Peeling back the layers of the extraordinary vegetable found around the world

Susan Puckett, CNN
Thu, December 14, 2023 

At this very moment, cooks around the world are standing in their kitchens, slicing and dicing onions and having a collective cry. Those tears are the price they pay for that soul-warming stew, heady stir-fry, savory custard pie, earthy bread or tongue-tingling salsa that will soon grace their tables.

All thanks to the humble onion.

Onions are the second-most-produced vegetable in the world, surpassed only by tomatoes, which, botanically speaking, are a fruit. Julia Child famously said she found it “hard to imagine a civilization without onions.” Her friend and fellow television cooking pioneer James Beard, who often professed his enthusiasm for onion sandwiches, deemed the ubiquitous vegetable “a thing of beauty in itself, and certainly a gastronomic joy that should never be taken for granted.”

In his new book, “The Core of an Onion,” Mark Kurlansky presents a lively collection of fun facts and lore to help us better appreciate the significance of this plebeian pantry staple in our kitchens and throughout world history.

Author Mark Kurlansky, known for picking seemingly mundane singular subjects to tell a global story, now turns his attention to "The Core of an Onion." - Courtesy Bloomsbury

Kurlansky also offers insight into how onion cookery has evolved through the ages with recipes gleaned from old texts, including the 18th century onion soup favored by King George II and the lemon pie made with pureed boiled onions that won first place in the cook-off at the 1987 Vidalia Onion Festival.

Kurlansky is well-known for choosing a seemingly mundane singular subject — often, but not always, edible — to unravel a global story. His 1997 book, “Cod: A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World,” became an international bestseller that’s been translated in 15 languages. “Milk!” “Paper: Paging Through History” and “Salt” are among his other titles.

I called Kurlansky at his home in New York City to learn more about peeling back those layers.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

CNN: What prompted you to embark on this onion odyssey?

Mark Kurlansky: I thought that onions were being underrated. They’re always around, and everybody uses them. You know, there’s a difference between something being common and being ordinary. Onions are common, but they are actually an extraordinary thing. They’re very unusual — both biologically and gastronomically. And because of these unusual qualities, they’re used just about everywhere in the world. One of their unusual qualities is that they can grow anywhere — in tropical, arid and even arctic climates.

CNN: Do people really eat onions whole?

Kurlansky: It’s a thing in certain places in the world to eat onions whole — and not even sweet onions. Especially in parts of central Europe. I remember traveling around what was then Yugoslavia by train, and people were just sitting around munching on onions.

CNN: That is rather hard to visualize.

Kurlansky: Certain people have done it, and they’re always looked down upon. It’s often considered a low-class thing. It’s even in “Don Quixote,” when (the mad knight in the 17th century novel) tells Sancho Panza (the illiterate farm laborer who becomes his squire) that he looks very low-class eating onions.

"Onions are common, but they are actually an extraordinary thing," Kurlansky says. "They’re very unusual — both biologically and gastronomically." - vusta/iStockphoto/Getty Images

The English in the Middle Ages and even later would talk about what backwards people the Scots were. I went to Scotland and you can’t believe these people; they just sit around munching on onions. And when the Arabs controlled Sicily, they claimed that the people of Palermo were very dumb and backwards because they ate raw onions. Onion on bread was a poor people food in London and in a lot of places, actually. Portugal, too.

CNN: You also developed a taste for this combination early in life?

Kurlansky: Onion rye — yeah! Supposedly I took a loaf of onion rye and hid under the bed and ate it. I remember loving the onion rye. I don’t remember the “under the bed” part. It might be true.

CNN: I don’t think of onions as being something children like.

Kurlansky: I did! I may have been an odd child. When I was a kid, one of my favorite things was vichyssoise soup. I love vichyssoise! This cold creamy (potato and leek) soup with little green dashes of chives on top.

CNN: Did you come from a cooking family?

Kurlansky: My mother was always in the kitchen cooking something. We were a family of six, and she did cook every night. She did an enormous amount of baking. We had pies and cakes sitting around in the house all the time. And her mother cooked a lot also. They were from Lithuania, and my grandmother moved to the Lower East Side of New York when she was a child, so she basically grew up on the Lower East Side. She always cooked Jewish food. And made a lot of strudel.

CNN: How and when did you get into Basque culture?

Kurlansky: In the 1970s when Franco was still in power in Spain, and Spain was like a 1930s fascist state giving fascist salutes, the whole thing. And nobody was writing about it anymore. So, I went to all these American newspapers and …. said I want to go to Spain and write about the resistance to the last fascist government. And everybody said great! Nobody was doing anything to resist except the Basques. I went there, and it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. It’s a fascinating culture, and so I just became completely taken with it. Really great salt cod dishes — better than anywhere else.

CNN: Onions are part of just about every cuisine. Are there differences you’ve observed about onions from the different places you’ve lived in?

Kurlansky: There are differences, and there are some things that are true everywhere. Everybody who makes a stew starts with onions. There’s an Andalusian thing that making a stew without onions is “like trying to sing a song without a tambourine.” And then there are curious local things everywhere. The elaborate Hungarian-stuffed onions. And the Basques use onions instead of rice as filler to make blood sausages. Blood and onions is a Basque thing, but it’s also a Catalan thing. And a Hungarian thing, and it’s also in some French cuisine. It’s something that keeps turning up.

For raw onions, Kurlansky says he prefers red. He says wearing glasses when cutting onions is one of the simplest ways to prevent crying.

 - Capelle.r/Moment RF/Getty Images

CNN: Your recipes are fascinating to read, but not exactly designed for the modern kitchen. Did you make any of them?

Kurlansky: All I’m saying is this is an interesting recipe. I’m not guaranteeing that this will be a great dish. There’s a Peruvian one called encebollada, which is one of my favorite onion dishes (and literally means “onioned).” And if you look at the recipe, you’ll notice that it’s almost the exact recipe for ceviche — but with onions instead of fish. It was like poor people’s ceviche.

CNN: I could see how the texture of the marinated onions could come out fish-like.

Kurlansky: I like to make a bunch of it and keep it in the refrigerator and just put a spoonful on different dishes. It brightens the plate, and it’s this great condiment. Onions and lime are two of the strongest flavors, so you put them together and have them duke it out. But it’s nice the way the red pigment from the red onions gets released by the acid from the limes and turns the whole thing this bright fuchsia color. It brightens up anything, both visually and taste wise.

With encebollada, there’s this whole controversy whether to sprinkle cilantro over the top or not. And of course, cilantro just seals it as ceviche, right? But a little bright green on top of the bright fuchsia is really just perfect.

CNN: Do you have a favorite onion?

Kurlansky: For raw onions I like red. For cooking … I get whatever kind of sweet onions are available. For certain kind of things, you want stronger onions. And for certain cuisines. Onions in India are quite strong because it’s a hot climate. So, if you want to make Indian food that tastes anything like what it tastes in India, you have to come up with strong onions.

CNN: Let’s talk about crying while cutting onions. A number of methods to prevent it are quite creative — like lighting a match or biting on the handle of a wooden spoon.

Kurlansky: Most of them don’t work. The simplest solution, which is almost never suggested, is just to wear glasses. It’s not 100%, but it does help. And you can get onion goggles.

CNN: You do need to cover your nose up, too.

Kurlansky: You do! The nose leads to the eyes. Which is why wearing glasses doesn’t totally work. Another thing that has some science to it is to chop onions under running water. It doesn’t entirely work, but the reason it somewhat helps is because what happens when you chop into an onion is the onion fights back by releasing this sulfuric gas, which is drawn to water. When it hits the water in your eyes, it turns into sulfuric acid, and that’s why it stings. But if you have another water source, it will divert some of that gas.

Susan Puckett is the former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and author of “Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler’s Journey Through the Soul of the South.”

 A Buoy in the Pacific Detected the Most Extreme Rogue Wave Ever Measured

Cassidy Ward
Wed, December 13, 2023

Water covers roughly two thirds of our planet in a cold, dark blanket thousands of meters thick. Those vast global waters hold never-before-seen creatures, undiscovered ecosystems, and untold secrets. In the case of one well-meaning teenager, the ocean hides monsters and the truth of her identity as Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken (streaming now on Peacock).

Throughout history, sailors have told tales of krakens, great serpents, mermaids, and all manner of sea monsters. For better or for worse, we haven’t managed to find any reliable evidence that any of them actually exist (although the giant squid is a pretty good stand in), but some old sailing tales turned out to be true.

RELATED: What is a Kraken? Ruby Gillman’s Sea Monster History Explained

For hundreds of years, oceanic explorers have reported encountering rogue waves which appear out of nowhere to destroy ships and claim lives. Those stories were largely discounted until scientists confirmed the existence of a rogue wave in the ‘90s. Now, a fortunate buoy measurement reveals the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded.
The Most Extreme Rogue Wave Ever Recorded

In November of 2020, scientists received an alert from a single buoy floating off the coast of British Columbia. According to the measurements, the buoy had suddenly lifted more than 17 meters (58 feet) above its previous position before crashing back down again. It took more than a year for scientists to figure out what had happened, and we know now that the buoy was picked up by a fleeting but impressive rogue wave.

Otherwise known as “extreme storm waves,” a rogue wave is defined as any wave which is at least twice the size of its next-door neighbors. They can be unpredictable and can even come from unexpected directions, moving at odds to prevailing winds and nearby waves. The few folks who have been unfortunate enough to see a rogue wave up close have described them as a wall of water with nearly sheer walls.

Aerial view of waves splashing in sea.

Aerial view of waves splashing in sea. Photo: Nazar Abbas Photography/Getty Images

Rogue waves are powerful enough to threaten sailing vessels, oceanic equipment like oil rigs and scientific stations, and coastal areas. We may have spent centuries believing they were just a legend told by bored sailors, but we now believe that at least some shipwrecks can be laid at the watery feet of rogue waves. Moreover, climate change is predicted to make rogue waves even more impressive. If our environmental relationships continue as they have been, we can expect the rogue wave record to be broken again relatively soon.

RELATED: Just Like Scientists Predicted, There Is a Massive Blob Stretching Across the Atlantic Ocean

It isn’t totally clear how and why rogue waves form, but researchers have a couple of ideas. Data from these sorts of sensing buoys is just what we need to get a better handle on things. One idea is that several smaller waves moving in the same direction but at different speeds all line up and reinforce one another, creating a mega wave. An alternate explanation involves a stormfront forming waves which move against the normal wave direction. If waves crash into one another just right, their wavelengths can shorten, collapse together, and create a short-lived monster wave.

While 58 feet is far from the tallest wave we’ve ever seen, the ratio between the November 2020 wave and its neighbors was the most extreme we’ve ever seen. Most rogue waves are about twice the size of nearby waves, but this one was almost three times the size of its neighbors.

Astronomers detect never-before-seen quirk in mysterious fast radio bursts

Ashley Strickland, CNN
Thu, December 14, 2023 


Fast radio bursts, or bright, millisecond-long flashes of radio waves in space, are one of the most enduring mysteries of the cosmos — and they just became a little stranger.

The first fast radio burst, or FRB, was discovered in 2007, and since then, hundreds of these quick, intense events have been detected coming from distant points across the universe. In a thousandth of a second, the bursts can generate as much energy as the sun creates in one year or more, according to previous research.

But astronomers don’t understand what causes them.

Now, scientists have noticed a never-before-seen quirky pattern in a newly spotted repeating fast radio burst called FRB 20220912A. A study published Wednesday in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society details the discovery, which provides valuable clues to researchers aiming to identify the phenomenon’s source while introducing new enigmas to unravel.

Astronomers detected the burst using the California-based SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, or ATA, which includes 42 antennae at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in the Cascade Mountains.

The team detected 35 fast radio bursts from one source over a two-month period.

Many FRBs release radio waves lasting only a few milliseconds at most before disappearing, which makes fast radio bursts difficult to observe. But some radio bursts have been known to repeat and release follow-up bursts that have allowed astronomers to trace the signals back to distant galaxies.

At first, FRB 20220912A seemed similar to other known “repeaters,” and each detected burst shifted from higher to lower frequencies.

But a closer look at the signal revealed something new: a noticeable drop in the center frequency of the bursts, acting like a celestial slide whistle.

The dip became even more obvious when the researchers converted the signals into sounds by using notes on a xylophone. High notes correspond to the beginning of the bursts, with low notes acting as the concluding tones.

The team tried to determine whether there was a pattern within the timings between each burst, similar to some other known repeating fast radio bursts. But researchers weren’t able to detect one for FRB 20220912A, further suggesting that the celestial events can be unpredictable as well.

“This work is exciting because it provides both confirmation of known FRB properties and the discovery of some new ones,” said lead study author Dr. Sofia Sheikh, a National Science Foundation MPS-Ascend postdoctoral fellow at the SETI Institute, in a statement.

More questions than answers

Each observation of fast radio bursts brings insights as well as more questions, the researchers said.

Astronomers suspect that some fast radio bursts may originate from magnetars, the powerfully magnetized cores of dead stars. But other research has suggested that collisions between dense neutron stars or dead stars called white dwarfs may be the cause.

“We’re narrowing down the source of FRBs to extreme objects such as magnetars, but no existing model can explain all of the properties that have been observed so far,” Sheikh said.

The study was the first to observe fast radio bursts using the Allen Telescope Array, which has been undergoing refurbishment the past few years. Ongoing upgrades for the array will not only allow astronomers to track how fast radio bursts behave at different frequencies but also search for fainter signals.

“This work proves that new telescopes with unique capabilities, like the ATA, can provide a new angle on outstanding mysteries in FRB science,” Sheikh said

Salamanders and spiders and flatworms — oh my! Scientists say nature emojis are not diverse enough

Faith Karimi, CNN
Thu, December 14, 2023 



Italian ecologist Francesco Ficetola was at a conference two years ago when it dawned on him that emojis can help power global conservation efforts.

Ficetola does a lot of research on salamanders. But with no salamander emojis available, it’s hard to send a quick message to his colleagues when he’s busy.

He realized he was not alone during the ecology conference, when an aquatic fungi expert lamented the lack of a digital icon for the microscopic organism.


So Ficetola and his colleague, Stefano Mammola, started working on a comprehensive survey of the animal and nature icons on Emojipedia, the global library of emojis widely recognized internationally. Their effort included finding how much of it represents the Earth’s “tree of life” — a metaphor and model that groups living entities and maps their evolutionary relationships.

Their research, published Monday in the journal iScience, highlights what they called a bias in biodiversity research.

The study found that animals are better represented on Emojipedia, compared with plants, fungi and other organisms.

Though humans tend to have more empathy for living things that are closer to them, the results were concerning, Ficetola said. With people constantly on their phones, the scientists said, ensuring the emoji biodiversity of animals and organisms helps create awareness about unknown species — and efforts to save them.

“Communication is the first step. If people are aware that organisms exist, they start to appreciate them. And it’s much easier to communicate the importance of conserving them,” said Ficetola, a professor in environmental science and policy at the University of Milan.

“We as researchers or people who work on animal biodiversity, we use emojis often for our communications. And when we realized that plenty of animals are not (in the emoji library), we started to ask, what is missing or why is it missing?” Ficetola told CNN. “This was important to help with communication on biodiversity.”

An analysis of emojis highlights biodiversity bias

After a conversation with the expert on aquatic fungi, Mammola said he and Ficetola decided to conduct a quantitative analysis of emojis.

The topic may sound “a bit random,” but the results were eye-opening, said Mammola, a researcher in ecology and subterranean biology at the Italian National Research Council.

Ficetola, Mammola and a third colleague, University of Milan researcher Mattia Falaschi, studied icons that represent plants, animals and nature on Emojipedia.

They found that the emojis represent 112 distinct organisms, including 92 animals, 16 plants and one “toadstool-like fungus.” But very few of the emojis featured marine animals, even though 70% of the planet is the sea, Ficetola said.

The study showed that animals and vertebrates are overrepresented, while plants, fungi, microorganisms and arthropods such as spiders and scorpions are underrepresented. Some species such as starfish, water bears — tiny aquatic animals also known as tardigrades — and flatworms were completely overlooked.

Ficetola said there’s an assumption that fungi are not as important, but they play a crucial role within the soil. “Life on the planet depends on fungi,” he said.
The lack of attention has a ripple effect, scientists say

It’s not surprising that large mammals such as monkeys, cats and dogs are well represented among emoji.

“There is a human tendency to be more empathetic and aware of organisms close to us, for example vertebrates, with awareness decreasing in inverse proportion to a group’s evolutionary distance from Homo sapiens,” the researchers noted in the study.

The abundance of animal emojis and scarcity of plant, fungi and microorganism emojis influences societal awareness and prioritization of species.

“Such zoocentrism in biodiversity conservation is leading to unequal attention and funding for plants and fungi compared to animals, despite the fundamental ecosystem services afforded by these organisms,” the study noted.

Even among animal emojis, there was imbalance. Vertebrates, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, represented 76% of available animal emoji taxa.

At just 16%, arthropods were the second-most represented organism in the emoji library, even though they’re the most biodiverse group of the tree of life, according to the study.

But even with the shortcomings in emoji diversity, the study highlighted a positive note: The number of animal and nature emojis has more than doubled in the past eight years, with a current total of 214 available on Emojipedia.

The coauthors hope the study will provide a lesson that emoji biodiversity is more than just lions, monkeys and pandas.

Ficetola said they’ve not reached out to the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, which determines what emoji should be added. But he hopes the study pushes people to rethink biodiversity communication in the digital era and the emoji tree of life. The committee, he said, uses strict criteria based on popularity and interest.

On its website, the subcommittee said it reviews proposals for new emojis and makes decision based on various factors, including usage level, compatibility with existing social media platforms and distinctiveness.

But if he had a choice of two emojis to add immediately, Ficetola said he’d pick the starfish and tardigrade.

His colleague, Mammola, said his choice would be fungi or a moss. “It’s a group that’s very popular, but is not there,” he said of the latter, a nonvascular flowerless plant in the Bryophytes family.

Emojis may seem like a mundane form of communication, scientists said, but their simplicity and immediacy are important for documenting biodiversity and conservation efforts as some animals go extinct and disappear from collective memory.

8-eyed creature — with personality like ‘Satan’ — discovered as new species in Ecuador
Aspen Pflughoeft
Thu, December 14, 2023 at 11:08 AM MST·2 min read
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In the mountains of Ecuador lurked an eight-eyed creature with a “bad temperament.” When scientists encountered the hairy animal, they discovered its bristly personality — and a new species.

Researchers ventured into the forests of central Ecuador in 2021 in search of tree-dwelling spiders, according to a study published Dec. 13 in the journal ZooKeys.

They found one hairy spider inside a bamboo fence. The spider tried to defend itself then attempted to flee, making “quick sporadic movements, nearly too fast to see,” the study said.

It didn’t work.

Researchers captured the spider and took it to a research lab. They found three similar-looking spiders in archive collections and, taking a closer look, realized they’d discovered a new species: Psalmopoeus satanas, or the Satan tarantula.

The Satan tarantula can reach just under two inches in length, the study said. It has eight eyes, eight legs covered in “golden” hair and “long” “fringe” on its face.

Photos show the new species. It has a dark brown body and almost looks like it’s wearing fringed leg warmers.

Views of a Psalmopoeus satanas, or Satan tarantula.

In the lab, researchers said they “grew very fond” of the tarantula, “in spite of the individual’s bad temperament and sporadic attacks.” This personality earned it the nickname “Satanas,” which is Spanish for “Satan.” The nickname stuck and inspired the name of the new species, the study said.

“Psalmopoeus satanas is appropriately named because the initial individual that was collected had an attitude!” the study’s lead co-author Pedro Peñaherrera-R. told McClatchy News via email.

The new species was identified by its male genitalia, female reproductive organs and habitat, the study said. Researchers did not provide a DNA analysis of the new species.

Satan tarantulas live in forests of the Andes mountains between elevations of about 2,800 feet and about 3,100 feet, researchers said.

So far, Satan tarantulas have been found in two neighboring provinces in central Ecuador, the Province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and the Province of Pichincha. The latter province includes Quito, the country’s capital.

Researchers suggested the new species might be critically endangered due to its limited habitat, deforestation and the introduction of non-native species.

The research team included Peñaherrera-R. and Roberto León-E. Researchers also discovered a second new species of tarantula.

Study identifies surprising culprit behind the poor performance of some NFL teams: ‘The evidence is piling up’

Laurelle Stelle
Wed, December 13, 2023 



The amount of air pollution in an athlete’s city has a measurable effect on their performance, according to a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Researchers from two Louisiana universities recently collected data on two high-level team sports: Major League Baseball (MLB) and the NFL. They then compared those stats to the air quality index for each team’s home city.

Their analysis, published in January, shows that baseball teams commit an extra 0.000993 errors per game for every additional air quality index point, while quarterbacks can expect a 0.23-point dip in their QB rating, an all-around stat for measuring on-field performance.

This study is the latest in a series of recent papers examining the effects of air quality on athletics. Another study published this year found that air pollution impacts running speed, while one conducted in 2017 linked air quality to the number of passes that soccer players made.

In this case, researchers accounted for other factors that might affect performance, like the team’s budget.

Francis Pope, a University of Birmingham professor of atmospheric studies, told The Daily Beast that this data is about more than just the heart and lungs — pollution also affects the brain. Unlike a sport like track in which the athlete is constantly moving, baseball and football are played in short bursts, so errors can easily occur due to failures in judgment.

“Certainly the evidence is piling up,” he told the outlet, “that pollution does appear to have an effect on the cognitive impacts of people, both in the short term and, via increased rates of diseases like Alzheimer’s, the long term.”

Study co-author Jeremy Foreman stressed to the Daily Beast that air quality isn’t the only factor that can affect an athlete’s performance.

“It doesn’t mean that a high-performing quarterback is going to all of a sudden be awful because he’s playing in a certain city,” he said. “But how much better could you be if there was better air?”

New S. Korea study reveals alarming link between commuting and mental health

Ryan General
Tue, December 12, 2023 


[Source]

A groundbreaking study conducted in South Korea sheds light on the detrimental impact of lengthy commutes on mental health.

Unveiling the research gap: While the frustrations of lengthy commutes are universally acknowledged, particularly with traffic, noise and air pollution, there has been a significant gap in understanding the health implications, especially in Asian countries.

South Korea, known for having some of the lengthiest commutes and high rates of depression among OECD nations, served as the backdrop for the comprehensive study determining connections between daily travel and mental well-being.

Core findings: Conducted by a team led by Dr. Lee Dong-wook from Inha University Hospital, the study delved into data from 23,415 individuals aged 20 to 59, sourced from the World Health Organization's well-being index.

The study, published in the Journal of Transport & Health, revealed that those who spend over an hour commuting daily are 16% more likely to experience depressive symptoms than their counterparts with shorter commutes. The average daily commute is 47 minutes, which is equivalent to nearly four hours per week.

Demographic nuances: Findings showed that for men, the connection between prolonged commutes and depressive symptoms was strongest among the unmarried, those working over 52 hours per week, and those without children. In contrast, women facing extended commute times were most vulnerable if they belonged to the low-income bracket, were shift workers, or were mothers.

The study identified socio-economic conditions as influential factors in commuters' mental health. The researchers noted, however, that while they adjusted for various factors such as age, income and occupation, they couldn't account for individual risk factors like family history. The study also predates the widespread shift to remote work prompted by the pandemic.

Addressing the issue: The study calls for tailored approaches that emphasize the need for interventions that address specific demographic features such as age, gender and income to effectively mitigate the adverse impact of commuting time on depressive symptoms. The study also recommends improved transportation infrastructure to reduce commute times and enhance overall mental health, particularly among low-income workers.

  Inside the US Army’s failed nuclear ice lair in Cold War Greenland

Claire Barrett
Wed, December 13, 2023 

As Soviet ICBM tests and the launch of Sputnik in the 1950s added intensity to the Cold War, the United States turned its attention to the ice sheets of Greenland for an edge.

Meant to be a “city under the ice,” Camp Century was designed to be a series of “twenty-one horizontal tunnels spidering through the snow,” according to the University of Vermont. Designers boasted that, once complete, it would be three times the size of Denmark — replete with a movie theater, hot showers, a chapel, a library, chemistry labs, and, most importantly, a portable nuclear reactor.

Destined to house nearly 200 residents, the top-secret missile base in northwestern Greenland, far north of the Arctic Circle, was publicly touted as a “remote research community” under the auspices of the Army Polar Research and Development Center.

In reality, it was “a top-secret plan to convert part of the Arctic into a launchpad for nuclear missiles,” according to the Washington Post.

Dubbed “Project Iceworm,” the city nestled under layer after layer of ice was to be positioned less than 3,000 miles from Moscow. During the Cold War, the frigid location offered the U.S. Army a more covert and convenient cover for its medium-range ballistic missiles, or MRBMs.

The project was to take advantage of the strategic location of Greenland — midway between the two superpowers — so as to avoid using long-range Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, located stateside, professor Nikolaj Petersen of Denmark’s Aarhus University wrote in a 2007 article for the Scandinavian Journal of History.

In 1958, the U.S. received tacit approval from Denmark — which has maintained control of the world’s largest island since the 1814 Treaty of Kiel — after being approached with the plans for Iceworm by U.S. ambassador Val Petersen.

According to Petersen’s account, Danish Prime Minister H. C. Hansen replied, “You did not submit any concrete plan as to such possible storing, nor did you ask questions as to the attitude of the Danish Government to this item. I do no[t] think that your remarks give rise to any comments from my side.”

The U.S. deemed this a green light, with construction slated to begin in June 1959. Despite temperatures as low as -70°F, winds as high as 125 miles per hour and an annual snowfall of more than four feet, the audacious project was completed the following October, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

“The missile force is hidden and elusive,” a 1960 planning document noted. “It is deployed into an extensive cut‐and‐cover tunnel network in which men and missiles are protected from weather and, to a degree, from enemy attack. The deployment is invulnerable to all but massive attacks and even then most of the force can be launched. Concealment and variability of the deployment pattern are exploited to prevent the enemy from targeting the critical elements of the force.”

U.S. soldiers within the icy catacombs of Camp Century, an Arctic military base in Greenland. (U.S. Army)

The audacious $2.71 billion plan didn’t account for one thing, however: Mother Nature.

It became increasingly clear, in short order, that building an atomic city under shifting ice sheets was tenuous at best. The project was scrapped entirely by 1967, and the massive underground structure collapsed shortly after.

Despite this rather large military gaffe, the project wasn’t entirely a waste. During the building of Camp Century, U.S. glacier scientist Chester Langway drilled “a 4,560-foot-deep vertical core down through the ice,” according to an account in the University of Vermont Today. “Each section of ice that came up was packaged and stored, frozen. When the drill finally hit dirt, the scientists worked it down for twelve more feet through mud and rock. Then they stopped.”

For decades, this layer of ice and rock from Greenland’s core remained untouched, stored in cookie jars at the bottom of a freezer in Denmark.

Then in 2017, it was rediscovered by Jørgen Peder Steffensen, a professor and curator of the ice core repository at the University of Copenhagen, and glaciologist Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, who were going through the university’s extensive collections of ice cores in preparation for a move to a new freezer.

“Some were oddly labeled ‘Camp Century sub-ice,’” Steffensen told UVM Today. “I never thought about what was in those two boxes.

“Well, when you see a lot of cookie jars, you think: who the hell put this in here?” he continued. “No, I didn’t know what to make of it. But once we got it out, we picked it up to see these dirty lumps, and I said: what is this now? And all of a sudden it dawned on us: Oh s--t, this is the sediment underneath it. The ‘sub-ice’ is because it’s below the ice. Whoa.”

In October 2019 the overlooked bits of dirt finally had their time in the sun as more than 30 scientists from around the world gathered in Vermont to study what the silty ice and frozen sediment might tell us.

The convention discovered that the sediment contained “fossilized leaf and twig fragments, proving that plants had once grown under one of the coldest regions on earth,” according to the Washington Post story.

While the U.S. didn’t get to act out its Bond villain lair fantasies, it did, at the very least, further scientific understandings of the world around us — and below us.

Scientists Surprised by Samples Recovered From Ancient Asteroid

Noor Al-Sibai
Wed, December 13, 2023 


Technical Difficulties

NASA scientists are hard at work sifting through samples from an asteroid dating to the dawn of our Solar System, and what they've found so far has been fascinating.

As the journal Nature reports in a news brief, there has been some very peculiar asteroid dust gleaned from the US space agency's first sample return mission to the asteroid Bennu — but researchers haven't been able to test it all yet, because two of the screws in its high-tech canister still won't budge.

After touching down at the end of September, the OSIRIS-REx capsule that collected dust samples from the ancient Bennu has proved to be a problem because two of the canister's 35 screws are stuck. Though scientists have been able to extract more than 70 grams of space dust so far, there's more in there that they can't access.

"It’s kind of like Schrödinger’s sample," joked Dante Lauretta, a University of Arizona planetary scientist who heads OSIRIS-REx's scientific analysis, in an interview with Nature. "We don’t know what’s in there."

Sing the Blues

As frustrating as the Fort Knox-esque canister conundrum has been, what has been analyzed so far has offered some pretty incredible results — though they too have left scientists with more questions than answers.

During a meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in San Francisco on December 11, Lauretta said that the Bennu samples he and his team have done early analyses on are unique even to the naked eye. Most of the material is black in color, but some has a bluish sheen to it — while other, smaller fragments are light in color and reflective in a way that makes them pop against the other pebbles brought back by OSIRIS-REx.

Those lighter-colored bits are magnesium, phosphate, and sodium per the early analysis, and that bright and brittle outer layer chips off to reveal darker rock beneath it, the UA planetary scientist explained. Wilder still: that combination is thought to be rare in asteroids, making it something of a "head-scratcher," per Lauretta.

Also among the findings from the early Bennu analyses are what could be the building blocks of life: organic compounds containing carbon-carbon or carbon-hydrogen bonds. Meteorites found on Earth have had similar compounds, and as Nature explains, those carbon-rich minerals may have contributed to life on our planet.

Despite the technical difficulties, the Bennu samples are a big deal because, as Lauretta puts it, they represent the first time NASA has been able to physically handle such ancient materials.

"This alone makes the whole mission worthwhile," the scientist said. "We now have abundant pristine material."

'What is that material?': Potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu stumps scientists with its odd makeup

Sharmila Kuthunur
Wed, December 13, 2023

A view of the outside of the OSIRIS-REx sample collector. Sample material from asteroid Bennu can be seen on the middle right. Scientists have found evidence of both carbon and water in initial analysis of this material. The bulk of the sample is located inside.

Tasked with finding clues about origins of life on Earth, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft scooped up pieces of a rugged, rubble-pile asteroid named Bennu in late 2020 and delivered them to Earth about two months ago. On Monday (Dec. 11), scientists got their first detailed description of some of that extraterrestrial collection.

"We definitely have hydrated, organic-rich remnants from the early solar system, which is exactly what we were hoping when we first conceived this mission almost 20 years ago," Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator, said at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference being held this week in California and online. "I fully expect the cosmochemistry community is going to go to town on this."

Lauretta, a professor of planetary science and cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona, said the bits of the 3-billion-year-old asteroid that have been retrieved so far are from the outer lid of the sample capsule and are rich in carbon and organic molecules. All the particles are very dark in color and consist of centimeter- and millimeter-sized "hummocky boulders" that have a rough "cauliflower-like texture", said Lauretta. "They cling to everything we touch them with."

The OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft was designed to be in contact with Bennu for six seconds, but it ended up plunging 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) into the asteroid's surface for 17 seconds instead. A victim of its own success, the probe dug out so much material that particles began leaking out of the sample collector's head — but they were still protected inside its outer lid. On Monday, Lauretta blamed a 1.3-inch (3.5 cm) stone that appeared to have jammed open a small flap on the head and let the material escape into the lid.

Two faulty fasteners continue to prevent technicians from removing the lid to access and catalog the bulk of the collected sample that's still trapped within the head. While they wait for new tools to be approved for use on the precious rocks, they are using tweezers to pick tiny rocks through the partially open flap, totaling the collected material to 70.3 grams (0.07 kg) — higher than the predicted 60 grams (0.06 kg).

Some of that material was shipped for spectral analysis at the NASA-supported Reflectance Experiment Laboratory (RELAB) facility in Rhode Island, while another batch was sent to the Natural History Museum in London. Initial findings using spectroscopy, a scientific technique that reveals a material's makeup by studying how it reflects different wavelengths of light, show a dominant spectral signature in blue. This azure hue is currently unexplained but may mean the space rocks contain even more water than scientists initially predicted, Lauretta said, adding that more results will be shared at a scientific meeting next spring.

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The material also hosts high amounts of magnesium, sodium and phosphorus, a combination that so far puzzles the team.

"I've been looking at meteorites for a long time and I've never come across anything like that," said Lauretta. "It's a head-scratcher right now. What is this material?

Barringer Crater may have been formed by a cosmic 'curveball,' asteroid simulations show

Deepa Jain
Wed, December 13, 2023 

Aerial view of Barringer crater (meteor impact) in Arizona.


Loosely-bound clumpy asteroids with curveball-like spins may have scooped out some of Earth's most distinctly shaped craters, including Arizona's bowl-like Barringer Crater, a study published Nov. 22 in the journal Physical Review E suggests. Craters carved by fast-spinning space rocks tend to be wider and shallower than those formed from their slower-spinning counterparts, the study authors found — a potentially counterintuitive finding if you've ever seen a curveball slam hard against a player's bat in a game of baseball.

Impact craters ― pock-marks created by space rocks ― scar the surface of most of the solar system's rocky bodies, from Jupiter's moon Io to our own home planet. But these traces of past celestial encounters have a bewildering diversity of shapes.

Take those on Earth. Some, like Arizona's 49,000-year-old Barringer Crater, resemble a bowl jammed in the ground. Others have more complicated architectures with one or more peaks around or even inside the crater.

Geologists have previously unearthed many factors responsible for this diversity, like an asteroid's velocity upon impact. But in the new study, researchers zeroed in on two typically overlooked parameters.

One was the asteroid's spin, or how quickly it rotates while whizzing through the atmosphere. Rotating objects have more energy than non-rotating ones. So it may seem intuitive that a spinning asteroid would gouge out a deeper crater than a non-spinning one.

Related: World's 1st mountaintop impact crater discovered in northeastern China

But what if the incoming impactors — whether comets, asteroids or smaller meteoroids — were made up of thousands of smaller bits glommed together through gravity? Recent NASA missions, like the OSIRIS-REx mission that collected samples from asteroid Bennu, have confirmed that not all asteroids are monoliths; many, especially the gargantuan ones that are a kilometer (half-a-mile) in size or larger, are actually clumps of smaller rocks glued together by gravity.

Studying the spin and clumpiness of asteroids will help scientists "better understand how the different types of crater are formed, [and] how the material from the impactor spread[s] after collision has taken place," study co-author Erick Franklin, a researcher at Brazil's University of Campinas, said in an email to Live Science.

To investigate both factors, the researchers ran many simulations. They created virtual asteroid-like projectiles, each "the size of a grapefruit", Franklin said. Every projectile itself was a cluster of two thousand mite-sized spheres. The researchers then virtually dropped each of these "asteroids" on a grainy layer meant to resemble a planet's surface. In some models, the projectile's spin ranged between that of a super slow-spin splitter and an off-the-charts high-spin curveball.

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The researchers found that rapidly rotating asteroids did gouge out narrow, deep gorges ― but only when the asteroid's tiny constituent spheres were tightly bound together. Fast spinning "rubble-piles" — asteroids like Bennu with weakly-bound components — produced wide, shallow holes. "Roughly speaking, the more the grains forming the projectile spread radially at the impact, the shallower and wider the crater will be," Franklin noted.

That's because part of the asteroid's energy is used to break the bonds holding its components together. This scatters the fragments, but leaves each with less energy, so they don't burrow as deeply into the ground as when the asteroid doesn't rotate. In addition to Barringer Crater, another potential curveball-created crater is the saucer-shaped Flynn Creek crater in Gainesboro, Tennessee, Franklin said.

WORKERS CAPITAL

OPINION
Editorial: CalPERS must ditch fossil fuel investments. Its new ‘sustainable’ plan doesn’t do that


An oil refinery looms over Wilmington in 2016. Billions of California public employees’ retirement funds are invested in fossil fuel companies.
(Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

BY THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

DEC. 3, 2023

California’s two big public pension funds have been under increasing pressure to divest from fossil fuels as other big institutional investors move to shed their holdings in oil companies and other heavily polluting industries. And it’s not hard to see why.

CalPERS and CalSTRS have billions invested in fossil fuels, from multinational oil giants such as ExxonMobil and Chevron to government-owned companies in China and Saudi Arabia. In a state that prides itself on its climate leadership, there is obvious hypocrisy in using the retirement money of state employees and teachers to prop up companies that profit from the burning of oil and gas that’s causing a catastrophic overheating of our planet. It’s no wonder that so many Californians, including lawmakers, environmental activists, young people and retirees, have called for these influential funds to divest from these dangerous industries.

Last month CalPERS, which manages a portfolio of more than $462 billion, announced a new sustainable investments strategy that seems designed to address those calls, but not satisfy them. It includes a plan to more than double investment in low-carbon assets and other climate solutions to $100 billion by 2030. There’s a commitment to make “more selective investments in high emitting sectors” and to hold companies accountable for reducing their carbon footprint, by establishing a process to exit those without “credible net zero plans.”



It’s good to see the nation’s largest public pension fund taking initial steps to shift its portfolio away from some of the highest-polluting companies that refuse to switch to cleaner technologies. But the approach is far too timid, incremental and ill-defined, and doesn’t go nearly far or fast enough to respond to the scope and scale of the climate crisis. And it doesn’t change the need for a real divestment mandate.

Leaders of the pension fund said the plan would accelerate their move toward their preexisting goal of achieving a net-zero portfolio by 2050. But the 28-page plan is short on details, hazy on the criteria that will be used to determine which companies to reduce investments because of insufficient climate plans, and lacks a timeline for those decisions. CalPERS staff has promised its board to come back with those details next year.


CalPERS offcials don’t see the strategy resulting in any across-the-board divestment that would exclude an entire sector of the economy. Instead, they believe in supporting even heavily polluting oil companies so long as they have committed to transitioning to lower-carbon technology.


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In many ways, this plan seems like new wrapping on the fund’s old approach of using its shareholder power to try to coax fossil fuel companies into acting more responsibly. But that has not proved very successful. Just look at the oil industry’s recent actions to walk back climate pledges and launch new disinformation efforts to derail the shift to renewable energy.

CalPERS’ new strategy also seems designed to head off legislation to force the pension funds to sell their investments in the largest fossil fuel companies by 2031. The bill, Senate Bill 252, passed the state Senate, but has yet to advance in the Assembly. The pension funds’ leaders oppose the legislation on the grounds that it would reduce the diversification of their holdings and violate their fiduciary duty to make investments solely in the interest of maximizing returns.

CalPERS’ rationale for its new strategy is similarly divorced from morality. The fund’s leaders say that any decisions to reduce or shed assets will be based on the financial risks of high-polluting companies not having plans to decarbonize.

But as supporters of divestment have argued for years, casting off fossil fuel assets is at its core a financially prudent move. In a world that is rapidly shifting toward renewable energy, these investments are becoming too risky to keep.


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State Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), who wrote SB 252, commended CalPERS for taking a step in the right direction, but said the strategy won’t stop the divestment push.

While it is encouraging to see CalPERS officials start to take seriously calls to dump fossil fuels and prioritize renewable energy, their solution would only prolong the power and influence of an industry whose reckless and deceitful actions going back decades continue to fuel a worsening climate catastrophe. It seems clear that the only way to ensure that public pension funds move out of this risky business is by forcing them to do so through legislation.

COP28 climate agreement is a step backward on fossil fuels

Alaa Al Khourdajie & Chris Bataille & Lars J Nilsson
Thu, December 14, 2023 

Delegates from nearly 200 countries at COP28 agreed to text calling for the world to move "away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner." Stronger demands to "phase out" fossil fuels were ultimately unsuccessful. Photo by Ali Haider/EPA-EFE

Dec. 14 (UPI) -- The COP28 climate summit in Dubai has adjourned. The result is "The UAE consensus" on fossil fuels.

This text, agreed upon by delegates from nearly 200 countries, calls for the world to move "away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner." Stronger demands to "phase out" fossil fuels were ultimately unsuccessful.

The agreement also acknowledges the need to phase down "unabated" coal burning and transition toward energy systems consistent with net zero emissions by 2050, while accelerating action in "the critical decade" of the 2020s.

As engineers and scientists who research the necessary changes to pull off this energy system transition, we believe this agreement falls short in addressing the use of fossil fuels at the heart of the climate crisis.

Such an approach is inconsistent with the scientific consensus on the urgency of drastically reducing fossil fuel consumption to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

'Abated' vs. 'unabated'

The combustion of coal, oil and gas accounts for 75% of all global warming to date -- and 90% of CO₂ emissions.

So what does the text actually ask countries to do with these fuels -- and what loopholes might they exploit to continue using them well into the future?

Those countries advocating for the ongoing use of fossil fuels made every effort to add the term "unabated" whenever a fossil fuel phase-down or phase-out was proposed during negotiations.

"Abatement" in this context typically means using capture capture and storage technology to stop CO₂ emissions from engines and furnaces reaching the atmosphere.

However, there is no clear definition of what abatement would entail in the text. This ambiguity allows for a broad and and easily abused interpretation of what constitutes "abated" fossil fuel use.

Will capturing 30% or 60% of CO₂ emissions from burning a quantity of coal, oil or gas be sufficient? Or will fossil fuel use only be considered "abated" if 90% or more of these emissions are captured and stored permanently along with low leakage of "fugitive" emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which can escape from oil and gas infrastructure?

This is important. Despite the agreement supposedly honoring "the science" on climate change, low capture rates with high residual and fugitive emissions are inconsistent with what research has shown is necessary to limit global warming to the internationally agreed guardrails of 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

In a 2022 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicated that most coal emissions and 33%-66% of natural gas emissions must be captured to be compatible with the 2015 Paris agreement.

That's assuming that the world will have substantial means of sucking carbon (at least several billion tons a year) from the air in future decades. If these miracle machines fail to materialize, our research indicates that carbon capture would need to be near total on all fuels.

The fact that the distinction between "abated" and "unabated" fossil fuels has not been clarified is a missed opportunity to ensure the effectiveness of the Dubai agreement. This lack of clarity can prolong fossil fuel dependence under the guise of "abated" usage.

This would cause wider harm to the transition by allowing continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure -- new coal plants, for instance, as long as some of the carbon they emit is captured (abated) -- thereby diverting resources from more sustainable power sources. This could hobble COP28's other goal: to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

By not explicitly defining these terms, COP28 missed the chance to set a firm, scientifically backed benchmark for future fossil fuel use.

Carbon dioxide removal

Since the world is increasingly likely to overshoot the temperature goals of the Paris agreement, we must actively remove more CO₂ from the atmosphere -- with reforestation and direct air capture, among other methods -- than is emitted in future.

Some carbon removal technologies, such as DAC, are very early in their development and scaling them up to remove the necessary quantity of CO₂ will be difficult. And this effort should not detract from the urgent need to reduce emissions in the first place. This balanced approach is vital to not only halt but reverse the trajectory of warming, aligning with the ambitious goals of the Paris agreement.

There has only really been one unambiguously successful U.N. climate summit: Paris 2015, when negotiations for a top-down agreement were ended and the era of collectively and voluntarily raising emissions cuts began.

A common commitment to "phase down and then out" clearly defined unabated fossil fuels was not reached at COP28, but it came close with many parties strongly in favor of it. It would not be surprising if coalitions of like-minded governments proceed with climate clubs to implement it.

The Conversation

Alaa Al Khourdajie is a research fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. Chris Bataille is an adjunct research fellow in energy and climate policy at Columbia University. Lars J Nilsson is a professor of environmental and energy systems studies at Lund University.

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

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors.

'Where is the money?' COP28 deal throws spotlight on funding

Kelly MACNAMARA
Thu, December 14, 2023 

Environmental activists at COP28 in Dubai (Giuseppe CACACE)


After COP28's landmark call for the world to move away from fossil fuels, experts say the pressure is on to fast-track -- and fund -- the global energy transition.

The agreement was a compromise wrestled out of countries with sharply conflicting interests by the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, hosting COP28 in the last days of the hottest year humans have recorded so far.

It calls for "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner" -- after three decades without naming the main driver of planet-heating pollution.

With rapidly-accelerating climate impacts slamming communities across the planet, observers said this was both a major milestone and the very minimum needed to steer the world onto a safer track.

The bigger challenge will be turning the promise of the COP28 agreement into sweeping global decarbonisation that comes close to the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels.

COP28's goal to triple global renewables capacity and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030 will require significant investment, particularly in developing countries least responsible for warming.

An editorial in Indonesia's Jakarta Post on Thursday called on rich polluters to scale up finance.

"COP28, where is the dough?" it asked.

The Dubai text acknowledged that trillions of dollars are needed by debt-stricken developing countries to meet their climate targets this decade as they face worsening warming impacts.

But Senegal's climate envoy Madeleine Diouf Sarr, Chair of the Least Developed Countries Group, said it "fails to deliver a credible response to this challenge", calling for 2024 UN climate talks to work to close the gap.

- Dangerous, expensive, uncertain -

Countries in Dubai were tasked with responding to a damning assessment of progress on the world’s existing flagship climate promise -- the 2015 Paris deal’s commitment to limit warming to "well below" 2C and preferably to the safer 1.5C threshold.

At 1.2 degrees of warming, scientists have said climate change was a major driver of the extreme heat that has scorched across the planet this year and stoked massive fires in parts of Canada.

It increased the severity of devastating drought in the Horn of Africa -- and then exacerbated catastrophic flooding in the same region.

"Until fossil fuels are phased out, the world will continue to become a more dangerous, more expensive and more uncertain place to live," said Friederike Otto, senior Climate Science lecturer at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London.

Before COP28, Earth was heading towards disastrous heating of between 2.5C and 2.9C by 2100, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

The Dubai decision had not changed the reality that the world is not on track, said its Executive Director Inger Andersen.

"Now the hard work of decarbonisation must begin," Andersen said, calling for greater financial support for poorer countries in their energy transitions.

Observers said a lack of specifics on finance in the COP28 text sets the stage for the issue to dominate COP29 talks next year in Azerbaijan and ups the pressure for sweeping climate-focused reforms of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Nicholas Stern, of the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, said countries should respond to the COP28 decision with "a huge increase in investment" in clean energy and green growth.

That is particularly needed in developing countries, except China, which face an estimated $2.4 trillion annual cost by 2030 to meet their climate and development priorities.

- End of an era? -

The International Energy Agency estimates global clean energy investments need to reach $4.5 trillion a year by 2030.

That is a steep increase from the $1.8 trillion this year, helped by policies in the United States, Europe, China and India.

IEA chief Fatih Birol called on countries to follow through on COP28 with more "concrete policies", in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Nevertheless, "spectacular" growth of technologies like wind and solar, as well as electric vehicles, has enabled the IAE to forecast that world fossil fuel demand will peak this decade.

That prognosis has been shrugged off by fossil fuel producers.

They plan to continue to expand oil, gas and coal despite the message from climate scientists that this would push the world beyond the 1.5C target.

Observers say loopholes in the Dubai text include the focus on fossil fuels for energy -- potentially leaving out polluting products like plastics and fertilisers -- as well as a nod to gas as a "transition fuel".

Bill McKibben, the founder of environmental campaign group 350.org, said while the COP28 call to shift from fossil fuels may seem like "the single most obvious thing one could possibly say about climate change", it could give activists a powerful new argument.

"We need to insist that the clear, plain meaning of the language is, the fossil fuel era is over," he wrote in his newsletter.

klm/rl

What’s Missing From the COP28 Climate Deal
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Updated Wed, December 13, 2023

United Nations Climate Chief Simon Stiell, from left, COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber and Hana Al-Hashimi, chief COP28 negotiator for the United Arab Emirates, pose for photos at the end of the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)


The COP28 climate summit wrapped up Wednesday with a compromise agreement that calls on nations to move away from fossil fuels.

But the deal still gives energy-exporting giants such as Saudi Arabia plenty of leeway to continue drilling and presents countries and investors with the huge challenge of how to fund a green-energy shift over the next few years.

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Here’s what’s in the pact: pledges by countries to wean their economies off fossil fuels in a “just, orderly and equitable manner” this decade; triple their uptake of renewables by 2030; restrict methane emissions; and halt carbon emissions entirely by midcentury.

It’s the first explicit agreement to curb fossil fuel use in the roughly three decades of such multinational negotiations. Scientists say drastic cutbacks are needed to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy, said he was “in awe of the spirit of cooperation” among negotiators. And Dan Jorgensen, the Danish minister for climate and energy, marveled that such an agreement could be reached at a summit hosted by the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.

Here’s what isn’t in it: tough language on outlawing construction of new coal-burning power plants and specific commitments to help finance poorer nations’ energy transitions.

“Asking Nigeria, or indeed, asking Africa, to phase out fossil fuels is like asking us to stop breathing without life support,” said Ishaq Salako, Nigeria’s environmental minister.

Heading into the conference, there was deep skepticism among climate activists and scientists that the UAE and other OPEC nations would try to water down any deal. And indeed, countries such as Saudi Arabia were among those pushing back against efforts to craft a tougher pledge to fully phase out fossil fuels.

The deal is not legally binding. And some critics grumbled that it contained “cavernous loopholes” that would give countries producing fossil fuel incentives to continue oil exploration, including allowing room for “transitional fuels” such as natural gas.

Investors didn’t appear worried about what the pledge might mean for the fossil fuel industry: Shares in Chevron and Exxon Mobil were up slightly in premarket trading Wednesday.

Much work remains. One recent estimate suggests that trillions of dollars in investment is needed to transition to greener fuel sources such as wind and solar and avert a climate catastrophe.

“We must transform the international financial system to pursue and achieve our climate goals,” Kerry told delegates. He added that policies were needed to encourage investment in green initiatives “and shift finance away from the things that put our shared prosperity at risk.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

RESISTANCE TILL THE BITTER END...

12-year-old Indian activist Licypriya Kangujam interrupts COP28 stage in Dubai

Michelle De Pacina
Wed, December 13, 2023 

[Source]

Licypriya Kangujam, a 12-year-old climate activist from India, interrupted the COP28 climate summit in Dubai on Monday.

What happened: Kangujam ran up the stage with a sign reading “End fossil fuels. Save our planet and our future.” While holding the poster up, she demanded governments to “act now” in phasing out coal, oil and gas, which she says are the top causes of the climate crisis today.

Although Kangujam was escorted away, the COP28 Director-General Ambassador Majid Al Suwaidi praised her enthusiasm and the audience applauded.

The drafted final deal: The protest occurred amid criticism of a draft text for the final agreement, with opponents expressing disapproval that it did not explicitly tackle the elimination of fossil fuels, a crucial request from both the European Union and susceptible developing nations. There is uncertainty whether the talks, initially set to conclude on Tuesday, will finish on schedule.

Kangujam’s urgent plea: Kangujam shared a statement on X after her protest, noting that she was detained for over 30 minutes. “My only crime - Asking to Phase Out Fossil Fuels, the top cause of climate crisis today. Now they kicked me out of COP28,” she wrote.

Her plea emphasizes the necessity for global collaboration in ending fossil fuel use, highlighting the devastating impact of climate disasters on millions of children. She asks governments to redirect their resources from wars to address hunger, provide education and combat climate change. She stresses the basic rights of every human being, such as clean air, water and a habitable planet.

“Your action today will decide our future tomorrow,” Kangujam wrote. “We are already the victim of climate change. I don’t want my future generations to face the same consequences again. Sacrificing the lives of the millions of innocent children for the failures of our leaders is unacceptable at any cost…After thinking many times, I decided to do this protest. Even my mom tried to stop me but I convinced her that ‘Everything will be alright.’ I am taking the risks of my life because I want to save our Planet and our Future. My voice deserve to be heard by the world. Let's stand together by uniting, instead of dividing.”

COP28 reaches tentative climate deal calling for 'transitioning away from fossil fuels'

CBC
Tue, December 12, 2023 at

Climate activists protest against fossil fuels during the final stages of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), in Dubai on Tuesday. (Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters - image credit)


After negotiators worked through the night, a new tentative deal has been reached at COP28 which could signal the world's desire to move away from fossil fuels over the next few decades in an effort to address climate change.

Representatives from nearly 200 countries will gather in a public meeting later Wednesday morning in Dubai to vote on the proposed deal.

The latest draft of the new text seen contains much stronger language on fossil fuels compared to a previous version.

Specifically, the text calls for a "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science."

The proposal does not call for a fossil fuel phase out, as some countries and environmental leaders were pushing for.

Still, the proposed agreement would be the first time the words "fossil fuel" are included in a UN climate summit deal.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault speaks to reporters in Dubai late-Tuesday before leaving COP28.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault speaks to reporters in Dubai late-Tuesday before leaving COP28. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)

"I feel very encouraged," federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault told reporters before he left the summit late Tuesday. "I would say much more encouraged than I was [when the first draft was released.]"

He said the original text "did not go far enough when it comes to sending the world a signal that we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels."

Scientists Warn That the Dubai Climate Conference Is Full of Crap

Noor Al-Sibai
Tue, December 12, 2023 



For the past two weeks, the world's best and brightest have been meeting in Dubai — under a glittering, color-changing dome built to resemble Islamic geometric art — as the petrostate hosts the United Nations' latest climate change conference.

And experts are calling bull. In interviews with The Guardian, climate scientists and advocates said the "solutions" offered at the COP28 conference, which include such goofiness as a panel on "responsible yachting," are "distractions" at best and "frightening" at worst.

Troublingly, the conference is presided over by Dubai's Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who also runs the United Arab Emirates' national oil company in what seems very much like a massive conflict of interest.

Al Jaber sparked controversy last week when he publicly expressed pessimism about a gradual fossil fuel phase-out and said there was "no science" behind it, which is categorically false given that the vast majority of scientists — not to mention the UN's secretary-general — say that eliminating fossil fuel pollution is absolutely the biggest and most important way to turn back the tide on the worst of what climate change has in store.

Notably, oil companies in both the Middle East and stateside have invested heavily in carbon removal technologies, which are promising enough as a tool in what should be an arsenal to fight back against climate change, but are being touted as a catch-all solution that an increasing number of experts say is a waste.

"It’s frightening because they see this as a new business opportunity, a new way to make money and continue as before," climate researcher Pierre Friedlingstein told The Guardian.

Friedlingstein leads a project called the Global Carbon Budget out of the University of Exeter in England that looks, in part, into the efficacy of the sort of expensive carbon capture and removal projects touted by the oil barons and tech tycoons at COP28. Thus far, the results have been damning, with such technologies removing more than a million times less carbon than is currently being emitted.

"They will scale this up, and if they do it by a factor of 100 in the next 10 to 20 years, that would be amazing, but they won’t scale up by a factor of 1 million," Friedlingstein decried. "There is no alternative to reducing emissions massively. These technologies are a distraction, a way to pretend we are dealing with the issue, but we aren’t."

As The Guardian's reporting cites, a new report by the German non-governmental organization Climate Analytics has warned that an additional 86 billion tons of carbon could be released into the atmosphere if these technologies underperform after further investment, and a separate Oxford study found that it would cost a trillion dollars per year to build them out to scale.

While global leaders "can’t take anything off the table" to solve the climate conundrum, Steve Smith, the executive director of Oxford's Net Zero initiative, said that reducing emissions needs to be paramount.

"There’s not much scope for either/or," Smith told The Guardian. "It’s both/and. This technology isn’t a false solution — there’s no one solution.”

As such big names as Bill Gates and US climate envoy John Kerry continue pushing these persistently expensive fixes without committing to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, so too will climate change worsen — until the global community actually starts moving away from fossil fuels, which have been produced in higher measure than ever in recent years.

"We have housing insulation, we have electric vehicles, we have renewables, we have batteries," Friedlingstein said. "Scaling them up is not trivial, but we don’t need a magical new technology for the first 90 percent of this problem."

More on climate change: Carbon Dioxide Is Becoming More Fearsome, Scientists Find