Hippos die as DR Congo river contaminated with 'toxic' waste


Issued on: 13/08/2021 -
Local officials say the dead bodies of hippos and fish have been found in contaminated waters in DR Congo, according to the environment minister ULISES RUIZ AFP

Kinshasa (AFP)

Toxic substances emitted in Angola have turned a river red in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the environment minister said on Friday, warning of an "ecological catastrophe" as the pollution kills wildlife including hippos.

This "discolouration would be caused by a toxic substance spill by an Angolan factory specialising in industrial diamond mining," DR Congo Enviroment Minister Eve Bazaiba said in a statement.

Polluted tributaries are feeding into the Kasai river in the west of the vast central African country.

Local officials in the Kasai region said the dead bodies of hippos and fish had been found in the polluted waters, she said.

The Kasai feeds into the Congo River, the second longest African river after the Nile.

The situation is an "ecological catastrophe", for the local populations, said Bazaiba.

The discolouration was "on the brink of reaching Kinshasa" where over 10 million people live, she added.

So far the exact nature of the toxic substances polluting the waterways is unknown. A team of environment ministry experts has been rushed to the area to collect samples of river water.

The Four Tortured, Pathetic Arguments Republicans Use to Downplay January 6th


Tim Dickinson
Fri, August 13, 2021

US-POLITICS-ELECTION-TRUMP - Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

A rash of new evidence has made clear that Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election were more sophisticated and far-reaching than Americans knew in real time.

Trump’s pressure on the Department of Justice, in particular, was relentless. He reportedly plotted to elevate a staunch loyalist, and fellow election conspiracy theorist, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, to the post of attorney general. Newly uncovered documents show how Clark had endeared himself to Trump by circulating a draft letter in December that would have demanded the Georgia legislature “immediately call a special session” to consider overturning Trump’s narrow loss there, citing unspecified “irregularities.” (Trump reportedly backed down from installing Clark only in the face of a threat of mass resignations at DOJ.) On December 27th, according to notes recently uncovered by the House Oversight Committee, Trump himself pushed top DOJ officials to “just say that the election was corrupt” and “leave the rest to me.”

In light of these fresh details, the January 6th insurgency — whipped to motion by Trump’s orders to “fight like hell” against the certification of the Electoral College results — appears to have been the serious, last-ditch act of a would-be tyrant to hold on to power. Yet even as the context of the coup attempt has become clearer, the moral clarity of Republicans in Washington about the blame for January 6th has become increasingly cloudy.

In real time, GOP leaders had blamed Trump for the day’s violence. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack by mob rioters,” House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said on January 13th. Mitch McConnell, then Senate majority leader, was even more direct, insisting Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the siege on the Capitol by people who “believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”

For a brief moment, it appeared as if Trump — deprived of his Twitter megaphone and exiled to Mar a Lago — might have lost his stranglehold on the Republican Party. But as the weeks and months passed — and Trump not only prevailed against impeachment (again) but steadily reasserted himself as the GOP’s one true king — most Republicans cowered. (For some prominent Republicans the bravery only lasted days: McCarthy backtracked by January 21st, saying of Trump: “I don’t believe he provoked it if you listen to what he said at the rally.”) Those who stood up to Trump’s flamboyant falsehoods about the 2020 election paid a price. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), who voted for Trump’s impeachment, lost her leadership post for refusing to toe Trump’s authoritarian line. “If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I’m not your person,” she told her colleagues on the eve of her ouster. Cheney was replaced by Rep. Elaine Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a onetime critic of the 45th president who has shamelessly morphed into a Trump toady.

This summer, the vast majority of GOP politicians refused to back an independent commission to investigate January 6th. South Dakota’s John Thune, the GOP Senate whip, admitted that getting to the bottom of Trump’s complicity in that assault on our democracy pales in importance to 2022’s midterm elections. “Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections is a day lost on being able to draw a contrast between us and the Democrats’ very radical left-wing agenda,” he said.

But rather than simply avoid the subject, D.C. Republicans have increasingly painted Trump’s attempted “autogolpe” as an innocent protest that got a little out of hand. Others have attempted to deflect attention from Trump by insisting that January 6th was relatively harmless compared to the (utterly unrelated) urban unrest in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. Still others have followed the president’s lead to argue — without any logic or evidence — that culpability for the violence that day lies not with the man who riled up the mob, but with a woman whose Capitol office was breached: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) is one of a pair of House Republicans now serving on a special committee to investigate January 6th. He’s blasted his party’s “insane” rhetoric, and argued that it smacks of the GOP’s “desperation to try to derail” an effective inquiry — while still seeking the validation of dear leader Trump. But he’s practically alone in his party.

Below are four tortured arguments Republicans have put forward to dismiss or minimize the democracy-shaking events of January 6th:

It Wasn’t That Bad!

Of all the arguments marshaled by Trump’s GOP defenders, the effort to gaslight Americans into thinking the events of January 6th just weren’t that bad are perhaps the most offensive. In addition to the deaths of four members of the mob, including Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead while attempting to break into the House Chamber, the day’s violence resulted in 138 officers being injured, with at least 15 requiring hospitalization. A total of four officers have since died by suicide. Another died of a stroke on the day after the attack. Had Capitol Police not sacrificed their bodies to slow and blunt the actions of the mob, it’s impossible to say what heinous acts might have been executed, as Trump supporters, who’d set up a gallows in the shadow of the Capitol, stormed the halls chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”

Republicans have long positioned themselves as defenders of police, calling on America to “Back the Blue.” But faced with the reality that Trump’s backers savagely beat and insulted officers (as detailed by the officers themselves in a recent congressional hearing), powerful Republicans have shrugged their shoulders. None of the carnage of January 6th — or the fact that the mob disrupted the counting of Electoral College votes key to the peaceful transfer of power — appears to weigh on the conscience of senators and representatives who’ve attempted to rewrite history, chiefly by contesting that the events of that day could be called an “insurrection.”

In a May interview on Fox News, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) insisted of January 6th that, “by and large, it was peaceful protest,” while arguing that “it wasn’t… an insurrection.” Johnson later embellished: “To say there were thousands of armed insurrectionists breaching the Capitol intent on overthrowing the government is just simply a false narrative.”

GOP House members have been driving home the same deplorable talking point. In a May House hearing, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) insisted that “to call it an insurrection… is a bold-faced lie.” Clyde alternatively suggested the siege of the Capitol resembled “a normal tourist visit” or at worst “an undisciplined mob.” Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) likewise described the insurgency as “a mob of misfits.”

The Insurgents Weren’t Trump Supporters!

One of the earliest lies about January 6th is that the violent agitators were not in fact Trump supporters, but rather undercover Antifa agents trying to harm the reputation of honest conservatives. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) — accused of inciting the violence in his own speech to the mob that day — was an early spreader of this disinformation:

In reality, as federal prosecutions have underscored, the overwhelming majority who participated in the events of January 6th were, indeed, Trump supporters who had been summoned to gather in D.C. by the president (who’d tweeted: “Be there. Will be wild!“) — including members of organized, militant right-wing groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

But in that May House hearing, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) contested the obvious. He took issue with an entry in an official timeline: “’2:07 PM: A mob of Trump supporters breached the steps’?” he said, incredulous. “I don’t know who did a poll that this is Trump supporters.” Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) took this absurd argument and twisted it even further, painting the assailants as the victims. “In fact, it was Trump supporters who lost their lives that day,” Hice said, “not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others.”

In early July, Rep Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) sent around a fundraising email surfacing a new conspiracy theory: “Facts are coming to light that the FBI might have had a hand,” he wrote, “in planning and carrying out that event.” But by late July Trump himself took things full circle, releasing a tweet-like statement in which he falsely claimed that evidence might yet implicate Antifa or BLM activists: “Will Nancy release the thousands of hours of tapes so we can see the extent to which ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter played a role?”

Black Lives Matter Demonstrations Were Worse!

Republicans have attempted to deflect responsibility for the events of January 6th by pointing to the unrelated unrest that arose out of the murder of George Floyd in the spring and summer of 2020. In trying to gin up a reason to oppose the creation of an independent January 6th commission, Republicans insisted that the commission should also investigate what GOP partisans shorthanded as “BLM riots.”

These talking points came from the top. In May, Trump released a statement in which he demanded Republicans oppose “the Democrat trap of the January 6 Commission” calling it “just more partisan unfairness… unless the murders, riots, and fire bombings in Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago, and New York are also going to be studied.” He concluded, “Hopefully, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are listening!” (McConnell, as if taking his cue from Trump, would call the independent commission a “purely political exercise” and join with 35 GOP senators who succeeded in blocking its creation by using the filibuster.)

In the May House hearing, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) cited injuries to police and other fallout “from BLM riots last year” to strike a pose of outrage that “we’re going to discuss today — as if none of that happened — the events of January 6th. The hypocrisy of this body is, indeed, disturbing!”

Republicans are still banging the drum that unrest over racial injustice somehow connects to the Capitol insurrection. “I think it’s important to point out that Democrats created this environment sort of normalizing rioting, normalizing looting, normalizing anarchy in the summer of 2020,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R. Ohio) in late July. “And I think that’s an important piece of information to look into.”

It Was Nancy Pelosi’s Fault!

The oddest, laziest argument Republicans have yet surfaced is that Pelosi is somehow to blame for the carnage of January 6th because she failed to anticipate — and fortify the Capitol against — the eventuality that the president of the United States would turn loose a mob to attack a co-equal branch of government.

Forget for a moment that Pelosi was in the Capitol at the time and her office was breached, and that this argument amounts to blaming a victim for that day’s crimes. The truth of the matter is that the speaker of the House has no special role to play when it comes to directing the security of the building, which is guarded by the Capitol Police. Aside from the reflexive GOP impulse to blame Pelosi for everything, condemning her makes no more sense than blaming her GOP counterpart McConnell, about whose actions Republicans have been totally silent.

It’s of little surprise that this demented rhetoric comes from the mind of the man who actually set January 6th in motion. In a July 26th statement, Trump lofted the idea that Pelosi’s actions should be scrutinized, leveling false charges: “Will Nancy investigate herself and those on Capitol Hill who didn’t want additional protection, including more police and National Guard, therefore being unprepared despite the large crowd of people that everyone knew was coming?”

The very next day, Stefanik, newly the third-ranking House Republican, stepped in front of cameras to blast Pelosi: “The American people deserve to know the truth that Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility as Speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on January 6th.” The most powerful House Republican, McCarthy — who recently fantasized aloud about striking Pelosi with the Speaker’s gavel if he were to succeed her in 2022 — also parroted this nonsense: “If there is a responsibility for this Capitol, on this side, it rests with the Speaker,” McCarthy said.

This reckless and debasing behavior by top Republicans is an indication of the stranglehold Trump has over the modern GOP, and the extent to which he remains the “audience of one” for whom GOP politicians perform on TV. Republican congressman — and rare Trump antagonist — Kinzinger of Illinois insists that his party continues to make a mockery of itself, and its obligations to defend our democracy, to please the 45th president.

“All Donald Trump needs to see is that you’re making a defense, no matter how nonsensical that defense is,” Kinzinger said in a recent interview. “If you stand in front of the proper news channel that Trump watches and say, ‘This is Pelosi’s fault,’ you’ve just done your job. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense anymore. It just matters is that you’ve said something to placate him.”

Rolling Stone

#FEMICIDE #MISOGYNY #MACHISMO
Survivors of acid attacks in Mexico unite to push for change




APTOPIX Mexico Acid Attacks Elisa Xolalpa, who survived an acid attack when tied to a post by her ex-partner 20 years ago when she was 18, poses for a portrait inside her greenhouse where she grows flowers to sell at a market in Mexico City, Sunday, May 30, 2021. “I have to turn this pain into something else,” Xolalpa said. For now, that means demanding justice and not being silent. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme)

MORE PHOTOS HERE

MARÍA VERZA and GINNETTE RIQUELME
Thu, August 12, 2021,

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Elisa Xolalpa has had three daughters and found a job she enjoys since a former boyfriend tried to destroy her life by tossing acid on her when she was 18. Two decades later, she is still seeking justice.

Survivors of acid attacks like Xolalpa are banding together and raising their voices in Mexico despite the country’s high rates of violence, which often targets women, and staggering levels of impunity.

“I thought I was the only one,” said the 38-year-old, who grows flowers on Mexico City’s south side. “But we’re not alone anymore.”


Earlier this year, the Carmen Sánchez Foundation formed here to provide support and lobby for legal reforms for survivors of acid attacks. It has registered 29 such attacks so far, five already in 2021, but believes that is only a fraction of the real number.

Survivors want the attacks classified as attempted femicide, aid with the innumerable surgeries that follow and psychological support. They want to be seen even though their faces hurt.

“Mom, what is acid?” 9-year-old Daniela asked Xolalpa one day. For a moment Xolalpa was silent. Then she told her daughter that it was a liquid they used in the greenhouse that is dangerous. Another day Daniela left school in tears. “Some kids told me you’re ugly, Mom, and it’s not true,” Xolalpa said her daughter told her.

Xolalpa has a sweet gaze. She enjoys growing flowers in the chinampas — fertile islands interlaced by canals in the capital’s Xochimilco borough — like her ancestors did. She recognizes that one day she will have to explain to her three daughters, product of another relationship, the attack that changed her life and for a time left her wanting to die.

These days she is focused on preparing herself mentally for a new court hearing for her attacker, who was finally arrested in February. She has made three complaints to authorities and suffered constant threats from him. For now he only faces a domestic violence charge, but Xolalpa hopes that will hold him long enough to pursue an attempted femicide charge.

Her attacker’s lawyer has been dismissive. “He says I’m alright because I was able to have a family,” she said indignantly. She entered the relationship with the father of her three daughters “to feel that I could please someone despite the scars,” Xolapa said. “It was a mistake, I’m still damaged.”

Dousing someone in acid means wanting to dissolve a person physically and psychologically. It is always premeditated, according to the United Nations.

In Xolalpa’s case, she was tied to a post. The acid dissolved the ropes, but also her clothes and her body as she ran half-naked for help. She has had 40 surgeries to repair her body.

Carmen Sánchez, who started the foundation that bears her name, was eating breakfast with her mother and sisters at home in 2014 when her partner entered and threw acid on her face. He fled with a driver who was waiting outside as Sánchez’s chin melted to her chest and her cell phone dissolved in her hand.

It took years before Sánchez turned to activism.

One day in 2017, Sánchez called Gina Potes, a Colombian survivor, whose collective “Rebuilding Faces” helps other women who have survived attacks. Potes happened to be on her way to a doctor’s appointment.

“She told me about all her pain, she cried, she talked to me about her surgeries,” Potes recalled. When Potes got to the doctor, “I told Carmen, ‘Look, I’m going to strip, but we’ll keep talking, don’t worry.’”

Seeing Potes bare her scars without any shyness shook Sánchez. She understood that trying to hide what had happened didn’t help. So while she sought justice in her case and underwent operation after operation — she’s up to 61 — she began to talk with other survivors, seek out donors, psychologists and doctors.

“From the beginning I only had two options: let myself die, something she considered many times, or look at my scars, inside and out, and understand that that was my new reality,” Sánchez told lawmakers in late July when she received a prize from Mexico’s lower congressional chamber.

Sánchez made it clear to the lawmakers that women like her face not only violence from their aggressors, but also the “indifference and impunity of the state, revictimization by the media and social and labor exclusion and discrimination.”

There are children and men among the victims of acid attacks, but 80% are women, according to The Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI).

They are usually attacked by partners or former partners or people paid by them out of jealousy or revenge, according to U.N. Women, the United Nations’ gender equality entity.

ASTI documents about 1,500 acid attacks per year, but says the real number could be higher.

Acid attacks aren’t limited to any particular part of the world, certain religions or cultures, but rather to conservative institutions and “the deep economic and social inequalities of gender that exist,” said Jaf Shah, the organization’s director.

“Many attacks may not be reported,” Shah said. “If they are reported there is a chance that they could be classified under a different offense.”

Sayuri Herrera, Mexico City’s special prosecutor for femicides, said that more acid attacks are being registered in Mexico. Her office is currently reviewing older cases that were originally classified as serious injuries to see if they can be reclassified as attempted femicide like Xolalpa’s.

Only two of Mexico’s 32 states have classified acid attacks on women as attempted femicide. Violence against women in Mexico extends far beyond acid attacks making it more difficult to gain attention.

In the first half of the year, 1,879 women were murdered in Mexico and ore than 33,000 injured, according to federal government data. More than 10,000 rapes were reported and nearly 24,000 cases of domestic violence.

“They consider us their property and act under the reasoning that ‘if you’re not going to be mine, you’re not going to be anyone’s,’” Herrera said.

In June, Xolalpa and other women protested in front of the capital’s prosecutor’s office to pressure for resolution of their cases. Meanwhile, new cases keep surfacing.

Ximena Canseco, a co-founder of the Carmen Sánchez Foundation, recalled one day, July 29, when they learned of a survivor from an attack 30 years ago and they found a message asking for help on Facebook from the mother of a girl who had just had acid tossed on her from someone on a passing motorcycle. That same day, Canseco learned a 30-year-old woman who had recently shared her story had died of COVID-19.

“She never made it public, she had lost everything and was still receiving threats,” Canseco said. “We talked for an hour.”

Xolalpa said we can’t allow the violence to be normalized and that’s a message she wants to teach her daughters.

“I have to turn this pain into something else,” she said. For now, that means demanding justice and not being silent.

'It's like a war zone' - U.S. Air Force veteran comforts children plagued by gun violence


Dnayjah Joseph, Jawanna Hardy, and Kate Ross pose in front of the "Guns Down Friday" van

Vanessa Johnston
Fri, August 13, 2021, 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Davon McNeal was just 11 years old when he was struck in the head by a stray bullet at a Fourth of July cookout in Washington, D.C., last year.

Now, every Friday, community activist Jawanna Hardy visits the boy's gravesite and the graves of other children who have lost their lives to gun violence.

"I sometimes feel so hopeless," Hardy said, as she placed flowers and balloons and trimmed the grass around the headstones.

Like many cities across the United States, Washington has seen a spike in shooting-related deaths during the pandemic. Homicides were up 19% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. This month's data shows that the city has already clocked more cases than at the same time last year.

Nationwide, more than 5,100 children and teens were killed or injured by gun violence in 2020 - the highest number since the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive started collecting data seven years ago.

"It's like a war zone. It's like being in the military," Hardy said.

Frustrated by the senseless loss of life, Hardy, an Air Force veteran and now a 34-year-old high school English teacher, launched 'Guns Down Friday,' an outreach program to support neighborhoods plagued by gun violence - including the one she has lived in since childhood.

She has raised money for shooting victims' gravestones, advocated for more streetlights, and trained people how to treat bullet wounds themselves.

After visiting the cemetery, she drives her van - adorned with photos of young gun violence victims - through the streets to greet youngsters.

"These are friends of these kids - so we just do all we can to show love," Hardy said.

On a recent Friday, she arrived with water balloons.

"Put your guns down and pick your water balloons up!" Hardy cried through a megaphone as children outside an apartment complex in southeast Washington laughed and scrambled to drench one another.

She knows her Friday night street parties will not stop gun violence but hopes they can at least provide children a brief respite from the constant fear in which many live.

Hearing gunshots is all too normal.

"Down the street, just like two hours ago, (there were) three shots," said 13-year-old Armani Chambers.

Rashad Bates, 12, said he knows exactly what to do if he hears shots being fired.

"Just ignore it. Don't look out the window, because you never know if the bullet is coming toward your window," he said.

Fact check: A 1912 article

about burning coal and 

climate change is authentic

McKenzie Sadeghi, USA TODAY

Fri, August 13, 2021,

The claim: An article from 1912 warned coal consumption can have a negative impact on climate

A viral image of a 1912 newspaper clip circulating on social media claims scientists have known for more than a century that coal consumption can have a negative effect on climate.

The image of the newspaper article, shared to Facebook on Aug. 12 by the page Historic Photographs, is titled, “Coal Consumption Affecting Climate,” and it says the coal burned in furnaces around the world is causing an effect that "may be considerable in a few centuries." It’s dated Aug. 14, 1912.

The same photo was shared to Twitter on Aug. 12 in a tweet with more than 16,000 likes, with the caption, "Climate change prediction from 1912." In the replies, some were skeptical about the authenticity of the article.

But the article in question is authentic, originally published more than 100 years ago.

And it has proven true, as today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says, "the burning of coal, natural gas and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse emissions."

USA TODAY reached out to the poster for comment, and they noted Snopes had previously identified the clipping as legitimate.

Fact check: Posts falsely claim 95% of energy for charging electric cars comes from coal

Article is authentic

The text in the article originates from a March 1912 report in the magazine Popular Mechanics titled, “Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate – What Scientists Predict for the Future.”

The same phrasing was published on Aug. 14, 1912, in the New Zealand newspaper Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, which is the publication shown in the viral image. Prior to that, it appeared in The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal, an Australian newspaper, on July 17, 1912.

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Update your settings here to see it.

“The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year,” the article reads. “When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries."

Reports about coal burning and its effect on the atmosphere date back to the 1800s, according to The New York Times.

In an April 1896 paper titled, "On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground," Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, suggested a link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature.

Our rating: True

The claim that an article from 1912 warned coal consumption can have a negative impact on climate is TRUE, based on our research. The article first appeared in Popular Mechanics in March 1912, then was republished in other newspapers that same year.

Our fact-check sources:

• Popular Mechanics, March 1912, Remarkable Weather of 1911

• The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal, July 17, 1912, Coal Consumption Affecting Climate

• Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, Aug. 12, 1912, Coal Consumption Affecting Climate

• The New York Times, Oct. 21, 2016, Coverage of Coal's Link to Global Warming, in 1912

• Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, April 1896, On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground

• Snopes, Oct. 18, 2016, Did a 1912 Newspaper Article Predict Global Warming?

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app, or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Yes, a 1912 article linked burning coal to climate change

Data signals third year of vast Brazil Amazon deforestation


FILE - In this Aug. 23, 2020 file photo, cattle graze on land recently burned and deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)

DÉBORA ÁLVARES
Fri, August 13, 2021

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Preliminary government data released on Friday indicates annual deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon may have surpassed 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles) for the third straight year, continuing a worrisome jump since President Jair Bolsonaro assumed office.

The area deforested from August to July – the 12-month period that is Brazil’s reference – was 8,793 square kilometers, just below last year’s record, according to daily alerts compiled by the National Institute for Space Research’s Deter monitoring system.

That data is considered a leading indicator for complete calculations released near year end from the more accurate system, Prodes. It uses at least four different satellites to capture images, addressing oversights in preliminary data caused by lower resolution and cloud cover.

Márcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups, told The Associated Press that he anticipates the final tally will land right around 10,000 square kilometers.

Before Bolsonaro’s term began in 2019, the Brazilian Amazon hadn’t recorded a single year with that much deforestation in over a decade and, between 2009 and 2018, the average was 6,500 square kilometers. The far-right president has encouraged development of the biome and dismissed global handwringing about its destruction as a plot to hold back the nation’s agribusiness. At the same time, his administration defanged environmental authorities and legislative measures to loosen land protections have advanced, emboldening land grabbers.

“In two and a half years, the Bolsonaro government has managed to provoke a situation of destruction and chaos in the environment,” Suely Araujo, a former president of the environmental regulator, Ibama, told The Associated Press. “A group of factors is delegitimizing enforcement. There is an anti-policy that has no way of going right.”

More recently, Brazil’s government has been trying to improve its environmental credibility with the U.S. As a presidential candidate last year, Joe Biden proposed countries provide Brazil with $20 billion to fight deforestation. His presidential administration has since made clear it would only be willing to contribute once Brazil shows concrete progress, and talks have stalled.

During the U.S.-led climate summit in April, Bolsonaro shifted his tone on Amazon preservation and exhibited willingness to step up commitment. And, in late June, he issued a decree returning soldiers to the Amazon to bolster policing against logging and other illegal land clearance – even as environmental groups allege the mobilization is mostly symbolic, given troops are ill-prepared to conduct oversight.

Vice President Hamilton Mourão, who leads the nation’s Amazon Council, said he aimed to cut deforestation by 10% this year. He acknowledged on Aug. 2 that perhaps only half that goal would be attained, an amount he told reporters was “very small, very paltry, but some progress.″

Deter data show a 5% decrease from the prior year. Greenpeace senior forest campaigner Cristiane Mazzetti told The Associated Press she expects the complete Prodes data to show deforestation exceeded 10,000 square kilometers in 2020-2021.

Mazzetti highlighted the advance of bills like one, presented last year, that would increase the size of public lands that can be made legal for private ownership without in-person surveys from authorities. Derided by environmentalists as “the land grabbing bill," it is has broad support from Bolsonaro-allied lawmakers and those who champion agribusiness, and was approved by the lower house last week.

It is yet another signal to those who invade public lands and clear pasture that they will be not only pardoned, but also compensated for their crimes, Mazzetti said.

“When deforestation was reduced years ago, it became common to deforest smaller areas, because the deforesters tried to evade the satellites. Today, that doesn’t happen anymore,″ she said. "We have the return of big deforesters, in areas bigger than 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) being opened up. That shows there is no longer any intimidation.”

Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan visited Brazil last week and met with three governors from Brazil’s nine Amazonian states. One of them, Para’s Gov. Hélder Barbalho, told the AP that Sullivan spoke of the U.S. intent to help Brazil with investments in a new model of sustainable development, but that the American envoy didn’t specify amounts.

“We emphasized the need to value the standing forest with implementation of sustainable agribusiness, making it so that (the forest) becomes an economic asset,” Barbalho said. “For that, we need a solid partnership for investments in cutting-edge technology and payment of subsidies.”

Para accounted for 39% of deforestation from 2020 to 2021, according to Deter data, the most of any Amazonian state.

While in the capital Brasilia, Sullivan didn’t meet with Brazil’s environment minister, whose predecessor Ricardo Salles resigned in June amid sharp criticism of his tenure and two investigations into his actions involving allegedly illegal timber operations. Salles has denied all wrongdoing.

Bizarre ‘Whalefish’ Just Made a Rare Appearance to Explorers


Matthew Hart
Thu, August 12, 2021,

As ocean explorers continue to scour the seas for more discoveries—and gobs and gobs of precious minerals—Earth’s salty waters continue to spew forth endless bizarro creatures. Like so many water-type Pokémon, we’ve seen everything from dangly anglerfish to ballooning eels to, of course, tons of weird octopi. Now, however, an ultra-rare wild whalefish has appeared! And it has no scales, tiny eyes, and is generally haunting.

A fiery orange whalefish swimming through the dark-blue depths of the ocean.

MBARI

Live Science picked up on the new glimpse of the whalefish. Which, let us tell you people, is a bizarre creature even for life residing in the “midnight zone” of the ocean. The midnight zone is also known as the “bathyal zone, which covers the entire ocean and spans from a depth of 3,300 feet to 10,000 feet. This particular specimen swam past a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) as the submersible explored waters at a depth of 6,600 feet, offshore from Monterey Bay, California.

For the unfamiliar, whalefish, or cetomimiformes, are fish that look like whales. (Surprise!) That’s where the similarities end, though. As the whalefish’s odd breeding methods and growth cycles mean that things get real whacky. Male whalefish, for example, feed off of their huge livers and use their large nasal organs to sniff for females. The males also look utterly different from the females due to the order of fish displaying extreme sexual dimorphism.

In the video above, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) shows us their glimpse of a female whalefish. Note that females are much larger than the males—18 inches versus 1.5 inches!—and have a fiery orange color. The color is intrinsic and not due to the ROV’s lights; that incredible hue happens to help the fish blend in.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the female whalefish, however, is how it sees. Or rather, doesn’t see. As a female whalefish evolves from a larva (or a “tapetail”) into an adult, it loses its eyes’ lenses and the ability to form images. Consequently, a system of pressure-sensing pores that runs along its head and down the length of its body develops. Which, in turn, allows it to detect its surroundings via vibrations in the water. And while that’s clever and Daredevil-esque, we’re beginning to get an idea of why whalefish are so rare.

Feature image: MBARI

The post Bizarre ‘Whalefish’ Just Made a Rare Appearance to Explorers appeared first on Nerdist.

Calling hydrogen a zero-emissions fuel is wrong, new study says — energy industry cries foul

 Aug. 13, 2021

By Rachel Koning Beals

Report titled ‘How Green is Blue Hydrogen?’ generates buzz, and pushback, as Biden, Congress and Wall Street promote the energy source in path toward zero emissions


One of the world's first plants for the production of climate-friendly hydrogen by Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell is in Germany. A new study takes aim at the energy source touted by President Joe Biden, the International Energy Agency and some major energy companies. AFP/GETTY IMAGES


Clean hydrogen is a fuel the Biden administration believes will be part of the toolkit necessary to propel the U.S. to zero emissions by 2050, not to mention a 50% cut in those emissions as soon as the end of this decade. But a peer-reviewed study out Thursday argues that the fuel’s credentials need reconsideration.

Some energy-industry and clean-air analysts raised their own concerns that the study, published in the Energy Science & Engineering journal by researchers from Cornell and Stanford Universities, misapplied short-term findings to a long-term view, made other flawed assumptions, and risked sidelining the evolving technology prematurely.

Hydrogen is already used in some applications but has historically been too expensive to directly replace fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency, in an anti-oil report that surprised many earlier this year, has factored in hydrogen’s role in the new-energy world.

Most hydrogen used today is extracted from natural gas NG00, -2.14% in a process that emits carbon dioxide as well as the more-fleeting, but more-potent, methane. It’s these emissions that the study mostly focuses on.

The researchers, Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist and ecosystem scientist at Cornell, and Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and director of its Atmosphere/Energy program, examined the lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions of “blue” hydrogen, accounting for emissions of both carbon dioxide and unburned, fugitive methane (The U.N. has stepped up its concerns that methane be addressed sooner than later).

As the natural-gas industry looks toward more hydrogen production, it pushes capturing emissions, which then leaves “blue” hydrogen, as the industry calls it. That’s short of “green,” but still curtails the pollution. “Green” hydrogen would ultimately need to be made using zero-emissions renewable energy, such as wind or solar, and electrolyzing water to separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen. Renewable energy is not yet common enough — although it is getting more cost competitive — to replace natural gas in this process.

The paper argues that across the “blue” hydrogen supply chain, the process actually emits more than simply burning natural gas for its traditional uses.

The researchers accounted for carbon dioxide emissions and the methane that leaks from equipment during natural-gas production. They assumed that 3.5% of the gas drilled from the ground leaks into the atmosphere, basing that percentage on mounting research that argues natural-gas drilling puts off more methane than previously known. And they added in the natural gas required to power the carbon-capture technology.

In total, they found that the greenhouse-gas footprint of blue hydrogen was more than 20% greater than just burning natural gas or coal for heat, and 60% more than burning diesel oil for heat.

“Our analysis assumes that captured carbon dioxide can be stored indefinitely, an optimistic and unproven assumption,” they said. “Even if true though, the use of blue hydrogen appears difficult to justify on climate grounds.”

Record Salmon in One Place. Barely Any in Another. Alarm All Around.


Victoria Petersen
Fri, August 13, 2021

An aerial view of the Yukon River in Alaska, Aug. 3, 2021. 

(Ash Adams/The New York Times)

This summer, fishers in the world’s largest wild salmon habitat pulled a record-breaking 65 million sockeye salmon from Alaska’s Bristol Bay, beating the 2018 record by more than 3 million fish.

But on the Yukon River, about 500 miles to the north, salmon were alarmingly absent. This summer’s chum run was the lowest on record, with only 153,000 fish counted in the river at the Pilot Station sonar — a stark contrast to the 1.7 million chum running in year’s past. The king salmon runs were also critically low this summer — the third lowest on record. The Yukon’s fall run is also shaping up to be sparse.

The disparity between the fisheries is concerning — a possible bellwether for the chaotic consequences of climate change; competition between wild and hatchery fish; and commercial fishing bycatch.

“This is something we’ve never seen before,” said Sabrina Garcia, a research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “I think that we’re starting to see changes due to climate change, and I think that we’re going to continue to see more changes, but we need more years of data.”

The low runs have had ripple effects for communities along the Yukon River and its tributaries — the Andreafski, Innoko, Anvik, Porcupine, Tanana and Koyukuk rivers — resulting in a devastating blow to the people relying on salmon as a food staple, as feed for sled dogs and as an integral and enriching cultural tradition spanning millenniums.

“We have over 2,000 miles of river, and our numbers are so low,” said Serena Fitka, the executive director of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association. “Where are all our fish? That’s the question hanging over everyone’s head.”

Because the critically low runs of chinook and chum didn’t meet escapement goals, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game prohibited subsistence, commercial and sports fishing on all of the Yukon, leaving nearly 50 communities with basically no salmon.

“When we have a disaster of this magnitude, where people are worried about their food security, they’re worried about their spiritual security, they’re worried about the future generations’ ability to continue our way of life and culture — our leadership is very anxious,” said Natasha Singh, who is general counsel for the Tanana Chiefs Conference, a tribal organization representing 42 villages in an interior Alaska region nearly the size of Texas. “Our people are very anxious. They want to remain Athabascan-Dene. They want to remain Native, and that’s at risk.”

It’s not the first time salmon runs on the Yukon River and its tributaries have plummeted, but this summer’s record low numbers feel particularly distressing. A large stretch of the Yukon River carries only two of the five species of salmon found in Alaska: chinook and chum.

“When one species crashes, we’re kind of shocked, but we’re OK because we know we can eat from the other stock,” said Ben Stevens, the tribal resource commission manager for Tanana Chiefs Conference. “But, this year is unprecedented in that we don’t have either stock there. They’re both in the tank.”

Yukon River chinook salmon have been in decline for decades, shrinking in size and in quantity as the years pass. The region is also seeing mass die-offs of salmon. In 2019, thousands of chum carcasses washed up on the banks of the Yukon River and its tributaries, which scientists blamed on heat stress from water temperatures nearing 70 degrees, about 10-15 degrees higher than typical for the area.

While warming waters can create an inhospitable habitat for salmon, some research indicates that the heat benefited the sockeye in Bristol Bay, boosting the food supply for young salmon.

Some fish processors are donating excess fish from Bristol Bay to communities along the Yukon. SeaShare and other Alaska fish processors are coordinating donations, and more salmon is expected to be shipped in the next few weeks.

“It’s so heartwarming to have our fellow Alaskans reach out and provide donations,” Stevens said. “I’m just kind of sad that we’ve allowed the situation to get this bad.”

Stevens is a Koyukon Athabascan from Stevens Village, a small community northwest of Fairbanks, Alaska, where the Trans-Alaska Pipeline crosses over the Yukon River. He toured the region last month to hear how communities are coping with the low runs. He said people are scared about a winter with no food, and for the consequences that come with being disconnected from the land and animals. With the loss of fish also comes “the incredible loss of culture,” Stevens said.

Meat harvested from the land is a core food for people living off Alaska’s road system, whose communities are accessible only by boat or plane. Steep shipping costs and long travel times make fresh food at village stores prohibitively expensive and limited; the custom of harvesting food together with friends and family goes back thousands of years.

No salmon also means no fish camp — an annual summer practice where families gather along the rivers to catch, cut and preserve salmon for the winter, and where important life lessons and values are passed down to the next generation.

“We go out and we pass on our tradition over thousands of years from the young to the old,” said PJ Simon, a chief and chairman of the Tanana Chiefs Conference. “That’s our soul. That’s our identity. And that’s where we get our courage, our craftsmanship, for everything that has led up to where we are today.”

Model and activist Quannah Chasinghorse, 19, travels to her family’s fish camp every summer. Chasinghorse is Han Gwich’in and Oglala Lakota, and is from the Eagle, Alaska.

“Every time I go out to fish camp there’s something new I notice that’s different — due to climate change, due to so many different things — and it breaks my heart because I want to be able to bring my children, and I want them to experience how beautiful these lands are,” Chasinghorse said. “I want to see younger generations fishing and laughing and having fun and knowing what it’s like to work hard out on the land.”

The future of Yukon salmon runs remains uncertain. But there’s still time for fishers in the region to adapt to the effects of climate change and to different management approaches, said Singh, the attorney. If salmon are allowed to rebound, then “our children will be fishing people,” she said.

“We shouldn’t conclude that climate change is going to change our fisheries to the point where we have to give up our identity,” Singh said.

Stevens said state and federal natural resource managers “need more Indigenous science” and more “traditional resource management principles in play right now.”

“I think we need folks to know that the last great salmon run on this globe, the last wild one, is about ready to end,” Stevens said. “But, we can stop it.”

© 2021 The New York Times Company

Animal rescuer who uses drones to find animals after natural disasters says it’s the ‘look on an animal’s face’ that keeps him going

Rachel Grumman Bender and Jacquie Cosgrove

Thu, August 12, 2021, 

Animal rescuer and cinematographer Douglas Thron’s passion for animals began when he was a little kid. “I started rescuing orphaned baby animals,” Thron tells Yahoo Life. “And I wanted to be a wildlife cinematographer.”

When Thron grew up, he did just that, working as a cinematographer for shows like Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week,” filming the Great White sharks off the coast of Santa Cruz, Calif., along with doing aerial cinematography for NatGeo. But Thron says it was the Paradise fire in California in 2018 that “pushed” him to do animal rescue activism work, putting his aerial cinematography skills to good use.

At the time, Thron was working as a cinematographer filming a man who was rescuing cats after the fire using an infrared handheld camera. The camera uses heat to detect the animals at night. Thron and the man talked about how incredible it would be to put one on a drone to detect animals more easily. “The animal’s body temperature will glow on the screen and you can pick them out amongst the rubble,” explains Thron.

Cinematographer Douglas Thron rescues animals after natural disasters using an infrared drone. (Photo: CuriosityStream)

He explains that flying a drone over a big disaster gives you “a real feel for how extensive the disaster is,” adding: “You definitely get inspired to drop everything to help as much as possible. The feeling I get when I rescue an animal is most definitely an incredible feeling, so it just keeps me going.”

The first animal Thron ever rescued was a dog in the Bahamas after a category 5 hurricane hit, which “wiped out hundreds of houses,” he says. Thron tested out putting an infrared scope on a drone and found the dog “literally in the middle of the giant debris pile where hundreds of houses had been smashed,” he says. “I flew the drone over and I found him. I was able to rescue him. And nobody claimed him after 30 days so I adopted him, and he’s a super wonderful dog.”

Thron with a koala rescued after the devastating fires in Australia in 2020. (Photo: CuriosityStream)

Thron adds that he’s basically been “going non-stop since then.” His TV show, Doug to the Rescue, shows some of his heartwarming animal rescues, including after Hurricane Laura in Louisiana in 2020 and after fires in Northern California and Oregon. Thron also helped rescue koalas after fires ravaged parts of Australia in 2020, using infrared-equipped drones for the first time there to help locate the animals.

“The drone really shaves off critical time so that the really badly hurt animals are able to be rescued,” Thron says. Once the infrared scope pics up the “heat signature of an animal,” Thron turns a spotlight on the animal and zooms in on it, so he and the rescue crews can go save the animal.

Thron’s dream is to one day have an animal rescue ranch where he can train others on flying drones and to make infrared drones "as popular for rescuing animals as helicopters are for rescuing people after a disaster,” he says.

Thron with a rescue puppy. (Photo: CuriosityStream)

The work isn’t easy, but it’s rewarding. Thron shares that the “look on an animal’s face” keeps him going. “They need our help,” he says. Rescuing animals has led to many touching moments, including reuniting people with their beloved lost pets, or “when we’re rescuing animals after fires and their bodies are badly burned and then you see later on in the episode cats and dogs all fat and happy and sitting under Christmas trees and stuff like that,” he says, cracking a smile.

It’s the technology, as well as Thron’s dedication, that has made all of the difference. “It blows me away how many more animals we’re able to save now,” Thron says, “and how much faster we can save them before they might pass away after a disaster.”

Video produced by Jacquie Cosgrove.

VIDEO Animal rescuer who uses drones to find animals after natural disasters says it’s the ‘look on an animal’s face’ that keeps him going (yahoo.com)