polluting fossil fuel.

“European players, after the Russian war, are going to any place where there is coal,” Rizwan Ahmed, managing director of coal miner Bluesky Minings said in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. “They are offering to pay very good prices.”

Commodities trader Cargill has seen a marked rise in coal shipments into Europe in recent months, said Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill’s ocean transportation division, with the company transporting 9 million tonnes of coal globally in the June-August period compared with 7 million a year earlier.

“Europe is competing with other buyers and the alternative is more expensive, which is gas,” said Dieleman. “Europe should be able to source coal and we will see very strong flows into Europe from Colombia, South Africa and even further away.”

Even though the window of opportunity may be short should the geopolitical winds shift, some countries with coal resources see the margins to be gained as too good a chance to miss.

Front-month physical thermal coal at Australia’s Newcastle port - a global benchmark - was trading at $429 a tonne on Sept. 16, just below an all-time high of $483.50 in March and up from around $176/tonne this time last year.

Mtwara has seen 13 vessels load up with coal since November last year when it launched its first-ever coal shipment, according to a port official; the latest, the MV Miss Simona, a bulk carrier with 34,529-tonne capacity, docked last week, loaded up and sailed off to France.

Since the end of June, 57 cargo orders - requests for available vessels - to ship Tanzanian coal have been seen on the spot freight market compared with just two in the same period last year, according to analysis from maritime and commodities data platform Shipfix.

Global seaborne thermal coal imports reached 97.8 million tonnes in July, the highest level on record and up more than 9% year-on-year, an analysis from ship broker Braemar shows. The volume dropped to 89 million tonnes in August, largely due to export disruptions from major producer Australia.

A LAST HURRAH FOR COAL?

Tanzania expects coal exports to double this year to around 696,773 tonnes, the country’s Mining Commission told Reuters, while production is expected to increase by 50% to about 1,364,707 tonnes.

Targeting sizeable tax revenues from this jump in exports, the government is considering building a railway that would link the coal-producing Ruvuma region to Mtwara, said Yahya Semamba, acting executive secretary of the Mining Commission, a government body.

Tanzania-based miner Ruvuma Coal has already exported at least 400,000 tonnes of coal via a trader to countries including the Netherlands, France and India since November, according to trade data reviewed by Reuters.

Ruvuma Coal declined to comment for this story.

Coal miners are enjoying unprecedented profit margins in what some see as a last hurrah for an industry facing intense pressure to cut production; with coal at $75 a tonne in late 2020, a coal mine might earn a cash margin of $15/tonne, said Rob West, analyst at consultancy Thunder Said Energy. But as prices hit $400/tonne, the cash margin increased to $235/tonne.

Indeed traders in Europe are willing to pay twice the price quoted by Asian buyers, according to some mine executives such as Bluesky’s Ahmed, who said his company didn’t currently export through Mtwara, but planned to do so, and had received requests from buyers in Germany, Poland and Britain.

Similarly, in landlocked Botswana, selling coal on the seaborne market used to be unthinkable, with most exports going to neighbouring South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

“Earlier, the logistics would kill us. However, at current prices, we can make this thing work,” said Morné du Plessis, CEO of Botswana-based coal miner Minergy.

Minergy has exported two shipments of around 30,000 tonnes each from Namibia’s Walvis Bay port, and sent two trains of coal to be exported from Mozambique’s Maputo port.

The island nation of Madagascar, the world’s top exporter of vanilla, could become another newbie on the global coal scene.

“The current prices comfortably support a business case for coal miners in Madagascar to start exporting coal for the first time in the country’s history,” said Prince Nyati, CEO of one of the companies developing a coal project in the country.

However, new entrants will have to ready themselves to pull back or even cease production if the market conditions become unfavourable, Nyati added.

1912

‘COAL HAS BEEN EMBRACED’

High demand and tight supplies of coal have redrawn trade routes, driving up global “deadweight tonne days” for the fossil fuel to record heights in July, according to Braemar research, referring to a measure of shipping levels in terms of fleet usage and the length of voyage

Thermal coal imports by the European Union from Australia, South Africa and Indonesia - which have traditionally supplied Asian markets - rose more than 11-fold in the four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, data from Indian consultancy Coalmint showed.

The invasion has forced EU nations to move to cut reliance on gas from Russia, which has reduced its vast supplies to the region. The bloc’s ban on Russian coal imports has further increased pressure on electricity generators to find alternative sources of the fuel.

Russia usually provides about 70% of the EU’s thermal coal, according to the Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel, while it typically supplies 40% of the bloc’s natural gas.

European countries have temporarily set aside environmental goals as they seek to stockpile the fuel and reopen mothballed coal plants to prepare for what could be a difficult winter.

“Strong incentives have pushed coal and lignite generation 25% above year-ago levels, despite a whole host of plant closures over the past three years,” analysts at Bank of America said about Europe.

The current ramp-up in thermal coal combustion could put countries on a collision course with ambitious CO2 emissions reduction goals; in the EU, burning more coal will increase CO2 emissions by 1.3% a year if Russian gas supplies are completely halted, according to energy think-tank Ember.

Governments in Europe say this is a temporary change, although that could depend on how long the energy crisis drags on. Germany is delaying planned shutdowns of some coal plants in order to ensure security of power supply.

Minergy, the Botswana coal miner, sees the coal market remaining strong until at least mid-2023, if not longer. It hopes to double its production capacity.

“The negative narrative surrounding coal has been abandoned, and coal has been embraced as the go-to energy source in the energy crises arising from the war,” the company said.

Reporting by Nuzulack Dausen in Dar Es Salaam, Sudarshan Varadhan in New Delhi, Helen Reid in Johannesburg, Jonathan Saul and Nina Chestney in London; Editing by Veronica Brown and Pravin Char

The Jackson Water Crisis Is a Disaster Created by Austerity

Jackson, Mississippi’s water crisis is an omen of climate disasters to come. But August floods were only the straw that broke the Jackson water system’s back. More fundamentally, the crisis is the result of decades of disinvestment and austerity.

The Salvation Army of Jackson and Walmart distribute bottled water in

 Jackson, Mississippi on August 31, 2022. (Brad Vest / Getty Images)

BY  RYAN ZICKGRAF

JACOBIN
09.06.2022

After a crisis which left 150,000 residents without drinking water for weeks, water pressure in Jackson, Mississippi is back as of Monday. But safe, clean drinking water remains elusive, and it’s unclear when that will change.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says it’s still too soon to declare the crisis over, and the city warned of “additional challenges” on the horizon. Jackson residents are still under the same boil-water advisory implemented in late July. For over a month, faucets have gushed a cloudy, discolored liquid that’s unsafe for drinking and cooking. Health officials told residents they could take a shower with the tainted water — albeit with mouths shut so as not to swallow it accidentally.

“It’s like we’re living in a nightmare right now,” a local high school sophomore told CNN.

The crisis was kicked off when heavy rain flooded the Pearl River and knocked out the pumps at Jackson, Mississippi’s water treatment facility for a week. Many commentators have rightly focused on climate change, identifying Jackson as a sign of disasters to come when increasingly extreme weather inevitably damages core infrastructure. But Jackson’s water problems can’t be blamed on the climate crisis alone. They’re also the result of decades of disinvestment, dysfunction, and systemic racism at every level of government.

“Deliberate Indifference”

Jackson’s mayors and city council have called for repairs on roughly fifteen hundred miles of century-old water mains off and on since the 1940s, according to Jackson’s Clarion Ledger. Back in 1978, the Environmental Protection Agency ((EPA) warned city leaders that significant improvements to the water infrastructure were needed. Yet decades of white flight and capital disinvestment from Mississippi’s capital city — now 82 percent black with a poverty rate of 25 percent — reduced the revenue officials say the water system needed to maintain full operations. An estimated $1 billion worth of necessary upgrade requests went unfulfilled.

Consequently many Jacksonians have lacked clean drinking water for years. The EPA first reported high lead levels in the city’s tap water in 2015. Since then, local officials have advised pregnant women and children under five not to drink from the tap. The lead issue has not yet been properly addressed, nor have many of the two dozen violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act that the EPA has issued over the past eight years.

Last year, two lawsuits were filed in federal court over Jackson’s lead level, with one suit alleging that the city of Jackson and the state’s Health Department made “conscience-shocking decisions and have shown deliberate indifference that has led to Plaintiffs’ exposure to toxic lead in Jackson’s drinking water.”

The lines were said to be as fragile as “peanut brittle” a year and a half ago, a time when most residents lost access to running water during back-to-back wintery storms. While the nation was panicking over the arrival of COVID-19 in February of 2020, roughly forty-three thousand Jacksonians also had to deal with losing water access for more than two weeks.

“We’ve been going it alone for the better part of two years when it comes to the Jackson water crisis,” Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said. “I have said on multiple occasions that it’s not a matter of if our system would fail, but a matter of when our system would fail.”

Build Back Never?

Residents were placed under a boil-water notice in late July. August floods only exacerbated the preexisting problems, acting as the straw that broke the camel’s back.

State and federal officials have declared a state of emergency, but aren’t taking any responsibility for years of inaction as the crisis unfolded in plain sight. Last year, two bills designed to raise money for water system repairs died in the legislature. In 2020, Mississippi governor Tate Reeves, a Republican, vetoed legislation meant to assist residents struggling to pay overdue water bills, which would have in turn delivered the city much-needed revenue. Reeves instead passed the state’s largest-ever tax cut in the nation’s poorest state.

“We’re facing an environmental injustice, and we have been ignored,” said Maisie Brown, a community activist and organizer in Jackson. “Jacksonians and people around the area have been ignored by state leadership, and now they want to swoop in — all hands on deck, fixing the problem — but we’ve been asking for help for years, not even just from this administration,”

Help is coming but it’s not enough. The state is receiving $429 million from Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill for water system repairs. But that money that will be spread throughout the state and won’t begin to cover the $1 billion estimated to fix Jackson’s ailing water systems. The federal government even bungled the effort to pass out water bottles: residents were seen waiting in mile-long lines at Hawkins Field Airport for hours last Tuesday to get just one case of bottled water. When the seven hundred cases of water ran out, many Jacksonians were eventually turned away.

It’s true that Jackson’s crisis is a sign of things to come if we don’t halt climate change and ward off extreme weather. But pinning Jackson’s problems on the August floods is the equivalent of pinning the Titanic disaster on the iceberg. Jackson’s water woes aren’t an act of God. They’re a manmade disaster happening in slow motion.

This work has been made possible by the support of the Puffin Foundation.

Ryan Zickgraf is an Alabama-based journalist and is the editor of Third Rail Mag.

4 parties agree in debate - fur farms need to banned in Quebec, CAQ doesn't participate


Christine Long
CTV News Montreal Videojournalist

Updated Sept. 22, 2022

The Montreal SPCA recently hosted the first ever provincial electoral debate on animal protection, and the organization is demanding that fur farms be banned in Quebec.

At fur farms, after spending their lives in small wire cages, minks and foxes are then euthanized for their fur.

"Anal electrocutions for fox and asphyxiations for mink, these are the standard practices," said Sophie Gaillard, director of animal advocacy and legal affairs and the interim director at the Montreal SPCA.

There are three fur farms left in Quebec, and the SPCA wants them closed.

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"Over 15 countries have banned fur farming due to the inherent cruelty, and British Colombia has banned mink farming." said Gaillard.

The SPCA invited the five major provincial political parties to a debate on animal protection.

Quebec Solidaire, the Conservative Party of Quebec, the Parti Quebecois (PQ) and the Liberal party participated, and all agreed that fur farming has to end.

"Amazing all four parties committed to banning fur farming in Quebec," said Gaillard.

However, the party that didn't show is the one most likely to be in power again after Oct. 3.

"The CAQ did not take us up on our invitation," said Gaillard.

Veterinarian Dr. Marion Demarchelais says fur farming is out of date.

"It's not compatible with the animal welfare standards in 2022," she said.

Her letter of support for the SPCA says that in both life and death, the code of practices still in effect in Quebec allows these animals to be mistreated.

"All the time they are being handled with gloves and other retraining devices is highly stressful, like terrifying," said Desmarchelais. "Both the SPCA and this veterinarian agree that whoever is in power -- fur farms have to be banned."

 
RELATED IMAGES


Minks on a conveyor belt to be skinned, at Sydvestjysk Pelscenter A.m.b.a. in Varde, Denmark, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. 200 More than a quarter million Danes have gone into lockdown in a northern region of the country where a mutated variation of the coronavirus has infected minks being farmed for their fur, leading to an order to kill millions of the animals. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Friday's move was contain the virus, and it came two days after the government ordered the cull of all 15 million minks bred at Denmark’s 1,139 mink farms. (John Randeris/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

 New Brunswick

Snow Cone death 'all but certain,' researchers say about entangled right whale

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One of only about 100 reproducing females, the North Atlantic right whale is 'in extremely poor health'

Hadeel Ibrahim · CBC News · Posted: Sep 23, 2022 

A photo of Snow Cone taken by the New England Aquarium aerial team, approximately 15 nautical miles south of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts. (Submitted by New England Aquarium)

Scientists say there is no hope of survival for an endangered North Atlantic right whale sighted with more fishing gear wrapped around its body.

In a news release, the New England Aquarium said Snow Cone, the whale featured in a recent documentary about the endangered species, was spotted south of Massachusetts on Wednesday.

The whale, a 17-year-old female, appears to be "in extremely poor health," and "her death is all but certain." 

Snow Cone was first seen entangled in March 2021. In July of this year, researchers spotted the whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence still entangled. This week, the whale appeared to be carrying rope from a new entanglement on top of the old gear.

"Eighteen months ago, there was hope that disentanglement efforts could remove enough of the gear and that would allow her to survive," research assistant Sharon Hsu said in the release.

"Now, she's covered in orange cyamids [whale lice]. She was moving so slowly, she couldn't dive, she just sunk. She's suffering. There is no longer hope for her survival."

A photo of Snow Cone and her calf taken on Jan. 6, 2022, approximately 12 nautical miles off Fernandina Beach in Florida. The calf has not been seen since April. (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission)

This is Snow Cone's fifth known entanglement, according to Heather Pettis, research scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. The right whale is also one of the last 100 reproducing females.

"Losing her is devastating," Pettis said.

Snow Cone's death means the likely loss of her lineage. Pettis said the whale's first calf was killed by a boat and her second calf, born while Snow Cone was entangled, has not been seen since April.

Pettis said some calves can survive without their mothers after eight months, but knowing Snow Cone was entangled while nursing her calf means it's not likely the young whale is still alive.

"We've never seen a calf fully weaned that early to a mom who's in this poor condition," she said.

The disentanglement team at the Center for Coastal Studies was alerted, but has not been able to immediately approach and help the whale because of the time of day, the whale's distance from the shore and weather conditions.

Pettis said considering Snow Cone's condition, even successful disentanglement might not keep her alive.

"It may provide some relief for sure ... But I don't think that we're looking at a case where she has much of a chance."

According to researchers, there are between 330 and 350 right whales remaining in the world. In 2015, their population was estimated to be 520.

Since 2017, 54 right whales have either been confirmed dead or seriously injured.

• Entangled whale Snow Cone spotted off New Brunswick

• Rescuers hope to resume efforts to disentangle right whale found near N.B.

Premature or unusual right whale deaths have been blamed on ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.

The Government of Canada has been implementing new speed and fishing restrictions to mitigate the harm, and the fishing industry has been working on developing fishing technology that does not require the use of rope.

But the measures have not gone far enough to protect this particular whale.

"The case magnifies the urgent need for dramatic changes to fixed gear fisheries, including accelerating the transition to ropeless or 'on-demand' gear,' the release said.

Pettis said it's not too late for the whales to rebound. It will just take quick and decisive action from humans.

"If we allow them a buffer, stop killing them, stop seriously injuring them, we have no doubt that they'll be able to recover," she said. 

"If we continue on this track, then we are looking at the potential extinction of a large whale species in our lifetime, and that thought, that, that possibility … should be absolutely horrific to people."

Suffering 'inexcusable'

The most dramatic health decline was seen in the last two months. 

Pettis said more than 86 per cent of right whales have experienced at least one entanglement, and some individuals have experienced as many as eight.

"We are watching one of the few remaining reproductive North Atlantic right whale females slowly die, and the deterioration and suffering that she has experienced is inexcusable," she said.

Air pollution can amplify negative effects of climate change, new study finds

by University of Texas at Austin

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The impacts of air pollution on human health, economies, and agriculture differ drastically depending on where on the planet the pollutants are emitted, according to a new study that could potentially incentivize certain countries to cut climate-changing emissions.

Led by the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California San Diego, the study, which was published Sept. 23 in Science Advances, is the first to simulate how aerosol pollution affects both climate and air quality for locations around the globe.

Aerosols are tiny solid particles and liquid droplets that contribute to smog and are emitted from industrial factories, power plants and vehicle tailpipes. They impact human health, agricultural and economic productivity in unique global patterns when compared with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are the focus of efforts to mitigate climate change.

Although CO2 and aerosols are often emitted at the same time during the combustion of fuel, the two substances behave differently in Earth's atmosphere, said co-lead author Geeta Persad, an assistant professor at the UT Austin Jackson School of Geosciences.

"Carbon dioxide has the same impact on climate no matter who emits it," said Persad. "But for these aerosol pollutants, they tend to stay concentrated near where they're emitted, so the effect that they have on the climate system is very patchy and very dependent on where they're coming from."

The researchers found that, depending on where they are emitted, aerosols can worsen the social costs of carbon—an estimate of the economic costs greenhouse gasses have on society—by as much as 66%. The scientists looked at eight key regions: Brazil, China, East Africa, Western Europe, India, Indonesia, United States and South Africa.

"This research highlights how the harmful effects of our emissions are generally underestimated," said Jennifer Burney, co-lead author and the Marshall Saunders Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Global Climate Policy and Research at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. "CO2 is making the planet warmer, but it also gets emitted with a bunch of other compounds that impact people and plants directly and cause climate changes in their own right."

The work, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, represents a collaboration between Persad and Burney, who are physical scientists, and a group of economists and public health experts. Co-authors include Marshall Burke, Eran Bendavid, and Sam Heft-Neal at Stanford University and Jonathan Proctor at Harvard University.

Aerosols can directly affect human health and the climate independently of CO2. They are associated with negative health impacts when inhaled, and can affect the climate by influencing temperature, precipitation patterns and how much sunlight reaches the Earth's surface.

To study aerosols' influence in comparison to CO2, the team created a set of climate simulations using the Community Earth System Model version 1 developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They ran simulations in which each of the eight regions produced identical aerosol emissions and mapped how temperature, precipitation, and surface air quality were affected across the globe. Then they connected this data with known relationships between climate and air quality and infant mortality, crop productivity, and gross domestic product across the eight regions.

In a final step, they compared the total societal costs of these aerosol-driven impacts against the societal costs of co-emitted CO2 in each of the eight regions, and produced global maps of the combined effects of aerosols and CO2. The researchers said the study is a big step forward from previous work, which either only estimated the air quality impacts of aerosols or didn't consider their diverse global climate effects.

The outcome paints a varied and complicated picture. Emissions from some regions produce climate and air quality effects that range from two to more than 10 times as strong as others and social costs that sometimes affect neighboring regions more than the region that produced the aerosol emissions. For example, in Europe local emissions result in four times as many infant deaths outside Europe as within.

But the researchers note that aerosol emissions are always bad for both the emitter and the planet overall.

"While we might think about aerosols, which cool the climate, as having the silver lining of counteracting CO2-driven warming, when we look at all these effects in combination, we find that no region experiences overall local benefits or generates overall global benefits by emitting aerosols," said Persad.

Researchers also said the findings create potentially new motivations for countries to cut emissions—and to care about other countries cutting emissions. For example, the study found that adding aerosol costs to CO2 costs could double China's incentive to mitigate emissions. And it switches the impact of local emissions in Europe from a net local benefit to a net cost. The study also shows that some emerging economies, like East African nations and India, might be motivated to collaborate on emission cuts since they are strongly impacted by each other's emissions.

The framework developed in this study can also be applied to maximize societal benefits from current mitigation strategies being considered by policy makers. For example, the researchers applied it to the "fair-share" approach laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement in which all countries target the same per-capita CO2 emissions. They found the approach, while beneficial for climate stability, does not improve the mortality and crop impacts from combined aerosol and CO2 emissions because it focuses mitigation in regions that already have fairly low aerosol impacts, like the U.S. and Europe.

"By expanding societal cost calculations to include the geographically-resolved societal impacts of co-emitted aerosols, we're showing that the incentive for individual countries to mitigate and collaborate on mitigation is much higher than if we only think about greenhouse gases," Burney said.


Explore further

Particulate pollution's impact varies greatly depending on where it originated
More information: Jennifer Burney et al, Geographically resolved social cost of anthropogenic emissions accounting for both direct and climate-mediated effects, 

Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn7307. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn7307

Journal information: Science Advances

Provided by University of Texas at Austin

Canada won’t come close to goal of eliminating plastic waste by 2030, report finds — and recycling is not the answer

Canada will miss its 2030 target by 2,092,994 metric tonnes if action isn’t taken to prevent plastics from becoming waste in the first place, environmental organization’s report says.

By Ghada Alsharif

TOR STAR Staff Reporter
Wed., Sept. 21, 2022

Canada will fail to achieve its goal to eliminate plastic packaging waste by 2030 without substantial new action by all levels of government, according to a report released Wednesday by NGO Environmental Defence.

If no changes are made to the management of plastic packaging and products to prevent them from becoming waste, Canada will miss its 2030 target by 2,092,994 metric tonnes.

This means that 88 per cent of plastics packaging generated “will continue to be disposed in landfills, incinerated or discarded as pollution,” the report said.

The plastic packaging report, which includes a report card assessing the current performance of Canada’s provinces and territories, gives Ontario a failing grade on plastics policy. In fact, the report found that all provincial policies across the country are largely failing, with only two provinces receiving a passing grade — British Columbia (C) and Prince Edward Island (D+).

In June, the federal government announced it was banning companies from importing or manufacturing plastic bags and takeout containers by the end of this year, from selling them by the end of next year, and from exporting them by the end of 2025.

But Karen Wirsig, the plastics program manager at NGO Environmental Defence, said as long as recycling is seen as the main solution and if plastic is not eliminated at the source, the problem of plastic waste will remain the same.

“We are in a plastic pollution crisis and we’re not going to solve that crisis without new measures, notably from the federal government, to reduce reliance on plastic,” Wirsig said. “All levels of government are too focused on recycling as a silver bullet.”

The vast majority of plastic packaging produced and sold in Ontario and across Canada never gets recycled and most end up in landfills, burned for fuel or in the environment. In 2019, Canada produced around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic packaging and of that, only 12 per cent was sent for recycling, according to a recent report commissioned by the Canada Plastics Pact.

Provincially, the Ford government recently approved a complete overhaul of Ontario’s curbside recycling regime. Between 2023 and 2026, Ontario will transition to a system where stewards — companies such as Loblaw and Unilever — are responsible for both running and paying for a more centralized blue box program. Toronto is scheduled to be one of the first municipalities to move to the new system, in the summer of 2023.

Wirsig said Ontario’s main weakness regarding plastic waste disposal is the lack of a deposit-return system for beverage containers, which she calls “low-hanging fruit when it comes to ensuring that plastic stays out of the environment, landfills and incinerators.”

“Fewer containers are collected and recycled in Ontario than almost any other province and we’re the biggest province, which means we generate more plastic waste than any other province,” Wirsig said.

Despite the reported shortcomings of the province, the Environmental Defence report notes that Ontario’s 60 per cent recycling target for rigid plastic — shampoo bottles, berry containers, juice jugs — is the most ambitious goal among all provinces.

But even the most ambitious action may not be enough according to the report.

“Even if all of Canada’s provinces and territories were to level up to the most ambitious waste management systems in Canada, and even if we generously assume that the targets for higher rigid plastic were to be achieved for all plastic packaging … Canada will miss its target by 933,489 (metric tonnes).

This means that 39 per cent of the plastic packaging generated will continue to be disposed in landfill, incinerated, or discarded as pollution.”

If all provinces adopted Ontario’s target by 2030, “we’d still have nearly a million tonnes of plastic waste because 60 per cent isn’t 100 per cent,” Wirsig said. “We need to start imposing real requirements on reused and refilled packaging and containers. And we need to get away from the sense that recycling is going to save us.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Rod Muir, a former waste campaigner for Sierra Club Canada and the founder of Waste Diversion Toronto, said the government’s efforts so far have been nothing more than “virtue signalling.”

“I don’t see how it’s going to be any different or change anything on the ground,” Muir said of Ontario’s new blue box system.

Muir added that crucial steps to improve plastic waste management include limiting the amount of plastic used in packaging and the elimination of certain types of plastic such as polyvinyl chloride, a nonrecyclable material.

“There needs to be more direction at the federal level,” Muir said.

 New Brunswick

Miramichi fish-eradication project paused for 2nd year

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Next phase will not go ahead this year after opponent asks judge to put stop to project

Hadeel Ibrahim · CBC News · Posted: Sep 20, 2022 4:33 PM AT | Last Updated: September 20

Smallmouth bass was introduced illegally in Miramichi Lake in 2008, according to Neville Crabbe, who has spoken at times for proponents of the pesticide project. (Nova Scotia Fisheries and Aquaculture)

A group trying to kill smallmouth bass in Miramichi Lake has agreed to stop more applications of a rotenone-bearing  pesticide and pause the eradication project until next year.

This marks the second year the project has been delayed after opposition from Indigenous women and local cottage owners.

A consent order filed in Woodstock Court of King's Bench says the North Shore Micmac District Council has agreed not to apply any more Noxfish II, a pesticide containing rotenone, this year.

The eradication project is led by the council and a coalition of six other salmon conservation and wildlife protection organizations, including the Atlantic Salmon Federation. Together, they're called the Working Group on Smallmouth Bass Eradication.

Want smallmouth bass eliminated

Their goal is to eliminate the invasive smallmouth bass population from the lake, which they say is threatening native species such as trout and salmon.

The consent agreement comes after Andrea Polchies, a traditional Wolastoqey leader as well as a band councillor in Wotstak First Nation, formerly Woodstock First Nation, filed a motion requesting a judge to force the group to stop the project.

The agreement says the group will not apply any more rotenone and Polchies will withdraw her motion.

A judge still needs to sign off on the consent order for the motion to officially end.

In an interview, Polchies said this is good news but not the end of the fight. She is still challenging the pesticide project in court through a separate request for a judicial review.

"Somebody's got to defend the water. If not me, who?" she said.

Indigenous residents paddled on the Miramichi Lake to prevent the application of rotenone, a fish-killing pesticide deemed necessary to eradicate the invasive smallmouth bass. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

Charles Bryant, Polchies's lawyer, said he can't speak to why proponents of the eradication project agreed to pause it.

"It just so happens that we were able to reach an agreement on the remedy that we were seeking."

Neville Crabbe, who has spoken for the proponents in the past, declined requests for an interview or comment.

Polchies and other Indigenous mothers and grandmothers have been camping on the lake shore since early August. She said they disbanded the camp on Monday.

"To get home was one of the best feelings in the world," she said.

Bryant said because it's possible the project will go ahead next year, he will try to have a judge review and rule on the project this year, despite the agreement.

"I'm hoping to convince the court that we can just argue it now, since we already have the parties at the table," he said.

Bass threatening ecosystem, group says

The pesticide would kill all the fish in the area, not just smallmouth bass, and kill some insects and other invertebrates. The plan, which has been approved by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, says the "do nothing" approach would do more damage than the fish kills caused by rotenone. 

"The risk of doing nothing is too high," the plan says.

The group is responsible for monitoring the lake system and adding back non-migratory fish that do not return to the lake naturally within two years.

"We do not expect or aim for the resulting fish community to be the same as the pre-treatment state, but we do expect overall rapid recovery of the ecosystem," the plan says.

• Fish-eradication project in Miramichi has begun, opponents say

• Salmon officials confirm first application of rotenone in Miramichi watershed

The group received federal and provincial approval to apply the chemical to the area in multiple phases between Aug. 8 and Sept. 30 of this year.

On Sept. 8 the group released Noxfish in Lake Brook and along about 15 kilometres of the Southwest Miramichi River. It said this was the first phase, and the second phase "calls for a simultaneous treatment of Miramichi Lake, Lake Brook, and the 15-km stretch of the Southwest Miramichi River."

The group did not commit to a timeline for the second phase. But according to the licence it received, the second application must be at least two weeks after the first.

Now, the second application will not happen.

Polchies said the agreement is bittersweet because many fish have already died from the first application.

"It was kind of mixed emotions. I was happy that they decided not to, but then again, I was still pretty pissed off that they got Lake Brook and the southwest branch of the Miramichi."

She said opponents are not saying the lake should be left alone and the smallmouth bass should be allowed to invade the area.

Polchies said they believe there are better, safer ways to control the bass population without killing every fish in the lake, and want to work with ecologists and other Indigenous groups to make that a reality.

"They can be speared, or netted. ... You don't need to poison every fish," she said. "Nobody ever said 'do nothing.'"

• Pesticide will be used to kill smallmouth bass in N.S. lake this weekend

• Judge bars pesticide spraying in Miramichi Lake until hearing

What this agreement means for the project, whether both phases will have to be repeated, and whether the group will have to re-apply for federal and provincial approval is not known.

One judge had already ordered the group to temporarily stop spraying this year. Several cottage owners filed a lawsuit alleging the project will irreparably harm them and their property, and they asked for the ban until their lawsuit is heard.

That injunction expired after the cottage owners agreed to abandon it. In that consent order, the North Shore Micmac District Council agreed to not seek any damages from the losses caused by the ban.

ANALYSIS: Curing Canada’s energy paralysis may mean new climate targets, renewed political will

By David Akin Global News
 September 23, 2022


If there’s been one constant tension in Confederation in the last 20 years, it has been the struggle between those who believe Canadian federal and provincial governments should do all they can to exploit Canada’s vast energy resources and those who insist fossil fuels must stay in the ground so that Canada can lead the world in reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s a tension that has led to an economic and policy paralysis. Through the years of the Harper government and now the Trudeau government, some big energy projects struggled to find their footing even as Canada missed one international commitment after another when it comes to fighting climate change.

Is that tension and the resulting paralysis a permanent feature of the Canadian condition? Or could Canada really be an energy superpower and be a global leader on climate change?

The answer to some is: Yes.

 

READ MORE: Ukraine war, energy crisis has Canadians more supportive of oil and gas: poll

“So I think it’s true that Canada is an energy superpower, and it’s true that I think Canada needs to do more on climate change. And I think it’s also true that we can do both,” said Christopher Ragan, an economist and director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University in Montreal.

“I think we should actually have more aggressive climate policy than we currently have. And I think it’s also possible that we can continue to produce fossil fuels. And I think we should, because the world will continue to use fossil fuels for a long time.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent disruption to global energy markets have moved this seemingly conflicting objective — producing more energy while cutting emissions — to the top of Canada’s national agenda.

As many of Canada’s Western European allies, notably Germany, are starved of gas and oil, Canada, despite its fossil fuel wealth, can do almost nothing. Those years of economic and policy paralysis left it without the infrastructure to move, for example, liquified natural gas from eastern Canadian ports to German homes and businesses.

But Russia’s invasion may have cured Canada of that paralysis.

“I sense that there is a greater sort of pragmatism being brought to bear on the issue,” said Brad Wall, the former Saskatchewan premier who now serves as a special advisor at the law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP when he’s not riding his horse through the grasslands of southwest Saskatchewan

“I think Canadians are looking through the lens of a bit more common sense. Not that they weren’t before, but I just think that there’s a greater focus.”

Wall, like Ragan, believes there is a way for Canada to achieve that dual objective of boosting energy exports while reducing emissions.

“I think it’s absolutely possible. I think what we need in Canada today is a leader. I don’t care what party the person leads, but we need a national leader that says we are all of the above,” said Wall.

“Canada is an energy superpower and not just on the fossil fuel side, but right across the spectrum. And so let’s start acting like it because a country that aspires to leadership and follows it up with action, I think, is going to find this intersection of very good policies that’s good for the economy, good for communities and can be sustainable in terms of the environmental impact.”

Still, solving the problem of moving gas or oil out of an Atlantic port could be the challenge of the century. First, if it is to be the private sector that builds the pipeline and refines infrastructure for European exports, it’s not clear that a solid business case can be made under the current conditions for a return on the billions of investment required.

That’s partly a result of the immense political challenges involved given that subsequent governments in Quebec have all but prohibited new pipelines transiting through the province. And finally, a federal government would almost certainly need to build the political will to convince Canadians that meeting its international commitment of becoming net-zero by 2050 is not only against the national interest but may, in fact, work against the more important goal of getting the planet’s climate change ledger to net-zero by 2050.

“I think Quebec is a tough problem to solve,” said Wall. “I think Quebec would bristle — and most provinces would — at the notion of a federal government saying, all right, this pipeline is happening and we’re going to put the full weight of the federal government behind it.

“I think the answer’s got to be the premiers, the goodwill they’ve built up sitting down saying, … let’s just find an answer here. We can do this.”

From 2014 to 2019, while Wall was participating in annual meetings of premiers trying to find political solutions to energy and climate problems, Ragan was chairing Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, a group of independent economists which tried to provide advice to governments on energy and climate policy.

The commission explicitly recognized the challenge politicians face to find progress on both files by sticking with mostly practical recommendations.
“We live in a democratic society. So it’s not just about policy making. It’s about selling and communicating those policies,” Ragan said. “And I think the [federal] government has not done a good enough job in communicating that. And it’s a tough argument to make.”

And a major energy infrastructure project, he said, will almost certainly need strong federal backing.

“A pipeline is a federal issue. It’s crossing provincial boundaries and we need our provinces to not be so damn provincial, frankly,” Ragan said. “They need to recognize that they’re part of a bigger country that is part of a bigger world.”

READ MORE: Europe’s energy crisis has Canada weighing future of oil and gas industry

Realigning expectations on Canada’s climate change targets would also likely be a requirement if Canada was to boost its energy exports.

The targets Canada has agreed to, be it in Paris or Copenhagen or Kyoto, occurred in a world where there was no imperative to remove Russia as a reliable source of supply. Energy security was rarely, if ever, a variable that was plugged into the calculus of achieving net-zero in the Canadian context.

Now that energy security is a global and Canadian imperative, targets may need to be adjusted.

“Energy security is not just an issue in Europe. It’s an issue for us in Canada,” Wall said. “We still import oil. [We have] a third of the world’s reserves, and we still important because we can’t get it across the country. So it’s an issue for the entire world. But it’s even more important now with what’s happened in Europe.

“And does that mean — and maybe this won’t be very popular with some folks — but does that mean we re-look at our own targets? I think we need to. So we can achieve that balance and answer both questions that the world is asking right now.”

Ragan suggests that Canadian policymakers and the broader Canadian public ought to consider Canada’s targets in a global setting where relatively cleaner Canadian natural gas can displace ‘dirtier’ forms of energy such as coal so that the planet gets to net-zero by 2050 — even if Canada cannot do so.

“I mean, in the big picture, you’re doing a very good thing. You’re taking natural gas from a country that has a pile of it. You’re liquefying it. You’re shipping it to a part of the world that needs it,” Ragan said.

“They can use that natural gas there rather than oil or rather than burning coal. So in a global sense, this will reduce emissions. This is a good idea. But in Canada it will increase emissions because we will burn a pile of natural gas to run the compressors for liquefied natural gas. And so we may blow past our targets. And then you say, maybe we don’t have the right domestic target for a world that has these ambitions and has these energy security issues.”

Wall, in his advisory work at Osler’s, hears something similar.

“We should approach this issue of doing our share of the emissions question and the target question the same way the balance on the other side of that equation is energy security,” Wall said. ” You have emissions reduction and targets and you have energy security. And right now we see Europe has a real energy security concern

“This dependence on Russia is not existential maybe, but the next door neighbour to it, if you ask Ukraine, they might say it is.”

2:01 Industry, government optimistic about Alberta’s Industrial Heartland future – Sep 15, 2022

“Energy security has obviously risen its head,” Ragan said. “So it hadn’t before that. So this is why I say it’s completely changing this discussion. And I wonder how long it will be before a Canadian government — maybe this one, maybe the next one — says, you know what, we need to sell more of our stuff to Europe because of energy security issues and Russia. And therefore, we need to adjust our domestic targets.

“Will they say that? Will they say that out loud?”

David Akin is the chief political correspondent for Global News.