CNN tries to track down corporate HQ of Arizona 'auditors' Cyber Ninjas — and it doesn't go well

Matthew Chapman
August 23, 2021


On CNN Monday, reporter Kyung Lah revealed what happened when she attempted to track down the corporate headquarters of "Cyber Ninjas," the mysterious pro-Trump cybersecurity firm hired by the GOP-controlled Arizona Senate to conduct a controversial "audit" of ballots in Maricopa County.

Lah ultimately did not find a great deal of substance behind the company, other than its founder, Doug Logan.

"The Cyber Ninjas were hired with very little experience. In fact, zero experience when it comes to election auditing," said Lah. "So we went to Sarasota, Florida ... our first stop, Cyber Ninjas legal department."

What she found was a rented mailbox inside a UPS store that had been described as a fourth-floor suite in an office building.

"No one ever answers the official business phone number," said Lah, playing a recording of a woman saying, "Thank you for calling Cyber Ninjas.

What's more, every single extension redirects callers to Doug Logan's voicemail.

"I'm still waiting for Doug Logan to call me back," said Lah. "He never returned any of our inquiries. What we can tell you on paper that the Cyber Ninjas ... were paid $150,000 by Arizona taxpayers to conduct this audit in addition to millions that were funneled into this effort. We don't know if they got millions, but millions was funneled into this effort to conduct this so-called audit."

The Cyber Ninjas report, which was intended to be delivered confidentially to the state Senate, has been delayed, due to Logan and several of his associates reportedly falling ill with COVID-19.

Watch below:

  

Trump-loving conspiracists found their 'perfect villain' in Dominion election programmer -- and ruined his life

Travis Gettys
August 24, 2021

Faceboo
Conspiracy theorists latched onto an employee of Dominion Voting Systems, and their threats upended his personal life and cost him the job he loved.

Eric Coomer helped make the company one of the largest providers of election software in the country, but a 2016 Facebook post was leaked -- by an acquaintance, he suspects -- to a right-wing podcaster who cited that post, and some exaggerated or false claims about him, were "100 percent" proof "the election was rigged," reported the New York Times Magazine.

"I don't give a damn if you're friend, family or random acquaintance," Coomer had posted in response to a relative's birther claims. "[If you] pull the lever, mark an oval, touch the screen for that carnival barker ... UNFRIEND ME NOW."

"The Conservative Daily Podcast," and its host Joe Oltmann, claimed he had infiltrated what he described was an antifa phone call in which Coomer had revealed his alleged scheme, and the increasingly wild claims rocketed around social media and were cited in some of the lawsuits brought by Donald Trump's attorneys that were eventually tossed out of court.

"By the way, the Coomer character, who is close to antifa, took off all of his social media," said Rudy Giuliani in one infamous news conference. "Aha! But we kept it. We've got it. The man is a vicious, vicious man."

The 51-year-old Coomer hit the road as the threats poured in, sometimes reaching his brothers or parents, taking a rifle and moving from one isolated location to another, with occasional visits to close friends, and he received word that Newsmax had settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion and recanted its claims about him -- but the threats and invasions of privacy persist.

"I think Dominion as a company would be facing all of the same things they are right now without me," Coomer said. "But I was an accelerant and, for lack of a better word, I was a perfect villain."

Conspiracy theorists have scraped up bits and pieces about Coomer from his now-deactivated social media accounts, posts on rock climbing message boards and other digital spaces, and have shared personal information about him, family members and his ex-wife, who've all experienced harassment.

Coomer has filed his own lawsuit against Oltmann and 14 other individuals who shared his conspiracy theories, but he was forced out of the company he helped build and his former colleagues miss his guidance and expertise.

"There's this concern — I don't want any phone record," said former colleague Jennifer Morrell, who has also received threats. "Even though everything seemed crazy and outlandish, and you knew it was false and built on lies and conspiracy — you didn't want to do anything that could jeopardize other places where you are providing support."

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh pledges to end for-profit long-term care if elected

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — An NDP government would ban the opening of any new for-profit care homes for seniors, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Tuesday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Speaking to reporters on campaign trail in Mississauga, Ont., he said his party, if elected, would implement a plan to take profit out of long-term care homes and would create national care standards to hold institutions to account.

"It is wrong that for-profits exist in the system," Singh said.

He said seniors living in for-profit facilities had higher infection and death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Singh made the comments outside the office of Revera, a for-profit company and one of the largest long-term care home operators in the country. It is wholly owned by the Public Sector Pension Investment, the Crown corporation managing public servants' pensions.

If elected, Singh said he'd nationalize Revera and make it public.

"We fund long-term care and some of that money is going to the pockets of shareholders," Singh said.

"That is wrong. It should be going to (protecting and caring) for our loved ones."

He said he'd work with provinces and territories, which have jurisdiction over long-term care homes, but admitted it would be a challenge.

"It's not going to be easy, but it is essential and we have to get profit out of long-term care," Singh said.

He said he'd use "all the tools" at the federal government's disposal, including the use of the Canada Health Act, to get for-profit companies out of the industry.

Long-term care homes were devastated by COVID-19 across the country.

The Ryerson University National Institute on Aging has tracked 15,217 COVID-19 deaths among long-term care residents since March 2020, which amounts to 57 per cent of all deaths from the pandemic in Canada to date.

Nearly 3,800 people have died from COVID-19 in Ontario's nursing homes since the pandemic hit in early 2020.

An independent commission found long-term care homes were underfunded, suffered severe staffing shortages, had outdated infrastructure and poor oversight. Those factors, the commissioners said, contributed to the deadly toll in Ontario.

Singh said federal money for long-term care homes would have conditions attached to it.

"We provide funding and that funding should go toward the best quality of care, it should go toward staffing, it should not go toward profits," he said.

"We need to do better."

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau last week said a re-elected Liberal government would give provinces up to $9 billion over the next five years to hike wages and train more workers in Canada's troubled long-term care facilities.

Trudeau said he would work with the provinces to implement national standards for long-term care homes, but won't micromanage long-term care, which falls under provincial jurisdiction.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet called on Trudeau to give up on the idea of creating national standards for long-term care homes.

Blanchet instead urged the federal government to provide Quebec with a "fair share" of funding through health transfers in order to improve care for the elderly.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 24, 2021.

Liam Casey, The Canadian Press

Jagmeet Singh promises to kill fossil fuel subsidies


If elected, the federal NDP would identify fossil fuel subsidies, eliminate them “once and for all,” and spend the money on the renewable energy sector, Leader Jagmeet Singh said on the campaign trail Monday morning.

Speaking from Jeanne-Mance Park in Montreal, Singh said instead of giving companies “blank cheques” that may or may not be used to achieve their goals, the NDP would make direct investments to clean up oil wells and retrofit some into geothermal plants.

“What we've seen for a long time from Liberals and Conservatives is this notion that you can give money away with really no strings attached to large corporations and hope that the money will actually end up in workers’ hands or end up in doing what we need to defend the environment,” said Singh. “That approach has been shown again and again not to work.”

Lisa Marie Barron, the federal NDP candidate for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, said the recent wildfire near her riding serves as a stark reminder of the climate crisis Canadians are facing.

“I'm also hearing from young people … and quite honestly, they're scared for their future based on everything that we're seeing around us in this climate emergency,” said Barron.

Since Justin Trudeau participated in a climate march back in 2019, Barron said he “has abandoned the young people,” and instead helped “big oil and big investors.”

“Jagmeet’s announcement is very exciting to hear because we want to be a world leader on climate action. Unfortunately, right now, that's not the case. We are a joke on the world stage, and we need to be doing better,” said Barron.

Singh also promised $500 million over four years to support Indigenous-led conservation programs to protect land, water, and forests, and advance reconciliation. Few other details were made available about the criteria or nature of the programs, but Singh said the goal is to create a fund that allows Indigenous communities to choose to conserve their land, instead of being forced to log and extract resources to create jobs.

In 2020, federal fossil fuel subsidies reached at least $1.9 billion, according to a recent report from the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD). The NDP said it would do a full audit to identify and eliminate those subsidies.

The promise to end subsidies is encouraging, said Bronwen Tucker, an analyst at Oil Change International, but she also wants to see the NDP commit to ending public financing through Export Development Canada — which provides an average of $13.3 billion per year in public finance for fossil fuels — and clarify whether it would also end handouts for blue hydrogen, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and other strategies to “decarbonize oil and gas.”

“It really ignores the best science and best models that are available that say hydrogen and CCS should be reserved for that last mile (of) decarbonization, the things that are the hardest to decarbonize, which is definitely not oil and gas production.”

Vanessa Corkal, a policy adviser for the IISD, said given the billions in support from Export Development Canada, it’s concerning “there's not a broader commitment from the NDP to also end public finance for fossil fuels.”

She said we need to expand the conversation to include not just subsidies, but all forms of government support.

“The federal conversation seems to be a bit stuck on phasing out inefficient subsidies, when in fact, the global conversation is more about phasing out oil and gas production, period, and phasing out government support for oil and gas production, period,” she said.

“From my perspective, if funding is reducing the cost of business for fossil fuel producers, that's not something that we want to be supporting,” said Corkal, citing the $1.7 billion provided by the Liberal government to clean up orphan wells as an example.

“That money was pitched as a way to create jobs, to reclaim wells, and to clean up the environment. But research shows that what actually happened is that large companies were able to use that funding to pay for activities that they would have done anyways, and that there wasn't actually a large increase in cleanup. So, ultimately, the result of that subsidy is that it just made it cheaper for (those big oil companies) to do what they're normally doing,” said Corkal.

For the NDP to meet its goal of ending oil and gas subsidies and supporting workers instead of companies, Tucker said any federal money for orphan wells would need to be conditioned on or accompanied by regulatory change to ensure companies pay upfront for cleanup costs rather than being able to almost fully avoid them as the current structure allows.

Tucker said the Liberal government’s creation of and support for fossil fuel subsidies like the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, $320 million to support the recovery of Newfoundland’s offshore oil and gas industry, and funding for carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen are not in line with the best science we have.

“The idea that we can just continue to expand fracking and (the) oilsands by building CCS and hydrogen that the government pays for is really wild,” said Tucker, adding it’s “a ridiculous amount of money” that would be better spent on green industries, transitioning workers, and public services.

In response to the NDP’s announcement, Atiya Jaffar, 350.org Canada’s digital manager, said ending fossil fuel subsidies is “a necessary first step” for Canada to achieve its global climate obligations, and calls for “a moratorium on fossil fuel expansion and a big, bold just transition plan that supports workers and communities.”

With the recent International Energy Agency report calling for the end to all new investment in fossil fuels, any credible and robust climate plan must include a commitment to immediately end all subsidies, public finance and other fiscal support, said Julia Levin, senior program manager for climate and energy at advocacy group Environmental Defence.

“We can't be paying oil and gas companies to do something that we could force them to do in another way,” she said.

“By paying them, by lowering their cost of business, we are still incentivizing ongoing and increased production, which is literally pouring fuel on the fire.”

Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

 #CAPITALISMISCRISIS   SOCIALISM IS PLANNING

Bosch says the semiconductor supply chains in the car industry no longer work

Sam Shead 

CNBC TODAY

Bosch believes semiconductor supply chains in the automotive industry are no longer fit for purpose as the global chip shortage rages on.

German car giants and semiconductor suppliers should figure out how the chip supply chain can be improved, according to Bosch board manager Harald Kroeger.

Semiconductor supply chain issues have been quietly managed by the automotive in the past but now is a time for change, according to Kroeger.

© Provided by CNBC

German technology and engineering group Bosch, which is the world's largest car-parts supplier, believes semiconductor supply chains in the automotive industry are no longer fit for purpose as the global chip shortage rages on.

Harald Kroeger, a member of the Bosch management board, told CNBC's Annette Weisbach in an exclusive interview Monday that supply chains have buckled in the last year as demand for chips in everything from cars to PlayStation 5s and electric toothbrushes has surged worldwide.

Coinciding with the surge in demand, several key semiconductor manufacturing sites were forced to halt production, Kroeger said.

In February, a winter storm in Texas caused blackouts at NXP Semiconductors, which is a major provider of automotive and mobile phone chips. In March, there was a fire at a semiconductor plant in Japan operated by Renesas, one of the car industry's biggest chip suppliers. In August, factories in Malaysia have been abandoned as national lockdowns were introduced to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

Volkswagen and BMW cut their production as they struggled to get the chips they needed to build their cars. These companies and semiconductor suppliers should now be looking to figure out how the chip supply chain can be improved, Kroeger said.

"As a team, we need to sit together and ask, for the future operating system is there a better way to have longer lead times," he said. "I think what we need is more stock on some parts [of the supply chain] because some of those semiconductors need six months to be produced. You cannot run on a system [where] every two weeks you get an order. That doesn't work."

Semiconductor supply chain issues have been quietly managed by the automotive in the past but now is a time for change, according to Kroeger, who believes demand is only going to increase with the rise of electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles.

"Every car that gets smarter needs more semiconductors," Kroeger said.

Electric cars need very powerful and efficient semiconductors in order to to get more range out of each kilowatt hour of battery, he added.

UBS analyst Francois-Xavier Bouvignies told CNBC last week that cars with internal combustion engines typically use around $80 worth of semiconductors in the powertrain, but electric vehicles use around $550 worth.
New chip plant

Bosch has built a new 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) semiconductor plant in Dresden — the capital of the German state of Saxony and one of Europe's biggest semiconductor clusters — over the last two years and production started last month.

"The fact that we actually started to build this plant a couple of years ago shows that we expected the demand to go up dramatically," said Kroeger.

"Bosch board member expects global chip shortage to last until at least 2022"

Other chip heavyweights including Intel and TSMC are planning to set up new factories in the next few years as part of an effort to boost production.

Kroeger said he expects the chip shortage to extend "way into 2022" adding that he hopes demand remains stable. "We need to ramp up supplies so we can fulfil that demand," he said.
Striving for sovereignty

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told CNBC this week that the plant comes at a crucial time for the industry, adding that Germany and Europe are still a long way from achieving digital sovereignty in semiconductor production.

"It's important and right that Bosch has chosen to invest here at a time when we see supply squeezes on international markets," he said during a visit to the new Bosch facility.

"I think the current situation gives us an added push to be stronger in this field," added Steinmeier.

The number of people working in the semiconductor sector in Dresden has risen from 45,000 to 70,000 over the last decade, according to Frank Bosenberg, managing director of tech network Silicon Saxony.

"We expect further growth to 2030 of up to 100,000," Bosenberg told CNBC.
Catching up with Asia

The vast majority of the world's chips are produced in Asia, with TSMC being the biggest chip producer worldwide. Europe accounts for just a fraction of global semiconductor production.

"Europe has a demand of 20% and production of less than 10% right now," Bosenberg said.


"European chip manufacturers on par with Asia: Silicon Saxony MD"

He thinks Europe should increase semiconductor production, but he noted that it's a global industry and no one country is even close to being autonomous.

Dutch semiconductor equipment seller ASML is the only company in the world capable of making the machines that are needed to make the most advanced chips, which are used by the likes of Apple.

ASML is a "major asset within the industry," Bosenberg said.

           'Don't panic and get back to work', Taliban order former officials 
               

MEET THE NEW BOSS

SAME AS THE OLD BOSS

   

America's housing crisis is screwing over millions of vulnerable Americans. Congress needs to stop twiddling its thumbs and use its biggest tool to help fight soaring prices.

insider@insider.com (Skylar Baker-Jordan) 4 hrs ago

 Housing activists gathering in Massachusetts in October. 

Michael Dwyer/AP Photo

More than 3 million Americans are at risk of eviction when the federal eviction moratorium ends.

Classist zoning laws and private deconversions have widened the gap between landlords and low-income tenants.

Only by investing in public housing can America truly end its housing crisis.

Skylar Baker-Jordan is a freelance writer who has worked in the mortgage industry.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Despite a temporary extension by President Biden, the national eviction moratorium is scheduled to end on October 3. It's estimated that 3 million Americans are at risk of eviction when the moratorium finally ends, and even a further extension is only delaying the inevitable. Compounding this problem is the fact that with home prices rising and rental incomes falling, many private landlords are opting to sell their investment properties. This reduces the overall number of rental properties available.

Simply put, the moratorium is just a band-aid on a bleed-out. The pandemic may have spotlighted the precarity of America's renters, but it did not create this crisis. To truly fix America's housing crisis will require us to look at how it began and to completely overhaul how and where we build affordable homes.

Bureaucratic barriers

"Build" is the operative word here. Yet the 2010s was "by far the lowest decade of single family production in the last 60 years," according to the National Association of Homebuilders. Of the homes that have been built, the majority have been high-end "luxury" homes; 2020 alone saw the construction of high-priced homes rise 81% while construction of homes between $100,000 and $250,000 fell by 11%.

Most homes in the United States are owner-occupied. This means when the eviction moratorium ends, tenants who find themselves evicted will be forced to compete for a reduced number of houses. In urban areas, this lack of supply has been exacerbated by classist zoning laws and wealthy individuals turning multi-unit properties into single family residences by combining multiple units.

Across the country, zoning laws prevent multi-family properties from even being built. These laws continue to make low-income and affordable housing difficult to build. By restricting the type of construction that can be built in a specific area, zoning laws mandate everything from the number of units to the number of parking spaces.

While this is a nationwide problem, no state better demonstrates just how bad things have gotten than California. The Golden State is plagued with draconian zoning laws. So cumbersome and absurd are they that Bill Maher does a running gag on his HBO show about how difficult it was for him to simply build a solar shed in his own backyard, something that took more than 1000 days to complete.

This is not an accident. A 1970 environmental law is used by residents and policymakers to exclude affordable housing to increase their own property values. Even if builders do successfully navigate this bureaucratic nightmare, the permits alone cost as much as a quarter of the cost of construction. It's no wonder that the most expensive place in the world to build is San Francisco.

Affordable homes, affordable solutions

Zoning laws are not the only hindrance to new construction, though. Likewise, the dearth of affordable housing is not a problem unique to California. Across the nation, multi-family properties are being turned into single-family dwellings.

Chicago's North Center neighborhood had 774 permits issued for new construction with 754 permits for demolition between 2006 and 2016, according to Chicago's NPR station WBEZ. Primarily a residential neighborhood on the city's leafy North Side, North Center saw a startling number of multi-family, affordable homes deconverted into single-family dwellings.

"Two-, three- and four-flats historically have been an accessible income-producing homeownership opportunity and a key source of lower-cost, family sized housing for renters," Sarah Freishtat wrote for the Chicago Tribune. "Once lost, they are hard to replace with similarly large, affordable units…" This translates into real and staggering numbers: between 2013 and 2019, North Center lost 13.5% of its units, while neighboring Lincoln Park lost more than 15% of its units.

There is an obvious incentive for homeowners to protect the wealth they build through ownership. Similarly, landlords benefit from increased rents and property values coupled with historically low mortgage rates. The policy failure comes from not anticipating this clash of class interests - that of the owning class versus the renting class - and of not adequately addressing it through the public sphere.

Low-income Americans, the most vulnerable to housing insecurity and homelessness, cannot have their fate decided by the whims of the real estate market. The state has a vested interest in ensuring every American has an affordable home, as reducing homelessness is shown to have a direct correlation to decreasing crime rates while quality and stable housing is shown to increase children's educational and emotional wellbeing.

There are solutions to this problem, but they will require Democrats in Washington to spend their political capital. To begin with, Congress can expand Section 8 vouchers to include every eligible American - something President Biden already promised to do on the campaign trail. Landlords have a checkered history of discriminating against Section 8 recipients, though, meaning new laws to protect tenants must simultaneously be introduced. Several jurisdictions have done just that, instituting "source of income laws" protecting Section 8 voucher-holders from being unfairly discriminated against. This should become a federal law to ensure low-income Americans have fair access in the private market.

Clearly, though, the private sector alone cannot address this crisis, nor prevent it from worsening as the pandemic rages on and the moratorium ends. There is an obvious need for more social housing. The government must build more public housing to house the people being frozen out of the private market that shuns them.

To do this will mean ending two decades of public housing prohibition. The Faircloth Amendment was added to the Housing Act of 1937 in the 1990s to prevent any new public housing units from being built. As a result, public housing has stayed at or below the level it was at in 1999. This is despite the US population growing by approximately 54 million people in that amount of time, while a dollar today only buys 61% of what a dollar then bought.

The Housing is Infrastructure Act of 2021 would repeal the Faircloth Amendment and provide $70 billion to repair public housing and $45 billion to build and preserve affordable homes. By repealing the Faircloth Amendment and investing in our public housing infrastructure, we can finally deliver change that is long overdue. Classist zoning laws and the drive for ever greater wealth has literally left millions of low-income Americans out in the cold.

To solve this problem and get people into good homes, America must rethink its approach to housing. We can start by repealing cumbersome zoning laws at the local level and protecting low-income renters at the federal level. Only then can we truly begin to reverse the inequality which has for too long run rampant in our housing market.

75 Doctors from Florida Hospitals Walk Out in Protest of Unvaccinated Patients: 

'We Are Exhausted'

Julie Mazziotta 

In protest of the deluge of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients filling up area hospitals, around 75 doctors from South Florida staged a walkout on Monday to urge people to get inoculated.

Provided by People Lannis Waters/Palm Beach Post/USA Today Doctors in South Florida walk out in protest of unvaccinated patients

Early in the morning before the start of their shifts, the doctors briefly stood outside and spoke against the high number of people in the Palm Beach area who refuse to get vaccinated.

"We are exhausted. Our patience and resources are running low and we need your help," Dr. Rupesh Dharia, from Palm Beach Internal Medicine, told WFLA News.

RELATED: Florida Church Urging Vaccinations After 6 Members — All Unvaccinated — Die of COVID in 10 Days

Florida is currently dealing with the highest number of new COVID-19 infections in the country as the state shatters previous daily records. On Monday, Florida reported 21,329 new cases, and the state now has 17,215 people hospitalized with the virus, an increase of 24% over the last 14 days, according to The New York Times. Deaths totaled 228 on Monday, an 86% jump over the last two weeks.

"This time around, this variant is deadlier, it is impacting the lungs quicker, it is eating away at the lungs, it is causing more problems … and the patients are dying quicker," Dr. Ahmed El-Haddad of Jupiter Medical Center told WPTV News.

The doctors said that they want more Floridians to get vaccinated and prevent this rush at area hospitals. Just over half of the state's population — 52% — is fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

"The heartbreak now, is we're not just going in to work and working long hours, but we're seeing people who don't need to be in the hospital, who are healthy and young, who don't have the co-morbidities that we typically see, and they're getting this from a preventable illness," Dr. Ethan Chapin of Jupiter Medical Center told WPTV.

Chapin said that it can be frustrating to treat patients who could have avoided getting sick if they had been vaccinated.

"The irony is difficult to deal with some times," he said. "It's [them] trying to reach out to us when we've already extended our hand to help them. And they've pushed it aside, and ignored our advice, and then they come back asking. And it's frustrating, and heartbreaking."

ONTARIO

MPP defends decision to remain unvaccinated (QUARENTINE HIM)
2 hrs ago

Chatham-Kent–Leamington MPP Rick Nicholls told The Chatham Voice he has “no regrets” about refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

The decision cost him his job as deputy speaker of the Ontario Legislature and saw Premier Doug Ford him toss him from the Progressive Conservative caucus.

Nicholls, who will now represent C-K-L as an Independent, said Sunday he has received tremendous support for taking a stand against what he calls “an experimental drug, not a vaccine.

“The outpouring of support has been incredible,” Nicholls said. “Not just locally, but from across the country.”

While he acknowledged there are plenty of people who disagree, Nicholls said he made his decision “based on principle.

“It’s all about choice,” the veteran politician explained, adding it comes down to the fact people should be free to choose what they put into their bodies.

Nicholls said the decision by Ford Friday to oust him from caucus is purely political. He said the premier’s office was under pressure from Toronto media nosing around about the number of MPPs who were vaccinated.

Pressure was created by the opposition as well, he added.

Nicholls said he received a “demanding ultimatum type phone call” from one of Ford’s top aides Aug. 16, advising him he had 72 hours to get the shot.

The politician called it a “bullying” tactic, and one hour before the 5 p.m. deadline Aug. 19, he called a press conference announcing his decision.

“I fully knew what the consequences would be,” Nicholls said. “I was prepared to put my political career in jeopardy. I know a lot of people are disappointed in it, but this is my choice.”

Scarborough MPP Christina Mitas, is the only other MPP who has not taken the vaccine to remain in the PC caucus. She has been provided a medical exemption from her doctor.

Nicholls, who has served three terms in office, said he took Ford “at his word” when he said the government would not mandate vaccines for the people of Ontario.

He doesn’t believe the vaccine should be mandated in any form and does not support municipalities forcing the employees or the general public to get the shot.

Ultimately, Nicholls said, it came down to his belief that not enough clinical research has been done to support the COVID-19 vaccine and determine its long-term effects.

Nicholls, who was invited to tell his story at a People’s Party of Canada fundraising dinner held by Chatham-Kent-Leamington federal candidate Liz Vallee on the weekend, said he’s not joining the PPC.

“I will remain apolitical on this,” he said. “I am not switching parties.

“My party is the independent party.”

By the time Nicholls finishes his current term, he will have served Chatham-Kent-Leamington for 10.5 years.

No names have been put forward by the PCs to fill his spot, but the MPP said there are plenty of good people ready to fill the seat.

“I’ve worked hard to keep this riding blue and I would want it to stay blue,” Nicholls said, adding he won’t run in the next election.

Nicholls said he holds no animosity towards the premier or his colleagues at Queen’s Park.

Pam Wright, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Chatham Voice

RIP

Charlie Watts, Rolling Stones Drummer, Dies at 80

Chris Morris 30 mins ago

VARIETY

© imageSPACE/MediaPunch/IPx


Drummer Charlie Watts, whose adept, powerful skin work propelled the Rolling Stones for more than half a century, died in London on Tuesday morning, according to his spokesperson. No cause of death was cited; he was 80.

A statement from the band and Watts’ spokesperson reads: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts. He passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family.

More from Variety
Rolling Stones Unveil 'Tattoo You' 40th Anniversary Edition, With Bonus Tracks and Live Album

Rolling Stones Drummer Charlie Watts Is 'Unlikely' to Join Group's 2021 U.S. Tour

Rolling Stones Unveil Rescheduled U.S. Tour Dates for This Fall

“Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also a member of the Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation.

“We kindly request that the privacy of his family, band members and close friends is respected at this difficult time.”

On August 4, Watts abruptly withdrew from the Stones’ upcoming pandemic-postponed U.S. tour, citing the need to recover from an unspecified but “successful” recent medical procedure. A spokesperson said, “Charlie has had a procedure which was completely successful, but I gather his doctors this week concluded that he now needs proper rest and recuperation. With rehearsals starting in a couple of weeks it’s very disappointing to say the least, but it’s also fair to say no one saw this coming.” Unconfirmed reports said he had undergone heart surgery.

Watts had generally been healthy throughout his entire career with the Stones. He was stricken with throat cancer in 2004 but successfully recovered, and suffered from substance abuse in the 1970s and ’80s, but beat that as well.

Universally recognized as one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, Watts and guitarist Keith Richards have been the core of the Rolling Stones’ instrumental sound: Richards spends upwards of half the group’s concerts turned around, facing Watts, bobbing his head to the drummer’s rhythm. A 2012 review of a Rolling Stones concert reads in part: “For all of Mick and Keith’s supremacy, there’s no question that the heart of this band is and will always be Watts: At 71, his whipcrack snare and preternatural sense of swing drive the songs with peerless authority, and define the contradictory uptight-laid-back-ness that’s at the heart of the Stones’ rhythm.” Watts was never a flashy drummer, but driving the beat for “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” for a two-hour set — in a stadium, no less — is an act of great physical endurance that Watts performed until he was 78.

His last concert with the group took place in Miami on August 30, 2019, although he did appear with the band during the April 2020 “One World Together” all-star livestream early in the pandemic. Reviewing a show earlier in the 2019 tour, Variety wrote, “Sitting at a minimalist kit and moving even more minimally with his casual jazz grip, [Watts looks] like the mild-mannered banker who no one in the heist movie realizes is the guy actually blowing up the vault.”

The wiry, basset-faced musician was a jazz-schooled player who came to the Stones through London’s “trad” scene of the early ‘60s. He was the missing piece in the group’s early lineup, joining in January 1963; with Jagger and Keith Richards, he remained a constant with “the World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band” on record and on stage for more than 50 years.

He provided nimble, energetic support on the band’s long run of dirty, blues- and R&B-based hits of the early and mid-‘60s. He reached the pinnacle of his prowess on a series of mature recordings, made with producer Jimmy Miller in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, in which his sharp playing caromed off Richards’ serrated guitar riffs.

In the 2003 oral history “According to the Rolling Stones,” Richards said, “To have a drummer from the beginning who could play with the sensibility of Charlie Watts is one of the best hidden assets I’ve had, because I never had to think about the drummer and what he’s going to do. I just say, ‘Charlie, it goes like this,’ and we’ll kick it around a bit and it’s done. I can throw him ideas and I never have to worry about the beat…It’s a blessing.”

A flexible player, Watts displayed his malleable chops on the Stones’ forays into off-brand styles – psychedelia, reggae and (on the 1978 hit single “Miss You”) disco.

Though he grew weary of the band’s touring pace as early as the 1980s, he soldiered on with the Stones for three more decades, in what was arguably the most comfortable and lucrative drumming gig in music. He prevailed through bouts with heroin addiction and a battle with throat cancer, quietly addressing these challenges as the spotlight shined more brightly on his more flamboyant band mates.

Watts remained a picture of domestic bliss and tranquility amid the soap-operatic lives of his fellow Stones: He wed his wife Shirley in 1964, and the couple remained together, even amid rough patches, for the duration.

He maintained a love of jazz throughout his life, and from the ‘80s on would record regularly with various ad hoc lineups of his Charlie Watts Quintet, essaying the hard-swinging instrumental music that fired his early interest in music.

Watts was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Stones in 1989.

He was born June 2, 1941, in London; his father was a truck driver for the English rail system. Raised in Wembley, he gravitated as a youth to the music of early jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton and bop saxophonist Charlie Parker. He was an indifferent music student in school, but began playing at 14 or 15.

In “The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones,” Watts told Stanley Booth, “Fortunately my parents were perceptive enough to buy me a drum kit. I’d bought a banjo myself and taken the neck off and started playing it as a drum…[I] played newspaper with wire brushes. My parents bought me one of those first drum kits every drummer knows too well.”

He emblazoned the bass drum head of his early kit with the name “Chico,” after saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s drummer Chico Hamilton. In his teens, he worked in various regional jazz groups.

He was schooled as a graphic designer at Harrow Art School, and worked for a London ad firm. In 1961, he illustrated and wrote a fanciful tribute to Charlie Parker; it was subsequently published in 1964, after the Rolling Stones’ rise to fame, as “Ode to a High Flying Bird.”

In 1962, Watts first encountered some of his future band mates at London’s Ealing Club, a subterranean venue where first-generation trad-to-blues players like Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies took early stabs at replicating American R&B and blues.

After a stint doing design work in Copenhagen, Watts returned to London and accepted an offer from Korner to drum in his group Blues Incorporated, which for a time had featured Jagger as its singer.

Jagger was in the process of establishing his own blues-based band, originally called the Rollin’ Stones, with Richards, guitarist Brian Jones, bassist Bill Wyman and pianist Ian Stewart. The weak link in the unit was drummer Tony Chapman, and, after pleas from Richards and Jones, Watts replaced Chapman in the nascent group; he was replaced in Korner’s band by Ginger Baker, later of Cream.

Watts later admitted, “It was from Brian, Mick and Keith that I first seriously learned about R&B. I knew nothing about it. The blues to me was Charlie Parker or [New Orleans jazz clarinetist] Johnny Dodds playing slow.” He schooled himself by listening to recorded performances such drummers by Earl Phillips, Jimmy Reed’s accompanist, and Fred Below, who powered many of Chess Records’ major blues hits of the ‘50s.

He proved an apt pupil, and he forcefully completed the sound of the Stones (who soon subtracted Stewart from the permanent lineup and employed him as a sideman and road manager). From the band’s debut 1963 single, a cranked-up cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On,” he pushed the unit with seemingly effortless power and swing.

Watts lent potent support to the R&B- and blues-derived material recorded in the era when the purist Jones enjoyed parity in the Stones with Richards and Jagger. However, he was much more than a four-on-the-floor timekeeper, and flourished as Jagger-Richards originals pushed the band to the top of the U.S. and U.K. charts.

He stood out on the Stones’ first U.S. No. 1, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (1965) and on latter-day exotica like “Paint It Black” (1966) and “Ruby Tuesday,” “Dandelion,” “We Love You” and “She’s a Rainbow” (all 1967).

He came into his own with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man” (1968) and “Honky Tonk Women” (1969), convulsive singles produced by Miller that marked the end of Jones’ tenure with the group (he died in 1969) and the arrival of guitarist Mick Taylor.

Those numbers and the subsequent “Brown Sugar” (No. 1, 1969) and “Tumbling Dice” (1972) – respectively drawn from the Stones’ landmark albums “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main St” – all exhibited the trademark sound of the Stones at their apex, with Watts bouncing hard off a lacerating Richards guitar intro.

From 1971-81, Watts appeared on eight consecutive No. 1 studio albums by the Stones, and appeared on three of the biggest-grossing tours of the era. From 1975 on, he brought his design skills to bear and worked with Jagger on configuring the elaborate stage sets that became a hallmark of the act’s later tours.

In the late ‘70s, he began using heroin, and his addiction became so acute that he nodded out in the studio during the recording of “Some Girls” (1978). He later said in an interview with the BBC that Richards – an enthusiastic abuser of the drug – shook him awake at the session and counseled him, “You should do this when you’re older.” Watts said he took the guitarist’s advice and stopped using the drug.

Despite his difficulties during that era, Watts smoothly navigated the dancefloor backbeat that propelled “Miss You,” the Stones’ last No. 1 single, released in ’78. During the ‘80s, he brought his whipcracking skills to the band’s top-10 hits of the period, the perennial show-opener “Start Me Up” (1981) and the dark fusillade “Undercover of the Night” (1983).

He again grappled with alcohol and drug issues in the mid-‘80s, but once again discreetly and successfully shook off his addictions, cleaning up for good in 1986.

In his 2002 book “Rolling With the Stones,” bassist Wyman (who exited the Stones in 1993) claims that Watts’ enthusiasm for working with the band waned in the late ‘80s, when conflict between Jagger and Richards over direction of the group threatened to run it aground permanently.

He increasingly recorded and toured on his own as a jazz band leader. He cut a big band album for Columbia in 1986; four sets with his own quintet from 1991-96; and worked on a collaborative project with fellow drummer Jim Keltner in 2000. In 2004, an album featuring his tentet was recorded at Ronnie Scott’s famous jazz venue in London.

Watts still dutifully clocked in with the Stones after Jagger and Richards reconciled: Their four studio albums between 1989-2005 were succeeded by mammoth tours that broke records internationally. His tour duty was not broken by a siege of throat cancer, diagnosed in 2004 and treated successfully.

At the half-century mark, the group made successful treks in the new millennium without any new product in stores, hitting the road for arenas in 2012-16.

In October 2016, the act filled the Empire Polo Field in Indio, Calif., site of the annual Coachella music festival on a double bill with Bob Dylan, as part of the three-day “Desert Trip” festival featuring ‘60s classic rock acts.

Watts is survived by his wife and daughter Serafina.

Charlie Watts, legendary Rolling Stones drummer, dies at 80
Issued on: 24/08/2021 -

The Rolling Stones' veteran drummer pictured at a concert in Santiago, Chile, on February 3, 2016. © Rodrigo Garrido, Reuters

Text by: FRANCE 24


Charlie Watts, the self-effacing and unshakeable Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock’s greatest bands and used his “day job” to support his enduring love of jazz, has died at the age of 80, according to his publicist.

Bernard Doherty said Tuesday that Watts “passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family”.

“Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation,” Doherty said.

Watts had announced he would not tour with the Stones in 2021 because of an undefined health issue.

Born in London in 1941, Watts started playing drums in London's rhythm and blues clubs in the early 1960s, before agreeing to join forces with Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in their fledgling group, The Rolling Stones, in January 1963.

The quiet, elegantly dressed Watts was often ranked with Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and a handful of others as a premier rock drummer, respected worldwide for his muscular, swinging style as the band rose from its scruffy beginnings to international superstardom.

The Stones began, Watts said, “as white blokes from England playing Black American music” but quickly evolved their own distinctive sound.

He would stay with the band for over 60 years, ranking just behind Jagger and Richards as the group’s longest lasting and most essential member.


04:05

A classic Stones song like “Brown Sugar” and “Start Me Up” often began with a hard guitar riff from Richards, with Watts following closely behind, and Wyman, as the bassist liked to say, “fattening the sound”.

Watts’ speed, power and time keeping were never better showcased than during the concert documentary, “Shine a Light”, when director Martin Scorsese filmed “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from where he drummed toward the back of the stage.

Watts' deadpan expression and metronomic rhythms formed an integral part of the band's classic performances, counterbalancing Jagger's onstage energy and charisma and the goofing about between Richards and Wood.

While the other members became known for what Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper described as "marriage break-ups, addiction, arrests and furious bust-ups", Watts lived quietly with his wife of more than 50 years, Shirley Shepherd, on a stud farm in the remote Devon countryside.

"Through five decades of chaos, drummer Charlie Watts has been the calm at the centre of the Rolling Stones storm, on and off stage," the Mirror wrote in 2012.

He was treated in the 1980s for alcohol and heroin abuse but said he had successfully come off them. "It was very short for me. I just stopped, it didn't suit me at all," he told the tabloid.

A jazz drummer in his early years, Watts never lost his affinity for the music he first loved, heading his own jazz band and taking on numerous other side projects.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, REUTERS, AFP)

  

Charlie Watts: the heartbeat of the Rolling Stones



Issued on: 24/08/2021 

Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts' calm style counterbalanced the onstage flamboyance of the band's other members PABLO PORCIUNCULA AFP/File


London (AFP)

British drummer Charlie Watts, who died on Tuesday at 80, was known as the quiet man of the scandal-soaked Rolling Stones, keeping the beat for the legendary rock group in his own steady style.

Watts' deadpan expression and metronomic rhythms formed an integral part of the band's classic performances, counterbalancing the onstage energy and charisma of singer Mick Jagger and the goofing about between guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood.

While the other members became known for what Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper described as "marriage break-ups, addiction, arrests and furious bust-ups", Watts lived quietly with his wife of more than 50 years, Shirley Shepherd, on a stud farm in the remote Devon countryside.

"Through five decades of chaos, drummer Charlie Watts has been the calm at the centre of the Rolling Stones storm, on and off stage," the Mirror wrote in 2012.

He was treated in the 1980s for alcohol and heroin abuse but said he had successfully come off them.

"It was very short for me. I just stopped, it didn't suit me at all," he told the tabloid.

Trashing hotel rooms and sleeping with groupies was not for Watts.

"I've never filled the stereotype of the rock star," he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1994. "Back in the 70s, Bill Wyman and I decided to grow beards and the effort left us exhausted."

- Early love of jazz -

Born on June 2, 1941 in London, Charles Robert Watts discovered jazz around the age of 10, with the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Charlie Parker.

Exploring drumming as a boy, he converted an old banjo that had a skin covering into a snare drum, according to the Rolling Stones' official website.

Watts discovered jazz around the age of 10 and, over the decades, kept his hand in, playing with various ensembles throughout his career with the Stones ANDREW COWIE AFP/File

But he had no formal training and learned by watching great jazz drummers in London clubs, it says.

After studying art, he found a job as a graphic designer and played with a variety of jazz bands in the evenings before joining the Rolling Stones in 1963.

Throughout his career with the Stones, Watts actively kept up his love of jazz, as leader of a jazz quintet and tentet, and a 32-piece band called the Charlie Watts Orchestra.

- No fear of break-up -

As the Rolling Stones aged, Watts was blase about the prospects of the band splitting.

"To say this is the last show wouldn't be a particularly sad moment, not to me anyway. I'll just carry on as I was yesterday or today," he told New Musical Express (NME) in a 2018 interview, as the septuagenarian band prepared another tour.

Watts openly admitted that he often thought of leaving the group.

"I used to leave at the end of every tour. We'd do six months work in America and I'd say, 'That's it, I'm going home'.

"Two weeks later, you're fidgeting and your wife says: 'Why don't you go back to work? You're a nightmare.'"

Still rocking well into their 70s, Charlie Watts (L), Mick Jagger (C) and Keith Richards (R) of the Rolling Stones DON EMMERT AFP/File

He was named the 12th greatest drummer of all time by Rolling Stone in 2016.

Ten years earlier, Modern Drummer magazine voted him into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame, alongside other notables such as The Beatles' Ringo Starr and Keith Moon of The Who.

Watts had a brush with throat cancer in 2004, making a full recovery.

He pulled out of the Stones' Covid-postponed US tour, scheduled for September 2021, as he recovered from a medical procedure.

"For once my timing has been a little off," he said. "I am working hard to get fully fit but I have today accepted on the advice of experts that this will take a while."

The band were last seen at the One World: Together At Home concert in April 2020, performing a socially distanced rendition of their 1969 classic "You Can't Always Get What You Want".

Watts joined from home, playing "air" drums.

© 2021
Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts dies at 80

The octogenarian rocker "passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family," his publicist said. Paul McCartney said Watts was "a fantastic drummer, steady as a rock."




Rock star Charlie Watts was also known playing jazz

Charlie Watts, the legendary Rolling Stones drummer, has died at the age of 80.

The musician "passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family," his publicist, Bernard Doherty said on Tuesday.

"Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation," Doherty added.
Watts revealed earlier this month he would not go on tour with the Rolling Stones in 2021 after undergoing a medical procedure.
The end of an icon

Charlie Watts was often described as one of the top musicians of his generation, helping to cement one of the greatest rhythm sections in the history of rock.

As a member of one of the first British bands to conquer the United States in the 1960s, the Rolling Stones went on multi-million pound tours across the world.

But in a recent interview with The Guardian he just spoke of himself as someone who was following his passions.

"I love playing the drums, and I love playing with Mick and Keith and Ronnie," Watts told The Guardian once. "I don't know about the rest of it. It wouldn't bother me if the Rolling Stones said: 'That's it ... enough.'"



Without Charlie Watts as a calming influence among rock 'n' roll's long-serving band, the Rolling Stones would probably have not lasted as long as it has.

Watts' diplomatic tact often served to bring the hot-tempered, quarrelsome Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to their senses. It was due to his calming influence that the Rolling Stones were still together when he passed away and were even ready to hit the road again once the pandemic subsided.
As Richards once said: "There couldn't be a Rolling Stones without Charlie Watts."
The music world pays tribute


Musicians from all over the world have been quick to praise Watts' musical genius which inspired a generation.

Fellow British star Elton John said Watts was "the ultimate drummer" in a Facebook post.

He called him "the most stylish of men, and such brilliant company," while offering his condolences to his family and the members of his band.




Tributes have poured in for Charlie Watts calling him "stylish" and "steady as a rock."

Another great British musician, Paul McCartney called Watts "a lovely guy."

"A fantastic drummer, steady as a rock. Love you, Charlie, will always love you," Paul McCartney said in a video he posted on Twitter.

"RIP Charlie Watts, one of the greatest rock drummers ever and a real gentleman," tweeted Canadian rocker Bryan Adams.
How did he die?

Watts was sidelined from the Rolling Stones earlier this month after his doctors found a unspecified problem they wanted to rectify, according to press reports.

At the time, he said that "for once my timing has been a little off" and he would not be going on tour as originally planned.

"I am working hard to get fully fit but I have today accepted on the advice of the experts that this will take a while," Watts added.



Charlie Watts continued to play drums until he passed away

Watts had received treatment for alcohol and heroin abuse, but said he had been able to leave those addiction problems behind. He also underwent treatment for throat cancer in 2004.

"We kindly request that the privacy of his family, band members and close friends is respected at this difficult time," his spokesman Doherty said while announcing the musician's death.

jc/dj (AP, Reuters)

 

Giant magnetic pulse rounds up spins far and wide

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TATA INSTITUTE OF FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH

 

IMAGE: (A) SCHEMATIC OF THE EXPERIMENT; (B AND C) CONCENTRIC CIRCULAR PATTERNS OF SPINS INDUCED BY THE MAGNETIC PULSES GENERATED AT TWO DIFFERENT LASER IRRADIATION LEVELS. view more 

CREDIT: SATYAJIT BANERJEE AND KAMALIKA NATH

A team of researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur have used extremely strong magnetic pulses to line up spins in a magnetic film on a scale never achieved before [1]. They demonstrate beautiful concentric circular patterns of spins as large as hundreds of micrometers. The natural scale for such patterns is typically sub-micrometre. Creation of such large scale ordered spin structures is potentially useful for electronic devices in the terahertz frequency range.

How is this achieved? The team used a high intensity, femtosecond laser to create a hot, dense plasma on a solid surface which in turn generates the giant magnetic pulse. The magnetic film, made of yttrium iron garnet (YIG) is hosted in a clever design to obviate the damaging effects of the plasma and is exposed to the pulse. The induced spin patterns are analysed by magneto-optical microscopy. In a big surprise, these onion ring shape structures are found to be very robust and stay ‘arrested’ as long as ten days!

How do we understand such large scale spin formations? YIG is a ‘soft’ magnetic material and micromagnetic simulations show that the giant magnetic field pulse creates ultrafast, terahertz (THz) spin waves in the film. A snapshot of these fast-propagating spin waves (magnons) is stored as layered onion shell shaped domains in the YIG film. Typically, information transport via spin waves in magnonic devices occurs in the gigahertz regime, where devices are susceptible to thermal disturbances at room temperature. The intense laser light pulse - YIG sandwich target combination, paves the way for room temperature table-top THz spin wave devices, operating just above or in the range of the thermal noise floor. This dissipation-less device offers ultrafast control of spin information over distances of few hundreds of microns. 

The study of patterns and symmetries is an enduring theme in science and our quest for understanding natural patterns can be tremendously aided if we can create ordered structures on a scale that is not naturally found. This study is a step in that direction.

[1] K. Nath et al., New Journal of Physics 23, 083027 (2021)

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JOURNAL

New Journal of Physics

DOI

10.1088/1367-2630/ac1807 

ARTICLE TITLE

Macroscopic, layered onion shell like magnetic domain structure generated in YIG films using ultrashort, megagauss magnetic pulses

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Aug-2021

 

UEA part of international team measuring how the Arctic responds to climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

Researchers at the University of East Anglia have helped develop a new way to measure how Arctic plants respond to climate change.

Over the past few decades, the Arctic has been warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet. At the same time, long-term atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements have shown substantial increases in the amount of carbon absorbed into and emitted by plants and soil - the terrestrial ecosystem - in the Arctic every year.

Scientists had assumed this terrestrial ecosystem was playing a large role in the changes they’re seeing in the Arctic carbon cycle.

But they lacked a technique to measure carbon uptake and release independently. And this is key for understanding how the biosphere is responding to climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions.

Now a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides new insights into this important process over the Arctic and boreal region, based on the modelling of atmospheric measurements of a related chemical - carbonyl sulfide.

Led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the international team of scientists developed a new way of analysing atmospheric measurements of the trace-gas carbonyl-sulfide, together with atmospheric CO2 measurements, to provide information on the total amount of carbon taken up by land-vegetation during photosynthesis.

Dr Parvadha Suntharalingam, from UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences,and a co-author on the study, said: “This work gives us new and valuable information about the processes controlling CO2 uptake by land-based vegetation in the boreal area of the Arctic.

“Carbonyl sulfide is taken by plants during photosynthesis, but unlike CO2, it is not released back into the atmosphere by the ecosystem respiration processes. It therefore gives us a way of separating the two key processes - photosynthesis and respiration - that control how CO2 is exchanged between the land-vegetation and the atmosphere.

“This research provides new estimates of the uptake of carbon by terrestrial ecosystems in North American high-latitude regions.

“It reduces the uncertainties in comparison to previous assessments, and also investigates the influence of other environmental factors - such as temperature and solar radiation - on the processes controlling carbon uptake by these high-latitude ecosystems.

“Our analysis shows the potential of using measurements of carbonyl-sulfide as an independent means of obtaining additional information on key carbon cycle processes,” she added.

Lead researcher Lei Hu, a Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) scientist working at NOAA in Colorado, said: “We now can study how Arctic terrestrial ecosystems react to climate change at process levels, because we are able to separate photosynthetic uptake and ecosystem respiration on regional scales.”

 

What is carbonyl sulfide?

Scientists have long known plants absorb carbon dioxide, or CO2, to fuel photosynthesis during the growing season, and then emit it back to the atmosphere during fall and winter when plant tissue decays. This give-and-take, set against rapidly rising atmospheric CO2 levels, makes it impossible for scientists to directly estimate how CO2 uptake by photosynthesis is changing over time based on measurements of CO2 alone.

However, plants need other nutrients, including sulfur - which is not released at the end of the growing season. Carbonyl sulfide, or COS, is a simple molecule that is very similar to CO2.

While CO2 is made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms, COS consists of one carbon atom, one oxygen atom and a sulfur atom. Continually produced by oceanic processes, it can also be found in volcanic gases, crude oil combustion, sulfurous marshes and soils, as well as diesel exhaust, natural gas, and refinery emissions.

It is present in the atmosphere in tiny amounts (parts per trillion). Uptake by plants is the dominant process that removes COS from the atmosphere. 

 

How are Arctic ecosystems changing?

In the new study, Hu and a team of researchers from NOAA, the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, University of California - Santa Cruz, NASA/Universities Space Research Association, Rutgers University, and UEA analysed atmospheric measurements of carbonyl sulfide collected from NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network from 2009 to 2013 to investigate carbon cycling in the North American Arctic and boreal regions.

The UEA contribution provided data and information on the oceanic sources of carbonyl-sulfide to the atmosphere. Oceanic emissions provide the largest global source of COS to the atmosphere - so accurate knowledge of these fluxes is needed when using atmospheric  measurements to identify and quantify the  uptake of COS and CO2 by vegetation during photosynthesis.

The team estimated plants over this region took up 3.6 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis each year. They also found that warming temperatures were causing increases in both net uptake in spring and net off-gassing in fall, but not equally, due to regulation by both temperature and light. 

From 1979-1988 to 2010-2019, the annual spring soil temperature in the region increased by an average of 0.9 ℉, while the autumn temperature increased by 1.8 ℉. The researchers found that in spring, the soil temperature increase helps to ramp up photosynthetic uptake of carbon as sunlight floods the region. In the autumn, the amount of carbon taken up by plants is reduced by the dwindling amount of sunlight, despite soil temperatures remaining elevated until late autumn. 

In contrast, when it came to giving off CO2, the scientists found the rate was mainly controlled by temperature. 

The results were also consistent with satellite remote-sensing-based gross primary production estimates in both space and time, boosting confidence in the findings. 

 

Implications for the future

One of the big unknowns about the future Arctic is whether plant communities around the Northern Hemisphere will continue to increase their carbon uptake as atmospheric CO2 rises.  One way to obtain a clearer picture, Hu said, would be to make more COS measurements from the region. 

If Arctic surface temperature continues to increase, especially in the fall and winter, the Arctic may start emitting more CO2 than it takes up, exacerbating climate change.  

Expanding the atmospheric COS observing system could improve scientists’ ability to monitor how much carbon land plants are removing from the atmosphere as CO2 levels increase and climate changes, which would improve understanding of the climate-carbon cycle feedbacks and climate projections in the Arctic and Boreal regions.

###

This study was funded in part by NASA, with ongoing support from NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory.

‘COS-derived GPP relationships with temperature and light help explain high-latitude atmospheric CO2 seasonal cycle amplification’ is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

COS-derived GPP relationships with temperature and light help explain high-latitude atmospheric CO2 seasonal cycle amplification

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Aug-2021