Researchers who reverse-engineered Starlink to work as a backup for GPS found a security flaw in the system — using a video of tennis star Rafael Nadal — that could be exploited in Ukraine

ktangalakislippert@insider.com (Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert) - 

SpaceX's Starlink signals have been long seen as a possible alternative to GPS.

In 2020, Elon Musk and SpaceX declined a US Army proposal to develop the tech for that purpose.

Researchers have succeeded in reverse-engineering the signals, MIT Technology Review reported.

After SpaceX declined to continue researching Starlink as a possible military alternative to GPS in 2020, a group of researchers found a way to do it without the help of Elon Musk — or his company that created the constellation of internet satellites.

For the past two years, Professor Todd Humphreys has led a group of researchers at the University of Texas in reverse-engineering signals from the satellite internet constellation with the hope of forming a new navigation system that would operate separately from the Global Positioning System and its European, Russian, and Chinese equivalents, MIT Technology Review reported.

In a non-peer-reviewed study, Humphreys claims the group has created a comprehensive characterization of Starlink's signals without breaking its encryption or accessing any user data coming from satellites.

"The Starlink system signal is a closely guarded secret," Humphreys told MIT Technology Review. "Even in our early discussions, when SpaceX was being more cooperative, they didn't reveal any of the signal structure to us. We had to start from scratch, building basically a little radio telescope to eavesdrop on their signals."

Related video: Elon Musk’s Starlink internet satellite units used by Ukraine face funding issues

Duration 2:42

View on Watch

Starting with a Starlink unit programmed to transmit high-definition YouTube videos of Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal, the group began tracking the satellite's synchronization sequences and detected their patterns of transmission — about four sequences every millisecond. These sequences — repeating patterns of signals beamed down to Earth by the satellite — help receivers coordinate with them, leaving clues to the satellite's distance and velocity.

The earthbound receiver, using the timing of the signals received from the satellite and information publically available about its orbit, can then calculate the distance to the satellite and approximate a location within 30 meters, Humphreys told MIT Technology Review. With tweaking, the geolocating capabilities could become as accurate as GPS', which tends to be accurate to about 16 feet in commercial use.

The discovery, while a potential breakthrough for geolocation services, also revealed a possible security concern about Starlink signals — which are currently key to keeping Ukrainian communication services running as Russia has invaded the country — if used as a navigation system.

"Humphreys has done a big service to the navigation community identifying these sequences," Mark Psiaki, an aerospace professor at Virginia Tech and GPS expert told MIT Technology Review. "But any navigation system working on open-source sequences could definitely be spoofed, because everyone will know how to spot those signals and create fake ones."

Starlink has become such an integral part of wartime communications in Ukraine that recent outages were described as "catastrophic" by officials. Musk tweeted this week Russia is "actively working" to destroy the satellites, but Humphreys' discovery — that the signals are predictable and replicable — highlights the possibility for intentional disruption of Starlink.

"As time goes on and their dependence on Starlink deepens, Ukraine and its allies in the West are coming to appreciate that they have little control over Starlink and know little about it," Humphreys told MIT Technology Review. "But now many millions have a vested interest in Starlink security, including its resilience to jamming. Assessing that security starts with a clear understanding of the signal structure."

SpaceX, Musk, and Humphreys did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

New research has uncovered a psychological mechanism that underlies fanaticism

PsyPost - 

A new series of nine experimental studies indicates that “discordant knowing”, certainty about something one perceives as opposed by the majority of others, predicts greater fanaticism. The studies showed that experimental manipulation of participants’ views, i.e. putting them in a situation where they are set to see their views as being in opposition to the majority, increased behavioral indicators of fanaticism, such as aggression, determined ignorance and wanting to join extreme groups in service of one’s view. The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.



Dogmatic beliefs, fanaticism and similar phenomena have been attracting interest of social psychologists for a long time. Tendencies of some people to maintain their beliefs in opposition to the views of the majority of people in their environment has been linked to these phenomena. Some studies proposed that people adopt such isolating behavior in an effort to satiate desires for certainty, control and uniqueness.

One concept proposed to explain this is “discordant knowing”. It consists of “felt knowledge” – being sure about an opinion or viewpoint – and “opposition” – perceiving one’s claim as being generally opposed by other people. While previous studies have focused very much on “felt knowledge”, a concept associated with dogmatism, rigidity, overclaiming and similar traits, psychological processes linked to holding minority viewpoints have not attracted much research attention.

To study discordant knowing, study author Anton Gollwitzer and his colleagues designed a series of nine social experiments. They recruited a total of 3277 people through Mechanical Turk [MTurk] and Prolific platforms as participants in these experiments. The first six experiments included 450-700 participants each, while the numbers in the last three were lower.

In the first five experiments, participants were randomly divided into a number of groups each of which was assigned a different experimental condition. In some of the experiments, researchers would ask participants about some of their beliefs and then, depending on the condition, asked them to imagine being in situations that regarded their views in a certain way. Participants were thereafter asked again to express the degree of endorsement of beliefs in question.

Experiments 6-9 included testing the generalizability of detected psychological mechanisms to beliefs about presidential candidates from the 2020 US elections, attitudes towards abortion, antivaccination beliefs, and on a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses, whom authors included in the study as “members of a fanatical religious group” and thus a group holding “their religious claims in a discordant knowing framework” as compared with non-fanatical religious individuals.

Results obtained across these multifaceted experiments supported the authors’ hypothesis that discordant knowing underlies fanaticism. Experimental manipulation of participants views to fall under the discordant knowing framework heightened all aspects of fanaticism. They found that: this effect is based on mechanisms for responding to threats; it depends on the strength of opposition to one’s views; it differs from effects of extremism and extends to the way one sees oneself.

This series of studies highlights new ways in which fanaticism can be studied. However, authors note that many details about these psychological mechanisms remain unknown and should be explored in future studies. Notably, it remains unclear “whether the observed effects are temporally stable” i.e., “does inducing discordant knowing heighten fanaticism only temporarily or over a longer time-period”.

The study, “Discordant Knowing: A Social Cognitive Structure Underlying Fanaticism”, was authored by Anton Gollwitzer, Irmak Olcaysoy Okten, Angel Osorio Pizzaro, and Gabriele Oettingen.

Newsmax cuts ties with Lara Logan after her QAnon-inspired, on-air rant about world leaders drinking the blood of children and making people eat insects

jzitser@businessinsider.com (Joshua Zitser) -

Lara Logan in Washington, DC, in 2017. SAUL LOEB/AFP 

Lara Logan, a war correspondent turned conspiracy theorist, went on a QAnon-inspired rant on Newsmax.

She accused world leaders of dining on the blood of children and making people eat insects.

Newsmax said in a statement that it has "no plans to interview her again."

The right-wing news outlet Newsmax has cut ties with former war correspondent turned conspiracy theorist Lara Logan after she gave a bizarre QAnon-inspired rant on air, the company said in a statement.

The Guardian reported that Logan told Newsmax host Eric Bolling that world leaders "dine on the blood of children," referring to the blood libel conspiracy theory that proliferates in QAnon circles.

QAnon is a baseless far-right conspiracy theory that claims former President Donald Trump is secretly fighting a "deep state" cabal of satanic pedophiles and cannibals.

During her on-air rant, The Hill reported that Logan also said: "God believes in sovereignty and national identity and the sanctity of family, and all the things that we've lived with from the beginning of time. And he knows that the open border is Satan's way of taking control of the world through all of these people who are his stooges and his servants.

"And they may think that they're going to become gods. That's what they tell us. You know, the ones who want us eating insects, cockroaches, and that while they dine on the blood of children? Those are the people, right? They're not going to win."

Newsmax, in a statement to The Hill on Friday, said it "condemns in the strongest terms the reprehensible statements made by Lara Logan."

The news outlet said that it has "no plans to interview her again."

Logan, 51, who was once Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CBS News, left the network after her 2012 report on the Benghazi attack was retracted after an internal review found that key elements of the story were untrue.

Since then, Logan has advanced right-wing conspiracy theories, including comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci, America's top infectious disease expert, to the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

She has also linked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to "satanic, occult" practices while praising Russian President Vladimir Putin and baselessly claimed that Charles Darwin was employed by the Jewish Rothschild banking family to create his theory of evolution.

CRITIC FROM THE RIGHT

Raymond J. de Souza: 

Danielle Smith — Canada's first 'alternatively informed' premier

Opinion by Father Raymond J. de Souza -

 TORONTO SUN -Oct 20, 2022

Were it not for Liz Truss, the soon-to-be-former prime minister of the United Kingdom, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith would have been His Majesty’s first minister who had the roughest last 10 days.


Alberta Premier Danielle Smith© Provided by National Post

(Spare a thought for King Charles III. His mother’s first prime minister was Winston Churchill; his first prime minister reigned for less time than it would take to read Churchill’s books.)

Premier Smith managed a spectacular triplex reversal to launch her premiership: first reversing her flagship policy on not abiding by adverse Supreme Court decisions; then clarifying her remarks about the unvaccinated as being the “most discriminated against group” in her lifetime; now apologizing for voicing some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for his aggressive war against Ukraine.

Back in April, Smith suggested that the Russian bear be permitted to swallow Ukraine’s eastern territories and that perhaps the war was Ukraine and NATO’s fault. In her October disavowal of those remarks, Smith said that her earlier comments were “ill-informed” and confessed that her “knowledge and opinion of this matter have drastically evolved since that time.”

Albertans have a bovine expression to characterize that claim. Danielle Smith may be many things, but “ill-informed” she is not. She is remarkably intelligent and articulate, and has spent a lifetime deeply engaged in public affairs, for years expatiating for hours a day on talk radio. By late April, Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine had dominated the news the world over for two months. Was Smith not watching?

Or what news was she watching? That’s the key part of Smith’s self-exculpatory remarks about her pro-Putin viewpoints. In the early months of 2022, Smith was travelling through rural Alberta, stirring up opposition to pandemic policies with the goal of taking out Premier Jason Kenney.

She achieved that goal by transforming the membership of the United Conservative Party; by the time of the May leadership review vote, more than half of the party members had not previously been members of the UCP, or either of the previous Progressive Conservative or Wildrose parties.

Related video: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith debuts new cabinet

Duration 2:06 View on Watch

Who were these new members, who were mad as hell at Kenney and the UCP establishment? Many of them were consumers of alternative news sources, the kind that were very much against vaccines but not so much against Putin. The locals.com site where Smith made her Ukraine remarks is one such forum.

In her April 29 livestream, Smith said it would be best for Ukraine to “denuclearize,” arguing that , “It would be absurd, if you want to draw a parallel, for Canada to have nuclear weapons and be allied with Russia and not think that was going to upset America. So why would we be surprised if Russia is upset because Ukraine has nuclear weapons and is allied with the United States?”

Of course, Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons, having given them up in 1994 under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances for Ukraine. It was one of the most important steps in creating a post-Cold War, post-U.S.S.R. security structure. Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity if Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons.

Perhaps Smith didn’t know this. But the Budapest Memorandum is hardly a secret. I wrote a column about it in January, and not for the first time. But in the conversation at locals.com and other such places, the historical facts are not always the starting point.

Smith’s premiership began with her trio of U-turns because she has latterly learned that saying in October as premier what she was saying in April on the hustings was no longer tenable.

Smith is the first premier to come from the world of alternative news sources. That’s very important to understand. After she decamped from her prominent Alberta talk show in 2021 because she felt that mass-market radio was too stifling, Smith moved onto alternative platforms. She was not “ill-informed,” so much as she chose to be “alternatively informed.”

Smith moved into circles where it was thought possible to simply ignore the Supreme Court and where Putin being offside with global institutions was attractive. Those circles are politically potent, strong enough in Alberta to capture the UCP and topple its founding leader. Smith was clever enough to mobilize them.

Governing from that base is another matter, though, and Smith will be the first in Canada to try it. How she fares will have an impact on politics throughout the Dominion. And it will determine her own future, as Liz Truss discovered, very, very soon, but not soon enough.

National Post

Jesse Kline: Will Danielle Smith winning the UCP leadership lead to an NDP revival?

As her resume reveals, practically everything Smith touches goes south

Author of the article: Jesse Kline
Publishing date: Oct 05, 2022

UCP leadership candidate Danielle Smith speaks at an all-candidates forum at the Oil Sands Trade Show in Fort McMurray on Wednesday, September 14, 2022. 

Vincent McDermott/Fort McMurray Today/Postmedia Network

A POLITICAL PARTY OF THE OIL INDUSTRY 

PETROLEUM IS THE P IN UCP

When historians look back at the past 15 years in Alberta politics, they would be wise to cite Danielle Smith’s stunning transformation from presumptive premier to political pariah, and her subsequent resurrection as the front-runner in the United Conservative Party leadership race, as a case study in how a politician’s image and political fortunes can be radically altered.

A decade ago, Smith was one of the most promising politicians in the country. Running on a libertarian platform, (NOT LIBERTARIAN, AYN RANDISM) she was a staunch defender of Alberta’s economic interests and a poignant critic of how far the long-ruling Progressive Conservative party had strayed from its small-C conservative roots in the post-Ralph Klein era.

In the lead-up to the 2012 election, as leader of the Wildrose party, Smith was widely seen as a sure bet to become premier and end the PC’s four-decade long dynasty. That didn’t happen, and two years later, Smith and eight of her MLAs, representing over 50 per cent of her caucus, struck a deal with the devil and jumped ship to the very party they had spent years trying to convince Albertans had become tired and out of touch.

It was an almost treasonous betrayal of her party and her principles, but perhaps it should not have come as a surprise, considering that the writing had been on the wall for some time.

Starting with her first political gig as a trustee on the Calgary Board of Education, where she almost immediately developed an adversarial relationship with her colleagues. Less than a year later, the board had become so “completely dysfunctional,” as its own chair put it, that the education minister fired the lot of them.

(Smith later admitted she was too “strident” and should have been more “open-minded” about her colleagues’ views, yet the whole debacle seems to have foreshadowed the antagonistic relationship she intends to forge with the rest of Canada, with her promised introduction of an “Alberta sovereignty act.”)

A few years after supporting Ted Morton’s failed PC leadership bid in 2006, Smith was elected leader of the Wildrose party. Polls conducted in the lead-up to the 2012 election had the Wildrose leading by as much as 10 points; but in the end, it lost by about that much, in no small part due to Smith’s refusal to condemn one of her candidates who said that gay people would burn in a “lake of fire.”

In her defence, Smith cited the candidate’s religious freedom, which is certainly important, but voters know that just because you have a right to say something offensive does not mean that they want you to govern them.

Nevertheless, Smith put on a commendable showing, taking Wildrose from a party without a presence in the legislature, to the official Opposition. Unfortunately, she lacked the patience to see the Wildrose revolution through, instead choosing to cross the floor with her tail between her legs, which paved the way for Rachel Notley’s socialist takeover of the province.

As her resume reveals, practically everything Smith touches goes south, and her political machinations have had wide-ranging consequences for the province — shattering its historically stable governance and lifting the fortunes of the NDP. Yet, after six years in the talk-radio wilderness, Smith revitalized her image and re-usurped her role as a powerful and potentially disruptive force in provincial politics.

Ironically, when Smith quit her job at Calgary’s venerable 770 CHQR radio station last year, she cited the vitriol she received in today’s “hyper-sensitive social media environment,” but ended up choosing a career path that will open her up to even more criticism. And in the intervening time, we’ve learned that many of her views, especially on the subject of medicine, are, well, downright loony.

This includes falsely claiming on Twitter that “hydroxychloroquine cures 100 per cent of coronavirus patients,” and alleging that ivermectin could not only treat or cure COVID-19, but that information about its benefits was being suppressed by the government. Both drugs deserved to be studied as potential treatments for COVID, but both have since been found to be of little to no benefit. Touting either as some sort of miracle cure, either before or after the relevant data was available, was wholly irresponsible.

Smith has not only argued against vaccine mandates, which is completely legitimate, but she has openly courted the anti-vaxxer vote and drawn false and unsupported comparisons between vaccine mandates and unethical Nazi experiments.

More recently, she featured a naturopathic doctor in one of her campaign videos who made false statements about cancer, suggesting that naturopathic treatments were just as effective as conventional ones until the cancer hits Stage 4.

By doing so, Smith put herself in the same camp as the left-wing soccer moms and right-wing conspiracists who reject medical science, while touting the healing benefits of crystals and homeopathic snake oil. Again, this shouldn’t come as a total surprise: in a 2003 newspaper column, she erroneously claimed that “moderate cigarette consumption can reduce traditional risks of disease.” And this is the person who may soon be in charge of Alberta’s health-care system.

If her “unconventional” views on health weren’t bad enough, Smith has made the unconstitutional “Alberta sovereignty act” a key plank of her campaign. If passed, it would allow the Alberta legislature to disregard federal laws and court rulings it deems to be in violation of the constitutional separation of powers. Yet by disregarding the very institution intended to interpret the Constitution and adjudicate disputes between different levels of government — the courts — it will surely precipitate a constitutional crisis.

This not only poses a dangerous threat to the rule of law, it also displays short-sighted thinking, as it would be far better for Conservatives to focus their efforts on electing Tories, both federally and provincially.

A federal government led by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, working closely with a strong UCP government in Edmonton, would have a historic opportunity to renegotiate Alberta’s place in Confederation and make a united stand against the provinces that have traditionally worked to block new pipeline infrastructure.

Yet if Smith were to insist on butting heads with the federal government by enacting unconstitutional legislation and flouting the judicial system, even Poilievre would have little choice but to take an adversarial position against her.

The only saving grace may be that, although Smith is the assumed front-runner, there is very little data to back this up, and the party’s single-transferable vote system has historically produced unforeseeable results.

Should Smith win on Thursday, recent polls indicate that her support may be concentrated among the party base, rather than the general electorate: a September Angus Reid poll found that the majority of Albertans, 54 per cent, think Smith would make a lousy premier. Though Notley didn’t fare much better, Smith’s take-no-prisoners style of politics and her fringe medical views could put off enough Albertans to once again open the door for the NDP to take power, just as Smith’s actions did back in 2015.

If Smith wins on Thursday, it could be a boon for Rachel Notley, and bad for Alberta.

National Post
jkline@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/accessd

Rachel Notley delivers 'campaign-ish' style speech at Alberta NDP convention

CALGARY — Alberta's NDP leader Rachel Notley poked fun at the United Conservative Party, it's recent turmoil and focused on the upcoming provincial election Saturday but never mentioned Danielle Smith once in her speech to her party's convention.


Rachel Notley delivers 'campaign-ish' style speech at Alberta NDP convention

© Provided by The Canadian Press

"They've had quite a year. I never thought I'd say this about Jason Kenney but I kind of miss him. Weird right?," Notley said.

"He may not have finished a whole term as a premier but he has lasted much longer than that head of lettuce on TV in Great Britain. The big question is will his successor be able to say the same?"

Notley said she expects both she and the NDP will be the focus of much of the discussion at the UCP gathering.

"Because we’re just a week away from Halloween and we frighten the hell out of them. They’ve going to tell some spooky stories about sinister New Democrats and their scary alliances."

Not once in her speech did she mention Smith by name and told reporters she hadn't spoken to Smith, elected as UCP leader earlier this month, in three or four years but said their relationship had always been "collegial."

"What we've been hearing from Albertans is that Albertans know the current leader of the UCP, they know who she is, they know what she has to say and more and more as a result they're coming to us to say 'OK, what's your plan?'" Notley told reporters.

"I certainly don't have any ill will against her personally. I do worry about the hurtfulness of some of her statements, some of her policies with respect to real Albertans, with respect to what the consequences of those decisions will be."

About 1,200 people are registered for the NDP convention, which Notley says is it's largest ever.

She spent much of her speech laying out election-style promises including repealing many of the United Conservative Party cuts to benefits for family and seniors supports and reining in costs for consumers.

"After the last election … some folks were ready to write us off. They thought we’d just fade away. But thanks to you, we are bigger and more confident."

Notley served as premier from 2015 to 2019. She reminded delegates this is the last party gathering before next year's provincial election, and promised to put a rate cap on utility bills, freeze auto insurance rates and keep the provincial gas tax off at the pumps until inflation returns to more normal levels.

She acknowledged that this does have the appearance of an election campaign launch.

"I think that's pretty fair to say. So yeah it's getting campaign-ish for sure. It's in that stage. The -ish stage."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published October 22, 2022.

Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press

Saturday's letters: 

Health-care restructuring never ends

Edmonton Journal -

I worked at a hospital in Edmonton for 16 years in the early 1990s. I was working when the Klein government proceeded with aggressive cuts to AHS, which resulted in a lot of layoffs and reduced availability of hospital beds. There have been many major upheavals in the AHS system, primarily in 2004 and again in 2008, at which time the regional boards became our current AHS system.


Demonstrators protest during the Rally to Support Public Healthcare organized by Protect our Province Alberta at the Alberta legislature in Edmonton on Wednesday, April 6, 2022.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal

There have also been expensive reviews done. In 2019, Ernst and Young was hired, at a cost of $2 million, to review AHS. Their report was released in February 2020, with 57 recommendations and 72 money-saving opportunities presented to our government, very few of which were acted upon.

I am not sure how many reviews and upheavals of AHS we taxpayers have to go through. Every time a new premier is installed, another restructuring seems to occur. Perhaps it is time for premiers, like Danielle Smith, to quit messing around with major restructuring ideas without considering prior reviews and recommendations already paid for.

I agree our health-care system is in trouble but I would like to know what her specific plan is and if she is listening at all to anyone else’s advice other than the power-hungry ideas in her own head.

Carol Alexander, Edmonton

Albertans didn’t vote for Smith’s changes

Premier Danielle Smith, regarding your upcoming changes to be made, you are quoted as saying, “be patient and gentle with us because we know that we have to do this for Albertans.” Premier Smith, you do realize, I hope, that you were not elected by the people of Alberta. You were voted in to be leader of the UCP, not voted in by Albertans. Tread carefully.

H.H. Kohel, St. Albert

Premier subscribes to conspiracy theories

We shouldn’t even have to be talking about taking responsibility or apologies. Those are her true colours and beliefs. She said she had to do her research to find the true information. Really, are you kidding me? We’re not ignorant. She’s trying to hide her true beliefs now that she’s been caught.

Bottom line, she’s a conspiracy theorist. The Ukrainian community should not waste a minute of time explaining things to her. This is who she is; you can take the horse to water but you can’t make him drink. What’s next with her? We should not be discussing any of this with any leader in Canada. Scary and shameless that a leader follows the dark web.

J.T. Syrnyk, Edmonton

‘Stand for public education’: Albertans pack legislature grounds for rally

Kellen Taniguchi - TODAY - Edmonton Journal

Related video: Thousands attend rally for public education at Alberta legislature
Duration 1:56
View on Watch

Chants of “stand for public education” echoed around the Alberta legislature grounds Saturday afternoon as crowds rallied for a better system.

The rally was held on the steps of the Alberta legislature, where calls for funding, smaller class sizes and a “forward-looking” curriculum were made. Albertans from Calgary and southern Alberta drove through snow to be at Saturday’s rally, while northern Alberta and local teachers and parents also showed their support.

Among the countless signs emphasizing the importance of public education and the red “stand for public education” scarves waving in the sky were Kris and Karen Fedun, both Edmonton Public school teachers and parents to two daughters, aged 14 and 16.

Kris said it was important for his family to be at the rally.

“The main message for me is that no matter what political party is in power, that education needs to be coming to the forefront because of the amount of impact it has to our community,” he said.

“Right now, we’re faced with a lot of large class sizes, students that don’t get support, we have students who are coming from overseas who don’t speak the language and we don’t even have an EA to support that student who just sits there in our classroom and sadly has to struggle.”

Karen said any government in power needs to prioritize Alberta’s education system.

“If our dollars go toward our public funding then we have more resources to give our students,” she said.

Kris added his daughters also attended the rally to see their parents “lead by example.”

“We wanted them to see that it isn’t just us talking in our home, just because we’re teachers, and that education is important to all Albertans,” he said, adding his daughters understand the value of education and wanted to support.


Wendy Palk of Edson, whose grandson is in kindergarten, holds a sign during Saturday’s education rally at the Alberta legislature and said she’s worried about the the curriculum. Alberta teachers, parents and education advocates from across the province gathered at the Alberta legislature Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022, to celebrate public education and demand it become, and remain, a priority for those currently in office and those seeking office in the next provincial election. Kellen Taniguchi/Postmedia

Wendy Palk travelled from Edson for Saturday’s rally. She hoisted a sign that read: “My grandchildren deserve better.”

Palk said she is upset with the current government’s curriculum plans and she’s worried about her grandson, who is currently in kindergarten. She added many Albertans have voiced their concern over the curriculum, but they haven’t been heard.

“Never give up,” she said. “I don’t know if Danielle Smith will listen, but look at the people here, this is amazing. This is just a small number of people in the province who believe in public education and are being ignored by this government.”

Related
Alberta NDP says it would spend $3M to train skilled trades workers

Ban on teaching anti-racism, diversity included in Alberta UCP policy resolutions

Critics say new curriculum rushed, age-inappropriate and lacking resources

The rally was co-sponsored by the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) and the Alberta School Councils’ Association (ASCA).

Jason Schilling, ATA president, ended the rally with a list of needs for public education.

“We want to see smaller class sizes so our students have the best opportunity to learn from their teachers. We want a modern, diverse, forward-thinking curriculum … We want a curriculum that is inclusive of all students and their realities and one that truly all students can see themselves and their families,” said Schilling.

“We want a comprehensive school plan that addresses the complex needs of our students, especially after these last few difficult years. And we want funding that fully and completely supports the needs of our students, especially our students with special needs.”

Schilling hopes to carry momentum of the rally into the 2023 provincial election. He added the ATA, ASCA and ATA locals across Alberta will be hosting community conversations over the next few months where supporters for public education are invited to share ideas.

ktaniguchi@postmedia.com
twitter.com/kellentaniguchi

CHARTS: “Almost unattainable” gap between green energy copper demand and mining supply

Staff Writer | October 20, 2022 | 

El Soldado copper mine in Chile. 

(Image courtesy of Anglo American | Flickr.)

A new report by Wood Mackenzie estimates that 9.7 million tonnes of new copper supply is needed over 10 years from projects that have not attracted sufficient investment, had not been approved by boards or received necessary government and environmental permits, to meet the targets set out in the Paris Climate Agreement.


To put that figure in perspective, 9.7mt is equivalent to nearly a third of current refined consumption, says Woodmac, a Verisk business (Nasdaq:VRSK). That is also the equivalent of putting a new La Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine by a country mile, into production each year.

Source: Wood Mackenzie

The reality on the ground is far removed from the copper demand created by electric cars and renewable energy generation and storage.

Woodmac figures show despite historically strong copper prices, mining project approval rates have dwindled to cyclical lows. In the first half of 2022, the volume of committed copper projects totalled an average annual production of just 260,000 tonnes per year.

“Copper’s critical role in the energy transition is undisputed. It’s the significant pull on the metal’s existing and potential supplies, and the investment required that needs urgent attention,” said Nick Pickens, research director of copper markets at Wood Mackenzie.

Source: Wood Mackenzie

“To successfully meet zero-carbon targets, the mining industry needs to deliver new projects at a frequency and consistent level of financing never previously accomplished,” Pickens added.

In short, says Woodmac, “the global energy transition presents an almost unattainable mine supply challenge, with significant investment and price incentives required.”

Source: Wood Mackenzie

Woodmac estimates that more than $23 billion a year will be needed over 30 years to deliver new projects under the 1.5 degrees Celsius Paris scenario – a level of investment only previously seen for a limited period from 2012 to 2016, following the China-induced commodity super-cycle.

The copper price needed to meet demand rises substantially to $9,370/t ($4.25/lb) in constant 2022 US dollar terms under this scenario. That constitutes a 25% rise from today’s price.

Los Andes Copper on track to deliver Vizcachitas feasibility by year-end, says CEO

A panoramic view of los Andes Copper's Vizcachitas project in Chile. Credit: Los Andes Copper.

POSTED BY: HENRY LAZENBY OCTOBER 20, 2022

Los Andes Copper (TSXV: LA; US-OTCQX) is eager to restart drilling at the flagship Vizcachitas porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit in Chile while it works in parallel to publish a pre-feasibility study on the project before year-end.

“General engineering work, infrastructure planning, plant design and environmental considerations are all on track with the plan to complete the (prefeasibility) in the fourth quarter,” CEO Michael Jones told The Northern Miner.

“The successful drilling completed in 2022 has been incorporated into the resource model, and opportunities to increase the potential project mining rate are being assessed,” Jones said in an interview.

Jones says the company is currently mobilizing drill teams after a July environmental court decision reinstating the drilling permit with certain operational conditions, including a restricted drilling plan for the first 12 months.

He underlined that the exploration and PFS workstreams could progress independently of each other, given a March court resolution asking the company to suspend drilling in an order that deals with protecting the Andean cat, a threatened species. The court order related to the impact on the habitat of the vizcachas, a small rabbit that is part of the food chain for the Andean cat, the company said at the time.

“Our drilling plan will allow the company to pursue its original program of illuminating and defining extensions of the mineralized body, which remains open,” Jones said. “Drilling is planned to resume soon to expand the resources beyond those currently considered in the (prefeasibility).” Alluding to the deposit’s growth potential, he added that large-scale intercepts of up to 1,000 metres of mineralization announced this year are still open in the deposit model.

Meanwhile, key engineering work being completed as part of the prefeasibility study include identifying and resolving primary bottlenecks in the mine plan, including increasing production rates via enhanced open-pit development and improving crushing and grinding of ore.

“The PEA has a 45-year life of mine, so accelerating production would benefit the project,” said Jones, referring to a preliminary economic study completed in 2019.

Los Andes also examines ways to enhance operations by applying new technologies. The company is considering incorporating high-pressure grinding rolls and dry stacking of tailings into the mine design process, for example, which would reduce water and energy use considerably. In addition, it recently entered a letter of intent for the procurement of desalinated water with plans to add to regional water infrastructure, benefitting the project and the community.

Situated about 120 km north of Santiago, the Minera Vizcachitas project hosts measured and indicated resources of 1.3 billion tonnes grading 0.396% copper, 141.4 parts per million (ppm) molybdenum, and 1.05 ppm silver for contained metal of 11.2 billion lb. copper, 400 million lb. molybdenum and 43.4 million oz. silver.

Inferred resources add 788.2 million tonnes grading 0.33% copper, 127 ppm molybdenum, 0.88 ppm silver for contained metal of 5.8 billion lb. copper, 221 million lb. molybdenum and 22.3 million oz. silver.

The 2019 preliminary economic assessment outlining a long-life open pit mine, forecasted an average head grade of 0.53% copper-equivalent over the first five years of operation.

At an 8% discount rate, the project would generate a post-tax net present value of US$2.7 billion and an internal rate of return of 26.7% using copper prices of US$3.50 per pound.

The study, which evaluated three cases with daily mill throughputs of 55,000 tonnes grading 0.52% copper,125 ppm molybdenum and 1.5 grams silver per tonne; 110,000 tonnes grading 0.47% copper, 129 ppm molybdenum and 1.3 grams silver per tonne; and 200,000 tonnes grading 0.44% copper, 113 ppm molybdenum and 1.2 grams per tonne silver, envisaged a capital cost of about $1.3 billion to $2.8 billion.

The feasibility study will seek to expand on these scenarios.

The Vizcachitas property includes a porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit that offers potential for a low strip, open pit operation in an area of low elevation with excellent infrastructure, including water and power in central Chile. The Vizcachitas deposit occurs in the same metallogenic belt as the large copper-molybdenum porphyries Rio Blanco-Los Bronces, Los Pelambres-El Pachon and El Teniente.

The company’s project lands are subject to net smelter return royalties of 2% on surface production and 1% on any underground production.

Exploration upside

According to Los Andes, the Vizcachitas porphyry system is associated with a complex of hydrothermal breccias and porphyries within Miocene volcanic rocks. Five different drilling campaigns have been undertaken on the property from 1993 to date.

A total of 165 diamond drill holes have been drilled, totalling 52,256 metres. Jones explains that the drilling carried out in 2015 to 2017 confirmed the new geological models and showed the importance of the early diorite porphyry and hydrothermal breccias in controlling the higher-grade mineralization of the deposit.

The new geological model also defined a near-surface higher-grade supergene enriched mineralization outlining an area of 400 by 400 metres where all the drill holes have returned average supergene grades greater than 0.5% copper.

Among the highlight results from this year’s completed drilling program was hole CMV-12B, which intersected 861.2 metres of 0.39% copper-equivalent from 29.5 metres depth, including 330.7 metres of 0.63% copper-equivalent from 560 metres depth. Another highlight intercept in hole CM-001B hit 1,177 metres of 0.5% copper-equivalent from 180 metres depth.

“The drilling program results, with the one-kilometre intercepts of copper, clearly point to Vizcachitas becoming the next significant deposit in line for development in a district which hosts three of the largest porphyry copper mines in the world. We are only just now starting to see its full potential,” said Jones, adding the company is still looking for the centre of mineralization on the property.

“Large-scale, advanced copper projects like Vizcachitas are rare and are expected to be in high demand as the copper market heads towards an expected significant supply deficit in the years ahead,” he said. “Los Andes Copper’s 100% ownership of Vizcachitas with no copper offtake entanglements is also attractive to larger copper producers in the region.”

However, the executive laments that despite the existing resource, the near-term value catalysts, project economics and the remaining resource upside, the company is trading at only about an x1 NAV multiple.

“It is incomprehensible how copper juniors are not getting the love they deserve. By Goldman Sachs’ estimates, there is a five to eight-million-tonne per year copper supply gap opening up from 2025 onwards – in the case of a 150,000-tonne per year project like Vizcachitas, that’s 85 new mines just to keep up with baseline demand. All these new mines are realistically never going to happen,” says Jones.

The company’s Toronto-quoted equity has come off a March high at $17.73 but is still up more than 55% over the 12-month timeframe, giving it a market cap of $368.2 million.

MINING IS NOT GREEN

All the metals we mined in 2021: Visualized

Visual Capitalist - Elements | October 20, 2022 |


View the full-size infographic

All the metals we mined in 2021

“If you can’t grow it, you have to mine it” is a famous saying that encapsulates the importance of minerals and metals in the modern world.

From every building we enter to every device we use, virtually everything around us contains some amount of metal.

The above infographic visualizes all 2.8 billion tonnes of metals mined in 2021 and highlights each metal’s largest end-use using data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Why do we mine so much iron ore?

Iron ore accounted for 93% of the metals mined in 2021, with 2.6 billion tonnes extracted from the ground. It’s important to note that this is ore production, which is typically higher than metal production since metals are extracted and refined from ores.

With 98% of it converted into pig iron to make steel, iron ore is ubiquitous in our lives. Steel made from iron ore is used in construction, transportation, and household appliances, and it’s likely that you encounter something made out of it every day, especially if you live in a city.

Due to its key role in building infrastructure, iron ore is one of the most important materials supporting urbanization and economic growth.

Industrial metals

Industrial metals are largely used in steelmaking, construction, chemical manufacturing, and as alloying agents. In 2021, the world mined around 177 million tonnes of these metals.

Aluminum accounted for nearly 40% of industrial metal production in 2021. China was by far the largest aluminum producer, making up more than half of global production. The construction industry uses roughly 25% of annually produced aluminum, with 23% going into transportation.

Chromium is a lesser-known metal with a key role in making stainless steel stainless. In fact, stainless steel is usually composed of 10% to 30% of chromium, enhancing its strength and corrosion resistance.

Copper, manganese, and zinc round out the top five industrial metals mined in 2021, each with its own unique properties and roles in the economy.

Technology and precious metals

Technology metals include those that are commonly used in technology and devices. Compared to industrial metals, these are usually mined on a smaller scale and could see faster consumption growth as the world adopts new technologies.

The major use of rhenium, the rarest metal in terms of production, is in superalloys that are critical for engine turbine blades in aircraft and gas turbine engines. The petroleum industry uses it in rhenium-platinum catalysts to produce high-octane gasoline for vehicles.

In terms of growth, clean energy technology metals stand out. For example, lithium production has more than doubled since 2016 and is set to ride the boom in EV battery manufacturing. Over the same period, global rare earth production more than doubled, driven by the rising demand for magnets.

Indium is another interesting metal on this list. Most of it is used to make indium tin oxide, an important component of touchscreens, TV screens, and solar panels.
The metal mining megatrend

The world’s material consumption has grown significantly over the last few decades, with growing economies and cities demanding more resources.

Global production of both iron ore and aluminum has more than tripled relative to the mid-1990s. Other metals, including copper and steel, have also seen significant consumption growth.

Today, economies are not only growing and urbanizing but also adopting mineral-intensive clean energy technologies, pointing towards further increases in metal production and consumption.

(This article first appeared in the Visual Capitalist Elements)