Extreme weather is battering the world. What's the cause?

Alistair Walsh

DW

May 19, 2024

Climate change is fueling a surge in extreme weather events across the planet. It's a troubling sign of things to come.

What is the link between climate change and flooding in Brazil?

Floods and heat waves across Africa, deluges in southern Brazil, drought in the Amazon and extreme heat across Asia, including India: the news has been full of alarming weather disaster stories this year, and for good reason.

So far, 2024 has been a particularly bad for extreme weather, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), with droughts, extreme heat and floods causing severe damage to health and livelihoods.

"Almost every region in the world saw extreme weather and climate events of different natures," WMO climate expert Alvaro Silva told DW

And while not every individual extreme weather event can be attributed to climate change, they are becoming more likely and increasing in intensity due to the greenhouse emissions coming from burning coal, oil and gas.

Last year, the Northern Hemisphere had its hottest summer in the past 2,000 years, and globally, 2024 is on track to be even hotter.

What's the link between climate change and weather?

Climate change increases evaporation and puts more water vapor into the atmosphere. This causes more intense rainfall and flooding in some areas, and more extreme droughts in others. Warmer ocean temperatures intensify climate patterns, while higher overall temperatures lead to more frequent heat waves.

This plays havoc with global weather patterns, resulting in disparate effects across the planet.

"It's not only the frequency and intensity that you usually hear about, but it's also the changes in timing and duration of these extremes," said Silva. "We no longer know what is normal in the climate, because we see an increasing trend of extreme events."

What extreme weather is caused by climate change and what isn't?

The influence of climate change is apparent when looking at long-term weather trends, but determining its role in specific weather events has only recently become possible.

DW looked at three big weather events this year to see if climate change was a decisive factor.

Was there a link between climate change and the heat waves in India?

In April and continuing into May, India, along with many parts of Asia, suffered through a sweltering heat wave.

Parts of India experienced temperatures of 47 degrees Celsius (116 degrees Fahrenheit), leading to deaths and widespread misery. The heat wave has even called into question voter turnout in the world's largest democratic exercise, as India votes in protracted national elections.

Several politicians, election officials and campaign managers have reportedly fallen ill due the heat, including the federal roads minister who collapsed on stage.

"More than 900 billion voters need to go out in the outdoors and queue […] for hours and hours under the sun," said Leena Rikkila Tamang, Asia director of IDEA, a Sweden-based pro-democracy NGO. "We see a clear dip in voter turnout in comparison to the 2019 elections."

Parts of India hit a sweltering 47 degrees Celsius in recent weeks

Image: Debarchan Chatterjee/NurPhoto/picture alliance

The heat wave in India was 45 times more likely due to climate change and was 0.85 degrees Celsius hotter than it otherwise would have been, according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA). The WWA is an initiative of scientists investigating whether and to what extent human-induced climate change has played a role in recent extreme weather events.

"There is absolutely no doubt that as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels and, therefore, increase the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, these heat waves will become more frequent, more severe, and longer in their duration," Friederike Otto, who leads the organization, told DW.

The damage caused by extreme weather depends on the vulnerability of the population. Even a seemingly small temperature increase can cause major harm.

"In countries like India and other parts of South Asia, where lots and lots of people are working outdoors, they are much more exposed and more vulnerable to even relatively small changes in extreme heat," said Otto.

India's heat wave could affect the election  02:19nul

Did climate change play a role in the Brazil floods?

More than 100 people have died so far in severe floods in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, which has also caused billions of dollars of damage.

Almost 1.5 million people have been displaced, in what is reported to be the biggest case of climate migration in the country. The state government is even considering moving entire cities to avoid future catastrophes.

Brazil: Dozens dead in severe flooding

Severe flooding in southern Brazil has killed dozens and forced tens of thousands to leave their homes. Aid is proving difficult, and the governor has called it a "historic disaster".Image: Diego Vara/REUTERS

Submerged in water

Only the roofs of these houses in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul are still sticking out of the water. Severe storms have been raging in the region since Monday, causing flooding. At least 56 people have died in the floods so far, officials said on Saturday. Scores remain missing, so the number of victims could still rise.Image: Diego Vara/REUTERS

Hundreds of thousands affected
Those affected are literally up to their necks in water. The heavy rain has flooded entire regions and thousands have had to leave their homes. According to reports, around 320,000 homes currently have no electricity and more than half a million households are cut off from their drinking water supply. The authorities have declared a state of disaster.Image: Diego Vara/REUTERS

Some scientists have already pointed to the effects of climate change, on top of ongoing warming from El Nino, to explain the floods.

One study, published by the French group Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory], found the heavy rainfall that led to flooding could mostly be ascribed to human-driven climate change.

WWA is working on its own study, but Otto said previous floods in the country were clearly linked to climate change.

Vulnerability also plays a highly significant role in the damage caused by floods, with some engineers pointing to a lack of preparedness and infrastructure issues.
Did climate change make the recent glut of tornadoes in the US worse?

The US has been buffeted by an high number of tornadoes this year.

Over a period of four days, more than 100 tornadoes hit the Midwest and the Great Plains, "causing significant damage and loss of life," said officials.

The National Weather Service in Omaha, Nebraska, set a record by issuing 48 tornado warnings in a single day.

Spring tornadoes rip through US Midwest  01:31

But the causes of tornadoes are incredibly hard to pin down, because they are so localized. Climate change attribution studies work best on large-scale events over big areas, such as heat and cold extremes, and droughts.

With the exception of tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic, climate change has not been linked to increased wind speeds, especially over land, according to Otto.

"Given that we don't see changes in other kinds of wind speeds or other kinds of storms, I wouldn't expect to see a huge change, but that might be quite different for tornadoes because they are also a different phenomenon," she said.

Essentially, scientists can't say what kind of role climate change played, or if it did at all.

The US was hit with more than 100 tornadoes over a few days in AprilImage: Scott Schilke/Sipa USA/picture alliance

Hasn't extreme weather always happened?

History is awash with examples of extreme weather, even before the cogs of the Industrial Revolution began turning and humans started burning the fossil fuels responsible for climate change in earnest. Such events are natural phenomena, but climate change has very clearly made them far more likely and destructive, say experts.

Before the 1990s, about 70 to 150 weather and water-related hazards were reported per year. Since 2000, 300 extreme events have been registered annually. Even with underreporting in the past, "the difference is unquestionable," said WMO's Alvaro Silva.

Edited by: Jennifer Collins

Small island states hail 'historic' victory in UN climate case

The UN maritime court on Tuesday ruled in favour of nine small island states that brought a case to seek increased protection of the world’s oceans from catastrophic climate change.

Issued on: 21/05/2024 -

Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne, Attorney General of Vanuatu Arnold Loughman, and Prime Minister of Tuvalu Kausea Natano pictured at a hearing of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Seas (ITLOS) on September 11, 2023 in Hamburg, Germany. 

© Gregor Fischer, AFP

Finding that carbon emissions can be considered a sea pollutant, the court said countries had an obligation to take measures to mitigate their effects on oceans.

The countries that brought the case called the court decision “historic”, and experts said it could be influential in shaping the scope of future climate litigation involving greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

“Anthropogenic GHG emissions into the atmosphere constitute pollution of the marine environment” under the international UNCLOS treaty, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ruled in an expert opinion.

Polluting countries therefore have “the specific obligation to take all measures necessary to ensure that... emissions under their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage by pollution to other states and their environment”, the court said.

The case was brought in September by nine small countries disproportionately affected by climate change, including Antigua and Barbuda, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.

They asked the Hamburg-based court to issue an opinion on whether carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the oceans could be considered pollution, and if so, what obligations countries had to address the problem.

The UNCLOS treaty binds countries to prevent pollution of the oceans, defining pollution as the introduction of “substances or energy into the marine environment” that harms marine life.

But it does not spell out carbon emissions as a specific pollutant, which the plaintiffs had argued should qualify.

‘Fighting for survival’

The court’s opinion is advisory and non-binding but will influence how the UN treaty is interpreted around the world.

“This is the first-ever decision by an international tribunal on climate change and the oceans and clarifies the legally binding obligations of 169 countries that are party to the (UNCLOS treaty),” the nine plaintiff countries said in a statement.

The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, said small island nations were “fighting for their survival”.

Read moreGlobal sea levels jumped due to El Nino and warming climate, says NASA

“Some will become uninhabitable in the near future because of the failure to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. We demand that the major polluters respect international law, and stop the catastrophic harm against us before it is too late,” he said.

The other island nations joining the ITLOS case were the Bahamas, Niue, Palau, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

The case is seen as the first major international climate justice case involving the world’s oceans, and experts say it could have far-reaching implications for countries’ future climate change obligations.

The Center for International Environmental Law said the case was “particularly significant” because it was the first of three key international court advisory opinions on climate change.

“For the first time, an international court has recognised that the fates of two global commons—the oceans and the atmosphere—are intertwined and imperilled by the climate crisis,” said CIEL attorney Joie Chowdhury.

The other climate case rulings, by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), are due to be given in the coming months.
Rising temperatures

Mandi Mudarikwa, Amnesty International’s head of strategic litigation, said the ruling was “likely to inform future climate justice cases in national, regional and international courts”.

Tom Mitchell, executive director at the International Institute for Environment and Development, told AFP the tribunal’s opinion “is an important marker on the legal responsibility for the effects of climate change, which will doubtless be influential in shaping the scope and direction of future climate litigation”.

Ocean ecosystems create half the oxygen humans breathe and limit global warming by absorbing much of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities.

But increasing emissions can warm and acidify seawaters, harming marine life and ecosystems.

Rising global sea temperatures are also accelerating the melting of polar ice caps and increasing sea levels, posing an existential threat for small island nations.

Global sea surface temperatures hit a monthly record in April for the 13th month in a row, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

(AFP)

Volunteers race to save Mexico's howler monkeys in heat wave

Comalcalco (Mexico) (AFP) – Volunteers are rushing to hoist food and water up into trees in sweltering southern Mexico, but help came too late for the howler monkeys whose lifeless bodies lay still on the ground.


Issued on: 22/05/2024 

A sick howler monkey recovers at a clinic in southern Mexico after being taken there by residents 

© Yuri CORTEZ / AFP

Dozens of the primates are reported to have dropped dead from trees in recent weeks, alarming conservationists trying to keep the monkeys hydrated during a heat wave.

Victor Morato and his team at a veterinary hospital in the town of Comalcalco in Tabasco state have treated eight howler monkeys brought in by residents.

"When they arrived here in agony, they extended their hand to us as if to say 'help me'. I had a lump in my throat," he told AFP.

Several monkeys arrived at the clinic with body temperatures of around 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit), Morato said.

A DEAD howler monkey's body is seen covered in lime in southern Mexico

 © Yuri CORTEZ / AFP

When they faint from the heat they sometimes fall 20 meters (65 feet), he added.

It is all the more worrying since the Mexican howler (Alouatta palliata mexicana) and the Yucatan black howler (Alouatta pigra) are considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The mantled howler (Alouatta palliata), which also lives in southern Mexico as well as Central and South America, is classified as vulnerable on the Red List of Threatened Species.

Authorities investigate

Leonardo Sanchez was among those putting out water and fruit to help the animals on a cocoa plantation in the southern state of Tabasco.

Food and water are hoisted up into a tree by volunteers for howler monkeys in Mexico

 © Yuri CORTEZ / AFP

The thermometer has reached almost 50 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in recent weeks, the 22-year-old biology student said.

"We've had a large number of deaths (of monkeys) due to the increased temperatures," he said.

Some volunteers carried lime to sprinkle on the bodies of dead primates.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who hails from Tabasco, said Monday the heat was the worst he had known.

"Since I've been visiting these states I've never felt it as much as I do now," he said at his regular news conference.

Mexico's environment ministry has said that it is investigating whether extreme heat was killing the monkeys, with studies under way to rule out a virus or disease.

A wild howler monkey is seen in a tree in Mexico's Tabasco State

 © Yuri CORTEZ / AFP

Causes under consideration included heat stroke, dehydration, malnutrition or fumigation of crops with pesticides, it said.

In Tabasco, a vulture lingered and flies swarmed near a grave that volunteer Bersabeth Ricardez said contained the bodies of around 30 monkeys.

"Today it's the monkeys. Tomorrow it will be us," she said.

© 2024 AFP

It’s so hot in Mexico that howler monkeys are falling dead from the trees


A veterinarian feeds a young howler monkey rescued amid extremely high temperatures in Tecolutilla, Tabasco state, Mexico, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Dozens of howler monkeys were found dead in the Gulf coast state while others were rescued by residents who rushed them to a local veterinarian. (AP Photo/Luis Sanchez)


BY MARK STEVENSON
May 21, 2024


MEXICO CITY (AP) — It’s so hot in Mexico that howler monkeys are falling dead from the trees.

At least 138 of the midsize primates, who are known for their roaring vocal calls, were found dead in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco since May 16, according to the Biodiversity Conservation of The Usumacinta group. Others were rescued by residents, including five that were rushed to a local veterinarian who battled to save them.

“They arrived in critical condition, with dehydration and fever,” said Dr. Sergio Valenzuela. “They were as limp as rags. It was heatstroke.”

While Mexico’s brutal heat wave has been linked to the deaths of at least 26 people since March, veterinarians and rescuers say it has killed dozens and perhaps hundreds of howler monkeys. Around a third of the country saw highs of 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.

In the town of Tecolutilla, Tabasco, the dead monkeys started appearing Friday, when a local volunteer fire-and-rescue squad showed up with five of the creatures in the bed of a truck.

Howler monkeys sit in a cage at a veterinarian clinic after they were rescued amid extremely high temperatures in Tecolutilla, Tabasco state, Mexico, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Luis Sanchez)

Normally quite intimidating, howler monkeys are muscular and some can be as tall as 90 centimeters (3 feet), with tails just as long. Some males weigh more than 13.5 kilograms (30 pounds) and can live up to 20 years. They are equipped with big jaws and a fearsome set of teeth and fangs. But mostly they’re know for their lion-like roars, which bely their size.

“They (the volunteers) asked for help, they asked if I could examine some of the animals they had in their truck,” Valenzuela said Monday. “They said they didn’t have any money, and asked if I could do it for free.”

The veterinarian put ice on their limp little hands and feet, and hooked them up to IV drips with electrolytes.

So far, the monkeys appear to be on the mend. Once listless and easily handled, they are now in cages at Valenzuela’s office. “They’re recovering. They’re aggressive … they’re biting again,” he said, noting that’s a healthy sign for the usually furtive creatures.

Most aren’t so lucky. Wildlife biologist Gilberto Pozo counted about 138 of the animals dead or dying on the ground under trees. The die-off started around May 5 and hit its peak over the weekend.

“They were falling out of the trees like apples,” Pozo said. “They were in a state of severe dehydration, and they died within a matter of minutes.” Already weakened, Pozo says, the falls from dozens of yards (meters) up inflict additional damage that often finishes the monkeys off.

Pozo attributes the deaths to a “synergy” of factors, including high heat, drought, forest fires and logging that deprives the monkeys of water, shade and the fruit they eat, while noting that a pathogen, disease or other factor can’t yet be ruled out.

For people in the steamy, swampy, jungle-covered state of Tabasco, the howler monkey is a cherished, emblematic species; local people say the monkeys tell them the time of day by howling at dawn and dusk.

Pozo said the local people — who he knows through his work with the Biodiversity Conservation of The Usumacinta group — have tried to help the monkeys they see around their farms. But he notes that could be a double-edged sword.

“They were falling out of the trees, and the people were moved, and they went to help the animals, they set out water and fruit for them,” Pozo said. “They want to care for them, mainly the baby monkeys, adopt them.”

“But no, the truth is that babies are very delicate, they can’t be in a house where there are dogs or cats, because they have pathogens that can potentially be fatal for howler monkeys,” he said, stressing they must be rehabilitated and released into the wild.

Pozo’s group has set up a special recovery stations for monkeys — it currently holds five monkeys, but birds and reptiles have also been affected — and is trying to organize a team of specialized veterinarians to give the primates the care they need.

Belatedly, the federal government acknowledged the problem Monday, with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador saying he had heard about it on social media. He congratulated Valenzuela on his efforts and said the government would seek to support the work.

A soldier removes the body of a howler monkey that died amid extremely high temperatures in Tecolutilla, Tabasco state, Mexico, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Luis Sanchez)

López Obrador acknowledged the heat problem — “I have never felt it as bad as this” — but he has a lot of human problems to deal with as well.

By May 9, at least nine cities in Mexico had set temperature records, with Ciudad Victoria in the border state of Tamaulipas clocking a broiling 47 C (117 F).

With below-average rainfall throughout almost all the country so far this year, lakes and dams are drying up, and water supplies are running out. Authorities have had to truck in water for everything from hospitals to fire-fighting teams. Low levels at hydroelectric dams have contributed to power blackouts in some parts of the country.

Consumers are feeling the heat as well. On Monday, the nationwide chain of OXXO convenience stores — the nation’s largest — said it was limiting purchases of ice to just two or three bags per customer in some places.

“In a period of high temperatures, OXXO is taking measures to ensure supplies of products for our customers,” parent company FEMSA said in a statement. “Limits on the sale of bagged ice seek to ensure that a larger number of customers can buy this product.”


But for the monkeys, it’s not a question of comfort, but of life or death.

“This is a sentinel species,” Pozo said, referring to the canary-in-a-coal-mine effect where one species can say a lot about an ecosystem. “It is telling us something about what is happening with climate change.”

A howler monkey sits inside a cage with others at a veterinarian clinic after they were rescued amid extremely high temperatures in Tecolutilla, Tabasco state, Mexico, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Luis Sanchez)

___

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

'Wake-Up Call for the world': Millions impacted by extreme floods in Brazil

Edward Carver,

 Common Dreams
May 21, 2024 

A man rides a bicycle in a flooded street at the historical center of Porto Alegre, Brazil on May 3, 2024 © Anselmo Cunha / AFP

Experts emphasized the escalating risks of climate-related disasters and their disproportionate impacts on low-income people on Monday following flooding in Brazil that has killed at least 150 people and displaced more than 600,000.

The floods that hit over recent days and weeks have knocked out bridges and the main airport in Porto Alegre, a port city in southern Brazil. More than 460 of the 497 municipalities in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sol have been affected, with more than 2 million people impacted, according to provisional government data.

"The situation is catastrophic," said Rachel Soeiro, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical coordinator in Brazil, who visited the area by helicopter. "We were able to view the towns from above and noticed that in some cases we couldn't even see the roofs of houses.”

More than two feet of rain has fallen so far this month, according Brazil's national weather service, inundating large areas.

"Whole towns and large, urban city centers are in some cases almost completely underwater," the BBCreported on Saturday.

Experts connected the extreme rainfall to climate change, which increases the likelihood of such weather events. Incidents of extreme flooding have increased "sharply" across the planet in the last two decades, according to a study in Nature Water released last year.


"In many ways, this is not a disaster of Brazil’s making. The whole planet is experiencing increasingly rapid climate changes due largely to the greenhouse gases produced by a handful of wealthy nations," Cristiane Fontes (Krika), executive director of World Resources Institute (WRI) Brasil, wrote in a commentary earlier this month in which she called the situation a "wake-up call for the world."

In recent weeks, flooding has also hit China, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia, and WRI's staff in Kenya are dealing with dam breaches from heavy rains, Fontes noted.


A Brazilian expert indicated that the flooding, catastrophic as it has been, should not come as a surprise.

"People on the streets here in Brazil, they've attributed this change to global climate change driven by the increase of fossil fuels," Paulo Artaxo, a physics professor at the University of Sao Paulo, and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He explained that was in line with IPCC projections showing that southern Brazil would face more extreme rainfall due to tropical and polar currents.

In Brazil, as elsewhere, climate impacts are not evenly distributed. MSF relief efforts are focused on the most vulnerable, including Indigenous communities, one of which had been isolated by rising waters and without help for 10 days before being reached by the humanitarian group.

"Assisting those who are most vulnerable is one of our main concerns in such situations," Soeiro said. "These people were already facing difficult situations before the flooding. But their needs have risen further and access to them has become more difficult."

Some wealthy people in Porto Alegre have choices such as escaping to a second home, but in "rundown towns" on the city's periphery, low-income people have no such options, according to CNN.

Brazilian left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to provide relief money to families that lost their homes. Brazil is one of most unequal countries in the world, according to World Bank data.

Deforestation exacerbated deadly Brazil floods, say experts

The floods devastating southern Brazil have been exacerbated by deforestation, much of it driven by soybean farming, according to experts, who urge the country to restore its forests and their vast water-retaining root systems.

Issued on: 22/05/2024 - 

Destroyed houses, damaged cars, branches, and debris are seen in Cruzeiro do Sul following the devastating floods that hit the region in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, on May 14, 2024. 

© Nelson Ameida, AFP

The key agricultural state of Rio Grande do Sul has been hit by an unprecedented climate disaster for the past three weeks, with cities and rural areas alike inundated by torrential rains that have left more than 150 people dead and some 100 missing.

It is the region's fourth extreme weather event in less than a year, a phenomenon scientists say is driven by climate change -- and also deforestation.

"There's a global component to climate change, and also a regional one, which is the loss of native vegetation. That increased the intensity of the floods," says biologist Eduardo Velez of MapBiomas, an organization that uses satellite images to track deforestation.

According to the group, Rio Grande do Sul lost 22 percent of its native vegetation, or 3.6 million hectares (8.9 million acres), from 1985 to 2022.

Those wildlands have largely been replaced by fields of rice, eucalyptus and especially soybeans, of which Brazil is the world's biggest producer and exporter.
Vicious cycle

Native forests help ensure water permeates the soil, preventing it from accumulating on the surface, says Jaqueline Sordi, a biologist and journalist based in the region who specializes in climate issues.

Vegetation also holds soil in place, helping to prevent erosion and landslides.

The deep brown color of the water that has flooded the state capital, Porto Alegre, along with 90 percent of Rio Grande do Sul's towns, "shows just how many tons and tons of soil were washed away" in the rains, Velez told AFP.

In a vicious cycle, that mud has now accumulated in the beds of rivers, making them shallower -- and therefore more likely to flood next time.

"Beyond relocating people (from high-risk areas) and rebuilding infrastructure, it's extremely important to have policies on restoring native vegetation," said Velez.

Rio Grande do Sul "urgently" needs to restore more than a million hectares of forests in order for them to adequately perform their proper environmental role, according to a 2023 study by the sustainable development group Instituto Escolhas.

But Velez says there is still no "heavyweight" plan to do that in Rio Grande do Sul, despite a deal it signed last year with other states in southern and southeastern Brazil to reforest 90,000 hectares by 2026.

'Open people's eyes'

At the national level, deforestation surged under the government of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, a climate-change skeptic and ally of the powerful agribusiness sector who was in office from 2019 to 2022.

"It became easier to get permits (to clear vegetation), and Rio Grande do Sul played a big role" in benefitting from those permits, said Sordi.

A local municipal council member from Bolsonaro's Liberal Party, Sandro Fantinel, caused controversy last week by saying the region should clear more trees around roads, arguing their weight and water-swollen roots had caused landslides during the floods.

Sordi says disasters like the current one have the potential to "open people's eyes" to the scientific evidence of climate change and its "warning signs."

"Sometimes we only pay attention when the problem arrives."

(AFP)

Fear brews in Turkey's landslide-plagued tea hills

Abdullahhoca (Turkey) (AFP) – Every time it rains heavily in Turkey's spectacular Black Sea tea growing region -- where it rains a lot -- Zikrullah Komurcu starts to worry.

Issued on: 22/05/2024 -

Pluckers harvest tea near the village of Abdullahhoca overlooking the Black Sea in northeastern Turkey 

© Yasin AKGUL / AFP

Last August he was almost swept away by a mudslide when a tea garden above his home in the village of Abdullahhoca began to slide down the mountain during a downpour.

The house above his was destroyed with part of the field ending up in his kitchen.

"It's a miracle that no one was killed," Komurcu told AFP, an electricity pylon still perched dangerously over his mud-splattered home.

The tea-growing province of Rize in Turkey's northeast has been repeatedly hit by major landslides over the last 50 years.

Nearly twice as wet as Ireland, with 2.2 metres (86 inches) of annual rainfall, the Turkish disaster agency AFAD said last year alone there were 355 serious landslides there affecting homes.

Villager Metin Kopuz amid the spectacular tea hills of Rize on Turkey's northeastern Black Sea coast 

© Yasin AKGUL / AFP

And it is going to get worse, experts warn, with climate change making the Black Sea warmer and rainstorms even more violent, putting still more pressure on the soil.
Dangerous monoculture

Hakan Yanbay, of the province's chamber of geological engineers, said the "uncontrolled" construction of roads cut into the sides of mountains to link its scattered villages has exacerbated the problem.

They undermine the stability of the soil of the mountainous region, 80 percent of which is made up of steep hillsides.

Yanbay blames the spread of tea plantations over the last century for much of the soil erosion. Long encouraged by the state, they now take up a staggering 90 percent of the region's agricultural land.

Turkey's green paradise endangered by natural disasters 

© Yasin AKGUL / AFP

While no one has died in a landslide in Rize in nearly three years, three workers were swept away in one in neighbouring Trabzon province in March -- 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Abdullahhoca.

But painful memories of other disasters that have claimed 130 lives in Rize since the 1960s are never far from the surface.

"We are going to prevent the floods and landslides that we have been experiencing in the Black Sea region for years," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- whose family comes from Rize -- vowed in April.

After six villagers were killed in floods and mudslides in 2021, Erdogan called for a ban on "five- to 10-storey buildings being put up on hillsides".

The president was scathing about the damage being done. "Look at what nitrogen fertilisers are doing to the tea gardens," he said on a visit to Rize after that disaster. "They turning the soil into mud," he added.
'Man-made disasters'

But three years later "no serious measures have been taken", insisted Tahsin Ocakli, the only opposition MP in the province dominated by Erdogan's AK party.

Turkey governments have encouraged people to plant tea for nearly a century 

© Yasin AKGUL / AFP

Ocakli, who has demanded a parliamentary inquiry, said that "these events, which are now happening several times a year, are no longer natural catastrophes but man-made disasters."

The Rize chamber of agriculture raised the alert about discounted nitrogen fertilisers being sold in February, warning they were likely to further undermine the soil.

But experts say the real problem is the tea plants themselves whose roots are not deep enough to stabilise the ground.

They recommended planting trees like poplars and eucalyptus whose deeper roots absorb more water.

To try to reduce the risks, the authorities have begun building drainage channels and retaining walls below some tea gardens.

A concrete barrier has been built to protect the home of Zikrullah Komurcu's nephew, who lives near him in Abdullahhoca.

Medine Komurcu collecting tea in the area hit by the landslide behind her home in Abdullahhoca, Turkey

 © Yasin AKGUL / AFP

Komurcu and his wife Medine are waiting for a similar one to shield them.

"Every time it rains we wonder if there will be another landslide," Medine said. "I don't sleep anymore -- we're afraid."

© 2024 AFP

Mexican feminists torn over prospect of first woman president

"If there isn't a woman who makes the patriarchal system tremble, nothing's going to change,"

Mexico City (AFP) – Mexico appears almost certain to elect its first woman president on June 2 -- a prospect that divides opinion among women's rights activists in a country with a long history of macho culture.


Issued on: 22/05/2024 -

Feminist activist and street artist Flor de Fuego performs on a street in Mexico City 

© CARL DE SOUZA / AFP

Front-runner Claudia Sheinbaum of the ruling party and her main opposition rival Xochitl Galvez have both invoked cracking the glass ceiling in their bids to lead the Latin American nation.

According to an average of polls compiled by the firm Oraculus, Sheinbaum is leading the presidential race with 56 percent of voter support, while Galvez follows with 34 percent.

The only man running, Jorge Alvarez Maynez of the Citizens' Movement party, has just 10 percent.

While Mexican women enjoy growing success in politics and business, life remains bleak for many in a country where around 10 women are murdered every day.

Last year, 852 killings were classified as femicides -- murders of women because of their gender.

'Important changes'

"It's time for women to be recognized," declared Elena Poniatowska, a renowned Mexican journalist and author known for her fervent left-wing views.

French-born Poniatowska, 91, has long supported outgoing leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and is confident that Sheinbaum will win.

Mexican author Elena Poniatowska speaks at her home during an interview with AFP in Mexico City 

© CARL DE SOUZA / AFP

Having a woman in the presidential palace would be a "logical consequence of a country that has been advancing," she told AFP in an interview at her home in Mexico City.

"There are going to be very important changes," said Poniatowska, the winner of the 2013 Cervantes Prize -- considered the most prestigious award in Spanish-language literature.

She expects the next government to do more on cultural issues and policies that benefit children -- and therefore women.

'Low expectations'

In contrast, Sara Lovera, who manages the feminist website SemMexico, said she has "low expectations" for a Sheinbaum presidency.

The former Mexico City mayor often praises Lopez Obrador, who has criticized women's rights activists as "pseudo-feminists."

While abortion was decriminalized and legalized, critics note that it was done by the Supreme Court and not by Lopez Obrador's government.

"We're not going to see any change. We're going to continue losing. Some people think that we have lost 30 years in gender politics," said Lovera.

But "I think we could talk to Xochitl Galvez, even though she doesn't understand anything" about the feminist struggle, the 74-year-old added.

Fashionable trend?

Activist and street performance artist Flor de Fuego (Fire Flower) earns a living as a fire dancer, performing for stopped traffic at intersections in Mexico City.

'I don't think things will change much,' activist and street performance artist Flor de Fuego said about the prospect of Mexico's first woman president 

© CARL DE SOUZA / AFP

The 53-year-old, who prefers not to reveal her real name, is a regular at women's rights marches, which she lights up with flames shooting out of her mouth.

"Women are in fashion so (political parties) took advantage of it," she said sarcastically after running between cars with the tray she uses to collect coins from motorists.

That was how she paid for her son to earn a biology degree.

"The truth is that I don't think things will change much" whichever candidate wins, Flor de Fuego said.

When Sheinbaum was Mexico City mayor, "we feminists were quite repressed in our marches," the activist added.

"Who knows how the feminist community will fare" if Sheinbaum becomes president, she said.

- 'Burn everything' -

Economics and law student Alondra, who prefers not to give her full name, is a member of the Black Bloc, a radical feminist movement.

Things are likely to "remain the same" with no end to violence against women, she said before posting flyers with the image of an alleged perpetrator of femicide.

Mexican activist Alondra covers her face during an interview with AFP in Mexico City 

© SILVANA FLORES / AFP

Alondra participated in the occupation of the National Human Rights Commission building in 2020-2022 -- a protest led by the mother of Maria de Jesus Jaimes Zamudio.

The petroleum engineering student was thrown from the fifth floor of a building in Mexico City in 2016.

The Black Bloc has been accused of vandalizing monuments and businesses.

Its members say such action is needed to send a message to politicians who have failed to protect women.

"If there isn't a woman who makes the patriarchal system tremble, nothing's going to change," said Alondra, who has been injured several times in scuffles with security forces.

"If we have to burn everything, then we have to burn everything."

© 2024 AFP

POST-FORDISM

Turkey bets on Togg to give its car industry electric edge

Gemlik (Turkey) (AFP) – On the shores of the Sea of Marmara, a grey and turquoise factory built at breakneck speed is churning out electric cars by the hundreds.

Issued on: 22/05/2024 - 

A Togg electric car rolling off the assembly line in Gemlik near Bursa in western Turkey 

© Yasin AKGUL / AFP

Turkey is hoping its first major electric carmaker will put the country in the driving seat of the automotive industry.

Inside the plant, robot arms weld the passenger compartment of its first SUV, the T10X, which launched last year. After painting, the parts are then sent for assembly, before finally passing through a luminescent tunnel to be scrutinised by workers for imperfections.

The batteries, made in partnership with Chinese manufacturer Farasis Energy, are assembled in a next-door building.

It takes an hour for the plant to produce 20 vehicles.

"Last year, we produced 20,000 vehicles without any loss. Tesla produced only 2,000 in their first year," a production manager told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The manager also praised the plant's "highly educated" workers, 40 percent of whom are women.

In half a century, the Marmara region around Istanbul has become one of the leading centres of the world's automobile industry.

Major carmakers including Fiat and Renault opened plants there at the beginning of the 1970s, with others like Ford, Toyota and Hyundai following, taking advantage of Turkey's position at the crossroads between Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Car horn in outer space

"They initially invested to supply the local market, which for a long time was protected by tariffs," independent consultant Levent Taylan told AFP.

The Togg logo at its Gemlik plant in Turkey © Yasin AKGUL / AFP

But after the European Union-Turkey Customs Union agreement came into force in 1995, opening the European market to cars made in Turkey, exports revved up.

"Today the Turkish automobile industry exports around 70 percent of its production to Western Europe," Taylan said.

A vast network of 530 automotive subcontractors has also sprung up, employing more than 230,000 people, according to Albert Saydam, President of the Turkish Association of Automotive Parts and Components Manufacturers (TAYSAD).

"Most cars around the world have a part which is produced in Turkey. For example, the horn of (the) first car in space, the Tesla Roadster, was supplied from one of our members," he told AFP.

In 2018, Tesla boss Elon Musk blasted a Roadster into space aboard a Falcon heavy rocket as a publicity stunt, with the car's sound system set to play David Bowie's hit "Space Oddity" on loop.

That same year Togg was founded as a joint venture between four Turkish companies and the country's chamber of commerce to steer its car industry towards the electric future.
Market booming

"The project represents a significant milestone in Turkey's automotive industry and symbolises the country's ambition to become a prominent player in the global electric vehicle market," Saydam said.

Workers on the assembly line at the Togg electric vehicle plant in western Turkey

 © Yasin AKGUL / AFP

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to make the carmaker a point of national pride, with the T10X model launched in March 2023 right before the country's presidential elections.

"We have not missed the boat on electric cars," he said again in mid-May.

Nevertheless, Togg says the government's support is limited to allowing it the free use of land for its seaside Gemlik factory and a commitment to purchase 500 vehicles a year.

Since its launch, the Togg T10X has taken nearly a third of electric car sales in Turkey, according to data from the Turkish Automotive Distributors Association (ODMD), with 19,583 vehicles sold in 2023.

And the market is booming. EV sales increased nine fold there last year, making the Turkish market bigger than Italy and Spain's.

Despite Togg's hopes that the T10X will hit the road in Germany by the end of the year and in France next year, Taylan believes the company still has a long way to go.

The car "is considered to be expensive and only about 25,000 models a year are being sold," he said.

To have a chance of being profitable, a car plant would have to make at least "200,000 vehicles a year", Taylan argued.

© 2024 AFP

Forever fad: Rubik says his cube 'reminds us why we have hands'
Agence France-Presse
May 20, 2024 

Success cubed: Hungarian inventor Erno Rubik, the man who created Rubik's Cube (ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP)

The naysayers said the maddening multicolored cube that Erno Rubik invented 50 years ago would not survive the 1980s.

Yet millennials and Generation Z are as nuts about Rubik's Cube as their parents were, much to the amusement of its 79-year-old creator, who talked to AFP in a rare interview.

In a digital world "we are slowly forgetting that we have hands", Rubik said.

But playing with the cube helps us tap back into something deeply primal about doing things with our hands, he said -- "our first tools", as he calls them.

"Speed cubing" and Rubik's Cube hacks are huge on social media, with youngsters regularly going viral while dancing, rapping and even playing the piano while solving the 3D puzzle.

Rubik said the "connection between the mind and hands" that the cube helps foster has been "a very important" factor in human development.

"I think probably the cube reminds us we have hands... You are not just thinking, you are doing something.

"It's a piece of art you are emotionally involved with," Rubik added.

The unassuming Hungarian architecture professor never thought the prototype he devised would conquer the world -- and set him up for life.


It's what hands are for: Inventor Erno Rubik gets to grip with his famous cube (ATTILA KISBENEDEK)

More than 500 million copies of the cult object have been sold -- not counting the myriad of counterfeits.

Rubik's Cube has remained one of the world's top-selling puzzle games, with more than 43 quintillion -- a quintillion being a billion trillion -- ways of solving it.

Even after "hundreds or thousands of years", you would still be finding ways to crack it, Rubik enthused.

Despite the omnipresence of screens, "new generations have developed the same strong relationship with the cube," Rubik told AFP at Budapest's Aquincum Institute of Technology, where he sometimes gives lectures.

It was in the spring of 1974 that he created the first working prototype of a movable cube made of small wooden blocks and held together by a unique mechanism.


A Rubik's Cube-shaped kite at a kite festival in Hsinchu, Taiwan (Sam Yeh)

The five decades since have been "unbelievable", he said, comparing his relationship with the cube to having a "wunderkind" in the family.

"You need to take a step back because of your 'child' and its fame.... (which) can be very tiring," he said.

In his book "Cubed", published in 2020, Rubik revealed that he had never intended to leave a mark on the world -- he was just driven by a love for building geometric models.

It took Rubik several prototypes and weeks of tinkering to figure out the ideal mechanism -- and a way to solve his puzzle -- before he could file a patent application in 1975.

The colourful "Magic Cube" first sold domestically in 1977 before hitting international shelves three years later.

Rubik recalled his first fairytale-like trip from communist Hungary to the West, on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Despite being publicity-shy, the inventor has amassed a collection of some 1,500 magazine covers featuring his cube over the years, which has become "a symbol of complexity" to illustrate anything from geopolitical problems to elections.

You either "like or hate it", he said, but you cannot ignore it.

Rubik's Cube legacy lives on strongly in pop culture, having been featured in numerous TV series and Hollywood blockbusters.


It has also remained the centrepiece of puzzle-solving competitions.


Pope Francis takes on the mystery of the cube

Handout

Masters of the cube frequently gather across the world, battling with their hands and feet -- sometimes while blindfolded, parachuting or doing headstands -- Rubik said.

The cube has a place in the permanent exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and it has also inspired artists, including renowned French street artist Invader.

An educational tool used everywhere from nursery schools to universities, the cube is also popular in retirement homes and helps people living with autism, including American speed-cubing star Max Park, who holds the world record of solving it in 3.13 seconds.

Rubik said the emotional rewards the cube has brought him have been even better than the "retirement money" it has earned him.

It feels nice to have done "something good for people", he said, adding that the cube has even made "marriages and much more..."

© Agence France-Presse

After 180 years, new clues are revealing just how general anesthesia works in the brain

The Conversation
May 20, 2024 

Anesthesia (Sergey Mironov/Shutterstock)

Over 350 million surgeries are performed globally each year. For most of us, it’s likely at some point in our lives we’ll have to undergo a procedure that needs general anesthesia.

Even though it is one of the safest medical practices, we still don’t have a complete, thorough understanding of precisely how anaesthetic drugs work in the brain.

In fact, it has largely remained a mystery since general anesthesia was introduced into medicine over 180 years ago.

Our study published in The Journal of Neuroscience today provides new clues on the intricacies of the process. General anaesthetic drugs seem to only affect specific parts of the brain responsible for keeping us alert and awake.
Brain cells striking a balance

In a study using fruit flies, we found a potential way that allows anesthetic drugs to interact with specific types of neurons (brain cells), and it’s all to do with proteins. Your brain has around 86 billion neurons and not all of them are the same – it’s these differences that allow general anesthesia to be effective.

To be clear, we’re not completely in the dark on how anesthetic drugs affect us. We know why general anaesthetics are able to make us lose consciousness so quickly, thanks to a landmark discovery made in 1994.

But to better understand the fine details, we first have to look to the minute differences between the cells in our brains.

Broadly speaking, there are two main categories of neurons in the brain.

The first are what we call “excitatory” neurons, generally responsible for keeping us alert and awake. The second are “inhibitory” neurons – their job is to regulate and control the excitatory ones.

In our day-to-day lives, excitatory and inhibitory neurons are constantly working and balancing one another.

When we fall asleep, there are inhibitory neurons in the brain that “silence” the excitatory ones keeping us awake. This happens gradually over time, which is why you may feel progressively more tired through the day.

General anesthetics speed up this process by directly silencing these excitatory neurons without any action from the inhibitory ones. This is why your anesthetist will tell you that they’ll “put you to sleep” for the procedure: it’s essentially the same process.
A special kind of sleep

While we know why anesthetics put us to sleep, the question then becomes: “why do we stay asleep during surgery?”. If you went to bed tonight, fell asleep and somebody tried to do surgery on you, you’d wake up with quite a shock.

To date, there is no strong consensus in the field as to why general anesthesia causes people to remain unconscious during surgery.

Over the last couple of decades, researchers have proposed several potential explanations, but they all seem to point to one root cause. Neurons stop talking to each other when exposed to general anesthetics.

While the idea of “cells talking to each other” may sound a little strange, it’s a fundamental concept in neuroscience. Without this communication, our brains wouldn’t be able to function at all. And it allows the brain to know what’s happening throughout the body.


Colorized neurons in the brain of a fly. Adam Hines

What did we discover?

Our new study shows that general anesthetics appear to stop excitatory neurons from communicating, but not inhibitory ones. This concept isn’t new, but we found some compelling evidence as to why only excitatory neurons are affected.

For neurons to communicate, proteins have to get involved. One of the jobs these proteins have is to get neurons to release molecules called neurotransmitters. These chemical messengers are what gets signals across from one neuron to another: dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin are all neurotransmitters, for example.

We found that general anesthetics impair the ability of these proteins to release neurotransmitters, but only in excitatory neurons. To test this, we used Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies and super resolution microscopy to directly see what effects a general anesthetic was having on these proteins at a molecular scale.

Part of what makes excitatory and inhibitory neurons different from each other is that they express different types of the same protein. This is kind of like having two cars of the same make and model, but one is green and has a sports package, while the other is just standard and red. They both do the same thing, but one’s just a little bit different.

Neurotransmitter release is a complex process involving lots of different proteins. If one piece of the puzzle isn’t exactly right, then general anesthetics won’t be able to do their job.

As a next research step, we will need to figure out which piece of the puzzle is different, to understand why general anesthetics only stop excitatory communication.

Ultimately, our results hint that the drugs used in general anesthetics cause massive global inhibition in the brain. By silencing excitability in two ways, these drugs put us to sleep and keep it that way.

Adam D Hines, Research fellow, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Darwin's footsteps: scientists recreate historic 1830s expedition

Agence France-Presse
May 21, 2024 

The Oosterschelde set out from Plymouth, England, in August 2023

 (Carlos Espinosa/AFP)

Like Charles Darwin did in 1831, a group of scientists and environmentalists last year set sail from the English port of Plymouth, headed for the Galapagos islands off the coast of Ecuador.

But what they found on their arrival last month differed vastly from what naturalist Darwin saw while visiting the archipelago in 1835, in a trip key to developing his world-changing theory on natural selection.

The Galapagos today is under protection, part of a marine reserve and classified a World Heritage Site. Yet the area faces more threats than ever, from pollution and illegal fishing to climate change.

There to observe the challenges, with a well-thumbed copy of her great-great-grandfather's "On the Origin of Species" in hand, was botanist Sarah Darwin.

"I think probably the main difference is that, you know, there are people working now to protect the islands," the 60-year-old told AFP, onboard the "Oosterschelde," a refurbished, three-mast schooner built more than 100 years ago.

The ship has been on a scientific and awareness-raising expedition since last August, stopping so far in the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Brazil and Chile among other locales.

- Darwin's 'heirs' -

In colonial times, the islands -- located in one of the world's most biodiverse regions -- served as a pit stop for pirates who caught and ate the giant turtles that call it home.

During World War II, the archipelago hosted a US military base.

"I think if (Darwin) were able to come back now and see the efforts that everybody is making, both locally and globally, to protect these extraordinary islands and that biodiversity -- I think he'd be really, really excited and impressed," the naturalist's descendant told AFP.

Sarah Darwin first visited the Galapagos in 1995, where she illustrated a guide to endemic plants. She then devoted herself to studying native tomatoes.

She also mentors young people as part of a project to create a group of 200 Darwin "heirs" to raise the alarm about environmental and climate threats to the planet.

Calling at several ports on the journey from Plymouth to the Galapagos, the Oosterschelde took on new groups of young scientists and activists at every stop, and dropped off others.

One of them, Indian-born Laya Pothunuri, who joined the mission from Singapore, told AFP the Galapagos "has a very important place in scientific terms."

She was there, she said, to improve the irrigation systems in the islands' coffee-growing regions.


"I plan to do it using recycled plastic, which also, again, is a big problem over here," she said, noting that plastic waste ends up being consumed by wildlife.

- Plastic peril -

In the Galapagos, the expedition members worked with researchers from the private Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), the Charles Darwin Foundation and the NGO Conservation International on both confronting invasive species and protecting endemic ones.


Last year, a study by the Charles Darwin Foundation found that giant turtles in the area were ingesting harmful materials due to human pollution.

Samples revealed that nearly 90 percent of the waste consumed was plastic, eight percent was fabric and the rest metal, paper, cardboard, construction materials and glass.

From Galapagos, the Oosterschelde set sail again on Sunday to continue its world tour, with stops expected in Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.