The Complicated Popularity of Net-Zero Emissions Climate Targets


Jennifer Fergesen

TIME
Mon, October 17, 2022 

Germany Plans 40 New Coal-Fired Power Plants

A loan wind turbine spins as exhaust plumes from cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde lignite coal-fired power station, owned by Vatenfall, April 12, 2007 in Jaenschwalde, Germany. Credit - Sean Gallup—Getty Images

When the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco announced in 2012 that it planned to reach net-zero at its waterfront home, no one expected that seagull droppings would become part of the equation.

But that’s just what happened after the museum installed enough solar panel arrays to provide 80% of the building’s electricity needs—piles of gull guano reduced energy generation by up to 15%. “A seagull dropping in the wrong spot can turn off a whole panel,” says Shani Krevsky, project director for campus facilities at the Exploratorium. For the museum, seagulls were just one of the many variables involved in the complex accounting problem that is net-zero.

Whether it’s a public learning laboratory, nonprofit organization, small business, corporation, or government doing the math, achieving net-zero involves balancing an equation. On one side of the equation is the amount of greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere from sources such as energy and transportation; on the other is the amount taken out by sinks, such as plants and technological methods like carbon capture and storage. Though CCS is a promising technology, the world’s current capacity for carbon storage (40 million metric tons) is just one-thousandth of annual greenhouse gas emissions (40.8 billion metric gigatons), so pathways to net-zero primarily depend on emitting less.

Some related terms to net-zero include carbon neutral, zero carbon, and carbon negative. Carbon neutral is sometimes used as a synonym for net-zero, but it can exclude other greenhouse gasses like methane; zero carbon means getting rid of all carbon dioxide emissions without the need for sinks; and carbon negative (also called climate positive) is an ambitious goal that involves capturing more carbon than one emits.

‘A Straightforward Proposition’

Net-zero is ideally a global goal. When the equation balances worldwide, global warming will plateau—so the world should aim to reach net-zero before temperatures rise beyond the 1.5 degree Celsius increase from pre-industrial levels set as a target in the 2015 Paris Agreement. To avoid the worst consequences of climate change, the deadline is 2050, according to international scientific consensus highlighted in the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Read more: The World’s Top Carbon Emitters Now All Have Net Zero Pledges. Most of Them Are Too Vague

In reality, there is no global authority that can compel the world to meet this deadline, though the United Nations is doing its best to encourage commitments. Net-zero efforts are therefore a patchwork of governments, companies, and organizations of all sizes. The more that sign on (including small businesses and nonprofits), the more feasible the global goal becomes.

When a country announces it wants to reach net-zero, it’s referring to emissions within its borders. More than 70 countries have announced net-zero targets, though only a handful have legally bound themselves to these commitments with legislation, including the European Union, Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. (In most cases, it’s unclear how these governments will enforce their own legislation against themselves.) Governments can work toward these goals by spending money on renewable energy and other infrastructure needed to move away from fossil fuels, reinforcing the electric grid, and passing laws that encourage electric vehicles and other low-emission technology, among other legislation.

The United States has not passed a formal net-zero commitment, but the Biden administration has expressed a goal to reach net-zero by 2050. Last year, the Net-Zero America project at Princeton University published a report outlining five possible ways to achieve that goal. Some models depend primarily on switching to renewable energy, while others include nuclear power and a major expansion of carbon capture technology. All are technically feasible but involve expanding infrastructure at an unprecedented rate, especially the electrical grid, which will see a huge increase in demand with a shift to electric cars, heating systems, and other appliances. This will involve up-front costs, but “there’s a lot more jobs in a net-zero future than there are in a sort of business-as-usual,” says Eric Larson, co-author of the study and senior research engineer at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.

Companies, organizations, and institutions can also announce net-zero targets, usually referring to emissions associated with their operations. Over 5,000 businesses, including major multinationals like Unilever and Maersk, have committed to reaching net-zero by 2050 through the United Nations Race To Zero campaign, along with over 400 large investors. Some Race to Zero participants have also announced more ambitious goals, such as Microsoft’s plan to become carbon negative by 2030 and to remove the equivalent of its historic carbon emissions by 2050.

Read more: The Problem With Corporate Net-Zero Emissions Goals

Investor pressure is one of the main reasons for companies to reduce their carbon emissions, says Kirsten Snow Spalding, senior program director of the Ceres Investor Network, a network of 220 institutional investors managing more than $60 trillion. The investor network is part of the Boston-based sustainability nonprofit Ceres and is a founding partner of the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative.

“For investors, I think this is a straightforward proposition: It’s about risk and return,” Spalding says. Companies may lose money due to carbon taxes and other regulatory risks if they don’t decarbonize, as well as physical and reputational risks. “They’re not climate activists. They’re trying to deal with a global economic problem, one that has real financial consequences.”

Accounting for the Carbon

Carbon taxes, which require companies to pay a predetermined rate based on their emissions, are a form of carbon pricing, a hallmark of some regulatory frameworks for reaching net-zero. Cap-and-trade is another form; it sets a limit on greenhouse gasses and allows companies that don’t meet that limit to sell their extra carbon credits to other companies. There are various regional cap-and-trade systems in place around the world, including three in the U.S. that involve 23 states, as well as the EU Emissions Trading System, and pilot programs in several Chinese cities.

Then there’s the offset market, a market-based form of carbon pricing that can exist either with regulatory oversight (mandatory) or without (voluntary). With offsets, companies can pay for carbon credits that represent a greenhouse gas reduction somewhere else in the world and subtract the amount from their own emissions. Sometimes this means paying for carbon capture and storage. Other times an offset involves efforts like planting trees, protecting a stretch of rainforest, or paying another company to emit less in the future. Companies often use offsets to help achieve their emissions targets, but some offsets, especially in the voluntary market, have been criticized for being difficult to measure or allowing companies to meet their goals without bringing the world closer to net-zero.

“Carbon pricing could actually be a solution to so much,” says Vinay Shandal, who leads the climate and sustainability practice for North America at the big-three firm Boston Consulting Group. “But how do I verify it? How do I measure it? How do I confirm it will stay there forever? … That’s why carbon accounting and reporting matter.”

Read more: Carbon Credits Should Be One of Our Best Tools to Fight Climate Change—If We Use Them Right

Reporting, regulatory frameworks, and corporate commitments will all be key to achieving net-zero by 2050, which the UN says the world is far from achieving, taking into account all the commitments made by countries that signed the Paris Agreement. But it will also involve countless individual commitments and compromises: farmers allowing wind energy providers to use their land, homeowners accepting electric ranges and heat pumps, and facilities managers figuring out how to keep birds from defecating on the solar panels. At the Exploratorium, bird deterrent filaments did the trick.

For Krevsky, working on the edge of the San Francisco Bay, the reasons to care about net-zero are clear. “We are on the waterfront, so we’ll be on the frontlines of sea level rise in the coming years,” she says. “So showing smart development and good design practices that help enable energy efficiency is paramount.”

This article is part of a series on key topics in the climate crisis for time.com and CO2.com, a division of TIME that helps companies reduce their impact on the planet. For more information, go to co2.com

US Atlantic coast now a breeding ground for supercharged hurricanes – study

Nina Lakhani in New York
Mon, October 17, 2022

Photograph: Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images

The US Atlantic coast has become a breeding ground for super-charged hurricanes which are likely to batter coastal communities even harder if the world remains hooked on fossil fuels, a new study found.

Global heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning oil, gas and coal is the main factor contributing to increasingly severe storms and flooding affecting the American east coast over the past four decades. Rapid intensification has led to storms gathering strength so quickly it has become increasingly difficult to provide timely warnings and evacuation orders to residents.

The warming planet is poised to bring hurricanes that intensify quicker and, with them, a heightened risk of flooding to east coast communities which modeling suggests will get even worse without radical action to curb greenhouse gases, according to the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“The nearshore environment has absolutely become more favorable for hurricanes near the Atlantic coast and that’s very consistent with the rising hurricane intensification we’ve observed in the region,” said Balaguru, a climate scientist and lead author. “Our findings have profound implications for coastal residents, decision- and policy-makers.’

Analysing storm activity and the conditions that shaped them, the researchers found that the rates at which hurricanes gathered speed near the US Atlantic coast increased significantly between 1979 and 2018.

The Atlantic coast has a unique mix of environmental conditions not found in the Gulf of Mexico, another hurricane hotspot, that makes eastern US states particularly vulnerable to rapidly intensifying and wetter storms, according to researchers from the department of energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Last month, Hurricane Ian killed at least 126 people and caused widespread flooding and infrastructure damage in Florida after transforming from a tropical storm to a category 4 hurricane within 24 hours. Storms that intensify close to the shoreline pose a more serious threat to life, land and property, as rising sea levels means storm surge is higher and reaches further inland.

For a storm to explode in strength or undergo rapid intensification it requires near-perfect environmental conditions that do not happen often. But the ingredients needed for this perfect storm recipe – warm ocean surface, high humidity, low wind shear and the spinning motion of air (vorticity) – have become increasingly common as greenhouse gas emissions have built up, researchers found.

One major factor is that as the planet has warmed, the temperature difference between land and water has widened.

As higher air pressure over the cooler sea blows inland toward warmer, lower-pressure areas, the Earth’s rotation guides these winds in a cyclonic, swirling direction, sucking up warm, moist air and converting its energy into damaging winds. As moist air rises inside the hurricane’s core and cools toward the top, water vapor condenses and emits heat, further energizing the storm.

Warmer land temperatures strengthen this twisting motion that pulls humid air up, while a warmer sea surface – also a product of greenhouse gas warming – adds even more humidity, a crucial ingredient for intensification.

Another important factor is wind shear, which measures the strength and direction of wind higher up in the atmosphere.

The findings build on previous studies which found that the growing contrast in land-sea temperature is also associated with changing rainfall patterns and drought. “This study adds a new and important consequence – changes to hurricane behavior in coastal regions that could affect large populations around the world,” said Ruby Leung, atmospheric scientist and co-author.

Ian was one of the strongest storms to hit the US coast, but not the deadliest.

In 2017 in Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria, which caused the longest blackout in US history and led to 3,000 deaths, intensified from a category 1 to a category 5 hurricane within just 15 hours. The same mix of pro-hurricane conditions could form in many other regions, including those near the east Asian coastline and the northwest Arabian Sea, according to the study.

Projections using several climate models suggest that the destructive trend looks set to continue unless fossil fuels are phased out. Balaguru said: “What we have seen is likely related to climate change. Natural variability does play a role, but to a lesser degree.”

How did white students respond to school integration after Brown v. Board of Education?


Charise Cheney, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of Oregon
Sun, October 16, 2022 

THE CONVERSATION

The collective memory of school desegregation is of anger and division, like in this photo of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford walking away from a crowd outside a high school in Little Rock, Ark. 

Bettmann via Getty Images

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

What did white children have to say about their “all-white” schools integrating? – Julia M.N., age 11, New York City

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racially segregated schools violated the civil rights of Black students. Black Americans throughout the country celebrated the decision as a blow to anti-Black racism.

Whites’ reactions to the case varied, depending on where they lived and whether their local communities had a history of segregation, either through laws or just local customs and practices. White students’ acceptance of this social change was significantly shaped by their parents’ political beliefs about school desegregation.

Stories of peaceful transition to integration are less known than stories of white defiance.

The Supreme Court case was named for a lawsuit that originated in Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, opposing public school segregation. The segregationist Topeka School Board was embarrassed by the publicity associated with the case because of the history of Kansas as a state where slavery was illegal. So eight months before the landmark Supreme Court decision, the board members reversed their prior stance, resolving “to terminate … segregation in the elementary schools as rapidly as is practicable,” according to meeting minutes.

Those records also showed that some white parents threatened to withdraw their children if they were expected to share classrooms with Black students or Black teachers.

Other white parents embraced the new desegregation policy, like the parents of Clay Elementary School student Nancy Jones. Jones’ parents advised her to “be friendly with the new students and to treat them with kindness and respect.”

Although Black students began attending integrated schools in Topeka in 1954, it wasn’t until 1957 that the city assigned Black teachers to predominantly white schools. And even then, anticipating what it called “social hazards,” the School Board let white parents choose whether they wanted their kids to only have white teachers or to let the district assign students and teachers without regard to race.

The parents of Randolph Elementary School student Mike Worswick were among those who chose the latter. It was a decision that indirectly supported the integration of Black teachers.

“It turned out to be one of the best things of my life,” Worswick recalled in an interview years later. 

During Boston’s school desegregation debate in 1974, there was cheering as well as violence. 

AP Photo/PBR

Jones, whose parents had urged kindness, was upset when she found out about violence that erupted in other places across the nation.

“We never saw anything like that in Topeka,” she recalled in 2019.

Americans’ collective historical memory of desegregation is filled with visual images of white resistance in Southern cities like Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 and northern cities like Boston in 1974.

One iconic photo was taken at Little Rock’s Central High School on Sept. 4, 1957. That day, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block Black students’ entry into the school. Local newspaper photographer Will Counts photographed one of the Black students, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, after she was turned away from school. Eckford was surrounded by white students in the picture, as one named Hazel Bryan, also 15, is yelling at her.

The picture quickly spread through national news outlets, and Bryan became the symbolic face of Southern white racism. The notoriety haunted Bryan, who apologized to Eckford five or six years later.

While Bryan and her fellow students became a public spectacle, the fact that most whites did nothing was less remarked upon.

White students who supported integration knew that if they came to Black students’ aid, they risked social repercussions, or worse. Central High junior Robin Woods was “ashamed” of her peers’ behavior outside of school that September day, but did not get involved. When a Black classmate forgot his math book that day, though, Woods shared hers. That act of kindness was met with a “gasp of disbelief,” and a year of harassment followed.

Central High School senior Marcia Webb also witnessed her peers’ aggression toward the integrating Black students, who became known as the “Little Rock Nine.” At the time she was more interested in high school dances and athletic events than the emerging political storm, a racial privilege that was denied her new Black classmates.

“I’m sorry to say now, looking back, that what was happening didn’t have more significance and I didn’t take more of an active role,” she recalled. “But I was interested in the things that most kids are.”

As an adult, Webb expressed regret for her unwillingness to intervene:

“[H]urt can come from words, from silence even, from just being ignored.”

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. Like this article? subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

It was written by: Charise Cheney, University of Oregon.

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Trump administration blocked CDC transit mask mandate, report shows


The global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in New York City

Mon, October 17, 2022
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former President Donald Trump's administration at a crucial time in the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 blocked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from adopting a federal mandate requiring face masks on airline flights and other forms of transit, a congressional report released on Monday said.

Marty Cetron, a senior CDC official, is cited in the report as saying the federal public health agency began working on the proposed order in July 2020 after its experts determined that there was scientific evidence to support requiring masks in public and commercial transportation.

The report was released by a Democratic-led House of Representatives subcommittee examining pandemic-related issues.

The proposed order would have required masks on public and commercial transportation modes and hubs like airports, airplanes, trains and ride-sharing vehicles, Cetron said.

By July 2020, major airlines, regional transit systems and some airports had taken action on their own to mandate masks to try to curb the spread of COVID-19. But the report stated that CDC had heard from the transit industry that it wanted the federal government to issue a mandate.

Cetron, who heads the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine, said the agency was told by Trump administration officials that a mask requirement on mass transportation "would not happen," according to the report. Cetron also told the panel that masking requirements "could have made a significant contribution" to saving U.S. lives from COVID-19 in 2020.

The report quoted Cetron as saying Alex Azar and Robert Redfield, who at the time headed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC respectively, both had expressed support for the proposed order.

With more than a million deaths, the United States leads the world in reported COVID-19 fatalities. Democrats have accused Trump of overseeing a disjointed response to the pandemic. Trump himself was hospitalized with COVID-19 later in 2020.

Days after President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the CDC issued a sweeping order requiring face masks on nearly all forms of public transportation.

Cetron, who remains at the CDC, and an agency spokesperson declined to comment on Monday.

Reuters reported in July 2020 that the Trump administration had held extensive talks about whether the CDC should issue an order requiring transportation masking. The Trump White House instead announced that it opposed any efforts by Congress to require masks in transit. Trump was seeking re-election at the time. Many U.S. conservatives opposed government mandates requiring masks during the pandemic.

Representative James Clyburn, who chairs the House committee, said the report shows that Trump's administration "engaged in an unprecedented campaign of political interference in the federal government's pandemic response, which undermined public health to benefit the former president's political goals."

The Biden administration's transportation mask mandates were challenged in court. A Florida-based federal judge in April declared the order unlawful and lifted it. The administration has appealed the ruling. A U.S. appeals court has tentatively set arguments in the case for January.

The House report also said Trump's administration rejected a CDC plan to extend a no-sail order for cruise ships through the winter of 2020-2021 and instead issued a conditional order requiring the cruise industry to complete incremental steps before resuming operations.

The report cited Redfield as saying then-Vice President Mike Pence made the decision not to extend the no-sail order following lobbying from the industry and its allies.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Will Dunham)

CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House


Anne Schuchat, who served as the top career official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other CDC leaders detailed how Trump officials pressured the agency, according to a House report released Monday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)


Dan Diamond
Mon, October 17, 2022 

Appointees of President Donald Trump oversaw a concerted effort to restrict immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border during the pandemic, change scientific reports and muzzle top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to emails, text messages and interviews gathered by a congressional panel probing the pandemic response.

Former CDC director Robert Redfield, former top deputy Anne Schuchat and others described how the Trump White House and its allies repeatedly "bullied" staff, tried to rewrite their publications and threatened their jobs in an attempt to align the CDC with the more optimistic view of the pandemic espoused by Trump, the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis concluded in a report released Monday.

Several public health officials detailed a months-long campaign against Schuchat sparked by Trump appointees' belief that her grim assessments of the pandemic reflected poorly on the president, leading Schuchat, a 32-year CDC veteran, to openly wonder whether she would be fired in the summer of 2020, her colleagues told the panel.

The panel's latest report also offers new insight into key flash points, such as a CDC-backed plan to require masks on public and commercial transportation in the summer of 2020, with Martin Cetron, director of the agency's division of global migration and quarantine, citing evidence that the requirement would have reduced coronavirus risks to travelers.

The plan was backed by the travel industry and "could have made a significant contribution" by curbing infections and deaths ahead of a fall and winter virus surge that year, Cetron added, but Trump officials blocked the measure. President Biden later issued a similar order in his second day in office in January 2021.

Redfield and other officials told the panel that they believed they might be fired if they angered the White House, hindering the CDC's ability to fight the virus.

"If we constantly are finger-pointing and blaming somebody else for things, we lose the fact that the real enemy here was the virus," Cetron said in a May 2022 interview included in the report, adding that political infighting hampered the pandemic response. Cetron also criticized a federal order, Title 42, that used the pandemic as a public health reason to bar people from entering the United States at its borders with Canada and Mexico as an example of a poorly constructed policy where CDC experts were overruled.

The order was "handed to us," Cetron told the panel, saying that then-White House adviser Stephen Miller was among the officials who discussed the immigration restrictions. Other emails and media reports have linked Miller to the order's creation.

While Cetron said he and his team opposed the order, arguing it lacked a scientific basis because the coronavirus was already widely spreading in the United States and could lead to harm for asylum seekers, Redfield signed Title 42 in March 2020. The Trump administration characterized the measure, which allows the government to immediately send asylum seekers back to their home countries, as a way to prevent the spread of infection in detention cells, at border stations and in other crowded settings. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have since been turned away at the U.S.-Mexico border. The measure remains in place under the Biden administration after a district court judge in May blocked the administration's plan to lift the order.

The panel's report draws on more than 2,100 pages of transcribed interviews with Redfield, Schuchat, Cetron and 10 other current and former CDC officials that were newly released on Monday, in addition to prior interviews and testimony from people such as former White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx. The panel also released other documents, including a letter sent by a pair of former Trump appointees, Kyle McGowan and Amanda Campbell, who served as the CDC's chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, respectively, that detailed examples of political interference and poor treatment of CDC officials.

"The committee's report reflects a serious and fair look at what happened," McGowan said.

Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who chairs the panel, said that the report demonstrates how the Trump White House engaged in a concerted effort "to downplay the seriousness" of the pandemic.

"This prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts harmed the nation's ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis and put Americans at risk," Clyburn said in a statement.

Clyburn's panel has spent more than two years investigating the Trump administration's pandemic response, issuing reports that detailed White House pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to authorize unproven coronavirus treatments such as the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine; its efforts to overrule public health officials on coronavirus guidance for churches; and exploring how its focus on challenging the 2020 election outcome distracted from the virus response, among other findings.

Republicans have assailed the panel's reports as partisan, saying it has neglected to probe Biden administration virus missteps or the origins of the pandemic. GOP leaders vow to conduct their own investigations next year should they win control of the House or Senate. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky also acknowledged this summer that her agency had made significant mistakes during the pandemic, laying out a plan intended to speed up its recommendations, improve its communications and take other steps to win back public trust.

The report also details how Trump appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services worked to wrest control of the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, or MMWRs, which offer public updates on scientists' findings and had been considered off-limits to political appointees for decades.

McGowan and Campbell told the panel that fellow Trump appointees were angry about a May 2020 MMWR written by Schuchat that they believed did not give them sufficient credit for their efforts to contain the pandemic.

"Secretary [Alex] Azar, in particular, was upset and said that if the CDC would not get in line, then HHS would take control of approving the publication," McGowan and Campbell's lawyer wrote to the panel. As a result, Trump appointees increasingly received access to the CDC's draft summaries and sought to edit or block the reports, including one on the rise in hydroxychloroquine prescriptions that was held up for more than two months amid concerns it would call attention to an unproven treatment touted by Trump.

In a statement, Azar said that he "never pressured Dr. Redfield to modify the content of a single MMWR scientific article."

"I always regarded the MMWR and other peer-reviewed scientific publications as sacrosanct," Azar added, saying that he worked with Redfield to "protect the integrity" of the report's peer-review process after a "defect" was identified in May 2020. Azar did not specify the "defect" that needed to be addressed.

The panel concluded that Trump appointees had sought to "alter the contents, rebut, or delay the release" of 18 MMWRs and one health alert on an inflammation syndrome in children who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus, and succeeded at least five times.

CDC officials said the agency resisted the most significant efforts to edit their publications. "Was I concerned that there was an attempt to alter the scientific content of the MMWR? Yes. Do I think they were successful? No," Jay Butler, the CDC's deputy director of infectious diseases, told the panel in a November 2021 interview.

The panel also details repeated attempts by Trump appointees to pressure Schuchat, such as a personal phone call from then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows - the first time any White House chief of staff had called the CDC deputy, she said - that left her "very shaken," she told the panel, declining to offer details of the call, on the advice of HHS counsel.

Meadows did not immediately reply to an email sent to a spokesperson.

Schuchat was again targeted after an interview she gave to a medical journal in June 2020 in which she acknowledged the nation's struggles in containing the virus. HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo and his adviser Paul Alexander circulated internal emails claiming the CDC deputy was attempting "to damage the president."

Other officials described interactions with Caputo and Alexander where the two men "threatened" staff, such as when a CDC official spoke to NPR without the HHS spokesperson's permission in July, the panel said. Caputo "wanted to terminate the CDC official who set up the interview," McGowan and Campbell's lawyer wrote to the panel.

Caputo declined a request for comment. Alexander did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Redfield said that he repeatedly told Caputo that Alexander should stop his barrage of emails to staffers demanding changes to CDC publications and accusing them of working to undermine Trump. "I advocated to Caputo, probably around [late June], that he should get rid of this guy. He's not helpful," Redfield told the panel.

But Alexander's messages continued until mid-September, when his emails leaked to the press and Caputo subsequently accused CDC scientists of sedition in a Facebook Live video. Caputo took a medical leave on Sept. 16, and Alexander left the agency the same day.

Redfield also said he clashed with the White House and Florida politicians about his plan to reissue a "no-sail order" that would keep the nation's cruise ships in dock, given evidence that the coronavirus could rapidly spread aboard the vessels and sicken and potentially kill vulnerable passengers.

"I was signing it . . . [even] if that meant that I was resigning or being fired as CDC director," Redfield told the panel. He said he was eventually able to reach a compromise in October 2020 that kept the ships in dock until the cruise industry instituted more safety precautions.

Hair-straightening products linked with uterine cancer risk -study



Mon, October 17, 2022 

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) - Hair-straightening products may significantly increase the risk of developing uterine cancer among those who use them frequently, a large study published on Monday suggests.

"We estimated that 1.64% of women who never used hair straighteners would go on to develop uterine cancer by the age of 70, but for frequent users, that risk goes up to 4.05%," study leader Alexandra White of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Safety (NIEHS) said in a statement.

"However, it is important to put this information into context. Uterine cancer is a relatively rare type of cancer," she added.

Still, uterine cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with rates rising, particularly among Black women.

Researchers tracked 33,947 racially diverse women, ages 35 to 74, for an average of nearly 11 years. During that time, 378 women developed uterine cancer.

After accounting for participants' other risk factors, the odds of developing uterine cancer were more than two and a half times higher for women who had used straightening products more than four times in the previous year.

Less frequent straightener use in the past year also was associated with an elevated uterine cancer risk, but the difference was not statistically significant, meaning it might have been due to chance.

Earlier studies have shown that hair straighteners contain so-called endocrine disrupting chemicals. The products have previously been associated with higher risks of breast and ovarian cancer.

"These findings are the first epidemiologic evidence of association between use of straightening products and uterine cancer," White and colleagues wrote in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "More research is warranted to ... identify specific chemicals driving this observed association."

The link between straightener use and uterine cancer did not differ by race in the study.

But "because Black women use hair straightening or relaxer products more frequently and tend to initiate use at earlier ages than other races and ethnicities, these findings may be even more relevant for them," Che-Jung Chang of NIEHS said in a statement.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; editing by Bill Berkrot)

U.S. Supreme Court gives boost to Domino's in arbitration case


: A Domino's Pizza restaurant is seen in Los Angeles

Mon, October 17, 2022

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave a boost to Domino's Pizza Inc's bid to force delivery drivers to bring a wage lawsuit in private arbitration rather than in court in a case from California that could have major implications for gig economy companies.

The justices threw out a lower court's ruling that had let a group of drivers pursue a class action lawsuit seeking to recoup work-related expenses because their local deliveries represented the final step in the flow of goods over state lines.

The justices ordered the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the case in light of the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in June that Southwest Airlines Co could not force an overtime pay lawsuit by baggage handlers into arbitration because the workers routinely load cargo onto planes that cross state lines.

A U.S. law called the Federal Arbitration Act requires the enforcement of agreements that workers sign with companies to bring legal disputes in arbitration, but it exempts transportation workers engaged in interstate commerce.

More than half of private-sector U.S. employees have signed arbitration agreements, which typically also bar class action claims. Business groups have called arbitration a quicker and more efficient alternative to suing in court. Workers' advocates have said that process tends to favor employers.

Three delivery drivers sued Domino's in California state court in Santa Ana in 2020, accusing the company of violating various wage laws, and the case was subsequently transferred to federal court.

Domino's made a motion to send the claims to arbitration, citing agreements that the drivers had signed barring them from suing in court. A federal judge in Santa Ana denied the motion, ruling that the drivers were exempt from arbitration because they were involved in interstate commerce.

The 9th Circuit last year upheld the judge's decision, finding that the drivers were integral in getting products that came from outside California to their final destinations. Domino's then appealed to the Supreme Court.

There has been a growing number of lawsuits filed in courts around the country asserting that local delivery drivers qualify for the interstate commerce exemption because they handle goods coming from other states such as various ingredients used to make Domino's pizza and other prepared foods.

The scope of the exemption has divided federal appeals courts in cases involving Grubhub Inc, Uber Technologies Inc and its subsidiary Postmates Inc, and Amazon.com Inc "last mile" delivery workers.

Up to 20 arrested after striking truckers block plant exits

Mon, October 17, 2022

PLYMPTON, Mass. (AP) — Striking truckers used tractor-trailers to block the exits at New England’s largest wholesale food distributor Monday and prevented some employees from leaving, resulting in as many as 20 arrests, police said.

More than 400 Teamster union members arrived at the Sysco facility in Plympton, Massachusetts, in the early morning and stopped about 100 employees from leaving, Police Chief Matthew Ahl said in a statement.

Police spent two hours negotiating with picketers.

“After the attempted negotiation to move union members out of the roadway to create a safe passable environment, unfortunately we had to respond by removing members of the crowd who were inciting a hostile picket line," the chief said.

Sixteen to 20 people were arrested on charges including disorderly conduct and assault and battery, he said. After the arrests, traffic started to flow safely.

About 300 Sysco drivers represented by the Teamsters Local 653 started their strike Oct. 1 seeking better pay and benefits. Voicemails seeking comment were left with union representatives.

Houston-based Sysco, which has distribution facilities across the country, supplies food to schools, hospitals, nursing homes and restaurants.

A Sysco spokesperson said in a statement Monday that the company remains committed to reaching a “competitive labor agreement" with Local 653.

“While we are disappointed in the Teamsters leadership’s ongoing decision to have our employees out on strike without letting them vote, we respect their right to do so under the law," the company said. “What we can’t respect is violence, disorderly conduct, intimidation, or threats, on or off the strike line, targeting our employees, vendors, customers, or the public."

The Sysco warehouse in Plympton, south of Boston, is still operating with third-party drivers. The facility stocks about 13,000 products, according to the company’s website.

Sysco employees at a company facility near Syracuse, New York, had also been on strike, but the sides reached an agreement last week.

Ute Indian Tribe Blasts Biden’s National Monument at Camp Hale



Isabella Rosario
Fri, October 14, 2022 

The Utah-based Ute Indian Tribe says the Biden administration failed to formally consult their government before designating Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in Colorado this week--a process required by federal law.

In a news release Wednesday, tribal leaders called the decision "an act of genocide to attempt to erase the history and connection of the tribe to these lands."

"These new monuments are an abomination and demonstrate manifest disregard and disrespect of the Ute Indian Tribe's treaty rights and sovereign status as a federally recognized Indian Tribe," said Shaun Chapoose, chairman of the tribe's business committee and an Uncompahgre Band member.

Biden used his authority under the Antiquities Act to designate the new 53,804-acre monument, which includes Camp Hale, a former Army base where the 10th Mountain Division trained to fight in World War II. It is located within the homelands of the tribe's Uncompahgre Band, who were forced out of the area by the U.S. in 1880.

The Ute Indian Tribe is one of three Ute Nation tribes in the western U.S. with ancestral ties to the land. Both the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute have spoken in favor of the monument and attended the proclamation ceremony on Wednesday.

Chapoose told the Associated Press that the White House only called his tribe about a potential monument at Camp Hale a week ago.

"What frustrated us is that they didn't want us there to comment, they wanted us there for the photo opp," Chapoose told the AP, adding that he was invited to the event, but left out of frustration. "I don't expect them to roll out a red carpet, but I expect a little common courtesy. If I'm just going to be one of the Indians that you want to photograph, I'm the wrong Indian to call."

A senior Biden administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the AP that officials met with each Ute tribe about the monument, and that the tribes all expressed support for it.

During his remarks on Wednesday, Biden mostly spoke of the site's historic significance to the U.S. military, but also acknowledged the Ute tribe's connection to the land.

"I'm also honored to be joined by several tribal leaders here, because this is your progeny, this magnificent land," Biden said. "These treasured lands tell the story of America. For thousands of years, tribal nations have been stewards of this sacred land, hunting game, foraging for medicinal plants, and maintaining a deep, spiritual bond with the land itself."

In their statement earlier this week, the Ute Indian Tribe reiterated their opinion that the U.S. should adopt a tribal consultation standard of free, prior, and informed consent. According to a 2021 White House report, many Indigenous leaders have criticized the current consultation process as a "box-checking exercise" that leaves tribes in the dark.

"The White House and the Administration have refused to recognize and uphold this international law principle as other developed nations with large Indigenous populations, such as Canada, have sought to do," Ute Indian Tribe leaders said in a statement. "Failing to abide by this international standard casts a cloud on the United States and diminishes its standing among the world's governments."

University of Tennessee dinosaur mummy provides new insight into soft tissue fossilization

College of Arts and Sciences

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE

In 2008, an Edmontosaurus “mummy” arrived at the North Dakota Geological Survey where lab technicians began the process of removing sediment and preparing the specimen for paleontologists to investigate. Nicknamed “Dakota,” the mummy revealed several unexpected features, such as extensive areas of fossilized skin and the presence of a broad fingernail on the end of dinosaur’s ‘mitten-like’ hand.

A paper published in PLOS reveals that these bite and potential claw marks in its beautifully preserved skin defied paleontological conventions on how such fossils formed.

“Conventional wisdom was telling us that ‘Dakota’ shouldn’t exist,” said Stephanie Drumheller, lead author and paleontologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “We needed to figure out how dinosaur skin, which had clearly been partially eaten, still managed to survive long enough to be buried and fossilized.”

Traditional understanding was that very rapid burial after death was necessary for soft tissue to end up in the fossil record. Burial is a great way to slow down many of the processes that break down remains, including predation and scavenging.

“Dinosaur mummies, however, never fit very well in this model,” Drumheller said. “They often appeared dried out, as if they had been baking under the sun for some time.”

In addition, long-term exposure would also leave the remains vulnerable to scavenging, which was thought to destroy any chance for the soft tissues to fossilize.

Fortunately, the field of forensic anthropology provided an alternate explanation. Modern research into patterns of decomposition suggests that partial scavenging of a carcass can, somewhat unintuitively, help dry and preserve skin over longer periods of time, even when the other soft tissues have decayed.

Researchers took digital images of the inside of “Dakota” that revealed the skeleton was preserved with the empty skin deflated around and appressed to the bones. All of the other internal organs were missing, which meant the dinosaur’s carcass could have laid on the landscape for weeks to months before burial – plenty of time for the organs and muscles to be eaten or decompose and for the skin to dry out and deflate before it was buried in sand.

“Not only has ‘Dakota’ taught us that durable soft tissues like skin can be preserved on partially scavenged carcasses, but these soft tissues can also provide a unique source of information about the other animals that interacted with a carcass after death, said Clint Boyd, Senior Paleontologist at the North Dakota Geological Survey.

NASA's Lucy spacecraft prepares to swing by earth

Reports and Proceedings

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

IMAGE: THIS ILLUSTRATION SHOWS THE LUCY SPACECRAFT PASSING ONE OF THE TROJAN ASTEROIDS NEAR JUPITER. view more 

CREDIT: CREDITS: SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

On Oct. 16, at 7:04 a.m. EDT, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, will skim the Earth’s atmosphere, passing a mere 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the surface. By sling-shotting past Earth on the first anniversary of its launch, Lucy will gain some of the orbital energy it needs to travel to this never-before-visited population of asteroids.

The Trojan asteroids are trapped in orbits around the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter, either far ahead of or behind the giant planet. Lucy is currently one year into a twelve-year voyage. This gravity assist will place Lucy on a new trajectory for a two-year orbit, at which time it will return to Earth for a second gravity assist. This second assist will give Lucy the energy it needs to cross the main asteroid belt, where it will observe asteroid Donaldjohanson, and then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm. There, Lucy will fly past six Trojan asteroids: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus. Lucy will then return to Earth for a third gravity assist in 2030 to re-target the spacecraft for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm.

For this first gravity assist, Lucy will appear to approach Earth from the direction of the Sun. While this means that observers on Earth will not be able to see Lucy in the days before the event, Lucy will be able to take images of the nearly full Earth and Moon. Mission scientists will use these images to calibrate the instruments.

Lucy’s trajectory will bring the spacecraft very close to Earth, lower even than the International Space Station, which means that Lucy will pass through a region full of earth-orbiting satellites and debris. To ensure the safety of the spacecraft, NASA developed procedures to anticipate any potential hazard and, if needed, to execute a small maneuver to avoid a collision.

“The Lucy team has prepared two different maneuvers,” says Coralie Adam, Lucy deputy navigation team chief from KinetX Aerospace in Simi Valley, California. “If the team detects that Lucy is at risk of colliding with a satellite or piece of debris, then--12 hours before the closest approach to Earth --the spacecraft will execute one of these, altering the time of closest approach by either two or four seconds. This is a small correction, but it is enough to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision.”

Lucy will be passing the Earth at such a low altitude that the team had to include the effect of atmospheric drag when designing this flyby. Lucy’s large solar arrays increase this effect.

“In the original plan, Lucy was actually going to pass about 30 miles closer to the Earth,” says Rich Burns, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “However, when it became clear that we might have to execute this flyby with one of the solar arrays unlatched, we chose to use a bit of our fuel reserves so that the spacecraft passes the Earth at a slightly higher altitude, reducing the disturbance from the atmospheric drag on the spacecraft’s solar arrays.”

At around 6:55 a.m. EDT, Lucy will first be visible to observers on the ground in Western Australia (6:55 p.m. for those observers). Lucy will quickly pass overhead, clearly visible to the naked eye for a few minutes before disappearing at 7:02 a.m. EDT as the spacecraft passes into the Earth’s shadow. Lucy will continue over the Pacific Ocean in darkness and emerge from the Earth’s shadow at 7:26 a.m. EDT. If the clouds cooperate, sky watchers in the western United States should be able to get a view of Lucy with the aid of binoculars.

“The last time we saw the spacecraft, it was being enclosed in the payload fairing in Florida,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Boulder, Colorado office. “It is exciting that we will be able to stand here in Colorado and see the spacecraft again. And this time Lucy will be in the sky.”

Lucy will then rapidly recede from the Earth’s vicinity, passing by the Moon and taking a few more calibration images before continuing out into interplanetary space.

“I’m especially excited by the final few images that Lucy will take of the Moon,” said John Spencer, acting deputy project scientist at SwRI. “Counting craters to understand the collisional history of the Trojan asteroids is key to the science that Lucy will carry out, and this will be the first opportunity to calibrate Lucy’s ability to detect craters by comparing it to previous observations of the Moon by other space missions.”

The public is invited to join the #WaveToLucy social media campaign by posting images of themselves waving towards the spacecraft and tagging the @NASASolarSystem account. Additionally, if you are in an area where Lucy will be visible, take a photograph of Lucy and post it to social media with the #SpotTheSpacecraft hashtag. Instructions for observing Lucy from your location are available here.

Hal Levison of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), in the Boulder Colorado office is the principal investigator. SwRI, headquartered in San Antonio, also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. NASA Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for Lucy. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado built the spacecraft, principally designed the orbital trajectory and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the Lucy spacecraft. Lucy is the thirteenth mission in NASA’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

For more information about the Lucy mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

or

http://lucy.swri.edu

NASA’s Lucy to fly past thousands of objects for earth gravity assist

Reports and Proceedings

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

IMAGE: NASA'S LUCY MISSION PASSES AN ASTEROID. ARTIST RENDITION view more 

CREDIT: NASA/SWRI

Mission engineers will track NASA’s Lucy spacecraft nonstop as it prepares to swoop near Earth on Oct. 16 to use this planet’s gravity to set itself on a course toward the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.

But they also will be closely tracking something else: more than 47,000 satellites, debris, and other objects circling our planet. A greater than 1-10,000 chance that Lucy will collide with one of these objects will require mission engineers to slightly adjust the spacecraft’s trajectory.

Although an adjustment is unlikely, and collisions are rare, the chances are increasing as the number of objects in Earth’s orbit grows, NASA experts say.

The International Space Station, for instance, has maneuvered out of the way of space debris 31 times since 1999, including three times since 2020.

“Low-Earth orbit is getting more crowded, so that has to be part of the consideration nowadays, especially for missions that fly low, like Lucy,” said Dr. Dolan Highsmith, chief engineer for the Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis group at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The group determines the probabilities of collisions between NASA’s robotic spacecraft and Earth-orbiting objects. NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston does the same for crewed spacecraft, such as the space station.

Launched on Oct. 16, 2021, Lucy is on a 12-year-journey to study multiple Trojan asteroids up close. It’ll be the first spacecraft to visit these remnants from the early solar system, helping scientists hone their theories on how the planets formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they ended up in their current configuration.

But Lucy has a long way to go before it arrives at the Trojans in 2027. The upcoming gravity assist is one of three the spacecraft will rely on to catapult itself to its deep-space targets.

When Lucy comes nearest to Earth for its first gravity assist it will cruise 220 miles (350 km) above the surface. That’s lower than the altitude of the space station and low enough that the spacecraft will be visible with the naked eye from western Australia for a few minutes starting at 6:55 p.m. local time (10:55 UTC). On its way down, Lucy will fly through the most crowded layer of Earth’s orbit, which is monitored by the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron. The squadron helps NASA identify close approaches.

Engineers began collision analysis for Lucy a week before the spacecraft’s Earth approach. Starting the process any earlier would render collision predictions futile, Highsmith said: “The further you're predicting into the future, the more uncertain you are about where an object is going to be.”

Determining the positions of spacecraft, plus orbiting satellites and debris, is challenging, particularly when trying to anticipate the future. Largely that’s because the Sun plays a major role in pulling or pushing objects around, and future solar activity is hard to predict. For example, the Sun’s activity — how much plasma and radiation it shoots out — affects atmosphere density, and thus how much friction will tug on a spacecraft and slow it down.

So the closer the collision assessment is to the Earth flyby time, the better. NASA sends Lucy’s whereabouts to the Space Force squadron daily. If the squadron determines that Lucy could intersect with something, Highsmith’s group will calculate the probability of a collision and work with the mission team to move the spacecraft, if necessary.

With such a high value mission, you really need to make sure that you have the capability, in case it's a bad day, to get out of the way,” Highsmith said.

Lucy navigation engineers have two maneuver options ready in case the spacecraft needs to avoid an object. Both maneuvers require engine burns to speed up the spacecraft, which is traveling about 8 miles (12 km) per second. Each maneuver can move Lucy’s closest approach to Earth up by 2 seconds or 4 seconds, respectively.

“That's enough to avoid any one thing that could be in the way,” said Kevin E. Berry, Lucy’s flight dynamics team lead from NASA Goddard.