Climate change threat to tropical plants

UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Tropical plants closer to the equator are most at risk from climate change because it is expected to become too hot for many species to germinate in the next 50 years, UNSW researchers have found.

Their study analysed almost 10,000 records for more than 1300 species from the Kew Gardens' global seed germination database.

The research, published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography recently, was the first to look at the big picture impact of climate change on such a large number of plant species worldwide.

Lead author Alex Sentinella, UNSW PhD researcher, said past research had found that animal species closer to the equator would be more at risk from climate change.

"The thought was that because tropical species come from a stable climate where it's always warm, they can only cope with a narrow range of temperatures - whereas species from higher latitudes can cope with a larger range of temperatures because they come from places where the weather varies widely," Mr Sentinella said.

"However, this idea had never been tested for plants.

"Because climate change is a huge issue globally, we wanted to understand these patterns on a global scale and build upon the many studies on plants at an individual level in their environment."

Seeds a key indicator of survival

The researchers examined seed germination data from the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership Data Warehouse, hosted by Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London, to quantify global patterns in germination temperature.

They analysed 9737 records for 1312 plant species from every continent except Antarctica and excluded agricultural crops.

Mr Sentinella said they chose seed data because it was widely available and relevant to the ability of a species to cope with different temperatures.

"With seeds, you can experiment on them quickly, there are a lot of studies about them and importantly, germination directly relates to how a species will survive, because if the seed doesn't germinate the plant won't live," he said.

"So, we collated the data from the Kew Gardens database, examined all experiments on the same species from the same locations, and then determined the range of temperatures each species could tolerate in order to survive."

The researchers also examined climate data for the same locations as the plant species used in the study.

They looked at current temperature - the average temperature of the warmest three months from 1970 to 2000 - and predicted temperature for 2070.

The researchers then compared the temperatures the plants were experiencing now with the forecasted 2070 temperatures.

Tropical plants to hit or exceed temperature limits

The study discovered tropical plants do not have narrower temperature tolerances but were more at risk from global warming, because it would bring them close to their maximum seed germination temperatures.

Mr Sentinella said, on average, the closer a plant was to the equator, the more at risk it would be of exceeding its temperature ceiling by 2070.

"These plants could be more at risk because they are near their upper limits. So, even a small increase in temperature from climate change could push them over the edge," he said.

"The figures are quite shocking because by 2070, more than 20 per cent of tropical plant species, we predict, will face temperatures above their upper limit, which means they won't germinate, and so can't survive."

Mr Sentinella said the researchers also found that more than half of tropical species are expected to experience temperatures exceeding their optimum germination temperatures.

"That's even worse because if those plants can survive it would be at a reduced rate of germination and therefore, they might not be as successful," he said.

"If a seed's germination rate is 100 per cent at its optimum temperature, then it might only manage 50 or 60 per cent, for example, if the temperature is higher than what's ideal."

Mr Sentinella said he was surprised to find that climate change would threaten so many tropical species.

"But our most unexpected discovery was that the hypothesis often used for animals - that those near the equator would struggle to survive the impact of climate change because they have narrower temperature tolerances - was not true for plants," he said.

"We found that regardless of latitude, plant species can germinate at roughly the same breadth of temperatures, which does not align with the animal studies."

The researchers also found 95 per cent of plant species at latitudes above 45 degrees are predicted to benefit from warming, because environmental temperatures are expected to shift closer to the species' optimal germination temperatures.

Findings to help target conservation efforts

Mr Sentinella said it was possible for some plants to slowly evolve to increasing temperatures, but it was difficult to predict which ones would survive.

"The problem with the quick change in temperatures forecasted, is that some species won't be able to adapt fast enough," he said.

"Sometimes plants can migrate by starting to grow further away from the equator or, up a mountain slope where it's cooler. But if a species can't do that it will become extinct.

"There are almost 400,000 plant species worldwide - so, we would expect a number of them to fail to germinate between now and 2070."

Mr Sentinella hopes the researchers' findings will help to conserve plant species under threat from climate change.

"Ideally, we would be able to conserve all ecosystems, but the funding is simply not there. So, our findings could help conservation efforts target resources towards areas which are more vulnerable," he said.

"We also hope our findings further strengthen the global body of research about the risks of climate change.

"Humans have known about dangers of climate change for decades and we already have the answers to tackle it. So, hopefully our study will help encourage people and policy makers to take action now."

###

Read the study in Global Ecology and Biogeography: https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.131

Arctic plants may not provide predicted carbon sequestration potential

UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING

 

IMAGE: SCIENTISTS DR MIKE BILLETT AND DR LORNA STREET CONDUCT MEASUREMENTS OF ECOSYSTEM LEVEL FLUXES OF CARBON DIOXIDE, IN LIGHT AND DARK CHAMBERS. PICTURE TAKEN IN TALL SHRUB BIRCH COMMUNITIES AT... view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING

The environmental benefits of taller, shrubbier tundra plants in the Arctic may be overstated, according to new research involving the University of Stirling.

Current ecosystem and climate models suggest that, as the Arctic warms, tundra ecosystems are becoming more productive, with greater photosynthesis resulting in more carbon being removed, or sequestered, from the atmosphere.

However, most models do not consider the transfer and fate of this carbon below-ground, and how this can interact with soil carbon through the activities of soil microorganisms. This is critically important because the vast majority of carbon in Arctic ecosystems is found in soil and 'permafrost' (permanently frozen soil or sediment) in the form of organic matter produced by the incomplete decay of dead plants, animals and soil organisms in cold conditions.

The new research considered the impact of a shrubbier Arctic on soil carbon stocks and the overall carbon sequestration potential of these ecosystems. Significantly, it found that some tall shrub communities stimulate recycling of carbon in soils, releasing it back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide - meaning that more productive shrubs might not always result in greater carbon sequestration.

Professor Philip Wookey of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Stirling led the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded research programme of which this study was a part. Stirling colleague Dr Jens-Arne Subke was also involved in this work.

Professor Wookey said: "While previous studies suggest that a warmer, greener Arctic may increase the rate that carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere, our research identified an acceleration in the rate of loss of carbon from soils, back into the atmosphere.

"This may more than offset carbon sequestration and would, unexpectedly, turn these ecosystems into a net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Significantly, current ecosystem and climate models do not account for this conundrum, which means we may be underestimating future climate feedbacks from Arctic ecosystems."

The study was led by Dr Lorna Street, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, and also involved scientists from the NERC Radiocarbon Facility in East Kilbride, and the Universities of Durham and Liverpool. Further support was received from the Aurora Research Institute, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the University of Montreal, all in Canada.

The fieldwork - looking at how carbon is cycling in plants and soils over the past 50 years - was conducted in 2013 and 2014 in the Mackenzie Uplands of Northwest Territories, Canada.

The team found evidence that birch shrubs in Arctic tundra are strongly linked to the release of old carbon - fixed by photosynthesis more than 50 years ago and stored in soil organic matter. However, this was not true of alder, another type of Arctic shrub.

Dr Street said: "We think this is because, in birch, the products of photosynthesis are transferred to the soil through fungal symbionts, which stimulate the decomposition of soil organic material as a means of releasing the nutrients, like nitrogen, that the birch shrubs require to grow.

"By contrast, in alder, photosynthesis products are mostly retained in plant tissues because alder often has the help of microorganisms in the roots, which are capable of 'fixing' nitrogen directly from the atmosphere.

"These findings indicate that, if - as evidence has suggested - shrub birch proliferates in tundra ecosystems over the next decades, this might directly stimulate the loss, through accelerated decomposition, of pre-existing soil carbon as carbon dioxide."

Uncertainty surrounds the level of potential carbon release from high latitude permafrost systems - with predictions ranging between 0 and 200 gigatons. For context, 200 Gt represents approximately 20 years of current total global carbon emissions, due to human activity, to the atmosphere.

Dr Street added: "If our results apply across permafrost tundra regions, this suggests there is a previously unaccounted for process which could push the system towards the upper end of those predictions. This is hugely important as it means we may need to do more than currently expected, in terms of carbon dioxide emissions reductions, to meet our climate targets."

###

The study, Plant carbon allocation drives turnover of old soil organic matter in permafrost tundra soils, is available now.

A Submerged 7,000-Year-Old Discovery Shows the Great Potential of Underwater Archaeology
Stone tools scattered on the seafloor mark the oldest underwater site ever found on the continent.  

Turquoise waters of the Murujuga site. (Flinders University)
By Megan Gannon

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
JULY 1, 2020

Australia has a deep human history stretching back 65,000 years, but many of its oldest archaeological sites are now underwater. In an encouraging sign that Aboriginal artifacts and landscapes may actually be preserved offshore, archaeologists have discovered a 7,000-year-old site submerged along Australia's continental shelf, the first of its kind. Their discovery is outlined today in the journal PLoS One.

At the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago, when glaciers melted and sea level rose, waters inundated one-third of Australia’s habitable land. As part of a project called Deep History of Sea Country, Jonathan Benjamin, a professor of maritime archaeology at Flinders University in Adelaide, led a team that searched for submerged sites off Murujuga (also known as the Dampier Archipelago), a dry and rocky coastal region in northwestern Australia.
This area has a wealth of inland archaeological sites, including more than one million examples of rock art. About 18,000 years ago, the shoreline of Murujuga would have extended another 100 miles further than the current coast. But Benjamin and his colleagues had little to go on when they began to search the offshore territory.

"We were going into an area completely cold in terms of the probability of discovery," Benjamin says. "So we just figured if we could throw every bit of technology and a lot of smart people at the problem, after three years, we should come up with something."

At first, the team used LiDAR-mounted airplanes and sonar-equipped boats to scan the shallow seas around Murujuga for places that might have the right conditions for preservation of artifacts. (They ruled out areas where the seabed is covered in lots of shifting sand, for example.) Last year, divers suited up in scuba gear to survey the identified targets. The first few sites delivered no finds. Then came Cape Bruguieres Channel.

Chelsea Wiseman, a doctoral student at Flinders University, recalls swimming through turquoise water when her colleague, John McCarthy, grabbed her fin and showed her an igneous rock stone tool. "The first one he handed me was just unmistakably a lithic artifact," Wiseman says. "Then we found four or five others."

The team ultimately found 269 stone artifacts at Cape Bruguieres Channel, buried under about eight feet of water. The various tools appeared to be designed for activities like scraping, cutting and hammering, and the researchers found one grindstone that may have been used for crushing up the seeds of Spinifex grass for baking into bread. Based on radiocarbon dating and an analysis of when this spot became submerged, the researchers think the artifacts are at least 7,000 years old. The team also describes a second site, Flying Foam Passage, a freshwater spring about 45 feet below sea level and at least where one stone tool that's at least 8,500 years old turned up.

"A lot of our understanding of Australian Indigenous archaeology is based on sites that would have been significantly further inland,” Wiseman says. “This discovery will help indicate that there is more to be found offshore."
Location of the Murujuga site (Benjamin et. al.)

Marine geo-archaeologist Nicholas Flemming of the U.K.'s National Oceanography Centre, who was not involved in this study, says archaeologists are particularly interested in studying the northern and northwest coast of Australia. Sites like Cape Bruguieres Channel may contain evidence that tells scientists more about how people first crossed the sea from Southeast Asia to arrive in the continent and how they lived in this now-sunken coastal environment. "The discoveries by Benjamin’s team provide the first clues to answering both these questions, and show that the material does survive on the seafloor, and can be discovered and analyzed as accurately as archaeology on land," Flemming says.

Flemming adds that this study marks the first time any marine sites older than 5,000 years have been found in the tropics. Most submerged prehistoric sites are discovered by random chance, he says—by trawlers, dredgers or divers who then report the sites to conservation authorities. "The discovery proves that stone tools do survive on the sea floor in tropical environments,” Flemming says, though these undersea sites are vulnerable to coral growth, algae, mangroves, cyclones and other threats.




"It is a really exciting find, and it just continues to push the idea of submerged continental shelf sites to the forefront," says Amanda Evans, a marine archaeologist with Gray & Pape heritage consultants in the U.S. who also wasn't involved in the study. "Even up until ten years ago, there were just a handful of people who were really actively engaged in this work. These types of discoveries get more people involved and talking."

Indeed, while marine archaeology has long been focused on shipwrecks, the last decade has seen a rising interest in more ancient sunken landscapes with subtler features. The amount of submerged continental shelf around the world constitutes an area the size of Africa, meaning a lot remains to be explored.

Benjamin and his colleagues documented the world's oldest seawall at a 7,000-year-old site off the coast of Israel. Other teams are exploring the west coast of North America searching for sites that may settle long-standing debates about how humans first populated the continent. Evans just got back last week from a six-day expedition in the Gulf of Mexico, where 40 million acres of land that was dry 12,000 years ago is now underwater. She and her colleagues took 40 core samples from the underwater sediment that they plan to analyze for archaeological material.

But if the world’s submerged sites are to be explored, first they must be protected.


Benjamin hopes the finds from Murujuga will impact public policy regarding maritime heritage in places like Australia that have a lot of offshore energy development but haven't given much protection for underwater landscapes with Indigenous archaeology—in part because they haven't been documented yet.

"We have a situation in Australia where a shipwreck that's 75 years old is given automatic protection, but to protect a site of 7,000 years old, we have to ask for ministerial approval," Benjamin says. 

UPDATED 
Protesters In Baltimore Pulled Down A Statue Of Christopher Columbus And Threw It Into The Harbor

The statue is the latest in a list of monuments depicting enslavers and colonizers that have been torn down amid Black Lives Matter protests.

Stephanie K. Baer BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on July 4, 2020,

Protesters tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus and tossed it into the harbor in Baltimore Saturday night in what is the latest monument depicting enslavers and colonizers in the US to topple.

Videos showed demonstrators cheering as they pulled down the statue near the city's Little Italy neighborhood with rope, and later pushing it into the water.



spencer compton@spencercompton
Baltimore just tore down the Columbus statue ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻 #blacklivesmatter12:54 AM - 05 Jul 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite


Dedicated in 1984, the marble statue is one of three monuments to Columbus in the city, according to the Baltimore Sun. This week, the city council introduced a bill to rename one of the Columbus statues in honor of victims of police brutality.



J. M. Giordano photo@jmgpix
Baltimore’s Columbus statue gets dumped in the harbor01:03 AM - 05 Jul 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite


Amid a global reckoning over police brutality and violence against Black and Indigenous people, protesters have been tearing down statues of Confederacy leaders, enslavers, and colonizers.

Last month, protesters brought down a bronze statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia, and demonstrators in Boston beheaded a statue of Columbus.


MORE ON THIS
Protesters Tore Down A Statue Of Confederate President Jefferson Davis In VirginiaAmber Jamieson · June 11, 2020

Statues In The US And Around The World Are Being Beheaded And Torn Down Amid Black Lives Matter ProtestsAde Onibada · June 10, 2020

Stephanie Baer is a reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.

Columbus statue toppled by Baltimore protesters

In this Monday, Oct. 9, 1984, file photo, President Ronald Reagan addresses a ceremony in Baltimore, to unveil a statue of Christopher Columbus. Baltimore protesters pulled down the statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into the city's Inner Harbor, Saturday, July 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Lana Harris, File)
BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore protesters pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into the city’s Inner Harbor on Saturday night.

Demonstrators used ropes to topple the monument near the Little Italy neighborhood, news outlets reported.

Protesters mobilized by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police have called for the removal of statues of Columbus, Confederate figures and others. They say the Italian explorer is responsible for the genocide and exploitation of native peoples in the Americas.

According to The Baltimore Sun, the statue was owned by the city and dedicated in 1984 by former Mayor William Donald Schaefer and President Ronald Reagan.

A spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young told The Sun the toppling of the statue is a part of a national and global reexamination over monuments “that may represent different things to different people.”

“We understand the dynamics that are playing out in Baltimore are part of a national narrative,” Lester Davis said.

Statues of Columbus have also been toppled or vandalized in cities such as Miami; Richmond, Virginia; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Boston, where one was decapitated.

The Latest: Confederate statue in Maryland toppled
yesterday

The Latest on protests over racial inequality:

(AP) LOTHIAN, Md. — A privately owned Confederate statue at a Maryland church has been toppled and vandalized, according to police.

The Capital Gazette reports that photos provided by Anne Arundel County police show that the statue at Mt. Calvary Anglican Church in Lothian was ripped off its concrete platform.

The word “racist” was written in red spray paint on the platform and descriptive plaque for the statue of Private Benjamin Welch Owens, who served in a Confederate Maryland artillery unit during the Civil War.

Police said the statue was last seen undamaged late Thursday. No suspects were immediately identified.

People aren’t stupid’: Pence’s virus spin tests credibility

FILE - In this June 12, 2020, file photo Vice President Mike Pence, waves as he arrives to speak after a tour at Oberg Industries plant in Sarver, Pa. As the public face of the administration's coronavirus response. Vice President Mike Pence has been trying to convince Americans that the country is winning even as cases spike in large parts of the country. For public health experts, that sense of optimism is detached from reality. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence has long played the straight man to Donald Trump, translating the president’s bombast into more measured, calming language.

His job has become even more difficult. As coronavirus cases spike across large parts of the country despite months of lockdown, Pence has spent the past week trying to convince the American public that things are going very well, even though they’re not.

“Make no mistake about it, what you see today is that America is going back to work and the American people are finding a way every day to put this coronavirus farther in the past,” he told CNBC the same day the country reported more than 55,000 new virus cases, a daily record.


For public health experts, the optimism has been unmoored from reality.

“It’s almost laughable because it doesn’t pass any test of credibility when we’re seeing spikes in cases, spikes in hospitalizations,” said Larry Gostin, who specializes in public health at Georgetown University Law School. “The American people aren’t stupid. They can see spin when there is spin.”

The most important thing Pence can do, Gostin said, “is to be honest with the American public. ... They need to be told the truth and then they need to be told what America is going to do to turn this around.”

It’s not the first time Pence has been forced to put his own credibility on the line as he serves as Trump’s most loyal soldier. It may be the most consequential.

While Trump has tried to distance himself from what he calls “the plague” as he pursues reelection, Pence has emerged as the public face of this phase of the outbreak, traveling frequently to virus hot spots, coordinating with governors and leading the administration’s coronavirus task force.

The role, according to those close to him, is a natural fit for Pence, a former Indiana governor who sees it as his job to defend the president and reopen the country as safely as possible. But allies are keenly aware that Pence’s political future will hinge on whether Trump wins a second term.

If Trump loses, and Pence makes his own run at the presidency in 2024, he probably would face many candidates from a new generation of politicians. That could include Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor, and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said Pence faces a “real dilemma” because Trump’s reelection depends so much on an economic rebound predicated on states reopening during the pandemic.

From a public health perspective, “We’re actually losing again. It’s getting worse. We’re going to have to cut back in the economy,” he said.

After spending time on the road highlighting reopening efforts, Pence traveled this past week to Arizona and Florida, states where cases are surging. He tried to make the case that the country is in a far improved position now than it was early on in the outbreak when testing capacity was dismal and doctors and nurses were desperate for basic protective equipment.

“The American people deserve to know that we’re in a much better place today, thanks to the whole-of-government approach, the whole-of-America approach that President Trump initiated at the very outset of the coronavirus pandemic,” Pence said Tuesday during a task force briefing held not at the White House but at the U.S. Public Health Service headquarters in Rockville, Maryland.

White House officials and allies stress there are positive signs beyond the flow of supplies, with deaths remaining down and several therapeutics on the market. The point of the lockdowns, they stress, was to flatten the infection curve to avoid overwhelming hospitals, not eliminate cases.

To further push that message, Pence is expected to resume campaign travel soon. Campaign officials met by phone on Thursday to map out media markets where they feel he could be beneficial.

While Trump favors large-scale rallies, Pence will continue to focus on more intimate settings, inducing diner visits, bus tours and smaller speaking engagements, especially in front of groups such as white evangelicals and suburban families who may be more receptive to a less hyper-political message.

Pence will focus on swing states by stressing local issues and trying to show voters how the administration has affected their lives for the good. He’s expected to spend plenty of time in states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, as well as Arizona and North Carolina, talking about bringing back manufacturing jobs. It’s a promise Trump made in 2016 that has been largely unmet.

At the same time, however, Trump’s campaign recently disbanded a team of staffers dedicated to Pence, including his communications director, spokesperson and the director of vice presidential operations. Strategy and planning are now being handled by Marty Obst, a longtime Pence adviser who served as his campaign manager in 2016, and Marc Short, his chief of staff.

While some described the move as a natural transition given the vice president already has a full staff at the White House, others said it suggested a diminished role on a campaign that sees Pence more as a surrogate than a principal.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Ali Pardo dismissed that suggestion, saying Pence “has played an integral role in promoting and implementing President Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda across the country.”

Pence has made clear he feels this is Trump’s campaign and he has every right to run it how he wants.

Barry Bennett, a longtime Republican strategist who worked for Trump in 2016, praised Pence’s performance.

“He has a very tough job. But so far I think he’s managed to do it with compassion and integrity,” he said. “He’s probably the only that’s come out of the pandemic experience with positive results.”

As monuments fall, Confederate carving has size on its side

By KATE BRUMBACK and RUSS BYNUM

1 of 3
FILE - This June 23, 2015 file photo shows a carving depicting Confederate Civil War figures Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, in Stone Mountain, Ga. The sculpture is America's largest Confederate memorial. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. (AP) — Some statues of figures from America’s slave-owning past have been yanked down by protesters, others dismantled by order of governors or city leaders. But the largest Confederate monument ever crafted — colossal figures carved into the solid rock of a Georgia mountainside — may outlast them all.

Stone Mountain’s supersized sculpture depicting Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson mounted on horseback has special protection enshrined in Georgia law.

Even if its demolition were sanctioned, the monument’s sheer size poses serious challenges. The carving measures 190 feet (58 meters) across and 90 feet (27 meters) tall. An old photo shows a worker on scaffolding just below Lee’s chin barely reaching his nose.

NICE WHITE PEOPLE

Paula and Michael Smith pose for a photo with their 10-year-old grandson, Evan, in front of a giant carving of Confederate figures during a visit to Stone Mountain Park, Monday, June 29, 2020. “The mountain itself is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful and the carving is an engineering marvel,” said Paula Smith, a 70-year-old white woman who dismissed talk of removing or altering the carving as an attempt to “steal American history.” (AP Photo/Kate Brumback)

Numerous Confederate statues and monuments to American slave owners have come down across the South amid recent protests against racial injustice. Stone Mountain hasn’t escaped notice.

After organizing a protest where thousands marched in neighboring Atlanta, 19-year-old Zoe Bambara held a demonstration June 4 with a much smaller group — her permit allowed no more than 25 — inside the state park where the sculpture has drawn millions of tourists for decades.

“The Confederacy doesn’t celebrate the South; it celebrates white supremacy,” said Bambara, who is Black. “The people on that mountain, they hated me. They didn’t know me, but they hated me and my ancestors. It hurts to see those people celebrated and a memorial dedicated to them.”

Still, Bambara admits she’s at a loss for what should be done with the massive monument, conceived some 50 years after the Civil War ended but not finished until 1972.

The sculpture’s creators used dynamite to blast huge chunks of granite away from the mountain, then spent years carving the detailed figures with hand-held cutting torches.

Erasing the carving would be dangerous, time-consuming and expensive.

The stone is likely too durable for sandblasting, said Ben Bentkowski, president of the Atlanta Geological Society. Controlled explosions using TNT packed into holes drilled in the mountainside would work, he said.

“With the logistics, the safety aspect of it, you’d have a budget certainly north of $1 million, I suspect,” Bentkowski said. “You’ll need insurance for the project, you’ll need hazard pay for people working on the surface of it. It could easily take a year or more.”
ADVERTISEMENT



There’s also a sizable legal obstacle.

When Georgia lawmakers voted in 2001 to change the state flag that had been dominated by the Confederate battle emblem since 1956, language to guarantee the preservation of the Stone Mountain sculpture was included as a bargaining chip.

The law states that “the memorial to the heroes of the Confederate States of America graven upon the face of Stone Mountain shall never be altered, removed, concealed, or obscured in any fashion.”

Ryan Gravel, an Atlanta-based urban designer, noted the law doesn’t mandate maintenance. He suggested allowing nature to take its course, letting vegetation grow over the sculpture from its nooks and crannies.

“I think we’re in a moment where pushing the limits of that law is possible,” Gravel said. “And certainly the scale of the challenge at Stone Mountain warrants that.”

Other ideas — such as adding a bell tower atop the mountain in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — have failed to take hold. And Democratic proposals to strip the protective language from Georgia law have fallen flat with the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Asked whether Stone Mountain still deserves special protection, GOP Gov. Brian Kemp didn’t give a direct answer when speaking to reporters June 26.

“As I’ve said many times, we can’t hide from our history,” Kemp said, while citing the new hate crimes law he signed the same day as a significant step in fighting racial injustice.

Stone Mountain wasn’t a battle site and had little historical significance to the Civil War. But 50 years after the war ended, the exposed surface of the mountain’s northern face sparked an idea among the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

“It looked like a giant billboard,” said Stan Deaton, senior historian for the Georgia Historical Society.

The group hired sculptor Gutzon Borglum — who later would carve Mount Rushmore — to design a massive Confederate monument in 1915.

That same year, the movie “The Birth of a Nation” glorified the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan and Stone Mountain played a key role in its resurgence, marking its comeback with a cross burning atop the mountain on Thanksgiving night.

Budget problems plagued the Stone Mountain project and work on the sculpture languished until the state bought the mountain and surrounding land in 1958 for a public park. Finishing the monument gained renewed urgency as the civil rights movement brought unwanted change to defiant Southern states.

“It became the centerpiece of the park,” Deaton said. “There was never any doubt that the state’s intention of finishing this was of a piece with massive resistance.”

An estimated 10,000 people attended the monument’s dedication in 1970. Another two years passed before its official completion.

Five decades later, the park at Stone Mountain markets itself as a family theme park rather than a shrine to the “Lost Cause” mythology that romanticizes the Confederacy as chivalrous defenders of states’ rights. Its website highlights miniature golf and a dinosaur-themed attraction while downplaying the Confederate carving, Confederate flags and brick terraces dedicated to each Confederate state.

Paula and Michael Smith of Monticello, Georgia, visited Stone Mountain on Monday so their 10-year-old grandson could see the monument for the first time.

“The mountain itself is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful and the carving is an engineering marvel,” said Paula Smith, a 70-year-old white woman who dismissed talk of removing or altering the carving as an attempt to “steal American history.”

Jarvis Jones climbs the steep hiking trail on the back side of Stone Mountain several times a week. The 29-year-old Black man said he tries to avoid seeing the carving.

“I definitely understand everyone wants their history to be represented,” Jones said. “But when it comes to the oppression of other people, I think it needs to change.”

___

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press writers Ben Nadler and Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed to this story.

Israeli leader’s son takes center stage in corruption sagas
RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY NUT

FILE - In this Jan. 23, 2020, file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, second from left, and son Yair, left, pose for a photo in Tel Aviv, Israel, ahead of the World Holocaust Forum. As the scandal-plagued prime minister stands trial for corruption, his 28-year-old son has emerged as a driving force in a counterattack against critics and the state institutions prosecuting the longtime Israeli leader. A favorite of the prime minister’s nationalistic base and far right leaders around the world, Yair Netanyahu has become a fixture in the news. (Aleksey Nikolskyi/Sputnik Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

JERUSALEM (AP) — As scandal-plagued Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands trial for corruption, his 28-year-old son has emerged as a driving force in a counterattack against critics and the state institutions prosecuting the longtime Israeli leader.

A favorite of the prime minister’s nationalistic base and far right leaders around the world, Yair Netanyahu has become a fixture in the news, clashing with journalists on social media, threatening lawsuits against his father’s adversaries and posting online content deemed so offensive that Facebook briefly suspended his account.

In the past month alone, he has called to banish minorities from Tel Aviv, tweeted a discredited conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and intimated that a critical Israeli broadcast journalist slept her way up to her coveted job.

But his toughest broadsides have been directed at the Israeli media, judiciary and law enforcement for conducting what he has called a leftist, ideological crusade to topple his father. He’s called for the attorney general to be investigated for his “crimes,” compared the police chief to fictional mob boss Tony Soprano and described investigators as the Stasi, Gestapo and “the political police of the Israeli junta.”

It’s part of a campaign, echoed to a lesser degree by his father, that critics warn is eroding public faith in Israel’s democratic institutions.

“We would love to just disregard him as a curiosity, as this difficult kid who keeps embarrassing his father. But the truth is there is evidence that he is very influential,” said Raviv Drucker, a well-respected investigative TV reporter and favorite target of the Netanyahus, whom both father and son recently tweeted they would like to see imprisoned. “He holds very extreme positions and it affects the prime minister’s actions.”

Though he holds no official position, Yair Netanyahu is considered a key adviser and the mastermind of his father’s increasingly confrontational social media strategy.

Netanyahu faces charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of corruption cases stemming from ties to wealthy friends. He denies the charges, which follow years of scandals swirling around the family.

For years, it was his wife, Sara, who drew most of the fire because of her extravagant tastes, misuse of state funds and alleged abuse of her staff. But recently, his eldest son has taken center stage. He’s figured prominently in various scandals while earning a reputation of living a life of privilege at taxpayers’ expense.

Australian billionaire James Packer, one of the figures in the prime minister’s corruption indictments, reportedly gave the younger Netanyahu gifts that included stays at luxury hotels in Tel Aviv, New York and Aspen, Colorado, as well as the use of his private jet and dozens of tickets for concerts by Packer’s former fiancée, Mariah Carey. Nir Hefetz, a former Netanyahu aide turned state witness against him, told police that Yair Netanyahu was the major instigator of the bribery case against his father.

Yair Netanyahu has also sparked controversy by posting an anti-Semitic caricature aimed at his father’s critics, vulgarly confronting a woman who told him to pick up after his dog at a park, and tweeting that he hoped elderly leftist protesters would die of COVID-19.

The prime minister has been forced to denounce some of his son’s behavior, like a particularly lewd outing to a strip club with wealthy friends. But generally, he staunchly defends his son.

Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist for the Haaretz daily and author of a recent biography of the prime minister, said Yair Netanyahu enables his father to test boundaries of what the public will accept.

“If he goes too far, they can say it’s only Yair,” he said. “It gives him deniability, creates a gray area and blurs the lines on what the prime minister is saying on record.”

Yair Netanyahu was only 4 when his father first became prime minister in 1996 and has grown up in the limelight. During his compulsory army service, he was assigned as a liaison to foreign media. He was once court-marshaled for taking an unauthorized furlough.

He’s volunteered for local animal welfare organizations and briefly worked as a social media director for an Israeli NGO providing legal services to victims of Palestinian attacks. But he was put on leave after attacking Israel’s figurehead president for advocating Jewish-Arab coexistence.

As a private citizen, Yair Netanyahu has published op-eds for Breitbart, gone on U.S. and European speaking tours and voiced support for right-wing extremists in the U.S. and Europe. He has earned their praise in return.

Supporters claim he is a victim of the same people targeting his father. But the media have largely ignored his older half-sister Noa and his younger brother Avner, an unassuming 26-year-old university student who generally keeps to himself.

Yair Netanyahu, who still lives with his parents and declined to comment, claims to have no political aspirations. In his lone interview to Israeli media, he lamented last year to the pro-Netanyahu Channel 20 about the cost his family pays for their status. He said the three years his father was out of politics in the early 2000s were their happiest ever.

“My father decided to put the good life he had aside and get back into all this mud because of his calling,” he said. “My only political involvement is what you see on my private Facebook and Twitter.”

On Twitter, where he has more than 80,000 followers, he lashes out dozens of times a day and his feed often dictates the following news cycle. Facebook blocked his account for 24 hours in 2018 for sharing banned content and writing that he would prefer an Israel without Muslims.

His brand of provocation has proven irresistible to politicians, journalists and commentators alike, many of whom have been drawn into bouts of mud-slinging with him. Even so, at least a half dozen of his former targets refused to comment, citing his unofficial role and litigious nature.

—-

Follow Aron Heller on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap

UPDATED
JULY 3 RESISTANCE TO TRUMPS INVASION OF SIOUX NATION
THE SAME NATION HE DECLARED WAR ON OVER THE 
KEYSTONE PIPELINE 





PURIFYING THE SPACE AND THE INVADERS
 WITH SACRED SAGE


DISARM, DEMILITARIZE, DEFUND, POLICE

LIKE THEIR PREDECESSORS THE WHITE SUPREMACIST
COLONIZERS BRING THEIR ARMY AND THEIR DISEASES
WITH THEM, TO THIS CULT RALLY OF ARYAN NATIONALIST
CHRISTIAN CONFEDERATES.

THE FIRST NATIONS HAVE SUFFERED HEAVILY
UNDER COVID-19 WITH NO FUCKING HELP FROM THE AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT


SINCE TRUMP HAS DECIDED IT'S 1968 AGAIN
 HERE  IS A RON COBB CARTOON FROM THEN


MEANWHILE RUMOURS PERSIST THAT TRUMP
WANTS TO BE ON MOUNT RUSHMORE IF HE
WINS RE-ELECTION 
SEEN HERE FRIDAY SIZING UP HIS PROFILE.

FROM

Here's What Trump's Visit To Mount Rushmore Looked Like

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katebubacz/trumps-visit-to-mount-rushmore-photos

TEXT AND MORE PHOTO'S 

FROM AP
https://apnews.com/10793013ab9d6febaf896b2bd25ec62a

Leaders of several Native American tribes in the region raised concerns that the event could lead to virus outbreaks among their members, who they say are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 because of an underfunded health care system and chronic health conditions.

“The president is putting our tribal members at risk to stage a photo op at one of our most sacred sites,” said Harold Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

Some Native American groups used Trump’s visit to protest the Mount Rushmore memorial itself, pointing out that the Black Hills were taken from the Lakota people.

More than 100 protesters, many Lakota, lined the road leading from Keystone to the monument holding signs and playing Lakota music in 95-degree heat. Some held their fists in the air as cars loaded with event attendees passed by. Others held signs that read “Protect SoDak’s First People,” “You Are On Stolen Land” and “Dismantle White Supremacy.”

“The president needs to open his eyes. We’re people, too, and it was our land first,” said Hehakaho Waste, a spiritual elder with the Oglala Sioux tribe.

About 15 protesters were arrested after blocking a road and missing a police-imposed deadline to leave.

THAT OTHER PLAGUE
Crunch, crunch: Africa’s locust outbreak is far from over
1 of 6

Locusts swarm on a tree south of Lodwar town in Turkana county, northern Kenya Tuesday, June 23, 2020. The worst outbreak of the voracious insects in Kenya in 70 years is far from over, and their newest generation is now finding its wings for proper flight. (AP Photo/Boris Polo)

Locusts swarm on the ground south of Lodwar town in Turkana county, northern Kenya Tuesday, June 23, 2020. The worst outbreak of the voracious insects in Kenya in 70 years is far from over, and their newest generation is now finding its wings for proper flight. (AP Photo/Boris Polo)
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The crunch of young locusts comes with nearly every step. The worst outbreak of the voracious insects in Kenya in 70 years is far from over, and their newest generation is now finding its wings for proper flight.

The livelihoods of millions of already vulnerable people in East Africa are at stake, and people like Boris Polo are working to limit the damage. The logistician with a helicopter firm is on contract with the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, helping to find and mark locust swarms for the targeted pesticide spraying that has been called the only effective control.


“It sounds grim because there’s no way you’re gonna kill all of them because the areas are so vast,” he told The Associated Press from the field in northwestern Kenya on Thursday. “But the key of the project is to minimize” the damage, and the work is definitely having an effect, he said.

For months, a large part of East Africa has been caught in a cycle with no end in sight as millions of locusts became billions, nibbling away the leaves of both crops and the brush that sustains the livestock so important to many families.

“The risk of significant impact to both crops and rangelands is very high,” the regional IGAD Climate Prediction & Applications Center said Wednesday in a statement.



For now, the young yellow locusts cover the ground and tree trunks like a twitching carpet, sometimes drifting over the dust like giant grains of sand.

In the past week and a half, Polo said, the locusts have transformed from hoppers to more mature flying swarms that in the next couple of weeks will take to long-distance flight, creating the vast swarms that can largely blot out the horizon. A single swarm can be the size of a large city.

Once airborne, the locusts will be harder to contain, flying up to 200 kilometers (124 miles) a day.

“They follow prevailing winds,” Polo said. “So they’ll start entering Sudan, Ethiopia and eventually come around toward Somalia.” By then, the winds will have shifted and whatever swarms are left will come back into Kenya.

“By February, March of next year they’ll be laying eggs in Kenya again,” he said. The next generation could be up to 20 times the size of the previous one.

The trouble is, only Kenya and Ethiopia are doing the pesticide control work. “In places like Sudan, South Sudan, especially Somalia, there’s no way, people can’t go there because of the issues those countries are having,” Polo said.

“The limited financial capacity of some of the affected countries and the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic have further hampered control efforts. Additionally, armed conflict in Somalia rendered some of the locust breeding areas inaccessible,” ICPAC expert Abubakr Salih Babiker and colleagues wrote in correspondence published in the journal Nature Climate Change this month.

Since “more extreme climate variability could increase the likelihood of pest outbreaks and spread,” they called for a better early warning system for the region and urged developing countries to help.

The World Bank earlier this year announced a $500 million program for countries affected by the historic desert locust swarms, while the FAO has sought more than $300 million.

The pesticide spraying in Kenya “has definitely borne fruit,” said Kenneth Mwangi, a satellite information analyst with ICPAC. There’s been a sharp decline from the first wave of locusts, and a few counties that had seen “huge and multiple swarms” now report little to none. Areas experiencing the second wave are notably the farthest from control centers, he said.

It’s been more challenging in Ethiopia, where despite the spraying, new locust swarms arrived from Somalia and parts of northern Kenya. “Unfortunately both waves have found crops in the field,” Mwangi said.

But without the control work, Polo said, the already dramatic swarms would be even more massive.



He and colleagues target the locusts in the early mornings before they leave their roosting spots and start flying in the heat of the day. The work has gone on since March.

“These plagues are part of nature,” Polo said. “They actually rejuvenate the areas. They don’t kill the plants, they eat the leaves. Everything grows back.

“They don’t harm the natural world, they harm what humans need in the natural world.”

___

Anna reported from Johannesburg.

IMPERIALIST TROPHIES OF COLONIALISM
Algeria buries fighters whose skulls were in Paris museum

A soldier and members of the Algerian Republican Guard, guard the remains of 24 Algerians at the Moufdi-Zakaria culture palace in Algiers, Friday, July, 3, 2020. After decades in a French museum, the skulls of 24 Algerians decapitated for resisting French colonial forces were formally repatriated to Algeria in an elaborate ceremony led by the teary-eyed Algerian president. The return of the skulls was the result of years of efforts by Algerian historians, and comes amid a growing global reckoning with the legacy of colonialism. (AP Photo/Toufik Doudou)
MORE PICTURES
https://apnews.com/695349764cae2a309c6d4ca82cbdd35a

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algeria at last buried the remains of 24 fighters decapitated for resisting French colonial forces in the 19th century, in a ceremony Sunday rich with symbolism marking the country’s 58th anniversary of independence.

The fighters’ skulls were taken to Paris as war trophies and held in a museum for decades until their repatriation to Algeria on Friday, amid a growing global reckoning with the legacy of colonialism.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said he’s hoping for an apology from France for colonial-era wrongs.

“We have already received half-apologies. There must be another step,” he said in an interview broadcast Saturday with France-24 television. He welcomed the return of the skulls and expressed hope that French President Emmanuel Macron could improve relations and address historical disputes.

Tebboune presided over the interment of the remains Sunday in a military ceremony at El Alia cemetery east of Algiers, in a section for fallen independence fighters. Firefighters lay the coffins, draped with green, white and red Algerian flags, in the earth.

The 24 took part in an 1849 revolt after French colonial forces occupied Algeria in 1830. Algeria formally declared independence on July 5, 1962 after a brutal war.

Algeria’s veterans minister, Tayeb Zitouni, welcomed “the return of these heroes to the land of their ancestors, after a century and a half in post-mortem exile.”

Algerians from different regions lined up to pay respect to the fighters on Saturday, when their coffins were on public display at the Algiers Palace of Culture.

Mohamed Arezki Ferrad, history professor at the University of Algiers, said hundreds of other Algerian skulls remain in France and called for their return, as well as reparations for French nuclear tests carried out in the Algerian Sahara in the early 1960s.

In 1966, seven years after Algeria's National Liberation Front (FLN) successfully fought France for their country's independence, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo released the iconic The Battle of Algiers. Despite winning a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and its widespread public influence, inspiring notable activists such as pro-Palestinians and the Black Panthers, the film was banned in France until the 1970s. Featuring interviews with revolutionary leaders such as Saadi Yacef, Algerian filmmaker Malek Bensmaïl looks back on the making of this landmark film half a century after its release. His doc presents us with an Algeria still gripped with pride for its independence, and one in which the annually broadcast The Battle of Algiers remains a staunch cultural phenomenon.