Afghanistan: Some Taliban open to women's rights talks - top UN official

Lyse Doucet - Chief international correspondent, Kabul
Sat, January 21, 2023 

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed

A top UN official believes progress is being made towards reversing bans on women taking part in public life in Afghanistan.

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed has been in Kabul for a four-day visit to urge the Taliban to reconsider.

Last month, the country's Islamist rulers banned all women from working for non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The move caused several aid agencies to suspend operations.

Speaking to the BBC at the end of her trip, Ms Mohammed said most senior Taliban officials she met had been ready to engage over the rights of girls and women.

However, she described the talks as tough and cautioned that it would be a very long journey before the leadership took the fundamental steps required for international recognition of their rule.

"I think there are many voices we heard, which are progressive in the way that we would like to go," Ms Mohammed said. "But there are others that really are not."

"I think the pressure we put in the support we give to those that are thinking more progressively is a good thing. So this visit, I think, gives them more voice and pressure to help the argument internally."

Ms Mohammed also criticised the international community, including other Islamic states, for not doing enough to engage on the issue.

Since seizing back control of the country last year, the Taliban has steadily restricted women's rights - despite promising its rule would be softer than the regime seen in the 1990s.

As well as the ban on female university students - now being enforced by armed guards - secondary schools for girls remain closed in most provinces.

Women have also been prevented from entering parks and gyms, among other public places.

It justified the move to ban Afghan women from working for NGOs by claiming female staff had broken dress codes by not wearing hijabs.

Ms Mohammed's comments come as Afghanistan suffers its harshest winter in many years.

The Taliban leadership blames sanctions and the refusal of the international community to recognise their rule for the country's deepening crisis.

Ms Mohammed said her message to Afghanistan's rulers was that they must first demonstrate their commitment to internationally recognised norms and that humanitarian aid cannot be provided if Afghan women are not allowed to help.

"They're discriminating against women there. for want of a better word, they become invisible, they're waiting them out, and that can't happen," she said.

But she said the Taliban's stance was that the UN and aid organisations were "politicising humanitarian aid".

"They believe that... the law applies to anyone anywhere and their sovereign rights should be respected," she said.

The Taliban health ministry has clarified that women can work in the health sector, where female doctors and nurses are essential, but Ms Mohammed said this was not enough.

"There are many other services that we didn't get to do with access to food and other livelihood items that that will allow us to see millions of women and their families survive a harsh winter, be part of growth and prosperity, peace," she said.

This visit by the most senior woman at the UN also sends a message that women can and should play roles at all levels of society.

UN says Taliban divided on appeal to restore women's rights


A Save the Children nutrition counsellor, right, explains to Nelab, 22, how to feed her 11-month-old daughter, Parsto, with therapeutic food, which is used to treat severe acute malnutrition, in Sar-e-Pul province of Afghanistan, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022.

(Save the Children via AP, File)

Fri, January 20, 2023 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A delegation led by the highest-ranking woman at the United Nations urged the Taliban during a four-day visit to Afghanistan that ended Friday to reverse their crackdown on women and girls. Some Taliban officials were more open to restoring women’s rights but others were clearly opposed, a U.N. spokesman said.

The U.N. team met with the Taliban in the capital of Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar. It did not release the names of any of the Taliban officials. The meetings focused on the restrictive measures the Taliban have imposed on women and girls since they took power in August 2021, during the final weeks of the U.S. and NATO forces' pullout after 20 years of war.

The team, headed by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, found that some Taliban officials “have been cooperative and they’ve received some signs of progress,” said U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq. “The key thing is to reconcile the (Taliban) officials that they’ve met who’ve been more helpful with those who have not.”

Haq stressed that “there are many different points of authority” among the Taliban and that the U.N. team will try to get them to “work together to advance the goals that we want, which include most crucially, bringing women and girls back to the full enjoyment of their rights.”

Mohammed, a former Nigerian Cabinet minister and a Muslim, was joined on the trip by Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women, which promotes gender equality and women’s rights, and Assistant Secretary General for political affairs Khaled Khiari.

As the Taliban did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, they gradually re-imposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia. Girls have been barred from school beyond the sixth grade and women are banned from most jobs, public spaces and gyms.

In late December, the Taliban barred aid groups from employing women, paralyzing deliveries that help keep millions of Afghans alive, and threatening humanitarian services countrywide. In addition, thousands of women who work for aid organizations across the war-battered country are facing the loss of income they desperately need to feed their own families.

Limited work by women has been allowed in some sectors, including the health field.

“What we’ve seen in terms of basic rights for women and girls is a huge step backwards,” Haq said. “We are trying to do more and we’ll continue on that front.”

In a statement, Mohammed said her message to the Taliban was very clear — "these restrictions present Afghan women and girls with a future that confines them in their own homes, violating their rights and depriving the communities of their services.”

She stressed that delivery of humanitarian aid is based on the principle requiring unhindered and safe access for all aid workers, including women.

“Our collective ambition is for a prosperous Afghanistan that is at peace with itself and its neighbors, and on a path to sustainable development. But right now, Afghanistan is isolating itself, in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis and one of the most vulnerable nations on earth to climate change,” she said.

During the trip that also included a visit to western Herat, Mohammed's team also met humanitarian workers, civil society representatives and women in the three cities.

“Afghan women left us no doubt of their courage and refusal to be erased from public life,” Bahous, of UN Women, said in a statement. “They will continue to advocate and fight for their rights, and we are duty bound to support them in doing so.”

“What is happening in Afghanistan is a grave women’s right crisis and a wakeup call for the international community,” she said, stressing that the Taliban restrictions and edicts show “how quickly decades of progress on women´s rights can be reversed in a matter of days.”

Before arriving in Kabul, members of the delegation visited Muslim countries in the Middle East as well as Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey. They met leaders of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Islamic Development Bank and groups of Afghan women in Ankara, Turkey, and Islamabad, as well as a group of ambassadors and special envoys to Afghanistan based in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

“The need for a revitalized and realistic political pathway was consistently highlighted and all remained firm on the fundamental principles, including women’s and girls’ rights to education, work and public life in Afghanistan,” the U.N. said.

Haq apologized for a photo on social media of seven men from the U.N. delegation’s security team posing in front of a Taliban flag, calling it “a mistake” and “a significant lapse of judgment.”

No country has recognized the Taliban, and Afghanistan’s seat at the United Nations is still held by the previous government headed by Ashraf Ghani. The U.N. refers to the Taliban as the country’s “de facto authorities.”

The Women of Afghanistan Won't Be Silenced Anymore

Homeira Qaderi, Translated By Zaman Stanizai

TIME
Thu, January 19, 2023 

AFGHANISTAN-WOMEN-AID
Afghan people stand with food aid being distributed by a non-governmental organization at a gymnasium in Kabul on Jan. 17, 2023. At least three leading international aid agencies have partially resumed life-saving work in Afghanistan, after assurances from the Taliban authorities that Afghan women can continue to work in the health sector. 

Credit - Wakil Kohsar—AFP/Getty Images

It’s been a year and a half since the United States left Afghanistan, and the Taliban continues to make decrees in an effort to silence and eliminate women from society. Two months into their administration in Nov. 2021, the Taliban sent all women employees of the government home. A month later, they ordered the closure of university campuses for women, and yet another ban calls for the segregation of healthcare preventing women to be seen by male doctors. Afghan women begin each day with confusion, dismay, and fear of what’s to come. In the latest salvo of Jan. 9, 2023, the Taliban threatened the closure of all stores and markets where women work in northern Mazar-e-Sharif and the closure of all beauty salons in Baghlan. The Taliban have denied these claims, but they are giving women a 10-day grace period after which they will be provided “appropriate” locations to work. In Taliban language, that’s a ban in the making.

Worried about my friends back home, I called Maryam (not her real name) whom I remember as a youngster during the first reign of the Taliban in 1996. After the Taliban fell, Maryam returned to school and had to start first grade at the age of nine. She studied economics at Herat University and later married a police officer who worked at the Ministry of Interior. Her husband was killed in a Taliban ambush in 2018. During these years, Maryam was the breadwinner for her children. She was working in a government office until November 2021 when, like most women Afghan civil servants, she was prevented from working in the government office. These latest decrees pose yet another challenge for Maryam to put food on the table for her three children, so Maryam decided to open a sewing shop with two other friends. Although Maryam has decided to move the sewing shop to her home, she is certain that she will have trouble finding customers. On the phone, she sighs deeply and says, “I must get out of Afghanistan before it is forbidden for us women to even breathe.”

Read More: One year after the fall of Kabul, Afghan women are attempting to build new lives abroad

The 20-year U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan has left many women widows, many of whom are now their family’s only breadwinners—women who have to put food on the table no matter what the suffering and hardships.

After banning women from employment in the civil service and academia, large numbers of women have joined the ranks of street beggars. The Taliban made only one concession: that women who beg are not required to have a mahram, a male companion, when leaving their homes.

From the Taliban’s perspective, the presence of a large number of women in the streets doesn’t challenge their honor, but a woman working in an office is seen as a sign of her independence and empowerment, threatening the religious, social, and cultural identity that the Taliban upholds.

I, however, remember Afghanistan of two years ago very differently.

In Kabul, my apartment was located in the Karte Chahar district across from the Kabul University campus, in a neighborhood with three high schools and five private and public schools. The indomitable enthusiasm and excitement of the girls during the school holidays gave me hope that it was impossible for Afghanistan to return to the dark days of the past. Before the fall of the previous regime, that reality was defined by the presence of millions of girls and women in the education sector and various other walks of life in urban and rural Afghanistan.

Today’s Afghanistan has been defined by the post-Aug. 15, 2021 reality when Kabul, once again, fell to the Taliban. All around me, the Taliban commanded the streets as if they had risen from their graves. They passed by me as though I didn’t even exist. The Kabul University campus was now a ghost town, and no one but the Taliban could be seen on the streets. Black paint was smeared on posters of women’s images on a barbershop window I passed and advertisement posters with women’s images had been torn down.

The city that used to be humming with life and cheerful crowds was no more. Instead, there was the milling of distraught crowds of young and old, men and women, around the Kabul Airport, queuing up for their last hope – a way out.

In the last days of August 2021, I watched the American military planes through my 10th floor apartment window as they took off and landed from the hell-on-earth that was the Kabul Airport. My concern was for the women of Afghanistan: How many women can these military planes rescue? Where will they take them? What will become of the women who are left behind? Will women be suppressed again under the yoke of misogynistic slavery? Are the Taliban “saving” Afghans from sin and corruption by establishing the “Islamic” version of Gilead in Afghanistan that will spawn yet another Handmaid’s Tale? Will Afghan women be subjugated in a 21st-century serfdom of the Taliban? Will Afghan women fight for their rights at the ballot box as an alternative to Taliban rule? Or will these girls and women be crushed the way we were in 1996?

I lived under the Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, and I have seen their world from under my burqa. Girls’ schools were shuttered, shopkeepers were threatened not to sell to women who didn’t have a mahram, and all women were expelled from public and private offices. The Taliban ordered men to protect and herd their wives, daughters, and sisters “properly,” as if they were livestock.

Tucked away from the Taliban’s eyes early in the spring of 1997, those of us who were once in school gathered for a meeting in the safety and privacy of the women’s public bathhouses to discuss our future. It was there that the first feminist political action by the girls of my hometown, Herat, took place. We planned a public demonstration against the Taliban, calling for the reopening of our schools.

Our 10-girl-strong demonstration started on a Wednesday morning and ended instantly. An angry armed guard stood in front of the governor’s office and swore that if we didn’t leave immediately, he would gun down every one of us. Soon after that incident, the women’s bathhouses were closed. Several of the girls I knew from the bathhouse gatherings committed self-immolation. The rest of them were forced into arranged marriages, often to members of the Taliban.

In the summer of 1997, when five brave young men of Herat also tried to protest the Taliban, they were accused of conspiracy against the Islamic Emirate. They were beheaded and hanged from the meat hooks of butcher shops. The rustic and traditional city of Herat could not protest this Taliban crime. No voice was raised after that. No protest was organized.

The war-weary grown-ups, exhausted by civil war, simply surrendered their fate to the Taliban law. For 10 long years, they had fought against the Russians to honor and liberate the homeland—they had paid their dues.

The plight of women under Taliban rule did not concern the men much. But they were not alone in abandoning us. The world community turned away as well. While many men suffered, it was the women who paid the highest price. As the outside world espoused third-wave feminist slogans, they couldn’t be heard by the faraway and locked-up women of Afghanistan—and their plight couldn’t be heard either.

During the two decades after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, girls went back to school and women filled the rank and file in the public and private sectors of society. Women played a major role in the development of their country. A new generation grew up in Afghanistan that did not expect to see the Taliban as the only reality for Afghanistan.

Read More: What Afghanistan’s Women Stand to Lose

It was quite clear that, this time around, the girls and women of Afghanistan would not be silenced and would stride farther than the previous generations of Afghans. It took some time for women to come out of the shock of the government’s sudden collapse after the U.S. withdrawal, but ultimately they returned to the streets in protest. Girls in Badakhshan, Herat, Kabul, and Mazar-e Sharif took to the streets in small groups risking the wrath and pain of Taliban whips. They raised their voices for freedom and justice in front of school gates, on the street, and on university campuses.

The many miseries and gender apartheid that have befallen women in Afghanistan like Maryam are not the responsibility of the Afghan women alone. It is a crime against humanity and must concern every human being on this planet. 20 million women have been taken hostage by the Taliban—20 million women locked away, herded, denied basic rights, abused, and have literally vanished from daily life. If they’re not already buried underground, they are virtually buried alive.

Maryam’s firm, strong, and telling voice is a testimony that she does not and will not spare any effort for herself or her children. She is determined to continue to fight along with many other women, but they cannot defeat the Taliban alone.

The liberation of the women of Afghanistan is the responsibility of all the countries that believe in human rights and that have protected their interests on Afghan soil for the past 22 years.

THEY NEED THEIR OWN YPJ/YPG

WOMEN'S SELF DEFENSE UNITS

 

 

Greta Thunberg: It’s ‘absurd’ that we think the oil companies causing the climate crisis have a solution to it

Last Updated: Jan. 19, 2023
Rachel Koning Beals


Thunberg is joined by fellow young activists Vanessa Nakate, Helena Gualinga and Luisa Neubauer in a roundtable with IEA Director Fatih Birol at the World Economic Forum.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg of Sweden listens as Vanessa Nakate of Uganda speaks at a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The activists urged attendees to give less power in the climate-change fight to oil companies. AP

Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, age 20 and arguably the face of a generation that wants to roll back decades of reliance on oil and gas by means of alternative energy sources, had a message Thursday as she mingled with the corporate and political bigwigs meeting in Davos, Switzerland: Stop listening to the companies responsible for “fueling the destruction of the planet.”

Backing these interests only gives more power to those who are culpable in the climate crisis, by investing in fossil fuels and prioritizing short-term profits over people and broader economic growth, she said.

Thunberg was joined by prominent young activists Vanessa Nakate, Helena Gualinga and Luisa Neubauer in a roundtable with International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol at the World Economic Forum.

Stop listening to the companies responsible for ‘fueling the destruction of the planet.’— Greta Thunberg

Thunberg spoke first, saying it is “absurd” that in Davos, so many are turning to the people who are mainly causing the climate crisis to fix it, rather than to those on the front lines who are suffering from the drought, heat and more frequent extreme weather that costs livelihoods as well as lives.

We seem to rely on these people to resolve our problems, Thunberg says, even though they have shown they are prioritizing short-term “greed.”

Read: U.S. corporate greed has gone too far, says Norway fund manager who voted against Apple CEO’s pay

Thunberg urged Birol to stop the global energy industry and the banks that support it from financing new carbon-intensive investments such as those in coal, oil and gas. In 2021, the IEA under Birol did take a tougher stance on emissions and exploration for new fossil-fuel CL00, +0.06% sources, a position that surprised the industry.

Earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates announced its decision to appoint the CEO of a state-run oil company to preside over 2023 U.N. climate negotiations in Dubai. It was a move that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said he backs, citing Sultan al-Jaber’s work on renewable energy projects.

Kerry, the former U.S. secretary of state, told the Associated Press that the Emirates and other countries that rely on fossil fuels to fund their governments will need to find “some balance” ahead.

However, he dismissed the idea that because Sultan al-Jaber heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., his appointment should be automatically disqualified. Activists, however, equated the appointment to asking “arms dealers to lead peace talks.”


Others have said the infrastructure already in place from Big Oil, and the capital it has to invest in carbon capture and other technologies, can deliver the scale a climate-change fix requires.

Thunberg and many of her generation aren’t convinced.

“As long as they can get away with it, they will continue to invest in fossil fuels, they will continue to throw people under the bus,” Thunberg warned Thursday.

Instead, she said, climate policy makers should listen more closely to those who are actually affected by the climate crisis, particularly people living in the Southern Hemisphere and in developing nations — places that tend to be exploited for the resources that run modern society and bear the brunt of its pollution.

Don’t miss: Read Greta Thunberg’s killer comeback to former kickboxer Andrew Tate’s tweet about his ‘enormous emissions’

Earlier this week, police in western Germany carried Thunberg and other protesters away from the edge of an open-pit coal mine, where they had been demonstrating against the ongoing demolition of a village to make way for the mine’s expansion, German news agency dpa reported.

Thunberg was among hundreds of people who resumed antimining protests at multiple locations in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The German government reached a deal with energy company RWE RWE, +1.81% last year allowing it to demolish the village in return for ending coal use by 2030 rather than 2038, as had originally been planned.

Both the government and RWE argue the coal is needed to ensure Germany’s energy security, which is being affected by the cut in supply of Russian gas NG00, -0.26% due to the war in Ukraine.

More: BlackRock’s Fink says climate and ESG-investing attacks getting ugly, personal

At Davos, Thunberg visit spotlights lack of climate action

DAVID KEYTON and MASHA MACPHERSON
Thu, January 19, 2023 

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg on Thursday slammed corporate bigwigs meeting in Davos, Switzerland, for “fueling the destruction of the planet” by investing in fossil fuels and prioritizing short-term profits over people affected by the climate crisis.

Thunberg was joined by prominent young activists Vanessa Nakate of Uganda, Helena Gualinga of Ecuador and Luisa Neubauer of Germany in a roundtable with International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering.

Nakate, who at one point choked up, said “leaders are playing games” with people's futures.

People in parts of the world most affected by climate change are "clinging to their lives and just trying to make it for another day, to make it for another week, to make it for another hour, another minute,” she said.

Gualinga said the world is “taking a really dangerous path.”

The activists brought a “cease and desist” letter calling on the heads of fossil fuel companies to stop all new oil and natural gas projects, signed by nearly 900,000 people. Scientists say no new fossil fuel projects can be built if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in line with climate goals set in Paris in 2015.

Nakate added that current levels of warming, which have reached up to 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 F), means it is “already a living hell for many communities across the African continent, across the Global South” who are facing extreme drought, heat and flooding.

Activists have been increasingly critical of the lack of action taken by governments and large corporations in recent years.

Birol, meanwhile, said he had “legitimate optimism” that the world would move away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy. He noted that the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act ’s nearly $375 billion in climate incentives would be transformative for renewables in the country.

But he added that “the problem is not being fast enough to reach our climate targets.”

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, when asked for one thing she would change to accelerate the net zero transition, said she would lock the U.S., China, India and E.U. in a room and lock the door.

“Let them out after they sign in blood a commitment to work together to save the planet,” she said to applause from the audience at a Davos discussion on green finance.

Climate and sustainability have increasingly been major themes of the elite conclave in Davos, though it has faced criticism for being a talking shop that results in little direct action. This year, several sessions focused on the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy alongside panels on the slowing global economy, food insecurity and tech innovation.

The event kicked off with dozens of climate activists — some with clown makeup — braved snowfall on Sunday to wave banners and chant slogans at the end of the Davos Promenade.

“The changes that we need are not very likely to come from the inside (of the Davos meeting), rather I believe they will come from the bottom up,” Thunberg said. “Without massive public pressure from the outside, at least in my experience, these people are going to go as far as they possibly can. As long as they can get away with it, they will continue to invest in fossil fuels, they will continue to throw people under bus for their own gain.”

Thunberg did not attend the latest U.N. climate conference, or COP, in Egypt last year, but Nakate, Neubauer and Gualinga took part in protests and sessions at the event.

“It should be those on the frontlines and not privileged people like me” speaking to leaders at high-level meetings, Thunberg said.

The conference came under criticism in recent days for installing the chief of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. as its president for this year's event.

“It just sends this message of actually not taking it seriously," Gualinga said.

But U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told The Associated Press that he backs the decision, citing Sultan al-Jaber's work on renewable energy projects.

“I think that Dr. Sultan al-Jaber is a terrific choice because he is the head of the company. That company knows it needs to transition,” Kerry said Sunday after attending an energy conference in Dubai. “He knows — and the leadership of the UAE is committed to transitioning.”

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who’s leading an initiative to trace greenhouse gas emissions, said Thursday at Davos that fossil fuel companies were pumping three times the amount of planet-warming gases in the air than they were reporting.

“Most (other industries) are not this far off,” he said.

Thunberg arrived in Davos from Germany where she participated in a demonstration in a town being cleared for the expansion of a coal mine. Her boots were still covered in mud from the protest. She and several other high-profile activists were removed by police from the town on Tuesday.

“The level of action and frustration and anger that is there and one might even say desperation for me is a signal of what we need not only in Germany but around the world,” German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan told AP on Wednesday.

Morgan said that Davos attendees “are major decision-makers that if they were to really understand the 1.5 degree goal and take the action that’s required, it would make a massive difference."

But she acknowledged that while they have a role, “they're not the answer.”

___

AP journalists Kelvin Chan and Dana Beltaji in London and Jamey Keaten and Markus Schreiber in Davos contributed.

Greta Thunberg Leads Calls of Disappointment on Climate in Davos

Ayesha Javed
Thu, January 19, 2023

German climate activist of the "Fridays for Future" movement Luisa Neubauer (L), Ecuadorian environmental and human rights activist Helena Gualinga (2nd L), Ugandan climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate (2nd R) and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (R) pose with a letter to CEOs of fossil fuel companies during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, on January 19, 2023.

 Credit - Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

In 2023, TIME will once again recognize 100 businesses making an extraordinary impact around the world. Applications for the TIME100 Most Influential Companies of 2023 are open, now through March 1, 2023. Apply here.

Welcome to our final daily edition of the Leadership Brief’s Davos diaries, in which we’ll catch you up on the latest from the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting and my colleague Kevin J. Delaney, CEO and editor-in-chief of Charter, shares the view on how a looming recession could impact businesses. We’ll be back on Sunday with more insights on how the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting went this year. In the meantime, you can follow all our WEF-related coverage here, and if you’re in Davos, pick up a copy of TIME’s special issue in the Congress Centre.

For all the conversation around sustainability and the climate crisis, disappointment about the lack of real progress on the ground was palpable as the week drew to a close. Fresh off her detention in Germany, Greta Thunberg was in Davos Thursday to issue an open letter to fossil fuel company CEOs demanding that they immediately halt opening new extraction sites for oil, gas or coal, signed alongside Vanessa Nakate, Helena Gualinga, and Luisa Neubauer. The environmental activists appeared on a panel with the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Executive Director, Fatih Birol.

Thunberg called out delegates in Davos, who she said were “mostly fueling the destruction of the planet,” and “at the very core of the climate crisis,” such as those who have invested in fossil fuels. “Somehow these are the people that we seem to rely on solving our problems when they have proven time and time again that they are not prioritizing that,” Thunberg told an audience at The Filecoin Sanctuary. “They are prioritizing self-greed, corporate greed and short-term economic profits above people and above planet.” She added that the people on the front lines of the climate crisis are those who we should be listening to, branding the situation “absurd.”

The IEA’s Birol emphasized the need for much more investment in clean energy to combat global warming during Thursday’s panel, highlighting that there is a $2.5 trillion shortfall in funding required to meet climate targets.

Birol told TIME earlier this week that the clean energy transition for developing countries is crucial, and expressed some frustration with the lack of progress in Davos given the heavy corporate presence. He noted that the relative lack of snow here demonstrated just how vital action on climate change is.

Former U.S. Vice President and co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, Al Gore expressed frustration with slow progress on Wednesday, saying, “We are not winning. The crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying these solutions.” He also expressed support for Thunberg’s efforts during a protest to prevent the expansion of a coal mine in Germany earlier this week.

At Salesforce’s annual lunch on Thursday, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, in conversation with Gore, struck a more optimistic tone about the extent to which climate change had become a priority for leaders, according to one attendee.

People attend a demostration demanding climate justice and against the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos from Jan. 16 until Jan. 20, 2023.

The Enduring Mystery of an Aggressive FBI Raid Near Area 51


Lucas Ropek
Thu, January 19, 2023 at 2:10 PM MST·10 min read

When federal agents kicked in his door one icy morning last November, Joerg Arnu was still asleep. Roused by deafening bangs and shouts, the 60-year-old retired software developer stumbled out of bed to find a crowd of unfamiliar men in military gear standing in his foyer.

At least one of the half dozen men, he remembers, was visibly armed and pointing a gun in his direction. Another was holding a riot shield. “This is the FBI,” one yelled. “Put your hands against the wall!” Less than a minute later, Arnu was being handcuffed and led forcefully outside, dressed only in sweatpants and a T-shirt. His house, located in the remote town of Rachel, Nevada, had been swarmed by police vans. Shivering from a lightly falling snow, he was placed in the back of one of the vehicles, while over a dozen agents from the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations—the Air Force’s secretive counterintelligence wing—poured into his home. Not long afterwards, agents started asking him questions. One of the first things they wanted to know was: “Are there any booby traps on the property?” To Arnu, it seemed like a pretty weird thing to ask. A retired software developer and self-admitted senior citizen? Did that really sound like somebody who would boobytrap his own house?

Of course, Arnu had one particular hobby that he felt might be of interest to federal investigators: he had spent the last two decades tending to a popular blog about “Area 51,” the remote military base near Rachel that was known for its shroud of mystery and UFO lore. Arnu’s site, Dreamland Resort, regularly posted news about the base—including articles about its alleged connection to “black projects” and other clandestine government operations. When police crashed into his life that wintry day, he suspected it had something to do with this. Still, running a blog wasn’t illegal, and the force with which the government had come down on him seemed unbelievable. Just what exactly were agents looking for what? And what did they think he’d done?

On the same morning of the raid in Rachel, federal law enforcement descended on another property owned by Arnu, a house in Las Vegas, where his girlfriend Linda Hellow was staying at the time. She said that the raid similarly involved 15 to 20 armed agents in riot gear. “I heard and felt a large ‘BOOM,’” said Hellow, who was upstairs when police first entered the residence. “Don’t ask me what I hollered, probably ‘Who the eff are you?’”

After identifying themselves as the FBI, agents quickly escorted her outside in her underwear (she wouldn’t be allowed to dress properly until later, when an agent brought her a pair of pants).

Arnu shared pictures with Gizmodo of the damage caused by the feds as they stormed both residences. They clearly showed door frames that have been violently impacted. Arnu says that agents also tracked mud all over his carpeting, broke a desk and a lamp, and left his homes in a state of disarray. The damages from the raids total approximately $5,000, he said.

Photo: Joerg Arnu

The biggest loss that the blogger suffered, however, was the assets that police seized during the raids: approximately $20,000 worth of electronics, according to him. This included five computers, multiple phones, external hard drives, digital cameras, and an expensive drone, among other items.

“I’d really like to have my stuff back,” Arnu said in an interview. “I lost all of the backups. I lost literally all of the information that I had saved on my computers, including tax information, financial information, medical records—all of that is gone and is basically being held hostage by the FBI right now.”

As of this week, it’s been more than two months since the government raided both of Arnu’s properties, but he still hasn’t been charged with a crime. He was served with a search warrant that was missing dozens of pages and gave no reason for the raid; the case records related to the warrant have been sealed, so there’s no way of telling what the point of the search was. He also hasn’t been able to get in touch with the FBI, aside from a letter from the agency’s legal department denying reimbursement for the damage caused during the raids, he said. And, it goes without saying, he never got his stuff back.

“I believe the search, executed with completely unnecessary force by overzealous government agents, was meant as a message to silence the Area 51 research community,” Arnu recently wrote on his website.

The lingering questions around the case have yet to be answered: what were federal agents after when they ransacked his residences in Rachel and Las Vegas? Why did they feel the need to conduct their raids with such force? And what exactly did Arnu do to incur their wrath?
Mystery in the Desert

For decades, Area 51 has been popularly associated with UFO sightings and with extraterrestrial lore. But Arnu doesn’t believe in little green men, and if you peruse Dreamland, you’ll find that he doesn’t think the secretive military base has anything to do with aliens. Instead, the hobbyist researcher says that America’s UFO mythology is little more than a smokescreen to hide the much more mundane reality of what goes on at Area 51: the testing of classified military projects and aircraft.

The UFO craze first “started when Area 51 was first founded in the 1950s for the U2 spy plane project,” Arnu said. “All of a sudden airline pilots would see something way above them, at 80,000 feet or whatever [where the U2 was known to fly]. So that’s when this whole ‘UFO’ story was born as a diversion from what is really going on.”

Arnu said that, over the years, he has met a lot of people who have claimed to have seen something strange in the skies around Rachel. “By seeing how easy it is to misidentify something they see as a ‘UFO,’ I really became a skeptic,” he said. “I came to realize it’s really all about military aviation.”

Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images)

Other writers and researchers have come to similar conclusions. Journalist Annie Jacobsen’s Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, tells the story of how—at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s—the CIA used the base to develop new surveillance planes to spy on the Soviets. These included the U-2, as well as “Operation Oxcart,” a program that spawned numerous surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.

This is where the possible motive for the government’s raids comes in. What the agents were looking for may have been evidence that he had illegally photographed the military base, according to Arnu and others who know him.

According to Hellow, an agent present at the Vegas raid told her: “Your boyfriend took pictures of a military installation—that’s against the law.” In a blog post on Dreamland, Arnu similarly said that all he was told about the investigation was that it was “related to images posted on my Area 51 website.”

Taking an unauthorized picture of a defense installation (such as a military base) is a federal misdemeanor offense—on par with hunting or fishing in a wildlife refuge. It carries with it a punishment of a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail.

However, Arnu maintains that he never broke the law and that the government’s case against him—whatever it is—has zero merit. “I had some photos [on my website] of Area 51 that were about two years old,” said Arnu, which he believes were the reason for the raid. “They were legally obtained. There’s absolutely nothing illegal about them,” he said. “Most of these photos were not taken by me, I just published them [on the site].” He adds that they were “not classified photos” and that they “were not taken from inside the boundary”—that is, the area inside the perimeter of the base that is off-limits to civilians. Arnu says the photos had already been widely circulated on other news websites and TV shows, making it inexplicable why the government would target him and him alone.
A Fishing Expedition?

Without expedient answers from the government, Arnu has taken to calling officials’ raid a “fishing expedition”—an attempt to dig up dirt on him without a concrete basis. He also thinks it was the government’s way of intimidating him into shutting down his blog. In particular, the confiscation of the computer equipment that he uses to operate Dreamland Resort seems—to Arnu—like a naked attempt to shut down the site.

Michael German, a former FBI agent who has been critical of the bureau since leaving it, called Arnu’s case “troubling.” German, who now works as a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, told Gizmodo that it wasn’t unusual for the FBI to conduct an operation like this to “send a message,” and to cow a specific individual or community. That’s particularly disturbing given Arnu’s role as a person involved in media, he added.

“Certainly it [an operation like this] could intimidate other journalists who were writing about these secret government programs. That chilling effect seems to be part of why they would be so aggressive in a case where the level of dangerousness is not clear,” he said. On top of this, German notes that the targeting of Joerg’s computer equipment “raises concerns that the intent may have been to impede his ability to exercise his First Amendment rights.”

Peter Merlin, an aviation historian, fellow Area 51 researcher, and colleague of Arnu’s (he occasionally contributes to Dreamland), said the raids seemed designed to discourage Arnu and others from engaging in further Area 51 research. He does not blame the agents who conducted the raids, however, so much as whoever decided to mobilize them.

“It’s almost pointless to get mad at the Air Force for doing this, or even the FBI,” Merlin said. “If someone shoots you in the leg, do you get mad at the gun? No, you get mad at the guy who pulled the trigger. These guys are just a tool and somebody obviously weaponized them because they wanted to send Joerg a message. Somebody doesn’t like what he’s doing.”

The government has continued to be tight-lipped about the episode. Gizmodo reached out multiple times to both the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations for comment on the November raids. The FBI responded but refused to comment. AFOSI never responded.

While Arnu waits for answers, he’s trying to get on with his life. In addition to a slew of interviews with the press, the blogger has launched a GoFundMe to help pay for the damages inflicted by the raids and to finance his legal expenses (he has now hired a lawyer). He’s also trying to make up for the thousands of dollars of computer equipment that have vanished into government evidence lockers.

“I was treated like a drug dealer or some hardened criminal,” Arnu said during one of our interviews. “I was manhandled. I’m a sixty-year-old guy. There was no reason to bang me against the wall and drag me out of my own home in handcuffs...I just don’t see any reason to treat an unarmed senior citizen that way.”

Gizmodo

LOOK WHOSE TALKING
U.S., Cuban officials wrap up law-enforcement talks in Havana


Cubans seek to travel abroad to escape economic crisis in Havana

Thu, January 19, 2023 
By Dave Sherwood and Matt Spetalnick

HAVANA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A visiting U.S. delegation wrapped up two days of talks on law-enforcement issues with Cuban officials in Havana on Thursday, the two governments said following the first meeting of its kind since the previous Trump administration stopped such dialogue.

The talks, which included the State Department, Justice Department and Homeland Security - and their Cuban counterparts - as well as FBI and immigration officials and the Coast Guard, had been expected to focus on combating cybercrime, terrorist threats and drug and human trafficking.

"This type of dialogue enhances the national security of the United States through improved international law enforcement coordination," the State Department said. But it stopped short of announcing any agreements between the Cold War-era foes.

Washington's concerns about counterterrorism were among items on the agenda, U.S. officials had said.

Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the talks were mutually beneficial.

"Bilateral cooperation to confront scourges like terrorism, illegal trafficking of migrants and migratory fraud benefit both countries and we are committed to it despite the economic blockade and incessant hostility of the United States," Rodiguez said.

Cuba's Interior Ministry separately praised the meetings as taking place in a "climate of respect and professionalism."

Shortly before his term ended in January 2021, President Donald Trump had placed Cuba on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. The Biden administration has been reviewing this since taking office.

This week's meetings marked the revival of the law-enforcement dialogue, which was launched in 2015 under former President Barack Obama but was stopped in 2018 under Trump as he rolled back his predecessor's historic detente with Communist-ruled Cuba.

President Joe Biden, who served as Obama's vice president, has begun rolling back some of Trump's policies but has maintained others, insisting the Cuban government must improve its human rights record after a crackdown on protests in 2021.

U.S. officials did not respond to a Reuters question whether the agenda included discussion of Cuba's possible removal from the terrorism-sponsoring list. Cuba has called the designation a "slander" and false pretext to punish it economically.

Asked about the issue, a State Department spokesperson said: "After a careful review of all available information and intelligence, the Secretary of State will only designate or rescind SST designations after concluding that a country meets the relevant statutory criteria in accordance with applicable law."

When asked whether the United States was considering delisting Cuba, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told a daily briefing he had "no change in policy to announce" and said the Havana talks were specifically security-related.

It was the first Biden administration delegation known to have traveled to the island this year and appeared to signal increased openness to engage on specific issues of mutual interest despite icy relations.

The State Department said "this dialogue does not impact the administration's continued focus on critical human rights issues in Cuba."

U.S. and Cuban officials last year held talks on migration as Washington sought to stem the flow of Cubans to the United States by land and sea.

(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick and Dave Sherwood; Editing by Bradley Perrett & Simon Cameron-Moore)

Climate Misinformation Has Proliferated on Twitter Since Musk's Takeover

Fri, January 20, 2023

Yuri Samoilov via Flickr

Misleading posts about climate change have flourished on Twitter since Elon Musk took charge of the company in October, according to a new report.

“What’s happening in the information ecosystem poses a direct threat to action,” Jennie King, head of climate disinformation at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which produced the report, told the Associated Press. “It plants those seeds of doubt and makes people think maybe there isn’t scientific consensus.”

The report finds that Twitter is actively recommending the term “climate scam” to users who searched for “climate” during the UN climate talks in November. The report found that “climate scam” often appeared as the top result in searches, despite greater user engagement with other terms relating to climate change. The report says that it’s unclear why “climate scam” gained more prominence than these other terms, adding that the trend highlights “the need for transparency on how and why platforms surface content to users.”
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A recent analysis undertaken by the University of London found that tweets rejecting climate science hit an all-time high last year. As of December, there were more than 850,000 climate-skeptical tweets or retweets in 2022, as compared with 650,000 in 2021 and 220,000 in 2020.

Since Musk took over Twitter, several prominent climate deniers who had been banned from the platform for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 have had their accounts restored.

“My Twitter account and many others opposing the ‘consensus’ climate view have all increased visibility dramatically since Musk took over Twitter,” Marc Morano, a prominent climate denier, told E&E News in December. “Whatever Musk is altering, I hope he keeps it up.”

Climate crisis misinformation is thriving on Elon Musk's Twitter, research shows

Beatrice Nolan
Fri, January 20, 2023 

The #ClimateScam hashtag suddenly spiked on Twitter in July 2022 and has been increasing ever since, per the report.

Misinformation about the environment is flourishing on Elon Musk's Twitter, a study said.

The study said Twitter recommended "#ClimateScam" when users search for "climate."

The hashtag suddenly spiked on Twitter in July 2022 and has been increasing since, per the study.

Misinformation about the climate crisis is flourishing on Elon Musk's Twitter, according to a study.

The study, published on Thursday by Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), said Twitter was recommending the hashtag "#ClimateScam" when users search "climate." At the time of publication, Twitter was recommending the hashtag to several Insider employees as the top search result for "climate."

Referencing the hashtag, the study said that "in 2022, denialist content made a stark comeback on Twitter in particular."

The hashtag suddenly spiked on Twitter in July, and had been on an upwards trajectory ever since, the study said. By December, more than 91,000 unique users had mentioned the tag more than 362,000 times, it added.

The report said the term appeared to be trending despite "data that shows more activity and engagement on other hashtags such as #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency." The researchers added that its prominence couldn't be explained by personalization, volume of content, or popularity.

The source of the #ClimateScam hashtag was unclear and highlighted the need for transparency on how content was surfaced to users, per the study.

Only some of the content under the hashtag was labeled as misinformation, the report said.

Elon Musk has slashed Twitter's content moderation team since he bought the platform in October last year. He has also taken issue with some of Twitter's past content moderation decisions, including the suspension of former US president Donald Trump following the January 6 Capitol riots.

Representatives for Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Climate misinformation 'rocket boosters' on Musk's Twitter


DAVID KLEPPER
Thu, January 19, 2023 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Search for the word “climate” on Twitter and the first automatic recommendation isn't “climate crisis” or “climate jobs” or even “climate change” but instead “climate scam.”

Clicking on the recommendation yields dozens of posts denying the reality of climate change and making misleading claims about efforts to mitigate it.

Such misinformation has flourished on Twitter since it was bought by Elon Musk last year, but the site isn't the only one promoting content that scientists and environmental advocates say undercuts public support for policies intended to respond to a changing climate.

“What's happening in the information ecosystem poses a direct threat to action," said Jennie King, head of climate research and response at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit. “It plants those seeds of doubt and makes people think maybe there isn't scientific consensus.”


The institute is part of a coalition of environmental advocacy groups that on Thursday released a report tracking climate change disinformation in the months before, during and after the U.N. climate summit in November.

The report faulted social media platforms for, among other things, failing to enforce their own policies prohibiting climate change misinformation. It is only the latest to highlight the growing problem of climate misinformation on Twitter.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, allowed nearly 4,000 advertisements on its site — most bought by fossil fuel companies — that dismissed the scientific consensus behind climate change and criticized efforts to respond to it, the researchers found.

In some cases, the ads and the posts cited inflation and economic fears as reasons to oppose climate policies, while ignoring the costs of inaction. Researchers also found that a significant number of the accounts posting false claims about climate change also spread misinformation about U.S. elections, COVID-19 and vaccines.

Twitter did not respond to questions from The Associated Press. A spokesperson for Meta cited the company's policy prohibiting ads that have been proven false by its fact-checking partners, a group that includes the AP. The ads identified in the report had not been fact-checked.

Under Musk, Twitter laid off thousands of employees and made changes to its content moderation that its critics said undercut the effort. In November, the company announced it would no longer enforce its policy against COVID-19 misinformation. Musk also reinstated many formerly banned users, including several who had spread misleading claims about climate change. Instances of hate speech and attacks on LGBTQ people soared.

Tweets containing “climate scam” or other terms linked to climate change denial rose 300% in 2022, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit Advance Democracy. While Twitter had labeled some of the content as misinformation, many of the popular posts were not labeled.

Musk's new verification system could be part of the problem, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, another organization that tracks online misinformation. Previously, the blue checkmarks were held by people in the public eye such as journalists, government officials or celebrities.

Now, anyone willing to pay $8 a month can seek a checkmark. Posts and replies from verified accounts are given an automatic boost on the platform, making them more visible than content from users who don't pay.

When researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed accounts verified after Musk took over, they found they spread four times the amount of climate change misinformation compared with users verified before Musk's purchase.

Verification systems are typically created to assure users that the accounts they follow are legitimate. Twitter's new system, however, makes no distinction between authoritative sources on climate change and anyone with $8 and an opinion, according to Imran Ahmed, the center's chief executive.

“We found,” Ahmed said, “it has in fact put rocket boosters on the spread of lies and disinformation.”

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This story has been updated to correct the last name of Imran Ahmed.

Hydrogen-powered aviation reaches milestone with ZeroAvia's flight



Maria Gallucci
Fri, January 20, 2023

The largest aircraft powered partly by hydrogen took flight this week over the English countryside.

The startup ZeroAvia said it successfully flew its 19-seat prototype plane during a 10-minute flight test on Thursday, marking an early but important step toward hydrogen-fueled flying. The twin-engine aircraft was retrofitted to include fuel cells — which convert hydrogen into electricity — and batteries on one side, with the other side using an oil-burning jet engine.

ZeroAvia’s flight from Cotswold Airport comes as the global aviation industry is searching for viable alternatives to highly polluting fossil jet fuel.

Around the world, commercial air travel accounts for over 2 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, a percentage that’s set to soar in the coming years as passenger travel takes off. And as international air travel approaches pre-pandemic levels, the aviation sector is already driving an overall uptick in emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, which hit a record high last year.

In the near term, major airlines and plane manufacturers are seeking to curb emissions by designing more fuel-efficient engines, electrifying ground operations and increasing their use of “sustainable aviation fuel,” a broadly defined term that today mainly refers to fuels made from used cooking oil and animal fats. Companies are also developing battery-powered planes to hop between islands or make regional jaunts.

As a long-term solution, however, the industry is increasingly considering hydrogen. So far, the carbonless fuel has been tested dozens of times in tiny, single-digit-passenger prototype models. ZeroAvia’s most recent flight test represents a significant step up from earlier efforts, said Val Miftakhov, founder and CEO of the Hollister, California–based company.

“The first flight of our 19-seat aircraft shows just how scalable our technology is and highlights the rapid progress of zero-emission propulsion,” he said in a statement. “This is a major moment, not just for ZeroAvia, but for the aviation industry as a whole.”

Aviation companies are pursuing two forms of hydrogen aircraft: models with combustion jet engines burning liquid H2, and models with fuel-cell-battery systems using gaseous hydrogen. With the latter, hydrogen flows into the fuel cell and spurs an electrochemical reaction that produces electricity; that in turn drives electric motors and propellers. Since the fuel cells don’t burn hydrogen the way engines do, they don’t generate harmful nitrogen oxides or fine particulate matter.

However, liquid-burning engines are expected to produce more power than fuel cells — enough to cover most short- and medium-haul flights. Fuel-cell aircraft will likely be limited to short-haul regional routes, which are typically less than 400 miles, according to researchers at the International Council on Clean Transportation.

ZeroAvia’s flight, which was initially planned for July 2022, is part of the HyFlyer II project, a major research and development program backed by the U.K. government. In previous experimental flights, the startup used a six-seat prototype propeller plane equipped with only fuel cells and batteries. In April 2021, a prototype called the Piper Malibu was damaged during a forced landing at another small research airport. The bigger Dornier 228 aircraft tested this week had a different technology arrangement than its predecessors, using both a zero-carbon system and a conventional jet engine.

ZeroAvia said it expects to deliver a 2- to 5-megawatt hydrogen-electric propulsion system that’s certified to fly in 2023, with plans to launch nine- to 19-seater commercial aircraft with a 300-mile range by 2025.

Hydrogen-Powered Planes Could be the Best Bet For Greener Air Travel

Alejandro de la Garza
Fri, January 20, 2023

Web Summit 2021 - Day Three

Valery Miftakhov, ZeroAvia CEO, speaking in Lisbon, Portugal. ZeroAvia on Jan. 19 2023 completed a successful hydrogen-fueled flight in the UK. Credit - Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile for Web Summit—Getty Images

Yesterday, the world’s largest-ever hydrogen-powered plane took off from an airport in the U.K., made a 10-mile circle in the air, and landed again about 10 minutes later. The plane, a Dornier 228 19-seat turboprop extensively modified by startup ZeroAvia, wasn’t exactly a jumbo jet, but it still accounts for a significant step in the nascent world of zero emission flight. The previous record for largest hydrogen aircraft, also held by ZeroAvia, was for a 6-seat aircraft.

On board, a pair of fuel cells converted hydrogen into electricity to run an electric motor on the plane’s left wing, aided by a lithium-ion battery that added extra power during takeoff. In case something went wrong with the zero-carbon setup, the plane’s other propeller was powered by a conventional kerosine engine. And to keep things simple, the test plane only had about 10 kilograms of hydrogen on board (22 lbs), enough to fly for about 30 minutes. “In the target configuration for commercial [flights], we’re looking at 80 to 100 kilos of hydrogen on board. So significantly longer range,” says Val Miftakhov, ZeroAvia’s CEO.

This current plane is a stepping stone in the company’s larger ambitions. They’re currently working on a hydrogen power system for a 76-seat regional aircraft, which could be ready around 2026.

The aviation industry produces about 2% of all humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions, a share that’s expected to grow as air travel expands, with many analysts expecting the sector to triple by 2050. It’s critical to find sustainable alternatives. But the physical constraints that planes operate under—they have to be lightweight, refuel quickly, and carry enough stored energy on board to make it a decent distance before they have to refuel again—means that making a green replacement is more difficult than, say, building electric cars.

Some startups are working to develop fully electric, battery-powered planes, with some success, though many designs are relatively small. Alice, a battery-electric airplane developed by startup Eviation, which had its first short test flight last fall, can carry nine passengers. The largest battery powered plane, an electrified Cessna Grand Caravan first flown in 2020, can carry 14 passengers. Other companies are betting on so-called “e-fuels,” which use chemical processes to convert renewable energy into liquid fuels like kerosine, which then could be used by planes of any size, and many airlines are investing in scaling up this seemingly simple solution. But many processes to produce that fuel rely on organic feedstocks, and there ultimately may not be enough to go around. That leaves batteries and hydrogen as two longer-term clean energy solutions.

Read more: We’re Gonna Need a Greener Boat

Miftakhov, a former electric vehicle charging entrepreneur, says that battery powered planes have a shot at decarbonizing the market for small, short-range planes, but that hydrogen is the only reasonable option for decarbonizing longer routes flown by bigger aircraft. “If you do the math, there is actually a limitation on how much energy you can store in the battery,” Miftakhov says. “You’re not going to be able to run a 787 over the Atlantic on that energy source.”

Those longer flights account for the lionshare of the airline industry’s emissions. In 2020, long flights of more than 4,000km (2,485 mi.) constituted just 6% of all flights departing from European airports, but accounted for more than half of total flight emissions, according to an analysis by Eurocontrol. The shortest flights of 500 km (310 mi.) or less, the ballpark range of those being targeted by battery-electric airplane companies, were about 30% of departing flights, and 4% of emissions.

In order for battery-powered flight to compete beyond extremely short flying routes, says Miftakhov, batteries would have to store a lot more power, charge very fast, and last for thousands of battery cycles before they need to be replaced. “These are at natural conflict with each other,” he says. “To move all these three by an order of magnitude each is a monumental challenge.”

Hydrogen, on the other hand, has enough energy density to power the largest planes, according to Miftakhov. (Though even compressed hydrogen takes up a larger volume on board a plane than conventional kerosine.) European aircraft giant Airbus, for instance, is working on developing large hydrogen engines, which it claims it will be able to demonstrate in the next four years. And unlike e-fuels, producing hydrogen doesn’t require complicated chemical processes—it can even be produced at an airport if need be.

“Eventually, I think it’s all going to be… electric motors powered by hydrogen fuel cells,” Miftakhov says. “15 to 20 years out—obviously uncertain—we’ll get the technology to a point when it can power some of the largest planes out there.”

Warming to make California downpours even wetter, study says



 Floodwaters surround a home in the Chualar community of Monterey County, Calif., as the Salinas River overflows its banks, Jan. 13, 2023. A new study says the drenching that California has been getting since Christmas will only get wetter and nastier with climate change. 

SETH BORENSTEIN
Thu, January 19, 2023 

As damaging as it was for more than 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow to fall on California since Christmas, a worst-case global warming scenario could juice up similar future downpours by one-third by the middle of this century, a new study says.

The strongest of California’s storms from atmospheric rivers, long and wide plumes of moisture that form over an ocean and flow through the sky over land, would probably get an overall 34% increase in total precipitation, or another 11 trillion gallons more than just fell. That’s because the rain and snow is likely to be 22% more concentrated at its peak in places that get really doused, and to fall over a considerably larger area if fossil fuel emissions grow uncontrolled, according to a new study in Thursday’s journal Nature Climate Change.

The entire western United States would likely see a 31% increase in precipitation from these worst of the worst storms in a souped-up warming world because of more intense and widely spread rainfall, the study said.

Scientists say the worst-case scenario, which is about 4.4 degrees Celsius (7.9 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, looks a bit more unlikely since efforts are being undertaken to rein in emissions. If countries do as they promise, temperatures are on track to warm about 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Climate Action Tracker.


The National Weather Service calculated that California averaged 11.47 inches of precipitation statewide from Dec. 26 to Jan. 17 — including 18.33 inches in Oakland and 47.74 inches in one spot 235 miles north of San Francisco — because of a series of nine devastating atmospheric rivers that caused power outages, flooding, levee breaks, washouts and landslides. At least 20 people died.

“It could be even worse,” said study author Ruby Leung, a climate scientist at the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Lab. “We need to start planning how would we be able to deal with this.”

Leung used regional scale computer simulations to predict what the worst of the western winter storms will be like between 2040 and 2070 in a scenario where carbon emissions have run amok. She looked at total precipitation, how concentrated peak raining and snowing would be and the area that gets hit. All three factors grow for the West in general. California is predicted to get the highest increase in peak precipitation, while the Southwest is likely to see more rain because of a big jump in area of rainfall. The Pacific Northwest would see the least juicing of the three areas.

Overall precipitation is a bit lessened from adding all the factors, because just as the peak rainfall grows the rainfall on the edges of the storms is predicted to weaken, according to the study.

There are two types of storms that Leung said she worries about: Flash floods from intense rain concentrated over a small area and slower, larger floods that occur from rain and snow piling up over a large area. Both are bad, but the flash floods cause more damage and hurt people more, she said.

And those flash floods are likely to get worse from what Leung’s paper calls a “sharpening” effect that happens in an ever warmer world. That means more rainfall concentrated in the central areas of storms, falling at higher rates per hour, while at the outer edges rainfall is a bit weaker.

This happens because of the physics of rain storms, Leung said.

Not only can the atmosphere hold 4% more moisture per degree Fahrenheit (7% per degree Celsius), but it’s what happens in the storm that changes and makes the precipitation come down even more, Leung said. You’ve got air rising inside the storm with more water vapor condensing to produce rain and snow; it then releases heat “that kind of causes the storm to become more vigorous and stronger,” she said.

When water vapor condenses it comes down as rain and snow along the edges of the storm, but heating sort of squeezes that falling precipitation in toward the middle, Leung said.

“The concepts and impacts of how precipitation features are likely to change are well quantified and well explained,” said David Gochis, an expert in how water affects the weather at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, who wasn’t part of the study.

When she used computer simulations, Leung chose the most severe worst-case scenario for how the world’s carbon emissions will grow. It’s a scenario that used to be called business as usual, but the world is no longer on that track. After years of climate negotiations and the growth of renewable fuels the globe is heading to less warming than the worst case, according to climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth.

“We are providing more of a worst-case scenario, but understanding that if we do take action to reduce emissions in the future, we could end up better,” Leung said. “If we control the emissions and lower the global warming in the future, we can limit the impacts of climate change on the society, particularly flooding and extreme precipitation that we are talking about in this study.”

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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