The ocean twilight zone could store vast amounts of carbon captured from the atmosphere – but first we need an internet of deep ocean sensors to track the effects


Peter de Menocal, Director, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Wed, February 8, 2023 

A large robot, loaded with sensors and cameras, designed to explore the ocean twilight zone. Marine Imaging Technologies, LLC © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Deep below the ocean surface, the light fades into a twilight zone where whales and fish migrate and dead algae and zooplankton rain down from above. This is the heart of the ocean’s carbon pump, part of the natural ocean processes that capture about a third of all human-produced carbon dioxide and sink it into the deep sea, where it remains for hundreds of years.

There may be ways to enhance these processes so the ocean pulls more carbon out of the atmosphere to help slow climate change. Yet little is known about the consequences.

Peter de Menocal, a marine paleoclimatologist and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, discussed ocean carbon dioxide removal at a recent TEDxBoston: Planetary Stewardship event. In this interview, he dives deeper into the risks and benefits of human intervention and describes an ambitious plan to build a vast monitoring network of autonomous sensors in the ocean to help humanity understand the impact.

First, what is ocean carbon dioxide removal, and how does it work in nature?

The ocean is like a big carbonated beverage. Although it doesn’t fizz, it has about 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere. So, for taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it someplace where it won’t continue to warm the planet, the ocean is the single biggest place it can go.

Ocean carbon dioxide removal, or ocean CDR, uses the ocean’s natural ability to take up carbon on a large scale and amplifies it.

Methods of ocean carbon storage. Natalie Renier/©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Carbon gets into the ocean from the atmosphere in two ways.

In the first, air dissolves into the ocean surface. Winds and crashing waves mix it into the upper half-mile or so, and because seawater is slightly alkaline, the carbon dioxide is absorbed into the ocean.

The second involves the biologic pump. The ocean is a living medium – it has algae and fish and whales, and when that organic material is eaten or dies, it gets recycled. It rains down through the ocean and makes its way to the ocean twilight zone, a level around 650 to 3300 feet (roughly 200 to 1,000 meters) deep.

The years indicate how long deposited carbon is expected to remain before the water cycles to the surface. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The ocean twilight zone sustains biologic activity in the oceans. It is the “soil” of the ocean where organic carbon and nutrients accumulate and are recycled by microbes. It is also home to the largest animal migration on the planet. Each day trillions of fish and other organisms migrate from the depths to the surface to feed on plankton and one another, and go back down, acting like a large carbon pump that captures carbon from the surface and shunts it down into the deep oceans where it is stored away from the atmosphere.

Why is ocean CDR drawing so much attention right now?

The single most shocking sentence I have read in my career was in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021. It said that we have delayed action on climate change for so long that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is now necessary for all pathways to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F). Beyond that, climate change’s impacts become increasingly dangerous and unpredictable.

Because of its volume and carbon storage potential, the ocean is really the only arrow in our quiver that has the ability to take up and store carbon at the scale and urgency required.

A 2022 report by the national academies outlined a research strategy for ocean carbon dioxide removal. The three most promising methods all explore ways to enhance the ocean’s natural ability to take up more carbon.

The first is ocean alkalinity enhancement. The oceans are salty – they’re naturally alkaline, with a pH of about 8.1. Increasing alkalinity by dissolving certain powdered rocks and minerals makes the ocean a chemical sponge for atmospheric CO2.

Studies show increasing alkalinity can also reduce ocean acidification stress on corals. Wise Hok Wai Lum/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

A second method adds micronutrients to the surface ocean, particularly soluble iron. Very small amounts of soluble iron can stimulate greater productivity, or algae growth, which drives a more vigorous biologic pump. Over a dozen of these experiments have been done, so we know it works.

Third is perhaps the easiest to understand – grow kelp in the ocean, which captures carbon at the surface through photosynthesis, then bale it and sink it to the deep ocean.

But all of these methods have drawbacks for large-scale use, including cost and unanticipated consequences.

Kelp takes up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. 

David Fleetham/VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

I’m not advocating for any one of these, or for ocean CDR more generally. But I do believe accelerating research to understand the impacts of these methods is essential. The ocean is essential for everything humans depend on – food, water, shelter, crops, climate stability. It’s the lungs of the planet. So we need to know if these ocean-based technologies to reduce carbon dioxide and climate risk are viable, safe and scalable.
You’ve talked about building an ‘internet of the ocean’ to monitor changes there. What would that involve?

The ocean is changing rapidly, and it is the single biggest cog in Earth’s climate engine, yet we have almost no observations of the subsurface ocean to understand how these changes are affecting the things we care about. We’re basically flying blind at a time when we most need observations. Moreover, if we were to try any of these carbon removal technologies at any scale right now, we wouldn’t be able to measure or verify their effectiveness or assess impacts on ocean health and ecosystems.

So, we are leading an initiative at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to build the world’s first internet for the ocean, called the Ocean Vital Signs Network. It’s a large network of moorings and sensors that provides 4D eyes on the oceans – the fourth dimension being time – that are always on, always connected to monitor these carbon cycling processes and ocean health.

Top predators such as whales, tuna, swordfish and sharks rely on the twilight zone for food, diving down hundreds or even thousands of feet to catch their prey.

 Eric S. Taylor /© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Right now, there is about one ocean sensor in the global Argo program for every patch of ocean the size of Texas. These go up and down like pogo sticks, mostly measuring temperature and salinity.

We envision a central hub in the middle of an ocean basin where a dense network of intelligent gliders and autonomous vehicles measure ocean properties including carbon and other vital signs of ocean and planetary health. These vehicles can dock, repower, upload data they’ve collected and go out to collect more. The vehicles would be sharing information and making intelligent sampling decisions as they measure the chemistry, biology and environmental DNA for a volume of the ocean that’s really representative of how the ocean works.

Mesobot starts its descent toward the ocean twilight zone. Marine Imaging Technologies, LLC © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Having that kind of network of autonomous vehicles, able to come back in and power up in the middle of the ocean from wave or solar or wind energy at the mooring site and send data to a satellite, could launch a new era of ocean observing and discovery.
Does the technology needed for this level of monitoring exist?

We’re already doing much of this engineering and technology development. What we haven’t done yet is stitch it all together.

For example, we have a team that works with blue light lasers for communicating in the ocean. Underwater, you can’t use electromagnetic radiation as cellphones do, because seawater is conductive. Instead, you have to use sound or light to communicate underwater.

We also have an acoustics communications group that works on swarming technologies and communications between nearby vehicles. Another group works on how to dock vehicles into moorings in the middle of the ocean. Another specializes in mooring design. Another is building chemical sensors and physical sensors that measure ocean properties and environmental DNA.

This summer, 2023, an experiment in the North Atlantic called the Ocean Twilight Zone Project will image the larger functioning of the ocean over a big piece of real estate at the scale at which ocean processes actually work.

We’ll have acoustic transceivers that can create a 4D image over time of these dark, hidden regions, along with gliders, new sensors we call “minions” that will be looking at ocean carbon flow, nutrients and oxygen changes. “Minions” are basically sensors the size of a soda bottle that go down to a fixed depth, say 1,000 meters (0.6 miles), and use essentially an iPhone camera pointing up to take pictures of all the material floating down through the water column. That lets us quantify how much organic carbon is making its way into this old, cold deep water, where it can remain for centuries.

For the first time we’ll be able to see just how patchy productivity is in the ocean, how carbon gets into the ocean and if we can quantify those carbon flows.

That’s a game-changer. The results can help establish the effectiveness and ground rules for using CDR. It’s a Wild West out there – nobody is watching the oceans or paying attention. This network makes observation possible for making decisions that will affect future generations.

Do you believe ocean CDR is the right answer?

Humanity doesn’t have a lot of time to reduce carbon emissions and to lower carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

The reason scientists are working so diligently on this is not because we’re big fans of CDR, but because we know the oceans may be able to help. With an ocean internet of sensors, we can really understand how the ocean works including the risks and benefits of ocean CDR.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Peter de Menocal, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Read more:

Nations are pledging to create ocean preserves – how do those promises add up?

Geoengineering the ocean to fight climate change raises serious environmental justice questions

These machines scrub greenhouse gases from the air – an inventor of direct air capture technology shows how it works

Peter de Menocal is the president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

 

A major archaeological discovery was made on the Miami River. Was it kept ‘under wraps’?

Andres Viglucci

MIAMI HERALB
Tue, February 7, 2023

LONG READ

For the past year and a half, with scant public attention, squads of archaeologists digging at the Miami River site of a planned Related Group residential tower complex have unearthed remarkable finds, consisting of thousands of fragmentary prehistoric tools and artifacts, rare and well-preserved animal and plant remnants, vestiges of ancient structures and human remains — including some relics dating back to the earliest days of civilization on the planet.

Independent scientists say the findings, which include 7,000-year-old spearheads, are clear and abundant evidence of a continuous indigenous settlement in the area stretching much farther back in time than previously thought. The discovery, they say, may be the most significant in a series of archaeological finds made at the mouth of the Miami River in the past 25 years that include the Miami Circle National Historic Landmark, thought to be around 2,000 years old.

“There are artifacts going back sequentially over those thousands of years,” said William Pestle, an archaeologist and chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Miami, who is not involved in the excavation at the Related site but is familiar with the discoveries there. “This is like a continuous record, which is powerful and cool.

“You’re going back to the time of the emergence of the first cities in Mesopotamia. It’s thousands of years before the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. By any measure, this is an early manifestation of human activity. This is legitimately old.”

People are seen working an archaeological dig site located near Brickell on the Miami River on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023, in Miami. Artifacts going back 7,000 years have been found at the site, along with postholes, grave sites, human remains and other evidence of substantial settlement by the Tequesta Native American tribe.

Although the dig is not yet complete, the finds at the site, on the Miami River’s south bank just west of the Brickell Avenue bridge, are already recasting what anthropologists and historians thought they knew about the presence of prehistoric and indigenous people at the mouth of the waterway, the birthplace of both ancient and modern Miami.

But the discovery and the lack of public exposure are also raising an urgent concern — that Miamians will never get to see any of it if Related buries the site in concrete as planned.

Some critics say they believe the developers and the city have attempted to downplay the discoveries to avoid the kind of public uproar and litigation that led to the preservation of the Miami Circle from condominium development in 1999, as well as another Tequesta circle and other antiquities across the river at the MetSquare development in 2014. Both circles consist of postholes in the limestone bedrock that scientists think outline the foundation of Tequesta buildings.

Related officials won’t talk about the excavation, strictly restrict entry to the site and won’t say whether they plan to preserve any portion of the site or display the discoveries to the public. After the company, founded by billionaire developer and philanthropist Jorge Pérez, declined a request for an interview with the Miami Herald, a Related spokesman asked a reporter for written questions. The company did not answer the questions, instead issuing a general statement that asserts Related “has followed all existing laws and regulations for any site in a designated archaeological zone.”

“For over a year and a half, we have performed the meticulous excavation, analysis, organization, regular reporting to applicable regulatory authorities and careful preservation of all relevant findings,” according to the statement, describing the excavation carried out by its archaeological consultants as “meticulous.”

Records show a Related affiliate paid $104 million for the property in 2013. In January, the company took out a $164 million construction loan for the first skyscraper, a rental apartment tower.

The team of archaeologists excavated bone artifacts from the Related Group development site.

City officials mum

The city of Miami, which requires and regulates archaeological digs in designated zones and could require full or partial preservation of the site, among other mitigation measures, has taken no action beyond monitoring the dig and fielding reports from the excavation archaeologists. The city officials overseeing the dig, city archaeologist Adrian Espinosa-Valdor and historic preservation director Anna Pernas, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview for this story on the significance of the findings relayed for several weeks through the city communications office.

On Friday, Pernas said she was “not available” for an interview, city communications official Kenia Fallat said. Asked why Pernas was declining to talk, Fallat responded: “I can’t ask her why she is not available.”

Fallat, too, issued a general statement outlining required procedures the city has followed, but not addressing the finds, their significance or the site’s future.

“Documentation and final reports of the findings are underway,” according to Fallat’s statement. “Staff continues weekly/biweekly site visits. In addition, the archaeologist working the site provides City of Miami staff and the State Archaeologist of the Division of Historical Resources weekly reports of the findings.”

Pioneering South Florida archaeologist Robert Carr, who is leading the excavation under a contract with Related, said he can’t yet discuss it under the terms of his deal with the developers, who are required by law to fund the investigations.

But in preliminary reports filed with the city, which are public records, Carr says the site — where he notes he first dug as a boy in 1961 — is important enough to potentially merit inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. He also suggests that intact sections of midden — ancient refuse heaps where many of the artifacts, bones and shells are found — could be “preserved as part of the development.”

The critics concede that Related has followed legal requirements for excavation and documentation of the site and the finds to the letter, and has likely spent a substantial sum on the painstaking project.

Members of an archaeological team work at the site of a planned Related Group residential tower complex in Brickell at the mouth of Miami River. The team has unearthed extensive evidence of prehistoric indigenous settlement on the site and artifacts dating back to the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years ago.

‘Importance of this site cannot be overstated’

But in January, frustrated scientists went to the city’s historic preservation board, which has oversight of the excavation and legal power to require concrete action from Related, to plead for greater public exposure and discussion of the dig, its significance and the need to ensure that at least some of the finds are properly exhibited. The board promised a fuller public airing.

“The importance of this site cannot be overstated,” Sara Ayers-Rigsby, southeast director for the Florida Public Archaeology Network, which is based at West Florida University in Pensacola, told board members. She urged them to require better public discussion and documentation of the finds. “It’s a story of who we all are and where we come from.”

The board’s chairman, William Hopper, suggesting that previous presentations to the panel by Pernas and Espinosa-Valdor failed to make the site’s extreme antiquity clear, asked the city officials to schedule an updated presentation on the discoveries for its Feb. 7 meeting. He also asked the officials to invite the press to the meeting to ensure that word about the discoveries gets out to the public. A chuckling, clearly discomfited Pernas responded: ”I may not.”

The city has not issued any invitation or news release. And when the agenda for the Feb. 7 meeting was published, unusually late, on the previous Friday, the excavation topic was not on it. Fallat confirmed on Friday that the item would not be heard on Tuesday, but would come up at an as-yet-undetermined later meeting.

In an unexpected move, however, the preservation board on Tuesday, by an 8-0 vote, instructed Pernas to begin studying whether they should designate the Brickell site a protected archaeological landmark after Pestle and others showed up at the meeting at Miami City Hall to urge members to take action. That designation would give the city power to require developer Related Group to preserve all or part of the site or make accommodations in its project for public exhibition, and other measures.

Brickell residents also say the city and Related could do much more. The influential Brickell Homeowners Association has urged the city to consider requiring preservation of at least a portion of the site or for the developers to voluntarily do so, said Abby Apé, the group’s managing director.

“Preserving some kind of history is important to our neighborhood,” she said. “We want to see these artifacts preserved and we want the city to do the right thing. The concern is that perhaps they’re not taking the proper steps that code requires them to take. It would be beautiful if the developers could have an on site-park that the neighborhood could enjoy.”

Some neighbors are blunter. They say they don’t think the city or Related have been acting in good faith and have intentionally sought to keep the finds, as one resident put it, “under wraps.”

Geoff Bain’s condo balcony at the Brickell on the River tower overlooks the site of the Miami Circle and an excavation at the adjacent site of a planned residential tower complex that has unearthed a trove of prehistoric indigenous finds, including artifacts dating back to the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years ago. Bain says developer Related Group and the city of Miami should preserve a portion of the site as a park or museum.

“The city of Miami is doing absolutely nothing to keep Related from covering it all up,” said Geoff Bain, whose Brickell on the River apartment overlooks the site. “Even our commissioners are unaware of the significance and have not been briefed. I understand no one can stop development, but they can preserve at least a small portion.”

Related has said it plans three towers on the site — formerly occupied by U.S. Customs’ Miami headquarters and an adjacent parking garage — that include the ultra-luxury Baccarat condo and a rental tower. The 444 Brickell building housing the Capital Grille restaurant is part of the property and will eventually be torn town.

No neutral party to assess environmental data

There’s yet another concern: The discovery of soil contamination on the site, once also home to Standard Oil tanks, prompted Related to briefly halt all excavation last month. Work has resumed on a portion of the property, but it’s unclear what the developers intend to do on the unexcavated section nearest the river bank, where the outside experts think some of the oldest and most significant material may be found. Related has proposed removing the soil off with backhoes and taking it elsewhere, they have learned, but it’s unknown what standard the company is considering to determine if continued work would be hazardous.

“Right now we have a developer who has every interest in the world to have the archaeology go away as soon as possible. You have archaeology companies working for the developer who want to keep doing archaeology,” Pestle said. “But there is no independent, neutral third party looking at environmental data and saying it’s too high or it’s not too high.”

Pestle, Bain and others note that Related knew full well that demolition of the Customs building would likely lead to archaeological discoveries. The site is part of a city-designated archaeological zone where developers are required by law to conduct carefully regulated exploratory digs, and to finance full-fledged excavations if the evidence suggests significant finds may lie beneath the soil — which is precisely what happened at the Related property.

Archaeologists excavating the site of a planned Related Group residential tower complex on the Miami River in Brickell have uncovered extensive evidence of prehistoric indigenous settlements dating back to the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years ago. The discoveries indicate that the capital of the Tequesta tribe, believed responsible for the 2,000-year-old Miami Circle, visible at top, was significantly more extensive than once believed.

Christine Rupp, executive director of Dade Heritage Trust, Miami-Dade’s leading preservation group, said Related should not have prepared detailed development plans until it had a better idea of what was in the ground, and the city should have halted permitting until a public process could be carried out to determine how the discoveries should be handled.

Instead, the city has allowed Related to move forward with preparations for construction on half the parcel where archaeology has been completed, with no apparent effort to ask or require the developer to modify designs to accommodate some degree of preservation of the ground — including patterns of postholes in the limestone bedrock like the Miami Circle and Met Square — or to provide public display or exhibition of artifacts.

“When someone buys property in a known archaeological zone, that that owner would go forward with such a huge planning process before the zone has been fully investigated, it’s really backwards,” Rupp said. “Once construction begins, that’s an afterthought. It should be part of the process right now.”
Site occupied by indigenous settlement in 5,000 B.C.

The newly uncovered evidence, Pestle and other independent archaeologists say, suggests that the Related site was occupied by a succession of indigenous people starting in what’s known as the Archaic period. For 2,000 years or so until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century, it was home to the Tequesta tribe that is likely responsible for the Miami Circle, today a state park at the mouth of the river.

A bronze statue of a Tequesta hunter, woman and child stands on the Brickell Bridge in downtown Miami as a tribute to the indigenous tribe that occupied the mouth of the Miami River 2,000 years ago. A new archaeological excavation near the bridge has unearthed evidence that indigenous occupation of the site dates back 7,000 years ago.

The finds also demonstrate that the Tequesta village on the river, the tribe’s principal settlement, was far more extensive than previously believed, they say. Spanish accounts put the settlement only on the river’s north bank. But the finds at the Related site, just steps from the Miami Circle, indicate that at its peak hundreds of years ago the Tequesta town spread along both banks of the river.

It may have been home to perhaps 6,000 people, though no one has yet attempted a formal estimate, said Traci Ardren, an anthropologist and archaeologist at UM who is an expert on New World prehistoric cultures.

What is clear is that people who lived by hunting and gathering settled on the spot about 5,000 B.C., drawn by the abundant natural resources at the confluence of river and bay, including fresh water, wild plants and fish and seafood. Among the evidence: Archaic stone points that have never previously been documented in this part of Florida, Ardren said.

Traci Ardren, an anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Miami, is photographed at her campus office on Monday, Feb. 6, 2023, in Coral Gables, Florida.

“The mouth of the Miami River was the capital of a significant settlement of people that has been there thousands of years,” Ardren said. “What we know now is that it’s a whole indigenous Southeastern settlement.”

Other unusual finds, she noted, are bits of nets and twine made of plant fiber, and a wooden device used to start fires, all materials that usually do not survive for long. That they did is likely because they were found in natural holes in the limestone filled with water, called solution holes, which better preserves them, Ardren said.
Human, animal remains uncovered

Also found on the site were numerous fragmentary human remains, most of them teeth. At least two gravesites with skeletal fragments were uncovered, and one cranium, possibly belonging to a woman who was 45 years old at death, that may have been part of a ceremonial burial. Unusually, one human molar had been carved with incisions and grooves, and one humerus bone had been deliberately “cut on both ends, polished, and hollowed into a tube,” according to a report filed with the city.

Members of an archaeological team sift through soil excavated from the site of a planned Related Group residential tower complex in Brickell. The team has unearthed extensive evidence of occupation by prehistoric indigenous people and artifacts dating back 7,000 years.

The report notes that whenever human traces are found, work is stopped while the remains are documented and removed. Under state rules, human remains found in indigenous sites are turned over to the Seminole tribe for reburial in undisclosed locations to prevent looting.

Among the most abundant finds at the Related site are postholes cut into the bedrock to support buildings and boardwalks, as well as animal bones and shells, seeds and wood, pottery shards, and stone tools used to make wooden structures and canoes. Also found were animal bones, including perforated shark teeth that would be attached to wood to make knives, that were used for fishing and hunting, as well as shell ornaments.

“All are fragmentary, but their intricate engraved surfaces present evidence of artistic intent,” a report notes.

Most of the animal remains are of fish and reptiles, but also include deer. Some highly unusual animal finds include whale vertebrae and a whale rib, likely used for offerings according to a report, “modified” bear teeth, teeth from a now-extinct Caribbean monk seal, and a “battered” Megalodon tooth.

In Miami-Dade, Pestle said, only the Cutler Fossil Site at the Deering Estate in Palmetto Bay holds finds going back 7,000 years, but those are not nearly so well preserved as the discoveries at the Related condo development site.
Findings unearthed, shelved and forgotten?

The new animal finds are likely evidence of ancient feasts and ceremonies at the site, Pestle said, “giving us a window into different aspects of the past.”

“Everyone knew that when the building on the site came down there was going to be archaeological material unearthed,” he said. “But the richness of that material has been surprising.”

That makes it especially important that the site and the finds be made available to the public in some form, Pestle and Ardren, his UM colleague, say. They’re worried that the artifacts collected will end up like most of the Tequesta and older material found in previous discoveries on the Miami River — shelved out of sight and forgotten. Though the HistoryMiami museum has some on display, they say it has run out of storage space.

William Pestle, an archaeologist and chairman of anthropology at the University of Miami, is photographed inside his department’s artifact storage room holding a conch shell from a prehistoric archaeological site in the Florida Keys.

That means much of what Carr and his teams have unearthed over the past quarter century now resides in a crammed warehouse in Broward County. Pestle likened it to the final scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” where the Ark of the Covenant that’s the object of the film’s action ends up parked in a vast warehouse.

“The inaction by the city is really concerning,” Pestle said. ”What happens to the material? There are hundreds of boxes of material. And there will be more before they’re done here.

“Building permits should be contingent on there being a plan in place for the long term to preserve, document and exhibit, display, disseminate this material. There are places in the world where you walk into a building, walk over a glass floor and see the building that was there before. But we keep losing portions of this Tequesta site to one development after another and soon there won’t be anything left.

“We can’t just dig it up out of the ground and put in a box somewhere. The residents of the city deserve better.”

Letter to the editor: Keep religion out of government



The Repository
Wed, February 8, 2023 

A Feb. 2 letter said: "Please put God back into everything and allow our country to become great again." The founders of the U.S. kept religion out of government — including not mentioning the word "God" in the Constitution — for good reasons. Doing so helped make the country great.

The founders knew that throughout history, religions controlling government used governmental powers to impose their beliefs on others. This resulted in horrible persecutions of minority religions.

Benjamin Franklin said: "If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution."

Specific historical examples of governmental persecution of minority religions include the Inquisition, the Crusades, pogroms against Jewish communities, the burning of witches, religious wars in Europe and suppression of scientists and their findings.

Moreover, for hundreds of years in Europe, blasphemy laws required the death penalty or other severe punishments for persons opposing government-approved religions. Blasphemy laws exist and are enforced in some Islamic countries today.

Thomas Jefferson summarized the results of governments compelling people to support religion: "Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."

Religion should not be put in government. Church-state separation must be supported to prevent repeating an unspeakably appalling historical record, as the founders intended.

Joseph Sommer, Columbus

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Letter to the editor: Keep religion out of government

Letter to the editor: No, natural gas is not 'green energy'




The Repository
Thu, February 9, 2023 at 2:59 AM MST·2 min read

During the recent “lame duck” session, Ohio’s predominantly Republican legislature and Gov. Mike DeWine rushed to pass H.B. 507. The legislation would “create a broad new legal definition of green energy that would include natural gas.”

An anonymously funded, pro-natural gas, dark money group, the Empowerment Alliance, helped Ohio lawmakers spin the narrative that natural gas is green. The 501c4 group “Natural Allies for Clean Energy Future” is aiding the “greenwashing” by claiming gas is “necessary to accelerate our clean energy future.” Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) recently joined their ranks.

Labeling fracked gas as green energy does not change the scientific facts: The combustion of methane produces carbon dioxide, and methane itself is a potent greenhouse gas.

Methane produces lower carbon dioxide emissions when burned but that benefit is overshadowed by the fact that extracting methane via high-pressure hydraulic fracking releases enormous amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere. These emissions can be from leaks of storage tanks, compressor stations, blowdowns, pipelines, and flaring.

A report published in “Energy Science and Engineering” states natural gas (both shale gas and conventional gas) is responsible for much of the recent increases in methane emissions, and because of this have a higher greenhouse gas footprint than coal or oil. Pound for pound, the comparative impact of methane is 25 times greater than carbon dioxide.

Ohio’s southeastern counties are being used as sacrificial industrial sites. Pipelines mar wooded hillsides, well pads rise over the landscape, thousands of trucks loaded with carcinogenic chemicals, frack sand and toxic produced water travel our roads every day. Local residents are exposed to air and water emissions from the process which releases hazardous air pollutants and contaminates water.

The only time “green” can legitimately be used to describe methane gas is when pointing out it is a potent greenhouse gas.

Randi Pokladnik, Uhrichsville

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Letter to the editor: No, natural gas is not 'green energy'

What the First Amendment really says – 4 basic principles of free speech in the US

Lynn Greenky, Associate Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Syracuse University

The Conversation
Wed, February 8, 2023 

A protection that is, at least in this Philadelphia park, carved in stone. 

Zakarie Faibis via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Elon Musk has claimed he believes in free speech no matter what. He calls it a bulwark against tyranny in America and promises to reconstruct Twitter, which he now owns, so that its policy on free expression “matches the law.” Yet his grasp of the First Amendment – the law that governs free speech in the U.S. – appears to be quite limited. And he’s not alone.

I am a lawyer and a professor who has taught constitutional concepts to undergraduate students for over 15 years and has written a book for the uninitiated about the freedom of speech; it strikes me that not many people educated in American schools, whether public or private – including lawyers, teachers, talking heads and school board members – appear to have a working knowledge about the right to free speech embedded in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

But that doesn’t have to be the case.

In short, the First Amendment enshrines the freedom to speak one’s mind. It’s not written in code and does not require an advanced degree to understand. It simply states: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” The liberties embraced by that phrase belong to all of us who live in the United States, and we can all become knowledgeable about their breadth and limitations.

There are just four essential principles.

1. It’s only about the government

The Bill of Rights – the other name for the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution – like the Constitution itself and all the other amendments, sets limits only on the relationship between the U.S. government and its people.

It does not apply to interactions in other nations, nor interactions between people in the U.S. or companies. If the government is not involved, the First Amendment does not apply.

The First Amendment ensures that Twitter is, in fact, free of government restrictions against spreading misinformation and disinformation or virtually anything else. The company is similarly free to expel any users who offend Musk’s personal sensibilities. They can be booted off Twitter and any charges of “Censorship!” don’t apply.

2. For decades, speech has faced very few limits

Freedom of expression was understood by the nation’s founders to be a natural, unalienable right that belongs to every human being.

Over the course of the first 120-plus years of the country’s democratic experiment, judicial interpretation of that right slowly evolved from a limited to an expansive view. In the middle of the 20th century, the Supreme Court ultimately concluded that because the right to speak freely is so fundamental, it is subject to restriction only in limited circumstances.

It is now an accepted doctrine that tolerance for discord is built into the very fabric of the First Amendment. In the words of one of the most revered Supreme Court justices, Louis D. Brandeis, “it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; … fear breeds repression; … repression breeds hate; … hate menaces stable government.”

Opinions, viewpoints and beliefs – which are sometimes based on provable fact, other times on hypothetical theories and occasionally on lies and conspiracies – all contribute to what constitutional scholars and lawyers refer to as the “marketplace of ideas.” Similar to the commercial marketplace, the marketplace of ideas subjects all products to competition. The hope is that only the best will survive.

Therefore, members of the Westboro Baptist Church can picket the funerals of fallen soldiers with signs disparaging the LGBTQ+ community, Nazi hate groups can hold rallies and civil rights groups can participate in lunch-counter protests. The ideas expressed by each of these groups represent one perspective in the public debate about rights and privileges, government responsibility and religion. Other people and groups may disagree, but their perspectives are also protected from government censorship and repression.

Messages communicated by means other than speech or writing are generally protected by the First Amendment, too. A jean jacket bearing the Vietnam-era anti-war slogan “F*ck the Draft” is protected, as is the act of burning a United States flag in front of a crowd. These were potentially more emotionally powerful than politely worded statements opposing government policies.

It may be upsetting to see – but that’s part of the point of burning a flag, and a key reason it’s protected by the First Amendment. Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

3. But not all speech is protected

The government does, in fact, have the power to regulate some speech. When the rights and liberties of others are in serious jeopardy, speakers who provoke others into violence, wrongfully and recklessly injure reputations or incite others to engage in illegal activity may be silenced or punished.

People whose words cause actual harm to others can be held liable for that damage. Right-wing commentator Alex Jones found that out when courts ordered him to pay more than US$1 billion in damages for his statements about, and treatment of, parents of children who were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

So, abortion opponents can say what they wish but can’t threaten or terrorize abortion providers. And the white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 can shout to the rafters that Jews will not replace them, but they can be held liable for the intimidation, harassment and violence they used to amplify their words.

Rules about incitement to illegal action are part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into whether former President Donald Trump is at all responsible for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. On that day, citing unproven, even disproved, events, Trump delivered a speech insisting the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud.

However, the First Amendment doesn’t protect only true statements. Trump has a constitutional right to advocate for his perspective. Even his references to violence might be considered shielded from criminal prosecution by the superpower of the First Amendment. That superpower would evaporate only if a court finds that, when he spoke the words that day, “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” his intent was to incite the violence that followed.

4. What’s legal isn’t always morally correct

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: Moral boundaries to acceptable speech are different, and often much narrower, than constitutional boundaries. They should not be conflated or confused.

The First Amendment right to speak freely as an exercise of people’s natural rights does not mean everything anyone says anywhere is morally acceptable. Constitutionally speaking, ignorant, demeaning and vitriolic speech – including hate speech – are all protected from government repression, even though they may be morally offensive to the majority.

Still, some people insist that malicious and emotionally hurtful speech adds no value to society. That is one reason used by people who seek to cancel or ban controversial speakers from college campuses.

Indeed, virulent speech may even weaken the democratic exchange of ideas, by discouraging some people from participating in public discussion and debate, to avoid potential harassment and scorn.

Nonetheless, that sort of speech remains firmly under the umbrella of First Amendment defenses. Each person must decide how their own humanity and morality allows them to speak for themselves.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

It was written by: Lynn Greenky, Syracuse University.

Read more:

How tech companies are failing women workers and social media users – and what to do about it


State of the Union address is Biden’s chance to shine – and a speechwriter’s burden to get voters to listen

L.A. is shutting down its largest gas plant — and replacing it with an unproven hydrogen project


Sammy Roth
Wed, February 8, 2023

The Los Angeles City Council's approval of an $800-million plan to convert the city's largest gas-fired power plant to green hydrogen is being hailed as the kind of project needed to solve the climate crisis. But critics say keeping the Scattergood Generating Station open would harm vulnerable communities. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to move forward with an $800-million plan to convert the city's largest gas-fired power plant to green hydrogen — a first-of-its-kind project that was hailed by supporters as an important step to solve the climate crisis but slammed by critics as a greenwashing boondoggle that will harm vulnerable communities.

Council President Paul Krekorian described hydrogen as crucial to meeting L.A.'s goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035.

"It was widely seen as being an impossible goal. And we're now on the precipice of achieving that," he said.

The vote authorized the L.A. Department of Water and Power to begin the contracting process for revamping Scattergood Generating Station, which sits along the coast near El Segundo.

DWP plans to install turbines capable of burning significant quantities of hydrogen, which has never been done before on such a large scale. The fuel would be produced from water, with renewable electricity — from solar panels or wind turbines, for instance — splitting H2O molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

The city-run utility hopes to ultimately convert its other gas plants to hydrogen as well: Harbor and Haynes farther down the coast, and Valley Generating Station in Sun Valley. Those facilities wouldn't be fired up often, but they would help Los Angeles keep the lights on during times when there's not enough solar and wind power to go around, such as hot summer nights.

The city's ultimate goal is burning 100% green hydrogen — but DWP officials have acknowledged the technology might not be ready right away. That means the initial fuel mix at Scattergood might include more planet-warming natural gas than hydrogen.

Jason Rondou, DWP's director of resource planning, told The Times that Scattergood should be able to burn at least 30% green hydrogen on Day One — the same percentage the utility is targeting at its coal-fired Intermountain Power Plant in Utah.

"There's a lot of things that need to be figured out over the coming years," Rondou said.

That uncertainty helps explain why many climate and environmental justice activists opposed Wednesday's City Council motion.

A smokestack at Scattergood Generating Station near El Segundo. 

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

In public comments before the vote, critics from groups including Communities for a Better Environment, Pacoima Beautiful and the Sierra Club noted that although hydrogen doesn't produce planet-warming carbon emissions when burned, it does generate lung-damaging nitrogen oxide pollution — much more than gas, at least using current technology.

That's especially problematic for low-income communities of color that have already suffered from years of fossil fuel pollution — like those around DWP's Valley Generating Station, where residents were forced to live with a years-long methane leak.

Jasmin Vargas, an organizer with Food and Water Watch, described hydrogen as "fundamentally racist and inequitable." She also objected to public comments from labor union and business leaders saying hydrogen would create good-paying jobs.

"The jobs that everybody's talking about are not clean energy jobs," she said.

Other activists pointed to the risk of explosions from hydrogen leaks and to research finding that hydrogen can worsen climate change in the short term if too much of it leaks from pipelines before it’s burned. They also raised the possibility that DWP's experimental green hydrogen project could fail, leaving L.A. stuck burning natural gas when the city instead could have invested more heavily in battery storage, energy efficiency and other strategies to ditch fossil fuels while keeping the lights on.

"DWP should go back to the drawing board," said Theo Caretto, a UCLA legal fellow at Communities for a Better Environment.

After hearing from opponents and supporters, the council voted 12 to 0 to move forward with the hydrogen plan — but only after approving a separate motion that newly elected Councilmembers Traci Park and Katy Young Yaroslavsky said would require DWP officials to more closely examine alternatives and more robustly engage with communities near the gas plant.

"Even with the additional oversight, safeguards and engagement, I am still very reluctant to vote to move this project forward," Yaroslavsky said before the vote. "However, I am willing to support allowing the process to move to the next stage so that we can all collectively gather more information and understand its risks and its alternatives."

It's not yet clear, though, whether the City Council would be able to stop the Scattergood conversion if something went awry — costs spiraling out of control, for instance, or an inability by DWP to reduce nitrogen oxide pollution from burning hydrogen.

Further steps in the contracting process must be approved by the DWP board, whose members are appointed by the mayor. The City Council can override those decisions — but only with 10 supporting votes from the 15-member council, a high bar to clear.

A view of Los Angeles City Hall on Jan. 19. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

In 2021, L.A. got one-quarter of its electricity from natural gas — a major contributor to the worsening fires, droughts and heat waves of the climate crisis. Gas usage on California's power grid as a whole was even higher, at 38% — roughly the same as the country overall.

Green hydrogen has emerged in the U.S. and around the world as a potential substitute for natural gas on the electric grid — as well as gas piped to homes for heating and cooking. It's one of many relatively high-cost technologies competing to complement low-cost solar panels, wind turbines and battery storage to zero out global climate pollution by midcentury.

Many climate activists do see a role for hydrogen — but mostly in "hard to electrify" industries where switching from dirty fuels to clean electricity is expected to be too expensive, such as shipping, aviation, steelmaking and potentially long-haul trucking. Those activists' preferred technology is hydrogen fuel cells, which produce no pollution and can power heavy-duty trucks.

Activists are also cautious because the vast majority of hydrogen currently in use globally is produced from fossil fuels, adding to the climate crisis. The renewable "electrolysis" method for producing hydrogen planned by DWP is costlier and less efficient.

Adding to the skepticism over green hydrogen is that its loudest proponents are often fossil fuel companies.

In Los Angeles, that would be Southern California Gas Co., the nation's largest gas utility. Last year, the company proposed Angeles Link, a massive and potentially lucrative pipeline that would bring green hydrogen fuel to the L.A. Basin.

“It allows California to dramatically advance its climate and environmental goals,” SoCalGas President Maryam Brown said at the time. “It creates a cornerstone for the California green hydrogen economy, and the hydrogen economy in general."

"Southern California Gas is an infrastructure company. And we use that infrastructure to be able to meet customers’ needs,” she added. “Customers’ needs are changing. We see our customers needing cleaner and cleaner fuels.”

In an email ahead of the City Council's vote Wednesday, SoCalGas spokesperson Chris Gilbride said company executives "have not been engaged, and are currently not engaged, on the Scattergood project."

But there's little question it could be a boon for SoCalGas, fueling demand for the company's proposed pipeline and potentially leading to more widespread use of hydrogen.

Federal dollars could also accelerate L.A.'s hydrogen plans. The City Council voted last year to apply for a share of $8 billion in federal "hydrogen hub" funds, allocated by Congress as part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed by President Biden in 2021.

Whether or not that money materializes, DWP's Rondou said Los Angeles has little choice but to bet on hydrogen.

"We certainly looked at all the different pathways to get to 100%" clean energy, he said, referring to an in-depth study conducted with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. "But the study was clear. ... There wasn't an alternative."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Tesla Semi Skepticism Lingers Months After Musk’s First Delivery





Dana Hull
Thu, February 9, 2023 

(Bloomberg) --

Elon Musk has long relished trolling those who’ve doubted him and Tesla.

In 2018, he vowed to send “short shorts” to hedge fund manager David Einhorn, who’d been betting against Tesla’s stock. A couple years later, the company actually listed satin trunks as a gag gift for sale on its website.

Musk heard “various forms of ‘you’re a fraud,’” he told the crowd at Tesla’s Model Y unveiling in 2019. His defiant retort: “You can drive that fraud!”

The Tesla chief executive officer’s latest reveling had to do with the Semi, the heavy-duty truck that took five years to go from prototype to production. “Some people have said this was impossible,” Musk said during a Semi manufacturing event in Nevada last month. “But, uh, you can drive it.”

The reasons for this proverbial victory lap were clear. Weeks earlier, Tesla handed off its first Semis to PepsiCo, which took delivery of 15 of the big rigs for its massive Frito-Lay facility in Modesto, California. The purpose of the late January event in Nevada was to announce a $3.6 billion investment to expand the use of Tesla’s existing factory near Reno to build more battery cells, as well as Semi trucks.

While those are causes for celebration, there’s still a lot of uncertainty as to just how meaningful the Semi will be to Tesla’s business in the short to medium term. I had a lot of questions for the company when I drove out to Modesto to see the trucks in person last month. While I was able to climb into the Semi’s spacious cab and its centered driver’s seat, test drives were off limits.

Tesla staffers on site didn't comment. PepsiCo representatives confirmed they’d taken delivery of all 15 trucks ordered as part of a $30.8 million project I wrote about in November — the one for which California’s Air Resources Board picked up half the check — but had little else to share about the product.

It remains unclear how much the Semi costs, or whether any other customers who ordered trucks from Tesla a half decade ago have managed to get their hands on them. Tesla didn’t mention the model in its quarterly production and deliveries release last month, then referred to the Semi being in pilot production in its earnings deck. While Musk offered an update during the earnings call on when he expects Tesla to be making Cybertrucks in volume — not until next year — he didn’t have anything to say about the Semi.

Sightings of Semis on the side of the road in Sacramento and getting towed from a Nevada highway have lit up the message boards and social media networks where pro- and anti-Tesla flame wars have been fought for years.

Even before those incidents, there were still vestiges of doubt about the Semi that Musk had yet to vanquish. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets who have the equivalent of a buy rating on Tesla stock cautioned in December that the CEO may be getting ahead of himself in aiming to make 50,000 trucks in 2024. RBC was modeling for more like 4,000.

This much is for certain: there’s an urgent need for Tesla and other manufacturers to electrify big trucks. The city of Modesto has long struggled with poor air quality and high asthma rates. PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay facility spans 500,000 square feet, and the food giant’s ambition is for it to be a showcase in sustainable manufacturing, warehousing and distribution.

We should hear more about how Tesla plans to help companies like PepsiCo and cities beyond Modesto decarbonize on March 1. Musk has said the master plan he’ll deliver will chart “the path to a fully sustainable energy future for Earth.”

ANTI-TRUMP Republican Nancy Mace's Kevin McCarthy Roast Leaves D.C. Crowd In Shock

Ben Blanchet
Thu, February 9, 2023 at 5:41 AM MST·2 min read

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.) roasted prominent members of her own party Wednesday at the annual Washington Press Club Foundation Congressional Dinner.

The fundraising dinner was billed as an evening of “lighthearted quips,” but Mace’s digs were anything but. And she managed to bash House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and ex-President Donald Trump in the same one-liner about McCarthy’s contortions to win the speakership last month.

“I haven’t seen someone assume that many positions to appease the crazy Republicans since Stormy Daniels,” said Mace, referring to the adult film actor who accused Trump of having an affair with her in 2006.

Mace later made a jab at Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who she recently branded a “fraud.” Gaetz helped lead Freedom Caucus radicals who opposed McCarthy’s speakership until he promised concessions.

“Well, let’s be honest. We all knew that Matt Gaetz would never let the vote get to 18,” said Mace. The joke about Gaetz’s alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old drew shocked reactions from the crowd.

“I do have a message for Matt this evening. He really, really wanted to be here tonight, but he couldn’t find a babysitter — to be his date, I mean. Come on.”

Mace wasn’t the only politician firing off jokes at members of their own party.


Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) took aim at President Joe Bidenover a clip that shows him clapping out of sync with Black churchgoers at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church last month.

Montana bill would let students misgender BULLY classmates


FILE - Demonstrators gather on the steps of the Montana state Capitol protesting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Helena, Mont., March 15, 2021. More than two dozen Republican Montana lawmakers are co-sponsoring a bill that would allow students to misgender and dead-name their transgender peers in a move that has alarmed LGBTQ activists and others who argue it would allow the bullying of a population of kids already struggling for acceptance. 

AMY BETH HANSON
Wed, February 8, 2023 at 4:51 PM MST·4 min read

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana schools would not be able to punish students who purposely misgender or deadname their transgender peers under a Republican-backed legislative proposal that opponents argue will increase bullying of children who are already struggling for acceptance.

The proposal, co-sponsored by more than two dozen GOP lawmakers, would declare that it’s not discrimination to use a transgender classmate’s legal name or refer to them by their birth gender. Schools would be prevented from adopting policies to punish students who do so.

It comes amid a wave of legislation this year in Montana and other conservative states seeking to limit or ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. Montana's Senate passed a ban on gender-affirming medical care or surgery for minors on Wednesday.

But the proposal on misgendering and deadnaming is apparently the only existing legislation of its kind in the country this year, said Olivia Hunt, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equity.

“This would make Montana unique in enshrining the right to be bigoted toward or the right to bully trans children in the state code,” Hunt said.

The proposal would not apply to teachers, but some states are considering bills that would protect teachers’ rights to refer to students by their birth names and gender.

The main sponsor, Rep. Brandon Ler, said Wednesday during a hearing that his children, who live on a farm and ranch, “have learned from a very young age that cows are cows and bulls are bulls” and it's not open for interpretation.

“Children should not be forced to call somebody something they’re not,” Ler said.

Opponents agreed that students who accidentally use a wrong pronoun or name should not be punished, but said schools should still be able to respond to purposeful misgendering and deadnaming, perhaps under an anti-bullying policy. Refusing to acknowledge a transgender student’s preferred name and pronouns amounts to bullying, said SK Rossi, testifying on behalf of the Human Rights Campaign.

"The problem with the bill is that it takes away the ability of schools and teachers and administrators to intervene when something becomes cruel, before it becomes physical,” Rossi said.

The issue of punishment for misgendering or deadnaming doesn't appear to be a problem in Montana, according to Emily Dean, director of advocacy for the Montana School Boards Association. She said she was unaware of any students who had been punished for such actions.

Max Finn, a transgender middle schooler from Missoula, said he faces backlash from fellow students, including having crude remarks made about him and being tripped in the hallway, even though his teachers try to stop it from happening.

“If my teachers can’t or won’t intervene, it gets much worse,” Finn said.

People representing educational organizations, pediatricians, parents of transgender children and students testified against the bill, saying it would lead to unchallenged bullying and harassment as well as anxiety and depression among transgender students.

Layla Riggs told lawmakers about defending friends who were being bullied because they are transgender or gender nonconforming. Someone once threw rocks at her and a nonbinary friend after school, she said.

“School is supposed to be a place where you are accepted and a place where your safety is supposed to be one of the top priorities,” Riggs testified. “With the passage of this bill, even the illusion of safety for transgender and nonbinary students would be gone.”

A survey by The Trevor Project in 2022 found that 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year, but that those who were supported socially or at school reported lower rates.

Jeff Laszloffy with the Montana Family Foundation told lawmakers his group supports the measure because it would avoid students possibly facing civil lawsuits over using the wrong pronoun or name. He was the lone supporter to testify in a hearing that ended without lawmakers voting on the measure.

Richard Schade told lawmakers his 9-year-old nonbinary stepchild is bullied on a near daily basis with little to no intervention from school administrators.

“This demonstrates that the stated purpose of (the bill) is to address a problem that doesn’t exist, and that the real intent is to send a message to trans kids that they deserve to be bullied because of who they are,” he said.

During his testimony against the bill, Montana Pride President Kevin Hamm intentionally misgendered Laszloffy and a male lawmaker who had earlier sought to block opposition arguments that the bill would lead to bullying. Hamm said he wanted to hear “her” reasoning on that.

“Does she feel that misgendering isn't a bullying tactic?" Hamm asked.

At that point, Rep. Amy Regier, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, interrupted, saying: "Please don't attack other testimony."

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Hamm retorted. “Is it a bullying and an attack? So you do understand what this bill will do. Thank you for proving my point. Don't enshrine a tool for bullying into the law.”

CRIMINAL CYBER STATE CAPITALI$M
UN experts: North Korean hackers stole record virtual assets

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivers a speech during a feast to mark the 75th founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Army at an unspecified place in North Korea Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. 

EDITH M. LEDERER
Tue, February 7, 2023 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — North Korean hackers working for the government stole record-breaking virtual assets last year estimated to be worth between $630 million and more than $1 billion, U.N. experts said in a new report.

The panel of experts said in the wide-ranging report seen Tuesday by The Associated Press that the hackers used increasingly sophisticated techniques to gain access to digital networks involved in cyberfinance, and to steal information that could be useful in North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs from governments, individuals and companies.

With growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the report said North Korea continued to violate U.N. sanctions, producing weapons-grade nuclear material, and improving its ballistic missile program, which “continued to accelerate dramatically.”

In 2022, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – the North’s official name – launched at least 73 ballistic missiles and missiles combining ballistic and guidance technologies including eight intercontinental ballistic missiles, the panel said. And 42 launches, including the test of a reportedly new type of ICBM and a new solid-fueled ICBM engine, were conducted in the last four months of the year.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un ordered an “exponential increase of the country’s nuclear arsenal” in January, and the panel said “a new law discussed an increased focus on tactical nuclear capability, a new first-use doctrine, and the `irreversible nature’ of the DPRK’s nuclear status.”

“The ability to carry out an unexpected nuclear strike on any regional or international target, described in DPRK’s new law on nuclear doctrine and progressively in public statements since 2021, is consistent with the observed production, testing, and deployment of its tactical and strategic delivery systems,” the experts said in the report to the U.N. Security Council.

The panel said that South Korean authorities quoted in media reports “estimated that state sponsored DPRK cyber threat actors had stolen virtual assets worth around $1.2 billion globally since 2017, including about $630 million in 2022 alone.”

The experts monitoring sanctions against North Korea said an unnamed cybersecurity firm “assessed that in 2022, DPRK cybercrime yielded cyber currencies worth over $1 billion at the time of the threat, which is more than double the total proceeds in 2021.”

The variation in the U.S. dollar value of cryptocurrency in recent months is likely to have affected these estimates, the panel said, “but both show that 2022 was a record-breaking year for DPRK virtual asset theft.”

The panel said three groups that are part of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea’s primary foreign intelligence organization, “continued illicitly to target victims to generate revenue and solicit information of value to the DPRK including its weapons programs” – Kimsuky, Lazarus Group and Andariel.

Between February and July 2022, the panel said, the Lazarus Group “reportedly targeted energy providers in multiple member states using a vulnerability” to install malware and gain long-term access. It said this “aligns with historical Lazarus intrusions targeting critical infrastructure and energy companies … to siphon off proprietary intellectual property.”

Lazarus Group’s primary focus is on specific types of industry, aerospace and defense and conventional finance and cryptocurrencies, with the objective of accessing the internal knowledge bases of the compromised companies, the experts said. They quoted the cybersecurity section of an internet technology company as saying Lazarus has been targeting engineers and technical support employees “using malicious versions of open source applications.”

In December 2022, the panel said, South Korea’s national police agency announced that Kimsuky had targeted 892 foreign policy related experts “in an effort to steal personal data and email lists.”

The police reported that the hackers didn’t manage to steal sensitive information, but they “laundered IP addresses of the victims and employed 326 detour servers and 26 member states to make tracing difficult,” the experts said. The police noted it was the first time they detected Kimsuky using ransomware, saying 19 servers and 13 businesses were affected, of which two paid 2.5 million South Korean won ($1,980) in Bitcoin to the hackers.

On military-related issues, the experts said they investigated the “apparent export” of military communications equipment from a North Korean company under U.N. sanctions to Ethiopia’s defense ministry in June 2022.

The panel said it has not yet received a reply from Ethiopia's government about a photo published by the Ethiopian media in November allegedly showing a piece of equipment from the Global Communications Co., known as Glocom, being used by a top military official. Eritrea also hasn't responded to questions about its alleged procurement of Glocom equipment, the experts said.

North Korea may also have illegally traded arms and related material with a number of countries, including sending artillery shells, infantry rockets and missiles to Russia – claims Pyongyang and Moscow have consistently denied, the panel said. And the experts said they are investigating the reported sale of weapons from a North Korean company on the U.N. sanctions list to the Myanmar military through a Myanmar company.