Fossil Fuel Company Enbridge: Climate Change Means We Need to Make Money Now, Not Later

The pipeline giant Enbridge is making a novel argument in defense of jacking up consumer prices: the climate crisis is heating up, so Enbridge needs to make higher profits now.
An oil refinery near the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. 

(Cole Burston / Bloomberg via Getty Images)


BYJULIA ROCK
JACOBIN
12.21.2021

As Republican state officials insist that Canadian oil pipelines are necessary to lower energy costs for American consumers, the fossil fuel giant operating those pipelines is suddenly citing the climate crisis its products are creating as a rationale for raising those prices higher, according to new documents reviewed by the Daily Poster.

Last month, Ohio Republican governor Mike DeWine — who has raked in nearly $400,000 from fossil fuel industry donors — demanded the Biden administration keep open Enbridge’s controversial Line 5 pipeline, which runs under the Great Lakes, as a way to reduce energy prices.

But Enbridge just dropped a bombshell undercutting that argument: the firm told government regulators that climate change means its tar sands pipeline network only has nineteen years left of economic life. That assertion could allow the company to jack up the tolls that its customers pay to transport oil through its pipelines, because pipeline operators are authorized to recoup their operational costs through rate increases — and a shorter timetable means higher levies.

The episode is a spectacle of what’s been called disaster capitalism: In this case, a fossil fuel behemoth is citing the ecological crisis it is intensifying as a justification to extract more profits from consumers already being crushed by higher prices.

“There is something ironic about pipeline companies like Enbridge conceding that they can see the writing on the wall, they’re not going to be competitive or needed less than twenty years from today, and, as a result, they have to raise prices today to account for that,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School. “There’s something incongruous about that.”
A Changing Environmental and Political Landscape

Enbridge has been doing everything in its power to preserve and expand its massive pipeline network, the largest in North America. The multinational completed construction on its expanded Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota this fall, despite years of heated opposition from Indigenous people, climate activists, and lawmakers. Now the company is working to derail Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s reelection bid, in response to Whitmer’s order aiming to shut down the company’s aging Line 5 pipeline, because a spill could be imminent and the pipeline runs through the Great Lakes.

In that battle, Enbridge has insisted that shutting down Line 5 would cause a spike in fuel prices, because the pipeline supplies ten refineries in the region. And yet, this May, the company told federal energy regulators that its pipelines are likely worth far less because governments are preparing to try to combat the carbon emissions from its products.


The admission was included in filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the US regulatory body which regulates electricity, oil, and natural gas as part of ongoing tariff negotiations with the oil companies that use its pipeline network. During the negotiations, Enbridge filed a depreciation study in May 2021 in which it proposed an accelerated depreciation schedule for its Lakehead System, which transports crude oil from the Alberta tar sands through the Upper Midwest.

In that study, Enbridge estimated that the Lakehead System had an economic life of nineteen more years, a downgrade from its 2016 estimate in which it projected a lifetime of at least thirty years. Enbridge was not required to update those estimates until 2026, but filed the latest depreciation filing five years early as part of the negotiations.

Enbridge cited a number of factors in justifying the shorter expected life of its pipelines, including: “current and anticipated competition to the Enbridge Mainline, actions by state and local governments, and the uncertainty arising from the recent acceleration in the pace of Federal (United States and Canada), state/provincial and local governments passing decarbonization legislation or adopting policies that may influence the market demand for pipelines.”

Enbridge brought up these matters in its tariff negotiations because the rates for using pipelines are set by FERC to account for pipeline companies’ operational costs — infrastructure investments, salaries, maintenance, and other expenses — as well as reasonable profit. As a result, if the economic life of a pipeline ends up being shorter, the company won’t be able to collect payments from customers for as many years, so it can raise rates in order to recover its construction costs.

“These filings take into consideration the changing environmental and political landscape in which we operate this critical piece of energy infrastructure,” Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner told Jacobin.

The tar sands companies that move their oil through Enbridge’s pipelines filed a protest with FERC disputing the 2040 truncation date because they don’t want to pay a higher rate. The protest, filed by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), asks FERC to “investigate the factual basis of the claims that Enbridge makes regarding its remaining economic life.” According to the protest, “The claim that the Lakehead System may be, indeed will be, out of business in [2040] is remarkable given the entirety of the factual circumstances.”

Kellner said that the depreciation study “is used to determine the cost-of-service toll,” but noted: “It may not reflect the actual life of the assets.”

It’s possible that Enbridge and its customers will come to a settlement through ongoing negotiations before FERC has to intervene.

Whether or not the pipeline company and the oil firms come to an agreement, the negotiations point to a problem that experts say will become increasingly common in coming years: As the big business of extracting and moving crude oil comes to an end, who should bear the cost and risk of that transition?
Passing the Buck

One of the central issues considered during the Minnesota Public Utility Commission’s multiyear permitting process for the Line 3 pipeline through the state was whether there was sufficient demand for oil to justify building the new pipeline. Enbridge said in its April 2015 application for a “certificate of need” for the pipeline: “The anticipated economic life of the Project will be no less than 30 years.”

Enbridge repeated that estimate over the course of the permitting process, said Paul Blackburn, an attorney for Honor the Earth, an environmental justice organization which has opposed Line 3. “Thus, the [new depreciation study] represented a fundamental shift in Enbridge’s understanding of its future,” Blackburn said.

Enbridge has said the latest study does not apply to the Line 3 pipeline because it was under construction when the study was conducted. But Blackburn disputed that a single passage of the pipeline network could outlast the rest.

“Enbridge implies that new Line 3 can keep operating even if the rest of the Mainline System is not, and of course this is a blatantly false statement, because new Line 3 is just one piece of the system: It receives crude oil from other upstream pipelines and tanks owned by Enbridge, and new Line 3 delivers oil to other downstream pipelines and tanks,” he said. “If these other Mainline System pipelines and tanks ceased operation, it would be impossible for new Line 3 to continue operating.”

But experts say Enbridge’s new statement does raise questions about who should bear the cost of the accelerated depreciation.

“The environmental groups and the oil and gas companies agree on accelerated depreciation. The fossil fuel companies recover the money for their infrastructure and the environmental groups get an earlier shutdown,” said James Coleman, professor of energy law at Southern Methodist University. “The challenge for that is, and has always been, the consumer groups. And if you start charging more, and that shows up in oil and gas prices — we’ve seen that might be politically sensitive.”

Some of those costs will be assumed by energy customers in Minnesota, where Enbridge — with the support of local officials and police — forced through completion of its Line 3 pipeline this summer in the face of herculean efforts by Indigenous-led groups to stop it.


“The oil industry attempts to pass all of its costs onto consumers, so it is likely that Enbridge’s tariff rate increases will be passed onto consumers,” said Blackburn of Honor the Earth. “The supporters of new Line 3 who claimed it would reduce fuel costs in Minnesota because it would increase supply completely disregarded the complexity of this market.”

It doesn’t help that no one is sure how much oil will be needed several decades from now — and that’s not just because Enbridge and oil companies are currently arguing over the matter in tariff negotiations. Enbridge’s proposed oil pipeline truncation date, which tar sands companies are lambasting as being too early, is still far later than what scientists say is necessary to stave off catastrophic global warming.

“We live with a certain amount of cognitive dissonance about these inconsistent commitments, and for companies and regulators like FERC, they really have to square that circle and make some kind of prediction about what’s going to happen,” Coleman said. “The rates that they are recovering today depend on what oil use is going to be in 2040 versus 2050. We have this wild asymmetry in predictions about what oil use will be in 2022. So how are we supposed to have accurate predictions about 2040 or 2050?”
Stranded Assets

Regulators and lawmakers will also have to soon tackle a bigger question: Who should bear the costs of soon-to-be stranded assets, such as natural gas and oil pipelines?

If a careful plan isn’t put in place to account for the costs of pipelines that will soon be obsolete, the burden will likely fall on those who are least equipped to handle it, according to a 2019 report by the Environmental Defense Fund in California on the state’s natural gas infrastructure.

“What [would end] up happening is you make [electricity bills] more expensive through accelerated depreciation, which will further motivate customers who can afford to leave the gas system early,” said Michael Colvin, coauthor of the report and director of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs for California at the Environmental Defense Fund. “That will leave behind customers who aren’t able to electrify, so you end up with a tradeoff where wealthier and whiter customers who own their own homes and have more site control electrify, while the remaining customer base, which tends to be low and middle income, and more renters, are left behind.”

That’s why in California, where newly passed climate legislation is likely to lead utilities to shorten the lifespan of their natural gas pipelines, according to the report, advocates and regulators are trying to take a forward-looking approach to the situation, including phasing gas out on a planned timeline.

If governments set targets and require utilities to submit plans to recover their costs, the eventual abandonment of this infrastructure can be managed with an emphasis on equity, Colvin explained. There are tools that policymakers have at their disposal to shield low-income customers from bearing most of the risk, such as covering some of the cost of decommissioning pipelines with tax dollars, or forcing utilities to eat some of the cost through lower profits. Regulators already have the authority to reduce the profits that companies like Enbridge earn from rate collection.

Increased energy bills aren’t the only way the pipelines’ shortened life spans will impact the people who live in the regions that have been torn apart by the construction of Line 3, which contributed to droughts and leaked drilling fluids in waterways during construction last summer.

In Minnesota, Honor the Earth has responded by petitioning state regulators to make sure Enbridge keeps its promise, as part of the permitting process, to set aside money for the eventual decommissioning of the pipeline, which is estimated to cost $1.5 billion or more.

“The Commission should not wait to act on the matter,” Honor the Earth said in the petition. “It should promptly establish a robust and secure funding mechanism as soon as possible to ensure that new Line 3, once abandoned, does not become a financial burden on private as well as state and local government landowners.”

You can subscribe to David Sirota’s investigative journalism project, the Daily Poster, here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julia Rock is a reporter for the Daily Poster.

Carbon Capture Must Be Part of the Climate Solution

Fossil fuel companies tout carbon capture as a way to shore up their own profits. But the technology holds the potential for good — helping us to save the planet, and ourselves, from ecological catastrophe.

Orca, the world’s first, ONLY and largest climate-positive direct air capture and storage plant, in Hellisheidi, Iceland. (Climeworks)

BYSPENCER ROBERTS

JACOOBIN

12.22.2021

Imagine a group of campers carelessly polluting the forest, leaving beer cans, plastic wrappers, and propane tanks strewn about the understory. An ecologist comes upon their campsite and explains how they are harming the forest ecosystem. The campers decide to stop polluting, but never clean up the mess. This is analogous to a climate strategy without carbon removal.

At its root, the climate crisis is a chemical imbalance. Global heating is just one of its side effects. To restore the ecological conditions in which we evolved, we must restore the balance of carbon flows between our atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere. This means not only halting carbon emissions, but returning carbon to where it came from.

Where to Put All This Carbon

Since 1750, an estimated 26 to 46 percent of cumulative historical emissions have been released from the biosphere through deforestation and other forms of habitat destruction. Fortunately, ecosystems have myriad ways to reverse this process. Even on the mouth of a smokestack, the most advanced technology scrubbing the densest coal plume pales in comparison to a tropical forest, which itself pales in comparison to a mangrove. It’s true that nothing sequesters carbon more quickly than nature.

But the world’s ecosystems have a carbon ceiling, or carrying capacity. Even if we somehow returned all converted land to its preindustrial state, models estimate we could only sequester around 41 percent of cumulative historical emissions — in other words, roughly as much carbon as the biosphere originally contained.

This is because at least half of the carbon we’ve released into the atmosphere has come from the lithosphere, through burning fossil fuel from the Earth’s crust. There is no natural process to reverse this at the necessary scale and speed.

Despite this reality, many leading climate advocates argue that carbon capture is unnecessary. They point out — correctly — that if we rapidly decarbonize, the planet could make it halfway back to preindustrial carbon dioxide levels by the end of the century.

But again, the changing climate is only one consequence of the global chemistry experiment we’ve been running. If we leave all this carbon in the atmosphere, levels will eventually decrease once we stop emitting. That’s because most of it will dissolve into the ocean, triggering a chain reaction with carbonic compounds that acidifies seawater. Removing carbon from the atmosphere reverses this process. Even if we should reach preindustrial temperatures in the 2100s by emissions cuts alone, we will have done nothing to address ocean acidification. Is it a victory to achieve a planet where there are vast areas of ocean with no oysters to filter water, no corals to shelter fish, no pteropods to support food webs?

Worse yet, without burying carbon, the effects of temperature change will be catastrophic on both sea and land. We will almost certainly cross the two degree threshold, virtually dooming corals to extinction, liquidating the Arctic sea ice, sinking hundreds of cities from Bangkok to Miami, and killing millions of people in heatwaves. To survive, we must stabilize our climate — and quickly.
Ungreenwashing Carbon Capture

While leading biogeochemists have long made the case for carbon capture technology, its most visible proponent is the fossil fuel industry. Its lobbyists use it to sell carbon credits to big polluters and empty promises to world leaders. Its interest in the technology isn’t motivated by an obligation to humanity or the planet, but rather a strategy to silence critics and stay in business — whether that means emitting less or more. Today, most of the small amount of carbon the industry captures isn’t stored, but rather used in enhanced oil recovery to lubricate geological fissures and accelerate carbon extraction. Needless to say, this exacerbates the problem.

There are only a few forms of carbon capture technology that yield net-negative emissions. First, some catalyze natural processes, such as enhanced rock weathering and ocean iron fertilization. However, the sequestration potential of these approaches is generally thought to be modest — and with a high risk of negative ecological side effects.

Then there’s bioenergy carbon capture and storage, or BECCS. BECCS augments the theoretically net-neutral process of growing and burning biofuel with capturing carbon at the smokestack, storing it underground to push emissions into the red. This method could potentially sequester a lot of carbon, but at a high cost in land. While we wouldn’t have to expand cropland if we drastically reduced agricultural land use by farming fewer animals, using land to grow biofuels would sacrifice its higher potential for carbon sequestration through rewilding.

This leaves direct air capture (DAC), perhaps the most technologically challenging of all. DAC generally involves a system of enormous fans sucking air through a chemical sponge that filters roughly a thousand air molecules for every four of carbon dioxide. These are then liquefied in solvents and pumped back underground.

The drawbacks associated with direct air capture are low compared to other forms of geoengineering and related to the risks we already take during fossil fuel extraction, including seismic destabilization and injection well leaks. However, DAC is water-intensive, and although we might develop passive systems that use wind, absorbent solvents, or electrodialysis, today’s direct air capture technology demands high quantities of energy and is only emissions-negative if powered by renewables.

Therein lies the most significant caveat: carbon capture is no excuse for aggressively cutting emissions. It will only help if we also rapidly phase out the fossil fuel industry.

Unfortunately, that’s who’s getting all the funding. Fossil fuel corporations are raking in public investments and tax exemptions to research and develop carbon capture, yet posting pathetic results. Despite decades of R&D, billions in carbon capture subsidies, and proposals for $100 billion more, ExxonMobil reported capturing less than 1 percent of its emissions in 2019.

The charitable interpretation is that carbon capture engineering is uniquely challenging. A less credulous explanation is that fossil fuel corporations simply have no incentive to develop carbon capture technology. Funding isn’t contingent on progress, and scaling isn’t worth the capital of thousands of engineers and millions of construction workers. Either way, the research and development of carbon capture technology can only be successful if we decouple it from the fossil fuel industry and build it within the public sector, far from the tyranny of the profit margin.

Despite such misinvestment, net-negative carbon capture technology does exist. In August 2021, a prototype called Orca went online, making it the biggest direct air capture facility in the world. While its developer, Climeworks, is at best a net-neutral corporation — it sells carbon offsets to make a profit — Orca is net-negative, running on geothermal and drawing down a relatively impressive four thousand tons of CO2 per year. At that rate, we’d need more than eight million of them running for fifty years to capture all the fossil carbon we’ve burned (and it would take longer for the atmosphere to level out).

The good news is that the facilities are not that big — about the size of a shipping container, of which we have around 43 million — and like solar and wind, we can expect this technology to gain efficiency over time. Plus, if considering where to install them, we do already have millions of drill pads complete with tubes connected to oil deposits or porous shale strata. Lastly, it’s not all or nothing. Every atom counts.

The Real Net Zero

Carbon capture is not the easy road to net zero that oil lobbyists want to sell us. The real net zero is somewhere around 280ppm CO2. We should think of carbon capture more like putting an imperceptibly diffuse toothpaste back into countless millions of leaky tubes — essentially reverse-engineering fossil fuel, our most disastrous geoengineering experiment ever. It’s a moonshot, yet it’s not rocket science. And while there is a complex engineering case for carbon capture, the ecological case is simple: we need to rebury carbon to reverse ocean acidification.

Carbon capture is a challenge we cannot afford to turn away from, regardless of the venal purposes for which the technology has so far been developed. Today, it is used as a justification for prolonging our dependence on fossil fuel and enriching those who have profited from its extraction. Tomorrow, it may be the only way to remedy the crime against nature that precedes and precipitates climate change — the distortion of planetary chemistry.

This work has been made possible by the support of the Puffin Foundation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Spencer Roberts is a science writer, musician, ecologist, and rooftop solar engineer from Colorado.

GOLAN IS SYRIA

Israel plans to double settlement in Golan Heights

Israelis bathe in hot water coming out from a pipe at a reservoir near Mount Bental in the Israeli-controlled

 Golan Heights, Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty  

Published Sunday, December 26, 2021 9:21AM EST

MEVO HAMA, Golan Heights (AP) --  Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday the country intends to double the amount of settlers living in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights with a multimillion-dollar plan meant to further consolidate Israel's hold on the territory it captured from Syria more than five decades ago.

Bennett said the new investment in the region was prompted by the Trump administration's recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the swath of land and by the Biden administration's indication that it will not soon challenge that decision.

“This is our moment. This is the moment of the Golan Heights,” Bennett said at a special Cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights. “After long and static years in terms of the scope of settlement, our goal today is to double settlement in the Golan Heights.”

Bennett's office said the government would invest some 1 billion shekels (over $300 million) into developing the Golan, including the establishment of two new settlements as well as investments in tourism, industry, clean energy and technology that would create several thousand jobs.

Entrenching Israeli control over the territory would complicate any future attempt to forge peace with Syria, which claims the Golan Heights.

Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the territory, promoting settlement and agriculture there as well as creating a thriving local tourism industry. The U.S. was the first country to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan, which the rest of the international community regards as Israeli-occupied.

Bennett said the decade-long war in Syria made the idea of Israeli control of the territory more acceptable to its international allies, adding that the alternative would be much worse.

Israel has long argued that the strategically important area has, for all practical purposes, been fully integrated into Israel since it was captured from Syria - and that control of the strategic plateau is needed as protection from Iran and its allies in Syria.

Some 50,000 people live in the Golan Heights - roughly half Jewish Israelis and half in Druze Arab villages that formerly were part of Syria. Some of the Druze population opposes Israeli control. The Israeli development plan aims to double the Jewish population in the coming years.

Shortly after making his remarks, Bennett's office said he was notified that his daughter tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting the Israeli leader to leave the Cabinet meeting and head into self-isolation at home.

Bennett's office said he had tested negative in a rapid test taken before the meeting and that Bennett's daughter, 14, was vaccinated.

Israel's education minister, Yifat Shasha-Biton, missed Sunday's meeting after her daughter tested positive for COVID-19. Her office said she had gone into self-isolation while she awaited the results of a coronavirus test.

'The world's best place to be a woman' is being sued for misogyny

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN
 Sat December 25, 2021


Members of Öfgar, an Icelandic feminist group that fights against gender based violence, pictured in Reykjavik in October 2021.



(CNN)The bruises on Maria Árnadóttir's body were numerous, ranging in color from pale yellow to deep purple.
According to court documents, the injuries were caused by Árnadóttir's boyfriend throwing her around the room while trying to wrestle her phone away from her after she threatened to call the police. For days after the attack, Árnadóttir struggled to breathe. Eventually, she ended up in the emergency room, the documents say.
Speaking quietly in her apartment in the suburbs of Reykjavik, she told CNN the man had attacked her before, but never as viciously as he did on that occasion in July 2016. "I really thought I was dying. He was pulling me and throwing me around. I thought 'I am going to die today,'" she said.
Months later, she says she worked up the courage to go to the police, submitting photos of her injuries, medical notes, a list of witnesses to the violence and psychological abuse she was subjected to, as well as text messages from her alleged attacker, by then her ex-boyfriend, in which Árnadóttir says he admitted to the assault and threatened to share nude photos of her if she spoke up. A court filing includes all of these documents.



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According to the court documents, the man denied assaulting her, but admitted to sending the threat, although he said he never intended to follow up on it. CNN has reached out to the man's lawyer.
But for the police, that evidence was not enough.
A year and half after she had pressed charges, Árnadóttir says officers told her the case was being dropped because it would not lead to a conviction.
She later discovered that was not true. The case had not been dropped. Instead, the police failed to interview the accused and as a result, the statute of limitation expired in their hands, according to the judicial authorities who later reviewed the case.
Árnadóttir is one of several women collectively taking their government to the European Court of Human Rights over what they say is a misogynistic justice system that systematically violates the rights of victims of gender-based violence.
The strange twist in the tale? These women live in Iceland, long celebrated as the world's most gender equal country.

Maria Árnadóttir is one of the women suing Iceland for violating the rights of the victims of domestic violence.

On paper, Iceland is a great place to be a woman. For 12 years running, it has been crowned the world's top place for gender equality by the World Economic Forum.
It has world-leading equal pay and anti-discrimination laws. Women hold 47% of the seats in its Parliament and make up 46% of the boards of Icelandic companies.
Childcare is heavily subsidized and available to all. Maternity healthcare is free.
But for Árnadóttir and many other women struggling to see justice done, Iceland's portrayal as a feminist paradise is a far cry from reality -- far enough to take the country to court.
The lawsuit, launched in March, was coordinated by several Icelandic NGOs, including Stígamót, a non-profit that campaigns against domestic and sexual violence and provides counseling for survivors.
Steinunn Guðjónsdóttir, Stígamót's spokesperson and fundraising manager, told CNN the group reviewed a number of recent cases of alleged violence against women that had been dismissed by the police or prosecutors, and found that the victims' rights had allegedly been violated in several of them.

Steinunn Guðjónsdóttir is the spokesperson and fundraising manager at Stigamot, an NGO that is fighting sexual violence, providing counseling for survivors and running prevention workshops.

Guðjónsdóttir said these included examples where evidence had been ignored, statutes of limitation expiring because of lack of action by the police, victim shaming and a complete lack of transparency.
Guðjónsdóttir said there is still a significant gap between the law and the way it's being implemented.
"The justice system looks at rape as a very, very, very serious crime, in terms of the punishment, but it doesn't get any of the manpower and attention. When there is a murder -- which happens very rarely in Iceland -- the whole police force goes to investigate and it's just a huge priority. That's obviously not the case with rape," she said.
Transparency is also an issue, Guðjónsdóttir said, pointing out that under Icelandic law, victims do not have the right to view their case files, which means they cannot monitor the progress of an investigation.
In a statement to CNN, the Icelandic Ministry of Justice said that while "it has concluded that a certain mistake was made during the investigation [of Árnadóttir's case], the government's opinion is that the mistake does not meet the minimum level of severity" to qualify as a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Icelandic Police did not comment on the case, referring instead to the Ministry of Justice.

Murder cases may be rare in Iceland, but rapes aren't.

According to a 2018 landmark study into trauma, a quarter of Icelandic women have experienced rape or attempted rape over their lifetimes and around 40% have been subjected to physical or sexual violence. That number is significantly higher than the global average -- the World Health Organization says around 30% of women worldwide have been subjected to physical or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir and Arna Hauksdóttir, two public health experts and epidemiologists at the University of Iceland who conducted the research, reached out to nearly all women in Iceland. They ended up surveying more than 30,000 people -- almost a third of the country's entire female adult population, spread across rural and urban areas and representing a cross-section of Icelandic society.
They admitted the results of their study came as a shock. "We were quite struck by the very high proportion of women that have experienced either physical or sexual violence during their lifetime," Hauksdóttir told CNN.
"People had a hard time believing that these are real numbers," Valdimarsdóttir added. "The spontaneous reaction is basically '40%?! No way!'"

Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir and Arna Hauksdóttir are public health experts and epidemiologists at the University of Iceland.

"Even I must admit that I didn't want to believe it myself," she said. "And then I started to go through my friends and we started talking a lot about it, and it sounds right ... when you look at your girlfriends and you take 20 of them ... I would say maybe eight of them have that experience."
Valdimarsdóttir and Hauksdóttir said the results were particularly hard to square with Iceland's strong culture of gender equality.
"Iceland is a great place to be a woman, we have access to health care, childcare ... education and to a lot of things that most of the people living on this Earth don't have ... but we still have these numbers," Hauksdóttir said.

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She said it is possible that the very advances Iceland has made in gender equality might explain the relatively high number of women reporting violence.
"In societies that have scored high on gender equality, you will still see very, very high figures [of violence] and it's paradoxical to see that, but the reason might have to do with women being very aware of when they're being violated in any way," she said. "Is that the case in other countries? These numbers may be closer to the truth."
The research revealed another worrying thing -- the proportion of women who have experienced violence was very similar across all sections of Icelandic society. "Different backgrounds, different levels of education, different levels of income ... so it's not class related," Valdimarsdóttir said. "Then you start to think: 'Is this some kind of law of nature? Is this an essential part of human behavior?'"

'The generational curse'

One group that was not surprised by the results of the trauma study was Öfgar, a feminist collective that aims to educate the public about violence and rape culture.
In fact, the group thinks the real numbers might be even higher.
"I don't have a single girlfriend that has not been sexually abused, harassed, molested or in a toxic relationship," Helga Ben, one of the activists, told CNN during an interview with the group in a cafe in central Reykjavik.
One by one, the five women described their experiences with date rape, forced consent, sexual abuse and harassment. They spoke about the shame they experienced over and over again.
They call it the "generational curse."
"The idea that Iceland is a feminist paradise has been shoved down our throats since we were little kids: 'Why are you so angry? Do you see these women in the third world countries? ... You have it so good,'" said Ólöf Tara, one of the women involved in the group.

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"But the violence that women have been facing throughout the years, we never had the power to raise our voice about it. Violence thrives in silence, because if you speak out, somebody connects with your story and realizes this is their story too and then they may go and start seeking help and break the pattern, because it is a generational pattern. I got it from my mom and my mom got it from her mom, like my grandmother from her mom, and I'm gonna carry it to my kids if we don't speak and talk about it," Hulda Hrund Sigmundsdóttir added.
Öfgar has made it its mission to engage with younger people, trying to spread awareness through funny but hard hitting social media videos about issues like sexual consent and date rape.
They also offer help and support to victims and have played an instrumental role in the second wave of the #MeToo movement in Iceland.
The group said they realized they needed to "do something" when they kept receiving accusations of sexual violence and harassment about one particular man, a local celebrity in Iceland.


Tanja Ísfjörð is one of the women's rights activists involved in Öfgar.

"We had survivors coming to us, talking about what he did and it was a 10-year-long span of violence against women, against young girls and we thought this can't go on, he can't keep going on and doing what he's doing," said Tanja Ísfjörð, who was joining the meeting remotely, speaking to the rest of the group from a laptop screen propped up on a low coffee table.
Without naming the man, Öfgar published testimonials from more than 20 women who said they had been abused and harassed by him, sparking a huge outcry across the country. More victims came forward, but the group also faced a significant backlash, including personal threats.
"We were accused of making up stories and trying to cancel [the man], yet the only ones who have been canceled are the survivors," Tanja Ísfjörð said.
The man was dropped from the line-up of a major cultural event in Iceland and alleges he suffered professional consequences following the accusations. He has denied wrongdoing and threatened to sue the group for damages. He has not been charged with any crime. CNN has repeatedly reached out to him for comment, but did not hear back.
The revelations sparked a new wave of the #MeToo movement in Iceland, with several other men, including members of the national football team, accused of sexual misconduct and coverup. The entire executive committee of the Icelandic Football Association resigned in August after its chairman Gudni Bergsson denied the association received complaints of sexual violence -- a claim that was later proven to be false. The alleged attacker, who was identified as Kolbeinn Sigþórsson, issued a statement later admitting that he behaved inappropriately, but denying any violence.

The 'correct way' is not working

The backlash against Iceland's #MeToo movement was one of the things that sparked the lawsuit against the government.

"With #MeToo, women are now coming out and naming the men who raped them, even if they haven't pressed charges against them, and many people are like: 'Whoa, whoa, whoa! You cannot do it like this, you have to do it the right way,'" Guðjónsdóttir told CNN.
"There's a lot of pressure on survivors to do the 'correct thing' and press charges and try to have the perpetrator convicted, but the 'right way' isn't working, the vast majority of cases, they don't even make it to the judge. So they don't get any judgment on whether the perpetrator is guilty or not. It's just a mess," she said.

It will likely take several years for the European Court of Human Rights to reach a decision on the lawsuit. Meanwhile, Árnadóttir's struggle goes on.

She says she has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), had to take time off from work, and still sometimes finds it difficult to deal with everyday tasks. She blames her mental health problems on the judicial system, which she says has failed her.
"The Icelandic government acknowledges mistakes in the investigation of the case, resulting in its dismissal, due to the statute of limitation," Fjalar Sigurðarson, the information officer at Icelandic Ministry of Justice, told CNN in a statement.
He said the reason for the delay in the investigation was "uncertainty" about which charges to bring and added that "having cases lapse in the care of the police is very uncommon in criminal procedures in Iceland."

UK companies have to disclose gender pay gaps. It's not enough

While the case concerning the physical attacks against Árnadóttir lapsed, her former partner was convicted of separate charges of threatening her in 2020. According to court documents, he admitted to sending the threats, but said he never intended to follow up on them. He was handed a 45-day suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay damages, according to publicly available court documents. The country's National Court dismissed his appeal earlier this year, upholding the decision. CNN has reached out to the man's lawyer for comment.
"This goes to show that the case was taken seriously within the judicial system," Sigurðarson said.
Árnadóttir has poured all her energy into becoming an activist, speaking up about her experience and getting the attention of some of Iceland's top officials. As a law professional herself, she has spoken about her case to the Minister of Justice, pushing for reforms.
The National Commissioner of Iceland's Police, Sigríður Björk Guðjónsdóttir has publicly apologized to her "for the harm that she received by our system," stressing that the police force is working on reforms and "adopting a victim-oriented approach" in gender-based violence cases.
There is a momentum building up for reform -- and for Árnadóttir, that's what matters the most. "I have a daughter, I have friends, I don't want anybody to have to go through what I did," she said. "We need to change the system."
Correction: This story has been updated to clarify the findings of an Icelandic survey which found that 40% of women in the country had been subjected to physical or sexual violence, regardless of the perpetrator's identity.

Pope Francis Calls for Religious  CATHOLIC Leaders to Change
December 23, 2021
Pope Francis delivers his blessing at the end of his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021. (AP)

Pope Francis urged top Vatican officials Thursday to show humility this Christmas season.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church made the comments during his yearly Christmas speech. He said pride and self-interest is harmful to their spiritual lives and corrupts the Church's purpose.

Francis used his yearly Christmas speech to criticize Vatican administrators, or Cardinals, for what he sees as their moral and personal failings. He spoke about pride-filled clergy who hide behind Catholic Church traditions instead of seeking to help the neediest people with humility.

Pope Francis arrives for his weekly general audience as a child plays 

on the steps of the Paul VI Hall, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021

"The humble are those who are concerned not simply with the past but also with the future,” Francis said. They know how to look ahead, to widen their view and remember the past with feelings of thankfulness. The proud fear anything new, he added, “because they cannot control it.”

The Pope said that proud people only care about themselves, so they do not learn from their wrong actions and are not willing to forgive others. “This is a tremendous corruption disguised as a good. We need to avoid it," he said.

Reform measures

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has used his Christmas speech to speak against those who want to limit his efforts to reform the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Earlier this year, Francis cut pay to Cardinals by 10 percent. He also barred them from receiving gifts valued higher than $45. And, the Pope passed a law that permits the Vatican's own court to try Cardinals on criminal charges.

Francis compared the leaders to the person in The Bible called Naaman, who was a rich and honored general. Naaman had to become humble to be healed from leprosy.

"The story of Naaman reminds us that Christmas is the time when each of us needs to find the courage” and become humble like Naaman, he said.

New rules

This year, Francis took his strongest step yet to control extremely conservative Catholic clergy. He placed restrictions on the use of the old style of Latin Mass ceremony.

Pope Francis walks towards faithful at the end of his weekly general audience

 in the Paul VI Hall, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021.

He strengthened those restrictions last weekend with a new set of rules to prevent local church publications from advertising the times for Latin masses.

The Pope warned that the church might not survive without change. "All of us are called to humility, because all of us are called to remember and to give life. We are called to find a right relationship with our roots and our branches. Without those two things, we become sick, destined to disappear," he said.

I’m Jill Robbins.

Nicole Winfield reported on this story for the Associated Press. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. and Caty Weaver were the editors.

__________________________________________________
Words in This Story

humility – n. the quality or state of not thinking you are better than other people

church – n. a particular Christian group

pride – n. a feeling that you are more important or better than other people

tremendous –adj. very large or very great

disguise – v. to hide (something) so that it will not be seen or noticed

leprosy – n. a serious disease that causes painful rough areas on the skin and that badly damages nerves and flesh

courage –n. the ability to do something that you know is difficult or dangerous

destined – adj. certain to do or to be something

What do you think of the Pope’s speech? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

Opinion: Allow Golden Rice to save lives

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) has killed millions of children in less-developed countries for at least the last three decades—roughly 2 million annually in the early 1990s alone (1⇓⇓–4). Although the number is declining, it was estimated to be 266,200 (4) at the start of the millennium.

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View ORCID Profile Felicia Wu, View ORCID Profile Justus Wesseler, View ORCID Profile  David Zilberman, View ORCID Profile Robert M. Russell, View ORCID Profile Chen Chen, 

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PNAS December 21, 2021 118 (51) e2120901118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120901118

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Widespread consumption of the genetically modified rice variety known as Golden Rice offers a potent and cost-effective strategy to combat vitamin A deficiency. Image credit: International Rice Research Institute; photo licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The consumption of the genetically modified rice variety known as Golden Rice (GR) offers a potent and cost-effective strategy to combat VAD. But this innovation has been cast aside owing to fear or false accusations, resulting in numerous lives needlessly lost (1⇓–3). With the recent exception of the Philippines, governments have not approved the cultivation of GR (5). We believe it should be broadly approved and given the opportunity to save and improve lives.

In high-income nations where populations have access to a diversity of foods, VAD is rare. In many low-income nations, however, populations have limited access to foods rich in vitamin A or beta-carotene, a vitamin A precursor; hence, VAD rates can be dangerously high in children. There have been recent improvements: from 1991 to 2013, the VAD rate among children in low- and middle-income countries declined from 39% to 29%, with notable improvements among children in East and Southeast Asia (4). However, children in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia continue to disproportionately experience VAD and its associated risks: infectious and diarrheal diseases, irreversible blindness and other sensory losses, and premature death (1, 4, 6).

VAD has not been eradicated despite a variety of strategies used globally, including education on the value of dietary diversity, promotion of home gardens and maternal breastfeeding of infants, and community health programs including vitamin A supplementation with syrups or capsules (7). Principally, VAD is caused by insufficient dietary diversity, a result of poverty and agronomic and market constraints. Animal source foods and many kinds of produce are unavailable or expensive in local markets. Conversely, white rice or other cereal grains are easily available and inexpensive but primarily contain carbohydrates while lacking sufficient micronutrient levels.

GR, developed first in the 1990s and then modified in 2004 with transgenes from maize and a common soil bacterium Erwinia uredovora, could be an important public health intervention for VAD populations worldwide. This transgenic, or genetically modified, rice produces beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, in the normally white endosperm (8) and has proven an effective source of vitamin A in humans (9). GR* is now awaiting final approval in Bangladesh. In July 2021, it was approved for cultivation in the Philippines. Other countries will likely follow.

A recent study has estimated that substituting GR for conventional rice could provide 89% to 113% and 57% to 99% of the recommended vitamin A requirement for preschool children in Bangladesh and the Philippines, respectively (10). Even if there were no other sources of vitamin A in the diets, this boost in dietary beta-carotene could do much to prevent diseases associated with VAD.

GR is also financially viable. In Bangladesh, the current practice of fortifying rice with vitamin A and zinc using food additives, although supported by the World Food Programme, increases the cost of rice by 5% to 6% and is applied to only about 1 million metric tonnes of rice of the roughly 25 million metric tonnes produced in Bangladesh per year (11). GR, by contrast, poses no extra cost to governments, growers, or consumers in comparison with white rice.

Meanwhile, VAD has continued to cause severe illness and death among certain populations worldwide, especially children (12). The total estimated deaths from VAD-related diarrheal diseases and measles in children under five years of age in 2013 was 94,500 and 11,200, respectively, totaling 105,700 deaths across the world (4). Had GR become a part of diets in vulnerable populations worldwide, a portion of these lives might have been saved. Hopefully, approval of the commercialization of GR in the Philippines will provide impetus for Bangladesh and other nations with high VAD rates to provide poor consumers with an option that may save lives and improve health.

Unnecessary Delays

Those who oppose transgenic or genetically modified organisms raised concerns that led policymakers to delay the approval of the technologies (13). One argument relates to biotechnology company profits. But because the GR technology to the public sector is available at no cost for humanitarian uses, this concern is irrelevant. There are no limitations, except export, on GR use: replanting or selling or giving away seed, or polishing for consumption or sale.

Greenpeace summarized a food security-related objection to GR in a 2012 statement (14): “If introduced on a large scale, GR can exacerbate malnutrition and ultimately undermine food security.” The implication: GR will worsen malnutrition because it leads to a diet based on one staple. However, the replacement of traditional rice with GR would not exclude the development of diversified diets; in the meantime, vitamin A status could improve for many in the population. And optimizing vitamin A delivery could improve public health in at-risk populations.

A reasonable objection concerns possible human or environmental health risks. The United Nations (UN) Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (15) provides a framework for the regulation of genetically engineered crops in many countries, emphasizing the Precautionary Principle in assessing risks, and leaving out assessment of benefits. This Protocol was signed in 2000 and became effective in 2003, in the relatively early days of agricultural genetic engineering. Since then, multiple studies have reported on benefits of genetically modified organism (GMO) adoption through increased yields, reduced pesticide use, improved farmer income, reduced prices to consumers, and in some cases even improved food safety (16). Meanwhile, there have been no confirmed incidents of adverse human health or environmental effects from genetically engineered crops during nearly three decades of global use (16).

Transgenic crops are subject to many required regulatory tests before approval, including animal feeding and in vitro studies for toxicity and allergenicity. Yet opponents of these crops have continued to amplify suspicion on the long-term health effects of genetically engineered crops (17). Protection against such risks can be achieved through monitoring of the performance and the impacts of technologies and intervening when setbacks occur. However, the food safety assessments for transgenic crops in many countries are more demanding than for conventionally bred varieties. In fact, often less is known about the properties of plants developed by conventional mutagenesis than those developed by transgenic methods.

Another concern is that GR genes may intermingle with those of conventionally bred rice varieties. This uncertainty, however, applies not just to GR but also to any other new rice variety. Humans have consumed rice for more than 4,000 years, including varieties that have been crossed genetically across multiple strains. Transgenic methods of introducing novel genes is not inherently of greater concern, unless those genes produce proteins with potential adverse health effects—something that food safety tests for approval can determine. Clearly the lives saved with VAD outweigh concerns about these so-called unknown risks. In response to such criticisms, in 2016 more than 150 Nobel Laureates have signed an open letter to the UN, governments of the world, and Greenpeace, urging a more balanced approach toward genetically modified crops in general and GR in particular: “Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than, those derived from any other method of production. … Opposition based on emotion and dogma contradicted by data must be stopped” (18).

Questioning Science

The arguments used by organizations to delay adoption of GR often resemble the arguments of anti-vaccination groups, including those protesting vaccines to protect against COVID-19. Some of the opponents of GR and agricultural biotechnology more generally see the introduction of GR as forcing the consumption of GMOs on the population. However, for the case of GR, consumers have the option of easily avoiding consumption because GR is very easily identifiable by its color.

The tragedy of GR is that regulatory delays of approval have immense costs in terms of preventable deaths, with no apparent benefit (13). The approval of GR is even more urgent with the ongoing pandemic, which has made access to healthcare services more difficult in vulnerable populations worldwide. The World Bank has recommended that micronutrient biofortification of staple crops, including specifically GR, should be the norm and not the exception in crop breeding (19).

Golden rice can effectively control VAD. Delaying the uptake of a genetically modified product shown to have clear health benefits has and will cost numerous lives, frequently of the most vulnerable individuals. Policymakers must find ways to overcome this resistance and accelerate the introduction and adoption of Golden Rice.

Change History

December 23, 2021: The article text has been updated.

Footnotes


↵1F.W. and J.W. contributed equally to this work.
↵2To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: zilber11@berkeley.edu.
Accepted November 16, 2021.


Author contributions: J.W., D.Z., and A.D. designed research; F.W., J.W., C.C., and A.D. performed research; F.W., J.W., and C.C. analyzed data; and F.W., J.W., D.Z., R.R., C.C., and A.D. wrote the paper.


Competing interest statement: A.D. is a member and the Executive Secretary of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board. He is a volunteer, unpaid and without grants. R.R. is a member of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board. He is a volunteer, unpaid and without grants. The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board (http://www.goldenrice.org) holds the rights for humanitarian applications of the nutritional technology created by Professors Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer and related licensed technology. The Board is not legally incorporated in any way. It is a group of individuals who voluntarily share the objective of making Golden Rice available to resource-poor populations as a public good, delivered by the public sector in locally adapted and preferred rice varieties, at no greater cost than white rice and with no use limitations except export. All other authors declare no competing interests.


Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences.


↵*Many transformation events were produced (8), from which event GR2E has been selected on the basis of molecular structure and insertion in the rice genome, together with agronomic performance. It is the basis of the regulatory data generated and is the only form of GR which is offered for approval and use.
Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.


This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).


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Louise Bourgeois' etchings turn inward to explore motherhood, nature

Posted : 2021-12-26 

KOREA TIMES

Louis Bourgeois' "Turning Inwards Set #4 (The Smell of Eucalyptus (#1))" (2006), left, and "Turning Inwards Set #4 (I See You!!!)" (2007) / Courtesy of the Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, New York/SACK, Seoul

By Park Han-sol

Louise Bourgeois descends the stairs in her home on West 20th Street in New York City in 1992. / Courtesy of Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at ARS, NY

"Art is a guarantee of sanity." This sentence famously declared by Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) reflects the role that sculptures, paintings and etchings played throughout the life of the prolific French-American artist.

In Korea, she is arguably best known for her gigantic bronze spider sculpture series, "Maman," one huge piece of which used to sit in the courtyard of Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul before being relocated this year to the Ho-Am Art Museum in Gyeonggi Province. Representing protection and nurturing, the creature was an ode to her own beloved mother.

For Bourgeois, whose unresolved childhood traumas stemmed from resentment of her father's years of infidelity and sympathy for her invalid mother's silence, art was a tool for addressing her bottled-up fears and insecurities.

"But in comparison to her earlier works that are more piercing and emotionally intense, the artist's pieces created during the final years of her life turned inward ― to herself," said Yoon Hei-jeong, the managing director of Kukje Gallery, where the artist's lesser-known, soft-ground etching series "Turning Inwards #4" is currently on view.

"The series indicates a phase of self-reflection, as she turns her attention to her inner self, away from the resentment, wounds and hatred that consumed her in the past."


An installation view of "The Smell of Eucalyptus" exhibition at Kukje Gallery in central Seoul / Courtesy of Kukje Gallery

In "The Smell of Eucalyptus" exhibition, a total of 39 etchings produced between 2006 and 2009 are shown together for the first time in Korea. With these large prints at the forefront, there are also eight sculptures nestled throughout the gallery space that share similar formal and thematic concerns, thereby creating a point of dialogue between the two different genres of her work.

The primary themes and iconography addressed in her "Turning Inwards" series are a continuation of her years-long artistic exploration of motherhood, sexuality and interest in nature ― especially plants in relation to human bodies.

One of the pieces on display, from which the show's title derives, underlines the central importance of memory as well as the sense of healing that materialized in her later work.

In the 1920s, the artist nursed her ailing mother in the south of France, often using eucalyptus oil as a treatment. The plant eventually came to symbolize her time and relationship with her mother, later transforming into a means of visualizing maternal identity.

It also became a sensory trigger ― a means to evoke her past memory ― as she burned the plant in her studio to cleanse the aura.

"Ultimately, considering how art became a tool for coping with her emotions throughout the years, eucalyptus was both a physical and symbolic motif that provided her with a sense of healing," Yoon said.

A handful of her other pieces from the series draw an intricate connection between the human body and plant forms from nature, such as coiling stems reminiscent of a person's internal organs and an anthropomorphic creature filled with countless eyes, resembling a fruit-bearing tree.

"Our own body could be considered, from a topological point of view, a landscape with mounds and valleys and caves and holes," the artist once said. "So it seems rather evident to me that our body is a figuration that appears in Mother Earth."

"The Smell of Eucalyptus" exhibition runs through Jan. 30, 2022, at Kukje Gallery.

Scientists suggest possible life on Venus may be creating its own livable environment

Michael Lee

CTVNews.ca Writer
Thursday, December 23, 2021 

Signs of life on Venus?

A team of researchers discovered the presence of phosphine, a gas that is produced without oxygen on Earth, in Venus’ clouds.

This file photo, made available by NASA, shows the planet Venus made with data from the Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech FILE via AP)


A team of researchers has put forward a new theory suggesting possible life on the planet Venus could be making the environment more hospitable.

Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team from Cardiff University in Wales, MIT in Cambridge, Mass., and Cambridge University in England say potential life may be creating its own habitable environment in the clouds of Venus through a "cascade of chemical reactions," which in turn may also explain other "strange anomalies" that have puzzled scientists for decades.

Among those puzzling questions has been the presence of ammonia, a gas that was "tentatively" detected in the 1970s, and which the team says by all accounts shouldn't be produced through any chemical process known on Venus — the second planet from the sun after Mercury and before Earth.

Simply put, the group says: "Life could be making its own environment on Venus."

"We know that life can grow in acid environments on Earth, but nothing as acid as the clouds of Venus were believed to be," William Bains of Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy, and a co-author of the study, said in a news release.

"But if something is making ammonia in the clouds, then that will neutralize some of the droplets, making them potentially more habitable."

The scientists note that certain life forms on Earth have the ability to produce ammonia in order to neutralize and make an otherwise highly acidic environment livable.

As part of their work, the researchers modelled a set of chemical processes to show that if ammonia is present on Venus, the gas would set off a series of chemical reactions, neutralizing surrounding droplets of sulfuric acid.

The pH level of the clouds, or how acidic or basic they are, would then increase from roughly -11 to 0, the team says. While still very acidic, the researchers say this would be within the range of acidity that life could tolerate.

The team also tested whether dust could be sweeping minerals into the clouds of Venus and causing them to interact with the sulfuric acid.

However, it was determined that a massive amount of dust would be needed, which led the team to consider ammonia.

If life were producing ammonia, the researchers say the associated chemical reactions would naturally yield oxygen, which has been identified as one anomaly on the planet.

Once ammonia is in the clouds, it would dissolve in droplets of sulfuric acid and effectively neutralize it, creating a salt-like slurry.

The most plausible explanation for where ammonia would originate from, the researchers hypothesize, is biological, as opposed to a non-biological source such as lightning, volcanic eruptions or even a meteor strike.

"Ammonia shouldn't be on Venus," study co-author Sara Seager from MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences said.

"It has hydrogen attached to it, and there's very little hydrogen around. Any gas that doesn't belong in the context of its environment is automatically suspicious for being made by life."

The group says a set of proposed privately funded missions, called the Venus Life Finder Missions, of which Seager is principal investigator, could serve as an opportunity to check for the presence of ammonia — and signs of life — in the next several years.

"There are many other challenges for life to overcome if it is to live in the clouds of Venus," Bains adds.

"There is almost no water there for a start, and all life that we know of needs water. But if life is there, then neutralizing the acid will make the clouds just a bit more habitable than we thought."

 

Alien Life Could Theoretically Survive Within Venus's Clouds, Scientists Say

(NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech)

DAVID NIELD
23 DECEMBER 2021

With an atmosphere acidic enough to strip the skin from your bones, Venus is far from what we might imagine as hospitable. But a new study backs up the idea that cocoons of life could potentially exist in the planet's corrosive clouds.

Researchers have identified a chemical pathway through which the droplets of sulfuric acid lingering in the clouds of Venus could become neutralized – perhaps to the extent that life would be able to survive on this hostile world.

At the start of this chemical pathway is the biological production of ammonia, hints of which probes detected when passing by Venus in the 1970s. According to this new study, small amounts of ammonia could dissolve into the sulfuric acid droplets. This process would transform at least some of the acid into salts, turning the liquid drops into a slurry with a pH we know life can tolerate.

"As a result, the clouds are no more acidic than some extreme terrestrial environments that harbor life," write the researchers in their published paper. "Life could be making its own environment on Venus."

An illustration of hypothetical microbial life in the clouds of Venus. (J. Petkowska)

Ammonia shouldn't occur in any significant amounts on Venus, given the limited hydrogen required would be competitively snapped up in other reactions. The researchers suggest that life might have chemical advantages to overcome this, accounting for the ammonia signal that we've recorded on Venus, among other anomalies.

These other anomalies include small concentrations of oxygen that shouldn't be there, higher-than-expected levels of water vapor, and non-spherical particles that don't match the round droplets of sulfuric acid. Chemical modeling in the lab confirmed that these strange occurrences could be explained by ammonia-producing life on Venus.


A similar sort of process happens in certain places on Earth, and indeed our own stomachs, where ammonia also has the role of neutralizing an acidic environment to make it more hospitable. On paper at least, it checks out.

Lightning, volcanic eruptions, and meteorite strikes are all other possible sources of ammonia on Venus, but according to the researchers' calculations, they would not produce enough of the stuff. Biological life potentially could.

"No life that we know of could survive in the Venus droplets," says planetary scientist Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "But the point is, maybe some life is there, and is modifying its environment so that it is livable."

This is a long way from saying that there is life on Venus, but it's an interesting hypothesis that fits the observations we have right now. What's more, the researchers have put together a list of further checks that future Venus probe missions can make to test whether this new theory holds.

And this is by no means the only interesting discussion going on about Venus. There are suggestions that there might also be phosphine in the atmosphere – which, again, could hint at biological life – but we're going to have to wait for a closer look at the planet to clear up a lot of these unknowns.

"Venus has lingering, unexplained atmospheric anomalies that are incredible," says Seager. "It leaves room for the possibility of life."

The research has been published in PNAS.

Production of ammonia makes Venusian clouds habitable and explains observed cloud-level chemical anomalies
William Bains, View ORCID ProfileJanusz J. Petkowski, View ORCID ProfilePaul B. Rimmer, and Sara Seage

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PNAS December 28, 2021 118 (52) e2110889118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2110889118

Contributed by Sara Seager; received November 6, 2021; accepted November 11, 2021; reviewed by David Grinspoon and Thomas Puzia

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Significance

This research provides a transformative hypothesis for the chemistry of the atmospheric cloud layers of Venus while reconciling decades-long atmosphere anomalies. Our model predicts that the clouds are not entirely made of sulfuric acid, but are partially composed of ammonium salt slurries, which may be the result of biological production of ammonia in cloud droplets. As a result, the clouds are no more acidic than some extreme terrestrial environments that harbor life. Life could be making its own environment on Venus. The model’s predictions for the abundance of gases in Venus’ atmosphere match observation better than any previous model, and are readily testable.

Abstract

The atmosphere of Venus remains mysterious, with many outstanding chemical connundra. These include the unexpected presence of ∼10 ppm O2 in the cloud layers, an unknown composition of large particles in the lower cloud layers, and hard to explain measured vertical abundance profiles of SO2 and H2O. We propose a hypothesis for the chemistry in the clouds that largely addresses all of the above anomalies. We include ammonia (NH3), a key component that has been tentatively detected both by the Venera 8 and Pioneer Venus probes. NH3 dissolves in some of the sulfuric acid cloud droplets, effectively neutralizing the acid and trapping dissolved SO2 as ammonium sulfite salts. This trapping of SO2 in the clouds, together with the release of SO2 below the clouds as the droplets settle out to higher temperatures, explains the vertical SO2 abundance anomaly. A consequence of the presence of NH3 is that some Venus cloud droplets must be semisolid ammonium salt slurries, with a pH of ∼1, which matches Earth acidophile environments, rather than concentrated sulfuric acid. The source of NH3 is unknown but could involve biological production; if so, then the most energy-efficient NH3-producing reaction also creates O2, explaining the detection of O2 in the cloud layers. Our model therefore predicts that the clouds are more habitable than previously thought, and may be inhabited. Unlike prior atmospheric models, ours does not require forced chemical constraints to match the data. Our hypothesis, guided by existing observations, can be tested by new Venus in situ measurements.

Volcanically extruded phosphides as an abiotic source of Venusian phosphine
N. Truong and J. I. Lunine
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PNAS July 20, 2021 118 (29) e2021689118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021689118

Contributed by J. I. Lunine, June 8, 2021 (sent for review October 16, 2020; reviewed by James F. Kasting, Suzanne Smrekar, Larry W. Esposito, and Paul K. Byrne)

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Significance

Published observations suggest small amounts of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, and various abiotic mechanisms for its generation have been rejected in the literature, including active volcanism. We reexamine a volcanic source and find it to be sufficient to supply the observed amount of phosphine given that Venus might be subject to episodes of active volcanism and magmas originating deep in the mantle and brought up by plume volcanism.

Abstract

We hypothesize that trace amounts of phosphides formed in the mantle are a plausible abiotic source of the Venusian phosphine observed by Greaves et al. [Nat. Astron., https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1174-4 (2020)]. In this hypothesis, small amounts of phosphides (P3− bound in metals such as iron), sourced from a deep mantle, are brought to the surface by volcanism. They are then ejected into the atmosphere in the form of volcanic dust by explosive volcanic eruptions, which were invoked by others to explain the episodic changes of sulfur dioxide seen in the atmosphere [Esposito, Science 223, 1072–1074 (1984)]. There they react with sulfuric acid in the aerosol layer to form phosphine (2 P3− + 3H2SO4 = 2PH3 + 3SO42-). We take issue with the conclusion of Bains et al. [arXiv:2009.06499 (2020)] that the volcanic rates for such a mechanism would have to be implausibly high. We consider a mantle with the redox state similar to the Earth, magma originating deep in the mantle—a likely scenario for the origin of plume volcanism on Venus—and episodically high but plausible rates of volcanism on a Venus bereft of plate tectonics. We conclude that volcanism could supply an adequate amount of phosphide to produce phosphine. Our conclusion is supported by remote sensing observations of the Venusian atmosphere and surface that have been interpreted as indicative of currently active volcanism.