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Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Worldwide renewables growth rate must rise to meet climate targets – German engineers

23 Feb 2021, 11:56

Clean Energy Wire / Spiegel

Renewables expansion in Germany and across the world is insufficient to help keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C, a key goal of the Paris Climate Agreement, said the Association of German Engineers (VDI). In a renewable energies development status report for 2019, VDI says that use of clean energy sources worldwide showed the strongest growth in the power sector, with solar power in the lead of fastest growing green generation sources. However, renewables in heating stagnated – dominated by biomass – and there was only limited expansion in the transport sector.

The report is published as the German government enters the critical phase of negotiations about more ambitious renewables expansion targets. The Social Democrats (SPD) plan to present proposals this week to the conservative coalition partners CDU and CSU on how to speed up the development of new installations, reported Der Spiegel. The coalition had agreed to raise expansion targets by the end of March and speed up permitting procedures, but there are still major open questions, the magazine wrote.

Germany’s renewables expansion has been lagging in recent years, especially in onshore wind power. The country is facing a green power gap, as demand will increase with the electrification of sectors such as heating and transport. The government has set itself the goal of reaching a renewables share of 65 percent of power consumption by 2030 – and has said it would increase this target should new EU goals command this.

US contractors call on Biden to cut tariffs on construction materials

23 February 2021 | By GCR Staff |

The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) has written an open letter to US president Joe Biden warning of the effects of recent increases in materials prices.

According to the AGC, the cost of materials such as lumber and steel have reached “record-setting levels”, partly as a result of tariff levels.

A press release from the trade body added that contractors were facing long delivery times for materials, exacerbating the disruption caused by illness and Covid-19 site restrictions.

The price for non-residential materials and services increased 2.5% between December and January, and 10.7% since April last year.

Stephen Sandherr, the AGC’s chief executive, said: “Left unchecked, these rising materials prices threaten to undermine the economic recovery by inflating the cost of infrastructure and economic development projects.

“Widespread harm is caused by maintaining tariffs on products that so many Americans need to improve their houses, modernise their infrastructure and revitalise their economy.”

Ken Simonson, the AGC’s chief economist, said: “While contractors have kept bids nearly flat until now, project owners and budget officials should anticipate the prospect that contractors will have to pass along their higher costs in upcoming bids.

“The framing lumber composite price compiled by the publication Random Lengths hit an all-time high last week. Several steel product prices are also reported at record levels, and copper futures are at an eight-year peak. Meanwhile, delivery delays are affecting both imports and domestically sourced construction inputs.”

Image: Construction in New York (Elisa No Kim/Dreamstime)

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SOCIALIZE BIG PHARMA

AstraZeneca expected to fall short again and deliver half of contracted doses to EU during second quarter

Reuters quoted an EU official in reporting the latest shortfall today.

Image: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

TAOISEACH (PM) MICHEÁL MARTIN has said that an expected reduction in the number of vaccines which AstraZeneca will deliver to the EU next quarter has been accounted for as part of the Government’s vaccination plan.

An EU official told Reuters today that the pharmaceutical company expects to deliver less than half of the vaccines it was contracted to supply during the second quarter of 2021.

The official, whom Reuters have said is “directly involved in talks” with the company, said AstraZeneca would deliver less than 90 million doses to the EU next quarter.

The new development follows a huge row between Europe and AstraZeneca last month, when the company announced it would deliver fewer vaccines than planned during the first quarter.

A contract between the company and the EU which was leaked last week committed to the delivery of 180 million doses between April and June.

Ireland receives about 1.1% of all vaccines allocated to the EU based on its population size, and would have originally expected almost 2 million doses from AstraZeneca.

However, it is now expected that the EU will receive around half of this instead, and that Ireland will only receive roughly 1 million doses from the company.

But speaking to reporters this evening, Martin said the latest shortfall from AstraZeneca has been factored into the government’s vaccine rollout plan.

“I think we will have a sufficiency of vaccines,” the Taoiseach said.

“The big challenge for us in Q2 and Q3 will be the administration of the vaccines, because it will be unprecedented.”

Martin said other vaccines could “come on stream” before the end of the second quarter that the government had not factored in, which may make up for the AstraZeneca shortfall.

He referenced the vaccine being developed by German company CureVac, which could give Ireland “significant additional doses” if it is approved by the European Medicines Agency

Last week, pharmaceutical firm Janssen also applied for conditional authorisation for its Covid-19 vaccine, which is being developed by US firm Johnson & Johnson.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly also sought to reassure the public about the latest development this evening.

“I’m glad to be able to assure everyone that there is no change to our forecast of 1 million Covid vaccine doses a month from April on for Ireland,” he tweeted.

“Shortfalls in AstraZeneca supply for Q2 were already factored in by our Vaccine Taskforce and our programme continues as planned.”

SolarWinds hack was work of 'at least 1,000 engineers', tech executives tell Senate

True scope of the breach, which affected 100 companies and several federal agencies, is still unknown

Kevin Mandia, the FireEye CEO, Sudhakar Ramakrishna, the SolarWinds CEO, and Brad Smith, the Microsoft president, testify during a Senate hearing. Photograph: Drew Angerer/UPI/REX/Shutterstock

Kari Paul and agencies
Wed 24 Feb 2021

Tech executives revealed that a historic cybersecurity breach that affected about 100 US companies and nine federal agencies was larger and more sophisticated than previously known.

The revelations came during a hearing of the US Senate’s select committee on intelligence on Tuesday on last year’s hack of SolarWinds, a Texas-based software company. Using SolarWinds and Microsoft programs, hackers believed to be working for Russia were able to infiltrate the companies and government agencies. Servers run by Amazon were also used in the cyber-attack, but that company declined to send representatives to the hearing.

Representatives from the impacted firms, including SolarWinds, Microsoft, and the cybersecurity firms FireEye Inc and CrowdStrike Holdings, told senators that the true scope of the intrusions is still unknown, because most victims are not legally required to disclose attacks unless they involve sensitive information about individuals. But they described an operation of stunning size.

DoJ confirms email accounts breached by SolarWinds hackers

Brad Smith, the Microsoft president, said its researchers believed “at least 1,000 very skilled, very capable engineers” worked on the SolarWinds hack. “This is the largest and most sophisticated sort of operation that we have seen,” Smith told senators.

Smith said the hacking operation’s success was due to its ability to penetrate systems through routine processes. SolarWinds functions as a network monitoring software, working deep in the infrastructure of information technology systems to identify and patch problems, and provides an essential service for companies around the world. “The world relies on the patching and updating of software for everything,” Smith said. “To disrupt or tamper with that kind of software is to in effect tamper with the digital equivalent of our Public Health Service. It puts the entire world at greater risk.”

“It’s a little bit like a burglar who wants to break into a single apartment but manages to turn off the alarm system for every home and every building in the entire city,” he added. “Everybody’s safety is put at risk. That is what we’re grappling with here.”

Smith said many techniques used by the hackers have not come to light and that the attacker might have used up to a dozen different means of getting into victim networks during the past year.
This is the largest and most sophisticated sort of operation that we have seenBrad Smith

Microsoft disclosed last week that the hackers had been able to read the company’s closely guarded source code for how its programs authenticate users. At many of the victims, the hackers manipulated those programs to access new areas inside their targets.

Smith stressed that such movement was not due to programming errors on Microsoft’s part but on poor configurations and other controls on the customer’s part, including cases “where the keys to the safe and the car were left out in the open”.

George Kurtz, the CrowdStrike chief executive, explained that in the case of his company, hackers used a third-party vendor of Microsoft software, which had access to CrowdStrike systems, and tried but failed to get into the company’s email. Kurtz turned the blame on Microsoft for its complicated architecture, which he called “antiquated”.

“The threat actor took advantage of systemic weaknesses in the Windows authentication architecture, allowing it to move laterally within the network” and reach the cloud environment while bypassing multifactor authentication, Kurtz said.

Where Smith appealed for government help in providing remedial instruction for cloud users, Kurtz said Microsoft should look to its own house and fix problems with its widely used Active Directory and Azure.

Ben Sasse questions witnesses during a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Capitol Hill. Photograph: Reuters

“Should Microsoft address the authentication architecture limitations around Active Directory and Azure Active Directory, or shift to a different methodology entirely, a considerable threat vector would be completely eliminated from one of the world*s most widely used authentication platforms,” Kurtz said.

The executives argued for greater transparency and information-sharing about breaches, with liability protections and a system that does not punish those who come forward, similar to airline disaster investigations.

“It’s imperative for the nation that we encourage and sometimes even require better information-sharing about cyber-attacks,” Smith said.

Lawmakers spoke with the executives about how threat intelligence can be more easily and confidentially shared among competitors and lawmakers to prevent large hacks like this in the future. They also discussed what kinds of repercussion nation-state sponsored hacks warrant. The Biden administration is rumored to be considering sanctions against Russia over the hack, according to a Washington Post report.

“This could have been exponentially worse and we need to recognize the seriousness of that,” said Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. “We can’t default to security fatalism. We’ve got to at least raise the cost for our adversaries.”

Lawmakers berated Amazon for not appearing at the hearing, threatening to compel the company to testify at subsequent panels.

“I think [Amazon has] an obligation to cooperate with this inquiry, and I hope they will voluntarily do so,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Republican. “If they don’t, I think we should look at next steps.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

RUSSIAN AGENT
GOP senator raises uncorroborated claims about 'provocateurs,' 'fake Trump supporters' at Capitol riot hearing

BY JOHN BOWDEN - 02/23/21

A GOP senator used his questioning period during a joint Senate hearing Tuesday focused on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to read from an unverified eyewitness account published by The Federalist raising unproven claims about "provocateurs" and people pretending to be supporters of former President Trump participating in the riot.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked only one question during the joint hearing hosted by the Senate Rules Committee and Senate Homeland Security Committee regarding the events of the Jan. 6 riot during his allotted time period Tuesday as he read from a piece authored by J. Michael Waller, an analyst at the Center for Security Policy, describing his supposed personal observations of the violence.

In excerpts from the piece Johnson read during the hearing, the author describes seeing "an organized cell of agents-provocateurs to corral people as an unwitting follow-on force behind the plainclothes militants tussling with police," as well as "fake Trump protesters," whom he said remained nonviolent during the riot.

Other excerpts read by Johnson appeared to place the blame on Capitol Police officers for inciting the crowd to violence, claiming that, "[t]he tear gas changed the crowd’s demeanor. There was an air of disbelief as people realized that the police whom they supported were firing on them."

Assembled witnesses, including former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, were not given a chance to respond to those assertions during the hearing, and were instead directed by Johnson to respond to a list of questions the senator said he had provided them in a letter.

Law enforcement officials have not said that left-leaning activists or so-called "provocateurs" were responsible for the violence that unfolded on Jan. 6, however, the claim has been spread widely in conservative circles and uttered by allies of Trump to explain the events of the riot.

Baby shark with a 'human' face found in Indonesia

00:39

Fishermen in Indonesia caught and killed an adult shark Sunday and got the surprise of their lives.

Treat climate change as ‘global security threat’, David Attenborough urges

Climate crisis ‘biggest security threat humans have faced’, Sir David Attenborough tells UN

Attenborough called for tougher action to address ‘climate security risks’ at a UN Security Council session chaired by Boris Johnson

The climate crisis presents the “biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced”, Sir David Attenborough told a UN meeting held today.

Speaking at the first UN Security Council meeting on climate and security, Sir David said that the world had “left the stable and secure climatic period that gave birth to our civilisation”.

“Today, there are threats to security of a new and unprecedented kind,” he told leaders.

“These threats do not divide us. They are threats which should unite us no matter from which part of the world we come, for they face us all.

World must ‘transform relationship with nature’ to tackle burgeoning environmental crises, says UN

“If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security: food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature and ocean food chains. And if the natural world can no longer support the most basic of our needs, then much of the rest of civilisation will quickly break down.

“Please, make no mistake. Climate change is the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced.”

His words were echoed by UN secretary-general António Guterres, who described climate change as a “crisis multiplier”

“We need to protect the people and communities that are being hit already by climate disruption,” said the UN chief.

“We must step up preparations for the escalating implications of the climate crisis for international peace and security.”

António Guterres

@antonioguterres

11h

The climate emergency not only damages the environment; it weakens our political, economic & social systems.

We need to protect countries & communities and address the specific risks the climate crisis poses to international peace & security.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1364270017051779076

Boris Johnson, who chaired the UN Security Council meeting, also said that it was “absolutely clear that climate change is a threat to our collective security”.

“Whether you like it or not, it is a matter of when, not if, your country and your people will have to deal with the security impacts of climate change,” he said.

“So let’s do what this council was created to do and let’s show the kind of global leadership that is needed to protect the peace, the security and the stability of our nations, of our regions and of our world.”

His comments came just hours after he told an annual meeting of the National Farmers’ Union that he hoped this year would see the UK selling more “Welsh lamb” and “Aberdeen Angus beef” around the world.

French president Emmanuel Macron and the US special envoy for climate John Kerry also spoke on the need to take greater action to address the security risks posed by the climate crisis.

Mr Kerry said that the climate crisis was “indisputably” an issue for the Security Council, calling it “one of the most complex and compelling security issues that we’ve ever faced”.

“When farmers can no longer make a living because the weather is so extreme and unpredictable, they become increasingly desperate. When people already impoverished lose water and heat drives them from their homes, the embers of conflict burn brighter and faster,” he added.

However, a small number of countries, including Russia, questioned whether the climate crisis was an issue that should be discussed by the UN Security Council.

A representative for Russia said: “Climate change is one of the contemporary global changes that the world is facing ... We agree that climate change and environmental issues exacerbate conflicts, but are they really the root cause of these conflicts? There are serious doubts about this.”

The issue of how climate change could be contributing to human conflict is still an active area of research among scientists.

The most recent global assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s authority on climate science, said there was some evidence to suggest that the factors that increase the risk of violent conflict within states are sensitive to climate change, but there was still more to be learned about the possible links.

A study published in 2019 which drew on the knowledge of a range of experts concluded that “climate has affected organised armed conflict within countries”. However, the study authors added that “other drivers, such as low socioeconomic development and low capabilities of the state, are judged to be substantially more influential, and the mechanisms of climate-conflict linkages remain a key uncertainty”.

At the council meeting, representatives from the least-developed countries welcomed more discussion of the security risks posed by the climate crisis. However, they also urged developed countries to meet their existing commitments on providing financial assistance to those vulnerable to climate impacts.

Under the Paris Agreement – the global climate deal aimed at curbing global temperature rise – high-income countries pledged to provide poorer nations with $100bn (£73bn) a year by 2020 to help them both tackle and adapt to the climate crisis.

But the latest figures show that high-income countries mobilised just $78.9bn (£57bn) in climate finance in 2018.

Gaston Alphonso Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said that the security threats posed by the climate crisis were a “current reality” for small island developing states.

He told the council session: “For [small island developing states], our peace and security can be decimated on multiple fronts, sometimes at a moment’s notice – whether it be through sea level rise devouring our coastal and low-lying communities and territories … or even more severe and tropical cyclones rendering our states uninhabitable.

“There is considerable need for support from developed countries, through grant and concessional financing, capacity building and technology transfer.”

Climate crisis hits 'worst case scenario' levels – Environment Agency head

Sir James Bevan says extreme flooding in UK indicates urgent need for change if humanity is to survive

Flooding in Telford after Storm Christoph in January. Bevan said the ‘reasonable worst case’ for flood incidents had happened in the UK over the last few years. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA

Matthew Taylor
Tue 23 Feb 2021

The climate emergency is already hitting “worst case scenario” levels that if left unchecked will lead to the collapse of ecosystems, with dire consequences for humanity, according to the chief executive of the Environment Agency.

Warning that this is not “science fiction”, Sir James Bevan said on Tuesday that in recent years several of the “reasonable worst case scenarios” had happened in the UK, with more extreme weather and flooding. And he urged politicians to take action to reduce emissions and adapt to the “inevitable” impacts of the climate emergency.

Sir James Bevan: ‘Our thinking needs to change faster than the climate.’

Photograph: House of Commons/PA

“Much higher sea levels will take out most of the world’s cities, displace millions, and make much of the rest of our land surface uninhabitable or unusable,” Bevan told the annual conference of the Association of British Insurers. “Much more extreme weather will kill more people through drought, flooding, wildfires and heatwaves than most wars have.
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“The net effects will collapse ecosystems, slash crop yields, take out the infrastructure that our civilisation depends on, and destroy the basis of the modern economy and modern society.

“If [this] sounds like science fiction let me tell you something you need to know. This is that over the last few years the reasonable worst case for several of the flood incidents the EA has responded to has actually happened, and it’s getting larger.

“That is why our thinking needs to change faster than the climate. And why our response needs to match the scale of the challenge.”

Bevan’s dire warning comes nine months ahead of the Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow, where the UK will host delegates and climate experts from around the world, aiming to drive action on adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis, reduce emissions and protect and restore nature.

Bevan said that what had happened in the UK in the past few years should serve as a clear warning about the course the world was on.

The stark intervention comes amid concern about the government’s efforts to tackle the climate emergency ahead of Cop26. Its flagship programme for a green recovery is in turmoil and it has come under renewed pressure after refusing to withdraw support for a new coalmine in Cumbria.

Bevan said it was time the government – and the public – put the same effort into tackling the “unseen pandemic” of the climate emergency that they had into the fight against the Covid crisis.

“We will get the environment we pay for, we will get the climate we work for,” he added

A Major Ocean Current May Be Hurtling Towards Collapse

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation - Wikipedia

The ocean may have less time than we thought before massive, irreversible shifts take place. A new study finds that a crucial ocean system may reach its “tipping point” sooner than predicted if the rate of climate change continues at a breakneck pace.

When we talk about climate change, the concept of tipping points is basically adding fuel to the already nightmare fire. Scientists now agree that climate changes could drive crucial systems on our planet to change so much that they reach a tipping point where recovery is impossible and change is inevitable.

One of the most pressing worries scientists have when it comes to tipping points lies underwater. Specifically, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, known as the AMOC, which helps shepherd warmer water to the North Atlantic. Among other things, it helps ensure Europe has relatively mild winters given its high latitude. Messing with it could be one of the fastest ways to make not just the region’s but the world’s weather run amok.

In the new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, scientists considered not just the amount of change to the oceans that could precede a tipping point, but also the rate of change. Think of it as the difference between pouring a cup of hot water very slowly into a bucket of cold water versus dumping it in all at once. While the same amount of water is being added both times, the rate at which water is being added is quite different.

To measure the impact the rate of change may have on the AMOC, the new study ran several experiments on a global ocean model. The current has been under intense scrutiny in recent years because cold, fresh water from melting Greenland glaciers has essentially been causing the current to slow down, though not stop.

“The AMOC is at risk of collapsing when a certain level of freshwater flow into the North Atlantic from increasing ice melt in Greenland is reached,” Johannes Lohmann, one of the authors of the study, said in an email. “These tipping points have been shown previously in climate models, where meltwater is very slowly introduced into the ocean. In reality, increases in meltwater from Greenland are accelerating and cannot be considered slow.”

The study modeled the increase in freshwater flowing. Lohmann said using “a large ensemble of simulations, we systematically varied the rate of change and the ocean’s initial conditions, and investigated how the collapse of the AMOC depended on these factors.”

The models ended up showing that in some cases with a more rapid rate of change, the AMOC actually collapsed before previous predictions indicated it would. If we stick to the cup of water analogy, previous studies essentially found a full cup of hot water needed to be added to the bucket for collapse, but the new findings show dumping in the water faster means you need less than a cup to trigger the collapse. The study shows that “the safe levels of global warming before such a collapse occurs may be smaller than previously thought, and may also be difficult to predict with certainty,” Lohmann said.

This study isn’t the final word on how fast the AMOC may change. Some of the modeling Lohmann and his coauthors use may merit a closer and more critical look, Dave Sutherland, an associate professor in the department of Earth sciences at the University of Oregon, who was not involved in the study, said over email. Sutherland pointed out that the study does not account for some of the specifics of the location of freshwater in Greenland, even as the findings are “important and timely” to help determine the fate of the AMOC.

“Bottom line is I think this study is important and points out the complex dynamics inherent in our climate system,” Sutherland said. “I’m worried by the details (though I’m sure some reviewers were, too), and think there could be other climate feedbacks or unresolved processes that might change their results, if not their ultimate conclusions.”

Lohmann said that the study’s findings do need to be tested further, but pointed out that the possibility of a rapid AMOC collapse should sound an alarm bell.

“Due to the potentially increased risk of abrupt climate change in parts of the Earth system that we show in our research, it is important that policymakers keep pushing for ambitious short- and mid-term climate targets to slow down the pace of climate change, especially in vulnerable places like the Arctic,” Lohmann said.

Land Absorbs Carbon Now—But It Could Emit It in Just a Few Decades
The Earth is saving our asses right now by sucking up a large hunk of humanity’s carbon pollution.…

Disha Ravi: Indian climate activist from Greta Thunberg movement granted bail

The 22-year-old was arrested for allegedly being a ‘key conspirator’ in creating the toolkit shared by Greta Thunberg

Stuti Mishra @StutiNMishra THE INDEPENDENT

A protester demands the release of climate activist Disha Ravi after her arrest by the Delhi police in connection with a toolkit shared by Greta Thunberg
(EPA)

A Delhi court on Tuesday granted bail to a 22-year-old climate activist who was arrested in relation to a toolkit tweeted by Greta Thunberg in support of India’s months-long farmers’ protest.

Disha Ravi, one of the founders of Fridays For Future (FFF) in India, was arrested by the Delhi police on 4 February, along with two others, for allegedly editing the ‘toolkit’ shared by the Swedish activist on Twitter.

The Delhi police allege that Ms Ravi was a “key conspirator” in creating and circulating the online document, which according to them, was compiled to defame India and spread misinformation among people. They also allege that there was a connection between the toolkit and the clashes that occurred in the national capital on Republic Day.

The police also claimed that Ms Ravi had sent the toolkit to Ms Thunberg through the Telegram app, and also “coaxed her to act on it.”

The judge in his order granting bail said the decision was taken “considering the scanty and sketchy investigation,” according to Indian media reports.

“I do not find any palpable reason to breach the rule of bail for a 22-year-old girl who has absolutely no criminal antecedents,”Indian Express quoted the Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana as saying.

The charges levied by Delhi police against Ms Ravi include sedition, criminal conspiracy, spreading disaffection against the Indian state, and promoting enmity.

On February 21, the Delhi court heard the arguments from both sides before securing its judgement, where the Delhi police claimed that the toolkit“

seemed innocuous” but intended to "instigate people” and create “public disorder." The police also raised questions over the hyperlinks included in the toolkit which they said took users to websites which “defamed the Indian Army”.

The lawyer representing Ms Ravi told the court that there was no evidence against her and “having a difference of opinion does not amount to sedition.”

The publicly available toolkit, however, also did not include any mention of pro-Khalistan (Sikh separatist) groups that Delhi police is linking Ms Ravi with, along with numerous other charges, but contained reading material about why Indian farmers have been protesting against the new farm laws. It includes a call to action for steps to support farmers, including creating a Twitter storm and protesting outside Indian embassies.

Her arrest was criticised by several rights groups as baseless and an attempt to intimidate activists speaking against the government. Ms Ravi is one in a long list of activists arrested by the police under the Narendra Modi-led BJP government, which has been slapping stringent laws such as the one pertaining to sedition more often than other governments in the past.

According to Article 14‘s database, at least six sedition cases have been filed by the Indian government during the ongoing farmer’s protest. Sweeping arrests of activists also took place last year during the protests against India’s new citizenship amendment act during which 25 sedition cases were filed

India police arrest climate activist linked to Greta Thunberg movement over protests ‘toolkit’

Climate activist Disha Ravi, and India’s shrinking space for dissent

Disha Ravi: Arrested Indian climate activist pleads for police not to leak her private chats