‘BEST SUMMER EVER’ TAKES ITS TOLL ON JASON KENNEY AS ALBERTA PREMIER’S APPROVAL RATING TUMBLES

ALBERTA PREMIER JASON KENNEY IN A RECENT, MORE OPTIMISTIC, MOMENT

 (PHOTO: CHRIS SCHWARZ, GOVERNMENT OF ALBERTA).
Alberta Politics



DAVID CLIMENHAGA
POSTED ON OCTOBER 05, 2021, 1:28 AM

All of political Alberta was agog yesterday at the revelation 77 per cent of adult Albertans disapprove of Premier Jason Kenney’s leadership according to a recent online survey by ThinkHQ Public Affairs Inc.

The premier’s approval rating, which the Calgary-based polling company characterized as tumbling, has now reached 22 per cent, said ThinkHQ President Marc Henry, prompting the pollster to comment in the spirit of the pandemic moment that “Jason Kenney is a leader on life-support, and his prognosis is not good.”


ThinkHQ President Marc Henry (Photo: calgarycvo.org).

Indeed, the pandemic has plenty to do with it. “There is no doubt that COVID-19 is the origin of much of Kenney’s troubles,” Mr. Henry added, noting accurately that “in many respects, he has been the architect of his own misfortune.”

“The political gamble that was ‘The Best Summer Ever’ is now taking a punishing toll both politically for the leader and in real human costs for Albertans and the health care system,” Mr. Henry went on, to which one can only add a hearty, No Kidding!

“We have not seen a sitting premier with numbers this low in almost a decade,” Mr. Henry observed grimly on his company’s website. “Alison Redford resigned the day it was revealed her approval at the time had dropped to 18 per cent. That’s a ‘margin of error’ difference from Kenney’s results today.”

So there you have it, folks. It’s at least semi-official. Premier Kenney is now down there in Alison Redford territory and you can almost hear the whistle of the axe heading for his neck.

But at 22 per cent, I have to say I was surprised that many Albertans still approve of Mr. Kenney.

I’m not kidding. Matt Wolf and all the other United Conservative Party “issues managers” using a variety of aliases must be members of the Angus Reid Forum panel Mr. Henry used to get a number that high!

I’d bet you money the UCP’s own polling is considerably worse – at least, if they’re not so depressed they’ve stopped polling altogether.


Alberta Opposition NDP Leader and former premier Rachel Notley (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

Indeed, a Sept. 20-27 survey by EKOS pegged support for Mr. Kenney’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic at 11 per cent.

Now, you can argue that the two polls measure apples and oranges – approval of Mr. Kenney’s overall governing (very low) and approval of his efforts on the pandemic file (even lower) – but if you ask me, at this point the two questions are all but one and the same in the minds of most Albertans.

You don’t need a pollster to tell you Mr. Kenney isn’t very popular any more. All you have to do to is join a socially distanced line up for a grocery store cashier or a bank machine almost anywhere in Alberta to hear what folks have to say about our premier – which can be characterized as deep and abiding contempt.

Mr. Kenney was never an overwhelmingly popular premier, Mr. Henry noted in his commentary on the poll, which used a 1,116-member online panel and was in the field for three days from Wednesday to Friday last week.

Well, he’s even less so now. It’s worth noting that according to ThinkHQ, 61 per cent of the respondents were in the strongly disapprove category.

Perhaps worse, from the UCP perspective, Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley seems to be doing much better. “Kenney’s chief political rival … has seen public appraisals of her performance notch up slightly since July, currently sitting at 50 per cent approval (32 per cent strong approval) vs. 47 per cent disapproval (39 per cent strong).”


Former Alberta Conservative premier Alison Redford (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

And there’s no safe demographic for Mr. Kenney. City and country … Edmonton and Calgary … women and men … oldsters and young people … rich and poor … nobody much likes the guy, according to ThinkHQ.

Well, these kind of numbers add up to existential-threat territory for the UCP, so despite the fragile truce Mr. Kenney cobbled together on Sept. 22 to keep his job, various factions of the disunited party will be sharpening their knives in hopes of saving their own hides.

Unfortunately for them, what might save an MLA’s skin in vaccine-refusenik rural Alberta isn’t necessarily the same thing as what could work in vaccine-affirming Calgary.

“The UCP is an electoral creature, sewn together from two rival conservative parties primarily to unseat the NDP government,” Mr. Henry observed in his commentary. “In the face of this prolonged and punishing pandemic, the creature is tearing itself apart at the stitches.”

Indeed, it is easy to conclude that the re-animation of the Wildrose Party as a well-funded right-wing threat to the Progressive Conservatives after the 2008 provincial election has created a permanent rift in Alberta’s conservative movement never really went away.

With the NDP increasingly established in the minds of so many Albertans as the party of the sensible centre and the cautious and competent Rachel Notley still at the helm, that could be very bad news for the parties of the right.

Bell: Kenney at 22%, Alberta premier sinks in COVID quicksand

Author of the article: Rick Bell

 CALGARY SUN
Publishing date: Oct 05, 2021

Premier Jason Kenney provided an update on COVID-19 and the ongoing work to protect public health at the McDougall Centre in Calgary on Tuesday, September 28, 2021. 

PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK/POSTMEDIA
Article content

The nosecount is ugly.

Uglier than the previous ugly. The kind of ugly where you can’t talk your way out of the ugliness.


Back-against-the-wall ugly. Four-letter word ugly.

If the latest fresh-off-the-press poll by the well-respected ThinkHQ Public Affairs outfit is anything to go by, and it mirrors what a lot of folks are hearing these days, Jason Kenney is in more hurt than anybody who has had his job in the past and didn’t lose it.

Only 22% of Albertans show any approval for the premier. Only 6% show strong approval. Shortly before being frog-marched to the exit door former premier Alison Redford was at 18%.

Here are some numbers.

The Edmonton area? The approval for Kenney is 19%.

But watch this one. The Calgary area? The Calgary area, where the UCP romped in the last election, sits at 19% as well. Yikes.

The smaller cities? 25%. Northern Alberta? 24%.

It goes on. It’s painful.

Nowhere in Alberta does the man get more than 30%.

Men don’t like him. Women don’t like him. Young people don’t like him. Older people like him a little more but it’s so bad a little more is only one out of four of them.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much dough you make or much schooling you have, there is scant consolation in the arithmetic for a premier who refuses to take advice from those who might actually feel the pulse of the public better than he does.

You have to wonder what Kenney’s polls are telling him. Unless up is down and down is up on their graphs, the truth is the truth.

Or is Kenney convinced this is just a bump in the road, a big bump, but one day when COVID settles down he will emerge, leading his party to a wonderful victory?

No doubt there are the usual ring kissers and bootlickers bowing and scraping to the bossman, telling him what he wants to hear.

In the real world, disapproval of Kenney is quite the thing to see. You want strong disapproval of Kenney. That’s six out of 10 Albertans. STRONG disapproval.

You want to see more. Of course you do. Everybody wants a look at the trainwreck.

Among those who voted for Kenney’s United Conservative Party in the last election, only four in 10 back the premier’s performance.

NDP leader Rachel Notley has 3% more people approve of her than disapprove of her. That’s plus 3. 50% approve, 47% don’t.

Kenney is minus 55. Just 22% approve and 77% disapprove of him. One percentage point of those counted aren’t sure.

And how did it get this ugly?

The premier soldiering on and not even thinking he had to have a Plan B when his dream of the Best Summer Ever started turning into a nightmare and his government was missing in action.

This drove the nails deeper into his political coffin.

.

Premier Jason Kenney keeps a sharp eye on the prize as he shows off his pancake flipping skills at the annual Premier’s Stampede Breakfast in downtown Calgary on Monday, July 12, 2021. 

PHOTO BY GAVIN YOUNG/POSTMEDIA

There was a seven-point bump from April to July when COVID numbers were looking good and we were told we would be open for good.

Then it all came crashing down as Kenney fiddled and fumbled in the face of the virus. Approval dropped 16 points.

And let’s be honest. Even with all the promise of Best Summer Ever, Kenney still had only the backing of 38%.

The least popular premier. The least popular handling of COVID. Take a bow.

Yes, Kenney’s United Conservative Party was a marriage of convenience to defeat the NDP.

Mission accomplished.

Now the marriage shows signs of breaking apart and Kenney clings to power trying to put this Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Kenney was never real popular. But this is one hell of a fall from whatever grace he once may have enjoyed.

Can he ever come back?

“Jason Kenney is a leader on life support and his prognosis is not good,” says ThinkHQ’s Marc Henry.

“There is no doubt COVID is the origin of much of Kenney’s troubles but, in many respects, he has been the architect of his own misfortune.”

The full steam ahead Best Summer Ever gamble, the mixed messages on COVID, the man touted as a great leader but often not leading with confidence.

It is often said Kenney admires the British war prime minister Winston Churchill.

But, on this day and in this place and in this midst of this crisis, reality is confirmed.

It is an understatement to say he is no Winston Churchill.

rbell@postmedia.com

Leong: Alberta government offers unbelievable justification for COVID-19 inaction

Author of the article: Ricky Leong

CALGARY SUN
Publishing date:Oct 05, 2021 

Premier Jason Kenney speaks at the daily COVID-19 update with Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, on March 13, 2020. 

PHOTO BY ED KAISER /Postmedia file

Through much of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alberta officials have touted policies said to balance the need to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus against the need to promote our overall physical and mental health.

From the end of the first wave of widespread infections, provincial politicians from Premier Jason Kenney on down have made a big deal about how Alberta has been among the freest jurisdictions in the country


They’ve continually reminded us of the United Conservative government’s light hand in its attempts to keep a lid on COVID-19, and instead pushed the need for personal responsibility.

Even Alberta’s top medical official, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, would often refer to the importance of our whole health in her public remarks when asked to justify policies that sometimes seemed insufficient given the circumstances of the time.

To a degree, I understand.

It was nice to find anything resembling normalcy after the various restrictions through the first couple of waves of COVID-19.

And this year, once we started getting vaccines into people’s arms, it was a huge relief to finally worry a little less about the potential risk of being exposed to the virus and falling ill.

But now, Alberta confronts the fourth wave of COVID-19 that’s filled our hospitals and intensive-care units in a way we’ve never experienced before — and in a way that isn’t really being experienced in many other parts of the country.

This unwelcome turn of events was completely preventable, the result of the government’s continual lack of promptness in instituting useful and meaningful public health measures to minimize the spread of the coronavirus.

This will, for some, come at the expense of our general health and well-being, despite our leaders’ claims to the contrary.

The UCP government’s conspicuous absence in August, as coronavirus infections began to mount and send people to the hospital in greater numbers, was just the latest and most acute instance of their mismanagement.

Whether because of an inflexible dedication to ideology, a need to pander to a political base, a leadership vacuum, or some combination of those things, the people in charge missed the opportunity to impose even modest measures to counteract COVID-19 and prevent the world of hurt we are in now.

By the time September rolled around, the government reinstated some public health measures but insisted it would not implement a COVID-19 vaccine passport program as an extra layer of protection for non-essential businesses.

As we all know, it eventually relented and did just that — but don’t you dare call it a vaccine passport. It’s a Restrictions Exemption Program.

And the government never took the time to prepare for it, either.

Other large provinces have had fully functional proof of vaccination programs for weeks and months as part of their successful efforts to keep COVID-19 at bay.

Meanwhile, in Alberta, we went from nothing, to easily forged vaccine certificates, to QR codes with no ability to scan them.

All the while, business owners are going through the unnecessary stress of having to keep up with a government that can’t keep up with the virus.

Parents are worried about younger kids tracking COVID-19 home from school while the government isn’t tracking COVID-19 in schools at all.

People needing medical care for what would normally be urgent issues must wait as the system makes room for people who’ve become severely ill but, ultimately, wouldn’t have become sick at all had the right government policies been in place.

And the government dares to tell us their COVID-19 decisions were to preserve our mental health and general well-being?

It’s just one more excuse to add to the heap of unbelievable justifications for the government’s inaction.

rleong@postmedia.com

Jason Kenney’s Lethal Negligence
His decisions have led to hundreds of deaths. Who will hold him accountable?

Andrew Nikiforuk 1 Oct 2021 | TheTyee.ca
Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney: Do his COVID-19 policies meet the test of ‘wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons’? Photo via Wikimedia.

In the last two weeks, the political decisions of the Kenney government have helped kill 192 Albertans with the Delta variant.

That’s more deaths than Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario and the Northwest Territories combined.

In just two days last week, the Kenney government contributed to the deaths of 64 citizens in Alberta’s overwhelmed hospitals.

If the pace continues, that’s the equivalent of four Humboldt bus crashes every two days.
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In the last month, the Kenney government’s laissez-faire policies saw 307 people buried compared to 24 COVID deaths last September.

For the record, this September was the third deadliest month of a pandemic in Alberta. Worse is on its way.

Since the province lifted all public health measures (everything from contract tracing to masks and school reporting), those decisions by Kenney have led to the deaths of nearly 500 people.

Alberta, along with Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan, now own COVID-19 death rates (4.5 a day) that are three times greater than the rest of the country (1.5 a day).

Let me describe for a moment what this process looks like in graphic terms.

It begins with struggling for air. As the body’s oxygen level plummets, the patient enters the ICU for ventilation. Next comes intubation, a Foley catheter and rectal tube. Then the kidneys fail as the body swells with fluids. Blood clots and skin sloughing come next. The lucky get to say goodbye to their loved ones by cell phone. The whole horrific process may take six weeks.

But deaths only capture a fraction of the scale of the disaster. Thousands of Albertans with Long COVID; thousands of surgeries cancelled; thousands of burned-out health-care workers; thousands of infected children and overflowing pediatric wards.

And the entirely preventable horror goes on and on.

There is only one reason for the province’s new Death Advantage: the choices made by Premier Jason Kenney, his cabinet and chief medical officer of health.

Kenney, a fast-talking ideologue, has followed the same “personal freedom” path played by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Last July that notorious Republican politician removed all public health measures for ideological reasons. By doing so he turned Florida’s hospital system, like Alberta’s, into a battlefield.

Since then, DeSantis ideology of slamming mask and vaccine mandates and trivializing the pandemic has killed more than 1,000 people a day.


Bestselling author Don Winslow was so appalled by Desantis’s disastrous leadership, he made a video on the public slaughter.

The video went viral. It explains that the Vietnam War killed 58,000 soldiers. But thanks to the neglect of DeSantis, COVID-19 will kill more people than that in Florida.

Alberta is not as populated as Florida, but Kenney’s decisions are having a Desantis-like impact. They may well destroy the province’s public health-care system.

Canada’s Criminal Code defines criminal negligence as anybody, who in discharging or failing to do their duties imposed by law, shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons.

In my view, that’s what Kenney, his cabinet and chief medical officer Deena Hinshaw have repeatedly done since July 1.

On that date they withdrew all public health measures too rapidly in the province with the nation’s lowest vaccination rates as the Delta variant began to surge.

Experts warned that the province was building a fourth wave.

Kenney ignored the best evidence on Delta transmission rates; denied the vulnerable state of unvaccinated children; neglected the importance of good ventilation in schools and workplaces; and downgraded the importance of masks.

He recklessly declared the pandemic over.

His government then attacked critics of its horrendously misguided policies including public health experts such as Amir Attaran, Joe Vipond and Lorian Hardcastle.

Every time Kenney now appears before the media, he engages in a reprehensible game of manipulation. He repeatedly blames, for example, the province’s full ICU units on the unvaccinated. Yet the premier and Hinshaw had three months to address the province’s low vaccination rates in central and northern Alberta. They patently ignored that sociological and anthropological challenge.

Instead, they pretended that “personal responsibility” and “choice” was a public health measure. It isn’t, and never will be.

“In a time of crisis — war, depression, natural disaster, health pandemic — an ideology that emphasizes the individual, the market and small government does not work,” is the reality recently acknowledged by political scientist Duane Bratt of Calgary’s Mount Royal University.

Yet Hinshaw said it was time to live with the virus while the premier vanished, apparently to Europe.

As a direct and immediate consequence, Kenney’s government abetted exponential viral growth. It made inevitable a fourth wave turned tsunami.

That predictable explosion has now killed hundreds of people, exhausted health-care workers and placed Albertans with cancer and other medical conditions in harm’s way. I call that criminal negligence.

To understand what removing all the public health measures really meant last July, consider this blunt analogy. A murderous drug cartel threatens a peaceful community.

The police do their job, make arrests and protect public safety. But then along comes Kenney. He removes the police, the courts and community helpers all in one fell swoop, promising “the best summer ever.” And then the killing begins.

And yet Kenney recently compared Alberta’s woes to COVID peaks in other provinces as just normal routine stuff.

“It is important to note that we are not the only province to have gone through such a challenging period during COVID,” he said.

Rubbish. Those peaks, also the product of negligent conservative governments, occurred long before the vaccines arrived.

Now Kenney is again getting the best advice — and rejecting it. He says he won’t introduce a “circuit breaker” lockdown to slow down transmission of the virus, as recommended by the Canadian Medical Association, because 20 per cent of the population won’t follow the rules.



Sorry, Not Sorry! Jason Kenney’s COVID-19 Disaster

READ MORE

That’s like saying we won’t have laws against homicide because a percentage of the population won’t follow them.

In normal times, a premier that has failed his people and province so spectacularly would resign. Not in today’s Alberta.

Kenney has refused to step down.

Nor does Kenney’s cowered and complicit party have the guts or courage to force the bully out.

Nor does the province’s sheepish media. They belatedly express shock at the rising toll but fail to demand Kenney pay for his actions. Their pulled punches make them accomplices. (Some notable exceptions include Markham Hislop, Robson Fletcher and Graham Thomson.)

That leaves the hard work to Albertans. They have two choices. They can serve as accomplices to the destruction of their province, or they can exercise their civic duties and daily call for the resignation of Jason Kenney.

The dying won’t stop, and the pandemic won’t end until the chaos maker goes.

Squid Game & The Rise Of Anti-Capitalist Entertainment

Laura Pitcher 5 hrs ago

At this point, if you haven’t watched Squid Game, chances are you’ve had it recommended to you countless times. The Korean drama is quickly becoming one of the most watched foreign language productions of all time and is currently the top show on Netflix in 90 countries. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has hypothesized that it might be their biggest show ever and a South Korean broadband firm has even sued Netflix after the intense traffic surge from the show.

So what is it about the gore-filled survival show – where cash-strapped contestants quite literally fight until death in childhood games for money while rich VIPs watch – that has captivated a gigantic audience globally? Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s barely fiction at all. Squid Game perfectly mirrors our social realities, exploring themes like class struggle and economic anxieties through one dramatic competition.

Squid Game follows a series of movies and television shows that have gained success recently for their critiques of capitalist society, including Korean smash-hit Parasite in 2019, co-written and directed by Bong Joon Ho. US satire Sorry to Bother You was also a critical success in 2018, proving a sustained thirst for anticapitalist entertainment.

This comes as little surprise when considering the growing shift away from capitalism in recent years, exacerbated by the financial struggles that arose during the global pandemic. It’s why people like Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have risen to political stardom and socialism is officially part of the zeitgeist.

In an era where it’s cool to hate capitalism, the entertainment that critiques it has become cooler than ever. But does that amount to political progress? Anti-imperialist organizer Rhamier Balagoon for the Black Alliance for Peace says not. “Under capitalism, anything can become a commodity and ultimately de-radicalized,” they told Refinery29. “Hollywood, through corporate America, makes room for these performative gestures that allow people to romanticize the idea of resistance against a violent system.”

Balagoon is yet to watch Squid Game but sees the rise of anticapitalist entertainment as a way for liberals to dip a toe into seemingly radical discourse without taking part in organizing. Billionaire Jeff Bezos recently proved this point with a tweet saying he “can’t wait” to watch the show. The irony is not lost on many that Bezos’ own workers operate in often unsafe and poor working conditions.

Another indication that the radically anticapitalist messaging of Squid Game has gone over the heads of people is that many viewers are walking away from the show with the notion that the characters in the game “chose to be there,” despite them all coming from a place of poverty and life-threatening debt. This captures just how far we are from breaking down the current illusion of free will in a capitalist society; one of the show’s beloved characters, Ji-yeong, reveals that she has just been released from prison for killing her abusive father before entering the game.

“The idea of free will has very effectively been weaponized by white supremacist capitalism to gaslight people into believing that they are responsible for the shitty circumstances that capitalism puts them in,” says Bobo Matjila, online philosopher and co-host of the Bobo and Flex podcast. “A society that believes in free will also implicitly believes that everyone is responsible for their circumstances and material conditions despite how much they’ve been marginalized and oppressed by said society.”

CLASS CONCIOUSNESS IS UNDERSTANDING;

'WE ARE CAPITALISM' 

Balagoon agrees, saying that every person is still currently forced to participate in capitalism. “There’s no real way that we can opt out of it aside from a revolution that we can actually overturn the system,” they say. “You can be as anticapitalist as you want but at the end of the day you still need to wake up and go to work.”

To give due credit to Squid Game writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk (who wrote the show in 2009 but was rejected by studios for 10 years and had to sell his laptop at one point due to financial struggles), much of the anticapitalist messaging seems to have been watered down in the English translation. In a viral Tiktok, Youngmi Mayer, co-host of the Feeling Asian podcast, explains that English-language viewers lost many nuances in crucial scenes like the marble scene in episode six, titled “Gganbu.” In the current English translation, Oh Il-nam says: “We share everything.” In Korean he says: “There’s no ownership between me and you.” It’s worth also noting that many translators are underpaid and overworked, which is why Mayer says “it’s the fault of the producers.”

Translation issues aside, the popularity of Squid Game, two years after Parasite, shows that anticapitalist entertainment is going nowhere, nor should it. New releases shouldn’t, however, be interpreted as progress that we haven’t yet made.

“As good as these shows are, I don’t think any of them are effective in shifting viewpoints because these shows are descriptive but not prescriptive,” says Matjila. “They do a great job of describing the horrors of existing under late-stage capitalism but they don’t do very much as far as prescribing a solution for these horrors.” As a result, Matjila says, we risk coming away from these shows feeling more politically active than we are.

Simply put, we should all continue to enjoy Squid Game and other similar shows that follow. We’re largely enjoying them because they’re so relatable. However, we should also be aware that anticapitalism is being remarketed to us by the billionaires at Netflix. And really, by watching the show, are we any better than the VIPs who lap up the entertainment? Perhaps that’s the most disturbing twist of all.

PREHISTORIC WATER BABIES
Tiny rare fossil found in 16 million-year-old amber is 'once-in-a-generation' find
By Ashley Strickland, CNN 2 hrs ago

Microscopic tardigrades have thrived on Earth for more than 500 million years, and may well outlive humans, but the tiny creatures don't leave behind many fossils.

© Holly Sullivan/Harvard/NJIT

 This is an artistic reconstruction of microscopic tardigrades that are often found living in moss.

Hiding in plain sight, the third-ever tardigrade fossil on record has been found suspended within a piece of 16-million-year-old Dominican amber.

The find includes a newly named species, Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus, as a relative of the modern living family of tardigrades known as Isohypsibioidea. It's the first tardigrade fossil from the Cenozoic, our current geological era that began 66 million years ago.

The study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Beneath a microscope, tiny tardigrades look like water bears. Although they are commonly found in water -- and at times, serving as the nemesis in "Ant-Man and the Wasp" -- tardigrades are known for their ability to survive and even thrive in the most extreme environments.

These tiny, pudgy animals are no longer than one millimeter. They have eight legs with claws at the end, a brain and central nervous system, and something sucker-like called a pharynx behind their mouth that can pierce food. Tardigrades are the smallest-known animal with legs.

All of these details are incredibly well preserved in the new fossil specimen, down to its tiny claws.

"The discovery of a fossil tardigrade is truly a once-in-a-generation event," said Phil Barden, senior author of the study and assistant professor of biology at New Jersey Institute of Technology, in a statement.

"What is so remarkable is that tardigrades are a ubiquitous ancient lineage that has seen it all on Earth, from the fall of the dinosaurs to the rise of terrestrial colonization of plants," Barden said. "Yet, they are like a ghost lineage for paleontologists with almost no fossil record. Finding any tardigrade fossil remains is an exciting moment where we can empirically see their progression through Earth history."

The fossil allowed researchers to see evolutionary aspects that aren't present in modern tardigrades, which means they can understand how they've changed over millions of years.

At first, the researchers didn't even notice the tardigrade was trapped in the piece of amber.

"It's a faint speck in amber," said Barden. "In fact, Pdo. chronocaribbeus was originally an inclusion hidden in the corner of an amber piece with three different ant species that our lab had been studying, and it wasn't spotted for months."

© Phillip Barden /Harvard/NJIT 

This 16-million-year-old Dominican amber includes a tardigrade fossil as well as three ants, a beetle and a flower.

Close observational analysis helped the researchers determine where the new species belongs on the tardigrade family tree.

"The fact that we had to rely on imaging techniques usually reserved for cellular and molecular biology shows how challenging it is to study fossil tardigrades," said Javier Ortega-Hernández, study coauthor and assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, in a statement. "We hope that this work encourages colleagues to look more closely at their amber samples with similar techniques to better understand these cryptic organisms."

The new species is the first definitive fossil for the modern Isohypsibioidea family of tardigrades found across both marine and land environments today.

"We are just scratching the surface when it comes to understanding living tardigrade communities, especially in places like the Caribbean where they've not been surveyed," said Barden. "This study provides a reminder that, for as little as we may have in the way of tardigrade fossils, we also know very little about the living species on our planet today."

Tardigrades can tolerate extremes better than most forms of life -- like surviving five mass extinction events on Earth -- and some recently traveled to the International Space Station. It's not the first time tardigrades have gone to space -- and there may even be some of them on the moon after a mission carrying them crashed into its surface.

The tiny animals are related to arthropods and have a deep origin during the Cambrian Explosion, when multiple species of animals suddenly appear in Earth's fossil record, 541 million years ago. More tardigrade fossils could be hiding within other pieces of amber that have already been studied -- researchers just have to look close enough and have the expertise of what they're looking for when it comes to microscopic fossils.

And tardigrades could outlive humans. It's because they would be largely unaffected by things that could potentially spell doom for Earth and human life in the future, like asteroids, supernovae or gamma ray bursts. As long as the world's oceans don't boil away, tardigrades will live on.

© Ninon Robin/Harvard/NJIT 

This is a close-up view of the newly discovered taridgrade species trapped in amber.

Ancient Indonesian woman reshapes views on spread of early humans

By Rahman Muchtar and Heru Asprihanto

© Reuters/STRINGER 

Archaelogists visit the Leang Panninge cave during a research for ancient stones in Maros regency

MAROS, Indonesia (Reuters) - Genetic traces in the body of a young woman who died 7,000 years ago furnish the first clue that mixing between early humans in Indonesia and those from faraway Siberia took place much earlier than previously thought.

© Reuters/STRINGER Parts of Besse's ancient skeleton unearthed from Leang Paningge are pictured at archaeological laboratory of Hasanuddin University in Makassar

Theories about early human migration in Asia could be transformed by the research https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03823-6 published in the scientific journal Nature in August, after analysis of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), or the genetic fingerprint, of the woman who was given a ritual burial in an Indonesian cave.

© Reuters/STRINGER

 Iwan Sumantri describes part of Besse's ancient skeleton that was unearthed from Leang Paningge

"There is the possibility that the Wallacea region could have been a meeting point of two human species, between the Denisovans and early homo sapiens," said Basran Burhan, an archaeologist from Australia's Griffith University.

Burhan, one of the scientists who participated in the research, was referring to the region of Indonesia that includes South Sulawesi, where the body, buried with rocks in its hands and on the pelvis, was found in the Leang Pannige cave complexes.

The Denisovans were a group of ancient humans named after a cave in Siberia where their remains were first identified in 2010 and scientists understand little about them, even details of their appearance.

The DNA from Besse, as the researchers named the young woman in Indonesia, using the term for a new born baby girl in the regional Bugis language, is one of the few well-preserved specimens found in the tropics.

It showed she descended from the Austronesian people common to Southeast Asia and Oceania but with the inclusion of a small Denisovan portion, the scientists said.

"Genetic analyses show that this pre-Neolithic forager... represents a previously unknown divergent human lineage," they said in the paper.

Since scientists have until recently thought North Asian people such as the Denisovans only arrived in Southeast Asia about 3,500 years ago, Besse's DNA changes theories about patterns of early human migration.

The discovery may also offer insights into the origins of Papuans and Indigenous Australian people who share Denisovan DNA.

"Theories about migration will change, as theories about race will also change," said Iwan Sumantri, a lecturer at Hasanuddin University in South Sulawesi, who is also involved in the project.

Besse's remains provide the first sign of Denisovans among Austronesians, who are Indonesia's oldest ethnic grouping, he added.

"Now try to imagine how they spread and distributed their genes for it to reach Indonesia," Sumantri said.

(Writing by Christian Schmollinger; Editing by Richard Pullin and Clarence Fernandez)

2,700-year-old toilet found in Jerusalem was a rare luxury

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli archaeologists have found a rare ancient toilet in Jerusalem dating back more than 2,700 years, when private bathrooms were a luxury in the holy city, authorities said Tuesday.

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Israeli Antiquities Authority said the smooth, carved limestone toilet was found in a rectangular cabin that was part of a sprawling mansion overlooking what is now the Old City. It was designed for comfortable sitting, with a deep septic tank dug underneath.

“A private toilet cubicle was very rare in antiquity, and only a few were found to date," said Yaakov Billig, the director of the excavation.

“Only the rich could afford toilets," he said, adding that a famed rabbi once suggested that to be wealthy is “to have a toilet next to his table.”

Animal bones and pottery found in the septic tank could shed light on the lifestyle and diet of people living at that time, as well as ancient diseases, the antiquities authority said.

The archaeologists found stone capitals and columns from the era, and said there was evidence of a nearby garden with orchards and aquatic plants — more evidence that those living there were quite wealthy.

The Associated Press

USA

Pipeline developer charged over systematic contamination


The corporate developer of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline system that takes natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale gas field to an export terminal near Philadelphia was charged criminally on Tuesday after a grand jury concluded that it flouted Pennsylvania environmental laws and fouled waterways and residential water supplies across hundreds of miles

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced the sprawling case at a news conference at Marsh Creek State Park in Downingtown, where Sunoco Pipeline LP spilled thousands of gallons of drilling fluid last year. The spill, during construction of the troubled Mariner East 2 pipeline, contaminated wetlands, a stream and part of a 535-acre lake.

Energy Transfer, Sunoco's owner, faces 48 criminal charges, most of them for illegally releasing industrial waste at 22 sites in 11 counties across the state. A felony count accuses the operator of willfully failing to report spills to state environmental regulators.

Shapiro said Energy Transfer ruined the drinking water of at least 150 families statewide. He released a grand jury report that includes testimony from numerous residents who accused Energy Transfer of denying responsibility for the contamination and then refusing to help.

The Texas-based pipeline giant was charged for “illegal behavior that related to the construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline that polluted our lakes, our rivers and our water wells and put Pennsylvania’s safety at risk,” said Shapiro, speaking with Marsh Creek Lake behind him.

Messages were sent to Energy Transfer seeking comment. The company has previously said it intends to defend itself.

The company faces a fine if convicted, which Shapiro said was not a sufficient punishment. He called on state lawmakers to toughen penalties on corporate violators, and said the state Department of Environmental Protection — which spent freely on outside lawyers for its own employees during the attorney general's investigation — had failed to conduct appropriate oversight.

In a statement, DEP said it has been “consistent in enforcing the permit conditions and regulations and has held Sunoco LP accountable.” The agency said it would review the charges “and determine if any additional actions are appropriate at this time.”

Residents who live near the pipeline and some state lawmakers said Mariner East should be shut down entirely in light of the criminal charges, but the administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has long ignored such calls to pull the plug.

The August 2020 spill at Marsh Creek was among a series of mishaps that has plagued Mariner East since construction began in 2017. Early reports put the spill at 8,100 gallons, but the grand jury heard evidence the actual loss was up to 28,000 gallons. Parts of the lake are still off-limits.

“This was a major incident, but understand, it wasn’t an isolated one. This happened all across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said Shapiro, a Democrat who plans to run for governor next year. He said that spills of drilling fluid were “frequent and damaging and largely unreported.”

The pipeline developer continued to rack up civil violations even after Mariner East became one of the most penalized projects in state history. To date, DEP said Energy Transfer has paid more than $20 million in fines for polluting waterways and drinking water wells, including a $12.6 million fine in 2018 that was one of the largest ever imposed by the agency. State regulators have periodically shut down construction.

But environmental activists and homeowners who assert their water has been fouled say that fines and shutdown orders have not forced Sunoco to clean up its act. They have been demanding revocation of Mariner East’s permits.

Carrie Gross, who has been living with the roar of Mariner East construction in her densely packed Exton neighborhood all day, six days a week, for much of the last four years, fears that criminal charges will be just as ineffectual as DEP's civil penalties.

“I would say this is just another example of Energy Transfer paying to pollute, and that’s part of their cost of doing business. Until somebody permanently halts this project, our environment and our lives continue to be in danger,” Gross said.

The dental hygienist lives about 100 feet from the pipelines and works about 50 feet from them. She said she worries about the persistent threat of sinkholes, a catastrophic rupture or an explosion even after construction is over.

Shapiro’s news conference was originally rescheduled for Monday, but was abruptly postponed after the state environmental agency provided last-minute information to the attorney general’s office. The new information led to the filing of two additional charges, Shapiro said.

Energy Transfer acknowledged in a recent earnings report that the attorney general has been looking at “alleged criminal misconduct” involving Mariner East. The company said in the document it was cooperating but that “it intends to vigorously defend itself.”

The various criminal probes into Mariner East have also consumed DEP, which has spent about $1.57 million on outside criminal defense lawyers for its employees between 2019 and 2021, according to invoices obtained by The Associated Press.

The money was paid to five separate law firms representing dozens of DEP employees who dealt with Mariner East. Together, the firms submitted more than 130 invoices related to Mariner East investigations, performing legal work such as reviewing subpoenas and preparing clients to testify, the documents show.

When Mariner East construction permits were approved in 2017, environmental advocacy groups accused the Wolf administration of violating the law and warned pipeline construction would unleash massive and irreparable damage to Pennsylvania’s environment and residents.

“If we have a system where ... the punishment, the fines, are basically seen as just a price of doing business, then we’ll continue to have violations in the commonwealth,” said David Masur, executive director of Philadelphia-based PennEnvironment.

State officials “have a huge stick they could wield," he added. “Maybe they just have to stop hesitating and use it.”

The Mariner East pipeline system transports propane, ethane and butane from the enormous Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale gas fields in western Pennsylvania to a refinery processing center and export terminal in Marcus Hook, outside Philadelphia.

Energy Transfer also operates the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which went into service in 2017 after months of protests by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others during its construction.

Michael Rubinkam, The Associated Press

SASKATCHEWAN
Let it burn policy does not work for Chiefs


The Chiefs of both Red Earth and Shoal Lake Cree Nations have said the province is not taking enough action on two fires that are filling their communities with smoke and causing evacuations.

Both Marcel Head and Fabian Head said that the government needs to treat the fires near their communities the same as they did the fires near Prince Albert and Smeaton earlier this summer. Both Chiefs flew over the Pasquia Hills and the Crackling Fire on October 4 with the Public Safety Agency.

“There was absolutely no machinery, no crews, no aircraft, no air tankers fighting the blaze. There was something obviously wrong,” said Marcel Head, Chief of the Shoal Lake Cree Nation. “We will find out what the problem is. If the premier is listening, we’re telling the province to get their act together and put some resources and put some manpower and heavy equipment into our area and fight these fires.”

He stated that the province has opted to let some fires burn but the communities most impacted need to be included in the discussions.

The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency says that is not the case and that the Chiefs may not have seen the work that is being done because of either the smoke or the decision of the pilot not to fly near the head of the fire, where the resources are deployed.

“The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) is responding to several fires in the area near Hudson Bay, Sask., including Red Earth Cree Nation and Shoal Lake Cree Nation, by recalling and redeploying crews from across the province and attacking the fire with tanker, helicopter and ground crews,” said Christopher Clemett, acting executive director of the Agency, on October 5. “Crews have also been redeployed to address smaller fire starts in the area in order to prevent them from growing into larger fires.”

He also said that some of those crews are from the evacuated area.

“Currently, four Type 2 crews (including three from Red Earth Cree Nation and Shoal Lake Cree Nation) have been deployed on fires in this area. Additional Type 3 firefighters from Shoal Lake have been hired for these fires. Weyerhaeuser forestry staff and equipment have also been assisting with fire response efforts,” stated Clemett.

Both Chiefs, however, say they have had difficulty in communicating with the province and see a difference in the action taken when a community such as Prince Albert has a fire nearby and their communities.

“This let it burn policy won’t work for our people,” said Fabian Head. “Our hunting lands, our ancestral lands are at stake. Our trapping lands are at stake.”

Both Chiefs say they are serious about the threat to their communities and that it needs to be dealt with.

“At what point do you declare a real state of emergency where you have to call upon the Canadian armed forces to come put out these fires,” asked Marcel. “We’re that serious. We can’t rely on the policy that tells us, let it burn. We’re not going to allow that. We’re going to make sure that these fires are attended to properly.”

“If there’s any resources out there that we can utilize, we’ll put out the fire ourselves if it comes to that,” he said.

For its part, the SPSA says it has a protocol on how it responds to fires and starts by evaluating their ability to meet their protection objectives, it identifies values that are at immediate or potential risk, makes sure it is safe to respond and then provides a response that will minimize the impact. It also says it does not have a let it burn policy.

Some members of the Red Earth community have been evacuated since Thursday, Sept 30, including the elderly, those with chronic conditions such as asthma and mothers with young children.

Many of them are in Prince Albert but some are in Nipawin and others in Tisdale.

Fabian Head said that Red Earth evacuated four chartered bus loads numbering over 200 people on Oct. 5 and others left the community by driving.

“We were getting calls throughout the weekend from our members saying they were having difficulties with the smoke,” Fabian said.

Finding hotels for evacuees has been difficult first with COVID and vaccination requirements by some hotels. People want to go home, Marcel said, but band officials are asking them to stay put until the situation is safer.

The bands knew, along with the province, that the Bell fire had been burning near Hudson Bay all summer long but cooler weather in August slowed its growth. That has changed and the weather for the last few weeks has been warm and dry.

Of more immediate concern are the fire in the Pasquia Hills and the Crackling Fire, both of which are nearer to the two communities and the Chiefs say some of the decisions are having a negative impact now.

“Because the fire season was coming to a close, the crews were told to slow down or stop fighting and now we’re in this situation because of those decisions as well, where we’re not included,” Fabian said. “We need to work together with the federal and provincial governments in terms of mitigation and prevention of some of these disasters.”

Marcel said that Shoal Lake has been communicating with the Hudson Bay fire base all summer, trying to assess the situation.

“It’s always the same thing; we have limited resources, limited equipment and limited manpower to fight these fires,” he said of the provincial response.

“We saw the smoke that was coming out of the Pasquia Hills throughout the summer,” said Marcel. “We tried to contact the fire base in Hudson Bay but it’s always the same thing and there was just lip service that they’ve been doing up to this point.”

Both Chiefs point out that the resources were not limited when fires were burning near the edge of Prince Albert in May and north of Smeaton in July and August.

The Bell fire is very large and Fabian is worried that the smoke will linger as the fire will not be able to be extinguished for weeks at the earliest.

Given the poor quality of housing on reserve, the two Chiefs say that the province needs to also consider that more smoke seeps into homes with inferior windows and doors.

Another concern is the proximity of the fires to the two points of egress, Highways 55 and Nine.

The fire is four kilometres from Hwy. 55 and nine to 12 kilometres from Highway 9.

“Both sides of the access is going to be cut off pretty soon if nobody tends to those fires on our side of the fire,” said Marcel. “It’s up to the province to see this as a serious matter and we’re waiting for their action.”

Susan McNeil, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Prince Albert Daily Herald

THE SMOKE HAS TRAVELED TO EDMONTON WHERE IT IS A THICK HAZE 

Air Quality Advisory

from Tue. 5, 6:16 PM MDT to Wed. 6, 7:59 AM MDT

special air quality statement in effect

Smoke from a wildfire near Hudson Bay, SK is causing elevated values of fine particulate matter in parts of Alberta.

Poor air quality and reduced visibility may continue through tonight for some areas.

###

Individuals may experience symptoms such as increased coughing, throat irritation, headaches or shortness of breath. Children, seniors, and those with cardiovascular or lung disease, such as asthma, are especially at risk.

People with lung diseases, such as asthma and COPD, can be particularly sensitive to air pollution. They will generally experience more serious health effects at lower levels. Pollution can aggravate their diseases, leading to increased medication use, doctor and emergency room visits, and hospital visits.

For more information please visit Alberta Health Services at www.albertahealthservices.ca/news/air.aspx.

Visit www.airhealth.ca for information on how to reduce your health risk and your personal contribution to pollution levels, as well as for current and forecast AQHI values.

Please continue to monitor alerts and forecasts issued by Environment Canada.

If you or those in your care are exposed to wildfire smoke, consider taking extra precautions to reduce your exposure. Wildfire smoke is a constantly-changing mixture of particles and gases which includes many chemicals that can harm your health. For more details, please consult www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/air-quality-health-index/wildfire-smoke.html.

COACHING IS ABUSE
Football Australia to investigate sexual harassment claims

Issued on: 05/10/2021 -

Australian footballer Lisa De Vanna -- seen here in 2015 -- has said she was sexually harassed and bullied during her career

 ELSA GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Sydney (AFP)

Football Australia pledged Wednesday to investigate historic allegations of sexual harassment in the women's game raised by former members of the national team.

Star striker Lisa De Vanna, who earned 150 caps for Australia before her retirement last month, said she was regularly subject to predatory behaviour early in her career.

Her claims come as allegations of sexual misconduct and abusive behaviour are roiling the top US professional women's football league, with the US Soccer Federation naming a former federal prosecutor to lead an investigation.

"Have I been sexually harassed? Yes. Have I been bullied? Yes. Ostracised? Yes. Have I seen things that have made me uncomfortable? Yes," the 36-year-old De Vanna told Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

"In any sporting organisation and in any environment, grooming, preying and unprofessional behaviour makes me sick."

De Vanna said incidents included being propositioned in the changing room showers and teammates pulling her down and "dry humping" her.

She said she was a teenager at the time and did not know how to handle the situation but had broken her silence because "it is still happening across all levels and it's time to speak up".

De Vanna's former manager Rose Garofano said she told the then-governing body Soccer Australia and was assured the issues would be dealt with in-house.

Another ex-player, Rhali Dobson, said she was also harassed as a youngster.

"A lot of it is pushed under the rug. It was a case of grooming when I first came on the scene," she told the Telegraph.

Football Australia, which took over running the sport in 2005, said it was unaware of the specific allegations raised by De Vanna but would investigate if she and Dobson lodged formal complaints.

The governing body said it was working with Sport Integrity Australia to set up an independent inquiry looking at the broader issue of historic abuse allegations.

"We have... been engaging with Sport Integrity Australia to develop an additional process for independently investigating allegations of a historical nature as they relate to former players and staff -- such as Lisa and Rhali," it said.

"We will announce the joint initiative with SIA once the details have been finalised."

Football Australia's move comes after independent reviews found evidence of toxic culture and abuse in women's gymnastics and hockey.

Swimming Australia this year set up an independent panel to investigate issues relating to women and girls, while admitting "unacceptable behaviour" dating back decades.

© 2021 AFP

US Olympian Morgan slams NWSL's handling of sexual harassment claims

Issued on: 05/10/2021 -

Paul Riley was fired as coach of the North Carolina Courage last week 

Maddie Meyer GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File
Los Angeles (AFP)

US national team star Alex Morgan on Monday blasted the North America's top professional women's soccer league for not doing more to protect players over the last decade from sexual harassment by some of its coaches.

Morgan's comments come in the wake of The Athletic's reporting last week detailing alleged sexual misconduct by former National Women's Soccer League coach Paul Riley, spanning multiple teams and leagues since 2010.

Morgan was speaking on NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday where she was joined by two players, Mana Shim and Sinead Farrelly, who previously played for Riley and went on record with allegations against him.

"I'm here to support Mana and Sinead and to continue to amplify their voices, and just show the systemic failure from the league and how wrong they did in handling Mana's case and complaint and investigation and where they failed Mana and Sinead, and probably many other women," said Morgan, who won a gold medal with the US Olympic team in 2012.

"When I look back, I tried to be as good a friend and teammate as possible to Mana in helping her file a complaint, when at the time there was no anti-harassment policy in place, there was no league HR, there was no anonymous hotline, there was no way to report.

"We've now started to put these things in place, by demand of players, not by the league being proactive. Something we ask is for the league to start being proactive, not reactive. We're asking for transparency."

Farrelly, who played for Riley at three different teams, accused the coach of "sexual coercion" while he was her coach at the Philadelphia Independence.

Riley went on to become the coach of the North Carolina Courage after the Portland Thorns sacked him. The Courage fired Riley last week.

In the fallout from the allegations, NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird resigned last week from her job.

The league had also postponed a number of weekend matches but said Tuesday that the schedule would continue going forward.

Shim said Tuesday that Riley destroyed their careers.

"He's a predator. He sexually harassed me, he sexually coerced Sinead, and he took away our careers," Shim said. "From early on, there was a possession not just from Paul but from the team that I was playing for.

"They silenced me for multiple issues, my sexuality being the most important one, and, yeah, I was just very, very uncomfortable the whole time."

In a statement to The Athletic, Riley denied wrongdoing, describing the allegations as "completely untrue."

"I have never had sex with, or made sexual advances towards these players," he told the website.

The league's player's union, the NWSLPA, has said that "systemic abuse" was "plaguing the NWSL."

The NWSL announced Sunday it had retained a lawyer to oversee a number of investigations.

US Soccer and FIFA have also said they would launch investigations into the matter.

© 2021 AFP

Trio win physics Nobel for work deciphering chaotic climate

Niklas Pollard and Ludwig Burger and Simon Johnson
Tue, October 5, 2021

In this article:

* 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics goes to three scientists

* Their work improved understanding of changing climate

* World Meteorological Organization hails decision (Adds Manabe, Hasselmann comments, background)


By Niklas Pollard, Ludwig Burger and Simon Johnson

STOCKHOLM, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Japanese-born American Syukuro Manabe, German Klaus Hasselmann and Italian Giorgio Parisi won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for work that helps understand complex physical systems such as Earth's changing climate.

In a decision hailed by the U.N. weather agency as a sign of a consensus forming around man-made global warming, one half of the 10-million Swedish crown ($1.15-million) prize goes in equal parts to Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, for modelling earth’s climate and reliably predicting global warming.

The other half goes to Parisi for discovering in the early 1980s "hidden rules" behind seemingly random movements and swirls in gases or liquids, which can also be applied to aspects of neuroscience, machine learning and starling flight formations.

"Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement. "Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes."

Hasselmann, who is at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, told Reuters from his home that he did not want to wake up from what he described as a beautiful dream.

"I am retired, you know, and have been a bit lazy lately. I am happy about the honour. The research continues," he said.

The Academy said Manabe, who works at Princeton University in the United States, had laid the foundation in the 1960s for today's understanding of Earth's climate after moving to the United States from Japan to continue his research.

"In the context of the competition of the Cold War era, America in the 1960s was putting a tremendous amount of effort into scientific research," he said in an interview with Japanese broadcaster NHK after learning of his award.

"Being invited to America was my good fortune, rapid development in electronic calculators was also my good fortune, and so with an accumulation of good fortune I am here today."

Hasselmann, the Academy said, had developed models about 10 years later that became instrumental in proving that mankind's carbon dioxide emissions cause rising temperatures in the atmosphere.

Parisi, who dialled into the media briefing announcing the winners, was asked for his message to world leaders due to meet for U.N. climate change talks in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31.

"I think it is very urgent that we take real and very strong decisions and we move at a very strong pace," said the 73-year-old laureate who works at Sapienza University of Rome.

Scientists have spent decades urging climate change action on an often reluctant society, Hasselmann said in a recording published on the Nobel Prize's website.

"It is just that people are not willing to accept the fact that they have to react now for something that will happen in a few years," he said.

GLOBAL WARMING

Work on climate changes has been recognised by Nobel prizes before.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. climate panel received the Peace Prize in 2007 for galvanizing international action against global warming, and William Nordhaus won one half of the 2018 Economics prize for integrating climate change into the Western economic growth model.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is also seen as a strong contender for this year's Peace Prize, due to be announced from Oslo on Friday.

"Sceptics or deniers of scientific facts ... are not so visible anymore and this climate science message has been heard," World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said of this year's award.

Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week after Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the prize for medicine

 https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/julius-patapoutian-win-2021-nobel-prize-medicine-2021-10-04 

on Monday for the discovery of receptors in the skin that sense temperature and touch.

The Nobel prizes were created in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901 with only a handful of interruptions, primarily due to the two world wars.

As last year, there will be no banquet in Stockholm because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The laureates will receive their medals and diplomas in their home countries.

The physics prize announcement will be followed in the coming days by the awards for chemistry, literature, peace and economics. ($1 = 8.7290 Swedish crowns)

(Ludwig Burger reported from Frankfurt; Additional reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Supantha Mukherjee and Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm, Johan Ahlander in Gothenburg, Kirsti Knolle in Berlin, Emma Farge in Geneva, Chizu Nomiyama in New York and Angelo Amante in Rome, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Jon Boyle)

Physics Nobel: deciphering climate disorder to better predict it

Issued on: 05/10/2021 - 

US-Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe who has been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics

 KENA BETANCUR AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

The Nobel Prize in Physics has gone to three scientists who sought to predict the long-term evolution of a complex system such as the climate by modelling variables -- weather, human actions -- that create disorder within those systems.

What is the link between the modelling of global warming, which earned Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann half the prize, and the work of the third winner, Giorgio Parisi, who focused on the underlying disorder of matter?

All three study complex systems: large-scale climate or the behaviour of certain materials at an infinitely small scale. From the erratic fluctuations within these systems, the three physicists succeeded in teasing out simpler behaviours and reliable predictions.

"We recognised that emerging phenomena sometimes require us to look at all the individual complicated physical mechanisms and knit them together to make a prediction," said Nobel Physics Committee member John Wettlaufer, on hand when the awards were announced in Stockholm on Tuesday.

Climate "is THE complex system par excellence," said Freddy Bouchet, a physicist at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.

A large number of variables, in other words, interact -- atmosphere, oceans, soils, vegetation -- rendering any reliable forecast beyond a few weeks elusive.

But alongside and within this observable chaos there are also clear trends that can be linked to well-identified causes, such as long-term global warming attributable to human activity.

- Hidden rules -

"In climate science, the random and the systematic overlap," said Bouchet. "The mathematical tools developed by Klaus Hasselmann have made it possible to separate the two in order to better understand the evolution of climate."

Being able to tease out patterns in what is random -- the signal in the noise -- is fundamental to understanding the evolution of extreme weather such as heat waves, storms and hurricanes.

The models developed by the Japanese-American Syukuro Manabe have succeeded in cracking the signature code of climate subsystems.

"These are the first models which made it possible to calculate the effect of the increase in carbon dioxide of anthropogenic origin on global warming at the core of contemporary climate models", Bouchet said.

Giorgio Parisi, for his part, made a major contribution to the theory of these complex systems by revealing the hidden rules that govern them.

Co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics, Klaus Hasselmann of Germany 

Daniel Bockwoldt AFP/File

"I started to lay the foundations of this science -- which did not exist at the beginning of the 1980s -- by studying nature through mathematics", the Italian researcher told Corriere della Sera newspaper earlier this year.

It is a science that allows us, for example, to explain the changing form of a cloud of starlings in flight.

Parisi provided the mathematical tools to understand how random processes can play a decisive role in the development of large structures, such as those governing climate.

Today, they are applied in biology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

© 2021 AFP

How climate models got so accurate they earned a Nobel Prize

Climate modelers are having a moment.

Kieran Mulvaney 

NAT GEO

© Photograph courtesy NASA This composite image of southern Africa and the surrounding oceans was captured by six orbits of the NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership spacecraft on April 9, 2015, by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument. Tropical Cyclone Joalane can be seen over the Indian Ocean. Winds, tides and density differences constantly stir the oceans while phytoplankton continually grow and die. Orbiting radiometers such as VIIRS allows scientists to track this variability over time and contribute to better understanding of ocean processes that are beneficial to human survival on Earth.

Last month, Time Magazine listed two of them—Friederike Otto and Geert Jan van Oldenborg of the World Weather Attribution Project—among the 100 Most Influential People of 2021. Two weeks ago, Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University was a guest on the popular CBS talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! And on Tuesday, pioneering climate modelers Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselman shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi—a recognition, said Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, that “our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of observations.”

Climate modelers are experts from earth or planetary science, often with experience in applied physics, mathematics, or computational science, who take physics and chemistry to create equations, feed them into supercomputers, and apply them to simulate the climate of Earth or other planets. Models have long been seen by climate change deniers as the soft underbelly of climate science. Being necessarily predictive, they have been tarred as essentially unverifiable and the result of flawed input producing unreliable results.

A 1990 National Geographic article put it this way: “Critics say that modeling is in its infancy and cannot even replicate details of our current climate. Modelers agree, and note that predictions necessarily fluctuate with each model refinement.”

However, more recent analyses, dating back decades, have found that many of even the earliest models were remarkably accurate in their predictions of global temperature increases. Now, as computing power increases and more and more refinements are added to modeling inputs, modelers are more confident in defending their work. As a result, says Dana Nuccitelli, author of Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics, “there’s definitely been a shift away from outright climate science denial; because the predictions have turned out to be so accurate, it’s getting harder and harder to deny the science at this point.”

© Illustration by Niklas Elmehed, Nobel Prize Outreach Nobel Prize winners Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi

That 1990 article quoted Manabe—generally considered the father of modern climate modeling—as saying that, in some early models, “all sorts of crazy things happened … sea ice covered the tropical oceans, for example.” But in a seminal 1970 paper, the first to make a specific projection of future warming, Manabe argued that global temperatures would increase by 0.57 degrees Celsius (1.03 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1970 and 2000. The actual recorded warming was a remarkably close 0.54°C (0.97°F).

A 2019 paper by Zeke Hausfather of the University of California, Berkeley, Henri Drake, and Tristan Abbott of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyzed 17 models dating back to the 1970s and found that 14 accurately predicted the relationship between global temperatures as greenhouse gases increased. (The estimates of two were too high, and one was too low.) That’s because the fundamental physics have always been sound, says Dana Nuccitelli, research coordinator at Citizens’ Climate Lobby and author of Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics.

“We’ve understood for decades the basic science that if you introduce a certain amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere we would get a certain amount of warming,” he says. “These predictions in the 1970s were remarkably accurate, but they were also using quite simplified climate models, in part because of our level of understanding of climate systems but also because of computation limitations at the time. It’s certainly true that climate models have come a long way.”
The more things change…

In the realm of climate modeling, “What hasn’t changed over the years is the overall assessment of just how much the world would warm as we increased CO2,” says Hayhoe, who is also Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy and author of Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. “What has changed is our understanding at smaller and smaller spatial and temporal scales. Our understanding of feedbacks in the climate system, our understanding of, for example, just how sensitive the Arctic really is.”

As that understanding has increased, she says, so it has allowed the development of what she refers to as “the cutting edge of climate science today”—individual event attribution, the specialty for which Otto and van Oldenberg were recognized in Time, which for the first time is able to draw strong links between climate change and specific weather events, such as heat waves in the western United States or the amount of rain deposited by Hurricane Harvey.

“We couldn’t do that without models,” Hayhoe says, “because we need the models to simulate a world without people. And we have to compare an Earth with no people to the Earth we’re living on with humans and carbon emissions. And when we compare those two Earths, we can see how human-induced climate change has altered the duration, the intensity, and even the damages associated with a specific event.”

In Hayhoe’s case, the actual act of modeling involves “looking at thousands of lines of code, and it’s so intense that I often do it at night, when people aren’t emailing and the lights are off and I can focus on this bright screen in a dark room. Then I blink and it’s suddenly four-thirty in the morning.”

Much of the work, she says, requires trying to find things that are wrong in the models, to ensure they reflect reality. “If it doesn’t quite match up, we have to look harder because there’s something we didn’t quite understand.”

Whereas such discrepancies can be flaws in the models, they can sometimes reflect errors in observations. For example, a series of studies in 2005 found that satellite data which appeared to show no warming in the lower atmosphere, or troposphere, and which were used to cast doubt on global warming models, were themselves flawed. The models, supported by data from weather balloons, were right all along.

The irony, says Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University and author most recently of The New Climate War, is that “climate scientists were dismissed as alarmists for the predictions that we made, but the predictions, if anything, turned out to be overly conservative and we’re seeing even greater impacts than we expected to see.”

The apparent looming collapse of the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents is, he says, one such example. “It is something that we anticipated could happen, but it is not only happening, it is happening sooner than we expected, he notes.” Manabe, he points out, was one of those to first raise the possibility decades ago. “It just underscores that what’s happening in climate science is the worst thing that can actually happen to a climate modeler: to see your worst predictions come true.”

Modelers do acknowledge that the science isn’t perfect; even now, uncertainties remain, and not just one kind.

“Do we have all the physical processes in the model? And if we have them in there, are they correctly represented or not?” asks Hayhoe rhetorically. “Then there’s a second source of uncertainty called parametric uncertainty." Additionally, she says, some processes take place on such small scales—for example, among cloud particles—that they cannot be measured directly but must be inferred. Obviously that adds some uncertainty.” However, the greatest uncertainty, she says, lies not with the physics, but with our own collective behavior, and how much we are prepared to allow global levels of greenhouse gases to rise.

“If we didn’t know that carbon emissions produced all these impacts on us, that it isn’t just a curiosity of global temperature increase but is also our food, our water, our health, our homes, then we wouldn’t act,” Hayhoe says.

“That’s why I do what I do, and that’s why models are so important, because they show what’s happening right now that we’re responsible for, and what’s going to be happening in the future. I’m looking forward to the day when we can just use climate models to simply understand this incredible planet, but right now, these models are telling us, ‘Now is the time to act!’ And if we don’t, the consequences will be serious and dangerous.”

‘Scenes of horror’ as torrential rains flood Marseille with water-swept trash

Issued on: 05/10/2021

Seagulls walk on a beach covered with waste following torrential rain in Marseille, southern France, on October 5, 2021. 

© Nicolas Tucat, AFP

Text by: FRANCE 24
Video by: Catherine VIETTE

Heavy rains swept across much of southern France between Sunday and Monday, inundating the city of Aix-en-Provence and leaving France’s second-largest city Marseille under a blanket of trash that had piled up on the streets following a rubbish-collector strike.

Thousands of cans littered Marseille’s popular Borély beach, along with mounds of plastic and rubber tyres. Some volunteers working to clean the area even picked up dead rats.

“This happens often in Marseille. Every year, around the same time, we have trash washing up on the beach because of the rain, but this time there was also the rubbish-collector strike,” Isabelle Poitou, a spokeswoman for environmental group MerTerre, told the AFP news agency.

According to Météo France, the national meteorological service, "the equivalent of several months of rain" pounded Marseille between Sunday and Monday. After the Huveaune river burst its banks, larger trashed items, such as gas bottles, fridges and car parts, added to the mounting trash piles.

“All the trash started piling up and got swept away with the torrent from this morning and blocked the sewers,” said one homeowner who declined to give her name.

Marseille’s Deputy Mayor Christine Juste spoke of “scenes of horror”, with some city officials blaming the disaster on the previous administration.

They “continued to build concrete everywhere,” said Marseille urban planner Mathilde Chaboche, adding that past officials had ignored the fact that “nature needs space for water to flow”.

In the city of Aix-en-Provence, the water itself was a bigger issue with rescuers having to pluck people to safety as the floods turned backyards into small lakes.

“It's sad and there is nothing we can do about it,” said one resident. “When the rain comes down like that, we cannot resist – it's impossible.”

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)