Tag Archives: Climate change

Health

‘The Last of Us’ Come Alive: Fungi Are Adapting to Warmer Temperatures

Leave a comment

Dangerous fungal infections are on the rise, and a growing body of research suggests warmer temperatures might be a culprit.

The human body’s average temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit has long been too hot for most fungi to thrive, infectious-disease specialists say. But as temperatures have risen globally, some fungi might be adapting to endure more heat stress, including conditions within the human body, research suggests. Climate change might also be creating conditions for some disease-causing fungi to expand their geographical range, research shows. 

“As fungi are exposed to more consistent elevated temperatures, there’s a real possibility that certain fungi that were previously harmless suddenly become potential pathogens,” said

Peter Pappas,

an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. 

Deaths from fungal infections are increasing, due in part to growing populations of people with weakened immune systems who are more vulnerable to severe fungal disease, public-health experts said. At least 7,000 people died in the U.S. from fungal infections in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, up from hundreds of people each year around 1970. There are few effective and nontoxic medications to treat such infections, they said. 

Photos: What We Know About Deadly Fungal Infections

In the video game and HBO show “The Last of Us,” a fungus infects people en masse and turns them into monstrous creatures. The fungus is based on a real genus, Ophiocordyceps, that includes species that infect insects, disabling and killing them.

There have been no known Ophiocordyceps infections in people, infectious-disease experts said, but they said the rising temperatures that facilitated the spread of the killer fungi in the show may be pushing other fungi to better adapt to human hosts and expand into new geographical ranges. 

A January study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that higher temperatures may prompt some disease-causing fungi to evolve faster to survive. 

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

How should we address the growing threat of fungi? Join the conversation below.

Researchers at Duke University grew 800 generations of a type of Cryptococcus, a group of fungi that can cause severe disease in people, in conditions of either 86 degrees Fahrenheit or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers used DNA sequencing to track changes in the fungi’s genome with a focus on “jumping genes”—DNA sequences that can move from one location on the genome to another.

Asiya Gusa, a study co-author and postdoctoral researcher in Duke’s Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Department, said movement of such genes can result in mutations and alter gene expression. In fungi, Dr. Gusa said, the movement of the genes could play a role in allowing fungi to adapt to stressors including heat. 

Dr. Gusa and her colleagues found that the rate of movement of “jumping genes” was five times higher in the Cryptococcus raised in the warmer temperature. 

Cryptococcus infections can be deadly, particularly in immunocompromised people. At least 110,000 people die globally each year from brain infections caused by Cryptococcus fungi, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. 

Candida auris, a highly deadly fungus that has been reported in about half of U.S. states, also appears to have adapted to warmer temperatures, infectious-disease specialists said. 

“Fungi isn’t transmitted from person to person, but through fungal spores in the air,” Dr. Gusa said. “They’re in our homes, they’re everywhere.”

An analysis published last year in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases said some potentially deadly fungi found in the soil, including Coccidioides and Histoplasma, have significantly expanded their geographical range in the U.S. since the 1950s. Andrej Spec, a co-author of the analysis and an associate professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said warming temperatures, as well as other environmental alterations associated with climate change, could have played a role in this spread. 

Cases of Coccidioidomycosis or Valley fever, a disease caused by Coccidioides, were once mostly limited to the Southwest, Dr. Spec said. Now people are being diagnosed in significant numbers in most states. Histoplasma infections, once common only in the Midwest, have been reported in 94% of states, the analysis said. Histoplasma is also spread through bat droppings and climate change has been linked to changing bat migration patterns, Dr. Spec said.

The World Health Organization has identified Cryptococcus, Coccidioides, Histoplasma and Candida auris as being among the fungal pathogens of greatest threat to people. 

“We keep saying these fungi are rare, but this must be the most common rare disease because they’re now everywhere,” Dr. Spec said.

Write to Dominique Mosbergen at dominique.mosbergen@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

World

From China to Japan, deadly cold is gripping East Asia. Experts say it’s the ‘new norm’

Leave a comment


Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

A deadly cold snap that is gripping East Asia has killed at least four people in Japan after subzero temperatures and heavy snow brought travel chaos during the Lunar New Year holiday, with climate experts warning that such extreme weather events had become the “new norm.”

Japanese officials said all four of those who died on Wednesday and Thursday had been working to clear snow amid what Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno has called a “once-in-a-decade cold snap.”

Two of the deaths were reported in the western Niigata prefecture, with one in southwestern Oita prefecture and one in southern Okayama prefecture – where the victim had a heart attack.

In neighboring South Korea, heavy snow warnings were issued this week as temperatures in the capital Seoul fell as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) and plummeted to record lows in other cities, officials said. Residents said it began snowing heavily overnight late Wednesday into Thursday.

On the popular tourist island of Jeju, harsh weather this week led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights while passenger ships were forced to stay in port due to huge waves, according to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters.

“Cold air from the North Pole has reached South Korea directly,” after traveling through Russia and China, Korea Meteorological Administration spokesperson Woo Jin-kyu told CNN.

– Source:
CNN
” data-fave-thumbnails=”{“big”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230116145202-yakutsk-russia-extreme-cold-lon-orig-na.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill”},”small”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230116145202-yakutsk-russia-extreme-cold-lon-orig-na.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill”}}” data-vr-video=”” data-show-name=”” data-show-url=”” data-check-event-based-preview=”” data-network-id=”” data-details=””>

See what life is like inside one of the world’s coldest places

Woo said that while scientists took a long-term view of climate change, “we can consider this extreme weather – extremely hot weather in summer and extremely cold weather in winter – as one of the signals of climate change.”

Across the border in Pyongyang, North Korean authorities warned of extreme weather conditions as the cold wave swept through the Korean Peninsula. Temperatures in parts of North Korea were expected to dip below minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit), state media reported.

In Japan, hundreds of domestic flights were canceled on Tuesday and Wednesday due to heavy snow and strong winds that hampered visibility. Major carriers Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways canceled a combined total of 229 flights.

Meanwhile, high-speed trains were suspended between the northern Fukushima and Shinjo stations, Japan Railway Group said.

China’s meteorological authority has also forecast big temperature drops in parts of the country and on Monday issued a blue alert for a cold wave – the lowest level in a four-tier warning system.

Mohe, China’s northernmost city, on Sunday saw temperatures drop to minus 53 degrees Celsius (minus 63.4 degrees Fahrenheit) – its coldest ever recorded, meteorologists said. Ice fog – a weather phenomenon that occurs only in extreme cold when water droplets in air remain in liquid form – is also expected in the city this week, local authorities said.

Other parts of Asia also felt the impacts of harsh cold weather.

Earlier this month in Russian Siberia, temperatures in the city of Yakutsk stood at minus 62.7 degrees Celsius (minus 80.9 degrees Fahrenheit) – a record for a place widely known as the world’s coldest city.

The cold was also felt in Afghanistan, where Taliban officials reported the deaths of at least 157 people as the country experiences one of its coldest ever winters with minimal humanitarian aid. Officials said temperatures in early January had plummeted to as low as minus 28 degrees Celsius (minus 18 Fahrenheit).

Yeh Sang-wook, a climate professor at Hanyang University in Seoul, attributed the extreme cold wave on the Korean Peninsula to Arctic winds from Siberia, adding that the cold wave in South Korea this year was partly due to the melting of Arctic ice caps from a warming climate.

“There has been a record melting last year and this year,” he said. “When sea ice is melted, the sea opens up, sending up more vapor into air, leading to more snow in the north.”

As climate change worsens, the region would face more severe cold weather in the future, he said.

“There is no other (explanation),” he said. “Climate change is indeed deepening and there is a consensus among global scientists that this kind of cold phenomenon will worsen going forward.”

Kevin Trenberth, from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), agreed that “extreme weather events are the new norm,” adding, “we certainly can expect that weather extremes are going to be worse than they were before.”

He also pointed to the El Niño and La Niña climate pattern cycles in the Pacific Ocean that affect weather worldwide.

La Niña, which typically has a cooling effect on global temperatures, is one of the reasons for the current cold snap, he said.

“There’s certainly a large natural variability that occurs in the weather but … we often hear about the El Nino phenomenon and at the moment we’re in the La Niña phase. And that certainly influences the kinds of patterns that tend to occur. And so that’s a player as well,” he said.

Read original article here

World

Iceberg roughly the size of London breaks off in Antarctica

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

An iceberg nearly the size of Greater London broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica on Sunday according to the British Antarctic Survey.

Scientists first discovered significant cracks in the ice shelf a decade ago, but in the last two years there have been two major breaks. The BAS Halley Research Station is located on the Brunt Ice Shelf and glaciologists say the research station is safe.

The iceberg is around 600 square miles, or 1550 square kilometers. The researchers say this event was expected and not a result of climate change.

“This calving event has been expected and is part of the natural behavior of the Brunt Ice Shelf. It is not linked to climate change. Our science and operational teams continue to monitor the ice shelf in real-time to ensure it is safe, and to maintain the delivery of the science we undertake at Halley,” Professor Dominic Hodgson a BAS glaciologist said in a news release.

The calving comes amid record-low sea ice extent in Antarctica, where it is summer.

“While the decline in Antarctic sea ice extent is always steep at this time of year, it has been unusually rapid this year,” scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported in early January, “and at the end of December, Antarctic sea ice extent stood at the lowest in the 45-year satellite record.”

Researchers at the data center say the low sea ice has been due in part to a large band of warmer-than-normal air temperatures, which climbed to 2 degrees Celsius above average over the Ross Sea in November and December. Strong winds have also hastened the sea ice decline, they reported.

Recent data shows the sea ice has not since recovered, suggesting the continent could end the summer with a new record on the books for the second year in a row.

Antarctica has experienced a roller-coaster of sea ice extent over the past couple of decades, swinging wildly from record highs to record lows. Unlike the Arctic, where scientists say climate change is accelerating its impacts, Antarctica’s sea ice extent is highly variable.

“There’s a link between what’s going on in Antarctica and the general warming trend around the rest of the world, but it’s different from what we see in mountain glaciers and what we see in the Arctic,” Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, previously told CNN.

Satellite data that stretches back to 1978 shows that the region was still producing record-high sea ice extent as recently as 2014 and 2015. Then it suddenly plunged in 2016 and has stayed lower than average since.

Read original article here

World

The Doomsday Clock reveals how close we are to total annihilation

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Greener newsletter. Our limited newsletter series guides you on how to minimize your personal role in the climate crisis — and reduce your eco-anxiety.



CNN
 — 

The Doomsday Clock has been ticking for 76 years. But it’s no ordinary clock.

It attempts to gauge how close humanity is to destroying the world.

On Tuesday, the clock was set at 90 seconds until midnight — the closest to the hour it has ever been, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the clock in 1947. Midnight represents the moment at which we will have made Earth uninhabitable for humanity. From 2020 to 2022, the clock was set at 100 seconds to midnight.

The clock isn’t designed to definitively measure existential threats, but rather to spark conversations about difficult scientific topics such as climate change, according to the Bulletin.

The decision to move the clock 10 seconds forward this year is largely due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the increased risk of nuclear escalation, the Bulletin said in a news release. The continuing threats posed by the climate crisis, as well as the breakdown of norms and institutions needed to reduce risks associated with biological threats like Covid-19, also played a role.

“We are living in a time of unprecedented danger, and the Doomsday Clock time reflects that reality,” Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin, said in the release. “It’s a decision our experts do not take lightly. The US government, its NATO allies and Ukraine have a multitude of channels for dialogue; we urge leaders to explore all of them to their fullest ability to turn back the Clock.”

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded by a group of atomic scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, the code name for the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

Originally, the organization was conceived to measure nuclear threats, but in 2007 the Bulletin made the decision to include climate change in its calculations.

Over the last three-quarters of a century, the clock’s time has changed according to how close the scientists believe the human race is to total destruction. Some years the time changes, and some years it doesn’t.

The Doomsday Clock is set every year by the experts on the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates.

Although the clock has been an effective wake-up call when it comes to reminding people about the cascading crises the planet is facing, some have questioned the 75-year-old clock’s usefulness.

“It’s an imperfect metaphor,” Michael E. Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Earth and environmental science department at the University of Pennsylvania, told CNN in 2022, highlighting that the clock’s framing combines different types of risk that have different characteristics and occur in different timescales. Still, he adds it “remains an important rhetorical device that reminds us, year after year, of the tenuousness of our current existence on this planet.”

Every model has constraints, Eryn MacDonald, analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program, told CNN in 2022, adding that the Bulletin has made thoughtful decisions each year on how to get the people’s attention about existential threats and the required action.

“While I wish we could go back to talking about minutes to midnight instead of seconds, unfortunately that no longer reflects reality,” she said.

The clock has never reached midnight, and Bronson hopes it never will.

“When the clock is at midnight, that means there’s been some sort of nuclear exchange or catastrophic climate change that’s wiped out humanity,” she said. “We never really want to get there and we won’t know it when we do.”

The clock’s time isn’t meant to measure threats, but rather to spark conversation and encourage public engagement in scientific topics like climate change and nuclear disarmament.

If the clock is able to do that, then Bronson views it as a success.

When a new time is set on the clock, people listen, she said. At the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK, in 2021, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson cited the Doomsday Clock when talking about the climate crisis the world is facing, Bronson noted.

Bronson said she hopes people will discuss whether they agree with the Bulletin’s decision and have fruitful talks about what the driving forces of the change are.

Moving the clock back with bold, concrete actions is still possible. In fact, the hand moved the farthest away from midnight — a whopping 17 minutes before the hour — in 1991, when then President George H.W. Bush’s administration signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Soviet Union. In 2016, the clock was at three minutes before midnight as a result of the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris climate accord.

“We at the Bulletin believe that because humans created these threats, we can reduce them,” Bronson said. “But doing so is not easy, nor has it ever been. And it requires serious work and global engagement at all levels of society.”

Don’t underestimate the power of talking about these important issues with your peers, Bronson said.

“You might not feel it because you’re not doing anything, but we know that public engagement moves (a) leader to do things,” she said.

To make a positive impact on climate change, look at your daily habits and see if there are small changes you can make in your life such as how often you walk versus drive and how your home is heated, Bronson explained.

Eating seasonally and locally, reducing food waste, and recycling properly are other ways to help mitigate, or deal with the effects of, the climate crisis.

Read original article here

Science

Temperatures on Greenland haven’t been this warm in at least 1,000 years, scientists report

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

As humans fiddle with the planet’s thermostat, scientists are piecing together Greenland’s history by drilling ice cores to analyze how the climate crisis has impacted the island country over the years. The further down they drilled, the further they went back in time, allowing them to separate which temperature fluctuations were natural and which were human-caused.

After years of research on the Greenland ice sheet – which CNN visited when the cores were drilled – scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature that temperatures there have been the warmest in at least the last 1,000 years – the longest amount of time their ice cores could be analyzed to. And they found that between 2001 and 2011, it was on average 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than it was during the 20th century.

The report’s authors said human-caused climate change played a significant role in the dramatic rise in temperatures in the critical Arctic region, where melting ice has a considerable global impact.

“Greenland is the largest contributor currently to sea level rise,” Maria Hörhold, lead author of the study and a glaciologist with the Alfred Wegener Institute, told CNN. “And if we keep on going with the carbon emissions as we do right now, then by 2100, Greenland will have contributed up to 50 centimeters to sea level rise and this will affect millions of people who live in coastal areas.”

– Source:
CNN
” data-fave-thumbnails=”{“big”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/121204121146-greenland-secrets-in-ice-e-00021413.jpg?q=x_75,y_77,h_622,w_1107,c_crop/h_540,w_960″},”small”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/121204121146-greenland-secrets-in-ice-e-00021413.jpg?q=x_75,y_77,h_622,w_1107,c_crop/h_540,w_960″}}” data-vr-video=”” data-show-name=”” data-show-url=”” data-check-event-based-preview=”” data-network-id=”” data-details=””>

Greenland: Secrets in the Ice — Part 5


07:57

– Source:
CNN

Weather stations along the edge of the Greenland ice sheet have detected that its coastal regions are warming, but scientists’ understanding of the effects of rising temperatures there had been limited due to the lack of long-term observations.

Understanding the past, Hörhold said, is important to prepare for future consequences.

“If you want to state something is global warming, you need to know what the natural variation was before humans actually interacted with the atmosphere,” she said. “For that, you have to go to the past – to the pre-industrial era – when humans have not been emitting [carbon dioxide] into the atmosphere.”

During pre-industrial times, there were no weather stations in Greenland that gathered temperature data like today. That’s why the scientists relied on paleoclimate data, such as ice cores, to study the region’s warming patterns. The last robust ice core analysis in Greenland ended in 1995, and that data didn’t detect warming despite climate change already being apparent elsewhere, Hörhold said.

“With this extension to 2011, we can show that, ‘Well, there is actually warming,’” she added. “The warming trend has been there since 1800, but we had the strong natural variability that has been hiding this warming.”

Before humans began belching fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere, temperatures near 32 degrees Fahrenheit in Greenland were unheard of. But recent research shows that the Arctic region has been warming four times faster than the rest of the planet.

Significant warming in Greenland’s ice sheet is nearing a tipping point, scientists say, which could trigger catastrophic melting. Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melted, it could lift global sea levels by roughly 24 feet, according to NASA.

Although the study only covered temperatures through 2011, Greenland has seen extreme events since then. In 2019, an unexpectedly hot spring and a July heat wave caused almost the entire ice sheet’s surface to begin melting, shedding roughly 532 billion tons of ice into the sea. Global sea level would rise by 1.5 millimeters as a result, scientists reported afterward.

Then in 2021, rain fell at the summit of Greenland – roughly two miles above sea level – for the first time on record. The warm air then fueled an extreme rain event, dumping 7 billion tons of water on the ice sheet, enough to fill the Reflecting Pool at Washington, DC’s National Mall nearly 250,000 times.

With these extreme events in Greenland happening more often, Hörhold said the team will continue to monitor the changes.

“Every degree matters,” Hörhold said. “At one point, we will go back to Greenland and we will keep on extending those records.”

Read original article here

World

Rare good news for planet: Ozone layer on track to recover within decades as chemicals are phased out

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

In rare good news for the planet, Earth’s ozone layer is on track to recover completely within decades, as ozone-depleting chemicals are phased out across the world, according to a new United Nations-backed assessment.

The ozone layer protects the planet from harmful ultraviolet rays. But since the late 1980s, scientists have sounded the alarm about a hole in this shield, caused by ozone-depleting substances including chlorofluorocarbons, dubbed CFCs, often found in refrigerators, aerosols and solvents.

International cooperation helped stem the damage. The use of CFCs has decreased 99% since the Montreal Protocol went into force in 1989, which began the phase-out of those and other ozone-harming chemicals, according to the assessment by a panel of experts published on Monday.

If global policies stay in place, the ozone layer is expected to recover to 1980 levels by 2040 for most of the world, the assessment found. For polar areas, the timeframe for recovery is longer: 2045 over the Arctic and 2066 over the Antarctic.

“Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action. Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done – as a matter of urgency – to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase,” said Secretary General for the World Meteorological Organization Petteri Taalas.

Ozone-depleting gases are also potent greenhouse gases, and without a ban the world could have seen additional warming of up to 1 degree Celsius, according to a 2021 study in the journal Nature. The planet has already warmed around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution, and scientists have warned that it should be limited to 1.5 degrees to prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis. Warming beyond 1.5 degrees would dramatically increase the risk of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages, scientists have reported.

For the first time in this assessment, which is published every four years, scientists also looked at the prospect of solar geoengineering: the attempt to reduce global warming through measures such as spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight out of the earth’s atmosphere.

They found stratospheric aerosol injection could help reduce climate warming but warned there may be unintended consequences. Deploying the technology “could also affect stratospheric temperatures, circulation and ozone production and destruction rates and transport,” the report, published every four years, found.

Read original article here

World

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Has Forever How the World Does Science

Leave a comment

Last week, 10 months after Russia invaded his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an uncertain trip to Washington, D.C. to ask the U.S. for additional aid to finally end the conflict—which continues to stoke fears over environmental catastrophe in the wake of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, as well as Russian threats over the use of nuclear weapons. Among other measures, Zelensky asked the U.S. to “strengthen tariffs” against Russia, and render the war financially unsustainable. This would particularly affect areas of science and technology research where Russia has traditionally excelled, including physics, space exploration and climate science.

But despite widespread Western support for Ukraine, it has proven difficult to disentangle U.S. scientific and technical collaborations with Russia. In many cases, resistance is coming from American scientists themselves, who argue that theirs and their colleagues’ work is too important and urgent to disrupt, particularly surrounding climate change research as global warming accelerates.

Days before Zelensky’s speech, an editorial published in Nature magazine urged that science not be treated like a “diplomatic pawn,” and the war “must not become a barrier to countries working together” on to tackle pressing scientific issues such as climate change. Physicist Michael Riordan from the University of California, Santa Cruz espoused a similar sentiment in The New York Times back in late August, proclaiming, “I’m a physicist who doesn’t want Russia to leave the world of science.”

Others see things differently. “During the Cold War, Russia was a science powerhouse,” Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academies of Sciences in the U.S., told The Daily Beast. “But since the fall of the Soviet Union Russian science has not been as strong. When you look at the big issues of the day, like gene editing, I just don’t see Russia as being in the forefront.”

At the same time as Russia’s scientific contributions have weakened, Ukraine has risen up as a leader in science in Eastern Europe and former Soviet states, particularly in areas of agriculture research and nuclear power.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine last February 24, Europe responded swiftly to cut ties with Russia, and that included science and tech endeavors. Germany announced that it was ending all scientific collaborations with Russia the very next day, and other European Union member nations soon followed with similar comprehensive bans. CERN, a multinational particle physics lab in Switzerland and home to the famed Large Hadron Collider, suspended Russian membership in early March, as did the European Space Agency and the Max Planck Institute. ESA’s actions were particularly consequential, as its joint Mars rover mission with Russia is now in complete limbo for the time being.

“When you look at the big issues of the day, like gene editing, I just don’t see Russia as being in the forefront.”

— Marcia McNutt, National Academies of Sciences

In contrast, the U.S. scientific community’s response has proceeded somewhat unevenly. The Biden administration remained silent on the status of U.S.-Russia collaborations until June. That month, they announced that the U.S. would start to “wind down,” all current federally funded research projects partnering with Russia, and prohibited new projects.

“Considering the war crimes and other atrocities Russia has perpetrated it was very important for us to make an unequivocal statement of support for Ukraine,” a government official who was involved in the discussions but has since moved to another job in the administration, told The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity.

“But at the same time,” the official said, “we acknowledge there is a strategic need to engage with Russia” in order to avert the kind of global destruction that loomed over the Cold War.

Since the beginning of the war Russia has targeted Ukraine’s scientific infrastructure. Ukraine’s Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkiv has been heavily damaged by Russian bombs. At Chernobyl and other nuclear power plants and research facilities, Russian troops have looted or destroyed millions of dollars worth of high-tech equipment and computers. At least 20 Ukrainian universities have been completely destroyed.

To keep the war from sliding into a full destruction of Ukraine’s higher education institutions and a potential nuclear disaster, the Biden administration has refrained from cutting scientific ties to Russia completely—a policy formulated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which advises the president on all matters related to science and technology. The four month gap between the invasion and policy announcement was likely “a reflection of the nature of U.S. scientific enterprise” and the “decentralized research community,” in the U.S., the government official said.

Culturally, the science community has always been more immune from international schisms that characterize many other fields of work. For many scientists, there’s resistance to having to cut off access and partnerships with groups because of a war. One of CERN’s mottos, for example, is “science for peace.”

“There’s ample evidence that many Russian scientists want no part of Putin’s war. We want to ensure that those individuals have a clear pathway to engage with us or leave Russia if they so choose,” the official said.

“Many of the people that we talk with know each other, or work with each other in one form or another for years or decades. They are friends.”

— Raymond Jeanloz, University of California, Berkeley

“Within the scientific community there are mixed feelings and a variety of views about what is the appropriate response,” Raymond Jeanloz, a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Daily Beast. “Many of the people that we talk with know each other, or work with each other in one form or another for years or decades. They are friends.” Jeanloz is also the chair of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences, a private, non-profit, non-governmental organization funded primarily by federal grants. Its research is used to inform the OSTP.

A prevalent opinion is that it is not fair to judge individual scientists based on the actions of their government. Indeed several thousand Russian scientists signed a letter denouncing the invasion soon after it happened.

But Russian science is inextricably tied to the Russian government. The majority of the country’s scientists are at least partially funded by the Russian government.

And in September, the election for leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences showed evidence of state meddling: The incumbent president withdrew his candidacy the day before the election, in what he called a “forced decision.” Gennady Krasnikov, the head of Mikron, Russia’s largest chipmaker, was elected instead.

The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Mikron back in April, in a broad panel of sanctions against the aerospace, marine and electronics sectors in Russia. Another round of sanctions in August targeted the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, or Skoltech, founded in 2011 as a partnership with the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology to build out a Russian version of Silicon Valley. MIT announced it was shutting down the $3 billion partnership back in February—the day after the invasion.

On Earth—and Above It

Climate change research is an area where Russia’s contributions will be difficult, if not impossible to replace. The vast majority of the world’s permafrost, which scientists track to measure the rate of global warming, is in Russia. Russia currently chairs the Arctic Council, a consortium of eight nations that promotes cooperation on climate change research. At dozens of research stations in Russia, international teams of scientists collect permafrost samples by drilling boreholes in the earth.

Soon after the invasion started, the seven other members of the Arctic Council, which includes the U.S., halted their participation in the council. They have since resumed research without Russia. Some of the research has been transferred to Canada and Greenland, which are home to permafrost reserves of their own. But that still paints an incomplete picture, and may not accurately reflect what is happening to permafrost in Russia—a big problem when one degree of change can throw off the entire model.

“It’s the difference between ice and water,” said Brendan Kelly, a professor of marine biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and a member of the International Arctic Research Center. “Not being able to involve [Russia] is a significant detriment. It will be a big loss to us as we are trying to understand on a pan-Arctic scale what is happening in the Arctic.”

“Not being able to involve [Russia] is a significant detriment. It will be a big loss to us as we are trying to understand on a pan-Arctic scale what is happening in the Arctic.”

— Brendan Kelly, University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Russians have been massive contributors to climate knowledge, Kelly said. But at the same time, they “haven’t been the best team player in terms of data sharing.” That has been an issue going back decades, according to Kelly.

In other areas of science, a clean breakup is near-impossible. Perhaps the quintessential example is the International Space Station—a collaboration between the U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency, the first piece of which launched in 1998. The ISS literally cannot operate without both Russia and the U.S., which supply propulsion and power, respectively. Scientists on the station conduct experiments primarily to see how things function in microgravity, to prepare for long-term space flight. For decades, it has been lauded as an example of international cooperation, between parties that don’t always share the same goals in other areas of geopolitics. And the lives of the astronauts on board the ISS has always required both countries’ space programs to insulate themselves from deteriorating relations in other areas.

But that insulation has eroded as the invasion has progressed. In July, Russian cosmonauts on the ISS staged a picture in which they held up Russian and anti-Ukranian flags in an episode of propaganda that drew “strong rebuke,” from NASA. That month Russia announced that it planned to withdraw from the ISS in order to focus on building its own structure, but later walked that back and confirmed its participation until 2028 (a few years before the station’s formal shutdown in 2031.)

And in September, NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, collaborated to send astronaut Frank Rubio and two cosmonauts to ISS on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, launched from Kazakhstan.

Good Substitutions

Ultimately, there is no easy action that can satisfy all parties involved. “Obviously the war is obscene,” Kelly added. “It’s a devastating humanitarian crisis. But we also have a crisis with the climate, and not being able to advance our understanding of where the climate is headed is going to cost human lives and human wellbeing in the long run. I don’t know how to divide the baby here. It’s not an easy call.”

As of now, the total destruction in Ukraine is vast. Nearly 7,000 Ukrainian civilians have died since the start of the war, according to the U.N. And Ukraine’s scientific infrastructure and nuclear power plants continue to be under threat from Russian forces.

“I don’t know how to divide the baby here. It’s not an easy call.”

— Brendan Kelly, University of Alaska, Fairbanks

While many American scientists are hoping the conflict ends soon and they can return to somewhat normalized relations with their Russian counterparts, others consider the war to be an inflection point that could—and should—encourage the West to rethink its scientific partnerships across the board.

Some even think Ukraine itself could help fill the void left behind by Russia. To that end, the NAS has set up a sort of exchange program setting up displaced Ukrainian scientists with positions in Western universities and research institutions.

“Ukraine needs its researchers in order to rebuild. Russia has experienced significantly less damage from this war,” McNutt said. We’re not talking about needing to rebuild Russia.”

Read original article here

Science

Whales can have an important but overlooked role in tackling the climate crisis, researchers say

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

The world’s largest whales are more than just astonishing creatures. Much like the ocean, soil and forests, whales can help save humanity from the accelerating climate crisis by sequestering and storing planet-heating carbon emissions, researchers say.

In a paper published Thursday in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, climate researchers suggest that whales are important, but often overlooked, carbon sinks. The enormous size of these marine mammals, which can reach 150 tons, means they can store carbon much more effectively than smaller animals.

And because whales live longer than most animals, some for more than 100 years, the paper said they could be “one of the largest stable living carbon pools” in the ocean. Even when they die, whale carcasses descend to the deepest parts of the sea and settle on the seafloor, trapping the carbon they’ve stored in their stout, protein-rich bodies.

An indirect way whales can be critical carbon sinks is through their feces. Whale poop is rich in nutrients which can be taken up by phytoplankton — tiny organisms that suck up carbon dioxide as they grow. When they die, phytoplankton also sink at the bottom of the seafloor, taking tiny bits of carbon in their carcasses.

The process of carbon sequestration helps mitigate climate change, because it locks away carbon that otherwise would have warmed the planet somewhere else for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Yet whales are threatened, with six out of 13 great whale species classified as endangered or vulnerable due to threats including industrial whaling, which has reduced whale biomass by 81%, as well as entanglement with fishing gear, climate change-induced shifts in prey availability, noise pollution and more.

Heidi Pearson, lead author and researcher at the University of Alaska Southeast, said the research shows that protecting whales has a double benefit — helping to stem the biodiversity crisis as well as human-caused climate change.

The paper puts together all available research about how whales work as critical carbon sinks. As the need grows for nature-based solutions such as tree planting to help solve the climate crisis, Pearson said it is important to understand the ability of whales to trap carbon.

“You can think of protecting whales as a low risk and low regret strategy, because there’s really no downside,” Pearson told CNN. “What if we protect them and get ecosystem benefits in addition to carbon?” She said there was no risk to this strategy compared to other untested, expensive solutions to capturing and trapping carbon, such as geoengineering. There has been much research and analysis into whales’ contribution to carbon storage over the years.

In 2019, economists with the International Monetary Fund attempted to quantify the economic benefits of whales. The first-of-its-kind analysis looked at the market price of carbon dioxide, then calculated the whale’s total monetary value based on how much carbon it captures, in addition to other economic benefits like ecotourism. It put the average value of a great whale at $2 million.

But there remain big gaps in knowledge to fully determine how whale carbon should be used in climate mitigation policies. Asha de Vos, a marine biologist and founder of Oceanswell in Sri Lanka, said it’s important to recognize that whales have “more to offer than their beauty and charisma,” and that protecting them is key to a proper functioning ocean ecosystem.

“But, as the authors suggest, we mustn’t overemphasize the role of whales in these spaces as we do not have sufficient research,” de Vos, who is not involved with the study, told CNN. “Fundamentally, whales will not save our oceans or planet on their own, but they likely play a role in the larger system.”

As Pearson continues to research whale carbon in Alaska, particularly delving into the indirect pathways in which whales can be carbon sinks, she said she hopes the current paper pushes policymakers to consider whales as a significant part of climate mitigation strategies.

It’s another layer that links the biodiversity crisis to the climate crisis — but for now, Pearson said she and a team will go back out in the field to fully quantify the carbon impact of whales.

“Whales aren’t a silver bullet to saving the planet; it’s just one small thing that we could do amidst many other things we need to do for climate change,” Pearson said. “We just need to get the scientific story straight.”

Read original article here

Science

What Could Go Wrong?! 48,500-Year-Old Siberian Virus is Revived

Leave a comment

The world’s oldest known frozen and dormant virus has been revived in a French laboratory leading many to express concerns about the dangers of bringing to life ancient microbes. The virus was removed from the Siberian permafrost in Russia’s far east and is 48,500 years old, offering proof that viruses are incredibly hardy and capable of surviving indefinitely when they’re preserved in a frozen state.

Melting Siberian Permafrost in a Virus-Filled Pandora’s Box

This particular virus is actually one of nine different types of viruses that have been resuscitated from Siberian permafrost samples in recent years. That includes seven viruses resuscitated for this new study, and two other approximately 30,000-year-old viruses brought back to life by the same team of researchers from other samples taken in 2013. The youngest of these viruses was frozen 27,000 years ago.

As reported in the non-peer-reviewed journal bioRxiv, the 48,500-year-old virus has been named Pandoravirus yedoma , in reference to Pandora’s box. The virus was found in a sample of permafrost taken from 52 feet (16 m) below the bottom of a lake in Yukechi Alas in the Russian Republic of Yakutia.

The first-ever pandoravirus was one of the two viruses found in 2013, although that one was of a different type altogether. “48,500 years is a world record,” Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist at Aix-Marseille University in France and the lead author of the permafrost viral study, told the  New Scientist .

In addition to its age, the other remarkable feature of this pandoravirus is its size. Classified as a type of giant virus, Pandoravirus yedoma is approximately one micrometer long and .5 micrometers wide. This means they can be examined directly under a microscope. It contains approximately 2,500 genes, in contrast to the miniscule modern viruses that infect humans that possess no more than 10 to 20 genes.

Climate change and the resulting thawing of the permafrost could release a mass of new Siberian viruses into the atmosphere. ( Андрей Михайлов / Adobe Stock)

Climate Change and the Threat of Permafrost Viral Release

Given the disturbing coronavirus pandemic the world has just experienced, it might seem alarming that these scientists are intentionally reviving long-lost viruses previously hidden in the frozen wastelands of Siberia. But they say this research is necessary to evaluate the dangers associated with climate change.

“One quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost,” they wrote in their newly published paper. With the thawing of the permafrost, organic matter which has been frozen for as many as a million years is thawing out. One of the effects of this is the release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, amplifying the greenhouse effect.

The other is that “part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times,” explained the authors in bioRxiv. Only by extracting viruses from permafrost samples and reviving them in controlled conditions, the scientists claim, will it be possible to evaluate the nature of the threat they might pose to human health and safety in a warmer, permafrost-free future.

Since permafrost covers more one-fourth of all land territory in the Northern Hemisphere, this is not an idle concern. The viral load currently locked up in permanently frozen ground is undoubtedly massive, and if it were all released over the course of a couple of decades it could conceivably set off an avalanche of new viral infections in a variety of host species.

None of these victims would be immune to the impact of viral agents that had been out of circulation for tens of thousands of years. Immune systems would eventually adjust, but that might happen too late to prevent a catastrophic loss of life that cuts across the microbial-, plant- and animal-life spectrums.

The 48,500-year-old Siberian virus is a pandoravirus, which infects single-cell organisms known as amoebas. (Claverie et. al / bioRxiv)

Immortal Viruses May Be Returning Soon, in Quantities too Astounding to Imagine

Concerns about permafrost melting are not only theoretical. The once-frozen ground has already started to thaw in some areas, and that has allowed scientists to recover frozen and well-preserved specimens of animals that lived during the Paleolithic period.

In recent years the remains of wooly rhinos that went extinct 14,000 years ago have been found, and in one instance scientists recovered a 40,000-year-old wolf’s head that was in almost pristine condition. Wooly mammoth remains have proven especially easy to find in the freshly-thawed soil, so much so that a black-market industry has arisen in which mammoth tusks removed from illicitly unearthed mammoth skeletons are being sold to ivory traders.

What concerns scientists about this development is that potent infectious agents may be hiding dormant inside these well-preserved ancient animal remains. It is notable that the 27,000-year-old virus found in this new study was not removed from the lake bottom sample, but was instead extracted from frozen mammoth excrement taken from a different permafrost core.

Needless to say, ancient viruses released from thawed animal hosts would be more likely to evolve into something threatening to humans than a virus that specifically attacks microbes like amoeba.

Winter landscape and frozen lake in Yakutia, Siberia. ( Tatiana Gasich / Adobe Stock)

The Hidden Danger of Ancient Bacteria and Viruses in the Thawing Permafrost

In their research paper, Professor Claverie and his colleagues emphasized how dangerous ancient bacteria and viruses could be to present-day life forms of all types. Even if frozen in deeper levels of permafrost for millions of years, they could become active again should the permafrost disappear.  

In comparison to outbreaks from modern viruses, “the situation would be much more disastrous in the case of plant, animal, or human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus,” the French scientists wrote. “As unfortunately well documented by recent (and ongoing) pandemics, each new virus, even related to known families, almost always requires the development of highly specific medical responses, such as new antivirals or vaccines.”

The Arctic regions of the planet are largely free of permanent human settlers. But the researchers point out that more people are visiting the planet’s coldest regions than ever before, mainly to harvest valuable resources like oil, gold and diamonds that are present in abundance in these previously under-explored areas. In strip-mining operations the upper layers of the permafrost are actually torn out intentionally, meaning that viral exposures during such operations may be unavoidable.

“How long these viruses could remain infectious once exposed to outdoor conditions (UV light, oxygen, heat), and how likely they will be to encounter and infect a suitable host in the interval, is yet impossible to estimate,” the scientists concluded. “But the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming when permafrost thawing will keep accelerating, and more people will be populating the Arctic in the wake of industrial ventures.”

Other scientists have warned of the dangers of viruses being released in the Arctic through the melting of glaciers, which is yet another possible side effect of global warming. This could expose animals and humans to flowing rivers of glacial meltwater that could carry pathogens to new areas further south.

Whether any of these worst-case scenarios come to fruition remains to be seen. But even a small amount of melting, regardless of the cause, could be enough to release some potentially hazardous viral agents into the global environment, where billions of vulnerable people live.

Top image: Colony of microbes, representational image. Source: iarhei / Adobe Stock

By Nathan Falde



Read original article here

World

COP27: Negotiators reach tentative deal on ‘loss and damage’ at UN climate summit

Leave a comment


Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
CNN
 — 

Despite one major breakthrough on Saturday, international climate negotiations at the UN’s COP27 climate summit are dragging on into early Sunday morning.

The closing plenary of this year’s COP is scheduled to start at 3 a.m. Egypt time, according to a notice from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

For the second year in a row, marathon negotiations continued well past their scheduled end, as countries attempted to hammer out stronger language around phasing down all fossil fuels including oil and gas, instead of just unabated coal, according to multiple NGOs observing the talks.

Elsewhere, progress has been made. On Saturday, parties reached a tentative agreement to establish a “loss and damage” fund for nations vulnerable to climate disasters, according to negotiators with the European Union and Africa, as well as non-governmental organizations who are observing the talks.

The United States is also working to sign on to a deal on a loss and damage fund, Whitney Smith, a spokesperson for US Climate Envoy John Kerry, confirmed to CNN.

The fund will focus on what can be done to support loss and damage resources, but it does not include liability or compensation provisions, a senior Biden administration official told CNN. The US and other developed nations have long sought to avoid such provisions that could open them up to legal liability and lawsuits from other countries.

If finalized, this could represent a major breakthrough in negotiations on a contentious subject – and it’s seen as a reversal, as the US has in the past opposed efforts to create such a fund.

All is not yet settled – an EU source directly involved with the negotiations cautioned earlier Saturday that the deal is part of the larger COP27 agreement that has to be approved by nearly 200 countries. Negotiators worked through the night into Sunday. And other issues, including language around fossil fuels, remain, according to multiple NGOs observing the talks.

But progress has been made, the source said. In a discussion Saturday afternoon Egypt time, the EU managed to get the G77 bloc of countries to agree to target the fund to vulnerable nations, which could pave the way to a deal on loss and damage.

If finalized, the deal would represent a major breakthrough on the international stage and far exceed the expectations of this year’s climate summit, and the mood among some of the delegates was jubilant.

Countries who are the most vulnerable to climate disasters – yet who have contributed little to the climate crisis – have struggled for years to secure a loss and damage fund.

Developed nations that have historically produced the most planet-warming emissions have been hesitant to sign off on a fund they felt could open them up to legal liability for climate disasters.

Details on how the fund would operate remain murky. The tentative text says a fund will be established this year, but it leaves a lot of questions on when it will be finalized and become operational, climate experts told reporters Saturday. The text talks about a transitional committee that will help nail down those details, but doesn’t set future deadlines.

“There are no guarantees to the timeline,” Nisha Krishnan resilience director for World Resources Institute Africa told reporters.

Advocates for a loss and damage fund were happy with the progress, but noted that the draft is not ideal.

“We are happy with this outcome because it’s what developed countries wanted – though not everything they came here for,” Erin Roberts, founder of the Loss and Damage Collaboration, told CNN in a statement. “Like many, I’ve also been conditioned to expect very little from this process. While establishing the fund is certainly a win for developing countries and those on the frontlines of climate change, it’s an empty shell without finance. It’s far too little, far too late for those on the frontlines of climate change. But we will work on it.”

At COP27 the demand for a loss and damage fund – from developing countries, the G77 bloc and activists – had reached a fever pitch, driven by a number of major climate disasters this year including Pakistan’s devastating floods.

The conference first went into overtime on Saturday before continuing into the early hours of Sunday morning, with negotiators still working out the details as the workers were dismantling the venue around them. At points, there was a real sense of fatigue and frustration. Complicating matters was the fact that Kerry – the top US climate official – is self-isolating after recently testing positive for Covid, working the phones instead of having face-to-face meetings.

And earlier in the day Saturday, EU officials threatened to walk out of the meeting if the final agreement fails to endorse the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Global scientists have for decades warned that warming must be limited to 1.5 degrees – a threshold that is fast-approaching as the planet’s average temperature has already climbed to around 1.1 degrees. Beyond 1.5 degrees, the risk of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages will increase dramatically, scientists said in the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

In a carefully choreographed news conference Saturday morning, the EU’s Green Deal tsar Frans Timmermans, flanked by a full line-up of ministers and other top officials from EU member states, said that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”

“We do not want 1.5 Celsius to die here and today. That to us is completely unacceptable,” he said.

The EU made it clear that it was willing to agree to a loss and damage fund – a major shift in its position compared to just a week ago – but only in exchange for a strong commitment on the 1.5 degree goal.

As the sun went down on Sharm el-Sheikh Saturday evening, the mood shifted to cautious jubilation, with groups of negotiators starting to hint that a deal was in sight.

But, as is always the case with top-level diplomacy, officials were quick to stress that nothing is truly agreed until the final gavel drops.

Read original article here