It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, July 04, 2023
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Mozambique 'tuna bond' case against Credit Suisse can proceed, UK judge rules
Kirstin Ridley Mon, July 3, 2023
By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON (Reuters) -Mozambique's blockbuster lawsuit against Credit Suisse and others over the $2 billion "tuna bond" scandal can proceed to trial, a London judge ruled on Monday, despite complaints that the African nation has failed to fully disclose documents.
High Court Judge Robin Knowles said it was not just, proportionate or necessary to strike out the complex case, which encompasses 11 sets of proceedings, three months before a London trial scheduled to start on Oct. 2.
But he warned: "At trial, all alternatives, including to strike out and in whole or in part, remain available."
The tuna bond or "hidden debt" case has triggered litigation from Maputo to New York, but the London case is due to establish whether one of the world's poorest countries can revoke a sovereign guarantee on a loan it alleges was corruptly procured, and secure compensation for other alleged wrongdoing.
The case dates back to 2013 and three deals between state-owned Mozambican companies and shipbuilder Privinvest - funded in part by loans and bonds from Credit Suisse and backed by undisclosed Mozambican government guarantees - ostensibly to develop the fishing industry and for maritime security.
But hundreds of millions of dollars went missing and, when the state loan guarantees became public in 2016, donors such as the International Monetary Fund halted support, triggering a currency collapse and debt crisis.
The judge first raised the prospect of a strike-out in March, when he ordered Mozambique to ensure access to relevant documents in state offices such as the Office of President and SISE, the state security service.
Credit Suisse, UAE-Lebanese Privinvest and others argue that a lack of "adequate" disclosure jeopardised a fair trial.
Under English litigation rules, each party has to disclose documents on which they rely for their case, those that might damage their own case and those that support the case of others.
A spokesperson for Credit Suisse said the bank "continues to defend itself". Privinvest did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Mozambique's Attorney General's Office said: "In rulings of this kind, pronouncements are always issued after a through analysis so we will respond in due course."
The latest judgment comes as Credit Suisse's new parent, UBS, grapples with integrating its cross-town peer - and its inherited legacy - after an emergency rescue in March.
Lawyers for Mozambique have argued that state secrecy prevents some documents from being disclosed but urged the judge to consider that the case concerned "what is said to be an international fraud and corruption of public officials on a massive scale".
Credit Suisse agreed to pay about $475 million to British and U.S. authorities in 2021 to resolve bribery and fraud charges and has pledged to forgive $200 million of Mozambican debt. It has said three former bankers, who pleaded guilty in the U.S. to handling kickbacks, hid their conduct from the bank.
Privinvest has said it delivered on its obligations under the shipping contracts and any payments it made were legal under Mozambican law.
(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley; Additional reporting by Rachel Savage, Sam Tobin and Manuel Mucari in Maputo, Editing by Conor Humphries and Mark Potter)
Scientists discover concerning possible reason that seals are losing their fur — the findings may have horrible implications
Jeremiah Budin Mon, July 3, 2023
The overheating of our planet affects living things everywhere, including seals. Scientists have found that seals are losing their fur, probably as a result of rising temperatures.
Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, a professor at the University of Queretaro in Mexico, conducted a study of 13 Guadalupe fur seals in the San Benito archipelago off the west coast of Mexico between 2017 and 2018.
She and her team found that nine of the 13 seals showed visible signs of alopecia (the scientific term for hair loss) and that all 13 of the seals had unusually brittle hair.
“Structural changes, although less severe, were detected even in samples collected from fur seals that appeared to have normal fur,” she said. “This suggests that the changes are gradual and this alopecia only appears after the fur has undergone extensive structural damage.”
After ruling out other factors, Acevedo-Whitehouse and her team concluded that the hair loss was likely a result of nutritional deficiencies caused by rising sea surface temperatures.
Average sea surface temperatures have been rising steadily for the past century and are at an all-time high. Studies have found that, in warmer conditions, seals feed on a different and less nutritious variety of squid than they usually eat, as their preferred prey begins to disappear. This, according to Acevedo-Whitehouse, probably accounts for the hair loss.
While other seals rely on heavy layers of blubber to keep warm, fur seals do not have these thick layers of fat and rely instead on their thick fur layers for insulation. Losing that fur would pose a clear and obvious danger to fur seals’ ability to continue to survive in the wild.
This is another likely example of the far-reaching consequences of overheating our planet with air pollution and planet-warming gas emissions.
Though all aspects of life are threatened, marine life is particularly damaged by changes to our planet’s climate. And since that damage often happens out of sight of humans, it goes unremarked upon too often. Recently, nearly 200 countries in the United Nations came together to sign a “High Seas Treaty” to protect oceans and their biodiversity.
Chinese hospital ship to visit Pacific to boost 'responsible' image
Chinese hospital ship to visit Pacific to boost 'responsible' image
Reuters Sun, July 2, 2023
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is sending a military-run hospital ship to the Pacific to where it will call in at Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and East Timor at a time of growing competition with the United States and its allies for influence in the region.
The 14,300 metric ton "Peace Ark", which is bigger than a typical Chinese destroyer, will offer medical aid to Chinese citizens and residents of the countries it visits on its ninth humanitarian "Harmony Mission", the defence ministry said in a statement late on Sunday.
"It is to present our image as a responsible big country", navy spokesperson Liu Wensheng said in a statement.
The ship, painted white with red crosses on its sides, was commissioned in 2008 and has sailed to more than 40 countries.
China has been building ties in the Pacific in recent years to the consternation of the United States and allies Australia and New Zealand, that have long seen the region as their sphere of influence.
China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands last year and hopes to build similar ties with other Pacific countries. Its foreign minister has said relations with the Solomon Islands can serve as a model.
The United States has pledged to triple funding for the region and it opened an embassy in the Solomon Islands in February after a 30-year absence. It is also planning an embassy in Vanuatu.
In May, the U.S. opened an embassy in Tonga and signed a defence pact with Papua New Guinea.
(Reporting by Albee Zhang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Capitalism as we know it has failed. Not even the Tories can defend it
Nick Timothy Sun, July 2, 2023 Canary Wharf
Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary, once explained why he thought inequality had risen. “One of the reasons,” he said, “is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.”
That story is recounted in Hell to Pay, a brilliant new book by Michael Lind about how the suppression of wages is driving economic, social and political crises in America. The idea that we are paid what we deserve – and that the decline in mid-skilled, mid-paid jobs simply reflects the high-tech, globalised economy in which we live – derives from free market theory. But it is, Lind argues, utter nonsense.
In Britain, like in America, the labour market has bifurcated because of political choices and corporate behaviour. Businesses have reduced employment costs by offshoring production to countries with lower labour standards and wages, or by using immigration to import cheaper workers. They have replaced full-time employees with rights and pensions with part-time contractors and gig economy workers. The post-war militancy and overreach of trade unions, and the restrictive laws that followed, has given employers monopsony power: that is, the ability to lower the price of labour because of their relative power over workers.
At the heart of all these changes is a model of globalisation that has caused the economic elites of the West to get richer, and which has allowed millions of people in Asia to escape poverty, but which has also relentlessly and systematically damaged the interests of the Western working – and increasingly middle – class.
Our model of globalisation was not, as Tony Blair put it, as inevitable as summer giving way to autumn. Trade agreements were struck, international institutions created, and when the likes of China broke the rules, dumped goods, stole industrial secrets, and used the system the West had created against us, reality was ignored. In as much as anybody noticed the effects on British workers, the reaction was to subsidise low pay, through tax credits, or – better, but not enough – increase it through minimum wages.
Regardless of the model of globalisation, there always remained choices for domestic policies. We can see this, for example, in how the breakdown between improvements in productivity and increases in pay have differed from country to country. In the US, it is longstanding and chronic. In Britain, more recent yet acute. In Denmark and Sweden, recent and mild.
A recent academic study showed that, contrary to popular perception, Britain and America have tax systems more progressive than in Europe – based on the difference between the taxes paid by the top decile to the bottom half of earners – and redistribute a greater proportion of national income to the bottom half. The reason Europe is less unequal than Britain and America is that wages themselves are more equal.
But wages are not the only way in which capitalism is in crisis. In Britain, everything seems to be in the red: we have a trade deficit, a budget deficit, and a house-building deficit. Personal debt stands at around 130 per cent of household income. The only surplus we seem to run is in net migration: millions have been added to our population in recent years, and 606,000 in the last year alone. Since the financial crash, we have had anaemic growth and stagnant pay. Stuck in a rut of low investment, poor productivity and low pay, we earn no more in real terms, on average, than we did in 2005.
Globalisation is part of the story, but so too is the quality of British economic policy. George Osborne used to describe himself as a strict fiscal conservative but a “monetary policy radical”. But while a fiscal correction was necessary after the financial crash, austerity went too far and for too long. According to Andy Haldane, former chief economist at the Bank of England, “this ruptured growth and was self-defeating for debt”.
Radical monetary policy poisoned the well, inflating asset prices, keeping zombie companies alive, discouraging bank lending to businesses and slowing the circulation of money through the economy. The government and the country became addicted to cheap credit, and left us exposed now the music has finally stopped. It was regressive, hurting households with less, helping those with more, and making it harder for young people to get on to the property ladder. And it caused an orgy of financial restructuring, through share buybacks and leveraged debt.
This is part of the shameful story of the water companies – regulated monopolies that have racked up £65 billion in debt, even as they paid executives multi-million pound remuneration packages and their foreign owners large dividends, all while failing to modernise our creaking infrastructure.
As with the energy companies, this is not just a symptom of monetary policy, but a failure of regulation – which encourages systematic over-reward for investors.
We know capitalism, untempered, can be rapacious: brilliant, innovative and wealth-creating, but also exploitative and careless about the externalities of doing business. Think for example of those tech firms that profit from and care little about the algorithms that send inappropriate content to children. Our economic pain is sometimes caused by a failure to regulate – but when we do regulate we often get it horribly wrong.
From the absurd complexity of the planning system to the failure of pension regulations that drives our savings away from British equities, we have built an economic model that rewards the wealthy not the many, the incumbent not the challenger, the bureaucrat not the entrepreneur, the rentier not the risk-taker, the financier not the maker and the old and not the young. We are serfs to debt, trapped by low pay and bloated assets.
Conservatives should accept that to criticise capitalism is not to succumb to socialism, but turning a blind eye to the failures and excesses of capitalism – especially the crony capitalism we have brought on ourselves – makes defeat to Left-wing parties more likely.
It is often said that those without capital will not support capitalism, but if what we have today is capitalism, it should be up to conservatives to change it – and not just defend the indefensible.
Climate change spells 'terrifying' future: UN rights chief
AFP Mon, July 3, 2023 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said addressing climate change was a human rights issue (Fabrice COFFRINI)
Climate change threatens to deliver a "truly terrifying" dystopian future of hunger and suffering, the United Nations' human rights chief warned Monday.
Volker Turk slammed world leaders for only thinking of the short term while dealing with the climate crisis.
Turk told a UN Human Rights Council debate on the right to food that extreme weather events were wiping out crops, herds and ecosystems, making it impossible for communities to rebuild and support themselves.
"More than 828 million people faced hunger in 2021. And climate change is projected to place up to 80 million more people at risk of hunger by the middle of this century," said Turk.
"Our environment is burning. It's melting. It's flooding. It's depleting. It's drying. It's dying," he said, evoking a "dystopian future".
"Addressing climate change is a human rights issue... there is still time to act. But that time is now," he said.
The 2015 Paris Agreement saw countries agree to cap global warming at "well below" two degrees Celsius above average levels measured between 1850 and 1900 -- and 1.5C if possible. The global mean temperature in 2022 was 1.15C above the 1850-1900 average.
On current policy trends, the planet will be 2.8C warmer by the end of the century, according to the UN's IPCC climate science advisory panel.
"We must not deliver this future of hunger and suffering to our children, and their children. And we don't have to," Volk said.
"We, the generation with the most powerful technological tools in history, have the capacity to change it."
Turk said world leaders "perform the choreography of deciding to act and promising to act and then get stuck in the short term".
He called for an end to "senseless subsidies" of the fossil fuel industry, and said the Dubai COP28 climate summit in November and December needed to be the "decisive game-changer that we so badly need".
Turk urged the world to "shun the green-washers" as well as those who cast doubt on climate science, driven by their own greed.
The Human Rights Council's 53rd session runs until July 14.
rjm/ach
Farmers hope recent rains will ease Iowa's drought, now in the longest stretch in 23 years 2
Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register Mon, July 3, 2023
With drought conditions deepening across Iowa, Clark Whitaker welcomed the half-inch of rain that fell on his crops and pasture in southwest Iowa last Thursday.
Getting rain this year has been the “luck of the draw,” said Whitaker, who farms about 1,100 acres with his son, Will, growing corn, soybeans and alfalfa that he uses to help feed his cattle, pigs and sheep.
“It’s been very spotty, hit and miss,” said the 67-year-old, who hoped more rain through the weekend would help revive pastures that had burned up, with only 2 inches since May.
Iowa has experienced drought for 155 weeks, the longest stretch since the U.S. Drought Monitor began in 2000, says Iowa Climatologist Justin Glisan. Here, corn grows in front of a poorly-growing hayfield due to drought on Tuesday, August 2, 2022, at Rehder Farms outside Hawarden, Iowa.
Across Iowa, drought conditions are nearing a third year, the longest stretch since the U.S. Drought Monitor began 23 years ago, said Justin Glisan, the state climatologist. Some portion of Iowa has experienced drought conditions over the past 155 weeks, beating the 2011-12 drought that lasted 151 weeks, Glisan said.
The U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday showed almost all of Iowa experiencing abnormally dry or drought conditions. Nearly 90% of Iowa was gripped in drought, with about 45% of the state suffering either severe or extreme drought, including southeast Iowa, where Whitaker farms.
Even with recent showers, and scattered storms over the July 4th weekend, the state is unlikely to escape the drought anytime soon, Glisan said.
Recent rain — and signals that Iowa farmers will see more precipitation in July — will help, Glisan said. But “we will need several months, if not more than a year, to really get enough precipitation to chip away at the long-term deficit” in Iowa, he said.
Glisan said May and June are typically Iowa’s wettest months of the year, but the months as of last week had received only 62% of the normal rainfall, Glisan said. Southeastern Iowa has received less than half its normal rainfall, he said.
May was the 21st driest May in 151 years of record-keeping in Iowa, Glisan said, and June could rank the same, depending on rainfall totals through the weekend.
The reason: A blocking high-pressure system has stymied east-west flow across Iowa, preventing normal rainfall from the Gulf of Mexico, Glisan said.
“In July, we expect to see the pattern shift toward a more active storm track and wetter weather possibilities,” he said.
That’s good news for Iowa farmers. July is a critical time for the state’s corn crop, which will begin tasseling, part of the pollination process that’s a big factor in determining yields.
“We need a lot of rain in July to keep us going,” said Aaron Saeugling, an Iowa State University Extension agronomist in southwest Iowa.
“Soybeans appreciate a good drink, too, but August is much more critical for soybeans, reproduction-wise,” Saeugling said. Nearly 90% of Iowa is in moderate to extreme drought, the U.S. Monitor showed Thursday. Iowa has experience some level of drought for the past 155 weeks, the longest stretch since the Drought Monitor began in 2000, the state climatologist says.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s weekly crop report shows Iowa's crops have deteriorated: 56% of Iowa’s corn was considered good to excellent, dropping 16 percentage points from the first week in June, and 48% of the state’s soybeans are good to excellent, dropping 22 percentage points.
The rain "was a short-term blessing, but farmers still face a long-term challenge to get enough moisture" for their crops, Saeugling said.
Clarabell Probasco, an ISU Extension agronomist in southeast Iowa, said crops have shown signs of stress: Corn leaves curl tight to prevent moisture loss and soybeans are yellow.
Additionally, the week’s thunderstorms also have brought strong winds along with rain for southern Iowa farmers, knocking over corn plants, Probasco and Saeugling said. Farmers will need some time to determine whether the corn can recover.
The drought probably means some farmers are unlikely to see record yields this year.
“It’s taken top-line yields off the table,” she said, adding that the lack of rain has been especially difficult for cattle and other livestock producers that graze their animals on pastures.
Some farmers are hauling water to their herds and are worried they won’t get a second or third cutting of alfalfa to help feed their herds throughout the winter.
Whitaker said he has enough water for his cow and calf herd. Without some rain to help his pastures, he will need to feed his grazing cows, a move that typically wouldn’t happen until August or September. That will dip into the reserves that he puts away for winter.
“It’s ugly on the grass situation right now,” he said.
Still, Whitaker said his crops look “surprisingly good,” thanks to some timely rains and improving seed genetics. They'll get better with more precipitation.
"Nobody cares if it rains on our parade" this July 4th, he said.
Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register.
State’s prolonged drought brings additional fears of arsenic in dwindling water supply: ‘A problem that a lot of people are not aware of’
Roberto Guerra Sun, July 2, 2023
Prolonged drought in Colorado is doing more than just drying rivers. It’s also ruining the quality of drinking water, Inside Climate News reported.
Decades of little rain have brought water levels dangerously low, which is increasing the amount of heavy metals in the water people and animals rely on for hydration. What’s happening?
Human industrial activities have spewed an excess of planet-warming gases into the atmosphere over decades, causing our planet to heat up. This has also brought about an increase in floods and droughts in certain parts of the world.
As a result, the American West has been suffering from a powerful drought for over 20 years, a contributing factor in the drying up of important water sources, like the Colorado River.
But overuse is also to blame.
About 80% of the Colorado River goes toward agriculture, the majority of which goes to feeding cows for meat production.
Inside Climate News reported that a study led by Kathy James, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, has found increasing levels of arsenic, a carcinogen that occurs naturally in soil, in drinking water that has been depleted by drought.
As a result, it is estimated that the number of people in the contiguous U.S. exposed to dangerous levels of arsenic may increase from 2.7 to 4.1 million. Why does arsenic in drinking water matter?
Exposure to arsenic from water used for drinking and irrigation of food crops poses a huge risk to human health, as long-term limited exposure can cause cancer and skin lesions and has been associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes, according to the World Health Organization.
Melissa Lombard, a research hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, told Inside Climate News, “I think it’s a problem that a lot of people are not aware of. Climate change is probably going to impact water quality.” What’s being done about it?
Julie Zahringer, a chemist and laboratory director of SDC Laboratory in Colorado, encourages people to test their drinking water for arsenic.
In addition, she said another potential remedy would be to install reverse osmosis water filtration at the kitchen sink, which costs about $300 from an outside supplier, reported Inside Climate News.
In 2009, a water-quality campaign also found high levels of arsenic in the area. The campaign, led by the nonprofit San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, has worked with local real estate agents to make sure domestic water wells are tested for heavy metals before someone buys a home that uses those same water wells.
For now, it appears water testing and installing sophisticated water filtration systems are the best way to prevent residents from drinking water with dangerous levels of arsenic.
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New ‘significant’ deep-sea discovery leaves scientists stunned: ‘They are pristine’
Lajja Mistry Sun, July 2, 2023
Amid global concerns over coral’s survival in rising sea temperatures, scientists have discovered deep-sea coral reefs in a previously unexplored part of the Galapagos marine reserve — and they’re teeming with life.
According to The Guardian, scientists used a special human-occupied submersible called HOV Alvin and dove to a depth of about 600 meters (nearly 2,000 feet), making the unusual discovery of a healthy and active coral reef.
The discovery is surprising as scientists have described the coral reef to be in great condition, as it lacks evidence of any human damage or pollution.
As part of the Galapagos Deep 2023 project, HOV Alvin carried two scientists, Dr. Michelle Taylor and Dr. Stuart Banks, and explored the sea using state-of-the-art sampling capabilities and visual upgrades that included improved high-quality still and ultra-high-definition 4K video imaging systems, reported The Guardian.
“They are pristine and teeming with life – pink octopus, batfish, squat lobsters and an array of deep-sea fish, sharks and rays,” said Dr. Taylor.
The newly discovered coral reef might be hundreds of years old, thriving, and housing a plethora of living creatures such as the pink octopus, batfish, squat lobsters, and an array of deep-sea fish, sharks, and rays and over 50% live coral coverage in many areas.
The discovery of the reef is significant because prior to this, scientists believed Wellington Reef, along the coast of Darwin Island, was among the few shallow reefs surviving in the islands, after 1982-83’s El Niño.
El Niño is a recurring phenomenon that affects rainfall and causes rising ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
Six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador, the Galapagos waters are home to about 2,900 species of marine plants and animals.
With the discovery of the deep-water coral reef, scientists are more hopeful about the survival of that healthy coral despite alarming sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification. It also raises hopes about the existence of other deep-water coral reefs.
Ecuador’s environment minister, José Antonio Dávalos, told The Guardian that the discovery was “encouraging news” and emphasized his determination to establish new marine protected areas in Ecuador.
“These newly discovered reefs are potentially of global significance — a ‘canary in the mine’ for other reefs globally — sites which we can monitor over time to see how pristine habitats evolve with our current climate crisis,” Dr. Taylor added.
Exclusive-Microsoft faces EU antitrust probe after remedies fall short, sources say
Foo Yun Chee Mon, July 3, 2023
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Microsoft is likely to face a European Union antitrust investigation in the coming months after remedy discussions with the EU watchdog to avert such a move appear to have hit a roadblock, people familiar with the matter said.
Microsoft, which has been fined 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in the previous decade for practices in breach of EU competition rules, including tying or bundling two or more products together, found itself in the EU crosshairs after a complaint by Salesforce-owned workspace messaging app Slack in 2020.
Microsoft added Teams to Office 365 in 2017 for free, with the app eventually replacing Skype for Business.
Slack alleged that its rival had unfairly integrated workplace chat and video app Teams into its Office product. The company did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Microsoft kicked off talks with the European Commission last year in a bid to stave off an investigation. It recently offered to cut the price of its Office product without its Teams app.
The European Commission, which hopes a price differential between Office with Teams and Office without the app will ensure a level playing field with rivals and give consumers more choice, has been seeking a deeper price cut than that offered by the U.S. software giant, the people said.
The EU executive declined to comment.
A Microsoft spokesperson said: "We continue to engage cooperatively with the Commission in its investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address its concerns and serve customers well."
The company, which risks a fine up to 10% of its global turnover if eventually found in breach of EU antitrust rules, could still improve its remedy before the watchdog kicks off an investigation.
($1 = 0.9147 euros)
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, additional reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; editing by Mark Potter, David Evans and Sonali Paul)
Supercomputer makes calculations in blink of an eye that take rivals 47 years
James Titcomb Sun, July 2, 2023 Google researchers claim the latest technology is beyond the capabilities of existing supercomputers
- Google Quantum AI/PA
Google has developed a quantum computer that instantly makes calculations that would take the best existing supercomputers 47 years, in a breakthrough meant to establish beyond doubt that the experimental machines can outperform conventional rivals.
A paper from researchers at Google published online claims that the company’s latest technology is “beyond the capabilities of existing classical supercomputers”.
Proponents of quantum computers say the technology, which relies on the peculiar states of quantum physics, can create hugely powerful machines able to battle climate change and create breakthrough drugs.
However, they also threaten to undermine today’s encryption systems, making them a national security priority.
This was challenged at the time by rivals, which argued that Google was exaggerating the difference between its machine and traditional supercomputers.
The company’s new paper – Phase Transition in Random Circuit Sampling – published on the open access science website ArXiv, demonstrates a more powerful device that aims to end the debate.
While the 2019 machine had 53 qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers, the next generation device has 70.
Adding more qubits improves a quantum computer’s power exponentially, meaning the new machine is 241 million times more powerful than the 2019 machine.
The researchers said it would take Frontier, the world’s leading supercomputer, 6.18 seconds to match a calculation from Google’s 53-qubit computer from 2019. In comparison, it would take 47.2 years to match its latest one.
The researchers also claim that their latest quantum computer is more powerful than demonstrations from a Chinese lab which is seen as a leader in the field. IBM's quantum computer prototype - IBM
Google’s paper demonstrates how larger quantum computers can manage “noise” – interference that threatens to disrupt the fragile states in which qubits operate – to continue to make calculations.
The researchers said: “We conclude that our demonstration is firmly in the regime of beyond-classical quantum computation.”
The rival machines were measured on a randomisation task that critics say favour quantum computers and lack any practical value beyond academic study.
Sebastian Weidt, the chief executive of Brighton-based start-up Universal Quantum, said quantum computers needed to demonstrate more practical functions.
He said: “This is a very nice demonstration of quantum advantage. While a great achievement academically, the algorithm used does not really have real world practical applications though.
“We really must get to utility quantum computing – an era where quantum computers with many thousand qubits actually begin to deliver value to society in a way that classical computers never will be able to.”
Top chip design tool makers see China's auto industry going places and look to leave export restrictions in the dust
South China Morning Post Mon, July 3, 2023 at 3:30 AM MDT·4 min read
Chip design software companies are pinning their hopes on China's growing auto industry and its increasing demand for integrated circuits, executives suggested at Semicon China last week, while the top global players grapple with tightened restrictions on exports to the world's second-largest economy.
Liu Weiping, founder and chairman of the country's top chip design tool provider Empyrean Technology, said at the chip conference in Shanghai on Friday that the company is doubling down on building Chinese electronic design automation (EDA) solutions for automotive electronics to capture some of the rapid growth in the intelligent vehicle market.
"There are more and more electronic components in automotives, especially new energy vehicles, that require a large number of components such as chips, displays, and lidar," Liu said. "All the design of these components need support from EDA software."
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Empyrean Technology, which was founded in 2009 and went public in Shenzhen in July 2022, is viewed as one of China's best hopes to achieve self sufficiency in the EDA industry. The industry is currently dominated by just four US firms: Cadence, Synopsys, Ansys and Siemens EDA - known as Mentor Graphics before being acquired by Siemens in 2017 - which account for about 90 per cent of the market.
EDA is a category of software tools used for designing advanced integrated circuits, or chips containing billions of transistors, that serve as the "brains" powering everything from modern electric appliances, smartphones and personal computers to sophisticated medical equipment, cars and aircraft.
Danny Perng, senior vice-president of the Pacific Rim at Siemens EDA, also noted the auto industry's growing importance for chip design.
"The ecosystem of automotive electronics has been changing," said Perng in another keynote speech at the conference on Friday. "Tier1 [auto] companies such as BYD have ambitions to fully integrate chip design and manufacturing and build their own factories."
Perng praised Chinese electric vehicle makers for their "leading position" in the global market, which he said has created an excellent opportunity for the development of automotive electronics and semiconductors.
Perng said Siemens EDA has developed a set of "comprehensive solutions" for carmakers from auto chips to system intelligence that can help companies use human resources more efficiently, improve product quality, control costs, and shorten the time to market for new products.
The auto market has been a particular focus for chip makers in China because cars typically use mature-node chips that are not subject to US export rules. The market is also growing fast.
The automotive industry was the fastest growing among end-use industries for semiconductors last year, accounting for 14.1 per cent of global semiconductor sales, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics, a trade organisation. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to be the fastest-growing market for auto chips, according to the report.
Washington's escalating restrictions have contributed to a slump in China's chip industry, as have supply chain disruptions that were also exacerbated by geopolitical tensions. The global semiconductor industry is expected to see revenue fall 11.2 per cent year on year in 2023 to US$532 billion, according to a forecast from Gartner in April.
In the past several years, China has been ramping up its auto chips output, which is expected to reach US$17.2 billion this year, according to a report by AskCI Consulting. That would be a 55 per cent jump over 2018, growth that is being propelled by the increasing popularity of intelligent vehicles in the world's largest car market.
Empyrean's Liu said the company has developed a set of tools dedicated to the design of auto chips, which have higher standards compared with other integrated circuits.
Chips used in cars require a long life cycle - at least 30 years - and to be able to work in harsh environments including high temperatures, he said.
Beijing-based Empyrean is aiming to catch up with the four EDA leaders eventually, Liu added.
"We hope to learn from the 'big brothers', and stand with them side-by-side at the forefront of the [global EDA industry]," he said, earning loud applause from the conference audience.
Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Thousands rally across Australia in support of Indigenous reform
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney at Parliament House in Canberra
July 2, 2023
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Thousands rallied in Australia on Sunday to back a campaign to recognise the country's Indigenous people in the constitution ahead of a referendum later this year, after a recent dip in support for the change.
The referendum, likely to be held between October and December, seeks to amend the constitution and establish an advisory body, called the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a direct say in policies that impact them.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's centre-left Labor government backs the change, while the opposition Liberal-National conservatives urge a "No" vote.
On Sunday, an Australian Council of Social Service tweet showed Sydney rally attendees in T-shirts with the words "Vote Yes" and caps with the words "The Uluru Statement", referring to a key document that calls for an Indigenous Voice.
One rallygoer, Jason Howard, said the event was "a great opportunity for all Australians to get behind something that’s going to make this country better".
Another attendee, Isabelle Smith, said in her opinion the referendum was the most important issue in Australia.
"It’ll bring Australians together and I think voting 'Yes' is the most important thing that people can do," she said.
Yes23, the group behind more than 25 rallies nationwide, said the crowd in Sydney was around 3,000 and that it expected up to 25,000 people to participate in total.
The day of action comes after support for the referendum appeared to be ebbing, according to a poll last month, which showed "No" ahead for the first time, 51% to 49%.
Opponents, including some Indigenous people, have said the proposal lacks detail and will divide Australians.
"We do not really focus on the polls. What we focus on is the work that is involved in getting out and talking to people, Yes23 director Rachel Perkins told ABC television on Sunday.
Indigenous Australians, who account for 3.8% of the population, face disadvantages including discrimination, poor health and education outcomes and high incarceration rates.
(Reporting by Sam McKeith, James Redmayne and Jill Gralow; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and William Mallard)
Thousands rally across Australia in support of Indigenous reform: ‘We are exhausted but we are hopeful’
Maroosha Muzaffar Sun, July 2, 2023 Thousands gathered at a rally in Adelaide for ‘Come Together for Yes’ campaign (Yes23 Campaign)
Thousands of people turned out for rallies across Australia on Sunday in support of a campaign to recognise the country’s Indigenous people in the constitution ahead of a referendum later this year.
Across several cities in Australia, organisers rallied for the “Come Together for Yes” campaign which is likely to be held between October and December, local media reported.
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney addressed a crowd at the Brisbane Yes23 event kicking off the day of action on Sunday. She emphasised that a “Yes” vote would make a much-needed difference to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
“How often do we get the chance to put our shoulder against the wheel of history and give it a bit of a shove?” Ms Burney asked. “It comes once a lifetime and this is our time. This is about moving Australia forward for everyone.”
Reports said that many hundreds of people lined the steps at the Emma Miller Place park on Roma Street to listen to speeches and watch cultural performances.
ABC News quoted Rachel Perkins, the co-founder of the Yes23 campaign as saying that “you don’t necessarily see it on television. You don’t see it in the newspapers, but there are conversations happening around kitchen tables, in sporting clubs, in workplaces around the country. And that’s just going to grow”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government is in support of the change while the opposition Liberal-National conservatives have urged a “No” vote.
On Sunday, an Australian Council of Social Service tweet showed Sydney rally attendees in T-shirts with the words “Vote Yes” and caps with the words “The Uluru Statement”, referring to a key document that calls for an Indigenous Voice, Reuters reported.
“These community events are opportunities for people to come together and gain valuable information about the importance of a successful referendum later this year,” Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin said in a statement.
“We’re asking all Australians to walk beside us – vote yes for a better future,” a Ngunnawal elder Aunty Violet urged the crowd to vote yes to change Indigenous lives.
At the University of Wollongong, Jaymee Beveridge from the Woolyungah Indigenous Centre told those gathered the campaign was a long game. “We are exhausted but we are hopeful warriors,” she said.
Scientists discover game-changing bacterium that literally eats nuclear waste — here’s how it could protect us from toxins
Rick Kazmer Sun, July 2, 2023
Microbes being studied in the United Kingdom can chow down on toxic nuclear waste — and they don’t get heartburn after dinner.
“It doesn’t kill them,” Jonathan Lloyd, a geomicrobiologist at the University of Manchester who is studying the odd bacterial eating habits, said in a report from Science Hub. “If anything, it actually stimulates the microbes.”
This process has the potential to take care of one of the biggest criticisms regarding nuclear energy — radioactive waste. In England, there’s enough nuclear waste to fill Wembley Stadium four times, Science Hub reports.
Here in the U.S., there are 55 power plants in 28 states, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. They are a reliable, around-the-clock producer of low-carbon energy. In 2022, the nuclear generators provided about 18% of the country’s power, according to federal statistics. The majority of energy, about 60%, still comes from dirty energy sources like coal and gas.
So, a little help from our bacterial friends could light the way for a cleaner energy future. One reactor, for instance, can power hundreds of thousands of homes.
The U.K. study found that the microbes replaced oxygen in their diet with radioactive elements like uranium. This would help manage leaks at the toxic dump sites where nuclear waste is disposed.
The U.S. Energy Department has a fact sheet that also clears up some misconceptions about nuclear waste. For instance, there is no fluorescent green ooze leaking from drums in government cellars. The fuel used in modern reactors is stored as solid ceramic pellets.
“The fuel is a solid when it goes into the reactor and a solid when it comes out,” the fact sheet states.
The U.S. makes about 2,205 tons of nuclear waste a year, less than half the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, and enough to reduce air pollution by 441 million tons. The government stores the spent fuel at more than 70 sites in 35 states in what officials call a safe process.
But nightmares like Chornobyl (Ukrainian spelling) still haunt nuclear-wary critics. Plus, there are other criticisms, such as the fact that it uses elements like uranium, which are relatively scarce.
Still, safely storing, recycling, and — in the case of the Manchester microbes — eating the waste could help to bury at least some of these nuclear fears.
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Cocoa Surges to 13-Year High as Disease Ravages West Africa Crop
Mumbi Gitau, Tolani Awere and Baudelaire Mieu Mon, July 3, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Cocoa soared to a 13-year high as heavy rain across West Africa accelerated the spread of a rot-causing disease, threatening output in some of the world’s biggest producers.
Farmers in Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria have reported signs of blackpod disease, which causes cocoa pods to turn black and rot. That may affect the quality or curb output of beans. The disease can be catastrophic for supply, according to Fuad Mohammed Abubakar, head of Ghana Cocoa Marketing Co.
Both the output and quality of the mid-crop is likely to be disappointing compared to last year, said Maxime Godé, a farmer in the mid-west part of Ivory Coast. That’s spurring concern that the smaller harvest won’t be sufficient to plug a shortfall after the harvest of the main crop.
Cocoa is harvested twice a year, mostly from October to March for the main crop and from May to August for the mid-crop.
Cocoa futures in London have soared more than 20% this year. Most-active futures reached £2,544 a ton on Monday, the highest since mid-2010.
In Nigeria, farmer Sola Ogunsola said cocoa farms in coastal areas have been seriously affected as many of their developing pods were lost to the disease. The rain has also made some roads impassable, making it difficult for African producers to spray chemicals in plantations or deliver cocoa to the ports.
Ivory Coast farmers have sent 2.24 million tons to ports in the season through July 2, slightly less than estimates of about 2.29 million tons a year ago.
The return of El Niño conditions is also supporting prices because the weather phenomenon tends to bring hot and dry conditions to West Africa, risking an output drop of as much as 10%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence estimates.
--With assistance from Megan Durisin.
‘A dire situation.’ What caused Georgia’s catastrophic peach crop failure?
Gautama Mehta Sun, July 2, 2023
On a Monday morning in June, a few dozen peach pickers from the Mexican city of Guadalajara strode down rows of trees, in an orchard near Byron.
They walked one to a side, covering each row of the grove efficiently, with blue bags slung across their chests to collect the fruit, chatted in Spanish and unloaded their hauls into a large bin on a trailer hitched to a Chevy pickup at one end of the grove.
Supervising the pickers were two brothers, Elezar and Roberto Carrazco, who have worked at Dickey Farms, one of Georgia’s premier growers of the state’s most iconic crop, for three decades.
“I know when the peach is ready. I know when to pick and when not,” Elezar said. “It’s got to be at least three parts of the peach red, you know so it’s ready. But if you let it go, they’re gonna get soft.”
In a normal year, the farm would employ some 80 seasonal farmworkers from Guadalajara, which is the Carrazcos’ hometown. This year, there are around 30.
The reason for the reduced workforce was apparent in the sparseness of fruit visible on the boughs, which kept the pickers moving fast between the orchard rows. At each tree, the men paused to evaluate its offerings with a practiced eye — but as often as not, they seemed to move on to the next one having picked nothing or, at most, a few peaches.
This year’s peach crop is Georgia’s worst since the 1990s, peach growers say, with a projected loss of up to 95% of a normal year’s yield.
“It’s been a devastating year for a peach grower in the state of Georgia. Really, no one was spared, whether in South, Middle, or North Georgia,” said Will Bentley, president of the Macon-based Georgia Agribusiness Council.
Peach farmers have little financial recourse against an event like this, and Georgia’s elected leaders have pushed for relief in the form of both short-term assistance and long-term policy changes.
On Monday, Sen. Jon Ossoff spoke to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in an effort to unlock federal disaster assistance for the state’s peach farmers. At a press conference at Lane Southern Orchards in Fort Valley, flanked by representatives of the Dickey, Lane, and Pearson peach farms, Ossoff announced that the USDA was issuing a natural disaster declaration, allowing peach farmers across rural Georgia to apply for loans to offset this year’s losses.
“When you have a situation that’s as dire as this one … it’s in our state’s interests and our nation’s interest to ensure that farmers stay on their feet,” Ossoff said.
Beyond the immediate relief newly available through these loans, some farmers and agribusiness advocates see an opportunity for more durable protections against such weather events in upcoming federal legislation.
The Farm Bill, a massive agricultural omnibus bill that is renewed every five years, is currently being negotiated in Congress for passage later this year.
Among the policies governed by this law is the Federal Crop Insurance Program, the primary instrument by which farmers can be insured against weather events.
Fruit and vegetable growers have long complained that the insurance program is primarily geared toward producers of row crops like corn and soybeans, which are harvested on a far greater scale than “specialty crops” like peaches.
Robert Dickey, who in addition to running Dickey Farms with his son Lee Dickey is a state representative and the chair of Georgia’s House Agriculture Committee, recently traveled to Washington D.C. with Bentley and the state agriculture commissioner Tyler Harper to lobby for improvements for peach farmers in the “inadequate” crop insurance program.
“We’re really trying to salvage our peach industry in the Southeast,” Dickey said. “It’s been here for 150 years, and we want it to continue.”
Why did the peach crop fail?
Dickey Farms workers pick peaches in an ordcard in Byron Monday morning. Dickey along with other Middle Georgia peach farmers sustained a substantail loss in the years crop due to lack of chill hours and a late freeze.
Georgia had another in a streak of increasingly warm winters, followed by punishing spring frosts in March.
Together, these conditions amounted to a deadly combination of weather events to which peaches are uniquely vulnerable.
Peaches require “a certain amount of cold weather over the winter, while they’re dormant, so that they build up their energy, and then when it gets warm, they blossom and produce a crop,” Pam Knox, an agricultural climatologist at the University of Georgia, told the Telegraph.
Each of the hundreds of peach varieties requires a different number of “chill hours” — the time spent dormant in temperatures below 45 degrees.
The varieties that require a lower amount of chill hours are more resilient to warm winters, and bloom earlier in the season. After “one of the warmest Februarys on record for Georgia,” Knox said, those varieties came out of dormancy early and prepared to bloom just in time for mercilessly freezing weather in March.
“That killed off most of either the blooms or the early peaches that had already bloomed and then fertilized, because they can’t handle the frost,” Knox said. “The water inside the cells expands as it becomes ice, and that destroys the properties of the blossoms and the properties of the root.”
The role of climate change
A Dickey Farms worker picks a peach in an orchard in Byron Monday morning. Dickey along with other Middle Georgia peach farmers sustained a substantial loss in the years crop due to lack of chill hours and a late freeze.
The dual weather events responsible for destroying the peach harvest — warming winters and spring frosts — are both part of wider climatological cycles.
“Climatologists never attribute a single event to climate change, because there’s always other things going on — we’ve always had colder and warmer winters; we’ve had earlier and later frosts — but it’s clear in Georgia that the trend in winter temperatures is towards warmer temperatures over time,” Knox said.
The outlook for spring frosts in Georgia as climate change raises global temperatures is less straightforward.
Knox said the frost is caused by seasonal incursions of cold air into the state, which are predicted to continue.
“Over time, the average date of the last frost in spring will get earlier, but we still get these incursions that come in, and those are driven more by weather patterns” than they are directly affected by global warming, Knox said.
While these notoriously complex weather patterns remain the subject of research, Knox said, some scientists predict “a more wavy pattern in the large-scale atmospheric waves that occur” due to melting Arctic sea ice, leading to both “more warm outbreaks and more cold outbreaks.”
Agriculture is Georgia’s largest industry, and the wide-ranging effects of rising global temperatures are felt directly and indirectly across the state’s crops, regions, and seasons.
But many of Georgia’s farmers and agribusiness advocates remain reluctant to acknowledge the responsibility of climate change for the dramatic changes to which they are nevertheless adapting their practices.
Asked about the role of climate change in this year’s peach crop failure, Robert Dickey reflected on the weather events his family farm had experienced in its long history in Musella.
“We’ve kept records in the peach industry for probably 125 or more, 150 years. We’ve gone through a lot of cycles with weather,” he said.
Turning to his son, the representative said, “I don’t know. We do seem to be in a time of more fluctuation, more — a little bit more extremes, wouldn’t you say, Lee, in the weather? But nothing extreme changed. I think it’s just some coincidence, possibly, what’s going on.”
When asked the same question, Bentley said, “We’re definitely paying attention to the weather cycles,” which he said play “a big, big role in decisions that we’re making” in investments in agricultural research and technological development.
“But I don’t know that you would necessarily, you know, get into the climate change debate,” he added. “More so, what are the weather patterns we are in, what are some of the impacts we’re seeing, and how do we mitigate that risk?”
Dickey Farms workers pick peaches in an ordcard in Byron Monday morning. Dickey along with other Middle Georgia peach farmers sustained a substantail loss in the years crop due to lack of chill hours and a late freeze.
Such pragmatic considerations are widespread among Georgia’s farmers, Knox said.
“Calling it climate change is more of a political thing than anything else, but I think there’s definitely an awareness among producers that conditions are changing, especially the farmers that have been around for a long time,” she said. “You know, they can remember when things were different.”
Knox said peaches are not even the crop most vulnerable to climate change in Georgia.
“There’s a few crops that are going to be harder to grow in Georgia in the future,” she said. “One of those is probably corn because it doesn’t like really hot temperatures, but they’re more likely to adapt by planting it earlier in the year rather than just getting rid of it altogether.”
The crops that will fare the worst as temperatures rise are apples and grapes, she predicted, explaining that “apples really don’t do well in Georgia heat, so now, most of the apples that are being grown are up in the northeast part of the state. As those mountainous areas get warmer, it’s going to be harder to grow apples there. I don’t know that that means we’ll stop growing apples completely, but they’ll probably have to again change varieties.”
Peaches, on the other hand, have a wide range of varieties that can thrive in varied conditions.
“They grow peaches in Florida, so, you know that if they grow them in Florida, they can grow peaches in Georgia. They just have to change the kind that they’re growing,” Knox said.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s agricultural industry may also see some benefits of climate change, as other states become less hospitable to certain crops that can be grown here.
Citrus production has already begun to move into Georgia from Florida, and rising temperatures are one factor — in concert with accelerating development and citrus greening, an invasive disease that has forced some Sunshine State farmers out of business.
Knox said worsening conditions in California may also work to Georgia farmers’ advantage, as it becomes more difficult to grow staple crops like alfalfa and vegetables there.
A better harvest ahead
Peaches available at Dickey Farms packing house and market Monday morning in Musella. Dickey along with other Middle Georgia peach farmers sustained a substantial loss in the years crop due to lack of chill hours and a late freeze.
Looking ahead to next spring’s harvest, Knox said, “I think the likelihood of seeing another really devastating frost next year is not that high.”
The roots of her cautious optimism on this point lie in the fact that, this year, the planet is undergoing a switch in the El Niño Southern Oscillation — a gigantic weather pattern based in a cycle between warmer and cooler temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
For the last three years, those temperatures have been colder — a formation known as La Niña — but this year saw a swing back to its counterpart, El Niño.
Globally, the effects of El Niño involve a likely increase in temperatures. But in Georgia, Knox said, during El Niño “in the winter months we tend to see cooler and wetter conditions, because the storm track comes right over Georgia, especially south Georgia.” What does this portend for the Peach State’s peaches?
“We’ll reach our chill hour requirements more quickly. But it also means, since it’s cooler, we’ll probably have a slower or later bloom period, so they’ll be less vulnerable to frost,” Knox said.
For Dickey Farms’ seasonal workers in Guadalajara, a lot is riding on the hope of a better peach crop next year.
In March, after the frost, the Carrazco brothers had to inform dozens of their friends and neighbors back home that they wouldn’t have work in Georgia this summer. Roberto said this was “difficult for everybody, and especially for the ones that were already on the list [for a work permit]. At the end, you tell me we don’t have [anything], it’s hard for them.”
“It was pretty hard for them because they got just one choice,” Elezar said.
The only comparably lucrative work available in Guadalajara to most of these men is bricklaying, a job Elezar said pays about $60 a day — “but the other guys, the farmers, they only make, say, $30 a day,” as opposed to more than $100 picking peaches for the Dickeys.
“So, they’re going to wait until next year,” Elezar said. “We pray to God we have a good peach season next year.”
Smoke will keep pouring into the US as long as fires are burning in Canada. Here’s why they aren’t being put out
Alaa Elassar
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Another wave of wildfire smoke has drifted into the US, dimming blue summer skies and igniting troubling concerns regarding the increasing frequency of fires, and what they have to do with climate change.
More than 100 million people are under air quality alerts from Wisconsin to Vermont and down to North Carolina as smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to waft south, though conditions are expected to improve slowly into the holiday weekend.
Air quality on both sides of the border has been affected as more than 500 active wildfires raging across Canada. Some fires are so out of control officials have no choice but to leave them burning.
Meanwhile, at least 10 countries have deployed their own firefighters to assist Canada with putting out the ones threatening communities whose residents have scrambled to evacuate.
Scientists continue to reiterate warnings the effects of climate change have arrived, emphasizing wildfires and the plumes of toxic smoke generated by them will become more frequent.
As plumes of smoke billow out of Canada’s forests, some may be wondering why many of the fires are being allowed to burn unchecked.
Here’s why:
Some of the fires are in extremely remote areas
While every Canadian province responds to the fires in their regions differently, they all have common guidelines emphasizing the importance of prioritizing which fires to fight and which to leave alone.
Massive fires burning in remote areas – like some of those currently burning in northwestern Quebec – are often too out of control to do anything about.
“If you have limited resources, and you have a lot of fires, what you do is you protect human life and property first,” Robert Gray, a Canadian wildland fire ecologist, told CNN. “You protect people, infrastructure, watersheds, so there’s a prioritization system.”
He added, “If you’ve got these fires that are burning way out in the back forty, and they’re not threatening anything immediately, then you’re going to have to let them do their thing.”
While the thought of massive fires burning through millions of hectares of forestland might sound unfathomable, it isn’t entirely new.
“There’s always been fires Canadian fire managers don’t fight. It’s expensive to do so, ecologically undesirable, and kind of just messing with nature,” said Daniel Perrakis, a fire scientist with the Canadian Forest Service.
“The smoke is a problem but even if we wanted to do something about it, it wouldn’t really be clear how to do so. You’re talking about huge areas where there’s no road access, no communities in some cases.”
Of the 522 fires currently burning, 262 are listed as out of control across Canada, including British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.
Along with remoteness and distance from people, terrain is another factor. Some of the fires are being allowed to burn simply because they are too treacherous for firefighters to even attempt to tackle.
“These fires are so big that you really can’t put people anywhere near them, the winds kick up, they move very fast, they can start out ahead of you and they can trap crews,” Gray said.
There are not enough resources to fight all the fires
Firefighters from at least 10 countries, including the US, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, and France, have been deployed to assist with the Canadian wildfires since the first week of June.
Firefighters from South Africa are among the crews working in Alberta, Canada, to help with ongoing fire suppression efforts. - Shiraaz Mohamed/AFP/Getty Images
“Canada doesn’t have a lot of firefighting resources,” Gray said. “Individual provinces have their own contracting crews, but they have brought in thousands of folks from outside the country to help.”
One factor contributing to the lack of resources, evident in the current fight against the out of control fires, is funding, Gray acknowledged.
“They don’t typically appropriate a lot of money upfront for firefighting,” he continued. “But once the fires break out, the governments can certainly find all the money necessary to suppress them.”
“International groups keep saying, you need to shift the focus to upfront mitigation and prevention so you’re spending less money on response and recovery,” he added. “It’s ridiculous. We spend billions of dollars once the fire breaks out, but we don’t invest the money upfront to mitigate the fires from happening in the first place.”
Not enough prevention tactics to decrease the number of fires
More work needs to be done to reduce the opportunity for future wildfires, which may someday end in catastrophic tragedy.
One of the most effective fire prevention tactics is through prescribed burns, which are fires set intentionally as part of a forest management plan to reduce the risk of more serious and damaging blazes.
“We don’t do anywhere near enough prescribed burning in BC,” Gray said. “Right now we’re burning about 10,000 hectares a year. The state of New Jersey burns more than we do here at BC.”
Prescribed burns have been an important cultural and environmental tradition in Indigenous communities, who for thousands of years set low-intensity fires to rid the land of wildfire fuel like debris, scrub, undergrowth and certain grasses. Such fuel ignites easily, allowing for more intense flames, which are harder to fight.
The intentional burning practices can increase the forests’ resiliency and decrease the likelihood of future wildfires.
Perrakis echoed Gray’s sentiments: “It would be very useful to have maybe 10 times or 20 times more prescribed burning than what we’re doing presently.”
Since prescribed burns come with liability issues and pose a risk of ending in accidental unmanageable fires if not done correctly and at the right time, this will require more funding from the government and proper training.
“We would be removing the fuel from the fire before there’s even a fire,” Perrakis said. “It wouldn’t be used all across the Canadian countryside, but very strategically around communities and other values and will be in line with the local ecosystem.”
Along with prescribed burns, other tactics, like large scale thinning, need to be ramped up, Gray said.
“We need large scale thinning in these forest types that don’t produce a lot of dimension lumber, so there’s a lot of small trees and we need to come to do something with them,” he added. “We can ship them into the bioeconomy, produce bioenergy markets, engineering, wood products; there’s a lot of things we can do with low value wood, and that’s a lot of what’s out there burning up right now.”
The ecosystem depends on fires, and climate change is making them worse
Fires have always served a vital ecological purpose on Earth, essential for many ecosystems. They restore soil nutrients, helping germinate plants and remove decaying matter. Without fires, overgrown foliage like grasses and shrubs can prime the landscape for worse flare-ups, particularly during extreme drought and heat waves.
Most of Canada is covered by boreal forest, the world’s largest and most intact biome. The ecosystem with trees like spruce, pine, and fir makes up about one-third of all forests on the planet.
But it is a fire dependent ecosystem, meaning the species in the forest have evolved in the presence of fire, and fire “is an essential process for conserving biodiversity,” according to the Nature Conservancy.
“We have records as far back as the 1700s and 1800s of yellow sky and black sky and smoky sky days.” he added. “It’s the natural cycle of the boreal forest. There really isn’t much Canadian fire management agencies can do, even if they wanted to.”
While natural fires in the system have always been present and are usually caused by natural elements like lightning, climate change is making them more frequent, increasingly unmanageable, and a lot more difficult to prevent.
One year ago, after enduring a record-breaking temperature of 121 degrees, the British Columbia village of Lytton was leveled by a wildfire, drawing stark attention to the effects of climate change.
Heat-trapping emissions have led to hotter and drier conditions, and wildfires now burn longer and are becoming hotter in places where they have always occurred; meanwhile, fires are also igniting and spreading in unexpected places.
“We know that the weather is the most important ingredient of fire behavior, and climate and weather are linked,” Perrakis said.
Another issue is the increase in the wildfires are caused by climate change, and are simultaneously making climate change worse.
“Things are changing due to climate change, and that’s catching everyone somewhat by surprise, even though we’ve been talking about it for decades,” Perrakis said. “It takes a big season like this one for everyone to really wake up to what climate change looks like. It’s pretty undeniable.”
As Canadians near the fires evacuate while firefighters try to save their homes and communities, other, bigger fires burn freely with no way to control them, and people in the US will continue breathing in unhealthy smoke.
It all begs the question: When will it end?
“People should probably get used to it, because it’s not something that has come out of nowhere,” Perrakis said. “Climate change is undeniable, and now it’s time to think about the future, 10 or 20 years down the line, and what needs to be done.”
