Girl finds Viking coins from over 1,000 years ago in Danish field: 'Incredibly exciting'

Coins were part of two treasures found near Viking castle Fyrkat in Denmark

By Julia Musto | Fox News

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Around 300 pieces of silver from two Viking treasures, with approximately 50 whole coins, were found last fall in a Danish field at Bramslev.

The coins were located around fives miles away from the Viking castle Fyrkat, and date back to more than a thousand years ago.

The treasures were found less than 50 meters – or 164 feet – apart, containing the coins and cut-up silver jewelry.


North Jutland Museums said in a statement that the treasures probably served as a means of payment by weight.


The treasures were found in a field northeast of Hobro. 

(North Jutland Museums)

The rare trove was reportedly unearthed by a young girl who with a metal detector, according to AFP.

While originally buried close to each other, the hoards have been spread over a larger area due to modern ploughing, harrowing and sowing.

Both treasures contain a mixture of Danish, German and Arab coins.

The Danish coins are called cross coins, which were dated back to the reign of King Harald Blåtand, or Harald Bluetooth in English, during the 970s through the 980s.

The museum said the ruler's cross coins were in circulation for less than a few decades before losing the power struggle to his son, Svend Tveskæg, in the mid-980s. It noted that the cross coins were likely introduced in connection with his Christianization of the Danes.


The cross coins were introduction in connection with King Harald Bluetooth's Christianization with the Danes. (North Jutland Museums)

The other pieces of silver come from the same piece of jewelry: an unusually large ring pin. The pins were used by men at the top of society in Viking Age Ireland and neighboring islands

The museum said jewelry of this size and quality had been worn by bishops and kings, likely originating from a raiding expedition.

"The two silver treasures constitute a fantastic story in themselves, but to find them abandoned in a settlement only eight kilometers from Harald Blåtand's Viking fortress Fyrkat is incredibly exciting," Torben Trier Christiansen, archaeologist and museum inspector at North Jutland Museums, said in a statement. Fyrkat and the king's other ring castles were only use for a short time around the year 980.

A POPPY HEAD

The silver pieces come from the same jewelry: a large ring pin.

(North Jutland Museums)

"Perhaps the castles were not given up entirely voluntarily, and perhaps it happened in connection with the final showdown between Harald Blåtand and his son Svend Tveskæg. The Bramslev treasures were apparently buried around the same time or shortly after the castles were abandoned, and if there have been disturbances at Fyrkat, it makes good sense that the local magnate here at Bramslev has chosen to hide his valuables out of the way," he explained.

Excavation of the area will continue this autumn, focusing on finding the traces of buildings the treasures were originally buried inside, or very close to.

The treasures will be on display this summer at the Aalborg Historical Museum.

LA art exhibition on Middle East women opens amid US reproductive rights row

Agence France-Presse
April 22, 2023

An exhibition of work by female artists on women in the Middle East opens in California this weekend, as a fierce battle over women's reproductive rights grips the United States.

"Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond" brings together the creations of 42 female artists, depicting what curators say are the personal and universal stories of women in Islamic societies, and aims to challenge stereotypes about this part of the world.

"So many people think that all women are the same in Middle Eastern lands, they're all oppressed, they are invisible, they have horrible lives," curator Linda Komaroff told AFP.

"And it's not true. It's like women everywhere. They have a good deal of agency and they act upon it."
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Exhibits come from all over the Middle East and beyond, but include a number from Iran, which has been shaken in recent months after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested for allegedly not properly wearing the compulsory veil.

One powerful picture by Iranian photojournalist Newsha Tavakolian shows an Iranian woman in traditional clothes -- also wearing a pair of boxing gloves.

Another, by Shirin Aliabadi, showcases the irrepressible spirit of a younger generation, depicting a woman whose blonde wig pokes out from under her scarf as she blows a bubble with gum.
The exhibition comes as the United States has been thrown into tumult over the issue of abortion, after the US Supreme Court last year struck down the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

On Friday the same court is set to wade into the legal battle over abortion drug mifepristone, after a Texan judge issued a ruling that would ban this widely used medication.

Komaroff said the ongoing fight over abortion rights in the United States meant this was a timely exhibition.

"Things are kind of going downhill for women in America in terms of our own control over our own bodies," she said.

"American women have been complacent. It's easy for them to look to another country or another region and say, 'We're better off than they are.'

"But maybe we're not. Maybe we're all in the same boat together."


The exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opens Sunday and runs until September 24.

© Agence France-Presse

Pentagon leak spotlights surprising interplay between gaming and military secrets

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN
 Sat April 22, 2023

Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Getty Images
CNN —

The recent leak of classified US documents on social media platform Discord seemingly caught many at the Pentagon by surprise. But it wasn’t the first time that a forum popular with online gamers had hosted military secrets, underlining a major challenge for the US national security establishment and platforms alike.

As recently as January 2023, someone on a forum for fans of the video game War Thunder reportedly published confidential information on an F-16 fighter jet. That followed reports of at least three other occasions since 2021 when War Thunder fans posted documents on British, French and Chinese tanks. These cases – which Axios also reported on in the context of the Discord leaks – typically involved users boasting of their inside knowledge of military equipment and claiming to want to make the game more realistic.

Gaijin Entertainment, the company that produces War Thunder, took the posts down after forum moderators flagged them.



Member of chatroom where leaked Pentagon documents surfaced tells CNN alleged leaker didn't want users to be 'shocked by news cycles'

The recent leaks on Discord exposed a shortcoming in how the US government alerts platforms that they are hosting sensitive or classified information, according to Discord’s top lawyer.

There is currently “no structured process,” for the government to communicate whether documents posted on social media are classified or even authentic, Clint Smith, Discord’s chief legal officer, said in an April 14 statement that described classified military documents as a “significant, complex challenge” for Discord and other platforms.

The episodes point to vexing challenges for social media platforms like Discord – where 21-year Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira allegedly began posting classified information in December – and the US military, which has used Discord for recruiting.

Discord and other platforms face a difficult balancing act in giving young gamers the space to be themselves while also detecting when they post illegal content.

“A lot of these guys find their social circles in these online gaming spaces, and that can be great,” said Jennifer Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies. “But if the culture of the platform shifts to rewarding things that you shouldn’t be doing, it can hard if you’re really invested in that that social group to give that up.”

Inside the furious week-long scramble to hunt down a massive Pentagon leak

Teixeira allegedly posted the documents – which included sensitive US intelligence on the war in Ukraine – to a private Discord chat in an attempt to look after his online friends and keep them informed, one member of the chatroom has claimed.

The Pentagon is trying to tap into online youth culture without it backfiring spectacularly, as it allegedly did with Teixeira.

An Air Force Gaming program that allows service members to compete in video game leagues to, according to a Pentagon press release, “build morale and mental health resiliency,” has more than 28,000 members. The top of the Air Force Gaming website includes a link to join the program’s Discord channel.
A warning from the Army

There were signs that Pentagon officials were growing wary of information young service members might share on Discord even before news of Teixeira’s alleged leak broke.

“Don’t post anything in Discord that you wouldn’t want seen by the general public,” reads a pamphlet published by US Army Special Operations Command in March.

That the warning came as classified documents allegedly shared by Teixeira sat on Discord appears to be entirely a coincidence; many US officials appeared unaware of the leak until news of it broke on April 6.

“Past incidents show how hard it is to stop these leaks,” said Casey Brooks, an Army veteran and video game fan.

“This is about maturity and how certain people seek value from interpersonal relationships and approval from peers and the competitive nature that gaming group members bond over,” Brooks told CNN.

Classified or sensitive documents are also a unique problem for content moderators on social media sites.

FBI probes pro-Russia social media account's spread of classified information

“With porn, you can at least have some kind of AI that will give a rough flag at the beginning that this looks vaguely like porn,” said Golbeck, the University of Maryland professor. “But what looks like a classified document? They’re just documents.”

As social media platforms like Discord grapple with the challenges of detecting sensitive intelligence leaks online, current and former US officials worry that US adversaries like Russia may see an intelligence gathering opportunity.

“If it’s not already happening, my guess would be the Russians have assessed that digging around in some of these obscure online forums … could bear fruit,” Holden Triplett, a former FBI official who worked at the US embassy in Moscow, told CNN.

Though there is no evidence that Teixeira was approached by foreign agents, Triplett said a young generation of online gamers might be a ripe target for recruitment.

“Ego and excitement have always been strong motivations to spy,” said Triplett, who is founder of security consultancy Trenchcoat Advisors. But the group of Discord users that included Teixeira “seemed particularly indifferent to national security concerns,” which is a vulnerability for the US government, Triplett said.

Australian explorers find ship sunk in WWII with over 1,000 POWs onboard

Montevideo Maru located at depth of 4,000 meters off Philippines island in South China Sea; artifacts, human remains won’t be removed

By AP

22 April 2023


This photo provided by the Australian War Memorial shows the Montevideo Maru. (Australian War Memorial via AP)


SYDNEY — A team of explorers announced it found a sunken Japanese ship that was transporting Allied prisoners of war when it was torpedoed off the coast of the Philippines in 1942, resulting in Australia’s largest maritime wartime loss with a total of 1,080 lives.

The wreck of the Montevideo Maru was located after a 12-day search at a depth of over 4,000 meters (13,120 feet) — deeper than the Titanic — off Luzon island in the South China Sea, using an autonomous underwater vehicle with in-built sonar.

There will be no efforts to remove artifacts or human remains out of respect for the families of those who died, said a statement Saturday from the Sydney-based Silentworld Foundation, a not-for-profit dedicated to maritime archaeology and history. It took part in the mission together with Dutch deep-sea survey specialists Fugro and Australia’s Defense Department.

“The extraordinary effort behind this discovery speaks for the enduring truth of Australia’s solemn national promise to always remember and honor those who served our country,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. “This is the heart and the spirit of Lest We Forget.”

The Montevideo Maru was transporting prisoners and civilians who were captured after the fall of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea.

The ship was not marked as carrying POWs, and on July 1, 1942, the American submarine Sturgeon, after stalking the ship through the night, fired four torpedoes, which found their target, sinking the vessel in less than 10 minutes.

#breaking Wreck of Australia’s largest maritime disaster found. WWII ship Montevideo Maru sunk off Philippines in 1942 with approximately 1060 prisoners, both military and civilian, lost. At least 850 Australian service members and 210 civilians from 14 countries were on board pic.twitter.com/ZvabYHCVH1 

— Andrew Greene (@AndrewBGreene) April 21, 2023

Those killed included 1,080 people from 14 nations, including 979 Australians.

“Families waited years for news of their missing loved ones, before learning of the tragic outcome of the sinking,” said Silentworld director John Mullen. “Some never fully came to accept that their loved ones were among the victims. Today, by finding the vessel, we hope to bring closure to the many families devastated by this terrible disaster.”

World War II Shipwreck Found After 80 Years

This undated handout photo received on April 22, 2023 from the Silentworld Foundation shows images of the Montevideo Maru, a World War II Japanese transport ship, on a screen during the search for the ship.

April 22, 2023 
Phil Mercer

 VOA

SYDNEY —

The mystery of one of the world's worst international maritime disasters has been solved off the coast of the Philippines. The wreck of the Montevideo Maru - a Japanese transport ship sunk 80 years ago by an American submarine during World War II – has finally been found.

The Montevideo Maru was carrying 850 prisoners of war and about 200 civilians who had been captured by the Japanese in Papua New Guinea in 1942. Unaware of who was onboard, the ship was torpedoed by the USS Sturgeon, an American submarine.

Its sinking was initially heralded as a success by Allied forces before the identity of most of those onboard was finally revealed.

The vessel's location has until now been an enduring mystery.

The wreck was found earlier this week in the South China Sea off the Philippines. The mission was a combined effort of the Australian Defense Department, marine archaeologists from Australia's Silentworld Foundation, and experts from the Dutch deep-sea survey company Fugro.

The search began earlier this month off the coast of the Philippines. Within two weeks, a positive sighting of the Montevideo Maru was made before the identity of the vessel was officially verified. It was the culmination of years of research and preparation by the search team.

Almost 1,000 Australians died in the disaster, the worst in the nation's maritime history.

Cathy Parry McLennan's grandfather Arthur Perry was on the Montevideo Maru when it sank.

She told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Saturday that she now has closure.

"I burst into tears, and I have been a bit emotional all day, I'm sorry," she said. "I think it is growing up as a child with my father who really never knew his dad and talked about him a lot and talked about being in New Guinea and what happened, and, so, it has all come to fruition and I think it is a lovely day because at least we know where grandfather is now and I feel closer to him."

The wreck was discovered on a mission put together by the Silentworld Foundation, which is dedicated to maritime archaeology and history and Fugro with support from Australia's Department of Defense.

The tragedy affected more than a dozen countries. There were victims from Denmark, New Zealand and the United States as well as Japan.

No items or human remains will be removed from the Montevideo Maru.

Turkish scientists conduct atmospheric research in and around Horseshoe Island of Antarctic

As part of 7th National Antarctic Science Expedition, Turkish scientists execute many projects in Antarctica

Sebnem Coskun |22.04.2023 


ANTARCTICA

Turkish scientists carried out atmospheric research in and around Horseshoe Island of Antarctica as part of the 7th National Antarctic Science Expedition.

Under the auspices of the Turkish Presidency, coordinated by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye’s (TUBITAK) Polar Research Institute and under the responsibility of the Turkish Industry and Technology Ministry, the 7th National Antarctic Science Expedition became a laboratory for scientific research for Turkish scientists at the South Pole.

Air quality measurement stations were established as part of atmosphere research carried out on Horseshoe Island and its surroundings.

As part of the study, data is collected, measurements are made for mapping with unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry, and astronomy observations are made.

Also, the data from the weather station is instantly transferred to the website of the General Directorate of Meteorology.



The scientists regularly update the meteorological data taken from the weather station established on Horseshoe Island in 2019, said Cetin Bicer, electronics engineer of the General Directorate of Meteorology, who participated in the science expedition.

"Meteorological data is provided as a basic input to all research. We have been keeping the data transferred to Türkiye under control since our station was established, and we added an ultraviolet sensor to our station in 2022 to provide this data," Bicer said.

"I evaluated the temperatures last year and this year. On the dates during the expedition, our temperatures were approximately one degree high. This shows that climate change is at visible levels," he said.

Also, Yildiz Technical University Surveying Engineering Research Assistant Mustafa Fahri Karabulut said he carried out a mapping study on Horseshoe Island, consisting of aerial photographs called orthophoto, which includes photogrammetric measurements and 3D coordinate information of the earth with an unmanned aerial vehicle.

"We will compare the area we shot last year with the area we shot this year and examine whether there is a change in the glaciers both in volume and area," Karabulut added.

Additionally, again this year, we measured the area we measured last year with the GPR, which we call ground radar, and examined the difference between the two in terms of volume, he said.

"We received the data from our Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations, which have been collecting it for about four years. With this data, we observe both glacial and snow changes, sea level changes, and atmospheric studies in the area," he added.



Also, speaking about particulate matter measurements with air quality devices on Horseshoe Island, Furkan Ali Kucuk, a researcher at TUBITAK Polar Research Institute, said they continue to measure particulate matter.

"Our aim is to measure whether we cause air pollution during our study at the campsite in Antarctica. As Türkiye, we continue our studies showing that we do not cause air pollution during our work in Antarctica," Kucuk added. ​​​​​​​

How the U.S. Clean Air Act lets closed coal plants keep polluting for years



By Tim McLaughlin

Reuters
April 22, 2023

(Reuters) - Hatfield’s Ferry Power Station, a Pennsylvania coal-fired power plant, stopped producing electricity in 2013. Its closure came in a wave of coal-plant shutdowns triggered by competition from cheaper, cleaner natural gas and incentives in the U.S. Clean Air Act.

But the facility’s legacy of smog pollution continued long after it closed.

That’s because a loophole in clean-air regulations allowed Hatfield’s Ferry to collect emissions allowances under a cap-and-trade program for five years after it shut down. The plant’s owner then sold those credits to other plants, which can use them to stay in compliance when they exceed their own regulatory budget of allowances. Among the beneficiaries: the biggest emitter of smog-causing gas in America’s power sector.

Under the federal program, states distribute a certain number of allowances to power plants annually. Each one permits one ton of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. NOx contributes to smog, which causes respiratory problems and premature death.

If a plant doesn’t use all of its allowances, it can sell them to other plants. The credits are valuable because they can provide plants a cheaper alternative to buying and operating hugely expensive pollution-control equipment.

The provision grants closing plants a credit windfall: They can sell all of their allowances because they are no longer generating smog themselves.

A Reuters review of federal data shows the owner of Hatfield’s Ferry, FirstEnergy Corp, sold most of the credits it received after closing the plant or transferred them to other FirstEnergy-owned facilities. One batch, worth an estimated $1.2 million, helped Missouri’s New Madrid Power Plant in 2021 comply with emission regulations while generating the most smog-producing NOx in the nation. Reuters found dozens of other examples of coal plants using credits from closed facilities to help comply with pollution rules over the past five years.

FirstEnergy Corp declined to comment.

As the climate-change fight intensifies, governments worldwide have struggled to phase-out coal, among the dirtiest fossil fuels, without harming reliability and affordability of electricity. That issue and other environmental challenges are getting heightened attention today, April 22, on International Earth Day.

The issue highlights an unintended consequence of the U.S. EPA’s latest revision of the Cross-State Pollution Rule (CSAPR), first enacted in 2011 as a provision of the Clean Air Act. The measure is aimed at cutting air pollution from upwind states that harms air quality in downwind states.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last month moved to reduce the impact of closed-plant allowances by reducing the number of years a retired facility can collect them from five to two. But the previous policy had already injected the market with a huge volume of credits that will take years to work their way through the system: Between 2017 and 2020, for instance, the ratio of allowances available to comply with NOx-pollution regulations during the peak ozone season surged. In 2020, there were 2.5 allowances available for every ton of NOx pollution emitted by plants in the cap-and-trade program, compared to 1.5 allowances per ton in 2017, EPA disclosures show.

Retired-plant allowances fueled the liquidity. In 2020, about 20% of the 585,000 allowances available to cover 232,000 tons of emissions were from power plants that had retired at least one coal-fired unit in the past decade, federal data show.The power sector lobbied last year to keep the closed-plant credits flowing, according to letters sent to the EPA by utilities and electric cooperatives.

Associated Electric Cooperative Inc (AECI), the New Madrid plant’s owner, said in a statement that it was cheaper to buy allowances than run the facility’s pollution controls. “This is the EPA’s cap-and-trade allowance program working as designed,” AECI said.

CREDIT ‘GLUT’

But the program wasn’t working as the EPA intended. In 2021, the agency reduced allowances for power plants in 12 states to curb an oversupply in the NOx-credit market, according to rule changes published by the EPA.

The EPA took several more steps last month to reduce what it has described as a credit “glut,” the agency explained in a document detailing the changes. The problem: The oversupply depressed credit prices, encouraging plant owners to idle their pollution controls and use cheap credits for compliance, according to the document.

In response to questions from Reuters, the EPA said the credits for closed plants had no effect on the total number of credits given to all U.S. plants or the nation’s overall coal pollution. Overall pollution is capped, the agency said, by “the total volume of available allowances each ozone season and other design components.”

The EPA did not answer questions about why it continues to grant retired-facility allowances at all and why it chose to shorten the time frame.

The agency, however, said in disclosures explaining this year’s policy changes that the cheap-credit glut contributed to a surge in emissions at coal plants that have advanced pollution controls between 2017 and 2020. Constellation Energy Corp, which generates electricity from renewable sources and oil-fired power plants, blamed allocations to retired plants in a June 2022 letter to the EPA: “Continuing to allocate allowances to a retired unit inappropriately saturates the allowance market, deterring emissions reductions.”

The issue persisted last year, EPA data show, when a third of the 121 coal plants with the most advanced pollution controls produced NOx above what the agency calls an optimal level.

The EPA has long maintained that the retired-plant credits incentivize owners to close inefficient facilities. But now, with abundant government and market incentives to produce renewable energy, the extra credits will have minimal influence on shutdown decisions, the EPA said in its finalized March rule.

Elena Krieger, who oversees scientific research at PSE Healthy Energy, a California-based policy institute, was shocked when she learned about the retired-plant credits. She fears that trading of these allowances enables active plants to boost NOx emissions, harming public health in nearby and downwind communities.

“I was unaware of the practice and am somewhat horrified,” Krieger said.

DIRTY DEALS

In its 2021 deal, Hatfield’s Ferry traded more than 5,000 allowances to New Madrid’s owner, AECI, according to EPA transaction data. The sale terms were not disclosed, but NOx allowances traded at about $225 per ton at the time, according to S&P Global’s Market Intelligence.

That’s a bargain for coal plants with the most advanced pollution controls, which would otherwise spend $900 to $1,600 to remove a ton of NOx with their equipment, according to EPA estimates.

New Madrid cut back its pollution controls and chuffed out NOx at a high rate during that period, using credits to maintain compliance. During the 2021 ozone season, New Madrid’s pollution was five times higher than average among coal plants participating in the NOx-reduction program, EPA data show. Over the past five years, New Madrid has produced more NOx than any other U.S. power plant.

AECI said advanced NOx-pollution controls such as selective catalytic reduction (SCR) can limit a plant’s electricity production. The cooperative acknowledged it has taken New Madrid’s SCR offline to boost output, which it argues improves grid stability.

The New Madrid plant appears to be taking steps to reduce pollution. AECI agreed with Missouri regulators in October 2022 to operate its SCR pollution controls at least 95% of the time during the peak-ozone season, extending from May 1 to Sept. 30. The EPA is reviewing the agreement for approval.

Still, AECI contends federal regulators are moving too fast in the renewable-energy transition. The company told Reuters the hurried transition comes “at the expense of stable and reliable electricity” with potentially “very serious consequences” during severe-weather power outages.

RED-STATE PROTESTS

Utilities and lawmakers in Republican-controlled states have pushed hard against curbs on coal pollution, including the EPA’s latest NOx-reduction regulations.

“We remain concerned the rule will cause a large number of premature coal retirements that will increase the risk of electricity shortages,” said Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of America’s Power, a coal-industry trade group.

Ken Ivory, a Republican state lawmaker in Utah, told Reuters: “It really is just mind-numbing that the biggest obstacle to reliable electricity in our state is our federal government.”

The EPA’s latest update to cross-state emissions regulations, dubbed the Good Neighbor rule, caps the annual percentage of allowances that can be banked for future use in each state at 21%, another measure aimed at gutting the pollution-credit glut.

That and other policy changes have sparked a massive increase in allowance prices, which are now running at about $10,000 apiece, according to Roman Kramarchuk, head of future energy outlooks at S&P Global Commodity Insights.

But even at that price, NOx allowances will find buyers among coal plants, including those that operate at high pollution rates. When natural gas and wholesale power prices spike, some plants can still make money with allowance prices above $30,000, according to S&P.

(Reporting by Tim McLaughlin; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Brian Thevenot)

ICYMI

Fire danger in the high mountains is intensifying: That’s bad news for humans, treacherous for the environment

The Conversation
April 20, 2023,

Fires are increasing in high mountain areas that rarely burned in the past.

  John McColgan, Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service

As wildfire risk rises in the West, wildland firefighters and officials are keeping a closer eye on the high mountains – regions once considered too wet to burn.

The growing fire risk in these areas became startling clear in 2020, when Colorado’s East Troublesome Fire burned up and over the Continental Divide to become the state’s second-largest fire on record. The following year, California’s Dixie Fire became the first on record to burn across the Sierra Nevada’s crest and start down the other side.

We study wildfire behavior as climate scientists and engineers. In a new study, we show that fire risk has intensified in every region across the West over the past four decades, but the sharpest upward trends are in the high elevations.


In 2020, Colorado’s East Troublesome fire jumped the Continental Divide.

AP Photo/David Zalubowski

High mountain fires can create a cascade of risks for local ecosystems and for millions of people living farther down the mountains.

Since cooler, wetter high mountain landscapes rarely burn, vegetation and dead wood can build up, so highland fires tend to be intense and uncontrollable. They can affect everything from water quality and the timing of meltwater that communities and farmers rely on, to erosion that can bring debris and mud flows. Ultimately, they can change the hydrology, ecology and geomorphology of the highlands, with complex feedback loops that can transform mountain landscapes and endanger human safety.


Four decades of rising fire risk

Historically, higher moisture levels and cooler temperatures created a flammability barrier in the highlands. This enabled fire managers to leave fires that move away from human settlements and up mountains to run their course without interference. Fire would hit the flammability barrier and burn out.

However, our findings show that’s no longer reliable as the climate warms.


We analyzed fire danger trends in different elevation bands of the Western U.S. mountains from 1979 to 2020. Fire danger describes conditions that reflect the potential for a fire to ignite and spread.

Over that 42-year period, rising temperatures and drying trends increased the number of critical fire danger days in every region in the U.S. West. But in the highlands, certain environmental processes, such as earlier snowmelt that allowed the earth to heat up and become drier, intensified the fire danger faster than anywhere else. It was particularly stark in high-elevation forests from about 8,200 to 9,800 feet (2,500-3,000 meters) in elevation, just above the elevation of Aspen, Colorado.




Mohammad Reza Alizadeh, CC BY

We found that the high-elevation band had gained on average 63 critical fire danger days a year by 2020 compared with 1979. That included 22 days outside the traditional warm season of May to September. In previous research, we found that high-elevation fires had been advancing upslope in the West at about 25 feet (7.6 meters) per year.
Cascading risks for humans downstream


Mountains are water towers of the world, providing 70% of the runoff that cities across the West rely on. They support millions of people who live downstream.

High-elevation fires can have a significant impact on snow accumulation and meltwater, even long after they have burned out.

For example, fires remove vegetation cover and tree canopies, which can shorten the amount of time the snowpack stays frozen before melting. Soot from fires also darkens the snow surface, increasing its ability to absorb the Sun’s energy, which facilitates melting. Similarly, darkened land surface increases the absorption of solar radiation and heightens soil temperature after fires.


The result of these changes can be spring flooding, and less water later in the summer when communities downstream are counting on it.

Fire-driven tree loss also removes anchor points for the snowpack, increasing the frequency and severity of avalanches.


Wildfire burn scars can have many effects on the water quality and quantity reaching communities below. George Rose/Getty Images

Frequent fires in high-elevation areas can also have a significant impact on the sediment dynamics of mountain streams. The loss of tree canopy means rainfall hits the ground at a higher velocity, increasing the potential for erosion. This can trigger mudslides and increase the amount of sediment sent downstream, which in turn can affect water quality and aquatic habitats.

Erosion linked to runoff after fire damage can also deepen streams to the point that excess water from storms can’t spread in high-elevation meadows and recharge the groundwater; instead, they route the water quickly downstream and cause flooding.

Hazards for climate-stressed species and ecosystems

The highlands generally have long fire return intervals, burning once every several decades if not centuries. Since they don’t burn often, their ecosystems aren’t as fire-adapted as lower-elevation forests, so they may not recover as efficiently or survive repeated fires.

Studies show that more frequent fires could change the type of trees that grow in the highlands or even convert them to shrubs or grasses.



High-elevation tree species like whitebark pines face an increasing risk of blister rust infections and mountain pine beetle infestations that can kill trees, creating more fuel for fires. 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Wet mountain areas, with their cooler temperatures and higher precipitation, are often peppered with hot spots of biodiversity and provide refuges to various species from the warming climate. If these areas lose their tree canopies, species with small ranges that depend on cold-water mountain streams can face existential risks as more energy from the Sun heats up stream water in the absence of tree shading.

While the risk is rising fastest in the high mountains, most of the West is now at increasing risk of fires. With continuing greenhouse gas emissions fueling global warming, this trend of worsening fire danger is expected to intensify further, straining firefighting resources as crews battle more blazes.

Mohammad Reza Alizadeh, Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Mojtaba Sadegh, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Editorial: Biden isn’t banning gas stoves.

But facts don’t stop Missouri and Kansas

 GOP outrage

The Kansas City Star
2023/04/22

A burner on a stove emits blue flames from natural gas in Des Plaines, Illinois. 

- Tim Boyle/Getty Images North America/TNS

It’s not a surprise anymore when prominent politicians focus their energies on rabble-rousing culture war battles instead of doing the hard stuff of governing, but we still feel compelled to point out when Kansas and Missouri leaders actively mislead their constituents.

That brings us to Sen. Roger Marshall, the Kansas Republican, and his Twitter feed.

Like many conservatives, Marshall has lately made a big deal about proposed new federal regulations for gas stoves being offered by the Biden administration. The rules would simply mandate that new stoves for sale meet more stringent environmental and safety standards than the models currently on the market — but the Fox News set has treated this as a fresh opportunity for demagoguery. They haven’t quite resorted to “you’ll take my stove from my cold, dead hands” sloganeering, but they’ve come awfully close.

Certainly, that’s what Marshall seemed to suggest. On Tuesday, he linked to a report about his role in a group of Republican senators challenging the proposed regulations. And he posted this commentary:

“I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly not inviting the Department of Energy into my home to inspect my kitchen appliances. #GOVERNMENTOVERREACH”

WIth that tweet, Marshall painted a picture of government agents invading private residences to ensure that gas stoves conform to the Biden administration’s standards. And that would be alarming if that was really what we could expect to happen. But it’s simply not true.

Just to be sure, we reached out to the U.S. Department of Energy, which is formulating the new rules. The department confirmed that the gas stove regulations would apply only to new products and only at the point of manufacture. There will be no home invasions by jack-booted agents terrifying your family because you like to cook over an open flame.

The Department of Energy “proposes efficiency standards all the time — for lightbulbs, washers and dryers, refrigerators, and more,” a spokesman said in a written statement. “Does it mean they’re coming to ban those appliances? Of course not.”

That’s right. The stove you have in your home has almost certainly met the federal standards that already exist for such appliances. Have you seen a federal inspector in your house to look at your stove, ever?

No?

There is nothing different about this new round of regulations — except that some Republicans, including Marshall, see an opportunity to frighten their constituents.

We think there are good reasons for adopting new, better standards to regulate gas stoves in the United States. Studies suggest that the appliances often leak harmful fumes into the homes they serve, harming the health of family members and pets. There is reason to believe the new standards will save American consumers on energy costs.

But reasonable people can disagree about the issue. What’s not reasonable, however, is for Marshall to mislead and frighten the Kansans who look to him for responsible leadership.

He is far from the only regional GOP leader guilty of such demagoguery. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson on Wednesday blamed President Joe Biden for the protests that sprung up following the Kansas City shooting of teenager Ralph Yarl. Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt regularly fulminates on Twitter about “climate alarmists” despite the very real threats posed by climate change. And Sen. Josh Hawley’s social media feed seems designed to keep his followers in a near-constant state of high dudgeon. It’s exhausting.

Among our most prominent local Republicans, only Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas seems to have an interest in the nitty gritty details of governing. His Twitter feed is filled with boring, normal topics such as the new Amelia Earhart museum in Atchison, Veterans Administration policies and even the rules surrounding organ transplants. He rarely tries to provoke his followers. And that’s quite a relief.

Marshall, unfortunately, has not decided to follow the example of Kansas’ senior senator. Instead, he decided this week to unnecessarily frighten his constituents. He may profit from such demagoguery, but Kansans won’t.

___

© The Kansas City Star

IT'S GERMANY

Germany Moves To Ban Most Oil And Gas Heating Systems From 2024

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Apr 19, 2023, 

• On Wednesday, the German government voted to ban most oil and gas heating boilers in new and old buildings from 2024.
• 
  
• Under the rule, all new heating systems should run on 65% renewable energy, with exemptions for homeowners aged over 80 and for households with the lowest incomes.
• 
  
• The draft bill approved by the government suggests the switch to renewables could cost Germans around $10 billion every year until 2028.

The German government voted on a bill on Wednesday to ban most oil and gas heating boilers in new and oil buildings from 2024 as part of a plan to reduce emissions.

The ruling coalition in Germany has decided that nearly all new heating systems should run on 65% renewable energy, with exemptions for homeowners aged over 80 and for households with the lowest incomes. 

Industry associations and the German public disagree with the planned ban. A Forsa survey commissioned by RTL and ntv showed this week that 78% of Germans do not approve of the bill, and only 18% think the decision to ban oil and gas heating systems is the right one.

Most of the opposition to electric heating running on renewable energy stems from concerns that heating prices would rise. A total of 62% of respondents in the survey expect prices to increase if heating comes from renewables, while only 12% expect their heating bills to decline.

According to the draft bill approved by the government and seen by Reuters, a switch to renewables for heating could cost Germans around $10 billion (9.16 billion euros) every year until 2028.  

Last month, the German heating industry said that the government's plan to install electric heat pumps instead of oil and gas boilers shouldn't be rushed as fully electric heating systems require massive grid investments.

Germany plans to have more and more electric heating pumps installed to reduce CO2 emissions from buildings and reduce its dependence on oil and natural gas for heating.

However, associations in the heating pumps industry warn that ditching oil and gas boilers too soon would be both unrealistic and an enormous financial challenge. Germany should be flexible in allowing hybrid pumps and not ban oil and gas boilers too soon, the industry associations say.

In 2022, heat pump sales in Germany jumped by 53%, according to figures from the Federation of German Heating Industry (BDH) released earlier this year.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Dominion never intended to save democracy with its lawsuit: report

David McAfee
April 22, 2023

Photo: Anton Garin/Shutterstock

Dominion Voting Systems "was probably always going to settle" its massive defamation case against Fox News, and any talk of holding the media company accountable for its lies was likely a negotiating tactic to score the settlement, according to Slate writers who spoke about the issue on the outlet's podcast.

Dominion and Fox surprised almost everyone when they settled in the eleventh-hour before a trial that would have been seen around the world. This was in part attributed to a "secret mediator" who was making phone calls from a boat and a hotel.

In retrospect, however, Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern says it should have always been the expected move for a corporate entity.

"Dominion is a private company and what they really wanted here, above everything else, was to be made whole after Fox News slandered it relentlessly and threatened its entire business," Stern said in an edited version of the Amicus podcast by Slate. "You know, Fox tried to persuade election officials that they couldn’t trust Dominion’s voting machines, and that their machines were the key to massive voter fraud that let Joe Biden steal the election."

ALSO IN THE NEWS: 'Confederate-wannabe troll' Marjorie Taylor Greene leads pack for Trump VP picks

Stern added that Fox's lies represented "existential threat to Dominion’s ability to continue making a profit, so the company had to sue" the news network.

"They used the threat of a trial, in which all these secrets would come out, as a bargaining chip. They went all the way to jury selection because they were pressing Fox as hard as they could for a big settlement," Stern said. "And that’s what they got. Now they can expand further into the market."


Fellow Slate writer Dahlia Lithwick said the settlement was "yet more proof positive that the law is not going to keep saving us."

"We keep thinking that there is this thing called 'the law that is going to keep making us whole,' but it's not," Lithwick said, adding, "Capitalism is not going to save us, either."

Editorial: Lies landed Fox News in an expensive court settlement. Yet the lies continue
2023/04/22

News headlines on the impeachment trial of Donald Trump are displayed outside of the Fox headquarters on Feb. 9, 2021, in New York City.

 - Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America/TNS

The whole world by now is probably sick of hearing about the Dominion Voting Systems libel lawsuit against Fox News and Tuesday’s $787.5 million settlement. The whole world, that is, minus Fox News viewers, who have heard precious little about the lawsuit and even less about the settlement. The lead-up to the trial was the subject of countless news stories and analyses as the implications for journalism were weighed and multiple examples aired of how Fox presenters colluded behind the scenes to skew their coverage and advance the lie that Dominion had helped rig the 2020 presidential election.

But since the settlement didn’t require Fox News to apologize or outline publicly exactly how the network engaged in a systematic campaign of lies, those viewers will probably go on believing the nonsense they’ve been fed for the past two years.

Howard Kurtz, the network’s media reporter, announced the settlement using the vaguest possible terminology. He called it “one of the most heavily covered” defamation cases in history, neglecting to remind viewers that the network had banned him and other Fox presenters from discussing specifics of the trial on air. So viewers might have been surprised to learn of a settlement in a lawsuit they knew little about. Kurtz added to the confusion by claiming that he couldn’t independently confirm the amount of the settlement even though it was readily available to any reporter covering the trial or to millions of viewers watching other television networks.

The dollar figure, likely a record, is important because it sends a loud-and-clear message about how fearful Fox was that this case would go to trial, where all of the network’s dirtiest secrets and reckless disregard for the truth would be aired publicly. By settling for such a large amount, the network tacitly acknowledged its fear of losing the case. Dominion executives say they agreed to settle because it was better to take this amount, delivered now, than to engage in a dragged-out court case with multiple appeals that likely would have delayed a payout for another two years or more.

Nevertheless, it’s frustrating that the terms of the settlement didn’t require Fox to tell its viewers in no uncertain terms: We lied. We defamed Dominion. We apologize.

Instead, all Fox was required to say was that “We acknowledge the Court rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” Kurtz’s report also made it sound as Fox’s only error was quoting former President Donald Trump and his allies that election fraud deprived him of victory in 2020. “This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” Kurtz said, quoting a network statement.

The end result is that Fox viewers were again denied access to the truth behind Trump’s election-fraud lies, only to be lied to again on Tuesday about a “commitment” to journalistic standards that simply do not exist there.

© St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Two species found ‘nowhere else on the planet’ documented in western N.C, museum says

2023/04/21

A feisty looking crustacean in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains is a new species found nowhere else in the world, according to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Called the Stony Fork Crayfish, it is one of two new species revealed in research by a team of North Carolina scientists published April 20 in Zootaxa. The other species is called the Falls Crayfish.

Both creatures resemble miniature lobsters: The Stony Fork Crayfish is just under 4 inches from nose to tail, and the Falls Crayfish is slightly smaller, the museum reports.

They were discovered “tucked into niches of neighboring streams” that feed into the western upper Yadkin River basin in western North Carolina, officials said.

Bronwyn Williams, a museum research curator of non-molluscan invertebrates, conducted the extremely dirty research nearly six years ago with experts from the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

Crayfish

Crayfish are freshwater crustaceans belonging to the clade Astacidea, which also contains lobsters. In some locations, they are also known as baybugs, crabfish, crawfish, crawdaddies, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, mountain lobsters, mudbugs, rock lobsters, signal crawfish, or yabbies. Taxonomically... Wikipedia

Williams caught her specimens in a variety of ways, including seine netting and dip netting, as well as “simply flipping rocks.”

“I vividly remember catching one of these crayfish ...(and) being really confused. It looked like the Big Water Crayfish, which is known from the complete opposite side of the Eastern Continental Divide, in the Watauga and New Rivers,” Williams told McClatchy News.

“But here we were in a smallish tributary to the Yadkin River, which flows the complete opposite direction, into the Atlantic Ocean.”

The best explanation is a geologic phenomenon known as stream piracy in which “a waterway erodes into a divide, capturing or diverting an adjacent waterway into itself,” the researchers say.

“This is really neat, as it suggests that a previously unknown, localized, temporary, aquatic connection bridged the Eastern Continental Divide near where the headwaters of the Stony Fork and Lewis Fork are now,” Williams said in the release.

The two new species live in “highly restricted” ranges, which means they have adapted to specific conditions, the museum says.

Williams worked with Michael Perkins and William Russ from the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission on the research, officials said.