737 Max: Boeing refutes new safety concerns

Theo Leggett - Business correspondent, BBC News
Fri, November 26, 2021, 

A 737 Max lands after a test flight at Boeing Field in June 2020

It has been called "the most scrutinised transport aircraft in history", but some critics believe Boeing's 737 Max is still not safe.

It was cleared to fly passengers again by US regulators last year, having been grounded following two catastrophic accidents.

Since then, however, a number of potentially serious problems have been reported during 737 Max flights.

Boeing insists the aircraft is both safe and reliable.

On 14 October, a 737 Max took off from Boeing Field airport in Seattle, bound for Brussels. It was a delivery flight, taking the brand-new plane to start work for its owners, the travel group Tui.

But minutes into the 5,000-mile journey, the pilots reported an urgent "flight control problem" and had to turn back. The aircraft landed safely shortly afterwards.

The issue, linked to the autopilot, was rectified relatively quickly. The plane set off for Brussels again the following day, and has been flying regularly since then.

However, this was not an isolated incident.
Emergencies

Whenever a US carrier or repair station discovers any serious failure, malfunction or defect aboard an aircraft, it has to inform the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), via a so-called "service difficulty report".

There have been more than 180 such reports since the 737 Max returned to service.

Most faults were found on planes that were on the ground. But on 22 occasions, they occurred in-flight, and on four of those the pilots declared emergencies.


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US pilots also declared emergencies on two further occasions due to engine failures. These events do not currently appear in the FAA's database, but have been reported on the Aviation Herald website, which lists accidents and incidents in commercial aviation.

The problems occurred in a US fleet that is still relatively small, with fewer than 160 aircraft delivered as of mid-October - some of which were grounded for several weeks early in the year after the discovery of electrical issues.

Service difficulty reports are also made public by the Canadian regulator, Transport Canada. Its database shows that the Canadian fleet of 56 737 Max aircraft has generated 19 reports, five of them relating to in-flight incidents.

The 737 Max remains under intense scrutiny. The plane was grounded for 20 months from March 2019, after being involved in two major accidents, in which 346 people died.

The site near Addis Ababa where Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashed in March 2019

Its flight control software was modified, to remove a serious flaw implicated in both crashes. Other physical changes were made to the aircraft.

It is important to stress that none of the issues reported to the FAA and Transport Canada are directly related either to the causes of these crashes, or to the changes made afterwards.

But they do include problems with some critical systems, including the motors used to adjust the horizontal stabiliser - the wing on the tailplane of the aircraft.

There have also been faults with engines, flight control systems, hydraulics and wiring.

The horizontal stabiliser, in particular, is vital for keeping the aircraft in controlled flight.

It can be adjusted manually, using a wheel by the pilot's knee. But under certain conditions, for example if the aircraft is going too fast, that may not be possible due to the aerodynamic loads involved.

Joe Jacobsen is a former senior safety engineer at the FAA, which has been deeply critical of the way in which the agency originally certified the 737 Max.

He says the reports do give cause for concern, particularly regarding the stabiliser motors, wiring and flight control systems. Such issues, he says, are most likely to be blamed on manufacturing.

"If they are not manufacturing-related", he says "then we have a problem with the system safety analysis, as I don't believe we would have predicted this number of failures is such a short time span with such a small fleet of aircraft."

Boeing 737 Max aircraft

Gilles Primeau, a Canadian expert in flight control systems, is also alarmed. He has previously testified to Canadian lawmakers that in his opinion the stabiliser trim system on all 737 variants, not just the Max, is "obsolete", and does not have enough in-built redundancy in case of failures.

He says "a fundamental concept for safety-critical systems is that if the effects and severity of a failure cause a hazard, then the frequency of occurrence should be made infrequent enough by design... loss of horizontal stabiliser position can be catastrophic".


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Ed Pierson is a former senior manager at Boeing's 737 plant, near Seattle, who has previously voiced serious concerns about manufacturing standards at the plant. He says the number of failure and defect reports is "very troubling".

"I'm concerned this is just the tip of the iceberg", he says, adding: "It makes one wonder what the airline's own maintenance reports say about the condition of these airplanes, if the mandatory reporting looks like this."

'Not unreasonable'

However, not all experts are so alarmed. Dai Whittingham, chief executive of the UK Flight Safety Committee, has also seen the data.

"I don't think it's an unreasonable rate of occurrences," he explains. "With a fleet that size, it's not an unexpected level of problems, for the length of time.

"They are complex systems, so these things happen"

Boeing did not respond to specific questions about the failures featured in the service difficulty reports.

In a statement, it said: "Since the 737 Max returned to service, airlines have flown nearly 240,000 flights around the world, and are conducting more than 1,300 flights every day.

"The in-service reliability is greater than 99%, and is consistent with other commercial airplane models".

People close to the 737 Max programme do, however, acknowledge that there have been specific issues with stabiliser trim motors, and that changes have been made to rectify them.

The BBC also understands that regular weekly meetings take place between the aerospace giant and representatives of the engine manufacturer CFM International, in part to address the root causes of failures and in-flight shutdowns.

The FAA, meanwhile, said: "When we returned the 737 Max to service, we noted that routine incidents would occur with the aircraft, just as they do with every other make and model of aircraft.

"The FAA addresses these issues through the same Continued Operational Safety process that we provide for the entire US commercial fleet. We have seen no reported incidents attributable to the redesigned automated flight control system on the Max."

Ship's master said he spent 50 hours sleepless before crash


JANET McCONNAUGHEY
Sat, November 27, 2021

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An oil tanker hit an offshore oil platform at night off Louisiana because its Turkish operating company didn’t give the ship’s master time to recover from days of sleepless travel, federal investigators have found.

The master, or person in charge of sailing the Atina, had traveled from Istanbul and told investigators “he was tired from having no sleep for over 50 hours,” according to a National Transportation Safety Board report made public Tuesday.

The crash early Oct. 17, 2020, did an estimated $72.9 million in damage — $72.3 million to the platform SP-57B and the rest to the tanker Atina, the board said.

However, nobody was hurt when the empty 898-foot-long (274-meter) ship ran into the platform at 4:46 a.m., and there wasn’t any pollution, the board said.

The “accident master” took over immediately from the departing master even though the operating company's own safety manual calls for a 24-hour overlap, the report said. Such an overlap would have let him rest, it said.

The report described the accident's probable cause as the “operating company not ensuring sufficient time for the master’s turnover, which resulted in the master’s acute fatigue and poor situation awareness during an attempted nighttime anchoring evolution.”

The man had been told in Istanbul that he had to take over as soon as possible. The reason, according to the report, was that the master on board planned to leave after having “issues” with an inspector for the ship's owners and operators. The ship finished discharging its cargo of crude oil at the NuStar Terminal in St. James and then left for its planned anchorage off Southwest Pass, the report said.

The new master arrived on board and — instead of anchoring where the previous master had planned — he chose a closer spot. He told investigators that he “didn’t want to spend a lot of time finding a place to anchor in the middle of the night on a vessel he wasn’t familiar with” and he was exhausted. That spot was about 0.7 mile (1.1 kilometer) from the platform, the report said.

The NTSB identified the Atina's owner as Hanzhou 1 Ltd and its operator as Besiktas Likid Tasimacilik Denizcilik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi.

Besiktas did not respond to an email sent Wednesday. An attorney representing both companies in a lawsuit filed by the platform's owners, Cox Operating LLC of Houston, did not immediately respond to an email sent Friday.

Cox filed that suit the day after the crash, in federal court in New Orleans. It estimated damages to its platform at $225 million, including economic losses during repairs.

The NTSB does not assign fault or blame, and U.S. law forbids using NTSB reports as evidence in civil lawsuits.

YOUR AVOCADO ON TOAST
500 vigilantes gather in Mexico town, pledge to aid police
 

ARMANDO SOLÍS
Sat, November 27, 2021, 1:56 PM·3 min read

NUEVO URECHO, Mexico (AP) — Extortion of avocado growers in western Mexico has gotten so bad that 500 vigilantes from a so-called “self-defense” group known as United Towns, or Pueblos Unidos, gathered Saturday and pledged to aid police.

The vigilantes gathered for a rally in the town of Nuevo Urecho, in the western state of Michoacan, armed with AR-15s and other rifles, as well as a motley collection of shotguns.

They said that drug cartels like the Viagras and the Jalisco cartel have been charging avocado growers ‘war taxes’ of about $1,000 per acre ($2,500 per hectare).

Tired of the extortion demands and kidnappings, growers and farmers formed the group in 2020, and it now claims to have almost 3,000 members.

“Several of us have been victims of this situation, of kidnappings, extortions,” said one masked vigilante leader who asked his name not be used for fear of reprisals from the gangs.

For the moment, the vigilantes appeared willing to respond to a pledge by Gov. Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla to disarm the state's various ‘self defense’ groups.

“We reached agreements with the mayor to increase the number of police” patrolling the area, the vigilante leader said. “For the moment, we are putting away our guns, but we will be on alert to come out and support the police at any moment.”

Pueblos Unidos has staged armed rallies in several towns in Michoacan over the last year, but have always said they would rather have officially constituted security forces do the work of expelling criminal gangs.

Mexican law forbids most civilians from owning almost all firearms, except for extremely low caliber hunting rifles or shotguns.

But Michoacan has a history of armed civilian “self defense” vigilante militia movements from 2013 and 2014. Back then vigilantes managed to chase the dominant Knights Templar cartel out, but rival cartels like the Viagras and the Jalisco cartel have moved in. Kidnappings, killings and shootings have prompted thousands to flee their homes.

The Mexican army has sent troops to the state, but only to act as a buffer between the warring cartels, trying to ensure that neither invades the other gang’s territory.

But soldiers do little or nothing about illicit gang activities occurring just a few hundred yards from their checkpoints.

That has led Michoacan residents to once again take up arms, in the face of rampant extortion by the Viagras, Jalisco and other gangs.

This time around, the self-defense movement is mostly operating in the avocado-growing regions that were not the epicenter of the 2013 vigilante uprising.

As avocados have become a more widespread and lucrative crop, drug cartels and gangs have taken to extorting protection payments from growers.

While previous ‘self-defense’ groups have been infiltrated or taken over by drug gangs, Pueblos Unidos leaders said they were not associated with any of the warring gangs and are willing to put away their guns.

“We have never taken over any town,” said one masked vigilante leader. “We are not part of a cartel or anything like that.”

A member of the so-called self-defense group known as United Towns or Pueblos Unidos, rides with his weapon sticking out a window during a rally in Nuevo Urecho, in the Mexican western state of Michoacan, Saturday Nov. 27, 2021. Extortion of avocado growers in western Mexico has gotten so bad that 500 vigilantes from the "self-defense" group gathered Saturday and pledged to aid police. (AP Photo/Armando Solis)More

Watch: Incredible video of stampeding elk running wild on a Colorado golf course

Tim Schmitt
Sat, November 27, 2021


Just a few days ago, we talked about incidents of wild animals getting a little too close for comfort on the golf course.

For example, a bear was spotted at the H. Smith Richardson Golf Course in Connecticut, according to an article on patch.com.

The phenomenon continued when a video surfaced this week of an elk herd stampeding onto a golf course in Estes Park, Colorado. Believe it or not, elk are common during the mating season throughout the picturesque town, which sits just a few miles from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Herds often frequent Lake Estes 9-hole course, a small, but idyllic layout on a mountain lake just a few hundred yards from the city’s visitors center.

But what happened in the video below would be enough to shake any golfer.

Fortunately, no injuries were reported, but suffice to say those who are trying to block out any peripheral noise while putting on this green might want to think twice about that strategy.


Elk sip from Lake Estes in the center of Estes Park, Colorado, in early November. A herd of the animals was caught on video running through a golf course. (Photo by Tim Schmitt/Golfweek)

Omar calls on House leadership to take 'appropriate action' against Boebert after Islamophobic comments

Savannah Behrmann, USA TODAY

Sat, November 27, 2021

WASHINGTON – Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is calling on House leadership to "take appropriate action" against Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., after the GOP congresswoman made Islamophobic comments towards her during a campaign event.

The comments were posted to Twitter on Thursday by PatriotTakes – who says their mission is to "research, monitor and expose the extremism and radicalization of the far right" – in a video that showed Boebert recounting a supposed run-in with Omar at the U.S. Capitol grounds.

Boebert told a tale of joining an elevator with Omar – the first Somali American elected to Congress – which supposedly made a United States Capitol Police officer rush toward them with "fret all over his face." She said she responded to the officer that Omar didn't "have a backpack. We should be fine."

More: When does speech become dangerous? Rep. Gosar’s ties to white nationalists added to concerns about his video

The crowd at the event laughed, applauded and jeered at the comment that implied the Minnesota lawmaker was a terrorist.

Boebert told the crowd she turned toward Omar in the elevator and said, "'Oh look, the Jihad Squad decided to show up for work today.'"

Omar responded to the video, denying the story and saying the "whole story is made up." She continued: "Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout."

"Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny & shouldn’t be normalized. Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation."

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., speaks during a news conference in St. Paul, Minn.

Lawmakers swiftly called on Boebert to apologize for the comments, with many calling them Islamophobic.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., wrote the comments were "Shameful, deeply offensive & dangerous. Yet another blatant display of Islamophobia targeting (Omar)."

"These comments are personally hurtful, legitimately endanger her & the broader Muslim community. Rhetoric like this must be denounced & anyone spewing it held to account," she continued.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., called Boebert "TRASH" on Twitter.

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., called Capitol Hill "a toxic work environment for Muslim members and staff when bigots routinely spew racist, Islamophobic vitriol unchecked and with no consequence."

Boebert apologized Friday, tweeting: "I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar."

"I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction."

However, the apology was not enough for Omar.

"Saying I am a suicide bomber is no laughing matter," she tweeted. She called on both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to "take appropriate action."

"(N)ormalizing this bigotry not only endangers my life but the lives of all Muslims. Anti-Muslim bigotry has no place in Congress," she concluded.

"Appropriate action" could be censorship, which some social media users, like Boebert's opponent Donald Valdez, called for online.

It wouldn't be the first time the House has taken action against GOP lawmakers this year for derogatory actions or comments.

The House recently censured Boebert's colleague, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., for posting an anime video that was edited to show him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and attacking President Joe Biden. He was also stripped of his committee assignments.

More: House votes to censure Rep. Paul Gosar for posting violent video depicting attacks on Biden, AOC

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was also stripped of her committee assignments after she espoused multiple dangerous conspiracy theories.

McCarthy did not publicly condemn Gosar for the video and instead privately discussed the issue with the Arizona Republican, who later removed the video.

Additionally, McCarthy recently said if Republicans take control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections and he was voted the chamber's speaker, he would reinstate Gosar and Greene.

“They’ll have committees. They may have other committee assignments,” said McCarthy. He then went a step farther, saying, "They may have better committee assignments.”

More: Kevin McCarthy said if Republicans retake House, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar may get 'better' committee assignments

Pelosi and other members of House Democratic Leadership called on Boebert "to fully retract these comments and refrain from making similar ones going forward" in a Friday statement.

They also said McCarthy and "the entire House Republican Leadership’s repeated failure to condemn inflammatory and bigoted rhetoric from members of their conference is outrageous. We call on the Republican Leadership to address this priority with the Congresswoman and to finally take real action to confront racism.”

"Racism and bigotry of any form, including Islamophobia, must always be called out, confronted and condemned in any place it is found. This is particularly true in the halls of Congress, which are the very heart of our democracy," they said. Boebert’s "repeated, ongoing and targeted Islamophobic comments and actions against another Member of Congress, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, are both deeply offensive and concerning."

Boebert has used the offensive "Jihad squad" phrase several times before, including on the House floor when defending Gosar in a debate during the vote on his censorship.

Omar is part of a group of lawmakers dubbed "the Squad", largely composed of lawmakers of color.

Boebert is known for incendiary rhetoric, as well as being a fierce ally of former President Donald Trump, her comments leading up to – and surrounding – the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S Capitol and other controversial actions, like displaying a gun "shrine" as a Zoom background during a virtual hearing.

More: 'These are ready for use': Rep. Lauren Boebert defends her gun display Zoom background

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Omar: House leadership must take action on Boebert's anti-Muslim remarks

Cambodia releases endangered royal turtles in revival bid

Fri, November 26, 2021

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian conservationists released 51 critically endangered royal turtles back into the wild on Friday, in a drive to bolster a species thought to be extinct two decades ago.

Also known as the southern river terrapin, the large river turtles are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species, and the European Union is helping to fund the revival programme in Cambodia https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-turtles-idUKKBN22W1S3

The turtles, collected between 2006 and 2015 immediately after hatching and reared in a conservation centre, were released into the Sre Ambel river in Cambodia's coastal province of Preah Sihanouk.

"With the increasing number of adults in the wild through this release, we do hope that this species will breed in the wild and that annual nests will increase in the next few years," Wildlife Conservation Society's Ken Sereyrotha said.

The turtles, 31 females and 20 males between 6 and 15 years old, are implanted with a microchip and have an acoustic transmitter attached to their shells.

The royal turtle was believed extinct in Cambodia until 2000 due to sand dredging, illegal fishing, and loss of habitat. It was designated the country's national reptile in 2005.

Video: Cambodia's endangered royal turtles released into wild | World News | Sky News

Fresh hopes for species’ survival as 51 royal turtles released into the wild

Mom Kunthear | Publication date 26 November 2021 

Fifty-one royal turtles were released into the wild, in northern Preah Sihanouk province’s Kampong Seila district on November 26, by the Wildlife Conservation Society Cambodia Programme (WCS) and relevant government officials.

The event was accompanied by a ceremony, attended by Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries officials, local authorities, WCS representatives, Buddhist monks and locals.

WCS country director Ken Serey Rotha commented that conservationists had believed that royal turtles were extinct in the Kingdom, a presumption he said was rebuffed by a study back in 2000.

Also known as the southern river terrapin and by its scientific name Batagur affinis, the royal turtle is listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as “critically endangered”, and was designated as Cambodia’s national reptile by a 2005 royal decree, according to the NGO.

Serey Rotha noted that November 26’s event marks the sixth of its kind under the associated conservation project, bringing the total number of freed royal turtles from 96 to 147.

He also credited the ministry’s Fisheries Administration (FiA) for working with the WCS on rare-species conservation.

Speaking at the ceremony, Kampong Seila district deputy governor Prak Sovann urged commune- and village-level authorities and the general public to join hands in the conservation of royal turtles.

“If we can protect these habitats, they’d provide enchanting eco-tourism spots,” he said. “Sightseers would visit the royal turtles in their own spaces, as well as the beautiful forests here in Kampong Seila.”

Sovann said he was committed to protecting the species and ensuring viable populations “at all costs”, and called on the public to report trapped turtles to the authorities, who will then prepare them for release back into the wild.

FiA director-general Pum Sotha said royal turtles are now only found in Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia, of which the Kingdom has the largest population.

“We must all come forward to protect them, and not merely be content with having the most, but failing to look after them,” he said.

Sotha also requested local authorities, the WCS and EU to look into building statues and other monuments across the Kingdom that are dedicated to the royal turtle and bear inscriptions that indicate the rarity and importance of the species.

Cash coming to Tahoe animal center where burned cub escaped

 This July 31, 2021, file photo provided by Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care shows a bear cub that was taken in for treatment after it suffered burns in a California wildfire, to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. A private donor's pledge to match $500,000 in contributions for a $1 million expansion at a Lake Tahoe wildlife rescue center is bringing smiles back to staff and volunteers who've been on an emotional rollercoaster since the bear cub recovering from severe wildfire burns made a much-publicized escape back into the wild. 

(Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care via AP, File)

SCOTT SONNER
Fri, November 26, 2021

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Private donors' new pledge to match $500,000 in contributions for a $1 million-expansion at a Lake Tahoe wildlife rescue center is bringing smiles back to staff and volunteers, who have been on an emotional rollercoaster since a bear cub being treated for severe wildfire burns made a much-publicized escape this summer.

The Lake Tahoe Wildlife Center has been making repairs directed by California regulators since Tamarack — named after the wildfire that blazed across more than 100 square miles (259 square kilometers) in the Sierra and severely burned the cub's paws — tunneled under an electric fence and fled back to the wild.

It was the first escape in the 45-year-history of the center in South Lake Tahoe, California.

Two days later, volunteers spotted and photographed a cub clinging to a tree 40 feet (12 meters) up in a nearby forest. They became convinced it was the 6-month-old escapee, decided to leave him alone and now believe he’s doing just fine.

The contribution the Bentley Foundation and MH Buckeye announced this week may just be the happy ending they’ve been looking for.

“We’ve turned the corner,” center spokesman Greg Erfani told The Associated Press. As of Wednesday, they were only $180,000 short of the $1.05 million needed to begin construction in the spring and finish by the end of 2022.

“It’s going to build the first animal hospital in the Lake Tahoe area,” he said.

The center has continued to rescue smaller animals and recently released seven rehabilitated coyote pups. But it's been prohibited from accepting big game including bears since the California Department of Fish and Wildlife declared in October that it had to make improvements to its enclosures and fencing.

“Upon completion, CDFW will perform a site inspection and evaluate (the center's) request to renew its agreement to temporarily possess and rehabilitate injured and orphaned black bear cubs," department spokesman Peter Tira said in an email to AP on Wednesday.

Erfani said supply-chain challenges have delayed immediate repairs but the center should be fully up and running by next month, bears and all.

The expansion includes the hospital with two large recovery rooms, surgery and X-ray areas, individual care buildings for different species and a small dormitory for staff providing round-the-clock care — all at the place young Tamarack briefly called home.

The tale of his rescue-turned-escape began July 26 when a homeowner in Markleeville, California, spotted the cub crawling on his knees because his paws were so badly burned.

Photos of the bandaged black bear at the rescue center flooded social media and drew mention in international news coverage of the devastating fire that forced thousands of evacuations.

“Tamarack was sort of the first 'feel good’ story that came out of the fire. It was all destruction and heartbreak, and then there’s this little guy that had survived,” Erfani said this week. “Then, of course, that little stinker was not going to be caged. He just wanted out.”

The center announced his escape Aug. 3, warning anyone who spotted him to stay away and report sightings to wildlife officials.

Another flurry of publicity followed, less flattering than before.

“We got lambasted on social media. People were being nasty,” Erfani recalled. “It was very emotional for us because we had connections with him. A lot of people were really upset.”

Meanwhile, the center was doing everything it could to corral the cub, even sending up heat-seeking drones sometimes used to find lost hikers, Erfani said. “We spent a lot of time and money trying to find him. Our fear was that he wouldn’t be able to survive, so we didn’t give up.”

It paid off with the sighting of the cub clinging to the tree.

“We could tell he had all the same markings. But he appeared safe, and once released into the wild, we don’t bring them back,” he said.

“He wasn't happy being contained, pacing a lot. So, when we got him to a point where he could climb, that’s all he really needed. Once he got that defense ... his instincts kick in.”

Tamarack wasn’t like older bears who — because of issues including drought-driven food shortages — abandon the woods to rummage through garbage and sometimes break into Lake Tahoe homes.

“They become ‘urban’ bears," Erfani said. "Until the fire, (Tamarack) was from the backcountry, out in the wild. He never saw a house, never saw a car.”

“We like to believe he’s out there now in the wild, living the bear’s life.”

Consumers are open to electric vehicles, but face a steep learning curve



Joann Muller
Sat, November 27, 2021

Data: IHS Markit Data; Note: Chart: Thomas Oide/Axios

Americans are more open than ever to trading in their gas cars for electrified vehicles — but they're flummoxed by the confusing array of green options arriving in showrooms.

Why it matters: Getting up to speed on the differences among hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles will be a challenge for car buyers — and salespeople, too — as we transition away from gas-powered vehicles over the next decade.

What's happening: Overall car sales are down, but sales of electrified vehicles — hybrid, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles (EVs) — nearly doubled in the third quarter, to 10.4% of total sales from 5.5%, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Pure EVs, which have no combustion engine, were still just 3% of the total, partly because of their price tag: nearly $60,000 on average, before rebates, says KBB parent, Cox Automotive.

Until EV prices come down, hybrids and plug-in hybrids are a more affordable option for many car buyers.

Yes but: While consumers are more aware of these alternatives, they don't fully understand them, says Toyota, which introduced the Prius 25 years ago and dominates the U.S. market for hybrids.

75% of consumers surveyed by Toyota believe hybrids need to be plugged in, for example. That's not true.

Two-thirds of consumers surveyed think a battery-electric vehicle has an engine — also not true.

"After 25 years, consumers are still very confused," said Mike Tripp, VP of vehicle marketing and communications at Toyota North America.

Here's a quick primer on some terms buyers are likely to encounter:

Start-stop technology — this common fuel-saving system automatically shuts down and restarts a gasoline engine when the vehicle stops.

Mild hybrid — sometimes called e-assist, it's a gas-fueled car with an electric motor for added oomph during acceleration. The electric motor can't power the car on its own, but it can boost fuel economy as much as 20%.

Full hybrid — Toyota's Prius is a good example: The car has both a battery-powered electric motor and a gasoline engine, which operate independently or together. The e-motor can add power to supplement the engine, lowering fuel consumption.

Plug-in hybrid — With a larger battery and a more powerful motor, a plug-in hybrid can go 10-50 miles on electricity. That means you don't need to buy gas for short trips around town. When the battery is depleted, it operates as a regular full hybrid.

Battery-electric vehicle — The car must be plugged into the electric grid to recharge the battery, or it won't run. Most cars take 8-12 hours to recharge fully, although faster options are available. Today's BEVs usually get at least 250 miles between charges.

What's next: The number of electrified models is projected to explode over the next five years.

In 2020, there were 24 battery-electric models for sale in the U.S.; by 2025, IHS Markit projects that number will be 146.

Add various types of hybrids to the mix, and there will be 220 new or redesigned electrified models introduced between 2022 and 2025.

The bottom line: The EV era is going to take time to mature.

Get smarter, faster on climate technology with our free, 5-video short course.

Editor's Note: Cox Enterprises, the parent of Kelley Blue Book and Cox Automotive, is an investor in Axios.

A broken supply chain isn't a problem for the logistics industry. It's a moneymaking opportunity


Sam Dean
Fri, November 26, 2021

Shipping containers are piled high at the port of Los Angeles. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)

Thirty-thousand high-end snow globes are trapped in San Pedro Bay, split between two shipping containers on two ships in the idle flotilla offshore.

One ship arrived in late September; the other in late October. They've been stuck at anchor ever since.

Liz Ross, co-founder of CoolSnowGlobes, says that at this point in the season, all is lost. Her snow globes — representing $1.5 million in sales — needed to get to customers before the holidays.

But Wan Hai Lines Ltd., the Taiwanese shipping corporation that owns those vessels, is making a record profit this year. So is every major ocean shipping company, trucking company and warehouse company, as consumer demand has led to a 20% jump in imports.

The supply chain, defined as the system of moving goods from factories and farms to end consumers, is tied into knots and failing to deliver. But supply chain companies, each a private entity that hopes to make as much money as possible out of the surge in consumer demand, are having their best year ever. At the moment, that means there's little financial incentive to resolve the supply chain crisis quickly.

"Right now consumers are screaming because they don’t have the product and the price is going up," said Christopher S. Tang, a distinguished professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies supply chains, "but the big players are quietly happy."

This begins on the boat.

Most imports come to the U.S. in shipping containers, and just nine shipping companies control 80% of all global container shipping. Those companies have further consolidated into three major alliances — 2M, Transport High Efficiency Alliance and the Ocean Alliance — in the last decade, giving them unprecedented power in the market.

"To a certain extent they've become a cartel," Tang said. "There's not that much competition, so they can jack up the price more."

A look at San Pedro Bay, where dozens of ships have been idling for weeks, might give the impression that these companies are under duress. How can having $100-million ships tied up at anchor be good for the bottom line?

The shipping companies' financial reports show that they're finding a way. A.P. Moller-Maersk, the Copenhagen-based shipping giant, is on track to make more than $16 billion in profit in 2021 — three times as much money as its previous best year ever in 2014, and the most profit ever booked by any company in Danish history. Cosco Shipping, the Shanghai-based company that competes with Maersk for the top spot in the industry, made $12.6 billion in profit from container shipping in the first nine months of 2021, and reported that its revenue had doubled since 2020, thanks to the supply chain squeeze.

Wan Hai Lines, which is not in one of the major alliances, booked $2.48 billion in profit in the first nine months of 2021, 19 times what it made in the same period last year. Taken as a whole, the ocean shipping industry is on track to make more profit in 2021 than it has in the last decade.

The main source of this skyrocketing revenue is freight fees. In 2019, shipping a container from China to the West Coast cost less than $2,000, on average. At the height of the logistics crunch this summer, rates soared above $20,000 for that same container, before falling below $15,000 in the latter half of November. Demand went up, supply went down as backlogs grew, and prices surged.

Customers such as Liz Ross pay the shipping companies upfront. In previous years, those companies had a financial incentive to unload their ships as quickly as possible to free up capacity for more voyages. But the eight- to tenfold increase in prices means that a carrier can double its revenue even at 20% capacity. With that amount of money coming in, idle ships at ports such as those in Los Angeles and Long Beach barely scratch the bottom line — and in fact might prove good for business, if they mean that the companies can keep prices high, Tang said.

The ocean carriers also make money from the pileup of containers on the docks. After a container sits at the terminal for a certain number of days, shipping companies begin charging end customers a rental fee for using their box, a charge called demurrage in the industry. On the other side, once a trucker picks up a container and delivers its contents to a customer, the shipping companies also start charging the trucker a late fee, known as detention, if the trucker fails to return the empty container within a certain time frame.

At the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, so many empty containers have piled up that the shipping companies often won't allow truckers to return their empty containers but continue to charge detention fees. Truckers are then stuck with a rising detention tab and an empty container on their trailer, which means they can't go pick up a new import container and get paid for a new job. So the pile of import containers grows, and the only players with the power to remove the empty shipping containers to free up space — the shipping companies — have little incentive to do so expediently.

The ports themselves are owned by the cities of L.A. and Long Beach, respectively, but local governments have few levers at their disposal to change the behavior of private multinational shipping companies. The ports only serve as landlords to the private terminal companies that operate the docks, many of which are partly or wholly owned by the shipping companies and rely on them for their income.

In an attempt to change the financial incentives at play, port officials in October voted in a new fee on containers idling at terminals that could amount to millions in extra charges for the ocean carriers. Port leaders have delayed the fee's implementation, but cargo has been moving off the docks more quickly in recent weeks.

The federal government has turned its attention to the ocean carriers but has not taken any regulatory action as of yet. The Biden administration signed an executive order in July encouraging the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission to investigate "exorbitant fees" charged by the ocean carriers. A recent White House blog post raised the idea of using antitrust laws to regulate the industry and called on Congress to support expanding the commission's budget to meet the regulatory task.

While port truckers, many of whom are independent contractors, have been suffering under the fees and container logjam at the docks, other major players along the supply chain have been reaping profit bonanzas in the supply chain crisis.

DHL's supply chain business and Kuehne & Nagel, two of the world's largest freight-forwarding companies, have both more than doubled their profits this year in their core businesses. Profits at major truckers such as Saia Inc., Schneider National Inc., Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. and J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. have soared in 2021, even with fuel and labor costs on the rise, with many on track to earn nearly double the pre-pandemic profits of 2019. C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., one of the country's largest warehouse and logistics companies, booked $614 million in profit in the first nine months of 2021, up from $477 million in the same period in 2019, a nearly 30% jump.

Big companies have always had the advantage of scale, said Senthil Veeraraghavan, a professor of operations, information and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school. But now that capacity across the supply chain is stretched to the limit, "the first guys to get squeezed are people who put in small orders."

The last 20 years have seen an explosion of online direct-to-consumer brands and small e-commerce businesses, such as Ross' snow globe company, that rely on imports, while the back end of the supply chain has tended toward consolidation. "These aren’t centralized systems, there’s thousands of companies with millions of people doing their own things," Veeraraghavan said, and it worked to a point, with small importers placing orders more than six months out to get deliveries in time for the holidays. "Then it all collapsed at the same time."

"Year after year we talk about how a little bit of variation in the supply chain propagates all over the spectrum," Veeraraghavan said, "and unlike financial volatility, where stocks move up and down almost instantaneously, this is like a ripple in molasses."

As the demand for imports ebbs in early 2022, freight prices are likely to continue to fall. Companies that tried to expand to meet demand will find themselves with excess capacity on their hands and suffer the financial consequences. The companies that embraced the crunch, delivered goods late and charged high prices can settle into a soft landing at pre-crisis rates.

That's little solace to Ross. She spent 20 years building up her snow globe company from a hobby to a $2.5-million-a-year business, making custom products for clients such as Yves St. Laurent and the Museum of Modern Art. She spent the last three months anxiously watching the bulk of her orders — and it was a strong year for orders — sit stranded a mile offshore.

"We'll be here next year," she said, hoping to break even on her inventory over the course of 2022. "But it's a smack in the face."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

‘It’s critical’: can Microsoft make good on its climate ambitions?


Kyla Mandel
Sat, November 27, 2021

Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

When the UN’s landmark climate report was released in 2018, calling for urgent and unprecedented changes, Microsoft executives were told to “commit it to memory”, said Elizabeth Willmott, who leads the company’s carbon program. “And so we did.”

The report warned the world must reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to avert catastrophic climate change. To achieve this, not only must the emissions released by countries and companies be dramatically curtailed, but billions of tons of carbon dioxide must be sucked out of the atmosphere.

These findings directly informed Microsoft’s climate policy, said Willmott. In January 2020, the company announced that it would be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 it would have removed from the atmosphere all the carbon it has emitted since it was founded in 1975. By making this pledge, the company joined a small group of businesses, including Ikea and the software company Intuit, committed to going further than net-zero.


Microsoft is often ranked as a leading business on climate action. Its policies – from making it easier for people to repair their devices to launching software to help companies measure and manage carbon emissions – have been praised for going beyond the company’s own operations to the footprint of its suppliers and customers.

“Being a large, well-known brand, and putting a stake in the ground, talking publicly for years about the importance of climate change, is really critical,” said Simon Fischweicher, head of corporations and supply chains for the environmental non-profit CDP North America.

President of Microsoft Brad Smith as the company announced its carbon negative plan at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, on January 16, 2020. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

However, Microsoft has also been criticized for actions that appear to contradict its bold rhetoric on climate, including membership of trade associations that lobby against climate legislation, contracts with oil and gas firms and donations to politicians who obstruct climate policy.

These connections make it “complicit” in efforts to push against climate action, said Bill Weihl, a former sustainability executive at Google and Facebook and the founder of the advocacy group ClimateVoice.

Scaling up goals

Microsoft has been operating as a carbon-neutral company for nearly a decade, a feat it has achieved through buying carbon offsets as well as securing renewable power directly from clean energy companies and installing onsite renewable energy, such as solar panels at its offices.

Since 2012, Microsoft has also implemented an internal carbon fee, currently set at $15 a metric ton, making business units pay for emissions related to their operations and electricity, as well as from business air travel.

“The money gets collected and spent,” said Willmott, whose carbon management team uses the money to fund initiatives such as buying clean energy and carbon offsets. “I have to pinch myself regularly because that was something we dreamed about and didn’t think was actually going to happen.”

It’s a “powerful mechanism”, says Fischweicher, to push a company to think more deeply about the impact of its activities: “To pay a fee, you start to think about: ‘What can I do to reduce that so I have more money in my budget?’”

But the company has recognized that much more is required to tackle the climate crisis and the plan to go carbon negative was a big step up in ambitions.

Microsoft has laid out milestones for reaching the target. By 2025, it aims to reduce the emissions from its direct operations to “near zero” through gains in energy efficiency and using 100% renewable energy. By 2030, it has committed to reducing by at least 50% its direct emissions and those from its supply chain.

The company’s supply chain – more than 58,000 suppliers provide everything from office furniture to the metals and plastics used in its products – makes up the bulk of its emissions. Last year, the company implemented a carbon reporting requirement for suppliers and it extended the internal carbon fee to cover supply chain emissions.

But in order to remove more emissions than it produces, the company will rely heavily on carbon removal projects. These include nature-based initiatives such as funding reforestation projects, but the company is also pinning its hopes on technology. Microsoft is investing $1bn to support emerging technology that can reduce, capture and remove carbon from the air.

As part of this, the company has invested in and purchased carbon removal from Climeworks, which operates the world’s largest direct air capture plant, in Iceland, removing CO2 from the air and trapping it in rock underground.

Climeworks direct air capture plant near Reykjavik, Iceland. Photograph: Halldor Kolbeins/AFP/Getty Images

In 2020, Microsoft removed 1.3m metric tons of carbon through a range of initiatives from nature based programs to carbon capture technology.

However, these projects face obstacles. Relying on forests and soil to trap endless amounts of carbon is increasingly difficult in the face of worsening wildfires, pests and changes in land use. And carbon removal technology is not anywhere near the scale needed. There are 19 direct air capture (DAC) plants in operation globally, capturing just over 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. The International Energy Agency has estimated that reaching net zero by 2050 would require the world to scale up DAC to capture more than 85m tons each year by 2030 and around 980m tons a year by 2050.

It’s a challenge that Microsoft is grappling with. The number and type of projects currently available is “far short of what we need”, said Willmott. By 2030, the company estimates, it will need to remove 5m to 6m tons of carbon. This means the technology will need to be considerably scaled up to meet Microsoft’s demands alone, she said, “and that’s to say nothing of the fact that there’s a real spike in corporate demand”.

Related: Climate crisis: do we need millions of machines sucking CO2 from the air?

It’s not just the amount of viable carbon capture projects that’s lacking, Willmot said; there’s also a quality issue. The industry doesn’t fully distinguish between avoided emissions and those that are actually removed from the atmosphere, she said. More robust quality standards would go a long way to making sure “it’s not quite a wild, wild west that it is today”, Willmot said.

“[Microsoft is] opening up new conversations about historical emissions without having all the answers,” said Aoife Brophy, departmental research lecturer in innovation and enterprise at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. “Leaders on climate need to acknowledge the complexity of the problem and be transparent about the fact that there are not always clear solutions.”

Microsoft’s focus on historical emissions could also help spur a deeper conversation, she said, about “responsibility for the past, and may lead to much better ways to think about issues like climate justice that have not yet been adequately addressed by companies”.

A wider influence

The modern corporate sustainability movement requires companies to also consider their impacts on customers, peers and society more broadly. This shift in perspective, said Fischweicher, “is a really critical turning-point moment … because what you’re also talking about is shifting your business model overall”.

To Microsoft’s critics, this means the company should reconsider its work with oil companies. The same week that Microsoft made its carbon-negative announcement, it sponsored an oil conference in Saudi Arabia. A 2020 Greenpeace report digging into tech companies’ work with the oil and gas industry – such as providing software to support fossil fuel extraction – found that its contract with ExxonMobil “could lead to emissions greater than 20% of Microsoft’s annual carbon footprint”.

The company also spent about $200,000 during the 2020 US election cycle supporting politicians with a history of climate denial. And this October, Microsoft – along with other corporations – was criticized by the watchdog group Accountable.US for its membership of trade organizations with a history of fighting climate crisis legislation, including the Business Roundtable and the US Chamber of Commerce. Most recently, these groups have lobbied against climate legislation included under Joe Biden’s reconciliation bill.

Related: Apple and Disney among companies backing groups against US climate bill

“I feel really strongly that we need to be able to work with everyone to make this transition to a low-carbon economy in the future,” said Willmott, responding to these criticisms. “I really think it’s important not to villainize any particular sector, or villainize any particular entities, but rather really work hard from within to shape the journey.”

Weihl, whose organization ClimateVoice is calling on Microsoft and others to devote one-fifth of their lobbying dollars to climate policy in 2021, remains skeptical. “Companies are putting their narrow self-interest ahead of actually addressing the climate crisis at scale,” he said. “Silence and unwillingness to publicly distance themselves [from these groups] is not neutrality, it’s complicity.”

Whether it’s Microsoft’s customers and affiliations or the type of work it does, experts agree the company’s size and political heft as well as its position within trade groups give it immense power – and it’s all about how the company chooses to use it.

“Tech companies shape how we engage with the world, and the information we see on a daily basis,” said Brophy. “We need to think of impact beyond measuring emissions and consider ways in which technology can be used to create change across different systems.”

Microsoft’s climate commitments are laudable, she said, but ultimately success will require collective action. “The biggest challenge is that Microsoft’s goals cannot be achieved by Microsoft alone,” said Brophy. “But that’s exactly what we need to see companies across industries doing more of: coming out and being bold, recognizing that they need to be systems leaders.”