Electrify America–backed 75MW solar farm kicks off operations

Harri Weber
Tue, August 15, 2023 

Image Credits: Mario Tama / Getty Images

Electrify America, the EV charging company created by Volkswagen in the aftermath of its diesel emissions scandal, said on Tuesday that a new, 75 megawatt solar farm in Southern California is now up and running.

Electrify America isn't operating this solar farm. Instead, the company struck a 15-year virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with renewable energy developer Terra-Gen. It's the latest development in Electrify America's efforts to link itself to renewable energy projects. The firms broke ground on the plant back in February.

Your typical VPPA involves a buyer, which pays a fixed price for whatever energy is generated, and a seller, which generates the energy and sells it via the grid for the buyer at market rates. The buyer assumes some risk, because the seller might wind up selling the energy below the fixed rate. Yet, the buyer could also see the upside if market prices trend above the fixed rate.

In other words: Electrify America is taking on some risk with this deal, and in exchange it gets to say it's helping clean up the grid while potentially benefiting from rising energy prices.

Renewable energy developers play a crucial role in decarbonizing the grid, but just how far do VPPAs go in mitigating climate change? This seems to be an open question. Even Electrify America's press release leaves some wiggle room on this front: "This brand new construction contributes to 'additionality,' by producing new renewable energy that may not otherwise be available," the company said in a statement (emphasis ours).

Might another buyer have stepped in if Electrify America hadn't? Like any offset-related deal, it's difficult to say whether the agreement is facilitating something that definitively would not have happened otherwise. (If you are aware of any academic studies on the environmental impact of VPPAs, please get in touch at harri.weber@techcrunch.com.)

For its part, Electrify America states that the peak energy its investment will generate is "comparable to the power drawn by 500 EVs charging at once at an average speed of 150 kilowatts." The solar farm's annual "production is projected at 225 Gigawatt-hours," Electrify America adds. In an earlier press release, the firm claimed the outcome of this deal will be "comparable to the carbon sequestered by planting nearly 40 million trees."

Siemens to make solar energy equipment for US market in Wisconsin
Reuters
Tue, August 15, 2023 


(Reuters) - German conglomerate Siemens said on Tuesday it will start producing solar energy equipment in the United States in 2024 through a contract manufacturer in Wisconsin.

The announcement marks a move by one of the world's largest manufacturers to capitalize on incentives in President Joe Biden's year-old landmark climate change law to boost American-made supplies of solar energy components and compete with China.

Siemens will produce solar string inverters, devices that convert energy generated from solar panels into usable current, for the U.S. utility-scale market, it said in a statement. The products will be made at a facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin, operated by Sanmina.

"Working with Sanmina to establish this new production line, Siemens is well positioned to address supply challenges our country is facing as we work to localize production for green and renewable infrastructure," Brian Dula, vice president of electrification and automation at Siemens Smart Infrastructure USA, said in the statement.

The work for Siemens will create up to a dozen jobs at the factory to start, the company said. Production will scale up to a capacity of 800 megawatts of inverters per year.

The Inflation Reduction Act has unleashed $100 billion in investment in the domestic solar sector in the last year, including $20 billion for solar and storage manufacturing, the top U.S. solar trade group said this week.

More than 50 solar manufacturing facilities have been announced or expanded since the IRA passed, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association study. That includes about 7 gigawatts of inverter capacity.

IRA tax credits incentivize both producers and buyers of domestically made clean-energy equipment. For example, solar projects that use American-made equipment, including inverters and other components, can qualify for a bonus tax credit worth 10% of the project's cost.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Solar Developers Blast Specter of New US Tariffs as Blow to Climate

Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Fri, August 18, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- Renewable power developers blasted a US government decision that will slap new tariffs on solar exports from Southeast Asia, saying the move will slow clean energy deployment and harm climate progress.

“We’ve gone from toasting the anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act and its positive impacts on America’s energy transition to lamenting the imposition of harmful solar tariffs that will severely constrict solar availability in the US,” Gregory Wetstone, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, said Friday in an interview.

At issue is the conclusion of a 17-month Commerce Department trade probe that found some solar manufacturers are using Southeast Asian processing to dodge duties designed to counteract Chinese subsidies and below-market pricing. As a result, some solar cell and module exports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam — nations which represent roughly 75% of US supply — will be hit with varying tariffs beginning early June.

The investigation, triggered by a request from California-based Auxin Solar Inc., pitted two core Biden administration constituencies against each other: renewable developers eager to accelerate deployments and domestic manufacturers that argued they were unfairly being undercut by foreign rivals.

Minimize Disruption

Many US developers have already sought to shuffle supply chains to minimize disruption and were anticipating the outcome, following a preliminary ruling last December.

US solar manufacturing has been invigorated by incentives in last year’s climate law. But it will take time for that to ramp up and, in the meantime, the ruling “will perpetuate current supply problems,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents many developers.

“This case will just make it harder for American businesses to keep deploying, financing and installing solar power,” Hopper said, adding that the decision “is out of step with the administration’s clean energy goals.”

President Joe Biden already tried to soften the blow for domestic solar installers and power companies last year when he waived any resulting duties through June 6, 2024. Commerce’s ruling allows Southeast Asian manufacturers to steer clear of the new duties by ensuring modules using Chinese wafers only contain two other specified components from China.

The Commerce Department ruling “allows China to avoid future duties by constructing wafer facilities outside of China,” the Coalition for a Prosperous America said on its website. The group, which champions domestic production, decried the approach as “a loophole” that will allow Chinese solar manufacturers to avoid duties indefinitely.

The administration was “in an unwanted bind from day one,” TD Cowen said in a research note. As a result, the final decision and remedy “represents the ‘least bad’ outcome for the administration.”

Chinese Solar Makers Face New Tariffs After US Says They’re Dodging Duties

Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Michelle Ma
Fri, August 18, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- A US government probe has concluded some manufacturers in Asia are illegally bypassing tariffs on Chinese solar equipment, exposing them to duties that threaten to hike the cost of renewable power and slow the development of clean energy.

Some solar cells and modules exported from Southeast Asia could now face tariffs as high as 254% in June 2024, after the Commerce Department determined that companies operating in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are avoiding the longstanding duties.

The US singled out five companies that are either Chinese or linked to China as circumventing tariffs: BYD (H.K.) Co. Ltd. and New East Solar (Cambodia) Co. Ltd. in Cambodia; Canadian Solar Inc. in Thailand; and, in Vietnam, Trina Solar Science & Technology and Vina Solar Technology Co., a unit of Longi Green Energy Technology Co.

A senior Commerce official who briefed reporters on the findings said the investigation — which included site visits and factory audits — is a signal the Biden-Harris administration is taking trade enforcement seriously as well as a warning to other companies engaging in similar circumvention schemes.

Ultimately, the ruling should bolster US solar manufacturers, which are already expanding domestic production capacity with incentives from last year’s climate law. Many US power companies had started diversifying their supply chains ahead of the decision, to minimize potential exposure to new tariffs and a US forced labor law aimed at products tied to China’s Xinjiang region.

The Commerce Department’s decision could also inflame tensions between Washington and Beijing, even as the two superpowers look for ways to improve relations.

Shares of Canadian Solar were up 0.2% as of 10:46 a.m. in New York after paring earlier losses of as much as 1.6%.

In the short term, the ruling could accelerate US purchases of affected solar equipment before the expanded duties go into force next year, as renewable power developers look to stockpile tariff-free gear. Expanded duties would normally apply already, but President Joe Biden issued a proclamation in 2022 providing a two-year grace period designed to sustain US solar deployments while domestic manufacturing ramps up and developers shuffle suppliers.

Some US lobbyists tried unsuccessfully to push the Commerce Department to go further and crack down on solar imports that contain Chinese-made polysilicon and ingots, early precursors in the panel-making process. But the agency largely hewed to the preliminary determination it issued last December.

At least three companies won’t be hit with expanded tariffs — Hanwha Q Cells Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Jinko Solar Technology Sdn. Bhd., and Boviet Solar Technology Co. Ltd. — after the Department concluded they weren’t trying to evade the duties.

The US solar industry is heavily reliant on imports from Southeast Asia, with the affected countries supplying roughly 75% of modules to the US.

Under the ruling, all other solar manufacturers in the four countries will be hit with new duties unless they certify their exports don’t evade the tariffs. For instance, modules that are made using Chinese wafers will be spared duties as long as some key inputs were produced outside the country. Most companies facing new duties would see combined rates under 100%.

Even so, US renewable developers were bracing for higher costs from using imports subject to the duties or tariff-free supplies that can command a premium.

“The circumvention finding will increase the overall costs of virtually all US-bound solar products because it will constrain supply at a time when the demand for solar is skyrocketing,” Trina Solar (US) Inc. President Steven Zhu said in an emailed statement. The ruling “makes it harder, not easier, to establish a US supply chain and a homegrown American workforce.”

Still, there should be sufficient supply of tariff-free goods to meet domestic solar demand between 2024 and 2030, said BloombergNEF analyst Pol Lezcano.

The investigation, which spanned 17 months, was triggered in response to a petition from California-based manufacturer Auxin Solar Inc.

Auxin Chief Executive Officer Mamun Rashid cheered the decision even as he called on the administration to impose duties immediately.

“For years the Chinese have flouted the US trade remedy laws, and today, with Commerce’s affirmative country-wide circumvention decisions on Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, we’ve successfully closed these loopholes,” Rashid said in an emailed statement. “Because ample solar module supply exists from domestic manufacturers and non-circumventing imports, President Biden should immediately end his unlawful tariff moratorium policy and not continue to give Chinese trade cheats a continued free pass to the US market.”

The circumvention probe was a quasi-judicial process, largely dictated by nearly century-old US trade law.

The Biden administration had little “choice to be protectionist or not,” said James Lucier, managing director at research group Capital Alpha Partners. Biden’s two-year safe harbor was designed to address that inevitability, he said, adding: “There was no viable way to have Commerce find there was no dumping going on.”

Supporters of the probe said the US needed to more vigorously enforce measures first imposed in 2011 to offset unfair pricing and subsidies by China that have disadvantaged American rivals. Opponents argued Commerce was ignoring the complexity of solar cell production in Asia by treating it as a insignificant processing step.

“We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in cell and module production in Thailand and Vietnam and most recently another large-scale wafer production facility in Vietnam,” Trina’s Zhu said. “Characterizing this production as only minor processing is not an accurate assessment of the facts and against common sense.”

--With assistance from Luz Ding.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Lula approval rises on economic optimism, lower food prices -Brazil poll

Reuters
Updated Wed, August 16, 202

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends a breakfast with foreign correspondents in Brasilia


BRASILIA (Reuters) -Approval of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government increased in August on voter perceptions that Brazil's economy is improving and he is doing a good job governing, a new Genial/Quaest poll showed on Wednesday.

Positive approval of the government rose to 42% of respondents from 37% in June, while negative views fell 3 points to 24%, the poll found.

Approval of Lula's performance as president has risen to 60% from 56%, and is at its highest since a February poll, the first survey one month after he took office.

"The 60% is good news for Lula, particularly given the political polarization of Brazil," said analyst Andre Cesar at Hold Assessoria Legislativa consultancy. But he warned that the government cannot rest on its laurels and should watch out for the impact fuel price rises will have.

After dipping in April to 23%, the number of Brazilians who now see the economy improving rose to 34% in August, and the main reason has been the drop in food prices, the poll showed. Negative views of the economy have decreased again after starting to fall in June, the polling firm found.

Optimism over the economy's future has grown, from 56% to 59% of Brazilians who believe it will improve in the next 12 months.

The poll showed that Lula's approval rating has improved among sectors of society and regions of Brazil that mostly voted against him in last year's election.

For the first time more Evangelical Christians approve of the leftist leader than disapprove, and his ratings rose in the south of Brazil, where his Workers Party has faced electoral defeats.

Lula's policies that have most pleased voters, including those who did not vote for him, are his Plano Safra - a financing program for farming - and his plan to help people reduce their debt. Least popular is his tax reform proposal, the poll said.

Genial/Quaest interviewed 2,029 people of voting age between August 10 and August 14. The poll has a 2.2 percentage point error margin.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Mark Porter)

Five Things to Watch as South Africa Hosts BRICS Summit

Monique Vanek
Thu, August 17, 2023 







(Bloomberg) -- South Africa hosts a summit of the BRICS group of nations and others in the Global South next week who are seeking to balance Western dominance of the world order while dealing with their own internal divisions.

At least 40 heads of state and government will join South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Johannesburg. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov represents Vladimir Putin, who will attend virtually to avoid possible arrest for alleged war crimes if he entered the country.

“When it comes to global power equations, Africa and the Global South are still outliers,” said South Africa’s BRICS ambassador Anil Sooklal. “The so-called western liberal order that was created post the Second World War don’t want to make space for new players.”Here are five things to watch as they gather Aug. 22-24 in Sandton, the business hub in the city’s wealthy northern suburbs:

1. Expansion

Expansion from the group’s current membership of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is top of the agenda after being put on the back burner at previous summits. Formed in 2009 and with South Africa added a year later, there are now 23 other nations lining up to join including Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

China’s drive for rapid expansion has faced pushback from India, which fears the group could become a mouthpiece for its powerful neighbor. Brazil is also wary of alienating the West. But opposition has softened and these countries are now asking that admission rules and criteria be agreed, according to officials familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity.

2. Common Currency

The bloc will revive the idea of reducing the dollar’s dominance in payments, mooted at previous summits. The debate has resurfaced after US interest-rate hikes and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent the US currency soaring, along with the cost of commodities priced in dollars.

Proposals to be considered include increasing the use of members’ national currencies to trade and setting up a common payments system. A goal to create a common currency is viewed as a longer-term project.

Several BRICS members have already begun to settle bilateral trade deals in local currencies. India has an accord with Malaysia to ramp up usage of the rupee in cross-border business. Brazil and China earlier this year struck a deal to settle trade in their local currencies and India and Russia have approached South Africa about interlinking payment settlement in their own currencies.Read More: BRICS to Discuss Accelerated Use of Local Currencies at Summit

3. New Development Bank

Trade between BRICS members surged 56% to $422 billion over the past five years, and their collective nominal gross domestic product of $25.9 trillion equated to 25.7% of global output, data from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow show.

The New Development Bank, which would be a conduit for such transactions, has estimated that at least one third of lending will be in local currencies by 2026, Sooklal said.

The Shanghai-based lender’s President Dilma Rousseff will provide an update at the gathering on plans to diversify its funding sources. The NDB, set up as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in 2015, has been hampered by Western sanctions on Russia — a founding member — following its invasion of Ukraine. Read more: Xi’s Visit to South Africa for BRICS Marks Rare Trip Abroad

There’s also desire to broaden the bank’s borrowing basket and several countries in the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia are interested in contributing capital to the NDB, Sooklal said. He added that 12 countries are looking at becoming full members.

4. Ukraine

Russia’s 18-month long invasion of Ukraine will be on the agenda. BRICS nations have mostly stuck together since the war, with only Brazil voting in favor of a February United Nations resolution calling for an end to the conflict and demanding that Russia withdraw. China, India and South Africa abstained.

Lula has said he wants the bloc to help forge peace. South Africa is driving an African initiative to bring an end to the combat.

5. Food Security

Soaring food prices are hurting billions of the world’s poorest people and food security will be on the agenda against the backdrop of actions by India and Russia that have made the situation worse.

India — which accounts for 40% of the world’s rice trade — has ramped up export curbs to protect its local market. Russia has exited a deal to ensure the safe passage of Ukrainian grain exports, which had been a rare example of cooperation during the war.

Rice is vital to the diets of Asians and Africans, contributing as much as 60% of total calorie intake for people in these regions. India will host an India Africa Forum while in South Africa and China plans to stage a similar event of its own.

“I believe both of them will make announcements including around agriculture,” Sooklal said. “I’m quite confident that some of these issues will be addressed positively.”

--With assistance from Simone Preissler Iglesias, S'thembile Cele, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Colum Murphy and Anup Roy.

Opinion: The big story behind the police raid on a small-town paper

Opinion by Celia Wexler
Fri, August 18, 2023 
Editor’s Note: Celia Wexler is a journalist and the author of “Catholic Women Confront Their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope.” She writes frequently on Catholicism, feminism and politics. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. 

What happened to a weekly newspaper in Marion, Kansas, on Friday can be viewed as one unpleasant incident in a small town: the police raiding a local newspaper and the home of its owners and confiscating the digital equivalent of the paper’s printing presses by seizing computers, cell phones and reporting materials containing the names of confidential sources.

Celia Wexler - Valerie Wexler

But the proper perspective is a much broader one. This is about a police force essentially shrugging off the law and the Constitution. It’s about an intrusion into newsgathering that almost never happens because it so profoundly violates one of our deepest American values – the primacy of the public’s right to know.

The event stirred journalists to their core. But it also alarmed the White House. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN that the Kansas raid raises “a lot of concerns and a lot of questions” for the Biden administration.

I’m the vice president of the Washington, DC, chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. It happens that our national board is giving up to $20,000 to the newspaper in question, the Marion County Record, to help with its legal fees. But my views don’t represent my organization. Rather, they are deeply personal. I’m writing as a citizen who became a journalist to ensure the public’s access to information out of a conviction that good reporting is the best way to ensure a functioning democracy.

The news story at the center of this raid was so responsible and honest, and the reaction of local law enforcement was so over the top, it would be funny if it weren’t true.

The day before the raid, Eric Meyer, co-owner and editor of the Record, wrote an article laying out the state of affairs. His paper had received a private message on Facebook from an anonymous source sharing a government record indicating that a local restaurateur had had her driver’s license suspended because of a DUI. According to Meyer’s reporting, under state law, this could have jeopardized her ability to get a liquor license.

The Record checked the information on a public website and confirmed its accuracy. But Meyer said the paper declined to publish it, worried that the source may have had an agenda. Instead, the paper reported the incident to law enforcement out of fear the paper was being set up.

Eric Meyer, the publisher of the Marion County Record, conducts TV interviews in the newspaper's office after the unprecedented raid last week by local law enforcement officers. - Mark Reinstein/MediaPunch/AP

Then, Meyer reported, police apparently told the restaurateur about the information the newspaper had. Later, at a public meeting of the Marion city council, the restaurateur wrongly accused the paper of illegally obtaining and spreading private information about her, in the process making public by herself her DUI. The paper covered the meeting and spoke to the restaurateur following the event while refuting her accusations against it.

Does this sound like the making of a crime? Or is this anything but solid news reporting, something you’d expect from Meyer, a longtime journalist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who then went on to teach journalism at the University of Illinois? According to the publicly available information, there is no sign the newspaper did anything wrong.

Yet four days after the council meeting, the police raided the newspaper’s offices. Marion police chief Gideon Cody reportedly pushed for the warrant for the raid in order to investigate whether the paper illegally obtained the DUI information, thus potentially committing identity theft.

Cody also had a personal connection to the Record. The paper had investigated the police chief himself over “serious” allegations of misconduct in his previous job with the Kansas City Police Department, Meyer told the Kansas City Star.

Cody retorted that the paper had never published that investigation, which proved the charges had been groundless. “I have already been vetted,” he told the Star. Now the raid, according to Meyer, has given Cody access to the sources behind the story.

That raid was groundless, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In a letter to Cody it wrote, “Based on public reporting, the search warrant that has been published online, and your public statements to the press, there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search.”

The letter also warned that the raid “may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement’s ability to conduct newsroom searches,” which “are among the most intrusive actions law enforcement can take with respect to the free press, and the most potentially suppressive of free speech.”

While the Kansas Bureau of Investigation has not closed its probe of the publication, the paper is now getting back all its seized equipment and records. Even more important, the Marion County Attorney said Wednesday the search warrant was being withdrawn, concluding that the search shouldn’t have been permitted to begin with, saying it was based on “insufficient evidence” that any crime had been committed.

A tribute to the late Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer sits outside the newspaper's office. - John Hanna/AP

This plot could have the makings of a Frank Capra film – the noble newspaper editor standing up for truth and the rule of law and (hopefully) ultimately prevailing – except for its tragic, un-Capra-like elements. Joan Meyer, 98, who owned the paper with her son, had trouble eating and sleeping after her home was raided, asking, “Where are all the good people to put a stop to this?” Her anger and upset were, her son believes, a factor in her death the following day.

And contrary to Capra’s formula, there hasn’t been an overwhelming outpouring of public community support for the paper from churches, civic leaders, anyone. Meyer said that some people in the community were offering their support, but only privately. They tell him they’re afraid, he said. What if the police go after them?

Indeed, just because this raid had received lots of publicity and even drew the attention of the White House, it doesn’t mean that the Marion Record or anyone else who cares about democracy should breathe a sigh of relief.

We have seen so many laws broken and rights trampled over the last few years. Each time these boundaries are crossed, democracy is a little weaker, and people a little less empowered.

This time it was law enforcement seizing a newspaper’s property. Next time, a governor may decide to arrest a blogger for saying unkind things about him. In Florida, a bill pending in the legislature would require bloggers who write about state elected officials to register with the state and file reports about how much they earn from their work or face fines.

Librarians are quitting their jobs, fearful of intimidation by the book banners. Election workers are leaving in droves because they can’t stand the threats from people who believe, mistakenly, that they are rigging the vote. Teachers are growing weary of the harassment by parents who want to dictate what public schools may teach.

Marion may be a small town. But there’s nothing small about what happened there. Just ask Maria Ressa, the Nobel laureate Filipino journalist who was hounded by her government for years and became a symbol of press freedom. When news of the Marion police raid began to trickle out on Friday, Ressa responded, “It’s happening to you now … death by a thousand cuts.”

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A heroic effort to save Florida’s coral reef from extreme ocean heat is underway as corals bleach across the Caribbean

Michael Childress, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences & Environmental Conservation, Clemson University
Thu, August 17, 2023 

THE CONVERSATION

Elkhorn coral fragments rescued from overheating ocean nurseries sit in cooler water at Keys Marine Laboratory. NOAA


Armed with scrub brushes, young scuba divers took to the waters of Florida’s Alligator Reef in late July to try to help corals struggling to survive 2023’s extraordinary marine heat wave. They carefully scraped away harmful algae and predators impinging on staghorn fragments, under the supervision and training of interns from Islamorada Conservation and Restoration Education, or I.CARE.

Normally, I.CARE’s volunteer divers would be transplanting corals to waters off the Florida Keys this time of year, as part of a national effort to restore the Florida Reef. But this year, everything is going in reverse.

As water temperatures spiked in the Florida Keys, scientists from universities, coral reef restoration groups and government agencies launched a heroic effort to save the corals. Divers have been in the water every day, collecting thousands of corals from ocean nurseries along the Florida Keys reef tract and moving them to cooler water and into giant tanks on land.

Marine scientist Ken Nedimyer and his team at Reef Renewal USA moved an entire coral tree nursery from shallow waters off Tavernier to an area 60 feet deep and 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) cooler. Even there, temperatures were running about 85 to 86 F (30 C).


Marine scientist Ken Nedimyer collects still-healthy elkhorn coral fragments for moving. The tree structure keeps the corals free of harmful algae. Reef Renewal USA

Their efforts are part of an emergency response on a scale never before seen in Florida.

The Florida Reef – a nearly 350-mile arc along the Florida Keys that is crucial to fish habitat, coastal storm protection and the local economy – began experiencing record-hot ocean temperatures in June 2023, weeks earlier than expected. The continuing heat has triggered widespread coral bleaching off Florida in particular, but also beyond.

By mid-August, coral bleaching had been reported in the Bahamas, Cuba, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. This is particularly devastating because some of the healthiest remaining coral reefs are in the southern Caribbean. Scientists worry they may be seeing the sixth mass bleaching of Caribbean corals since 1995 and the third within the past 12 years, and the heat is likely to continue.

A bleached mound of coral at the Cheeca Rocks monitoring site in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary that had been previously tagged shows the coral skeleton. NOAA AOML

While corals can recover from mass bleaching events, long periods of high heat can leave them weak and vulnerable to disease that can ultimately kill them.

That’s what scientists and volunteers have been scrambling to avoid.

The heartbeat of the reef

The Florida Reef has struggled for years under the pressure of overfishing, disease, storms and global warming that have decimated its live corals.

A massive coral restoration effort – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mission: Iconic Reef – has been underway since 2019 to restore the reef with transplanted corals, particularly those most resilient to the rising temperatures. But even the hardiest coral transplants are now at risk.

Reef-building corals are the foundation species of shallow tropical waters due to their unique symbiotic relationship with microscopic algae in their tissues.

During the day, these algae photosynthesize, producing both food and oxygen for the coral animal. At night, coral polyps feed on plankton, providing nutrients for their algae. The result of this symbiotic relationship is the coral’s ability to build a calcium carbonate skeleton and reefs that support nearly 25% of all marine life.

Unfortunately, corals are very temperature sensitive, and the extreme ocean heat off South Florida, with some reef areas reaching temperatures in the 90s, has put them under extraordinary stress.


A boulder brain coral, Colpophyllia natans, before and after bleaching during the 2014 marine heat wave in the Florida Keys. Photos by Michael Childress and Kylie Smith

When corals get too hot, they expel their symbiotic algae. The corals appear white – bleached – because their carbonate skeleton shows through their clear tissue that lack any colorful algal cells.

Corals can recover new algal symbionts if water conditions return to normal within a few weeks. However, the increase in global temperatures due to the effects of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities is causing longer and more frequent periods of coral bleaching worldwide, leading to concerns for the future of coral reefs.
A MASH unit for corals

This year, the Florida Keys reached an alert level 2, indicating extreme risk of bleaching, about six weeks earlier than normal.

The early warnings and forecasts from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Network gave scientists time to begin preparing labs and equipment, track the locations and intensity of the growing marine heat and, importantly, recruit volunteers.

This year’s maximum sea surface temperature (top chart) and degree heating weeks (lower chart), a measure of accumulated heat stress, are the highest since record-keeping began. Adapted from NOAA

At the Keys Marine Laboratory, scientists and trained volunteers have dropped off thousands of coral fragments collected from heat-threatened offshore nurseries. Director Cindy Lewis described the lab’s giant tanks as looking like “a MASH unit for corals.”

Volunteers there and at other labs across Florida will hand-feed the tiny creatures to keep them alive until the Florida waters cool again and they can be returned to the ocean and eventually transplanted onto the reef.

Degree heating weeks is a measure of accumulated heat stress over the previous 12 weeks. At 4-degree Celsius-weeks (7.2 Fahrenheit-weeks), corals experience stress that can lead to bleaching. Above 8 C-weeks (14.4 F-weeks), they are likely to experience bleaching. NOAA Coral Reef Watch

Protecting corals still in the ocean

I.CARE launched another type of emergency response.

I.CARE co-founder Kylie Smith, a coral reef ecologist and a former student of mine in marine sciences, discovered a few years ago that coral transplants with large amounts of fleshy algae around them were more likely to bleach during times of elevated temperature. Removing that algae may give corals a better chance of survival.

Youth members of Diving With a Purpose attend a training session and coral maintenance dive with the Islamorada Conservation and Restoration Education team in Islamorada, Fla. I.CARE

Smith’s group typically works with local dive operators to train recreational divers to assist in transplanting and maintaining coral fragments in an effort to restore the reefs of Islamorada. In summer 2023, I.CARE has been training volunteers, like the young divers from Diving with a Purpose, to remove algae and coral predators, such as coral-eating snails and fireworms, to help boost the corals’ chances of survival.
Monitoring for corals at risk

To help spot corals in trouble, volunteer divers are also being trained as reef observers through Mote Marine Lab’s BleachWatch program.

Scuba divers have long been attracted to the reefs of the Florida Keys for their beauty and accessibility. The lab is training them to recognize bleached, diseased and dead corals of different species and then use an online portal to submit bleach reports across the entire Florida Reef.

The more eyes on the reef, the more accurate the maps showing the areas of greatest bleaching concern.

Ian Enochs, a research ecologist and lead of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab Coral Program, found that every coral in the Cheeca Rocks area had bleached by Aug. 1, 2023. NOAA AOML

Rebuilding the reef

While the marine heat wave in the Keys will inevitably kill some corals, many more will survive.

Through careful analysis of the species, genotypes and reef locations experiencing bleaching, scientists and practitioners are learn valuable information as they work to protect and rebuild a more resilient coral reef for the future.

That is what gives hope to Smith, Lewis, Nedimyer and hundreds of others who believe this coral reef is worth saving. Volunteers are crucial to the effort, whether they’re helping with coral reef maintenance, reporting bleaching or raising the awareness of what is at stake if humanity fails to stop warming the planet.

This article was updated Aug. 18, 2023, with bleaching reported in other countries.

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

It was written by: Michael Childress, Clemson University .

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Rep. Ocasio-Cortez calls on US to declassify documents on Chile's 1973 coup

TRY KISSINGER FOR THE COUP

MAURICIO CUEVAS and DANIEL POLITI
Thu, August 17, 2023 









 US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY), visits the Memory and Human Rights Museum in Santiago, Chile, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. Ocasio-Cortez is part of a US delegation who traveled to the South American country to learn about efforts to defend its democracy ahead of the 50th anniversary of the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

 (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday in Chile that it was imperative for the United States to declassify documents that could shed light on Washington's involvement in the South American country’s 1973 coup.

“The transparency of the United States could present an opportunity for a new phase in our relationship between the United States and Chile,” Ocasio-Cortez said in Spanish in a video posted on Instagram alongside Camila Vallejo, the spokesperson for the left-leaning government of President Gabriel Boric.

The Democratic congresswoman from New York is part of a delegation of lawmakers who traveled to the capital of Santiago ahead of the 50th anniversary of the coup against President Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973.

The delegation had first traveled to Brazil and will now go to Colombia, both of which are also ruled by left-leaning governments.

The goal of the trip was to “start to change … the relationships between the United States and Chile and the region, Latin America as a whole,” Ocasio-Cortez told outside the Museum of Memory and Human Rights that remembers the victims of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 to 1990.

“It’s very important to frame the history of what happened here in Chile with Pinochet’s dictatorship. And also to acknowledge and reflect on the role of the United States in those events,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Ocasio-Cortez said she has introduced legislation to declassify documents related to Chile’s coup and Vallejo said a similar request had been made by the Chilean government.

“In Chile as well, a similar request was made … that aims to declassify documents from the Nixon administration, particularly certain testimonies from the CIA director. This is to attain a clearer understanding of what transpired and how the United States was involved in the planning of the civil and military coup, and the subsequent years that followed,” Vallejo said. “This is very important for our history.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, said after the delegation’s approximately hourlong visit to the museum in Santiago that it was important to recognize the “truth” that “the United States was involved with the dictatorship and the coup.”

“So that’s why we’re here,” Casar said in Spanish to journalists, “to acknowledge the truth, to begin a new future.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro from Texas said the visit to the museum was a reminder that it was important “to make sure that a tragedy and a horror like this never, ever happens again in Chile or in Latin America or anywhere else around the world.”

Earlier in the day, the delegation also met with Santiago Mayor Irací Hassler.

Reps. Nydia Velázquez of New York and Maxwell Frost of Florida also traveled to South America as part of the delegation sponsored by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington-based think tank.

————

Politi reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

ELIMINATE GENDER PLAY IN FIDE

Chess official calls for more research as decision to block transgender women from events draws fire

JAMEY KEATEN
Updated Fri, August 18, 2023 

GENEVA (AP) — A top global chess official Friday called for more research into whether factors such as hormone levels and physical endurance might have an impact on players' abilities at the male-dominated game. Her comments came after the world chess federation was heavily criticized for its decision to block transgender women from official women's events.

The Switzerland-based federation FIDE said the decision, set to take place Monday, would stay in effect until the federation does an assessment of the issue.

Critics, including advocacy groups and some European players and federations, have derided what they call an unnecessary and discriminatory policy that appears to foster “trans panic,” with one former British women's champion calling for the world federation to reverse its decision.

Dana Reizniece-Ozola, the deputy chair of the chess federation's management board, insisted the goal of the new regulations was “actually to increase the rights of the transgender persons and allow them being registered under their new gender” in its official directory.

Tournaments for women only were created in the 1970s as a way to foster their participation in a sport that has long been dominated by men. Even now only 2% of all players — and 10% of rated players — are women, she said.

The new regulations, which could subject transgender women to a waiting period of up to two years as the issue is examined, was aimed at giving FIDE a “grace period” to sort out the matter of transgender players and men's dominance in the sport.

“What is still not clear is if the hormonal levels do influence the competitiveness in chess," Reizniece-Ozola said by video from Latvia's capital, Riga. "There is no serious research or scientific analysis that would prove one or the other way. There are speculations, but no more than that.”

Many sports involving intense physical activity — which chess does not — have been grappling with how to formulate policies toward transgender athletes in recent years.

Cathy Renna, communications director for the U.S. National LGBTQ Task Force, said the new rules appeared to be “a case of trans panic with no justification, not grounded in reality and once again marginalizing trans people.”

Reizniece-Ozola, a former Latvian finance minister, said FIDE, like other sports organizations, needs to balance equality — providing rights to every person to compete on an equal basis — with fair competition. “This is the aspect that really needs more and more research, scientifically based research," she said.

Culture, she said, was “probably” the main reason that women have been less active in chess “because chess has not been regarded as a sport that is appropriate for women in so many cultures. So that ... has created this huge gender gap.”

The foundation of chess, which she called an “intellectual sport,” is equal: "I mean, there is no difference between men and women at the intellectual part. But still, we see that the statistical data show the differences between men and women.”

The federation has open competitions that allow all players to take part, as well as specialized categories, such as for young players and even computers.

Malcolm Pein, director of international chess at the English Chess Federation, said research has been going on for over a half-century into “what makes chess players better,” and he believes “the biological differences don’t account for very much.”

“There may be, you know, tiny differences to do with stamina maybe, and maybe there’s some suggestion of a difference in competitiveness at an early age,” Pein said in a phone interview. “But genuinely, we think that the disparity in playing strength and level between male and female players is due to the participation levels — which are improving since 'The Queen’s Gambit’,” a TV series which follows the life of a female chess prodigy during her quest to become an elite player.

Pein said those possible differences “don’t justify a discriminatory policy," and he noted that a transgender woman has been selected to play chess for England, and a transgender woman participated in the British championships last month.

"In the English chess experience, this is solving a problem that doesn’t exist,” he said. “Transgender people have been competing very quietly, very happily for a long time with no issues. And we regard the latest developments as unwelcome.”

Other chess federations and some women players across Europe also voiced their opposition to the new regulations.

Germany’s chess federation messaged on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that it was “incomprehensible” that FIDE “still wants to check” the gender status of people legally recognized as women in their own countries.

International chess master Jovanka Houska, a nine-time British women's champion, wrote on X: “Please, FIDE can you reconsider these anti-trans regulations. There is no shame in backtracking and consulting afresh with trans women and women so that the chess world moves forward with fairness.”

“Together, we can create a progressive, fair and welcoming space for everyone,” she added.

Mexico president says he'll accept resolution of panel in corn trade spat with US

Reuters
Fri, August 18, 2023 

A worker holds GMO yellow corn imported from the U.S., in Tepexpan


MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday he would accept the decision of a trade panel requested by the United States to solve a spat over the Latin American country's move to ban genetically modified, or GMO, corn imports.

The United States on Thursday escalated its objections to Mexico, requesting a dispute settlement panel to carry out negotiations under the North American trade pact.

The panel came after formal consultations failed to resolve divisions between the two trade partners over GMO corn, which is widely produced by U.S. farmers.

If the panel rules in favor of the United States and Mexico fails to comply with its directives, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) could ultimately win the right to impose tariffs on Mexican goods.

Mexico's Economy Ministry has argued the country's policies are consistent with trade obligations.

Nonetheless, Washington alleges that Mexico's decree banning imports of GMO corn is not based on science and violates its commitments under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade launched in 2020.

(Reporting by Valentine Hilaire and Raul Cortes Fernandez; Editing by Isabel Woodford and Jonathan Oatis)

Driverless Cars are Biased Against Dark-Skinned People and Kids, Scientists Say

Maggie Harrison
Sat, August 19, 2023 

Racist Cars

Driverless cars have been stealing headlines by causing traffic jams, getting stuck in cement, and getting pulled over by very confused police. But according to a recent study, these basic technological failures hardly scratch the surface of more insidious problems that may lurk within autonomous vehicles' underlying tech.

According to the not-yet-peer-reviewed study, conducted by researchers at King's College in London, a fairness review of eight different AI-powered pedestrian detectors trained on "widely-used, real-world" datasets revealed the programs to be much worse at detecting darker-skinned pedestrians than lighter-skinned ones, with the system failing to identify darker-complexioned individuals nearly eight percent more often than their lighter-skinned counterparts.

That's a staggering figure — and speaks to the real, and potentially deadly, dangers of biased AI systems.

Ominous Implications

According to the study, researchers first engaged in extensive data annotation, marking a total of 8,111 images with "16,070 gender labels, 20,115 age labels, and 3,513 skin tone labels."

From there, it was just a statistics game, with the researchers ultimately finding a 7.52 detection accuracy disparity between light- and dark-skinned folks. And according to the research, the danger for darker-skinned folks went up significantly in "low-contrast" or "low-brightness" settings — or, in other words, at night.

But that wasn't all. In addition to this racial bias, the detectors had another collective — and concerning — blindspot: children, who results revealed were twenty percent less likely to be identified by the detectors than adults.

It's important to note that none of the systems that were tested were actually those belonging to driverless car companies, as such information generally falls under the "proprietary information" umbrella. But as Lie Zhang, a Kings College lecturer in computer science and a co-author on the study, told New Scientist, those firms' models probably aren't that far off — and considering that driverless vehicles are starting to win major regulatory victories, that's deeply unsettling.

"It's their confidential information and they won't allow other people to know what models they use, but what we know is that they're usually built upon the existing open-source models," said Zhang. "We can be certain that their models must also have similar issues."

It's no secret that machine bias is a serious issue, and the implications are only getting clearer as advanced AI tech becomes increasingly integrated into everyday life. But with lives literally on the line, these kinds of biases aren't something that we should wait for regulation to catch up to in the aftermath of preventable tragedies.

More on autonomous vehicles: Self-Driving Car Gets Stuck in Freshly Poured Concrete