They’re ‘World Champions’ of Banishing Water. Now, the Dutch Need to Keep It. As climate change dries out Europe, the Netherlands, a country long shaped by its overabundance of water, is suddenly confronting drought. A cargo barge on the severely depleted Rhine River at Lobith, the Netherlands, in August, when the river’s discharge hit a record low.Credit...Rob Engelaar/EPA, via Shutterstock By Raymond Zhong https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/...type=Homepage§ion=Climate and Environment Raymond Zhong crisscrossed the Netherlands to see how the famously threatened country is re-engineering itself for new threats. Oct. 10, 2022 ENSCHEDE, the Netherlands — The story of the Netherlands’ centuries of struggle against water is written all over its boggy, low-lying landscape. Windmills pumped water out of sodden farmland and canals whisked it away. Dikes stopped more from flooding in. Now, climate change is drying out great stretches of Europe, and, once again, the Dutch are hoping to engineer their way to safety — only this time, by figuring out how to hold onto more water instead of flushing it out. From California and Texas to India and China, many parts of the world are grappling with widening swings between very wet conditions and very dry ones. The extra heat near the earth’s surface from global warming is, in many regions, increasing the chances of both punishing droughts and violent rainstorms. Societies like the Netherlands must now plan for both extremes, even though the best preparations for one can be at odds with the best preparations for the other. “We are world champions in making land dry,” said Peter van Dijk, a blueberry grower based in the country’s south. “Now we are trying to turn that system around, because we overshot.” Even in a rich and ambitious country like the Netherlands, it’s a huge challenge. The Dutch government has tiptoed around raising prices for heavy water users, wary of a backlash. Tighter rules on construction in vulnerable areas could deepen a housing shortage. Curbs on water-use risk exacerbating tensions with farmers, who have staged furious protests against a plan to cut nitrogen emissions. Farmers worked to dam a ditch to capture water in Meijel, the Netherlands, in May.Credit...Rob Engelaar/EPA, via Shutterstock When it comes to drought, a major problem is that the Netherlands, one of the world’s most densely populated countries, just doesn’t have the space for big new reservoirs. Plus, it is pancake flat: Without gravity’s help, pumping water around takes lots of energy. If the Netherlands can gird itself for a drier future, “then we can show the world that this is possible,” said Henk Ovink, the country’s globe-trotting envoy for water issues. “It demands upping our game.” This year, during Europe’s hottest summer on record, extraordinary heat fueled wildfires, imperiled crops and strained hydropower supplies around the continent. A recent study found that soil conditions as parched as those this summer in Europe were now at least three times as likely as they would be in a world without global warming. In the Netherlands, hot and dry summers have reduced flows from the Rhine River, which is fed by Alpine snowmelt and provides much of the country’s fresh water. In August, the Rhine’s discharge where it enters the Netherlands from Germany ebbed to a record low. In Enschede, an inland city of 159,000 people, water has at times been so scarce that farmers have resorted to siphoning illegally, at night, from ponds and other water sources. After a rash of such episodes in 2018, the local water board began issuing warnings and fines, said Stefan Kuks, the board’s chairman. It assigned employees to patrol water sources and is looking into installing cameras and sensors. “There are a few farmers that are really persistent,” said Stefan Nijwening, a board adviser. Farmland reclaimed from the sea and protected by dikes near Rotterdam in May. The Netherlands is the world’s No. 2 exporter of farm products, after the United States.Credit...Jeffrey Groeneweg/ANP, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images To help more water stay put, kept in reserve for droughts, officials, farmers and scientists across the Netherlands are remaking the land from the bottom up. City planners in Enschede (pronounced EN-skeh-day) are carving gentle undulations into grassy areas to catch rainwater that would otherwise be flushed away in the sewers. They are tearing out concrete tiles and other paved surfaces to expose more permeable earth, a concept that has morphed into a yearly tile-ripping competition between Dutch cities. The water board is adding bends to brooks and streams so water doesn’t run off as quickly. Dutch farmers are making drainage ditches shallower so they remove less water from the ground — a reversal after centuries of seeking to banish every extra drop from the waterlogged land so it could sustain crops and cows. The Netherlands’ water boards have been helping growers dry out their fields since the Middle Ages. Now, some of them are trying to encourage farmers to keep the land wet and to conserve water — for instance, by using drip irrigation instead of inefficient spray cannons. Changing farmers’ minds can be delicate work, said Mr. van Dijk, the blueberry grower, who also helps lead his local water board. “Dutch people don’t like to be told what to do.” The Netherlands’ success at getting rid of excess water helped it become an agricultural powerhouse — the world’s No. 2 exporter of farm products after the United States. This year, though, drought and energy concerns caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine have prompted anguished debate about whether it is sustainable for the Netherlands to produce so many of its famous tulips, plus so much cheese, meat, fruits and vegetables. Jeroen Geurts, an ecologist at the Dutch water research institute KWR, wants the country to embrace its natural swampiness. He is conducting experiments on “re-wetted” marshlands, which could be used for growing cattails for building materials, or as pastures for water buffaloes. A nature reserve in Schijf, the Netherlands, in August after a wildfire. Credit...Remko De Waal/EPA, via Shutterstock Heat and drought are also hindering the Netherlands in its Sisyphean battle against rising seas. As less fresh water flows down the Rhine and other rivers and toward the North Sea, more seawater creeps up them instead, threatening water supplies for homes and farms. Heat waves are also causing more algae blooms in the rivers, harming water quality. Gertjan Zwolsman, a policy adviser and researcher at Dunea, a drinking-water company that supplies 1.3 million people around The Hague, and his colleagues are exploring methods for pumping up and treating the brackish water beneath the Netherlands’ sandy coastal dunes. The process is energy intensive. But so is transporting river water across great distances to cities, said Franca Kramer, a researcher at Dunea. “There is nothing natural about the Netherlands,” Dr. Zwolsman said, laughing. So far, the country’s adaptations to drought haven’t involved anything as grand as its massive storm barriers or other flood-control projects. But if the planet becomes much hotter — in the coming decades, it is projected to be more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) warmer than it was in preindustrial times, even if nations deliver on their climate pledges — then Dutch leaders might need to consider bolder, and potentially riskier, steps. One concerns the fate of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port. Today, the city has an open channel to the North Sea so cargo ships can move in and out easily. But the channel also lets seawater in, forcing the Dutch government to send huge amounts of fresh water down the rivers to push it back. As sea levels rise, “you’re going to need more and more water to keep that sea out,” said Niko Wanders, a water expert at Utrecht University. At some point, he said, the government might want to close off the Port of Rotterdam with locks, as it has done with the Port of Amsterdam. This would hinder shipping traffic but free up water for other purposes. (It wouldn’t solve the problem completely: During this summer’s drought, the Dutch government restricted how often the locks near Amsterdam could be opened each day to limit saltwater intrusion.) Some have floated an even more drastic solution: a gigantic new sea dike that walls off much of the Dutch coast. It wouldn’t be cheap. But the alternative, which could cost even more, is to keep adapting and re-adapting water infrastructure for progressively tougher conditions, said Stefan Nieuwenhuis, a senior adviser for the Dutch water ministry. “Or to move on,” he said — to retreat from the soggy shoulder of Europe that the Dutch have turned, through ingenuity and force of will, into one of the world’s most prosperous societies. “But that’s not our plan.”
Years of Failed Rains Prompt Ruto’s 15-Billion-Tree Plan in Kenya https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-billion-tree-plan-in-kenya?srnd=premium-asia President Ruto plans to recruit 2,700 rangers for program Climate change complicating socio-economic path, Ruto says William RutoPhotographer: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images By David Malingha 20 October 2022 Kenyan President William Ruto wants 15 billion trees planted in his country over the next decade as part of a program to stop the cycle of recurring droughts. The plan involves growing five billion trees in five years and an additional 10 billion by 2032, Ruto said at a rally in the capital, Nairobi, on Thursday. “This will eventually lead to the rehabilitation and restoration of 10.6 million hectares,” he said. Ruto, who took office last month, joins global and regional campaigns to curb climate change through planting trees, including the African Union-led $8 billion Great Green Wall Initiative to restore the degraded landscapes mainly in the Sahel and Ethiopia’s proposal to plant 4 billion trees. While the programs have faced setbacks partly due to unprecedented droughts, scientists and academics maintain forestation is one of the best ways to fight global warming. “Climate change is complicating our roadmap toward socio-economic transformation and achievement of sustainable development goals,” Ruto said. “The ultimate solution includes greening our country to more than 30% of tree cover by 2032.” Kenya, with over 90% of its land arid or semi-arid, has suffered three years of failed rains, causing the worst drought in four decades and a loss of at least 2.5 million heads of livestock. The situation, exacerbated by pricier fertilizer and other commodities, has caused inflation to accelerate at the fastest pace in five years and the central bank to hike interest rates. The project “will be undertaken by youth and women groups, civil society, community and religious organizations, leveraging on private sector and government financing,” Ruto said. “To ensure sustainable funding, Kenya is developing policies and strategies to tap into the global carbon market opportunities, accessible through carbon trading.” The government plans to immediately recruit an additional 2,700 forest rangers and 600 forest officers to support the program. The campaign may help position Ruto as a green champion ahead of the international climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, next month. More than 90% of the electricity from Kenya’s national grid is sourced from renewables, such as underground steam, wind and solar. Earlier this month, he urged Africa to embrace cleaner energy sources, saying “rather than trudging in the fossil-fuel footsteps of those who went before, we can leapfrog this dirty energy.” Other highlights of Ruto’s speech: The government is working on investment mechanisms through public-private partnerships to construct at least 100 dams under a plan to irrigate 3 million acres of land. The government is committed to close the housing gap, which stands at 2 million units. The target is to increase the supply fourfold to 200,000 per year.
The world hopes Lula will save the Amazon. After Bolsonaro, it won’t be easy By Paulina Villegas and Sarah Kaplan November 1, 2022 https://www.smh.com.au/world/south-...lsonaro-it-won-t-be-easy-20221101-p5bulq.html Brasilia: When Luis Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil on Sunday, Gustavo Conde felt a sense of relief for himself and everyone. “It feels like we can breathe again,” the 23-year-old cook said in downtown Brasilia. “And so will the planet.” If Lula keeps his campaign promises to safeguard the Amazon rainforest, analysts say, Brazil could have a major impact on the worldwide fight against climate change, after years of accelerating deforestation under President Jair Bolsonaro. Scientists warn that the lungs of the planet, vital to slowing global warming, are approaching a tipping point. An area of forest on fire near a logging area in the Transamazonica highway region, in Amazonas state, Brazil, in September.Credit:AP “Let’s fight for zero deforestation. The planet needs the Amazon alive,” Lula, who served two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, said in his victory address. “A standing tree is worth more than tonnes of wood illegally harvested by those who think only of easy profit.” During the bitterly fought campaign, Lula made the environment central to his pitch. Whereas Bolsonaro has promoted the development of the rainforest, Lula pledged to reverse many of his opponent’s policies. After winning the election with a margin of just 2 million votes – from more than 150 million electors – Lula vowed to restart the surveillance and monitoring of the rainforest, stop the invasion and burning of Indigenous lands, and fight other environmental crimes, including mining. Brazil’s now president-elect Luis Inacio Lula da Silva receives a headdress from Assurini Indigenous people in Belem, Para, Brazil, in September. He has promised to reverse Bolsonaro’s forest policies.Credit:AP Marina Silva, who was environmental minister under Lula and spokeswoman for environmental issues during his campaign, said the challenge was greater than when he first took office in 2003, but he would take concrete steps to strengthen the country’s main environmental agencies, which were largely dismantled or neutered under Bolsonaro. “Lula is as convinced today about the environmental issue as he has always been about the social issue,” Silva said. She pointed to his record: during his first two terms, deforestation fell by about three quarters from a peak in 2004. The significance of the Amazon, a region that occupies about 40 per cent of South America’s land mass and contains a third of the world’s trees, in the fight against climate change can hardly be overstated. The Brazilian Amazon recorded more fires in the first week of September alone than in the whole of the same month last year, according to Brazil Institute for Space Research. Fires are a common way to clear land for crops and grazing.Credit:AP When healthy, the rainforest’s annual carbon uptake is similar to Germany’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The landscape also plays a crucial role in regulating weather patterns. Its trees release huge amounts of moisture into the air, generating a river of rain that can affect precipitation half a continent away. The rainforest spreads across nine nations, but some 60 per cent is in Brazil. Under Bolsonaro, who campaigned promised to open up the Amazon to business, rates of deforestation in the Amazon have reached record highs. Satellite images reveal the ecosystem has shrunk by about 17 per cent and parts of the forest now emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb. More than 2 billion trees in the Amazon have been cut down or burnt on Bolsonaro’s watch, according to Imazon and MapBiomas, two of Brazil’s most renowned environmental research groups. A billboard supporting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the entrance of a farm in the municipality of Humaita, Amazonas state, Brazil, where deforestation is rife.Credit:AP A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in March showed the Amazon could soon approach a “tipping point”, at which swaths of the rainforest convert irreversibly to drier, more open grasslands. This would release millions of tonnes of carbon stored in the rainforest’s soils and trees, making it almost impossible for the world to achieve its most ambitious climate goals and averting catastrophic warming, scientists have warned. A recent analysis published by the website Carbon Brief found that if Lula follows through on a pledge to enforce Brazil’s Forest Code, a law that requires private landowners to preserve native vegetation on a certain fraction of their property, he could reduce deforestation by 89 per cent by the end of the decade. “This is a key element of stabilising global climate, second to stopping fossil fuel use,” tweeted climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth systems analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. The morning after Lula’s win, he wrote, was “a day of hope for the world”. The victory was inspiring for Manoela Machado, an ecologist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center who studies fire prevention in the Amazon. “The promise or the hope now is the government won’t be so permissive” of illegal logging and land clearing, she said. “It means I’m more energetic to fight than ever before.” The government of Norway said on Monday it would resume financial aid to Brazil to reduce deforestation through a global protection fund, Brazilian media reported. Lula da Silva has emerged victorious in the Brazilian election, beating Jair Bolsonaro to be president. Norwegian Environmental Minister Espen Barth Eide told the news agency NTB that his government would contact Lula’s team to resume the aid that was halted in 2019. But Lula faces a tremendous challenge, given the scope and impact of policies passed under Bolsonaro and the accumulated damage, analysts and activists say. “It will be very difficult to reverse the environmental policy overnight,” said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the advocacy network Climate Observatory. “Bolsonaro has sabotaged the institutions that fight environmental crimes. It will take time to restructure these public agencies.” Brazil has long struggled to bring order to the Amazon, but conditions have worsened significantly under Bolsonaro. Environmentalists say he has emboldened criminals by siding with those who want to exploit resources for economic gain, assailing the institutions charged with protecting the rainforest and its Indigenous communities and permitting illegal mining. Some analysts warn that a bloc of lawmakers with ties to agriculture could try to block Lula’s environmental policies and pass legislation to facilitate land-grabbing and illegal mining. Lula, who has spoken of turning Brazil into a “climate champion”, said his administration would be open to “international cooperation to preserve the Amazon” through investment or scientific research. “What is new about this time is that he sees climate and the Amazon as an economic asset, and as a vehicle to put Brazil back in the international scenario, after Bolsonaro’s years of isolation,” said Pedro Abramovay, executive director for Latin America and the Caribbean at Open Society. In Colombia, 42 per cent of which is considered part of the Amazon, President Gustavo Petro has pledged to work with Lula and other South American leaders to combat deforestation. But those plans are already proving difficult to implement for Petro, and have exposed differences in vision between the two leftist leaders. While Petro suggested building an anti-oil bloc in the region, Lula has rejected the idea for Brazil. “When governments change, it doesn’t automatically change what happens to the forest,” said Federal University of Minas Gerais professor Raoni Rajão, one of Brazil’s leading researchers on deforestation. He said it was unclear how Lula would bring new infrastructure projects in the Amazon without causing more damage. Any substantial change will take time, Rajão said. The budgets of the environmental control agencies have already been allocated for 2023. The Washington Post
Village in French Alps demolishes its ski lift because there's no snow left Xiaofei Xu, CNN • Published 21st November 2022 https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/french-ski-resort-dismantled-ski-lift-scn/index.html Image credit: OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images Paris (CNN) — After several squeaks, the rusty wheel was finally wrenched from the tarnished white pole that once stood proudly on the mountainside. Watching from the sidelines, roughly a hundred people gathered in the small French Alpine village of Saint-Firmin to bid farewell to their ski lift as a small team worked to dismantle it late last month. The reason? It hasn't been in use for years -- because there was no more snow. "Global warming happened, and that's what changed our view of this site," Didier Beauzon, 63, a life-long resident of Saint Firmin and an elected official serving the village, told CNN. "Well, we had to give it back to nature," he added. French environmental group Mountain Wilderness has been tasked with dismantling the ski lift. OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images The ski site was originally built in 1964 to help kids from the village learn how to ski somewhere close to home before they tackled more challenging trails all around the Alps. While it once enjoyed regular winter snowfalls, things had deteriorated in recent decades. It's a situation currently being experienced in other French and European ski resorts as climate crisis is blamed for shortening ski seasons and reducing mountain snow and glacier cover. "The lack of snow meant that the last time it ran was about 15 years ago and for just one weekend. Since then, it has not been used again," Beauzon said of his village's ski lift. Fun and joy The ski lift has been rusting away, unused in recent years. OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images But things were not always like this, Beauzon remembers his youth, when activities were organized by the village during wintertime for kids at the ski site. The local sport association would hold competitions at weekends, and open fun events for all comers on Wednesdays, followed by prize ceremonies in the village's center square. "Everybody could win a prize, all you had to do was get to the bottom, regardless of how," Beauzon said. The prizes were usually modest -- a pair of socks, a chocolate bar -- yet are joyful, he said. At the end of each skiing season, trophies would be awarded to the village's strongest skiers. Related content Why high temperatures can make planes too heavy to take off "Personally, I've never won a trophy," Beauzon said. "But it was always a good laugh for everybody because it was always a good atmosphere." The lift was built in 1964 to help local kids get experience before moving to bigger slopes. OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images Unfortunately, such traditions melted away along with the snows. And with the lift silently rusting away as a sad reminder of the good times gone by, the village decided to get rid of it -- a challenge that proved to be trickier than any downhill ski run. "Inside the pylon, we found that it was much more reinforced than we expected," said Olivier Bustillo, manager of environmental group Mountain Wilderness, tasked with breaking down the ski lift. "We spent maybe half an hour, maybe almost an hour more per pylon," Bustillo added. Record heatwave The cost of the lift dismantlement is said to be 20,000 euros. OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images It took the team of roughly 20 workers two days to finish dismantling the entire ski lift system -- the group has already dismantled around 10 similar ski lift systems in France, according to Bustillo. The cost of the entire Saint-Firmin lift dismantlement is around 20,000 euros ($20,691), financed mainly by the local government with help from charities. The recovered metal was collected by a company specializing in scrap metal and will be recycled, Bustillo said. It's unlikely to be the last lift dismantled. This year saw a record-breaking heatwave sweep through France and most of western Europe, pushing temperatures close to or above 40° C (104° F) for a sustained period during summer. Wildfires burned through the southern and western parts of the country. Currently 62% of France's population is exposed to either "significant" or "very significant" climate risks, according to data from the French Environment Ministry. The effect of climate change is being felt in ski resorts across France and Europe. OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images France could also be facing a much more challenging future as temperatures are expected to rise by 3.8 C by 2100, and even 6.7 in the worst-case scenario, according to a study published by researchers from the French national meteorological service Météo France in October. "Comparing our results with those based on previous generations of climate model ensembles reveals that our assessed ranges are substantially higher than previously reported," the study said in its conclusion. Gone forever The dismantled ski lift equipment was collected for recycling by a scrap metal company. OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP via Getty Images Earlier this month, French ski resort Val Thorens, the highest altitude resort in Europe, announced it was delaying the opening of its ski season by a week to November 26 because of "warm autumn weather." In Saint-Firmin, locals have decided to build something at the old site of the ski lifts, to remind their children of this piece of history. Many were glad that the village can finally move on and make the site useful again. Yet the sense of loss also remained. "I think that people are becoming aware of the evolution of the climate. Indeed, it's all about that. When we talk about the ski lift, people talk about the climate," Beauzon said. "I felt a little nostalgic. We had to mourn a whole era that will never return."
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$58 billion day of reckoning looms for 3M over toxic ‘forever chemicals’ By Carrie Fellner February 8, 2023 Snapshot PFAS or “forever chemicals” are contained in everyday items such as non-stick cookware, school uniforms and firefighting foam as they repel grease, oil and water. Their use has been linked to a range of illnesses but the potential health effects remain hotly disputed. In 2020, the Australian government paid $212 million to three communities polluted by foam used on military bases. 3M, one of the main American manufacturers of PFAS, is facing up to $US40 billion in legal liabilities after being hit with thousands of lawsuits over the chemicals. It will fight the allegations. Global chemicals maker 3M will be accused of a decades-long campaign to deceive the public about the risks of its controversial “forever chemicals” as it faces a series of bombshell legal claims worth up to $US40 billion ($58 billion) that a judge described as an “existential threat” to multiple defendants’ survival. The Wall Street giant is bracing for a landmark legal trial in the United States beginning in June over its use of the family of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl chemicals, known as PFAS. In Australia, the chemicals have contaminated at least 90 sites and officials have acknowledged PFAS has contaminated the blood of up to 98 per cent of the world’s population........ https://www.smh.com.au/national/58-...-toxic-forever-chemicals-20230203-p5chri.html
Why Some Americans Buy Guns Social scientists are just beginning to understand who is purchasing firearms and how gun ownership may alter behavior. A gun shop on Long Island in 2020. Gun sales were up 64 percent that year over 2019, with some 22 million guns sold.Credit...Mike Pont/Getty Images By Roni Caryn Rabin June 23, 2023 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/health/gun-violence-psychology.html In 2020, while many communities were under Covid lockdowns, protesters were flooding the streets and economic uncertainty and social isolation were deepening, Americans went on a shopping spree. For firearms. Some 22 million guns were sold that year, 64 percent more than in 2019. More than eight million of them went to novices who had never owned a firearm, according to the firearm industry’s trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Firearm homicides increased that year as well, to 19,350 from 14,392 in 2019. The death count from guns, including suicides, rose to 45,222 in 2020 from 39,702 in 2019. The number of lives lost to guns rose again in 2021, to 48,830. After quashing research into gun violence for 25 years, Congress began funneling millions of dollars to federal agencies in 2021 to gather data. Here is what social psychologists are finding about who purchased firearms, what motivated them and how owning, or even holding, a firearm can alter behavior. Who started buying guns? Millions of Americans who had never owned a gun purchased a firearm during a two-and-a-half-year period that began in January 2019, before the pandemic, and continued through April 2021. Of the 7.5 million people who bought their first firearm during that period, 5.4 million had until then lived in homes without guns, researchers at Harvard and Northeastern University estimated. The new buyers were different from the white men who have historically made up a majority of gun owners. Half were women, and nearly half were people of color (20 percent were Black, and 20 percent were Hispanic). “The people who were always buying are still buying — they didn’t stop. But a whole other community of folks have come in,” said Michael Anestis, the executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, who was not involved in the study. Outside a gun store in Culver City, Calif., in March 2020.Credit...Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated Press Why did Americans decide to buy guns? Self-defense is the top reason Americans purchase handguns. Gun ownership is not just a constitutional right but a necessary form of protection, according to organizations like the National Rifle Association and National Shooting Sports Foundation. A study of individuals who said they were planning to purchase a first or second firearm during the early days of the pandemic found that would-be buyers were more likely to see the world as dangerous and threatening than individuals who were not planning to purchase a firearm. Those planning to buy firearms were more likely to agree strongly with statements like “People can’t be trusted,” “People are not what they seem” and “You need to watch your back,” compared with those not planning a purchase, noted Dr. Anestis, an author of the study. Buyers were also more fearful of uncertainty. They tended to strongly agree with statements such as “Unforeseen events upset me greatly” and “I don’t like not knowing what comes next.” They were particularly frightened by Covid, according to the study, which was conducted in June and July 2020. They were more likely to be essential workers. Dr. Anestis, who studies suicide, said those planning to purchase a gun were also more likely to harbor suicidal thoughts. More than half of all gun deaths in the United States are suicides. In 2021, for example, there were 48,830 gun deaths; 26,328 were suicides. “Firearm owners are no more likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-owners,” Dr. Anestis said. “But if you look at who purchased a firearm during the surge, and if it was their first firearm, they were much more likely than others to have had suicidal thoughts in the last month, year or lifetime overall.” The number of suicides did not increase during the pandemic, but the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk for as long as the family owns the gun. And while research shows that some people buy a gun while they are planning a suicide, most people who used a gun to kill themselves already owned the firearm — for 10 years, on average. Families with teenagers who kept one firearm loaded and unlocked were more likely than those who kept guns stored to buy another firearm during the pandemic, other researchers have found. It’s possible the families were keeping guns easily accessible because they feared for their safety, and that this concern motivated the purchase of an additional firearm. But these households are particularly vulnerable to gun injuries, said Rebeccah Sokol, a behavioral scientist at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the study. “Teens have some of the highest rates of firearm fatal and nonfatal injuries,” she added. Brett Bass at a table selling lockboxes and sharing information about suicide prevention at a gun show in Spokane, Wash.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times To some, guns bring comfort. Experiments have shown that human touch can be remarkably soothing. In one study in 2006, for example, neuroscientists found that when married women were subjected to mild electric shocks as part of an experiment, reaching out to take their husband’s hand provided an immediate sense of relief. Nick Buttrick, a psychologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, wanted to know whether firearms provided similar comfort to gun owners, serving as a sort of psychological security blanket. “The real question I wanted to answer was, What do people get out of having a gun?” he said. “Why would somebody want to take this really dangerous thing and bring it into their lives?” He recruited college students, some of whom came from gun-owning households, to participate in a study in which they would be subjected to very mild electric shocks (he likened the sensation to static electricity). While the shocks were administered, participants were given a friend’s hand, a metal object or a prop that looked and felt like a pistol but had no firing mechanism. For participants who grew up around guns, holding the prop that resembled a firearm provided the greatest comfort, Dr. Buttrick said. “If you came from a gun-owning household, just having a gun present makes you feel more at ease,” said Dr. Buttrick, whose study has not yet been published. For participants unfamiliar with guns, the opposite was true: They became more anxious when holding a replica of a firearm. “If you didn’t come from a gun-owning household, having a gun present made the shock worse,” he said. “You were more on edge.” But safety may be an illusion. Advocacy organizations like the N.R.A. emphasize the need for safe handling and storage of firearms and offer training programs intended to make ownership safer. But critics say public health officials have done a poor job of communicating the risks to Americans. Many studies have found that easy access to firearms does not make the home safer. Instead, ownership raises the likelihood of both suicide and homicide, said Sarah Burd-Sharps, the senior director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that works to end gun violence. One of the earliest studies to bring attention to the danger was a 1993 paper in The New England Journal of Medicine that found that keeping a gun in the home brought a 2.7-fold increase in the risk of homicide, with almost all of the shootings carried out by family members or intimate acquaintances. The findings have since been replicated in numerous studies. “You are much more likely to be a victim of that gun than to successfully protect yourself,” Ms. Burd-Sharps said, adding that gun owners “are tragically not understanding the risks.” Carrying a gun can change how a person perceives threats. A memorial dedicated to Tamir Rice at the park in Cleveland where he was shot in 2014.Credit...Ty Wright for The New York Times When Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times in the vestibule of his building in the Bronx more than two decades ago, police officers said they mistook the wallet he was holding for a weapon. In Cleveland in 2014, a police officer killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice because he thought the child’s “airsoft” replica pistol was a real gun. Researchers are increasingly focusing on the idea that an armed person is more likely to perceive others as armed, and to respond as though he or she were threatened, a concept called gun embodiment. “The idea behind embodiment is that your ability to act in the environment changes how you literally see the environment,” said Nathan Tenhundfeld, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a co-author of one recent study. “Gun embodiment gets at the idea of the old colloquialism ‘When you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’” Stereotypes and emotions influence an observer’s ability to correctly identify a gun and, therefore, whether a particular individual is actually armed. One study found that participants were more likely to mistakenly think that a Black person was holding a gun than to mistakenly think that a white person was armed. In research using computer simulations, participants are more likely to shoot at a target who appears to be wearing a turban. In a recent effort to replicate older studies on gun embodiment, Dr. Tenhundfeld and his colleagues gave college students a fake gun or a neutral object — a spatula. They held the objects while watching images of guns and other ordinary items come up on a computer screen. They were asked to quickly decide whether to “shoot” in response. When the participants were holding the gun, they took longer to respond, had a harder time rapidly distinguishing between weapons and nonthreatening objects, and made more mistakes. “They weren’t biased — they were just getting it wrong more often, and were slower while holding a gun when the object they were looking at was a shoe,” Dr. Tenhundfeld said. It may be that this is a form of gun embodiment, he said, adding that the participant’s “ability to act in the environment is affecting how they see the environment — that holding that gun is distorting how you’re seeing the world.”
A map of the world plotted with some of the most significant climate events that occurred during June 2023. (Image credit: NOAA/NCEI) World Has Hottest June On Record As Ocean Temperatures Soar Bloomberg July 15, 2023 By Brian K. Sullivan (Bloomberg) –The world just had its hottest June ever for land and sea, with ocean temperatures setting new highs for the third month in a row. Combined ground and ocean temperatures across the Earth were 1.89F degrees (1.05C) above the 20th-century average of 59.9F, making this the warmest June in data going back 174 years, the US National Centers for Environmental Information said in a statement. It’s “virtually certain” that this year will rank among the 10 warmest on record, the agency said. Massive heat waves have endangered lives and taxed energy grids the world over since the start of the year. The blistering weather is also triggering droughts that have contributed to wildfires, such as those that burned more than 20 million acres (8.1 million hectares) across Canada, sending smoke into the US and Europe. Elevated ocean temperatures, meanwhile, are created conditions ripe for hurricanes. The world’s oceans produced an above-average nine named storms last month, four of which reached hurricane strength. The global accumulated cyclone energy – a measure of storms’ power – was almost twice the normal value for June. In addition to global temperatures, Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent on record despite winter being underway there, the agency said. © 2023 Bloomberg L.P.
Extreme weather China logs 52.2 degrees C. as extreme weather rewrites records July 18, 2023 https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/c...weather-rewrites-records-20230718-p5dp1v.html Beijing: A remote township in China’s arid northwest endured temperatures of more than 52 degrees on Sunday, state media reported, setting a record for a country that was battling minus 50 degrees weather just six months ago. Temperatures at Sanbao township in Xinjiang’s Turpan Depression soared as high as 52.2 degrees on Sunday, state-run Xinjiang Daily reported on Monday, with the record heat expected to persist at least another five days. A couple sit next to a large misting fan as they wait for a table outside a popular local restaurant during a heatwave in Beijing, China, on June 23.Credit: Getty The Sunday temperature broke a previous record of 50.3 degrees, measured in 2015 near Ayding in the depression, a vast basin of sand dunes and dried-up lakes more than 150 metres below sea level. Since April, countries across Asia have been hit by several rounds of record-breaking heat, stoking concerns about their ability to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees is moving out of reach, climate experts say. Prolonged bouts of high temperatures in China have challenged power grids and crops, and concerns are mounting of a possible repeat of last year’s drought, the most severe in 60 years. China is no stranger to dramatic swings in temperatures across the seasons, but the swings are getting wider. On January 22, temperatures in Mohe, a city in northeastern Heilongjiang province, plunged to minus 53 degrees, according to the local weather bureau, smashing China’s previous all-time low of minus 52.3 degrees set in 1969. Since then, the heaviest rains in a decade have hit central China, ravaging wheat fields in an area known as the country’s granary. Prolonged high temperatures in China are threatening power grids and crops and raising concerns about a repeat of last year’s drought, the most severe in 60 years. Typhoon Talim was gaining strength and due to make land at night along China’s southern coast, forcing the cancellation of flights and trains in the regions of Guangdong and Hainan. A woman cools herself in front of a misting fan in Beijing, China, on June 23.Credit: Getty In a resumption of diplomacy on global warming between the two superpowers, US climate envoy John Kerry met Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in Beijing, urging joint action to cut methane emissions and coal-fired power. Asia, Europe and much of the United States baked under extreme heat on Monday as global temperatures soared toward alarming highs and US leaders sought to reignite climate diplomacy with China. “In the next three days, we hope we can begin taking some big steps that will send a signal to the world about the serious purpose of China and the United States to address a common risk, threat, challenge to all of humanity created by humans themselves,” Kerry said, noting the proliferation of storms and fires. “It is toxic for both Chinese and for Americans and for people in every country on the planet.” The US was scorched by record-setting heat in the west and south, lashed with flood-triggering rain in the northeast, and choked by wildfire smoke in the midwest. A heat dome parked over the western US pushed the temperature in California’s Death Valley desert to 53 degrees on Sunday, and kept daily highs in Phoenix on track to exceed 43 degrees through the week. Even as nearly a quarter of the US population fell under extreme heat advisories, heavy rains devastated the state of Vermont and parts of Pennsylvania, where flash floods killed five people and swept away cars over the weekend. Reuters
Scientists woke up a 46,000-year-old roundworm from Siberian permafrost By Carolyn Y. Johnson July 27, 2023 https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/07/27/nematode-revived-siberian-permafrost/ Scientists recovered 46,000-year-old soil from a burrow embedded in Siberian permafrost, left. When they thawed it out, they were able to revive P. kolymaensis, a newly described species of nematode, right. (Shatilovich et al, 2023, PLOS Genetics) A female microscopic roundworm that spent the last 46,000 years in suspended animation deep in the Siberian permafrost has been revived and has started having babies in a laboratory dish. By sequencing the genome of this Rip Van Winkle roundworm, scientists revealed it to be a new species of nematode, which is described in a study published Thursday in the journal PLOS Genetics. Nematodes today are among the most ubiquitous organisms on Earth, inhabiting the soil, the water and the ocean floor. “The vast majority of nematode species have not been described,” William Crow, a nematologist at the University of Florida who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email. The ancient Siberian worm could be a species that has since gone extinct, he said. “However, it very well could be a commonly occurring nematode that no one got around to describing yet.” Beyond the “wow” factor of a time-traveling nematode, there’s a practical reason to study how these tiny, spindle-shaped creatures go dormant to survive extreme environments, said Philipp Schiffer, group leader at the Institute for Zoology at the University of Cologne and one of the authors of the study. Such work may reveal more about how, at a molecular level, animals can adapt as habitats shift because of soaring global temperatures and changing weather patterns. “We need to know how species adapted to the extreme through evolution to maybe help species alive today and humans as well,” Schiffer wrote in an email. A prehistoric nematode, resurrected Scientists have long known that some microscopic critters are able to hit pause on life to survive harsh environments, slipping into the deepest of sleeps by slowing their metabolism to undetectable levels in a process called cryptobiosis. As far back as 1936, a viable several-thousand-year-old crustacean was discovered buried in the permafrost east of Russia’s Lake Baikal. In 2021, researchers announced they had resurrected ancient bdelloid rotifers, microscopic multicellular animals, after 24,000 years in the Siberian permafrost. The previous resuscitation record for a nematode was set by an Antarctic species that started wriggling around again after just a few dozen years. This new species of nematode, dubbed Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, breaksthat dormancyrecord by tens of thousands of years. Thefrozen soil the nematode was embedded in came from an ancient gopher hole, excavated fromabout 130 feet below the surface.Scientists used radiocarbon dating to determine that the soil was 46,000 years old, give or take a thousand years. “The age over which it survived is one of the shocking things,” said Gregory Copenhaver, a co-editor of PLOS Genetics and director of the Institute for Convergent Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The past 46,000 years reach into the previous geologic epoch, called the Pleistocene, he noted, and “this single organism, the actual individual they found, has been alive over that period of time.” The molecular underpinnings of suspended animation The recipe for reviving these creatures is fairly simple, Schiffer said. Researchers thaw the soil, taking care to not warm it too quickly to avoid cooking the nematodes. The worms then start wriggling around, eating bacteria in a lab dish and reproducing. Scientists have continued to raise more than 100 generations from this single nematode, which reproduces without a mate through a process called parthenogenesis. What intrigues the researchers is not just the age of the specimen, but how it enters a state of limbo. Through experiments, they found that, like another microscopic roundworm, C. elegans, the new nematode species survives freezing and drying out better if it is exposed to mildly desiccating conditions before the deep freeze. During this preconditioning, the nematodes begin pumping out a sugar called trehalose, which may be involved in helping protect their DNA, cells and proteins from degrading. Study co-leader Teymuras Kurzchalia, a professor emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, said that efforts to unravel which proteins are necessary for the process are ongoing, using tools that can silence or knock out genes. “We have still much to learn about the mechanisms of the desiccation tolerance,” Kurzchalia said. Researchers are also curious whetherthere is any limit on how long an organism can survive and be resurrected, and what it means for evolution and even the notion of extinction if animals that typically live, reproduce and die over weeks can stretch out their existence by centuries or millennia. The normal life span of the 46,000-year-old nematode species is just one to two months. “We can say that they are alive, because they move, they eat bacteria on the culture plates, and they reproduce,” Schiffer said.