As Salton Sea faces ecological collapse, a plan to save it with ocean water is rejected

by Ian James

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

For as long as the Salton Sea has faced the threat of ecological collapse, some local residents and environmentalists have advocated a radical cure for the deteriorating lake: a large infusion of ocean water.

By moving desalinated seawater across the desert, they say, California could stop its largest lake from shrinking and growing saltier and could restore its once-thriving ecosystem. Without more water, they argue, the lake will continue to decline, and its retreating shorelines will expose growing stretches of dry lake bed that spew hazardous dust and greenhouse gases.

"The Salton Sea is drying up, along with water for our people and the environment," the Salton City nonprofit the EcoMedia Compass says on its website. "Let's ensure water resource sustainability for future generations, and import water from the ocean."

But advocates of tapping ocean water were dealt a significant blow when a state-appointed panel of experts rejected the idea after a yearlong review.

The seven-member panel analyzed proposals that would involve desalinating seawater in Mexico, at the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez, and sending it north across the border. The panel concluded that California shouldn't pursue such a plan, citing costs estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, harm to the coastal environment and a construction timeline that would take many years before any water would reach the lake.

"It's not feasible," said Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz who led the panel's research team. "The panel feels that the state should no longer consider water importation from the Sea of Cortez to restore the Salton Sea."

The panel presented its conclusions in two reports and discussed the findings in a virtual meeting last week.

The analysis has drawn condemnation from advocates of importing seawater, who argued that it was deeply flawed and seemed geared toward ruling out the concept.

"It's a travesty," said Tom Sephton, board president of the EcoMedia Compass. "What they did is essentially find a way to eliminate ocean water import from consideration for the indefinite future."

Sephton, who runs a small demonstration desalination project at the Salton Sea, submitted one of the proposals that the panel considered. He strongly disagreed with the panel's approach and cost estimates, calling the conclusions "completely bogus."

The debate reflects a long-standing and entrenched rift over how California should deal with the Salton Sea's worsening condition as the state adapts to recurrent droughts compounded by the effects of climate change.

While rejecting the idea of piping in ocean water, the panel instead recommended that the state negotiate a deal with the Imperial Irrigation District to pay farmers who would voluntarily leave farmland dry and contribute water to the lake.

Such an approach, which state officials have yet to endorse, would face major hurdles. Farmers in the Imperial Valley are already under pressure to reduce water use as part of efforts to prevent the Colorado River's reservoirs from dropping to dangerously low levels.

The historic shortage on the river, amid a 23-year megadrought amplified by climate change, has left water agencies scrambling to secure water cutbacks to shore up Lake Mead, which stores a dwindling supply for California, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.

The Salton Sea covers more than 300 square miles in Imperial and Riverside counties. It is nearly 240 feet below sea level in the Salton Trough, which over thousands of years has cycled between filling with Colorado River water and drying out.

The flooding river filled the Salton Sea from 1905 to 1907; it has since been sustained by water draining off farms in the Imperial Valley. The lake has been shrinking since the early 2000s, when the Imperial Irrigation District began selling a portion of its water to growing urban areas under an agreement with agencies in San Diego County and the Coachella Valley.

The lake's level has declined about 11 feet since 2003. Its water is now about twice as salty as the ocean and continues to get saltier with evaporation, a shift that has caused drastic declines in fish and bird populations.

Along the dry shorelines, windblown dust contributes to harmful air pollution in low-income, predominantly Latino communities, where people suffer from asthma at high rates.

California's 10-year plan for the Salton Sea, which came out in 2017, called for building nearly 30,000 acres of dust-control projects and wetland habitat around the lake by 2028.

After years of delays, workers with heavy machinery have been moving soil at the southern end of the lake as part of a 4,110-acre project aimed at suppressing dust and creating habitat for fish and birds.

In October 2021, state officials appointed the panel of experts, including water researchers and engineers, to study water importation concepts. The panel considered 18 ideas and found that all but three had "fatal flaws."

In its summary report, the panel said that because the three proposals had similarities, they were combined into a single concept. This included building a large desalination plant at the Gulf of California, discharging the brine byproduct offshore and sending fresh water flowing 190 miles north through two steel pipelines. The concept also called for building a desalination plant at the Salton Sea to gradually reduce the salt content.

The panel estimated the initial cost at $65.7 billion or $78.4 billion, depending on the scenario, and rejected the concept "based on its high cost, environmental damage, minimal benefits to Mexico" and other issues.

The panel rejected an alternative that would have involved desalinating water in Mexico and exchanging the resulting fresh water for Colorado River water.

It instead recommended that the state work with the Imperial Irrigation District to develop a "voluntary, compensated fallowing program," in which farmers would be paid to reduce water use. The goal would be to secure 145,000 acre-feet of water per year for the lake—more than 5% of the 2.6 million acre-feet that the IID diverts annually.

This approach would also include building a desalination plant that would take in water from the Salton Sea and put fresh water back. The brine would flow into evaporation ponds, and the dried salt would be loaded onto trains and shipped to landfills.

The panel estimated the initial cost at $17 billion.

Robert Glennon, a panel member and University of Arizona law professor, said the idea of importing water from the Gulf of California or the Pacific Ocean "didn't make sense when there were alternatives for a fraction of the money, without the environmental harms, and that could be implemented much sooner."

Glennon said speed is crucial to prevent the lake's salinity from reaching "frightening levels." He said the group's recommendations would achieve salinity levels that enable fish to survive and birds to return and would include an "aggressive campaign of dust suppression."

State officials said they will consider the panel's findings as they prepare a long-range plan for the Salton Sea.

During the virtual meeting, Haddad said the panel recommends "stabilizing the sea at a smaller but still large volume and focusing on rapidly lowering its salinity."

As he spoke, the Zoom chat filled with angry criticism. One listener wrote: "It is the worst possible solution."

Some argued that the idea of asking farmers to fallow their fields is unrealistic given the Colorado River shortage. Haddad replied that doing this would be a "trade-off." He said it would be up to the state to decide and to pursue negotiations with the Imperial Irrigation District.

Kerry Morrison, founder of the EcoMedia Compass and a longtime supporter of importing ocean water, said the original proposals were far cheaper than the one the panel analyzed.

"You didn't take into account the economic feasibility of this," Morrison told the panel. "We know it's doable."

Sephton, whose proposal was rejected, asked why the team decided on expensive pipelines instead of a canal, which would be far more economical. Sephton accused the panel of trying to make water importation appear impractical and expensive, saying it created a concept that was "designed to fail."

"They vastly overinflated the cost of everything," Sephton said.

Jenny E. Ross, a research affiliate of the Stout Research Center, said the panel recommended a "seriously misguided plan" that wasn't previously disclosed and would rely on "unsustainable use of Colorado River water."

Ross said the plan would result in shriveling the Salton Sea to a fraction of its size, worsening hazardous dust, and would cause large emissions of greenhouse gases. In her research, Ross has said that the collapse of the ecosystem and exposure of vast areas of lake bed—including sediment loaded with organic matter from decomposed aquatic life—would likely lead to a major increase in emissions of carbon dioxide and methane.

She said restoring the Salton Sea and reviving its ecosystem would have a positive effect by capturing and storing carbon.

"Ocean water importation is the only approach that can actually achieve true long-term restoration of the Salton Sea," Ross said in an email. She said it's also the only plan that would use a "guaranteed water supply independent of the Colorado River, thereby enabling the restored lake to be immune to the future vagaries of climate change and to increasing aridification."

Proposals to pump ocean water between the Gulf of California and the Salton Sea have been discussed since the 1990s, initially to address rising salinity.

In the 1950s and '60s, when the Salton Sea was much less salty, it attracted tourists who fished and went boating and waterskiing. But by the 1990s, the lake's eutrophic conditions were leading to mass die-offs of fish and birds. In recent years, rising salinity has further limited food sources for birds.

Some remnants of the lake's heyday, including old buildings and docks, stand abandoned near the retreating shores.

Michael Cohen, a senior researcher with the Pacific Institute, has long criticized water import proposals, which he says are a "distraction from the real work that faces us, which is getting projects on the ground now."

Cohen said that after years of delays, the state's efforts are "starting to move in the right direction," with funding and projects that will create thousands of acres of habitat and suppress dust.

He expects that the proposal to fallow farmland for the Salton Sea won't happen at a time when California is already discussing the need for large cutbacks in Colorado River water. But the panel's conclusions, he said, help "focus on the importance of near-term, feasible efforts" that can rely on available water supplies.

"We need to come to grips with the aridification of the West, in which there's simply less water available," Cohen said. "We need to live within our means. We can't rely on pumping in large amounts of water from somewhere else."

Editorial: The Salton Sea is a disaster in the making. California isn't doing anything to stop it

---

2022 Los Angeles Times.

Dropping water levels and rising salinity push Great Salt Lake to brink of ecosystem collapse

by Geological Society of America

Great Salt Lake shows dramatically dropping water levels and exposure and bleaching of 

microbialite reefs. Credit: Carie Frantz

Great Salt Lake is well known for being salty, but record-low water levels driven by high water usage and several years of drought may soon make it too salty for even the brine shrimp that have made it a home. The lake provides an important source of food for migrating birds and supports a multi-million-dollar brine shrimp industry, both of which could be lost if water levels don't rebound soon.

Carie Frantz of Weber State University has spent the last several summers studying the lake with teams of undergraduate researchers, checking on the health of microbialite reefs that form the bedrock of the lake's ecosystem. Frantz will share their findings at the GSA Connects meeting in Denver this Sunday, 9 October 2022.

Great Salt Lake's microbialites are rocky mounds built by mats of microbes that create carbonate minerals—the same basic constituent of limestone. Microbes in the reef, like algae and cyanobacteria, perform photosynthesis—providing the nutritional basis for the rest of the lake's ecosystem. Brine flies lay their eggs on the reefs, and both the brine shrimp and brine flies—two of the biggest populations at the lake—feed from the reefs.

Because the lake is too salty for fish, there are few predators, so the lake can become dense with the flies and shrimp, which then feed a large population of both migrating and resident birds. As lake levels have dropped, previously underwater reefs have become exposed to the air, causing the aquatic microbial communities to die off. As the microbes die, the reefs become bleached—changing color from dark green to white.

In 2021, Frantz and her students found evidence that the microbialite reefs might be resilient to the negative impacts of low water levels and be able to recover from bleaching, but the same experiments in 2022 cast doubt on that hopeful outlook. Students experimented with re-submerging bleached microbialite pieces into the lake by putting them in mesh bags attached to an underwater pipe. Even microbialites that looked dead still contained living microbes that recolonized the microbialite pieces when they were submerged back into the water—and this recovery was quick, with exponential growth of microbes, hinting that full recovery might be possible within several months. When they repeated the experiment in 2022, however, they did not see the same quick recovery.

Frantz attributes this change from 2021 to 2022 to increased salinity. As the water level keeps dropping, the lake keeps getting saltier. In 2021, she saw salinity levels as high as 18%, already above what is considered healthy for the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, which is typically 12-15% salinity. In 2022, she saw those measurements climb above 19% in open water areas and reach as high as 26% within the reef she and her students monitor (for reference, the ocean has a salinity of ~3.2%; salt precipitates from Great Salt Lake water at a salinity of ~27%).

The shrinking Great Salt Lake. Credit: NASA

Frantz explains, "Last year, it was really encouraging, because we saw that they can come back, and they come back fast. This year we saw something very different; we don't see that clear increase we saw last year. The organisms are stressed at these salinity levels. It's possible it's just too high for them to grow."

In the 1950s, the Great Salt Lake was split into northern and southern halves by the building of a railroad causeway. Because most of the fresh water coming into the lake goes to the southern portion, the north section experienced a mass die-off of photosynthetic microbes that can be observed from space—emanating a pink hue produced by the few salt-loving microbes that can survive its hypersaline water, which exceeds 25% salinity.

Students collect samples of the microbialite reefs in Great Salt Lake. Credit: Carie Frantz

The southern half of the lake may suffer the same fate if more water isn't brought into the system soon. Frantz estimates that, without major interventions, it could be a matter of months to a few more years before the ecosystem collapses. Scientists monitoring brine shrimp and brine flies in open water areas of the lake have already begun to report worrisome trends in the behavior of brine shrimp, brine fly larvae, and the birds that rely on them.

Some legislative measures have been taken in the past year to attempt to secure water rights for Great Salt Lake, but Frantz worries it won't be enough to prevent a collapse, saying "It's a slow shift in response to an emergency—we're not acting as fast as the situation calls for."Great Salt Lake on path to hyper-salinity, mirroring Iranian lake, new research shows

More information: Documenting a Geobiological Tragedy: The Exposure of Great Salt Lake's Microbialites and the Undergraduate Researchers at the Vanguard (2022).

Provided by Geological Society of America 

 Areas of UK where more people voted 'remain' saw smaller increases in hate crimes following historic Brexit vote

by Cardiff University

RR offense counts over time in nations of the United Kingdom.

 Credit: The British Journal of Criminology (2022). DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azac071

Parts of the UK that were against Brexit experienced less of a spike in hate crimes after the vote compared to leave areas, research from Cardiff University shows

The paper, published in The British Journal of Criminology, provides the first Brexit-related race and religious hate crime comparison between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Researchers combined a variety of data sets from different sources—including police recorded statistics, the Crime Survey of England and Wales and social media activity to investigate the possible factors that led to a rise in hate crime following the historic referendum in 2016.

Researchers examined data for each police force area in England and Wales and found those areas with greater remain vote shares tended to have smaller increases in hate crimes in the month after the Brexit vote. For example, Surrey, which had a remain vote share of 52%, saw 12% less of an increase in hate crimes compared to Essex, which had a remain vote share of 38%.

Scotland and Northern Ireland, which each have one police force and where most people voted to remain, also showed smaller increases.

Taking into account 31 other "trigger" events that occurred between October 2016 and December 2017, including the Westminster and London Bridge terror attacks, the findings show the Brexit vote led to the second highest spike in hate crimes. The only event in the period which led to more hate crimes was the Manchester Arena attack.

Lead author Professor Matthew Williams, director of HateLab, based at Cardiff University's School of Social Sciences says that their "findings show that leave areas across all corners of the UK saw larger spikes in hate crimes following the historic Brexit vote. It could be that the outcome of the vote meant some individuals with prejudicial views felt more justified in their opinions, leading them to be more vocal and confident to commit race and religious hate crimes—either on the streets or via social media platforms."

"Our statistical model also shows that the rise in hate crimes was not because of an increase in reporting by victims and witnesses or increased appeals for information from police—two reasons previously used to explain away the rise—but down to the number of crimes that were actually perpetrated and recorded by police."

In 2017, the Brexit vote was linked by the Home Office to the largest increase in police recorded hate crime since records began.

According to this research paper, in July 2016—the month following the vote—there were an additional 1,100 hate crimes committed in England and Wales—either in person or on social media, equivalent to a 29% rise.

Professor Williams says that "there seems to be no slowing in the rise in police recorded hate crime, and in the regularity of trigger events that seem to have powerful observable positive associations with the hardening of prejudiced attitudes and in turn the expression of identity-based hostility."

"Significant questions remain over the short- and long-term governance of hate crime. The Government's continued reliance on traditional criminal justice interventions of more or better policing and harsher sentencing must remain under question. That hate crime is so dependent on temporal forces clearly suggests a reassessment is in order. Further research is needed to understand these links better."Building hate crime response capacity in community-based organizations

More information: M L Williams et al, The Effect of the Brexit Vote on the Variation in Race and Religious Hate Crimes in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, The British Journal of Criminology (2022). DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azac071

Provided by Cardiff University 

Creating 'political economy of hope' at Pakistan-India border

by Cornell University

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Pakistani nationals of the Hindu faith migrate to India based on religion, caste, culture and history—and lately Indian government officials all the way up to the prime minister have been encouraging them to "return," according to Natasha Raheja, assistant professor of anthropology in the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences (A&S).

But at the border, many hopeful migrants find that Indian citizenship is not assured.

"Pakistani Hindus may imagine their migration as an enactment of their 'right of return,' but they in fact experience an ambivalent welcome on arrival," Raheja wrote in "Governing by Proximity: State Performance and Migrant Citizenship on the India-Pakistan Border," published Sept. 8 in Cultural Anthropology.

While embedded among migrants in the western Indian city of Jodhpur, Raheja found that Indian officials use physical closeness and digital connection to entice would-be citizens while keeping them waiting for recognition and basic welfare.

For the past eight years, Raheja worked with migrants from Pakistan waiting for Indian citizenship, as part of her broader inquiry on how border crossings demand new ways of imagining our geopolitical nation-state order.

"I wanted to understand how migrants continue to pursue recognition in the face of repeated deferral," Raheja said. "During fieldwork, I noticed the enchantment and cynicism associated with the visits of national politicians to borderland regions. In this article, I make sense of these mixed affects of state performances through the concept of governing by proximity."

Proximity is a modality of governance that yields mixed results, Raheja said. When politicians get close to constituents, either physically or digitally, they manage expectations and offer assurances to constituents. But they also expose themselves to scrutiny, giving people the chance to see beyond the performance into imperfect government workings.

"Proximity is like a magnifying glass that amplifies both stature and shortcomings," Raheja said. "On one hand, when people in powerful positions are close to us, we can feel special and as if we personally belong. On the other hand, we can observe their shortcomings and inconsistencies."

In Jodhpur, a city with a high concentration of Pakistani migrants from different castes, Raheja met Meera, an Indigenous farmworker hoping to get Indian citizenship for herself and her husband, parents and 10 children at a two-day citizenship camp.

"For Meera, meeting with high-ranking officers and seeing digital clips of welcoming political speeches in the palm of her hand made Indian citizenship feel like a close possibility," Raheja wrote. "At the same time, she had relatives and acquaintances whose visa and citizenship applications had been delayed or rejected."

Elsewhere in the citizenship camp, a man named Pankajlal waited for an hour to apply based on the fact that his mother, with him in the line, had been born in "undivided India" before the 1947 partition, which created the separate nations of India and Pakistan. When they finally reached the desk, they were refused because the affidavit Pankajlal had acquired was not sufficient; instead, they needed a birth certificate.

"The burden always falls on the common people, the way weight always falls on the wheel of a cycle," Pankajlal said. "There [in Pakistan], they call us infidel Hindus; here [in India], bloody Pakistanis."

But a fellow applicant encouraged Pankajlal to speak up. Together they approached government representatives to complain about the criteria for birth certificates.

"Their exchange conveys how this site, centered on a performative avowal of their special status as desirable Indian citizens, also generated refugee-migrants' critiques of the Indian government," Raheja wrote. "A few hours later, a Ministry of Home Affairs official came on the loudspeaker to make a special announcement: He had decided that, in lieu of birth certificates, the officers at the camp would accept applications with affidavits attesting to a parent's birth in undivided India."

Raheja's wider research looks to migration to understand how majority-minority politics exceeds national frames. Her studies of the India-Pakistan border raise wider questions of state power over migration at borders worldwide.

"Across borders, manufactured national belongings and state legitimacies require maintenance," Raheja said. "As the article carefully details, governing by proximity enchants but also generates fatigue and doubt. It is in this gap that there is potential for migrants to refuse and imagine alternatives."

Creating an artificial protein shell to combat COVID-19

More information: Natasha Raheja, Governing by Proximity: State Performance and Migrant Citizenship on the India-Pakistan Border, Cultural Anthropology (2022). DOI: 10.14506/ca37.3.09

Provided by Cornell University 

Professors call for more research into climate-change related threats to civilization

by University of British Columbia

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

An opinion piece published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences urgently calls for more research into the specific pathways by which civilization could potentially collapse due to climate change.

"Scientists have warned that climate change threatens the habitability of large regions of the Earth and even civilization itself, but surprisingly little research exists about how collapse could happen and what can be done to prevent it," says Dr. Daniel Steel of the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.

"A better understanding of the risks of collapse is essential for climate ethics and policy."

In the article, Dr. Steel and his colleagues, Dr. C. Tyler DesRoches with Arizona State University's School of Sustainability and Dr. Kian Mintz-Woo from University College Cork, define civilization collapse as the loss of societal capacity to maintain essential governance functions, especially maintaining security, the rule of law, and the provision of basic necessities such as food and water.

The co-authors consider three civilization collapse scenarios:

1. localized collapse of specific, vulnerable locations;
2. the collapse of some urban and national areas while the remaining ones experience detrimental climate-related effects such as food and water scarcity;
3. global collapse where urban areas around the world are abandoned, nations are no more, and global population falls.

It is not only the direct effects of climate change—such as drought, flooding, and extreme heat—that could create collapse risks, but also less-studied mechanisms.

As Dr. Steel and his co-authors explain, climate change may also have indirect effects on systems like trade and international cooperation, which might in turn lead to political conflict, dysfunction, and war. The authors also state that these effects may lessen civilizations' adaptability which would leave them vulnerable to other shocks, like pandemics.

"The danger climate change poses to civilization shouldn't just be left for journalists, philosophers, and filmmakers to ponder. Scientists have a responsibility to investigate this, too," said Dr. Steel.Chances of climate catastrophe are ignored, scientists say

More information: Daniel Steel et al, Climate change and the threat to civilization, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2210525119

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Provided by University of British Columbia 

Why some countries are leading the shift to green energy

by University of California - Berkeley

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Oil and gas prices skyrocketed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in spring 2022, creating a global energy crisis similar to the oil crisis of the 1970s. While some countries used the price shock to accelerate the transition to cleaner sources of energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal, others have responded by expanding the production of fossil fuels.

A new study appearing this week in the journal Science identifies the political factors that allow some countries to take the lead in adopting cleaner sources of energy while others lag behind. The findings offer important lessons as many governments around the world race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit the devastating impacts of climate change.

"We are really interested in understanding how national differences mediate the responses of countries to the same kind of energy challenge," said study lead author Jonas Meckling, an associate professor of energy and environmental policy at the University of California, Berkeley. "We found that the political institutions of countries shape how much they can absorb costly policies of all kinds, including costly energy policies."

By analyzing how different countries responded to the current energy crisis and to the oil crisis of the 1970s, the study reveals how the structure of political institutions can help or hinder the shift to clean energy. Meckling carried out the analysis in collaboration with study co-authors Phillip Y. Lipscy of the University of Toronto, Jared J. Finnegan of University College London, and Florence Metz of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands.

Because policies that promote the transition to cleaner energy technologies are often costly in the short-term, they can garner significant political pushback from constituents, including consumers and corporations. The analysis found that the countries that were most successful at pioneering cleaner energy technologies had political institutions that helped absorb some of this pushback—either by insulating policymakers from political opposition or by compensating consumers and corporations for the extra costs associated with adopting new technologies.

For example, Meckling said, many countries in continental and northern Europe have created institutions that allow policymakers to insulate themselves from pushback by voters or lobbyists or to pay off constituencies impacted by the transition. As a result, many of these countries have been more successful at absorbing the costs associated with transitioning to a clean energy system, such as investing in greater wind capacity or upgrading transmission grids.

Meanwhile, countries that lack such institutions, such as the U.S., Australia and Canada, often follow market-driven transitions, waiting for the price of new technologies to drop before adopting them.

"We can expect that countries that can pursue the insulation or compensation path will be early public investors in these very costly technologies that we need for decarbonization, such as hydrogen fuel cells and carbon removal technologies," Meckling said. "But once these new technologies become cost competitive in the market, then countries like the U.S. can respond relatively rapidly because they are so sensitive to price signals."

One way to help insulate policymakers from political pushback is to hand over regulatory power to independent agencies that are less subject to the demands of voters or lobbyists. The California Air Resources Board (CARB), a relatively autonomous agency that has been tasked with implementing many of California's climate goals, is a prime example of such an institution. Thanks in part to CARB, California is often considered a global leader in limiting greenhouse gas emissions, despite being a state within the U.S.

Germany, another global climate leader, is instead using compensation to achieve its ambitious climate goals. For example, the Coal Compromise brought together disparate groups—including environmentalists, coal executives, trade unions and leaders from coal mining regions—to agree on a plan to phase out coal by the year 2038. To achieve this goal, the country will provide economic support to workers and regional economies that are dependent on coal, while bolstering the job market in other industries.

"We want to show that it's not just resource endowments that shape how countries respond to energy crises, it's also politics," Meckling said.

The U.S., as a whole, does not have strong institutions in place to absorb political opposition to costly energy policies. However, Meckling said that policymakers can still drive the energy transition forward by leveraging the leadership of states like California by focusing on policies that have more dispersed costs and less political opposition—such as support for energy research and development—and by clearing the way for the market to adopt new technologies once the cost has gone done.

"Countries like the U.S. that do not have these institutions should at least focus on removing barriers once these clean technologies become cost competitive," Meckling said. "What they can do is reduce the cost for market actors."

Competition with China a 'driving force' for clean energy funding in the 21st century

More information: Jonas Meckling, Why nations lead or lag in energy transitions, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.adc9973. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc9973

Journal information: Science 

Provided by University of California - Berkeley 

80-year-old mystery in static electricity finally solved

by JooHyeon Heo, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology

Charge mosaics on contact-charged dielectrics. (a) In a conventional view, two electrically

 neutral materials (gra) brought into contact and then separated charge uniformly (lower left),

 one positive (red) and one negative (blue). In an alternative scenario (lower right), each 

surface develops a highly non-uniform 'charge mosaic' with neighboring domains of

 opposite charge polarities. (b) Collage of charge mosaics reported in the literature (the

 years and scale bars are indicated). Credit: UNIST

Historically, contact electrification (CE) was humanity's first and only source of electricity up until around the 18th century, yet its true nature is still elusive. Today it is considered a core component of technologies such as laser printers, LCD production processes, electrostatic painting, and separation of plastics for recycling as well as a major industrial hazard (damage to electronic systems, explosions in coal mines, fires in chemical plants, etc.) due to electrostatic discharges (ESD) accompanying CE. In a vacuum, ESDs of a simple adhesive tape are so powerful that they generate enough X-rays to take an X-ray image of a finger.

For the longest time, it was assumed that two contacting/sliding materials are charging oppositely and uniformly. In the 1940s though it was observed that each of the separated surfaces is carrying both, (+) and (-) charges, after CE. The creation of so-called charge mosaics was attributed to the irreproducibility of experiments, inherent inhomogeneities of contacting materials, or a general "stochastic nature" of CE.

A research team, led by Professor Bartosz A. Grzybowski (Department of Chemistry) from the Center for Soft and Living Matter, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) at UNIST has investigated the possible sources of charge mosaics for over a decade. Published online and to be included in the October 2022 issue of Nature Physics, this study is expected to help control the potentially harmful electrostatic discharges.

"In our 2011 Science paper, we showed sub-micrometer-scale charge non-uniformity of unknown origin. At that time, our hypothesis was to attribute these (+/-) mosaics to the transfer of microscopic patches of materials between the surfaces being separated. However, over many years of work on the problem, this and related models were simply not holding up, as it was gradually becoming unclear to us (and many other colleagues with whom we discussed) how these microscopic patches can explain even millimeter-scale regions of opposite polarity coexisting on the same surface. Nonetheless, we and the community had no better answer why the (+/-) mosaics are seen at all and over so many length scales," says Professor Grzybowski.

In the paper published recently in Nature Physics, the group of Professor Grzybowski shows that charge mosaics are a direct consequence of ESD. The experiments demonstrate that between delaminating materials the sequences of "sparks" are created and they are responsible for forming the (+/-) charge distributions that are symmetrical on both materials.

"You might think that a discharge can only bring charges to zero, but it actually can locally invert them. It is connected with the fact that it is much easier to ignite the 'spark' than to extinguish it," says Dr. Yaroslav Sobolev, the lead author of the paper. "Even when the charges are reduced to zero, the spark keeps going powered by the field of adjacent regions untouched by this spark."

The proposed theory explains why charge mosaics were seen on many different materials, including sheets of paper, rubbing balloons, steel balls rolling on Teflon surfaces, or polymers detached from the same or other polymers. It also hints at the origin of crackling noise when you peel off a sticky tape—it might be a manifestation of the plasma discharges plucking the tape like a guitar string. Presented research should help control the potentially harmful electrostatic discharges and bring us closer to true understanding of the nature of contact electrification, noted the research team.

Researchers observe Marcus inverted region of charge transfer from low-dimensional semiconductor materials

More information: Bartosz Grzybowski, Charge mosaics on contact-electrified dielectrics result from polarity-inverting discharges, Nature Physics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-022-01714-9

H. T. Baytekina Et al, The Mosaic of Surface Charge in Contact Electrification, Science (2011). DOI: 10.1126/science.120151

Journal information: Nature Physics , Science 

Provided by Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology 

Rabbit virus has evolved to become more deadly, new research finds

AND AS THEY HAVE FOUND IN CALGARY

by Pennsylvania State University

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A common misconception is that viruses become milder over time as they become endemic within a population. Yet new research, led by Penn State and the University of Sydney, reveals that a virus—called myxoma—that affects rabbits has become more deadly over time. The findings highlight the need for rigorous monitoring of human viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox and polio, for increased virulence.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have incorrectly assumed that as the SARS-CoV-2 virus becomes endemic, it will also become milder," said Read.

"However, we know that the delta variant was more contagious and caused more severe illness than the original strain of the virus, and omicron is even more transmissible than delta. Our new research shows that a rabbit virus has evolved to become more deadly, and there is no reason why this couldn't happen with SARS-CoV-2 or other viruses that affect humans."

According to Read, myxoma was introduced to Australia in the early 1950s to quell an out-of-control non-native rabbit population. Known as "myxomytosis," the disease it caused resulted in puffy, fluid-filled skin lesions, swollen heads and eyelids, drooping ears and blocked airways, among other symptoms. The virus was so deadly that it killed an estimated 99.8 percent of the rabbits it infected within two weeks.

Over time, however, the virus became milder, killing only 60% of the rabbits it infected and taking longer to do so.

"Scientists at the time believed this outcome was inevitable," said Read. "What they called the 'law of declining virulence' suggested that viruses naturally become milder over time to ensure that they do not kill their hosts before they've had a chance to be transmitted to other individuals."

Yet, when Read and his team began to study the myxoma virus in rabbits in 2014, they found that the virus had regained the upper hand and was once again killing rabbits at a higher rate. In their most recent study, which published on Oct. 5 in the Journal of Virology, they examined several myxoma virus variants collected between 2012-2015 in the laboratory to determine their virulence. The team determined that the viruses fell into three lineages: a, b and c.

Survival plots and virulence grades for trial 1 (Oak rabbits). Credit: Journal of Virology

 (2022). DOI: 10.1128/jvi.00886-22

Interestingly, Read said, the rabbits in their study exhibited different symptoms than those induced by viruses collected in the first decades after the release.

"Instead of developing puffy, fluid-filled lesions, these rabbits developed flat lesions, suggesting a lack a reduced immune response," said Read.

"In addition, these rabbits had significantly more bacteria distributed throughout multiple tissues, which is also consistent with immunosuppression. We interpreted this 'amyxomatous' phenotype as an adaptation by the virus to overcome evolving resistance in the wild rabbit population."

Lineage c, however, produced a slightly different response in rabbits. Rabbits infected with lineage c had significantly more swelling at the base of the ears and around the eyelids, where mosquitoes typically bite. These areas also contained extremely high amounts of virus.

"Insect transmissibility is dependent on high amounts of virus being present in sites accessible to the vector," said Read. "We hypothesize that lineage c viruses are capable of enhanced dissemination to sites around the head where mosquitoes are more likely to feed and that they are able to suppress inflammatory responses at these sites, allowing persistent virus replication to high amounts."

Read said that the team's findings demonstrate that viruses do not always evolve to become milder.

"By definition an evolutionary arms race occurs when organisms develop adaptations and counter-adaptations against each other," said Read.

"With myxoma, the virus has developed new tricks, which are resulting in greater rabbit mortality. However, over time the rabbits will likely evolve resistance to these tricks. An analogous arms race may be occurring with SARS-CoV-2 and other human viruses as humans become more immune. This is why it's so important for vaccine manufacturers to keep up with the latest variants and for the public to stay up to date on their vaccines. Better still would be to develop a universal vaccine that would work against all variants and be effective for a longer period of time."

The research was published in Journal of Virology.

Viruses up their game in arms race with immune system

More information: Peter J. Kerr et al, Divergent Evolutionary Pathways of Myxoma Virus in Australia: Virulence Phenotypes in Susceptible and Partially Resistant Rabbits Indicate Possible Selection for Transmissibility, Journal of Virology (2022). DOI: 10.1128/jvi.00886-22

Journal information: Journal of Virology 

Provided by Pennsylvania State University 

FOR MORE ON RABBIT VIRUS OUTBREAK SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for RABBITS