Artemis 2's Canadian astronaut got their moon mission seat with 'potato salad'

Elizabeth Howell
Sat, April 1, 2023 

illustration of canadarm3 attached to a space station. the moon is behind and the earth very far in behind

It took four years of negotations for Canada to get a seat on NASA's upcoming moon mission.

That mission, Artemis 2, will send a Canadian and three Americans around the moon no sooner than November 2024. The Canadian seat comes courtesy of a big contribution to NASA's Artemis program: Canadarm3, a robotic arm that will service the planned Gateway moon-orbiting space station. (The identities of the Artemis 2 crewmembers are currently unknown but will be revealed on Monday, April 3, in a live NASA event that you can watch here at Space.com.)

Canadarm3 was announced in 2019 as part of a big push in Canadian federal government circles to reprioritize space exploration. The government pledged US $1.56 billion USD in space spending over 24 years ($2.05 billion CAD under 2019 exchange rates). That's $65 million USD a year, a fairly significant amount for a space agency that specializes in niche projects.


Much of that Canadian Space Agency (CSA) money was for Canadarm3, but some was also earmarked for a business incubator known as the Lunar Exploration Acceleration Program (LEAP). Other support went to food and health tech development contests designed to assist future deep space astronauts.

Getting all that funding and securing a seat on Artemis 2, however, took four years of behind-the-scenes negotiations. To introduce what happened, let's talk about something that may not sound all that space-y at first: potato salad.

Related: NASA's Artemis program: Everything you need to know

Canada is a powerful tech specialist that has been supplying highly capable space robotics since 1981 — Canadarm for the space shuttle program; Canadarm2 for the International Space Station (ISS), along with a "handy robot" named Dextre; and Canadarm3, which will be built by the company MDA. These are all crucial tools used for applications such as spacewalking, satellite repairs and space station servicing.

Ken Podwalski, a senior CSA official involved with the Artemis 2 and Gateway negotiations, likens the reputation of Canada's space robotics to the dinner guest who comes armed with a divine side dish: "People look at Canada and say, 'Canada, you guys make the best potato salad, bar none. It's the best potato salad you can get. Nobody does it like you.'"

His confidence comes from decades of space experience. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, for example, would not be running today without Canadarm, which was used on five space shuttle servicing missions to the iconic observatory from 1993 to 2009. Nor would the ISS exist in its current form without Canadarm2, which berths cargo ships, assists in construction and even starred in a spectacular 2007 emergency spacewalk to fix a torn ISS solar panel.

Related: Astronauts ready for solar wing surgery

scott parazynski in a spacesuit beside a solar panel in space. he is riding a robotic arm
NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski during a tricky International Space Station solar array repair in 2007. He rode a combination of Canadian robotics to get to the distant site: the Canadarm2 grasped a modified Canadarm to extend the robotic reach as far as possible. (Image credit: NASA )

But in 2015, when the future of the ISS collaboration was being discussed within Canada, the U.S. and other nations, there were lots of questions about what would happen next. Canada was just changing over from a Conservative to a Liberal government for the first time in nearly a decade, following the 2015 election.

The U.S. was on the eve of the 2016 election, which brought in a new presidential administration as well. Numerous ideas were batted about concerning the direction of NASA's human spaceflight program over the coming years. Would the agency work toward a crewed visit to an asteroid? A moon mission? How quickly and with whom? And within Canada, no space plan for government spending direction had been formulated for many years, making roadmaps similarly uncertain — until a high-level strategy document came out in 2019.

The multinational space groups Canada is a part of all agreed on one thing, Podwalski said: Mars was the ultimate destination. The question simply came down to which pathway to take. The CSA created its own planning group that used the ISS agreements as a starting point. Gateway, though changing design and scope periodically, was a solid enough target to plan discussions with NASA during the 2015 to 2018 negotiations, he said.

"We were going through this quite intensive time. We were doing presentations with the partners and trying to understand what the right fit was," Podwalski recalled. "We were [also] doing presentations with our government, trying to make sure that we're taking the right approach."

Related: Maple leaf to the moon: Canadian Space Agency debuts new logo

illustration of spacesuited astronauts, a rover and a habitat on the surface of mars
NASA and other international partners have agreed that eventually they want to send humans to Mars, but the pathway has been under negotiation for many years.

 (Image credit: NASA)


Building the new Canadarm3 was established as the primary aim. Podwalski, citing what he calls the "potato salad speech" he brings out in such planning meetings, said he always told people that focus was essential.

"Everybody expects Canada to bring the potato salad," he said. "The potato salad gets you in the door, no problem ... and it doesn't stop you from bringing anything else. You're now a part of the party. Now's a good time to bring up other things."

He thus urged his collaborators to deprioritize expensive and newer work that Canada could undertake, such as space modules or large rovers. But they also sought other avenues where modest investments could have a powerful impact and involve many smaller companies in related industries to space. Through these conversations, a mini moon rover (announced in 2021), a lunar utility vehicle (announced in the Canadian federal budget on March 28) and the CSA LEAP incubator program (renewed in the 2023 federal budget) all eventually came to be as well.

Canadarm3 was also designed to align with the priorities of the Canadian government. Serving remote communities in the north, especially Indigenous groups, through spinoff medical technology? Check. Continuing to grow Canada's artificial intelligence community, a key tech direction for the country? Another big check, as Canadarm3 will be autonomously operating without astronaut crews nearby for at least 11 months a year. Preparing for Mars? Absolutely, as the artificial intelligence and robotics will also be beneficial on a more faraway planet, Podwalski said.

Related: Meet Au-Spot, the AI robot dog that's training to explore caves on Mars

A docked orion spacecraft with the gateway space station in an artist's illustration. gateway has numerous modules, somewhat like the international space station but smaller
A visualization of the crew segment of the NASA-led lunar Gateway station. Gateway's design will likely continue to evolve as new hardware becomes available. 

(Image credit: ESA/NASA/ATG Medialab)

Podwalski emphasized how important it was to stay flexible through the negotiations, which extended through several U.S. election and Canadian cycles across 2015 to 2018, not to mention policy changes in the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and other partners.

"It is difficult to pull together these multibillion-dollar programs and get all these partners with all their own agendas about what they want to do in space, what technologies they want to develop and what they want to do with their industry," he said.

Formulations also will continue to change on the key hardware, he emphasized, and negotiations are always undertaken with that flexibility in mind. For example, he said, it's possible that Gateway may alter again after SpaceX's Starship achieves its first spaceflight as soon as this month, given that Starship could carry a considerable amount of cargo to lunar realms.

Related stories:

—NASA to name Artemis 2 crew next week, the first moon astronauts in 50 years

—NASA's Artemis 2 mission: Taking humans around the moon

—NASA's Artemis program: Everything you need to know

But for Canada, the benefits from Canadarm3's "potato salad" approach have been considerable so far. The Artemis 2 seat, when offered by NASA, met the CSA's goal of having an early moon mission with an astronaut on board to build industry and scientific momentum for other moon ventures, Podwalski said.

So far, NASA has also promised a long-duration Gateway mission to Canada sometime in the future. Other astronaut lunar journeys may come, including a landing mission, in negotiations down the road.

The ISS journey will continue alongside Artemis, too. Canada last month committed to extending its ISS participation to 2030 alongside other partners who agreed to that last year, most crucially NASA. (Russia has said it aims to exit the ISS partnership sometime after 2024.) Canada will also fly an astronaut to the ISS again in 2024 or 2025, the Canadian federal budget confirmed a few days ago.

Podwalski urged the community to keep watching for new announcements. "We're a partner in good standing," he said of the ISS and Artemis consortiums. "We're part of the initial [moon] foray; we're part of the trailblazers. It really does position Canada in a good way."

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM

How 'complementarianism' – the belief that God assigned specific gender roles – became part of evangelical doctrine


Susan M. Shaw, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Oregon State University
Sat, April 1, 2023 

Southern Baptist women demonstrating against the faith's gender role doctrine in Birmingham, Alabama, in 2019. AP Photo/Julie Bennett

Prominent evangelical leader Beth Moore, who announced in March 2021 that she was leaving the Southern Baptist Convention over its treatment of women, among other issues, also apologized for supporting the primacy of the theology of “complementarianism.”

This belief asserts that while women and men are of equal value, God has assigned them specific gender roles. Specifically, it promotes men’s headship or authority over women, while encouraging women’s submission.

As a scholar of gender and evangelical Christianity who grew up Southern Baptist, I watched how complementarianism became central to evangelical belief, starting in the late 1970s, in response to the feminist influence within Christianity.

The start of the doctrine

In the 1970s, the women’s movement began to make inroads into a number of arenas in the U.S., including work, education and politics. Many Christians, including evangelicals, came to embrace egalitarianism and to champion women’s equality in the home, church and society.

In response, in 1977 evangelical biblical studies professor George Knight III published a book, “New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women,” and introduced a new interpretation of “role differences.”

Other evangelical biblical studies professors, such as Wayne Grudem and John Piper, began to write about submission and headship in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, making the claim that women’s submission to men was not, as many Christians at that time believed, a result of the Fall in the Garden of Eden when Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit.

Rather, they argued, the requirement for women’s submission was part of the created order. Men, they explained, were created to rule and women were created to obey.
Southern Baptists incorporate the belief

Evangelical leaders began to hold secret meetings, conferences and evangelical associations to work out, and then promote, a fully developed framework for complementarianism.

In 1987, a group including Piper and Grudem met in Danvers, Massachusetts, to prepare a statement that came to be known as the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. It set out the core beliefs of complementarianism.

Among other things, the Danvers Statement affirmed the submissive role of women. It said, “Wives should forsake resistance to their husbands’ authority and grow in willing, joyful submission to their husbands’ leadership.”

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was created at the same time. The goal of the council was to influence evangelicals to adopt the principles of complementarianism in their homes, churches, schools and other religious agencies.

Within a decade, the council and the Danvers Statement began to have significant influence among evangelicals, particularly Southern Baptists, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Entrenched evangelical beliefs

The Southern Baptist Convention soon incorporated these beliefs into its confessional statement – a document of generally shared beliefs. In an amendment in 1998 to the “Baptist Faith and Message,” the convention included the complementarian language.

The amended section on “The Family” stated, “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.”

For some, the theology of complementarianism became so deeply entrenched in evangelical belief that they came to see it as an essential doctrine of the faith. As Piper said in 2012, if people accept egalitarianism, sooner or later, they’re going to get the Gospel wrong.

While Moore has not entirely renounced complementarianism, she has now decried its use as a first-tier doctrine. First-tier doctrines are the ones that evangelicals believe people must accept in order to be Christians. For some evangelicals, however, complementarianism remains a litmus test for theological faithfulness, right alongside belief in God and acceptance of Jesus.


This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. Like this article? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

It was written by: Susan M. Shaw, Oregon State University.

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THE POPE RECENTLY DECLARED THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BELIEVES STRICTLY IN COMPLEMENTARIANISM 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_and_Female_He_Created_Them

Male and Female He Created Them - Wikipedia 

The Congregation states that "gender theory" is "strictly sociological". : 7. The Congregation asserted a "distinction" between "the whole field ...

https://nypost.com/2023/03/11/pope-francis-gender-ideology-is-one-of-most-dangerous-ideological-colonizations

Pope Francis: 'Gender ideology' is one of 'most dangerous ... 

Mar 11, 2023 ... “Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women.” “All humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/vatican-says-people-cant-choose-their-genders/2019/06/10/c3055aaa-8b8e-11e9-b6f4-033356502dce_story.html

Vatican says people can't choose their genders - The Washington Post 

Jun 10, 2019 ... A new document, titled “Male and Female He Created Them,” expands on comments from Pope Francis.

IN OPPOSITION TO FEMINIST HERETIC & GENDER BENDER; JUDITH BUTLER

Gender Trouble

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Gender_Trouble

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990; second edition 1999) is a book by the philosopher Judith Butler in which the author argues ...

Publication date: 1990

Subjects: Feminism, ‎Philosophy‎, ‎Queer theory‎

Publisher: Routledge

Pages: 272 (UK paperback edition)

‎Summary · ‎Reception

PDF

Gender trouble. Feminism and the subversion of identity

lauragonzalez.com

https://lauragonzalez.com › BUTLER_gender_t...

PDF

Gender trouble : feminism and the subversion of identity / by. Judith Butler. p. cm. (Thinking gender). Includes index. ISBN 0-415-90042- ...

92 pages

Judy Blume Annihilates Book Ban Efforts With Scathing Takedown

“Try and define pornography today, and you’ll find that it’s everything.”


Ben Blanchet
Sat, April 1, 2023 

In this article:
Judy Blume
American children's writer

Judy Blume ripped attempts to ban books and described what “books are all about” during an interview published by Variety on Friday.

Blume weighed in on book bans as attempts to challenge literary materials in schools and public libraries reached a record high in 2022, according to a report from the American Library Association.

The iconic author, known as an activist against book ban efforts, has seen several of her books challenged over the years, including “Forever...” and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

Blume told Variety that the challenges “all broke loose” following the election of President Ronald Reagan but argued that efforts to ban books today are different.

“It was bad in the ’80s, but it wasn’t coming from the government. Today, there are laws being enacted where a librarian can go to prison if she or he is found guilty of having pornography on their shelves,” Blume said.

“Try and define pornography today, and you’ll find that it’s everything.”

Judy Blume arrives at the 40th Annual Miami Film Festival's premiere of

Judy Blume arrives at the 40th Annual Miami Film Festival's premiere of "Judy Blume Forever" on March 4 in Coral Gables, Florida.

Blume’s comments come after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed that efforts to remove books from state classrooms only impact “pornographic and inappropriate” materials, a claim that literary group PEN America declared false in a post last month.

The author, a Key West, Florida resident, has also spoken out against GOP-backed efforts in the state.

The author wrote “Sorry, Margaret.” – a nod to the main character of her novel that addresses menstruation – in response to a tweet about a bill that would ban discussion of menstrual cycles in Florida classrooms.

Blume, in her interview with Variety, referred to politician-led attempts to challenge books as “the real danger.”

“What are you protecting your children from? Protecting your children means educating them and arming them with knowledge, and reading and supporting what they want to read,” Blume said.

“No child is going to become transgender or gay or lesbian because they read a book. It’s not going to happen. They may say, ‘Oh, this is just like me. This is what I’m feeling and thinking about.’ Or, ‘I’m interested in this because I have friends who may be gay, bi, lesbian.’ They want to know.”

Blume later praised one book – Maia Kobabe’s frequently-challenged memoir “Gender Queer” – for offering her insight into a life other than her own.

“I thought, ‘This young person is telling me how they came to be what they are today.’ And I learned a lot and became even more empathetic,” she said.

“That’s what books are all about.”’

You can read more of Blume’s interview with Variety here.

Judy Blume worried about intolerance and book banning in the US

Banning books "has become political... it's worse than it was in the 80s"

Steven McIntosh - Entertainment reporter
Sat, April 1, 2023 



Author Judy Blume has said she is worried about intolerance in the US, after some of her novels were removed from schools.

Some books have been removed from school libraries in the US due to concerns about how they explore complex themes of sex, race or gender identity.

One of Blume's novel was recently pulled in a Florida school district.

Blume told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg banning books "has become political... it's worse than it was in the 80s".

Asked if she was worried about intolerance in the US, she replied: "Absolutely, intolerance about everything, gender, sexuality, racism.

"It's just reaching a point where again we have to fight back, we have to stand up and fight."

Why author Judy Blume's classic still inspires

Blume's novels have been translated into 32 languages and sold more than 90 million copies, according to recent figures reported by The Washington Post.

A screen adaptation of the author's 1970 novel Are You There God? It's Me Margaret is set to be released in May, starring Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates.

Abby Ryder Fortson and Rachel McAdams will star in the screen adaptation of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

The novel follows a young girl exploring her religious and sexual identity as she confronts adolescent anxieties about reaching puberty.

The book won several literary awards and has remained popular with teenage girls, but it has also attracted controversy both at the time of its publication and more recently, for how openly it discusses sexuality and religion.

Asked about book banning, Blume told Kuenssberg: "I thought that was over frankly, I thought we had come through that, you know, not in every way, but I never expected us to be back where we were in the 80s plus, much worse.

"I came through the 80s when book banning was really at its height. And it was terrible. And then libraries and schools began to get policies in place and we saw a falling off of the desire to censor books.

"Now it is back, it is back much worse - this is in America, it is back so much worse than it was in the 80s. Because it's become political.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has proposed limiting discussion of gender and sexuality in schools

She continued: "We have legislators out there trying to put through laws, I just read about one last week in my home state of Florida, trying to put through a law - trying to put through laws saying that girls can no longer talk about periods at school or amongst themselves."

Earlier this month, Florida's state legislature introduced a new bill that may limit discussion of menstruation before sixth grade.

"I mean, that's crazy, that is so crazy," Blume said. "And it is so frightening that I think the only answer is for us to speak out and really keep speaking out, or we are going to lose our way."

Blume was also asked what she thought about Florida governor Ron DeSantis's proposal to restrict discussion about gender identity and sexual orientation in schools.

Last week, Florida's Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr tweeted: "Students should be spending their time in school learning core academic subjects, not being force-fed radical gender and sexual ideology."

Blume criticised "bad politicians who drunk with power, who want to get out there, and I don't know what they're trying to prove really".

She added: "I mean, there's a group of mothers now going around saying that they want to protect their children. Protect them from what? You know, protect them from talking about things? Protect them from knowing about things?

"Because even if they don't let them read books, their bodies are still going to change and their feelings about their bodies are going to change. And you can't control that. They have to be able to read, to question."

Why do flocks of birds swoop and swirl together in the sky? A biologist explains the science of murmurations


Tom Langen, Professor of Biology, Clarkson University
Sun, April 2, 2023 

Murmurations can have as many as 750,000 birds flying in unison. mikedabell/iStock via Getty Images

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Why do flocks of birds swoop and swirl together in the sky? – Artie W., age 9, Astoria, New York

A shape-shifting flock of thousands of starlings, called a murmuration, is amazing to see. As many as 750,000 birds join together in flight. The birds spread out and come together. The flock splits apart and fuses together again. Murmurations constantly change direction, flying up a few hundred meters, then zooming down to almost crash to the ground. They look like swirling blobs, making teardrops, figure eights, columns and other shapes. A murmuration can move fast – starlings fly up to 50 miles per hour (80 kilometers per hour).

The European or common starling, like many birds, forms groups called flocks when foraging for food or migrating. But a murmuration is different. This special kind of flock is named for the sound of a low murmur it makes from thousands of wingbeats and soft flight calls.

Murmurations form about an hour before sunset in fall, winter and early spring, when the birds are near where they’ll sleep. After maybe 45 minutes of this spectacular aerial display, the birds all at once drop down into their roost for the night.
Why do starlings form murmurations?

Unlike the V formations of migrating geese, murmurations provide no aerodynamic advantage.

Scientists think a murmuration is a visual invitation to attract other starlings to join a group night roost. One theory is that spending the night together keeps the starlings warmer as they share their body heat. It might also reduce the chance an individual bird would be eaten overnight by a predator such as an owl or marten.

This dilution effect might be part of the reason murmurations happen: The more starlings in the flock, the lower the risk to any one bird of being the one that gets snagged by a predator. Predators are more likely to catch the nearest prey, so the swirling of a murmuration could happen as individual birds try to move toward the safer middle of the crowd. Scientists call this the selfish herd effect.

Of course, the more birds in a flock, the more eyes and ears to detect the predator before it’s too late.


And a gigantic mass of whirling, swirling birds can make it hard to focus on a single target. A falcon or hawk can get confused and distracted by tricky wave patterns in the murmuration’s movements. It also must be careful not to collide with the flock and get hurt.

Over 3,000 citizen scientist volunteers reported spotting murmurations in a recent study. A third of them saw a raptor attack the murmuration. That observation suggests that murmurations do form to help protect the birds from predators – but it’s also possible a huge murmuration would be what attracted a hawk, for instance, in the first place.
How do starlings coordinate their behavior?

Murmurations have no leader and follow no plan. Instead, scientists believe movements are coordinated by starlings observing what others around them are doing. Birds in the middle can see through the flock on all sides to its edge and beyond. Somehow they keep track of how the flock is moving as a whole and adjust accordingly.

To learn what’s happening inside murmurations, some researchers film them using many cameras at the same time. Then they use computer programs to track the movements of individual starlings and create 3D models of the flock.

Within the murmuration, individual birds aren’t tightly packed together.

  K C Bailey/iStock via Getty Images

The videos reveal that the birds are not as densely packed as they might appear from the ground; there is room to maneuver. Starlings are closer to their side neighbors than those in front or behind. Starlings on the edge frequently move deeper into the flock.

Mathematicians and computer scientists try to create virtual murmurations using rules that birds might follow in a flock – like moving in the same direction as their neighbor, staying close and not colliding. From these simulations, it seems that each bird must keep track of seven neighbors and adjust based on what they’re doing to keep the murmuration from falling apart in a chaotic mess. And they do all this while flying as fast as they can.

Large schools of fish can appear to behave like murmurations, as do groups of some swarming insects, including honeybees. All these synchronized movements can happen so fast within flocks, herds, swarms and schools that some scientists once thought it required animal ESP!

Biologists, mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists and engineers are all working to figure out how animals carry out these displays. Curiosity drives this research, of course. But it may also have practical applications too, like helping develop autonomous vehicles that can travel in tight formation and work in coordinated groups without colliding.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
It was written by: Tom Langen, Clarkson University.

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Sacramento homeless encampment wins a lease — and hopes to be a model for California

“We don’t need a nonprofit industrial complex coming in, charging $4,000 a night for a piece of asphalt to babysit people” 

Ariane Lange
Sat, April 1, 2023 

Residents at an encampment who successfully negotiated a formal lease with the city of Sacramento called on homeless people across the nation to follow their example at a Saturday news conference.

The new lease binds city officials to an agreement: The people in Camp Resolution cannot be moved from the parking lot until every resident has been placed into permanent, stable housing.

The lease comes after a drawn-out fight with city officials, who have tried to force the residents to move multiple times. Now, the women-led camp has won official approval to remain in the tight-knit community they’ve refused to leave for months.

The point, said resident Desiree Pryor, is “to help everybody within it, and to make this a global movement for every other city to follow along.”

Anthony Prince, the attorney for the California Homeless Union who represented the residents of Camp Resolution in negotiations with the city, spoke with the crowd gathered outside the camp about the terms of the contract: “You cannot take this down until such time as every single person in this camp is provided with individual, durable and permanent housing. And housing does not mean some shelter where there’s 1,000 people all congregating together. It does not mean a pop-up tent encampment; it does not mean a sidewalk; it does not mean a street corner. It means a durable place to live like a human being.”

Camp Resolution leaders Sharon Jones, left, and Joyce Williams, right, embrace after a press conference announcing a formal lease agreement between the city and the encampment on Colfax street in North Sacramento on Saturday, April 1, 2023.

The camp and this agreement with the city, Prince said, could be “a model, an example for homeless people across the United States of America.”

Although the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2018 that citing or moving homeless campers when there was no other place for them to go was a form of cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution, the city and the county have continued to force unhoused people to move under many circumstances.

Sacramento County as a whole has at least 7,000 more homeless people than it has shelter beds for them to sleep on. The contract gives these campers an added layer of protection.

The attorney emphasized that the residents set the terms of the lease: “The days are over when other parties are going to make decisions for the homeless.”

Non-binding agreements between Camp Resolution residents and the city have collapsed before. After an August 2021 plan identified the lot on the corner of Colfax Street and Arden Way as a fitting site for shelters and parking, Sacramento moved people off the lot and spent $617,000 to put up an iron fence and prepare the lot for city-sanctioned campers. Then, the city scrapped the plan, telling the residents they could not return.

Residents moved back in anyway, and put up a defiant sign: “$617,000 TAXPAYER DOLLARS FOR A PARKING LOT???”

After police ordered Camp Resolution out in November 2022, 60 people showed up at a City Council meeting to protest. In response, Sean Loloee, who represents the campers’ district, said the sweep was being postponed. In the four months since, the campers and the city hammered out this new deal.

THE POST MODERN STATE
“We don’t need a nonprofit industrial complex coming in, charging $4,000 a night for a piece of asphalt to babysit people,” Sacramento Homeless Union President Crystal Sanchez told reporters Saturday. “We need that funding put into the resources.”

MUTUAL AID SOLIDARITY
Residents told The Sacramento Bee that the self-governing encampment — which has no nonprofit or city agency overseeing it — is a more dignified alternative to the controlling and sometimes degrading policies in place at many homeless shelters.

“We’re grown,” Pryor said.

Though the news conference was celebratory, Twana James, a homeless person who lives nearby at a camp called Bannon Island, said she and her elderly neighbors had just received 48-hour eviction notices. Pryor said she hoped Camp Resolution’s progress would inspire similar deals elsewhere, but the fight wasn’t over.

Ancient leaves preserved under a mile of Greenland's ice – and lost in a freezer for years – hold lessons about climate change

Paul Bierman, Fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment, Professor of Natural Resources, University of Vermont 

 Andrew Christ, Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Geology, University of Vermont

Sun, April 2, 2023 

Remnants of ancient Greenland tundra were preserved in soil beneath the ice sheet. Andrew Christ and Dorothy Peteet, CC BY-ND

In 1963, inside a covert U.S. military base in northern Greenland, a team of scientists began drilling down through the Greenland ice sheet. Piece by piece, they extracted an ice core 4 inches across and nearly a mile long. At the very end, they pulled up something else – 12 feet of frozen soil.

The ice told a story of Earth’s climate history. The frozen soil was examined, set aside and then forgotten.

Half a century later, scientists rediscovered that soil in a Danish freezer. It is now revealing its secrets.

Using lab techniques unimaginable in the 1960s when the core was drilled, we and an international team of fellow scientists were able to show that Greenland’s massive ice sheet had melted to the ground there within the past million years. Radiocarbon dating shows that it would have happened more than 50,000 years ago. It most likely happened during times when the climate was warm and sea level was high, possibly 400,000 years ago.

And there was more. As we explored the soil under a microscope, we were stunned to discover the remnants of a tundra ecosystem – twigs, leaves and moss. We were looking at northern Greenland as it existed the last time the region was ice-free. Our peer-reviewed study was published on March 15, 2021 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Engineers pull up a section of the 4,560-foot-long ice core at Camp Century in the 1960s. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers


With no ice sheet, sunlight would have warmed the soil enough for tundra vegetation to cover the landscape. The oceans around the globe would have been more than 10 feet higher, and maybe even 20 feet. The land on which Boston, London and Shanghai sit today would have been under the ocean waves.

The ice core and the soil below are something of a Rosetta Stone for understanding how durable the Greenland ice sheet has been during past warm periods – and how quickly it might melt again as the climate heats up. Today, humans are warming Earth’s climate, and the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising quickly.
Secret military bases and Danish freezers

The story of the ice core begins during the Cold War with a military mission dubbed Project Iceworm. Starting around 1959, the U.S. Army hauled hundreds of soldiers, heavy equipment and even a nuclear reactor across the ice sheet in northwest Greenland and dug a base of tunnels inside the ice. They called it Camp Century.

It was part of a secret plan to hide nuclear weapons from the Soviets. The public knew it as an Arctic research laboratory. Walter Cronkite even paid a visit and filed a report.

Workers build the snow tunnels at the Camp Century research base in 1960. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Camp Century didn’t last long. The snow and ice began slowly crushing the buildings inside the tunnels below, forcing the military to abandon it in 1966. During its short life, however, scientists were able to extract the ice core and begin analyzing Greenland’s climate history. As ice builds up year by year, it captures layers of volcanic ash and changes in precipitation over time, and it traps air bubbles that reveal the past composition of the atmosphere.

One of the original scientists, glaciologist Chester Langway, kept the core and soil samples frozen at the University at Buffalo for years, then he shipped them to a Danish archive in the 1990s, where the soil was soon forgotten.

A few years ago, our Danish colleagues found the soil samples in a box of glass cookie jars with faded labels: “Camp Century Sub-Ice.”

Geomorphologist Paul Bierman (right) and geochemist Joerg Schaefer of Columbia University examine the jars holding Camp Century sediment for the first time. They were in a Danish freezer set at -17 F. Paul Bierman, CC BY-ND
A surprise under the microscope

On a hot July day in 2019, two samples of soil arrived at our lab at the University of Vermont frozen solid. We began the painstaking process of splitting the precious few ounces of frozen mud and sand for different analyses.

First, we photographed the layering in the soil before it was lost forever. Then we chiseled off small bits to examine under the microscope. We melted the rest and saved the ancient water.

Then came the biggest surprise. While we were washing the soil, we spotted something floating in the rinse water. Paul grabbed a pipette and some filter paper, Drew grabbed tweezers and turned on the microscope. We were absolutely stunned as we looked down the eyepiece.

Staring back at us were leaves, twigs and mosses. This wasn’t just soil. This was an ancient ecosystem perfectly preserved in Greenland’s natural deep freeze.

Glacial geomorphologist Andrew Christ (right), with geology student Landon Williamson, holds up the first fossil twig spotted as they washed a sediment sample from Camp Century. Paul Bierman, CC BY-ND
Dating million-year-old moss

How old were these plants?

Over the last million years, Earth’s climate was punctuated by relatively short warm periods, typically lasting about 10,000 years, called interglacials, when there was less ice at the poles and sea level was higher. The Greenland ice sheet survived through all of human history during the Holocene, the present interglacial period of the last 12,000 years, and most of the interglacials in the last million years.

But our research shows that at least one of these interglacial periods was warm enough for a long enough period of time to melt large portions of the Greenland ice sheet, allowing a tundra ecosystem to emerge in northwestern Greenland.

We used two techniques to determine the age of the soil and the plants. First, we used clean room chemistry and a particle accelerator to count atoms that form in rocks and sediment when exposed to natural radiation that bombards Earth. Then, a colleague used an ultra-sensitive method for measuring light emitted from grains of sand to determine the last time they were exposed to sunlight.

Maps of Greenland show the speed of the ice sheet as it flows (left) and the landscape hidden beneath it (right). BedMachine v3; Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), CC BY-ND

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today is well beyond past levels determined from ice cores. On March 14, 2021, the CO2 level was about 417 ppm. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CC BY-ND

The million-year time frame is important. Previous work on another ice core, GISP2, extracted from central Greenland in the 1990s, showed that the ice had also been absent there within the last million years, perhaps about 400,000 years ago.
Lessons for a world facing rapid climate change

Losing the Greenland ice sheet would be catastrophic to humanity today. The melted ice would raise sea level by more than 20 feet. That would redraw coastlines worldwide.

About 40% of the global population lives within 60 miles of a coast, and 600 million people live within 30 feet of sea level. If warming continues, ice melt from Greenland and Antarctica will pour more water into the oceans. Communities will be forced to relocate, climate refugees will become more common, and costly infrastructure will be abandoned. Already, sea level rise has amplified flooding from coastal storms, causing hundreds of billions of dollars of damage every year.

Tundra near the Greenland ice sheet today. Is this what Camp Century looked like before the ice came back sometime in the last million years? Paul Bierman, CC BY-ND

The story of Camp Century spans two critical moments in modern history. An Arctic military base built in response to the existential threat of nuclear war inadvertently led us to discover another threat from ice cores – the threat of sea level rise from human-caused climate change. Now, its legacy is helping scientists understand how the Earth responds to a changing climate.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Andrew Christ, University of Vermont and Paul Bierman, University of Vermont.

Read more:

Shrinking glaciers have created a new normal for Greenland’s ice sheet – consistent ice loss for the foreseeable future


The Arctic hasn’t been this warm for 3 million years – and that foreshadows big changes for the rest of the planet


What is the cryosphere? Hint: It’s vital to farming, fishing and skiing

Andrew Christ receives funding from the Gund Institute for Environment and the National Science Foundation.

Paul Bierman receives funding from the US National Science Foundation and UVM Gund Institute for Environment.

Report by feds, anglers cites offshore wind impacts on fish


 

WAYNE PARRY
Fri, March 31, 2023 

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A joint study by two federal government scientific agencies and the commercial fishing industry documents numerous impacts that offshore wind power projects have on fish and marine mammals, including noise, vibration, electromagnetic fields and heat transfer that could alter the marine environment.

It comes as the offshore wind industry is poised to grow rapidly on the U.S. East Coast, where it is facing growing opposition from those who blame it for killing whales — something numerous scientific agencies say is not true.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance issued their report Wednesday after a 2 1/2-year-long study of the impacts existing offshore wind projects have on fish and marine mammals.

The goal was to solidify existing knowledge of the impacts and call for further research in many areas.


NOAA and BOEM are among agencies that say there is no link between offshore wind preparation and whale deaths. Their co-authorship of a report detailing potential negative impacts on fish and marine mammals may intensify an already highly politicized controversy.

Asked Friday about the likelihood of this happening, NOAA spokesperson Lauren Gaches reiterated the agency's position that offshore wind is not causing the whale deaths, which remain under investigation.

“We will also continue to explore how sound, vessel, and other human activities in the marine environment impact whales and other marine mammals,” she said.

The fishing industry is concerned that fish near construction sites may be killed or chased away for prolonged periods even after the turbines are built, according to the report.

“Physical changes associated with (offshore wind) developments will affect the marine environment — and, subsequently, the species that live there — to varying degrees,” the report read. ”These include construction and operation noise and vibration, electromagnetic fields, and thermal radiation from cables, as well as secondary gear entanglement.

In an interview, Fiona Hogan, research director for the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, said: "We wanted to document what was known and not known. As far as we know, this is the first cooperatively developed report that cites all aspects of the potential interactions between fisheries and offshore wind.”

The alliance is a fishing industry group trying to improve the compatibility of offshore wind with fishing operations.

The American Clean Power Association, an offshore wind industry group, said Friday it was still studying the 388-page report.

Andy Lipsky, who oversees the wind energy team at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center, is a co-author of the report. He said it helps the agencies define the type of monitoring required for long-term study of offshore wind's effects and points out "needed research on how offshore wind energy changes marine habitats and fisheries.”

Several concerns raised in the report mirror many of those raised by opponents of offshore wind, including those who blame preparation for offshore wind farms for killing whales along the East Coast. Since December, 30 whales have washed ashore there.

The report said offshore wind turbines can attract fish and marine life, but also repel them. The large underwater platforms are rapidly colonized by smaller marine life which in turn attracts larger predators to the area. Water cloudiness from turbine operations, noise, vibrations and electromagnetic fields could also make them leave the area.

Hogan said some disagreement remains on whether wind platforms will be a net attraction or deterrent to fish.

Regarding noise, the report said sounds emitted from pile-driving during construction “can be severe, resulting in mortality or injury of hearing tissues.” Noise levels from ongoing operation of the turbines once constructed “are not associated with direct physical injury, (but) long-term exposures may have negative effects on communication, foraging, and predator detection.”

In almost every instance, the report called for additional research. The study only dealt with fixed-location wind turbines; a second study will examine wind projects that float on the water's surface.

The $150,000 survey was funded by NOAA.

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Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Fishing boats sit at the dock in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. on Sept. 11, 2019. A report issued March 29, 2023 by two federal marine science agencies and the commercial fishing industry highlighted several potential negative aspects of offshore wind energy development on the fishing industry and called for additional research. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

Iraqi federal and Kurdish officials reach oil export deal


This is a locator map for Iraq with its capital, Baghdad. (AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

ABBY SEWELL and YASMINE MOSIMANN
Sun, April 2, 2023 

BEIRUT (AP) — Authorities in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region said Sunday they have reached a preliminary deal with the central government in Baghdad that will allow oil exports from the northern Kurdish region by way of Turkey to resume.

The central government's Ministry of Oil said in a statement that while a final agreement has not been reached yet, it “hopes to reach an agreement to resume oil exports soon.”

The ministry statement said that Baghdad “is keen to expedite the resumption of exports of the region’s oil through the Turkish port of Ceyhan."

Officials in Baghdad and Irbil, the seat of the Kurdish government, have long been at odds over oil revenues, a dispute that has been exacerbated by the lack of a federal law detailing the sharing of funds from oil and gas exports.


The announcement comes after an arbitration process by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) last sided with Iraq over a long-standing dispute over the independent export of oil by the Kurdish regional government.

Exports via a pipeline that goes through Iraq’s Fish Khabur border crossing to Turkey’s Ceyhan port will resume this week, according to Lawk Ghafuri, head of foreign media affairs for the Kurdish regional government.

Iraq filed for arbitration against Turkey in 2014 after the Kurdish region began exporting the resource without the consent of Baghdad through the neighboring country. Iraq argued that a 1973 agreement with Turkey requires all oil exports to go through Iraq’s state-owned oil marketing company, SOMO.

Iraqi officials announced on March 25 that the arbitration tribunal had ruled in its favor. Turkey’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources said in a statement that the arbitration ruling had thrown out four of Iraq’s five claims and upheld one.

In any case, the ruling halted oil exports from the Kurdish region by way of Ceyhan, which previously amounted to about half a million barrels per day. The stoppage, if prolonged, would have been a significant blow both to global oil supplies and to the Kurdish region’s budget.

Already in recent years the Kurdish government has frequently been late in paying public sector salaries, in part due to the ongoing dispute over oil and gas revenues, which has led to the central government withholding budget transfers to Irbil.

Ghafuri said Sunday that after “several meetings” between officials from Irbil and Baghdad, an initial agreement had been reached allowing exports to resume. The agreement will remain in effect until the long-delayed oil and gas law is passed by the Iraqi Parliament, he said.

Under the deal, oil will be exported jointly by SOMO and the Kurdish region’s Ministry of Natural Resources, with the revenues going to a financial account managed by the Kurdish government and monitored by the central government.

The central government’s Ministry of Oil said in its statement that “technical issues” remain to be resolved between Baghdad and Irbil.

The head of the parliamentary Oil, Gas and Natural Resources Committee, Haibet al-Halbousi, said Sunday in a statement that there is a “quasi-political consensus” to speed up passage of an oil and gas law and that the committee will be meeting with the heads of the various political blocs to reach a consensus. “The oil and gas law serves all Iraqis and not a specific party, because oil and mineral investments belong to all the people,” Halbousi said.

In a statement on the arbitration decision, Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Ministry on Tuesday stressed Ankara’s support for Iraq’s territorial integrity, the “political and economic stability of both Iraq and the region” and its efforts to support global oil markets.

“As always, Turkey is ready to fulfill the requirements of international law and to provide all types of contributions to the permanent settlement between the main parties to the dispute,” the statement added.

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Associated Press writer Andrew Wilks in Istanbul contributed to this report.