HIP(PIE) CAPITALI$M

Birkenstock Owner Plans September IP0 at $8 Billion Value

Swetha Gopinath, Eyk Henning and Ruth David
Mon, July 31, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- L Catterton is set to launch an initial public offering of Birkenstock as soon as September that may value the iconic footwear maker at more than $8 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The private equity firm backed by luxury French fashion house LVMH is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. on a potential listing of Birkenstock in the US, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month.

A listing could value the German sandal maker at as much as $10 billion, according to one of the people. The company’s sales have been boosted of late by the blockbuster Barbie movie, which stars Margot Robbie in the title role donning a pair of pink Birkenstocks in one scene.

Deliberations are ongoing and no final decisions on the size or timing of an IPO have been taken, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. Representatives for Birkenstock and L Catterton declined to comment.

Founded nearly 250 years ago, Birkenstock has become a high-fashion brand, launching collaborations with luxury names such as Dior, Manolo Blahnik and Valentino, and spawning variants from labels including Celine and Givenchy. Its sandals have been sold in the US since 1966.

Birkenstock saw revenue rise 29% to roughly €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) last year, leading to adjusted earnings of €394 million, according to a lender presentation seen by Bloomberg News. It’s been investing heavily in building out its production sites in Germany, including a new €120 million factory in Pasewalk, a town north of Berlin.

An IPO of Birkenstock would come more than two years after the L Catterton and the family investment company of billionaire Bernard Arnault acquired a majority stake in the business, valuing it at about €4 billion.

The US market for IPOs looks like it’s finally coming back to life after 18 months in the doldrums, boosted by the recent success of restaurant chain Cava Group Inc.’s debut.

--With assistance from Crystal Tse.

From fashion faux pas to a potential $10 billion brand: Birkenstock’s IPO could make it Wall Street’s new darling

Eleanor Pringle
Tue, August 1, 2023 

Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz/Bloomberg - Getty Images


They were once something of a fashion faux pas, championed for their comfort as opposed to their style. But these days the Birkenstock is a sandal donned by Margot Robbie in the new Barbie movie, while the brand collaborates with some of the world's largest fashion houses.

Now the Germany-based footwear company is reportedly eying an IPO, the second this year from private equity owners L Catterton.

Sources familiar with the matter said the IPO could happen as early as September with the company valued between $8 and $10 billion, according to Bloomberg and the Financial Times.

Birkenstock's owner L Catterton is backed by French fashion behemoth LVMH—the brand that has made billionaire businessman Bernard Arnault the world's second-richest man.

The private equity firm is reportedly working with JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs on the listing, the sources added. Goldman Sachs declined to comment when approached by Fortune; JPMorgan Chase did not immediately respond.

The sources added that no final decision on the size or the timing has been met, and L Catterton told Fortune it could not comment. Birkenstock also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Such deliberations come hot on the heels of another listing from L Catterton, which is no stranger to launching in an otherwise muted market.

Ernst and Young reported that for Q2 2023 global IPO volumes fell 5%, with proceeds down 36% year on year, but Connecticut-based L Catterton was undeterred. It backed online beauty products retailer Oddity Tech to raise more than $400 million when it listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in July.
Sudden interest

Birkenstocks have enjoyed renewed interest from consumers in recent years, as well as nods of approval from the wider fashion industry.

Luxury e-tailer Yoox reported that its best-selling shoe of 2022 was the Boston Clog from Birkenstock, while Google searches for the brand have more than quadrupled in the U.S. since January 2020.

On top of its regular sandal sales—which have been sold in the U.S. since 1966 and retail for approximately $90—the brand also collaborates with luxury shoe designers. Items have included velvet-covered clogs from Manolo Blahnik and double-buckled shoes from Dior.

Birkenstock had a further boost this year thanks to the blockbuster movie Barbie, with lead star and producer Robbie wearing a pair of the shoes in one scene.


The interest has all reportedly converted to success on the bottom line, a metric Wall Street will have a keen eye on this fall.

Birkenstock has been able to invest heavily in its production sites across Germany in the past couple of years, as well as pledging €120 million for a new factory in Pasewalk, a town approximately 84 miles north of Berlin.

As a private company, Birkenstock does not have to reveal its finances to the public, but told the Financial Times last year that in the year ending September 2019 it had seen an 11% increase in sales.

The sale of 23.8 million pairs of shoes in 2019 resulted in sales worth €721.5 million, with CEO Oliver Reichert noting the brand had been "sold out for 10 years."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Electric cars will cost more to make, BMW warns

Howard Mustoe
Tue, August 1, 2023 

BMW i4 electric automobile

BMW has warned investors that it was suffering higher costs in developing electric vehicles, sending its shares down by more than 6pc.

The carmaker also reported a lower profit margin for the three months to the end of June, which disappointed investors.

It is stocking up on parts anticipating an improvement in deliveries, which hit profitability and cash flow, it said.

The announcement was made in advance of its full earnings, due on Thursday. Investors will look for more detail on how BMW expects to improve its finances through the rest of the year, where it expects an improvement in its margins.

“BMW Group expects higher expenses for suppliers due to inflation and the supply chain to continue to be a headwind in the second half of the year,” it said.

Cash flow would be hit by an “increase in inventory to build product supply pipeline, and higher material and raw material costs,” it added.

Rival Mercedes has already suggested that a boom in its top-end models, which are highly profitable, may be cooling as more customers opt for its lower-margin middle-market vehicles. A similar shift could also hit BMW.

At the luxury end of the market, Bentley warned last week that its own post-Covid heyday may be over. It said that a repeat of its record-breaking earnings last year is unlikely after orders in the first half of the year slipped. Deliveries fell 4pc to 7,096.

Separately, Toyota said sales leapt by almost a quarter for the first three months of its fiscal year, buoyed by high demand that allowed it to raise prices.

Operating profit for the period hit a record 1.1 trillion yen (£6 trillion), helping send the carmaker’s shares to a record high, valuing the firm at 39.9 trillion yen.

Bloomberg analysts expect Japanese car sales to rise by almost 20pc in Japan and the US, although China remains a challenge as foreign carmakers are undercut by domestic players.

Toyota has recently launched an offensive on the highly competitive Chinese electric car market.

One of the slowest adopters of pure electric power for cars, preferring its own hybrid and hydrogen technology, the company said it and its suppliers will accelerate developing new parts for electric models as well as high-tech interiors demanded by Chinese buyers.

The plan with suppliers Denso and Aisin marks a ramp-up in its electrification efforts, although Toyota indicated that it will not abandon its other technologies.

Meanwhile, one of the largest leasing companies for electric cars in the UK is up for sale after investor Legal & General said it would not supply extra funding.

Onto will either be sold, Sky News reported, or try to attract some other form of financing.

Leasing electric cars is a tax-efficient way of driving the vehicles, as they can be hired long-term via a salary sacrifice scheme.

Legal & General pumped in millions of financing in May and June but last month called time on more liquidity.

The volatile price of electric cars has adversely affected some lenders, with a price war started by Tesla spreading to other carmakers and cutting the value of their stock of vehicles.

Rising interest rates have also squeezed margins for large fleet owners and the relative newness of the second-hand electric car market has meant prices for some models have suffered. L&G was approached for comment.

GEMOLOGY & CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Crypto founder allegedly bought ‘The Enigma,’ the largest black diamond in the world, after raising more than $1 billion in unregistered securities

Ben Weiss
Mon, July 31, 2023 

Giuseppe Cacace—AFP/Getty Images

The Securities and Exchange Commission continued its broadside against the crypto industry on Monday when it sued Richard Schueler (who goes by Richard Heart) and his crypto projects—Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX—for allegedly raising more than $1 billion by offering unregistered securities.

In the lawsuit, the SEC alleges Schueler used at least $12 million of the proceeds to buy himself a suite of luxury goods: nearly $7.2 million worth of luxury cars and watches, including a 2020 white Ferrari Roma and a Rolex Daytona Eye of the Tiger, and almost $5 million paid to Sotheby’s for “The Enigma,” a 555-carat black diamond said to be the largest in the world.

“Heart called on investors to buy crypto asset securities in offerings that he failed to register. He then defrauded those investors by spending some of their crypto assets on exorbitant luxury goods,” Eric Werner, director of the SEC’s Fort Worth office, said in a statement. “This action seeks to protect the investing public and hold Heart accountable.”

Heart did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by Fortune on Twitter. “The things that I’m designing are designed to be the pinnacle of their field,” he said in a video posted to his website.

A YouTube streamer and crypto personality, Heart began marketing Hex in 2018, according to the SEC, claiming that it was the first high-yield “blockchain certificate of deposit.” He engaged in three separate offerings of “crypto asset securities,” the SEC alleges, one for Hex, one for PulseChain—what Heart said was a layer-1 fork of Ethereum—and then another for PulseX, a DeFi protocol. HEX, PLS, and PLSX, respectively, were the associated tokens.

The action against Heart and his crypto projects follows a series of blockbuster lawsuits from the agency against much larger firms and industry players.

After the collapse of FTX in November, the SEC has sued Gemini, Genesis, Bittrex, Tron, and the company behind TerraUSD, among others. The federal government has also targeted the biggest names in the industry, with lawsuits against Coinbase, the largest U.S.-based crypto exchange, and Binance, the largest in the world.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

U.S. SEC Sues Richard Heart, Hex, PulseChain on Unregistered Securities, Fraud Allegations


Nikhilesh De
Mon, July 31, 2023

(Richard Heart/YouTube)

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued internet marketer Richard Schueler, known online as Richard Heart, and his projects Hex, PulseChain and PulseX, alleging he raised over $1 billion across three different unregistered securities offerings beginning in 2019.

Heart also defrauded his investors, the SEC alleged in a lawsuit on Monday, by using investor funds for personal goods.

"Heart continually touted these investments as a pathway to grandiose wealth for investors, claiming that Hex, for example, 'was built to be the highest appreciating asset that has ever existed in the history of man,'" the lawsuit said. "... Although Heart claimed these investments were for the vague purpose of supporting free speech, he did not disclose that he used millions of dollars of PulseChain investor funds to buy luxury goods for himself."

PulseX and PulseChain launched earlier this month, but faced rocky starts in the weeks immediately after going live, seeing high fees, liquidity issues and exploitable bugs. The prices of the HEX, PLS and PLSX tokens fell post-launch.

Read more: The PulseChain Sideshow Tent Is Collapsing

Heart made frequent references to federal securities laws, the SEC further alleged, citing his YouTube livestreams and other public statements. However, the suit said, Heart had himself admitted that "the success of these endeavors were completely dependent on his efforts."

"Heart pumped Hex’s capacity for investment gain, claiming at Hex.com (until at least November 1, 2020) that, 'Hex is designed to surpass ETH, which did 10,000x price in 2.5 years. It’s working! So far, HEX’s USD price went up 115x in 129 days,'" the suit said. 'On December 2, 2019, during a seven-hour livestream on YouTube hours before the Hex Offering commenced, Heart stated that Hex “was built to outperform Ethereum and Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies.'"

The suit charges Heart and the projects with fraud and securities registration violations.

Heart could not immediately be reached for comment. SEC Forth Worth Regional Office Director Eric Werner said in a statement that hte suit "seeks to protect the investing public and hold Heart accountable for his actions."

SEC sues Richard Heart and his projects Hex, PulseChain and PulseX for fraud, securities violations

Jacquelyn Melinek

TECH CRUNCH
Mon, July 31, 2023

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it is suing Richard Schueler, known online as Richard Heart, and his three crypto projects, Hex, PulseChain and PulseX, for conducting unregistered offerings of “crypto asset securities.”

The unregistered offerings raised more than $1 billion in crypto from investors, the agency stated.

Heart and PulseChain also were charged with fraud “for misappropriating at least $12 million of offering proceeds to purchase luxury goods including sports cars, watches, and a 555-carat black diamond known as 'The Enigma' -- reportedly the largest black diamond in the world.”

PulseChain launched in May, and PulseX is the exchange on its blockchain that allows users to exchange other tokens on its network, according to its website.

The two entities were off to a rocky start due to their connection to Hex and some community members' concerns about its fundamentals. Hex has been around since 2019 and doesn’t have a stellar reputation because many market players view it as a scam due to its advertisements as the first “blockchain certificate of deposit.” It claimed that users who stake its token could mine new coins with high APYs and deposits are worth “trillions of dollars” and are “worth more than gold, credit card companies and cash.” 🙄

With that said, Hex claims it's not a scam, and even has a page on its website dedicated to clarifying itself.

The SEC echoed that Heart allegedly created the “staking” feature for HEX tokens, which he claimed would provide yields as high as 38%, the agency stated. The complaint further alleges that Heart “attempted to evade securities laws by calling on investors to ‘sacrifice’ (instead of ‘invest’) their crypto assets in exchange for PLS and PLSX tokens.”

From December 2019 to November 2020, Heart and Hex allegedly offered and sold HEX tokens in an unregistered offering, bringing in over 2.3 million ether, worth about $4,271,468,000 at present value, the SEC stated.

The SEC also alleged that between July 2021 and March 2022, Heart created two additional unregistered crypto tokens, PLS and PLSX, that raised hundreds of millions in crypto to support PulseChain and PulseX, respectively.

The price of the HEX, PLS and PLSX tokens fell 24%, 25% and 42%, respectively, on Monday after news of the SEC’s complaint.

In recent months, the SEC has ramped up efforts to crack down on the crypto industry, going after companies big and small for alleged securities violations, fraud and other activities. As the agency continues to scrutinize the space, we could well see other firms facing lawsuits in the coming months.

All in all, the SEC’s issue is with companies treating crypto assets as securities, something that the industry and other government regulatory bodies don’t agree on.

Earlier this month, a federal court ruled that the XRP token, used for the Ripple blockchain, is not a security when sold to the broader public, but could be considered as one for institutional sales. The SEC had alleged in its case that Ripple and two executives had raised $1.3 billion in an alleged “unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.”

Stu Alderoty, chief legal officer of Ripple Labs, told me on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast that the ruling could potentially provide clarity for other pending lawsuits. “I think our case and the decision rendered by our judge will provide comfort to other judges that the SEC is just misguided.”

But, he said, the question that policymakers and lawyers should be asking is, “What’s the best regulatory framework that we can create that protects the integrity of the market?”

US SEC says Hex crypto founder defrauded investors, spent money on 'Enigma' diamond

FILE PHOTO: Signage is seen at the headquarters of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington, D.C., U.S.

By Jonathan Stempel

Mon, July 31, 2023 

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged online entrepreneur Richard Heart with illegally raising more than $1 billion in three unregistered cryptocurrency offerings, and defrauding investors out of $12.1 million to buy luxuries including the world's largest black diamond.

In a complaint filed on Monday in Brooklyn federal court, the SEC said Heart, also known as Richard Schueler, touted his Hex token, PulseX asset trading platform and PulseChain asset network on YouTube and other websites as pathways to "grandiose wealth."

The SEC said Heart knew his often "tongue-in-cheek" disclaimers that his offerings were not securities were false, including when he said Hex was capable of 38% annual returns and "built to be the highest appreciating asset that has ever existed in the history of man."

He was also accused of spending PulseChain investor funds on McLaren and Ferrari sports cars, four Rolex watches costing $3.02 million, and "The Enigma," a 555-carat black diamond costing 3.16 million British pounds (then $4.28 million) at a Sotheby's auction in February 2022.

Heart, 43, is a U.S. citizen believed to live in Helsinki, Finland, the SEC said. He could not immediately be reached for comment, and a lawyer for him could not be identified. Hex, PulseX and PulseChain are also defendants.

The lawsuit seeks civil fines and the recouping of gains from alleged wrongdoing that begin in late 2019.

According to the SEC, Hex's price had by June 30 fallen more than 98% from its peak, while PulseChain and PulseX offerings are now "practically worthless."

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has tried to rein in a crypto sector that he has said undermines investor trust in U.S. capital markets.

Hex's website says the token's long-term goal is to replace credit card and payment companies, certificates of deposit, and gold as a store of value. It also says "Hex is not a scam."

On his personal website, Heart calls himself a "force for good" who "makes the world a better place," and posted a nearly 30-minute video of him installing a bidet for his mother.

The case is SEC v Schueler et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 23-05749.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Chris Prentice in New York; Additional reporting by Katharine Jackson and Ismail Shakil; Editing by Will Dunham, Mark Porter and Marguerita Choy)

Huge Diamond Bought Illegally With Crypto Proceeds, SEC Alleges

Allyson Versprille
Mon, July 31, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- The creator of crypto token Hex illegally used millions of dollars of investor funds to buy a 555-carat black diamond known as “The Enigma,” according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Wall Street’s main regulator alleged in federal court on Monday that Richard Schueler, who goes by Richard Heart, raised more than $1 billion by selling unregistered securities, including the Hex coin and other tokens affiliated with his PulseChain blockchain network and PulseX decentralized finance platform. Heart and PulseChain used at least $12.1 million of investor funds for personal luxury purchases, including the diamond, expensive watches and high-end automobiles, the agency said.

The price of the Hex token fell about 25% to a fraction of 1 cent after the lawsuit was announced, according to CoinMarketCap data. PulseChain’s PLS and PulseX’s PLSX tokens also plunged after the lawsuit was announced. Richard Heart didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Even though the Hex coin is among thousands that trade at just a few cents or less, it amassed a significant following among digital-asset enthusiasts. Heart positioned himself at the center of the hype, projecting an over-the-top presence on social media with his designer track suits, expensive jewelry and luxury vehicles.

“Heart called on investors to buy crypto asset securities in offerings that he failed to register. He then defrauded those investors by spending some of their crypto assets on exorbitant luxury goods,” said Eric Werner, director of the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office.

In one specific allegation, the SEC said Hex investors “reasonably expected to derive profits” from their holdings through a staking offering that allowed them to lock up their tokens in exchange for additional coins in the future.

According to the SEC, Heart has repeatedly said that the purpose of the program was to “incentivize investors to lock up their Hex tokens — which reduced the number of Hex tokens in circulation — to drive up their price.” The SEC alleged that Heart and Hex advertised that investors would receive an average return of 38% for staking tokens.

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of SEC crypto enforcement actions this year. The regulator has also sued Coinbase Global Inc. and Binance Holdings Ltd. — the world’s largest crypto exchange.


--With assistance from Olga Kharif.

Bloomberg Businessweek

BDS AWS
Amazon to invest $7.2 billion in Israel, launches AWS cloud region

Reuters
Tue, August 1, 2023 

Logo for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Toronto

(Reuters) - Amazon.com said on Tuesday it is planning to invest about $7.2 billion through 2037 in Israel, and launched its Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the country.

Amazon's cloud services in the region will allow the country's government to run applications and store data in data centers located in Israel.

"The establishment of the Region will enable us to migrate substantial governmental workloads to the cloud, and we are confident that it will help us accelerate digital transformation in the public sector," said Yali Rothenberg, accountant general of Israel.

AWS is Amazon's cloud computing platform, used by companies such as Netflix, General Electric and Sony, enabling storage, networking and remote security.

With the expansion, AWS will be available in 32 geographic regions, the company said, adding that its investment in Israel will contribute about $13.9 billion to Israel's gross domestic product.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

Plummeting Production Show Australia's Lithium Refining Challenge

James Fernyhough
Sun, July 30, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Production has plummeted at Australia’s first lithium hydroxide refinery, operated by Tianqi Lithium Corp., extending a run of setbacks in the country’s attempt to move into battery metal refining.

The Kwinana refinery south of Perth produced just 142 tons of the battery-grade chemical in the three months to June 30, the project’s joint venture partner IGO Ltd. said in a statement Monday. That was down 85% from the March quarter, and a tiny fraction of its goal of 24,000 tons a year.

The figure was “significantly below expectations” and was due to “ongoing technical challenges following the scheduled shutdown during the quarter,” IGO said. Its Sydney-based shares fell as much as 5.3% to a three-month low, before trading down 4% to A$13.90 at 10:52 a.m. local time.

IGO gave no production guidance for the 2024 financial year, but said it will aim to reach 50% capacity by the end of 2023. In May, acting Chief Executive Officer Matt Dusci said he hoped to reach 60-70% of its target capacity by the end of 2023.

Australia is the world’s biggest producer of lithium, a vital ingredient in electric vehicle batteries, but the vast majority of that is shipped as ore to China for refining.

China’s Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia is one of three groups attempting to build an onshore refining industry, spurred on by growing demand from US and European carmakers for lithium that bypasses Chinese refineries altogether.

The move into downstream production has proved more difficult than expected. The other Australian refineries, operated by US lithium producer Albemarle Corp. and Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers Ltd., have also struggled to meet production targets.

In more positive news, IGO reported a sharp rise in production at the Greenbushes lithium mine, the largest in the world, which it holds in a joint venture with Tianqi and Albemarle.

The mine in Western Australia produced 395,000 tons of spodumene concentrate, a lithium-bearing ore, up 11% on the previous quarter. Sales volumes was up 28% and revenue was up 23% quarter on quarter, IGO said.


--With assistance from Georgina McKay.

Iran shuts down for two days because of 'unprecedented heat'


The sun rises at a sugar cane farm in the southern Iranian city of Ahvaz.

Tue, August 1, 2023 

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has announced Wednesday and Thursday this week will be public holidays because of "unprecedented heat" and told the elderly and people with health conditions to stay indoors, Iranian state media reported.

Many cities in southern Iran have already suffered from days of exceptional heat. State media reported temperatures had this week exceeded 123 degrees Fahrenheit (51 Celsius) in the southern city of Ahvaz.

Government spokesman Ali Bahadori-Jahromi was quoted by state media as saying Wednesday and Thursday would be holidays, while the health ministry said hospitals would be on high alert.

Temperatures are expected to be 39 C in Tehran on Wednesday.

Heatwaves have affected large parts of the globe in recent weeks. Scientists have linked them to human-induced climate change.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Is it really hotter now than any time in 100,000 years?

Darrell Kaufman, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Northern Arizona University

The Conversation
Sun, July 30, 2023 

Recent heat waves underscore Earth's new climate state. 

Sean Gladwell via Getty Images

As scorching heat grips large swaths of the Earth, a lot of people are trying to put the extreme temperatures into context and asking: When was it ever this hot before?

Globally, 2023 has seen some of the hottest days in modern measurements, but what about farther back, before weather stations and satellites?

Some news outlets have reported that daily temperatures hit a 100,000-year high.

As a paleoclimate scientist who studies temperatures of the past, I see where this claim comes from, but I cringe at the inexact headlines. While this claim may well be correct, there are no detailed temperature records extending back 100,000 years, so we don’t know for sure.

Here’s what we can confidently say about when Earth was last this hot.

This is a new climate state

Scientists concluded a few years ago that Earth had entered a new climate state not seen in more than 100,000 years. As fellow climate scientist Nick McKay and I recently discussed in a scientific journal article, that conclusion was part of a climate assessment report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2021.

Earth was already more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial times, and the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were high enough to assure temperatures would stay elevated for a long time.

Earth’s average temperature has exceeded 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) above the preindustrial baseline. This new climate state will very likely persist for centuries as the warmest period in more than 100,000 years. The chart shows different reconstructions of temperature over time, with measured temperatures since 1850 and a projection to 2300 based on an intermediate emissions scenario. D.S. Kaufman and N.P. McKay, 2022, and published datasets, Author provided

Even under the most optimistic scenarios of the future – in which humans stop burning fossil fuels and reduce other greenhouse gas emissions – average global temperature will very likely remain at least 1 C above preindustrial temperatures, and possibly much higher, for multiple centuries.

This new climate state, characterized by a multi-century global warming level of 1 C and higher, can be reliably compared with temperature reconstructions from the very distant past.

How we estimate past temperature

To reconstruct temperatures from times before thermometers, paleoclimate scientists rely on information stored in a variety of natural archives.

The most widespread archive going back many thousands of years is at the bottom of lakes and oceans, where an assortment of biological, chemical and physical evidence offers clues to the past. These materials build up continuously over time and can be analyzed by extracting a sediment core from the lake bed or ocean floor.

University of Arizona scientist Ellie Broadman holds a sediment core from the bottom of a lake on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. Emily Stone

These sediment-based records are rich sources of information that have enabled paleoclimate scientists to reconstruct past global temperatures, but they have important limitations.

For one, bottom currents and burrowing organisms can mix the sediment, blurring any short-term temperature spikes. For another, the timeline for each record is not known precisely, so when multiple records are averaged together to estimate past global temperature, fine-scale fluctuations can be canceled out.

Because of this, paleoclimate scientists are reluctant to compare the long-term record of past temperature with short-term extremes.
Looking back tens of thousands of years

Earth’s average global temperature has fluctuated between glacial and interglacial conditions in cycles lasting around 100,000 years, driven largely by slow and predictable changes in Earth’s orbit with attendant changes in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. We are currently in an interglacial period that began around 12,000 years ago as ice sheets retreated and greenhouse gases rose.

Looking at that 12,000-year interglacial period, global temperature averaged over multiple centuries might have peaked roughly around 6,000 years ago, but probably did not exceed the 1 C global warming level at that point, according to the IPCC report. Another study found that global average temperatures continued to increase across the interglacial period. This is a topic of active research.

That means we have to look farther back to find a time that might have been as warm as today.

The last glacial episode lasted nearly 100,000 years. There is no evidence that long-term global temperatures reached the preindustrial baseline anytime during that period.

If we look even farther back, to the previous interglacial period, which peaked around 125,000 years ago, we do find evidence of warmer temperatures. The evidence suggests the long-term average temperature was probably no more than 1.5 C (2.7 F) above preindustrial levels – not much more than the current global warming level.
Now what?

Without rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth is currently on course to reach temperatures of roughly 3 C (5.4 F) above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, and possibly quite a bit higher.

At that point, we would need to look back millions of years to find a climate state with temperatures as hot. That would take us back to the previous geologic epoch, the Pliocene, when the Earth’s climate was a distant relative of the one that sustained the rise of agriculture and civilization.

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

It was written by: Darrell Kaufman, Northern Arizona University.

Read more:

When Greenland was green: Ancient soil from beneath a mile of ice offers warnings for the future


As heat records fall, how hot is too hot for the human body?


Was Earth already heating up, or did global warming reverse a long-term cooling trend?

Darrell Kaufman receives funding from the US National Science Foundation.

Democratic lawmakers slam the lack of attorney access for asylum-seekers in Border Patrol custody


FILE - Migrants wait to be processed after crossing the border, Jan. 6, 2023, near Yuma, Ariz. Dozens of Democratic members of Congress are asking the Biden administration to end expedited screening of asylum-seekers in Border Patrol custody, calling it a “rushed practice” that has allowed little access to legal counsel.

 (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File) 

Associated Press
Updated Tue, August 1, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dozens of Democratic members of Congress asked the Biden administration Tuesday to end expedited screening of asylum-seekers in Border Patrol custody, calling it a “rushed practice” that has allowed little access to legal counsel.

As the administration prepared to launch speedy screenings at Border Patrol holding facilities this spring , authorities pledged access to counsel would be a key difference from a Trump-era version of the policy. So far, that promise appears unfulfilled.

A coterie of involved attorneys estimated that perhaps 100 migrants secured formal representation in the first three months of the policy, The Associated Press reported last month, and only hundreds more have received informal advice through one-time phone calls ahead of the expedited screenings. That represents a mere fraction of the thousands of expedited screenings since early April, though authorities have not provided a precise count.

The letter to the Homeland Security and Justice Departments, signed by 13 senators and 53 members of the House of Representatives, said conducting the “credible fear” interviews as little as 24 hours after arrival in a holding facility was “inherently problematic,” especially without access to counsel.

“Affording people fair adjudication — including adequate time to obtain evidence, prepare one’s case, and obtain and work with counsel — is particularly key for individuals fleeing life-threatening harm or torture,” the letter states.

Those signing include Alex Padilla of California, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Rep. Nanette Barragán of California, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Also Tuesday, the National Immigrant Justice Center said it would no longer serve asylum-seekers in Border Patrol custody “after more than two months attempting to overcome obstruction by the Biden administration that made it impossible to provide meaningful legal information and representation.” The group says it has represented about 30 people under the new policy.

The administration ramped up the speedy screenings as it ended pandemic-related asylum restrictions, known as Title 42 authority, and introduced new rules that make it far more difficult for people to seek asylum without applying online outside the U.S. or first seeking protection in a country they pass through.

The percentage of people who passed asylum screenings fell to 60% during the first half of July, after the fast-track process picked up, down from 77% the second half of March, just before it began.

The administration has faced criticism from immigration advocates that the new rules ignore obligations under U.S. and international law to provide asylum and from those backing restrictions who say authorities are acting too generously through the online appointment system, which admits up to 1,450 people a day, and parole for up to 30,000 a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Nearly 250,000 migrants crossed Panama's Darien Gap so far this year, more than in all of 2022

Migrants line up to take a boat after walking across the Darien Gap from Colombia, in Bajo Chiquito, Panama, May 7, 2023. The nation has also become the epicenter of a steady flow of migration through the perilous jungles of the Darien Gap running along the Colombia-Panama border.

AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko

Associated Press
Mon, July 31, 2023 

PANAMA CITY (AP) — The number of migrants crossing Panama’s dangerous, jungle-clad Darien Gap swelled to almost 250,000 in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing the number that crossed in all of 2022, officials said Friday.

It is a record pace of migration through the gap, which connects South America to Central America. The surge comes despite an agreement announced in April between the United States, Colombia and Panama to offer alternatives to migration.

The United Nations projects that if the pace keeps up, as many as 400,000 may cross the gap by the year’s end. Experts say it would be hard to crack down on the smuggling gangs that operate the route.

Panama's National Immigration service said 248,901 migrants had made the trip through July 31, and that 21% of those crossing were children or adolescents.

Security Minister Juan Manuel Pino confirmed that was higher than last year's total.

Migrants from South America — mainly Venezuelans — use the Darien Gap to travel be land through Central America and to the U.S. southwestern border. But a host of people from other places, including Africa and Asia, travel to South America to use the gap as well.

In April, The United States, Panama and Colombia said in a joint statement said the countries will use “new lawful and flexible pathways for tens of thousands of migrants and refugees as an alternative to irregular migration."

The also involved investment to reduce poverty and create jobs in the Colombian and Panamanian border communities, presumably so fewer people work at smuggling migrants.

Tourists search for Mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia – but does a geographical location for pivotal Bible event even exist?


Jacob F. Love, Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Tennessee
Mon, July 31, 2023 
The Conversation

Mount Sinai is mentioned in the second book of the Bible, Exodus, as the site where Moses received his first instruction from God. Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Since Saudi Arabia relaxed rules and expanded visas for tourists in 2019, Christians have been increasingly visiting the country, drawn by word of mouth and promotional YouTube videos, in search of Mount Sinai, where the Bible recounts God revealing the Ten Commandments to Moses.

For many centuries people have believed the location to be in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Catherine, the wife of the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian, is said to have journeyed throughout the region and identified the site of Mount Sinai. A monastery bearing her name was built there in 550 C.E., and it has served as the presumed location of Mount Sinai ever since.

But this was entirely based on the word of local tribes living some 2,000 years after the event. Most scholars believe that the location of Mount Sinai is unknowable from the available textual evidence. As a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and language, I agree with them.

The Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine on the Sinai Peninsula, some 240 miles from Cairo, Egypt. AP Photo/Enric Marti, File

The existence of Mount Sinai is likely a legendary myth that is part of the stories of many cultures. There is no corroborating evidence, archaeological or otherwise, to support any particular location.

What’s in a name?

The first biblical mention of the holy mountain occurs in Exodus, the second book of the Bible and the primary source for the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt.

In Exodus 3:1, a mountain is referred to as Horeb and called the “mountain of God.” Horeb is mentioned twice more in Exodus but then disappears without mention in the third and fourth books – Leviticus and Numbers – until it reappears in the last book of the first section of the Bible, or the Pentateuch – Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy retells the history of Israel as the Israelites were poised to enter the Holy Land. Throughout Deuteronomy, there are over a dozen references to Horeb as the place where Moses received the commandments.

Horeb is also found in biblical books after the Pentateuch. For example, the prophet Malachi says in the book that bears his name, “Remember the statutes of Moses … whom I commanded at Horeb.”

Horeb is a common name for the mountain in the Bible and yet is far less known than Sinai. The name Sinai is used throughout Exodus and occurs in Leviticus and Numbers, although Horeb is absent from those works.

But in Deuteronomy, Sinai all but disappears – it is used just once in a poem quoted by the author of Deuteronomy (33:2). The poem is cast as Moses’ final benediction of the people and begins, “This is the blessing with which Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. He said, ‘The Lord came from Sinai, and dawned from Se′ir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran, he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand.’”

Horeb or Sinai?

It is not simply a matter of two different names for the same place. That could be explained as easily as noting that Jerusalem is also called the City of David. And it would be logical if the various books scattered these names as if they were interchangeable. But I would argue that the distribution is anything but random.

The references to Sinai are concentrated in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, while Deuteronomy refers almost exclusively to Horeb. In other words, the author or authors of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers strongly preferred the word Sinai while the author of Deuteronomy used only Horeb.

For over 200 years biblical scholars have been analyzing the Pentateuch to discern its editorial history. The result of this search for the authors of the Pentateuch has led to the conclusions that the first four books were written by at least three authors and redacted by editors to combine their stories.

There is evidence to show that the last book, Deuteronomy, was written by a single author. However, scholars argue, an editor probably changed and added material. It is likely that the one poem that mentions Sinai in Deuteronomy, when every other mention of that mountain is in Horeb, is a result of the editorial changes.

A second possibility is that they are two different locations, each of which had sacred status to a particular group of Israelites. The third possibility, favored by most biblical scholars, is that the ancient stories cataloged among the Israelites came from different sources and were ultimately reconciled by editors.

The second and third possibilities are not necessarily mutually exclusive – in other words, even if the stories were written by different authors, those different authors could have the same place in mind.

Perhaps the key fact to keep in mind is that scholars know very little about the location of Mount Sinai and whether or not it is the same place as Horeb.

A strange absence

Many of the books recounting the early history of biblical times, especially the prophets, however, have practically no reference to Sinai or Horeb. Among the 150 Psalms there is but one reference to Sinai.

How can it be that such a critical source of the religion of Israel was of little interest to these prophets? The commandments that Moses is believed to have received from God framed the lives of all Israelites and established the priestly offerings, the courts, and the rules for marriage, divorce and inheritance. Yet, none of the prophets felt a need to call upon Israel to follow the laws of Moses given at Sinai or Horeb. Is it not more reasonable to imagine that they simply knew little of those events or did not attach much importance to them?

Some people might conclude that the belief about Moses at Sinai is just invention. After all, there is so much historical and archaeological evidence for the history of places such as Jerusalem and Lachish. But in the case of Horeb or Sinai, the geographical hints found in the Bible are insufficient to make any sort of determination.

In other words, there isn’t sufficient data to decide whether the biblical account of Sinai or Horeb happened somewhere, or whether it is perhaps a foundation legend created for some purpose such as uniting the disparate Hebrew-speaking tribes of Israel.

When some Christians, such as the ones now looking for Sinai in Saudi Arabia, examine these sources, they often try to stitch together texts written over centuries after the events supposedly happened. It is not surprising that various people have assigned the location of Sinai to locations hundreds of miles apart.

Based on all the evidence – or lack thereof – I argue that Sinai is located not in any specific place but rather in the hearts and minds of those who treasure the meaning of the Hebrew Bible.

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

It was written by: Jacob F. Love, University of Tennessee.

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Asian MIT grad asks AI to make her photo more ‘professional,’ gets turned into white woman



Carl Samson
Mon, July 31, 2023

[Source]

A recent Asian American Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate made headlines this month after sharing evidence of racial bias in artificial intelligence (AI).

What she asked for: Rona Wang, 24, has been experimenting with AI portrait generators. In a recent attempt, she purportedly used a program called Playground AI to turn an image of her in an MIT sweatshirt into “a professional LinkedIn profile photo.”

What she got: The program, to Wang’s surprise, returned an image that gave her a fairer complexion, dark blonde hair and blue eyes.

“I was like, ‘Wow, does this thing think I should become white to become more professional?’” she told Boston.com.

Reactions: On July 14, Wang shared the result in an X post, which has now received over 5.9 million views.

Social media users replied to the post with their own takes and theories. Druv Bhagavan, a M.D./Ph.D. student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, warned about delegating important tasks to AI tools as “unbiased training data is rarely ever used.” Meanwhile, user @CityBureaucrat wrote, “AI stands for Aryan Intelligence.”

Playground AI’s response: Responding to Wang’s post, Playground AI founder Suhail Doshi said that “models aren’t instructable like that” and will pick “any generic thing based on the prompt.” However, he said in another tweet that Playground AI is “quite displeased with this and hope to solve it.”

The big picture: Racial bias is an ongoing concern in AI-generated images. While some programs have been accused of turning subjects white, others have been slammed for turning subjects Asian. Outside image generation, racial discrimination in AI facial recognition is also a concern, particularly among African Americans. How and whether artificial intelligence manages to solve these issues are yet to be seen.

Asian American workers most likely to be replaced by AI, study reveals



Ryan General
Mon, July 31, 2023

[Source]

Asian Americans are among the groups most vulnerable to displacement by artificial intelligence (AI) in the U.S., a new study by Pew Research Center has revealed.

About the study: The study, released on Wednesday, looked into the exposure of American workers to AI technologies and their potential risk of being replaced or assisted by AI systems.

Technical writers, budget analysts, web developers and data key operators are among those with high exposure to AI displacement, while workers such as firefighters, barbers and janitors have low exposure due to the nature of their work.

Impact on racial disparities: Overall, the study found that approximately 19% of American workers held jobs that are the most exposed to AI technologies.
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Asian workers face the highest risk of displacement at 24% compared to their white, Black and Hispanic counterparts. According to the findings, about 20% of white workers were found to be exposed, while 15% of Black workers and 13% of Hispanic workers faced similar risks.

Other findings: Women faced a slightly higher risk with 21% of female workers being exposed to AI in their jobs, compared to 19% of male workers. This discrepancy is attributed to the different types of jobs typically held by individuals of different genders.

The study also revealed a correlation between education levels and susceptibility to AI displacement or assistance. Workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher accounted for 27% of the workforce and were more than twice as likely to be exposed to AI technologies in their jobs than those with only a high school diploma, of which 12% faced similar risks.

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The study also shed light on income disparities among workers with varying levels of AI exposure. Those in jobs with the highest exposure to AI technologies earned an average hourly wage of $33, while those in positions with the least exposure earned an average of $20 per hour.

Study’s implications: The findings, which provide crucial insights into the impact of AI on the American workforce, hold significant implications for policymakers and employers.

By identifying the groups most vulnerable to AI displacement, the study’s authors aim to provide policymakers with the ability to devise targeted strategies to support affected individuals and create measures to minimize potential workforce disruptions.

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Global disruption: A previous study published by the University of Oxford in 2013 predicted that 47% of U.S. jobs could be eliminated by AI over the next two decades.

Meanwhile, a more recent study by Goldman Sachs suggested that generative AI tools could potentially disrupt around 300 million full-time jobs worldwide, signifying a significant disruption in the global job market.