NO MORE BOWS & ARROWS
Papua rebels hold guns to hostage pilot’s head in alarming new video
Nicola Smith
Tue, November 21, 2023 

Papua rebels point their guns at hostage Phillip Mehrtens, whom they have held captive since February


New Zealand is investigating alarming footage of a pilot who has been held hostage by separatist rebels in the Indonesian region of Papua for the past 10 months.

Phillip Mehrtens, 37, was kidnapped in February by the West Papua Liberation Army (TPNPB) fighters after landing his Susi Air single-engine plane on a remote airstrip in the mountainous province of Nduga.

In the 48-second clip, which is circulating on social media, the New Zealander is seen sitting in a grassy field, surrounded by a circle of men pointing their automatic weapons at him.

The leader of the group turns his gun directly towards the pilot’s head while speaking to the camera.

Threat to kill in two months

The video comes with the message that Mr Mehrtens will be shot dead within two months if the rebels’ demands are not met. The group has previously insisted it will only release him when Papua gains self-rule.

New Zealand’s foreign ministry said it was aware of the video, though did not provide any further information concerning the footage, including when or where it was filmed.

It added that efforts to secure the pilot’s release were ongoing, including working closely with Indonesian authorities and deploying consular staff to do so.

The pilot’s safety and wellbeing remained the top priority, and his family were being supported, the ministry said.

Six Indonesian troops killed in April

In April, at least six Indonesian troops were killed after separatist gunmen attacked a unit searching for the pilot.

The resource-rich Papua region was formerly a Dutch colony that was incorporated into Indonesia after a widely criticised United Nations-backed referendum in 1969.

It has maintained a low-level battle for independence ever since, but the conflict has escalated significantly since 2018, with pro-independence fighters mounting deadlier and more frequent attacks.

The TPNPB has been pushing for independence for decades, and said it targeted Mr Mehrtens because of New Zealand’s co-operation with Indonesia.

The kidnapping of the pilot was the second abduction that independence fighters have carried out since 1996, when the rebels abducted 26 members of a World Wildlife Fund research mission in Mapenduma.

Two Indonesians in that group were killed by their abductors, but the remaining hostages were eventually freed within five months.

UH OH

‘Chlorine disinfectant no more effective than water at killing superbug’

Nina Massey, PA Science Correspondent
Tue, 21 November 2023 


Disinfectant used in hospitals is no more effective than water at killing off a superbug, research suggests.

According to the findings, one of the main chlorine disinfectants (bleach) used to clean hospital scrubs and surfaces does not kill off Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), the most common cause of antibiotic associated sickness in healthcare settings across the world.

Research by the University of Plymouth found that spores of the bacteria are unaffected despite being treated with high concentrations of bleach.

Writing in the journal Microbiology, the scientists suggest susceptible people working and being treated in clinical settings might be unknowingly placed at risk of contracting the superbug.

With the rise in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) worldwide, the researchers are calling for urgent research to find alternative strategies to disinfect C. diff spores in order to break the chain of transmission in clinical environments.

The superbug causes diarrhoea, colitis and other bowel complications and is known to infect millions of people all over the world each year.

Dr Tina Joshi, Associate Professor in Molecular Microbiology at the University of Plymouth, said: “With incidence of anti-microbial resistance on the rise, the threat posed by superbugs to human health is increasing.

“But far from demonstrating that our clinical environments are clean and safe for staff and patients, this study highlights the ability of C. diff spores to tolerate disinfection at in-use and recommended active chlorine concentrations.

“It shows we need disinfectants, and guidelines, that are fit for purpose and work in line with bacterial evolution, and the research should have significant impact on current disinfection protocols in the medical field globally.”

In the new study, scientists analysed the bacteria spore response of three different strains of C. diff to three clinical in-use concentrations of sodium hypochlorite (bleach).

The spores were then put on surgical scrubs and patient gowns, and examined using microscopes to establish if there were any changes.

The results revealed that C. diff spores could be recovered from surgical scrubs and patient gowns, with no observable changes.

This highlights the potential of these fabrics as vectors of spore transmission, researchers say.

Climate conspiracy theories flourish ahead of COP28

Roland LLOYD PARRY
Tue, 21 November 2023 

Wildfires that devasted Lahaina, Hawaii in August prompted conspiracy theories online (MARIO TAMA)

Climate conspiracy theories are flourishing with lifestyle influencers joining in the misinformation war and scientists hounded on social media, researchers say, as pressure rises on leaders at the COP28 summit.

"Mis- and disinformation about the climate emergency are delaying urgently needed action to ensure a liveable future for the planet," the United Nations said in a policy brief in June.

"A small but vocal minority of climate science denialists continue to reject the consensus position and command an outsized presence on some digital platforms."


At the UN's last COP summit, officials and campaigners called for delegates and social media giants to adopt a common definition of climate disinformation and misinformation, and work to prevent it.

As leaders prepare for the world's biggest climate meeting in Dubai from November 30 to December 12, AFP Fact Check details three trends in false climate information in 2023.

- Conspiracy theories thrive -

Wildfires and heatwaves struck around the world this year, fuelling false claims that the disasters were brought about by humans to justify repressive climate policies.

Unfounded conspiracy theories surged about "15-minute cities" -- urban-planning initiatives aiming in part to reduce traffic emissions -- with commentators branding them a plan by global elites to keep populations captive.

AFP fact-checks debunked numerous claims sparked by the deadly wildfires that ravaged Maui, Hawaii in August. Among them, one TikTok video claimed blazes were started on purpose in a "land grab" to "get people into 15-minute cities".

Conspiracy theories have a "choke hold... on all conversations around public policy" on climate and emissions reductions, said Jennie King, head of climate research and policy for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank.

The Centre for Countering Digital Hate, a campaign group that analysed thousands of posts on X (formerly Twitter), said the denialist hashtag ClimateScam trended on X after New York authorities issued a smog warning due to smoke from wildfires in Canada.

- Health influencers spread misinformation –

With the decline of the Covid pandemic and the numerous conspiracy theories it spawned, some "wellness" and New Age spiritualist influencers now post false claims about climate change, analysts at non-profit Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) said in a report.

They analysed posts by health influencers including bodybuilders and yoga teachers.

"Arguments are intimately linked to concerns around bodily integrity, including a common accusation that climate policies are a pretext to make people unhealthy," they wrote.

AFP fact checks have debunked claims that the World Economic Forum wanted to make people eat insects or that US cities planned to ban meat and dairy foods under climate policies.

- Scientists targeted online –

With governments pushing reforms to reduce carbon emissions, 2023 has seen online attacks on public figures over climate reforms -– from state officials to journalists to meteorologists.

"All of those are seen as targets for this sort of information warfare," said King, signalling "the increasing scapegoating of anybody who is associated with climate policy or climate action."

During a heatwave that started in April, Spain's State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) said its employees received threats from people who believed the widely debunked theory that the authorities were creating weather disasters through aeroplane "chemtrails".

Researchers meanwhile documented cases of scientists abandoning Twitter for alternative social networks as insults and threats from climate change deniers surged on the platform after billionaire Elon Musk took it over in October 2022.

Peter Gleick, a climate specialist with nearly 99,000 followers, announced on May 21 he would no longer post on the platform because the "intensity of abuse has skyrocketed".

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and prominent analyst of climate disinformation, said he believed the rise was "organised and orchestrated" by opponents of reforms.

An analysis of posts on Twitter carried out by computational social scientists at City, University of London in January 2023 found that the number of tweets or retweets using strong climate-sceptic terms nearly doubled in 2022 to more than a million.

Since then, Musk's move to restrict researchers' access to the platform's analytical data has made the trend harder to measure, City researcher Max Falkenberg told AFP.

rlp/giv

Fund to compensate developing nations for climate change is unfinished business at COP28

GAURAV SAINI and SIBI ARASU, Press Trust of India
Updated Wed, November 22, 2023 

NEW DELHI (AP) — Sunil Kumar watched helplessly in July as his home and 14 others were washed away by intense monsoon rains lashing the Indian Himalayas.

“All my life’s work vanished in an instant. Starting over feels impossible, especially with my three children relying on me,” said Kumar, a waste collector in the village of Bhiuli, in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh.

This year's monsoon season in India was devastating, with local governments estimating 428 deaths and more than $1.42 billion in property damage in the region. But India was just one of many developing nations to suffer from extreme weather made worse or more likely by climate change, caused largely by greenhouse gas emissions that result from the burning of fossil fuels.


Tropical storm Daniel hammered Libya with massive flooding in September, and Cyclone Freddy battered several African nations early in the year. Activists say all three disasters show how poorer nations, which historically have contributed less to climate change because they have emitted fewer planet-warming gases than developed countries, are often hit hardest by the impacts of global warming.

____

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series produced under the India Climate Journalism Program, a collaboration between The Associated Press, the Stanley Center for Peace and Security and the Press Trust of India.

___

Developing nations had long sought to address the problem, and finally broke through with an agreement at last year’s annual United Nations climate talks, known as COP27, to create what’s known as a loss and damage fund. But many details were left unresolved, and dozens of contentious meetings were held in the year since to negotiate things like who would contribute to it, how large it would be, who would administer it, and more.

A draft agreement was finally reached earlier this month, just a few weeks before this year's COP28 talks open Nov. 30 in Dubai. The agreement will be up for final approval at the climate talks, and dissatisfaction from both wealthy and developing nations could block approval or require additional negotiations.

“For us, it’s a matter of justice,” said New Delhi-based Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, a group that spent the past decade lobbying to compensate those nations. “Poor communities in developing countries are losing their farms, homes, and incomes due to a crisis caused by developed countries and corporations."

A recent report by the United Nations estimates that up to $387 billion will be needed annually if developing countries are to adapt to climate-driven changes. Even if details of a loss and damage fund are worked out, some are skeptical that it will raise anything close to that amount. A Green Climate Fund that was first proposed at the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, and began raising money in 2014, hasn't come close to its goal of $100 billion annually.

Chandra Bhushan, head of New Delhi-based climate think tank International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology, said he doesn't expect countries to contribute more than a few billion dollars to the loss and damage fund.

“Developing countries should be ready to manage these events independently, as seen with COVID-19. They can’t always rely on others,” Bhushan said.

The draft agreement calls for the World Bank to temporarily host the fund for the next four years. It lays out basic goals for the fund, including its planned launch in 2024, and specifies how it will be administered and who will oversee it, with a requirement that developing countries get a seat on the board.

The agreement asks developed countries to contribute to the fund but says other countries and private parties can, too. It says allocations will prioritize those most vulnerable to climate change, but any climate-affected community or country is eligible.

Developing nations were disappointed that the agreement didn't specify a scale for the fund, and wasn't more specific about who must contribute.

They also wanted a new and independent entity to host the fund, accepting the World Bank only reluctantly. They see the organization, whose president is typically appointed by the United States, as part of a global finance system that has often saddled them with crushing loans that make it more difficult to cope with the costs of climate change. They have long argued that there is a need for a larger, better coordinated pool of money that’s available without deepening debt crises.

“This arrangement won’t provide the new fund with true independence, will obstruct direct access to vulnerable communities, and will lack full accountability to governments and those most affected by climate change,” said RR Rashmi, a former climate negotiator with the Indian government who is now a distinguished fellow at New Delhi-based think-tank The Energy Resources Institute.

Meanwhile, wealthy nations sought to limit countries eligible for payments from the fund to the most vulnerable, like Afghanistan and Bangladesh in Asia, several African countries as well as island nations such as Kiribati, Samoa and Barbados. They also said all nations should contribute, particularly rapidly growing countries like China and Saudi Arabia.

“It’s important that the fund focuses on the poorest and most vulnerable. Those who have the strength and resources to contribute should do so,” said Dan Jørgensen, Denmark's minister for global climate policy.

The U.S. State Department expressed disappointment that the draft agreement didn’t specifically describe donations as voluntary despite what it said was broad consensus among negotiators.

Brandon Wu is director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, a nonprofit that pressed the U.S. to help reach a recommended agreement that could be taken to COP28. He said that unhappiness could still lead to discussions on the fund being re-opened in Dubai, but negotiators are under heavy pressure to deliver.

“Many believe this COP will be judged a success or failure based on whether or not it happens,” Wu said. "The UAE presidency has a huge interest in ensuring it does.”

Representatives from developing countries say it was critical to get the draft agreement in early November, and failure to approve it at COP28 would be the worst outcome.

Samoa's U.N. ambassador, Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Pa’olelei Luteru, also chairs the Alliance of Small Island States. He said the world's most industrialized nations have a “moral responsibility” to move as quickly as possible on loss and damage.

“We cannot continue with the path that we have taken over the last 30 years," he said.

___

Saini is a reporter for Press Trust of India. Arasu is a reporter for The Associated Press.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

COP28 Climate Loss and Damage
FILE - Flood survivor Abdul Salam Anwisi looks at the destroyed homes following flooding caused by Mediterranean storm Daniel, in Derna, Libya, Sept. 17, 2023. This year’s COP28 in Dubai is likely to see more discussion about compensation for developing nations harmed by climate change.

(AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)

Iraqis displaced by climate change fall into poverty

Tony Gamal-Gabriel
Tue, 21 November 2023 

Nasser Jabbar: "We lost the land and we lost the water" (Asaad NIAZI)

For the past decade, Nasser Jabbar and his children have lived in a rundown house built of grey concrete blocks at a shantytown in southern Iraq.

Drought chased the father of 10 out of the countryside, where he had been a herder and farmer, and into a life of unemployment and urban poverty.

"We lost the land and we lost the water," said the father in his 40s, wearing a traditional white robe.


He spoke to AFP in his home on the edges of Nasiriyah, capital of Dhi Qar province.

Jabbar's neighbourhood typifies the extreme poverty that those displaced by climate change face in south and central Iraq.

With declining rainfall, the country has seen four consecutive years of drought.

In the shantytown where he lives, cracked streets lined with rubble and piles of rubbish snake between houses thrown together by their inhabitants.

On an empty lot surrounded by ramshackle buildings, sewers empty onto open ground as cows rest in the shadow of a low wall nearby.

Like Jabbar, many of the displaced who live here abandoned their villages after a life working in agriculture.

In the old days in Gateia, Jabbar's village in Dhi Qar, he farmed five hectares (just over 12 acres) of land with his brothers.

In winter, they harvested barley; in summer, vegetables.

Before leaving his fields behind for the last time, Jabbar did what he could for four years to combat the onward march of an increasingly inhospitable climate.

- $4 a day income -

He dug a well, but "little by little the water dropped", and he had to sell off his herd of 50 goats one by one.

Once in the city, he found work on construction sites carrying bricks or mixing concrete, but had to stop in the end because of back problems.

"I haven't worked for three years," he said.

Now two of his children, aged 17 and 18, support the family by carrying goods to market, earning a little less than four dollars a day.

Despite Iraq being an oil-rich country, poverty is common.

In addition to drought, the authorities blame upstream dams built by Iraq's powerful neighbours Iran and Turkey for dramatically lowering water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which have irrigated Iraq for millennia.

By mid-September, "21,798 families (130,788 individuals) remain displaced because of drought conditions across 12 governorates" in central and southern Iraq, an International Organization for Migration report said.

According to the IOM, 74 percent of climate refugees resettle in urban areas.

Dhi Qar's deputy governor in charge of planning, Ghassan al-Khafaji, noted "significant internal migration" in the province, sparked by water shortages.

In five years "3,200 housing units were built on the outskirts of the city" of Nasiriyah, as a result of an exodus from Iraq's famed southern marshes which have been assailed by drought.

Those houses account for "between 20,000 and 25,000 people", Khafaji added.

- Risk of unrest -

"This internal migration has put extra pressure on employment, with our young people already suffering from significant unemployment."

Iraq has been wracked by decades of conflict, and corruption has eroded public administration. Urban centres are no better off than the countryside.

Cities are "already confined in their ability to provide basic services to existing residents due to limited, ageing and underfunded infrastructure", Thomas Wilson, a climate and water specialist at the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP.

"Trends in rural to urban movement put an additional burden on failing infrastructure," he said.

He recommended "resource management plans, effective governance, and investment" in favour of the regions the displaced come from, in the framework of a "policy to reduce and mitigate forced migration".

In a country of 43 million people, nearly one Iraqi in five lives in an area suffering from water shortages.

In April, a UN-issued report noted the risk of "social unrest" because of climate factors.

"Limited economic opportunities for young people in crowded urban areas further risk reinforcing feelings of marginalisation, exclusion, and injustice," the report said.

"This could fuel tensions between different ethno-religious groups or increase grievances vis-a-vis state institutions," it added.

Qassem Jabbar, Nasser's 47-year-old brother, joined him in Nasiriyah three years ago.

"Since we left, I haven't been working", said Qassem, his waist strapped in a brace after he had a back operation he could only pay for with the help of donors.

Of his own 10 children, only two go to school. How could he possibly cover school fees for them all?

tgg/gde/srk/srm

Sand mining in Vietnam's Mekong Delta sinks homes, livelihoods

Tran Thi Minh Ha with Alice Philipson in Hanoi
Tue, 21 November 2023 

A vessel dredges sand on a branch of the Hau river in southern Vietnam, where shore erosion is growing worse (Nhac NGUYEN)

One summer morning, Le Thi Hong Mai's home collapsed into a river in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, where shoreline erosion caused by sand mining and hydropower dams threatens hundreds of thousands of people.

Sand -- needed to produce concrete -- is the world's second most exploited natural resource after water, and its use has tripled in the last two decades, according to the UN environment programme.

Vietnam's "rice bowl" delta region, where the Mekong empties into the South China Sea, is predicted to run out of sand in just over a decade.

But losses to the riverbed are already devastating lives and harming the local economy.

Mai told AFP she "lost everything", including the small restaurant business attached to her house in the suburbs of Can Tho City.

"I heard a bang, I rushed out and everything was gone," recalled the 46-year-old, who was sleeping close by. "I have nothing left".

Over the past two decades, hydropower dams upstream on the Mekong have restricted the flow of sand to the delta.

And sand mining to feed Vietnam's construction boom is also fast depleting resources, according to a major WWF report published earlier this year.

By 2040, the amount of sediment could be reduced by up to 97 percent, a 2018 Mekong River Commission study said, with serious consequences for people living and working on the shores of the river.

With less sand, river flows become lighter and faster and hit the banks at greater speed, accelerating erosion.

Between 2016 and August this year, at least 750 kilometres (466 miles) of riverbank and nearly 2,000 houses in the Mekong Delta region have sunk into rivers, government figures show.

- 'Last grain of sand' -

Along the Mekong, diggers and boats work around the clock, dredging sand from the riverbed.

According to Vietnam's ministry of transport, the Delta region needs 54 million cubic metres of sand for six major national highways before 2025.

The river system can provide less than half, the ministry says.

Important projects have already been delayed while authorities debate alternatives, including sea sand or imports from neighbouring Cambodia.

In Can Tho, cows sit next to unmanned excavators, and sections of a road that will eventually run to Ca Mau province are still underwater -- awaiting sand to cover them.

"We haven't had enough sand since the beginning of the year, so we don't have much to do," one worker, who declined to give his name, told AFP.

Vietnam banned exports of sand in all forms in 2017.

But given high domestic demand, the amount dredged still exceeds what comes downstream, Mekong expert Nguyen Huu Thien explained.

At the current extraction rate of 35-55 million cubic metres a year, there will be no more sand by 2035, according to the WWF-led study.

"These are the last grains of sand we are dredging," Thien warned.

- 'Nowhere else to go' -

In Hau Giang province, 60 kilometres from where Mai lost her home, Diep Thi Lua awoke in the middle of the night to see her front garden disappear into the water.

"We all jumped out of bed after hearing a big noise," the 49-year-old told AFP.

"We could feel the ground was shaking. We were so, so scared."

She said the river had widened over the decades by dozens of metres.

Since 2016, Vietnam's government has spent over $470 million on 190 projects to prevent erosion in the Mekong Delta, according to state media.

But "many of these expensive structures have collapsed into the river", Thien said.

A single $4.7 million embankment built in 2016 was washed away three times between 2020 and 2022, state media reported.

Half the delta could be gone by the end of the century, Thein warned.

"After that, the delta will disappear altogether and we will have to redraw our map and rewrite our geography books."

Around 20,000 households need to be resettled because of the risks, according to the General Department of Natural Disaster Prevention and Control.

The WWF puts the figure much higher, saying half a million could lose their homes.

But resettlement "requires lots of money, which our government will never have", said an official from Hau Giang province who did not want to be named.

"We know that they could lose their lives, living in those high-risk areas, but we have no solutions," he said.

Residents like Mai and Lua are left gripped by fear.

"I have not slept well since the erosion. We have nowhere else to go. We just have to accept it," Mai told AFP.

Three dead and three missing after landslide smashes into Alaska homes

Sky News
Updated Wed, 22 November 2023


Three people have been killed and three are missing after a deadly landslide barrelled down a rain-soaked mountainside and smashed into homes in Alaska.

The slide - estimated to be 450ft (137m) wide - happened at around 9pm on Monday during a storm near Wrangell, an island community of 2,000 people.

The landslide left a scar of barren earth from near the top of the mountain down to the ocean. A wide swath of evergreen trees was ripped out of the ground and a road was buried by debris, cutting off access and power to dozens of homes.


Rescue crews found the body of a girl in an initial search and the bodies of two adults were later found by a drone operator.

Two children and one adult remained unaccounted for after the disaster, with searchers on land using a sniffer dog while coastguard and other vessels looked along the shoreline.

"Our community is resilient," Wrangell interim borough manager Mason Villarma said.

"And it always comes together for tragedies like this. We're broken, but resilient and determined to find everybody that's missing."

Alaska state governor Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration for Wrangell, saying he and his wife were heartbroken and praying for all those affected.

Another storm system is expected in the Wrangell area late on Wednesday into Thursday.

India scrambles fighter jets to investigate UFO sighting as airport halts flights


Maroosha Muzaffar
Tue, November 21, 2023 

India’s air force scrambled two fighter jets on Sunday to investigate the sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) near an airport.

An alert was issued by security forces after the UFO sighting was reported from the northeastern state of Manipur at about 2.30pm local time.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) also halted flight operations at state capital Imphal’s Bir Tikendrajit International Airport for several hours.

The object “was visible with bare eyes”, an unnamed official from one of India’s federal police agencies reportedly said.

“IAF activated its Air Defence response mechanism based on visual inputs from Imphal airport,” said a post on X by the IAF. “The small object was not seen thereafter.”

Indian authorities have not revealed specific details of their investigation of the UFO sighting.

A video on social media showed a small white dot on the skyline near the airport. The Independent could not verify the authenticity of the video.



Rafale fighter jets were dispatched to investigate the object from the Hashimara airbase in the eastern state of West Bengal.

“Soon after information about the UFO near the Imphal airport was received, a Rafale fighter aircraft from a nearby airbase was scrambled to go and search for the UFO,” a defence official was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

The jet returned and another one was later sent to investigate.

Reports said the second fighter jet also returned without finding any evidence of a UFO.

The fighter jets were equipped with advanced sensors and carried out low-level flying over the suspected area near the airport, but didn’t find anything suspicious.

“The UFO was visible with bare eyes moving westwards of the airfield [at the Imphal airport] till 4 pm,” an official from India’s Central Industrial Security Force was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

Investigation operations took several hours and flights at the Imphal airport resumed operations only after 5.30pm on Sunday, after authorities received clearance from the IAF.

Two flights were diverted from the airport and three departing flights were delayed before operations were allowed to resume.

CALIFORNIA
Column: This water project is expensive, wasteful and ecologically damaging. Why is it being fast-tracked?

Michael Hiltzik
Tue, November 21, 2023 

Cattle graze peacefully in the Sites Valley, the location of what could be California's last surface reservoir. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Noah Cross, the sinister plutocrat of the movie "Chinatown," remarked that "politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."

He might have added public works projects to that list: If they get talked about long enough, sometimes they acquire the image of inevitability. That seems to be the case with the Sites Reservoir, a water project in the western Sacramento Valley that originated during the Eisenhower administration.

The project's long sojourn on the drawing board should have been taken as a signal of its manifest flaws, which include its immense cost and its uncertain ability to contribute to the state's water supplies — a contribution that has only become more dubious with the intensification of global warming.

This is probably the last gasp of the concept of California surface reservoirs.
Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute

Instead, the project just received a priceless endorsement from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who on Nov. 6 certified it for fast-tracking under a new law that allows him to short-circuit court challenges to designated projects. Courts have only 270 days, or nine months, to decide legal challenges to those projects.

That might have been the only way to get the Sites project, which is estimated to cost $4.5 billion, up and running. Newsom's action will clear the way for as much as $875.4 million in state funding to flow from the Proposition 1 state water bond that voters approved in 2014. The rest of the funding would come from the federal government and payments by the reservoir's users.

The irony there is that the bond's allocations for water storage are to go to environmentally beneficial storage projects. It's doubtful that Sites would qualify under any honest assessment of its environmental impacts.

"This is miles from a project that would benefit the environment," says Barry Nelson, a Berkeley water policy consultant. "It could be the nail in the coffin of the Bay-Delta ecosystem."

Sites' promoters paint the project's putative environmental benefits with a broad brush. For example, they say it will provide "environmental water in drier periods for native fish and Pacific Flyway habitat for migratory birds and other native species."

Is that right? The California Department of Fish and Wildlife didn't think so in 2018, when it prepared an assessment of the project's ecological impacts, especially as they applied to the salmon that spawn in the Northern California rivers. The agency said it had "low confidence in the magnitude of the ecosystem improvement" claimed by the promoters.

Read more: Column: Humans have driven 21 more species to extinction. Here's why we should care

The agency was skeptical of claims that Sites would help to reduce water temperatures on the Feather and American rivers, where higher temperatures have been lethal for salmon spawn.

The promoters' calculations showed temperature reductions of less than 1 degree Fahrenheit, a "relatively small change" that could not be shown to benefit the salmon population, the agency said. Indeed, under some circumstances and during some seasons, the project might even increase water temperatures.

The project has been somewhat scaled back since 2018 to ameliorate some of its environmental impacts, but its estimated cost hasn't come down significantly.

The changes "moved it from a project that was catastrophic to one that is bad for the environment," Nelson says, "but it sure isn't a beneficial project." Nevertheless, as currently designed, Sites would consume the largest share of the $2.7-billion that state voters approved for surface water storage projects in 2014.

Newsom and other Sites advocates have tried to justify the project with flagrantly misleading statistics. As Newsom said when announcing his certification, the reservoir would hold "up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water, enough for 3 million households’ yearly usage."

That claim may have been accepted by some people who should know better, but it's fakery, pure and simple. First, suggesting that the reservoir's storage would serve "3 million households" is deceptive. As much as 80% of the water would be stored for the benefit of Central Valley growers, not urban residents.

Moreover, while 1.5 million acre-feet of water (about 488 billion gallons) may be equivalent to the consumption of about 3 million households, it's not as if the entire capacity of Sites Reservoir would be available to serve the needs of all those families every year. The project managers say that annual deliveries would average only about 243,000 acre-feet a year, the equivalent of the usage of 490,000 households — if all the water were going to residential users.

Read more: Column: This zombie dam project underscores California's dilemma over water

Even if a full reservoir were drained to the last drop, recharging it to full capacity would take five to seven years, or as many as 10, to fill up again.

That brings us to the details of where and how Sites would be built.

Located on a 14,000-acre swath of grassland in Glenn and Colusa counties about 80 miles northwest of Sacramento, the reservoir is designed as off-stream storage — that is, it wouldn't involve placing another dam directly on its source, the Sacramento River. Instead, it would involve a network of pumps, pipelines and dam to divert water from the river to the storage basin.

The diversions would only happen in wet years, when water in the Sacramento River is especially abundant — theoretically during surplus flows.

There lies another rub: Global warming is likely to mean longer drought spells between wet years in the Sacramento Valley.

"It's only going to fill when there are really wet years and extra flow, and I don't know how many really wet years we're going to be getting in the future," says Peter Gleick, an environmental scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit environmental think tank. "History will have to show whether there will ever be enough water to make it worth the money that we'll be putting into it."

In the context of global warming, Sites Reservoir must be seen as an anachronism. California has essentially gotten out of the business of building surface reservoirs through damming — "this is probably the last gasp of the concept of California surface reservoirs," Gleick told me.

Read more: Column: A farewell to James G. Watt, environmental vandal and proto-Trumpian

The last major on-stream reservoir project in the state was New Melones Lake, which came online in 1978 with the damming of the Stanislaus River. That was followed by the construction of Diamond Valley Lake, an off-stream reservoir completed by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in 1999.

That brought to a close a dam-building era in California that had been launched in 1923 by the construction of O'Shaughnessy Dam, which flooded the picturesque Hetch Hetchy Valley to provide drinking water for San Francisco. In the interim, Californians built more than 800 dams.

By the end of that period, the outsized cost of building dams and the ecological damage they do was becoming recognized, as were options that are far more cost-effective, efficient and ecologically sound. Indeed, America as a whole has shifted to tearing dams down — more than 1,100 have been removed in recent years, in an effort to return the ecosystems that they spoiled to their pre-construction conditions.

The most effective programs to improve water supplies don't require dams. "The smartest thing we can do is improve conservation and efficiency," says Gleick, "to expand wastewater treatment and re-use, which we're doing, and especially to figure out how to capture more stormwater not in surface reservoirs, but in groundwater. There needs to be a lot more of that. Those are the smartest, cheapest, fastest things we can do."

The Sites promoters haven't gotten the message that nature is trying to deliver. Their position is that climate change, which will increase the uncertainties of their water supply estimates, only underscores the wisdom of building Sites today.

"There is no time to waste and doing nothing while we wait for other actions to be completed is a sure way to continue the challenges we face today for decades into the future," the project management says. They call it a "smart, 21st century tool to help California manage through droughts, climate change, and the stresses these conditions create for our natural and developed systems."

It's anything but. The smart, 21st century approach would be to leave Sites on the drawing board and turn to truly 21st century approaches, rather than trying to prop an outdated 70-year-old concept up on its shaky feet.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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ARCHAEOLOGY

‘Sutton Hoo king’s lost temple’ discovered in Suffolk
Sarah Knapton
Wed, November 22, 2023 

Treasure from the Sutton Hoo site on display at the British Museum - David Ro

A lost 1,400-year-old temple, said to have been built by the English king buried at Sutton Hoo, may have been discovered in Suffolk.

The Venerable Bede, a monk and historian, wrote that King Redwald, who died in AD 625, built a temple housing altars to both Christ and pagan gods.

The monarch, thought to have been the person buried in a ship at Sutton Hoo, was the first East Anglian king to convert to Christianity but also kept links to other religions.


The temple’s location was believed to have been lost in time, but archaeological teams have uncovered the remains of a building in Rendlesham, close to King Redwald’s burial place, which may be the site mentioned by Bede.

Volunteers from Rendlesham Revealed, a community archaeology project, made the discovery, along with that of a number of other buildings, during a dig earlier this summer, Suffolk County Council has revealed.

Excavations at Rendlesham, Suffolk - Jim Pullen/Suffolk County Council

“Its distinctive and substantial foundations indicate that one of the buildings, 10 metres long and five metres wide, was unusually high and robustly built for its size, so perhaps it was constructed for a special purpose,” said Prof Christopher Scull, of Cardiff University and University College London.

“It is most similar to buildings elsewhere in England that are seen as temples or cult houses, and therefore it may have been used for pre-Christian worship by the early kings of the East Angles. The results of excavations at Rendlesham speak vividly of the power and wealth of the East Anglian kings, and the sophistication of the society they ruled.”

King Redwald reigned from around 599 to his death, and was referred to in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a bretwalda – an Old English term meaning “Britain-ruler” or “wide-ruler”.

He is thought to be the most likely occupant of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. A second ship burial site was found nearby in 1998, which was thought to contain Regenhere, his son.

A dig in the same area last year by members of Rendlesham Revealed found evidence of a huge royal compound, including a large timber hall. The site was surrounded by a ditch of nearly one mile long that enclosed an area the size of 20 football pitches.

Volunteers excavating the remains of the ditch that enclosed the royal compound in Rendlesham - Suffolk County Council

Along with the temple, the new excavations this summer also uncovered evidence of fine metalworking associated with royal occupation, including a mould used for casting a decorative horse harness similar to that found at Sutton Hoo.

The archaeological discoveries show that Rendlesham has been a location for human settlement and activity for 6,000 years from the fourth millennium BC to the present day.

The council said the area was “most important” when it was a royal centre from the 6th to 8th centuries AD.

The latest dig also uncovered a Second World War searchlight emplacement, which was part of a searchlight battery recorded by US Force aerial photography in December 1943.

A schoolboy digging potatoes in Scotland found an ancient Egyptian statue. Nobody knows how it got there.

Mia Jankowicz
Tue, November 21, 2023 

A series of wild coincidences led to the discovery of ancient Egyptian artifacts buried in Scotland.

A student at a Scottish school unearthed the first ancient treasure in 1952.

Researchers are still figuring out how they got there.

Historians are piecing together the wild story behind a series of highly improbable finds of ancient Egyptian treasure — dug up thousands of miles away in Scotland.

It starts in 1952, when a schoolboy was digging up potatoes as a punishment for bad behavior at his school near the tiny village of Monimail, in Fife.

He struck something that he thought was a potato at first — but it turned out to be the head of an ancient Egyptian statue.

Historians discovered that the sandstone statue dated back to the mid-12th Dynasty, or about 1922 to 1855 BC.

More finds would follow.

Fourteen years later, the same boy — identified by historians as Mr McNie — was teaching at the school. He was running an exercise class when one of his pupils landed awkwardly on something sticking out of the ground.

Digging further, he unearthed an Egyptian bronze statuette of a bull, which historians dated to between 664 and 332 BC.

Then, in 1984, schoolboys who had explored the same site with a metal detector alerted a curator, Elizabeth Goring, to another find — an Egyptian bronze figurine.


Leaded ancient Egyptian bronze figurine of a priest dating to about 1069-656 BC, found at a school in Scotland.

National Museums Scotland

These discoveries — and the mystery of how they ended up in a Scottish schoolyard — are detailed in a new paper by Goring and fellow curator Margaret Maitland.

"When I saw the little bronze figurine of a man in 1984, it was obvious the three objects must be connected," Goring wrote.

Goring got one of the boys with the metal detector to show her where they found the figurine, so she could excavate further.

"We found nothing," she wrote.

But just as they were about to give up, one of the geologists wandered into a different area — and spotted another figurine lying on the ground. It was a "shabti," a small, mummy-shaped sculpture.


This ancient Egyptian faience shabti dates to about 664-332 BC and was found at a school in Scotland.

National Museums Scotland

That led to a whole trove of Egyptian objects being unearthed, which are now in the collection of National Museums Scotland.

Some of the finds turned out to be 19th-century copies, but many were genuine ancient relics.

But there was still the mystery of how they got there.

There's no documentation of anyone who owned the property, in its long history, having amassed a collection of Egyptian objects.

Before Melville House was a school, it had belonged to David Leslie-Melville, the 7th Earl of Melville.

Volunteers excavate the site at Melville House in 1984

National Museums Scotland

The most likely scenario, the researchers now say, is that the objects belonged to Melville's son, Viscount Balgonie, who visited Egypt sometime in 1856 to help with health issues.

His sisters, who were there with him, could have brought vendors selling artifacts to his sick bed while he was there, the researchers said.

Balgonie died a year later, back in Scotland, at the tender age of 24.

The researchers theorize that the objects were then consigned to an outbuilding, and forgotten. The outbuilding was later demolished, and the objects buried with the remnants.

Another theory suggests that they were kept away from the main house because of superstition.

"Pharoah's curse" rumors were just beginning to emerge at this time, the researchers said.

Archaeologists Think They Might Have Found the Real Noah’s Ark
Tim Newcomb
Updated Wed, November 22, 2023 

Scientists Claim They May Have Found Noah’s Arkgaiamoments - Getty Images


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Archaeologists believe they may have discovered the final location of Noah’s Ark on Turkey’s Mount Ararat.


Soil samples from atop the highest peaks in Turkey reveal human activity and marine materials.


Dating of the rock and soil from the location match with Biblical timing of Noah’s Ark.

Researchers from a trio of universities in Turkey and the United States have spent roughly a year analyzing the rock and soil in the famous Durupinar formation on Mount Ararat, the highest mountain in Turkey. They believe that the boat-shaped site may hold the ruins of the legendary Noah’s Ark.

The Biblical account of Noah tells of God instructing Noah to build a giant ark to spare his family and pairs of animals from an impending flood meant to destroy the evil and wickedness running rampant on Earth. Noah’s Ark is said to have come to rest on the mountains of Ararat following a 150-day flood about 5,000 years ago.

Researchers now believe they’ve found evidence of human activity near the boat-shaped formation in the mountains from between 5500 and 3000 BC.

Faruk Kaya, AICU vice rector professor, says that analyzing rocks and soil from the uniquely shaped area on the mountain shows human activity in the region, timed to the years following the flood in the legend of Noah’s Ark. “In terms of dating, it is stated that there was life in this region as well,” Kaya says, according to The Daily Mail. “This was revealed in the laboratory results.”

Human activity, however, does not a Biblical account prove. The Durupinar formation has been put forth as a potential ark resting place for many years, and has received extensive attention from those hoping to find Noah’s Ark. Despite the hype, archaeologists have consistently reaffirmed over the years that the formation is natural, not the result of a petrified shipwreck, and that there is no geologic record of a global flood like the one described in religious texts. Some believe that a more local flood may have been possible, but that is also debated.

The team says it isn’t currently possible to say that Noah’s Ark itself was at the Durupinar site.

“With the dating, it is not possible to say that the ship is here,” Faruk Kaya, one of the researchers on the project, said according to Turkish news publication Hurriyet. “We need to work for a long time to reveal this. In the next period, we agreed to carry out a joint study under the leadership of ITU, Andrew University and AICU. Three universities will continue their work in this field in the future.”

For now, the scientists point to the evidence in the soil of “clayey materials, marine materials, and seafood,” according to Hurriyet, within the geological formation as evidence.


The team of researchers placed a renewed focus on the region in 2021 by exploring varying geological areas—including the Durupinar formation, which is made of limonite that bears resemblance to a ship like Noah’s Ark. Further exploration led the team to take the rock and soil samples from the country’s highest peaks for laboratory analysis.

The story of God, Noah, his family, the animals in his care, and Noah’s Ark has caused much debate for centuries. The search for proof of this event will likely continue for some time, and only that time will tell if it is there to be found.