WORKERS KAPITAL

EU urged to assist pension funds on margin calls stress

BY MIRZA SHEHNAZ

OCTOBER 20, 2022


European pension funds ought to have entry to a central bank-backed facility as a final resort to assist them keep away from the fire-sale of property compelled on UK pension managers, the derivatives trade’s fundamental commerce physique has stated.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (Isda) on Wednesday known as for a system that might enable pension funds to extra simply convert their extra collateral into money with a purpose to meet margin calls from clearing homes.

It comes as officers in Europe assess the implications of the UK’s pensions and bond market chaos final month, when Westminster’s “mini” finances prompted a monetary disaster. The sharp and surprising surge in gilt yields following the announcement of unfunded tax cuts triggered margin calls on derivatives for pension funds, which they met by promoting property right into a falling market.

The sudden plunge in gilt costs and fast gross sales threatened to spiral uncontrolled, forcing the Bank of England to step in with a £65bn bond-buying programme with a purpose to stabilise markets.

The paper outlined a sequence of suggestions to make clearing of derivatives in Europe extra enticing. The overwhelming majority of the world’s rate of interest swaps are managed in London, at LCH.

Pension funds have shied away from clearing as a result of they fearful that they might not have a prepared provide of cash or different extremely liquid property crucial to satisfy margin calls.

A report from the European Commission estimated European insurance coverage corporations and pension funds needed to pay an additional €50bn in margin over a 12 day interval in March 2020 when markets have been panicked by the impression of coronavirus.

Isda urged policymakers to “conduct an in-depth analysis of how central bank access could be intermediated to allow [pension funds] to convert high-quality liquid assets into cash, potentially limiting this to a last-resort tool that is only used in stressed market conditions,” it stated.

Other Isda suggestions included selling voluntary clearing by public corporations, increasing settlement hours for euro transactions past 6pm, and provides European clearing homes higher entry to central financial institution cash. Isda stated its paper had been written earlier than the “mini” Budget.

Isda’ name was echoed on Tuesday by Dutch pension fund APG, which has round €558bn property underneath administration.

Pension funds “remain dependent on the willingness of banks to accept bonds as collateral,” Jan Mark van Mill, head of treasury and buying and selling at APG, wrote on a company weblog. “We would therefore like to see the ECB guarantee the reliability of repo markets, just like the US Fed[eral Reserve] and the Bank of Canada do.”

Banks and buyers use repo markets to quickly change illiquid property for highly-liquid collateral like money. Those property are deposited in clearing homes.

The name comes because the Dutch central financial institution requested native retirement funds to examine for indicators of stress, recommending that they evaluation liquidity guidelines and report on any want for fireplace gross sales of property, within the wake of the issues within the UK market.

The Netherlands, the EU’s largest pensions market, has some similarities with the UK. Many Dutch pensions additionally use derivatives contracts open for a few years to assist them match their property with their liabilities and defend in opposition to modifications in rates of interest.

Both European and British pension funds are at the moment exempt from clearing their trades by means of a clearing home however that exemption expires in June subsequent 12 months.

HOLLAND

Rising interest rates boost pension funds despite market losses Business 

October 20, 2022 

The five biggest Dutch pension funds are in better shape, as rising interest rates offset financial market losses, and that means pension increases could be on the cards again next year. 

The government is putting up the state pension by 10% in 2023, and all the big five are on target to be able to at least partially put up company pensions in line with inflation. 

Civil service pension fund APB, one of the biggest funds in the world, has had a average coverage ratio of 116% over the past 12 months, and that is well above the 105% lowest level for index linking.

 The coverage ratio shows if a fund has enough assets to meet its pension obligations. Healthcare pension fund Zorg en Welzijn, construction sector fund BfpBouw and the two engineering funds PME and PMT also beat the 105% limit. 

However, the Financieele Dagblad points out that all five funds have made considerable losses on their investments this year – even bigger than during the financial crisis earlier this century. 

‘In fact it is very odd,’ actuary Marc Heemskerk told the paper. ‘Pension funds are losing billions but we are all cheering because the coverage ratios are going up.’ The funds will decide next month whether or not to put up pensions in 2023.

Read more at DutchNews.nl

After UK turmoil, Dutch central bank urges pension funds to review liquidity

Reuters
Toby Sterling
Oct 19, 2022 


AMSTERDAM — The Dutch central bank (DNB) said on Wednesday it had called on pension funds in the Netherlands to review their readiness to weather a sudden spike in interest rates, following turmoil among British funds.

A spokesperson for the bank confirmed a Financial Times report that said the funds had been asked to review their holdings of liquid assets.

In Britain, the central bank was forced to intervene after a surge in yields on Sept. 28 threatened to overwhelm pension schemes that had loaded up on leveraged derivatives.

Dutch pension funds, which collectively hold around 1.5 trillion euros in assets, have seen their solvency improve dramatically over the past year as interest rates have risen – reducing the value of their investments, but decreasing the value of their obligations by a far larger amount.

Dutch pension funds make less use of interest rate hedges than their British peers and benefit from the larger and more liquid eurozone government bond market.

However, some analysts say they still could be vulnerable in the event of a sharp sell-off in government bonds.

The DNB noted in its annual review of financial stability in the Netherlands, published on Oct. 10, that Dutch funds had smoothly sold 88 billion euros of investments in the first half of 2022.

“When a rise in interest rates happens gradually, there is no liquidity risk” it said, though it noted that a liquidity crisis was still possible.

Jan Mark van Mill, head of Treasury and Trading at fund manager APG, says his organization conducts monthly liquidity stress tests.

However, “what happened in the UK is a new scenario, so we (now) adjust the stress tests accordingly,” he said in a Q&A published on APG’s website on Monday.

He argued the European Central Bank (ECB) should ensure that Europe’s banks continue to offer pension funds cash in exchange for government bonds during a liquidity crisis, guaranteeing the so-called “repo market.”

The largest Dutch fund ABP, with 491 billion euros in assets, said it was “monitoring developments.”

“What happened in the UK is unprecedented,” said spokesperson Asha Khoenkhoen in an emailed response to questions.

ABP’s solvency ratio stands at 126%, up from 110% at the end of 2021 and 93.5% in 2020. It began indexing payments to pensioners to compensate for inflation in July for the first time in more than a decade.

“We have a prudent financial policy and we take into account extreme stress scenarios,” Khoenkhoen said. 

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Alex Richardson)

UK Pensions Must Learn Lessons From Cash Crunch, Regulator Says

Greg Ritchie and Libby Cherry, Bloomberg News 

Oct 12, 2022

BC-UK-Pensions-Must-Learn-Lessons-From-Cash-Crunch-Regulator-Says , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) --

UK pension programs should review their funding, liquidity and hedging policies in the wake of widespread collateral calls at the heart of the turmoil in the gilt market, according to their watchdog.

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) said it will continue to monitor the situation beyond Friday, when the Bank of England is scheduled to stop its emergency bond-buying operations. The interventions were designed to prevent a vicious cycle of selling prompted by collateral calls on some pension funds. 

“Insuring schemes against all extreme market outcomes might not be a reasonable expectation but it is important that lessons are learned from these recent events,” it said in a statement. 

Defined-benefit programs usually benefit from rising yields as it deflates the value of their liabilities. However, the scale and speed of the recent spike in yields proved too much for some funds to handle. The yield on 30-year UK government bonds has more than doubled since August. On Sept. 26, it surged by the most on record in data going back to 1996.

While these schemes were not at risk of collapse, the “key challenge has been the ability to access liquidity at short notice to maintain their liability hedging positions,” the regulator added. 

To allow for “swifter trading”, the regulator recommended that schemes consider taking steps such as granting LDI managers the power of attorney over some scheme assets or adding one or more professional trustees. 

Other considerations the regulator proposed included: 

• Discussing the potential for employers to provide additional collateral when the scheme is unable to generate enough liquidity from its assets, with one option being accelerating future contributions or via a loan
• Getting advice on whether to maintain a reduced level of hedging if a higher level requires the disposal of less liquid assets with a “significant haircut”, for schemes that are running a hedged position against interest-rate and inflation risks
• Reviewing the balance of risks in portfolio in light of market conditions and consider a rebalancing

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

How The Inflation Reduction Act May Impact Heat Pump Standards

How efficient should a heat pump be to qualify for incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act? That’s an interesting question.


Image credit: State Of Rhode Island


By Steve Hanley
Published 2 days ago


The Inflation Reduction Act provides significant incentives — up to $2000 — for Americans who install a heat pump. But just as its “Buy American” provisions for electric cars now exclude many EVs that are on the market — particularly those manufactured by Hyundai and Kia — the standards for heat pumps to qualify may be so high that many that are currently available do not qualify.

Canary Media reports that some in the industry worry the performance standards established in the IRA — which are intended to encourage manufacturers to build more efficient heat pumps — could limit the number of products available to customers who want to draw on federal incentives to help pay for the switch from fossil gas to electric heating. That could give the technology, and the tax credits meant to promote it, a bad reputation, said Nate Adams, an electrification advocate and CEO of HVAC 2.0, a company that makes software used by HVAC installers.

“If there are too many bad experiences, it can really slow things down. Word of mouth marketing is really critical” for an industry that’s still largely organized around local and regional networks of contractors and installers, he said. ​“Bad reviews get read hundreds of times.”

The Inflation Reduction Act requires heat pumps to ​“meet or exceed the highest efficiency tier” set by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency in order to be eligible for the tax credit. On its website, the organization says, “Efficiency can be a hard sell. After all, efficiency can’t always be seen, the first cost can be high, and it’s hard to know when you have it. On top of that, the promise of lower energy and operating costs is only one feature of a product. To meet these challenges, CEE creates common reference points that make efficiency visible and verifiable, attract multiple stakeholders, and increase the impact of efficiency messages. A CEE definition of efficiency bridges divides among stakeholders and consumers, creating market focus.” Those of us who advocate for electric transportation know firsthand how hard it is to educate people about the value of efficiency.

Right now, CEE’s highest efficiency tiers for air source heat pumps — the heat pumps that heat and cool air in buildings — are significantly more stringent than those set by Energy Star, the other major US standard for appliance efficiency, which operates under the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

In fact, Adams said, less than 10% of heat pumps available in North America meet CEE’s highest standard in the category commonly used for residential central heating. Most of the rest are slightly less efficient — but still quite capable — and even one of those is far more efficient than electric resistance heating and far cleaner than fossil fueled heating systems.

What’s more, those high efficiency systems tend to cost at least $3,000 more than the more widely available heat pumps that aren’t quite as efficient, he said. It’s hard to sell a customer on a heat pump tax credit if the price premium for eligible equipment is bigger than the tax credit itself, he pointed out.

The CEE Will Meet This Week

But all that could change after a meeting of CEE’s board of directors to be held this week. That’s when the group is expected to decide on new heating and cooling specifications to come into effect in 2023, the same year that the tax credits will first be available.

CEE declined to comment on what options it is considering for its new standards. But a September 30 document obtained by Canary Media indicates the organization is considering altering its current efficiency tier structure to have a simpler structure that would allow most heat pumps that now earn Energy Star ratings to be eligible for the tax credits

“This change with CEE, if it does go through, makes me really, really happy,” Adams said. ​“With reasonable efficiency requirements, it opens up a lot of pieces of equipment we can use.” That includes some equipment that combines good performance in low temperature climates that cost between $4,000 and $5,000. “That’s where that $2,000 tax credit really matters,” Adams said.

Nate Kinsey, senior policy manager for New York based home efficiency startup Sealed, said his company supports the proposed alignment with Energy Star. Not only are there far more Energy Star rated heat pumps available — about 39% of those currently available in the North American market, according to 2021 data — but customers are also more familiar with the Energy Star label than they are with the detailed efficiency metrics used by CEE. “Aligning the heat pump tax credit eligibility with Energy Star is a rare win-win-win opportunity,” he said.

The Other Side Of The Heat Pump Story

But some environmental advocates and energy efficiency experts are worried that CEE’s proposed changes dilute the clear intent of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is to promote greater efficiency in the US heat pump market.

“We believe that the intent was to ensure that consumers can get a very high-efficiency, quality product that can meet their heating needs,” said Mark Kresowik, senior policy director for the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. ​“Our assessment is that CEE should continue to push the market above and beyond, especially given the generosity of these tax credits.”

A CEE spokesperson told Canary Media that the organization has ​“received comments from the HVAC industry addressing these items. “Our membership is working diligently to establish performance requirements that are likely to meet the goals of our members, who have long standing incentive programs for customers and share concerns about product availability, cost effectiveness, and incremental benefits associated with higher performance levels.”

Sealed’s Kinsey said he understands that lowering efficiency requirements for heat pumps could set a precedent for lowering requirements for fossil fuel appliances as well. Yet he emphasized that it’s important to expand accessibility and affordability of heat pumps to speed broader market adoption of a technology that not only eliminates fossil fuel use in buildings but also uses energy far more efficiently than the systems it replaces.

Adams noted that the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits for EVs are limited by income, with more expensive cars and more wealthy customers barred from receiving them. Setting a heat pump tax credit that’s only available for the most expensive products is moving in the opposite direction. ​“It’s like arguing that you can only get the EV tax credit if you can afford the Tesla Plaid,” he said.

Kresowik, on the other hand, noted that efficiency improvements for consumer products ranging from washing machines to light bulbs have been driven largely by government standards. Instead of shifting those standards to make more existing products eligible for tax credits and other forms of government incentives, ​“manufacturers should meet that increased demand for all the benefits that efficient products provide,” he said.

Heat Pump Policy Consequences

There are parallels here to discussions about what is better — a hybrid car, a plug-in hybrid car, or a battery-electric car. Should they all be eligible for government incentives? Should more efficient electric cars get more incentives? There are no easy answers.

Heat pump manufacturers can restructure their equipment designs and manufacturing processes to adapt to changing regulations, Dana Fischer, director of regulatory strategy at Mitsubishi Electric, said during a webinar hosted by Rewiring America last week. But ​“it’s a lot of work to make those massive changes in the marketplace occur and it doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” he said. ​“It takes sustained growth.”

It also takes time for manufacturers to change their product lines. Waiting for those changes can result in big costs. If tighter efficiency standards end up slowing down the broader adoption of heat pumps by increasing prices and thereby reducing the impact of the new tax credits, that could severely hinder the growth of a technology seen as central to combating climate change. The International Energy Agency reports that global heat pump installations must triple by 2030 to keep the world on course to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But heat pump installations in the US grew by only about 15% last year.

Making the tax credit program as effective as possible will be important to driving a US heat pump market transformation, Fischer said. Of all the building electrification incentive structures in the Inflation Reduction Act, ​“I think the tax credit is really the big mover.”

Unlike the two other primary home electrification and efficiency incentive programs created by the IRA which are capped at around $9 billion, the heat pump tax credit is available without limits over the next 10 years. ​“It’s likely that there will be tens of billions, if not $100 billion, of tax credits issued over the course of the 10 year period, depending on how quickly electrification takes off,” Fischer said.

That speed is critical, Canary Media argues. “The more people take advantage of the heat pump tax credit over the coming decade, the better for cutting emissions.” We would love to get feedback from our readers on how these policy conflicts should be resolved. Please use the comment section to tell us your thoughts.

The unseen Black faces of AI algorithms

An audit of commercial facial-analysis tools found that dark-skinned faces are misclassified at a much higher rate than are faces from any other group. Four years on, the study is shaping research, regulation and commercial practices.

• Abeba Birhane
• • NEWS AND VIEWS
  • 19 October 2022

• Twitter 
• Faceb

Data sets are essential for training and validating machine-learning algorithms. But these data are typically sourced from the Internet, so they encode all the stereotypes, inequalities and power asymmetries that exist in society. These biases are exacerbated by the algorithmic systems that use them, which means that the output of the systems is discriminatory by nature, and will remain problematic and potentially harmful until the data sets are audited and somehow corrected. Although this has long been the case, the first major steps towards overcoming the issue were taken only four years ago, when Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru1 published a report that kick-started sweeping changes in the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI).

Read the paper: Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification

As a graduate student in computer science, Buolamwini was frustrated that commercial facial-recognition systems failed to identify her face in photographs and video footage. She hypothesized that this was due, in part, to the fact that dark-skinned faces were not represented in the data sets that were used to train the computer programs she was studying. This insight led Buolamwini and her collaborator Gebru to undertake a systematic audit of commercial facial-analysis systems, and to demonstrate that such systems perform differently depending on the skin colour and gender of the person in the image. The work became known as the Gender Shades audit.

The authors began by using a skin-type classification system, approved by dermatologists, to assess the composition of two image banks, known as IJB-A and Adience, that were widely used at the time to train facial-recognition software. They found that individuals with light-coloured skin were the subject of 79.6% of the images in IJB-A and of 86.2% of those in Adience. This prompted Buolamwini and Gebru to compile their own set of images — one that offered a broader range of skin tones than did either of the existing options, as well as including similar numbers of men and women (commercial algorithms are typically not capable of dealing with non-binary classifications). To do so, they turned to photographs of politicians from countries with gender parity in their national parliaments. The resulting data set, known as the Pilot Parliaments Benchmark (Fig. 1), contains images of 1,270 individuals from Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Iceland, Finland and Sweden.

Figure 1 | A gender-balanced facial image bank with a range of skin tones. On realizing that dark-skinned faces were under-represented in the data sets of images that are used to train facial-recognition software, Buolamwini and Gebru1 compiled their own data set using photographs of politicians from countries with gender parity in their national parliaments. This is a subset of ‘average’ faces made by blending many images from the full data set, which contains photographs of 1,270 individuals from Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Iceland, Finland and Sweden. Buolamwini and Gebru used their data set to show that three commercial gender-classification systems misclassified women with darker skin with an error rate that was much higher than that for men with lighter skin.Credit: Dr Joy Buolamwini (CC BY 4.0)

Buolamwini and Gebru then used their benchmark set to evaluate three commercial gender-classification systems developed by the technology companies Microsoft, Face++ and IBM. Rather than assessing the accuracy of these systems on the basis of gender or of skin type, the authors compared the performance of the classifiers on four intersectional groups that they termed darker female, darker male, lighter female and lighter male. They found that women with darker skin were the most likely to be misclassified, with a maximum classification error rate of 34.7%; by contrast, the maximum error rate for men with lighter skin was 0.8%. All three systems consistently showed poor accuracy for women with dark skin and performed substantially better on white men.

Impactful research isn’t always understood and acknowledged at first glance, especially when it challenges conventional thinking. At the time of publication, Buolamwini and Gebru’s paper was considered an outlier — not only in the field of computer vision (the study of how computers can be made to automate tasks performed by the human visual system), but also in AI ethics. Since then, a lot has changed, and algorithmic auditing has rapidly become a crucial practice, prompting academic journals and conferences to highlight audit studies.

The downstream effect of the Gender Shades audit in research can also be found in curation practices for large-scale data sets. For instance, an initiative reported earlier this year suggests that faces in large image banks, such as the popular ImageNet (go.nature.com/3qukjkn), should be obscured to protect individuals’ privacy2. The study showed that blurring or mosaicking faces in an image had little effect on the accuracy of software designed to recognize other elements of the image. But the authors also noted that this work must be done through crowdsourcing, rather than using commercial software, to avoid the racial bias revealed by the Gender Shades study.

Skin colour affects the accuracy of medical oxygen sensors

Although there was resistance to Buolamwini and Gebru’s paper at first, the vendors of the facial-recognition software that they audited eventually responded positively. IBM and Microsoft, for example, pledged to test their facial-recognition algorithms and diversify their training data sets (see, for example, go.nature.com/3rmbo17). Around a year after the paper was published, a follow-up audit found that Microsoft, IBM and Face++ had all succeeded in reducing the performance error of their facial-analysis products3. The most noteworthy improvement was a 30.4% reduction in the error with which the Face++ software recognized darker female faces in the Pilot Parliaments Benchmark set, with the Microsoft and IBM algorithms improving by 19.28% and 17.73%, respectively, on this task.

But none of these systems has yet overcome racial bias entirely, and many companies have discontinued or temporarily halted facial-recognition technologies. Evidence continues to emerge that AI models mistakenly associate images of Black people with animal classes such as ‘gorilla’ or ‘chimpanzee’ more often than they do for images of people who aren’t Black4.

The study also influenced how facial-analysis technology is regulated. In the United States, the 2019 Algorithmic Accountability Act authorized the Federal Trade Commission (the agency tasked with promoting and enforcing consumer protection) to regulate automated decision systems (go.nature.com/3xguff7). US cities such as San Francisco in California, Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon, have banned the use of facial recognition by police, citing biased misidentification that disproportionately affects communities of colour. In Europe, civil-society organizations, activists and technologists have come together to call for a ban on facial-recognition analysis (go.nature.com/3qwzmnq) and on biometric technology in general (go.nature.com/3f7jrka). And the first draft of the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (go.nature.com/3dtgh4x), released in April 2021, indicates that real-time use of facial recognition in public places might be restricted.

Regulations and the risk of liability impel large corporations to change their practices, but even minimal regulations are being undermined (go.nature.com/3yb96kq). Although such deterrents can result in measurably improved outcomes, given the prevalence of facial-analysis technology, the changes that have the most long-term impact are likely to come from shifting public attitudes — something that I think Buolamwini and Gebru’s study has influenced both directly and indirectly. The work even became the subject of the 2020 documentary film Coded Bias (go.nature.com/3fashnf). Unfortunately, the authors (like many other Black female scholars) have also been overlooked by mainstream media: a 2021 television segment on racial bias in facial-analysis technologies, for example, failed to recognize their work and that of their collaborators (go.nature.com/3satrp8).

Over the past few years, the conversation initiated by this work has shifted from a focus on the accuracy and performance of facial-recognition algorithms to larger and more-fundamental questions around surveillance technology. The question of accuracy becomes meaningless when this technology is used to supposedly measure internal behaviours from outward appearances. In fact, ‘accurate’ representation boils down to reducing these behaviours to outdated social stereotypes5.

Algorithms that claim to detect emotions, predict gender or gauge someone’s trustworthiness have been dubbed ‘AI snake oil’ by some (go.nature.com/3rh7cfp), because such sociocultural attributes cannot reliably be inferred from faces, expressions or gestures6. Others have called for a blanket ban on facial-recognition algorithms, saying that the technology resurrects the pseudosciences of physiognomy and phrenology7.

The ImageNet data set, a large-scale collection of images that is considered the gold standard in computer vision, has had a pivotal role in positioning computer-vision research at the core of the ‘deep-learning revolution’ of the past decade. Facial-recognition technology has subsequently become mainstream and is prevalent in almost all social and public spaces, including concert venues, schools, airports, neighbourhoods and public squares — seriously undermining privacy and enabling worrying surveillance practices. Even if new algorithms are designed on the basis of diverse image sets such as the Pilot Parliaments Benchmark, they are still vulnerable to being used for inherently harmful and oppressive purposes, such as the surveillance of minority communities.

Facial-recognition technology has expanded into other fields of research, such as studies designed to predict facial characteristics from the analysis of DNA8, and others that aim to automate medical diagnoses from images of faces alone9. Given the racial biases inherent in facial-recognition algorithms, these are concerning developments.

Amid what can feel like overwhelming public enthusiasm for new AI technologies, Buolamwini and Gebru instigated a body of critical work that has exposed the bias, discrimination and oppressive nature of facial-analysis algorithms. Their audit was ground-breaking four years ago, and remains an influential reference point to counter the rapid progress of this technology and the threat it poses.

Nature 610, 451-452 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03050-7

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Cinematographer documents stunning Vancouver Island jellyfish bloom: ‘It feels like you’re on another planet’

Posted: Oct. 18, 2022 

JOHN RONEY

Vancouver Island cinematographer John Roney got an up-close look at a moon jelly bloom near Brentwood Bay in September 2022. The sea jellies are often found in shallow pelagic areas of coastal waters near bays and harbours.

A Vancouver Island cinematographer took a deep dive into the waters off Brentwood Bay to get an up-close look at a massive moon jelly bloom, capturing the marine species on video for all to see.

John Roney, a Parksville resident, submerged himself in Todd Inlet to capture the visually spectacular phenomenon.

“When you’re down there, it feels like you’re on another planet. It’s really fascinating,” Roney told CHEK News.

“There are jellyfish touching every part of your body and you’re navigating your way through,” he recalled. “But then it also ties to the warming temperatures on the planet, so there are some interesting messages as well as beautiful visuals.”

Roney’s nighttime underwater exploration, a feat he had envisioned for as long as he can remember, happened the last week of September.

“I’ve been hoping to film a jellyfish bloom for quite some time and a friend of mine lives out in Brentwood, which is also on the Saanich Inlet,” Roney said in an interview.

“He was out for a row and saw that the moon jelly was blooming like crazy, so he gave me a shout and I packed my dive gear and we went out and spent the night on the boat in Todd Inlet.”

With his Panasonic GH5 camera in hand, Roney made a jump for it and dropped, at most, 50 feet below to witness a plethora of bright, transparent jellyfish.

“Definitely within the hundreds,” he recalled. “I’ve never been a numbers guy, so it’s hard to tell when you’re down there. If the visibility was clearer, you could really see how many of them there are.”

Roney recalls the water’s visibility being “super poor,” which presented a challenge in finding a way to capture the actual number of fish.

According to Central Coast Biodiversity, moon jelly is often found in shallow pelagic areas of coastal waters near bays and harbours from Alaska down to California.

The group, which provides species identifications for plants and animals found on B.C.’s central coast, says moon jelly can grow up to 40 centimetres with four gonads shaped like horseshoes under the stomach.

“You get the jellyfish blooms when the temperatures rise,” explained Roney. “I’m expecting we will see more and more jellyfish blooms as ocean temperatures continue to rise.”


Moon Jelly bloom at night in Todd Inlet

• r/VictoriaBC
• JRoneyMedia
• 3d ago

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While moon jelly isn’t known to sting, Roney still took precautions while wearing his dry suit, meaning “the only part of me that’s exposed is my face, minus my mask.”

“Because there are so many moon jellies in the area, there are also Fried Egg Jellyfish that are feeding on them. That’s where you gotta be a little more careful,” he said. “I did actually get a little bit of a sting on my face from a Fried Egg, but it was definitely worth it to get the shot.”

Currently working as a full-time editor, Roney’s temporarily moving to Indonesia in the new year to do underwater marine videography before returning to the Island — his favourite place to develop his craft.

“I feel super lucky to have the opportunity to dive and film in these waters,” he said. “In my opinion, and I feel like a lot of people’s opinions, it’s some of the best diving in the world, and so many locals aren’t even aware of the marine life in their own backyard.”

The Salish Sea is “an absolute hotspot” for biodiversity with underwater life you’d have to see to believe, Roney says.

“There are so many species that, unless you’re a diver exploring it or someone’s down there sharing the footage, people wouldn’t know about them,” he said.

READ ALSO: Cinematographer highlights waters off of Vancouver Island

Earlier this year, Roney was met with rave reviews when releasing “Beneath the Pacific Northwest” — a short film comprised of two years’ worth of footage highlighting life in waters from Victoria to the North Island.

“It was really cool because people really seemed to react to it positively. That was a few months back I released it and captured a whole lot more exciting footage since, so I’m excited to share more,” he added.

THE EARTH AIN'T ROUND

Gravity is constantly shaping the Earth’s surface

By Joshua Hawkins
October 17th, 2022

A new study has revealed that gravity’s effect on Earth is constantly shaping the surface of our planet. When our planet formed, it did so by pulling dust and rock toward its gravitational field. As the sphere swelled, the gravitational pull continued to gather more material. Now, gravity’s effect on the Earth continues to mold our planet from deep within.

This idea was posed in a recent study where the researchers looked at the subtle effects that gravity has been having on deep-lying structures within our planet. The study highlights the effects gravity has on Earth and how it can even cause the rise and fall of the crust above it.

To truly understand this conundrum, we have to look at how gravity works as a whole. For the longest time, scientists worked based on the equation that g = 9.8 ms–2. However, new studies have shown that gravity is not constant for the entire planet. Instead, this force can vary depending on where you are. For example, gravity’s effects on Earth at the equator are different, as the pull is weaker there.

Gravity is changing parts of our planet deep within the crust, shaping how the surface looks. Image source: rost9 / Adobe

As the ESA notes in an explainer on its website, gravity can vary from a minimum of 9.78 ms–2 at the equator to a maximum of 9.83 ms–2 at the poles. And now, with this new study, we may finally understand what causes these small but significant changes to how effects gravity has on Earth.

The researchers published their study in Nature Communications. In it, they argue that the role gravity has on changes we see in Earth’s crust is based on the effects gravity has on structures deep within the Earth. After all, the surface and inner levels of the Earth are not uniform throughout. Instead, different areas – like an ocean inside the Earth – can change how strong that structure is.

As a result, gravity can have an effect on the Earth’s crust by changing these structures deep beneath the surface. And with a better understanding of how gravity affects Earth as a whole, we may be able to find new ways to understand how gravity affects other planetary bodies out there, and perhaps even create artificial gravity on the Moon and other places we visit.

AUSTRALIA

The Coalition is seeing red (meat) over the methane pledge – but it’s not just about burping cattle

About half of the CO2-equivalent caused by releasing methane in Australia comes from agriculture. The rest comes mainly from coalmines, oil, gas and waste

‘Now the Aussie BBQ is under threat,’ said the National party leader, David Littleproud, suggesting cuts to methane would make meat too expensive. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

Graham Readfearn

THE GUARDIAN, AU

Thu 20 Oct 2022 

First it was electric cars trying to tow away your weekend, and now it’s a non-binding global pledge to make modest cuts to methane emissions that will devour your steak (apologies to the vegetarians and vegans).

The Albanese government is considering signing a global pledge alongside more than 120 other countries, led by the United States and Europe, to cut all methane emissions by 30% by 2030.

But this prospect has sent members of the Coalition into a red-meat frenzy.

“Now the Aussie BBQ is under threat,” said the National party leader, David Littleproud, who said such cuts to methane would make meat too expensive.

The Liberal leader, Peter Dutton, said the pledge would “destroy” rural jobs and the Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce claimed it was a pledge “to make people hungry”.

Senator Matt Canavan told Sky’s Outsiders program, “the kind of thing we have to do is ask, Australia, do you want to eat red meat in ten years time or do you not?”.

Let’s calm the farm a little here.

About half of the 123 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent caused by releasing methane in Australia comes from agriculture – much of it from burping cattle.

The rest comes mainly from coalmines, the oil and gas sector and the waste sector.

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There are real concerns the growth area for methane is in the fossil fuel sector, with the added problem that emissions are likely being substantially underestimated.

There are also concerns, as the planet continues to heat up, that more methane will be released from natural sources such as wetlands and thawing permafrost.

Cutting methane is seen as a way to quickly put downward pressure on global temperatures because it is a potent greenhouse gas (causing about 82 times more warming over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide) that is also short-lived, lasting only a decade in the atmosphere

An official briefing on the pledge says targeted measures to cut methane would see twice as many savings in the fossil fuel sector (64 million tonnes of methane) than in agriculture (32Mt).

Given the Coalition’s focus on agriculture, what does the sector’s research group, Meat and Livestock Australia, think? Would a 30% target by 2030 make meat prohibitively expensive, or be unachievable?

“No, as the proposed pledge is not a tax,” a spokesperson said. “MLA welcomes investment into methane-reducing technologies as part of Australia’s potential commitment to the pledge.”

Not all farming groups are behind the pledge – NSW Farmers is against it, and the National Farmers’ Federation is seeking assurances it won’t face new taxes or regulations.

But the MLA has a target for the red meat sector to be carbon neutral by 2030 and says its plan is “more ambitious” than the global methane pledge. Using feed additives and genetic selection for lower-emitting methane could save at least 19Mt CO2e per year.

In mining and heavy industry, the Albanese government says changes to a Coalition-era policy to cap emissions of the country’s biggest polluters will also cut methane emissions.

Tough to swallow

Canavan tweeted that Labor “wants to sign us up to a UN methane reduction agreement”.

But the pledge is an agreement between heads of state, and isn’t part of any UN process. Canavan went on, saying “according to the UN, you can only have 14g of red meat a day” to meet net zero emissions.

But no such UN recommendation exists (a factcheck from AAP took the One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts to task over the same claim earlier this year).
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The “14g” comes from not-for-profit group EAT’s 2019 report on science-based targets for diets (the group’s founder took a role at a UN food summit, from which this very long bow ending with a UN recommendation has been drawn).

Dr Michalis Hadjikakou, a lecturer in environmental science and sustainability at Deakin University, said the IPCC and the UN had recommended cutting red meat consumption.

But not everyone in the scientific community agreed with the recommended diet from EAT.

“[Cutting red meat consumption] helps reduce deforestation and demand for livestock feed, both of which have much broader implications on the environment,” Hadjikakou said.

“However, attempts to scare people in this way are not helpful and are not going to help achieve the behavioural change required.”
Dutton’s EV crash

Peter Dutton was shooting the breeze on electric vehicles with 2GB’s Ray Hadley last week. The radio host claimed the energy minister, Chris Bowen, wanted EVs “to be 80% of new production by 2030”.

“These cars … are run by electricity. I mean, we don’t have enough electricity,” said Hadley.

“You’re right,” said Dutton, before offering an anecdote from a friend who had taken 45 minutes to recharge their car during an outing.


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“Now, if you’re a sales rep or you’ve got two cars in front of you and you’re having to wait 90 minutes before you can charge your car up, which is 45 minutes, the country will go broke,” said Dutton. “The technology is not there yet.”

So let’s take all this in turn.

Labor doesn’t have a target on electric car production or sales, but it does have a target to have 75% of new government-owned vehicles and leases to be electric by 2025.

An electric car charging at a supermarket carpark in Sydney. 

Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

Modelling for the government’s Powering Australia plan did project 89% of new car sales would be electric by 2030, at which point 15% of cars on the road would be electric. But those are not targets.

And what about all the extra electricity?

Unsurprisingly, the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) is not oblivious to the demands that electric vehicles will place on the electricity network.

Aemo’s plan for the future of the electricity market includes an expectation that by 2030 about 12% of all the cars on the road will be electric.

Dr Jake Whitehead, head of policy at the Electric Vehicle Council, says if all Australia’s 17 million cars and light vehicles were suddenly electric and driving between 13,000 and 15,000 km a year, this equates to a 15% increase in electricity generation.

“Importantly though, this 15% increase will occur over the next 27 years – assuming we meet our net zero target and have a 100% zero emission car fleet by 2050,” Whitehead said.

On charging times, Whitehead said assuming drivers take a break every 2 to 2.5 hours (translating to about 250 km driven) then “EVs available on the market today can charge this amount in around 10 to 20 mins ... about the right amount of time to stretch your legs.”

With ultra-fast 350 kW chargers being rolled out (as well as models matching that capacity), charging times will be under 10 minutes.