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World

A former NBA champion is changing ‘how the world builds’ to fight the climate crisis

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London
CNN Business
 — 

Three years ago, a hurricane devastated the Bahamas, claiming dozens of lives. Today, the country is building what it claims to be the world’s first carbon-negative housing community to reduce the likelihood of future climate disasters and to ease the shortage of homes caused by the storm.

Rick Fox, a former Los Angeles Lakers player, is the lynchpin of the new housing project. The former basketball player and Bahamian citizen was spurred into action after he witnessed the destruction caused by Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Fox teamed up with architect Sam Marshall, whose Malibu home was severely damaged by wildfires in 2018, to develop Partanna, a building material that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The technology is being put to the test in the Bahamas, where Fox’s company, Partanna Bahamas, is partnering with the government to build 1,000 hurricane-resistant homes, including single-family houses and apartments. The first 30 units will be delivered next year in the Abaco Islands, which were hardest hit by Dorian.

“Innovation and new technology will play a crucial role in avoiding the worst climate scenarios,” Philip Davis, prime minister of the Bahamas, said in a statement. He is due to formally announce the partnership between the Bahamian government and Partanna Bahamas on Wednesday at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

As a country on the frontline of the climate crisis, the Bahamas understands that it’s “out of time,” Fox told CNN Business. “They don’t have time to wait for someone to save them,” he added.

“Technology can turn the tide, and at Partanna we have developed a solution that can change how the world builds,” Fox said.

Partanna consists of natural and recycled ingredients, including steel slag, a by-product of steel manufacturing, and brine from desalination. It contains no resins and plastics and avoids the pollution associated with cement production, which accounts for around 4%-8% of global carbon emissions from human activities.

The use of brine, meanwhile, helps solve the desalination industry’s growing waste problem by preventing the toxic solution from being discarded back into the ocean.

Almost all buildings naturally absorb carbon dioxide through a process called carbonation — which is where CO2 in the air reacts with minerals in the concrete — but Partanna says its homes remove carbon from the atmosphere at a much faster rate because of the density of the material.

The material also emits almost no carbon during manufacturing.

A 1,250 square foot Partanna home will contribute a “negligible amount” of CO2 during manufacturing, while removing 22.5 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere after production, making it “fully carbon negative within the product’s lifecycle,” according to the company.

By comparison, a standard cement home of the same size typically generates 70.2 tons of CO2 during production.

The use of salt water means that Partanna homes are also resistant to corrosion from seawater, making them ideal for residents of small island countries such as the Bahamas. That could make it easier for homeowners to get insurance.

The carbon credits generated from each home will be traded and used to fund various social impact initiatives, including promoting home ownership among low-income families.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated losses suffered by Rick Fox and Sam Marshall as a consequence of Hurricane Dorian and wildfires.

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World

COP27: What is ‘loss and damage,’ the climate summit’s key issue

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CNN
 — 

Aftab Khan felt helpless when torrential floodwaters submerged a third of Pakistan, his home country.

Khan’s hometown was completely underwater. His friend rescued a woman who had walked barefoot, carrying her sick child, through stagnant floodwaters for 15 miles. And Khan’s own mother, who now lives with him in Islamabad, was unable to travel home on washed-out roads to check if her daughter was safe.

“These are heart-wrenching stories, real stories,” Khan, an international climate change consultant, told CNN. “I was heartbroken.”

Pakistan became the clearest example this year of why some countries are fighting for a so-called “loss and damage” fund. The concept is that countries which have contributed the most to climate change with their planet-warming emissions should pay poorer countries to recover from the resulting disasters.

Earlier this year, Pakistan cooked under a deadly heat wave that climate change made 30 times more likely, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Now it is reeling from the aftermath of the worst floods in living memory.

The South Asian country is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s planet-warming emissions, but it is paying a heavy price. And there are many other countries like it around the world.

Loss and damage will be center stage at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, this year, as low-emitting countries inundated with floods or watching their islands sink into the ocean are demanding that developed, high-emissions countries pay up for this damage.

But it’s been a contentious issue for years, as rich countries like the United States fear that agreeing to a loss and damage fund could open them up to legal liability, and potential future lawsuits.

Climate activists in developing nations and a former top US climate official told CNN time is running out, pointing to Pakistan’s cascading disasters as the clearest evidence why a dedicated loss and damage fund is needed.

The developing world is “not prepared to protect themselves and adapt and be resilient” to climate disasters, former White House Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy told CNN. “It’s the responsibility of the developed world to support that effort. Commitments have been made but they’re not being delivered.”

As a concept, loss and damage is the idea that rich countries, having emitted the most planet-warming gases, should pay poorer countries who are now suffering from climate disasters they did not create.

Loss and damage is not a new ask. Developing countries and small island states have been pressing for these kinds of funds since 1991, when the Pacific island Vanuatu first proposed a plan for high-emitting countries to funnel money toward those impacted by sea level rise.

It took more than a decade for the proposal to gain momentum, even as much of Vanuatu and other small island Pacific nations are slowly disappearing.

In Fiji, climate activist Lavetanalagi Seru’s home island, it has cost an average of $1 million to relocate communities because of sea level rise. Moving away from ancestral lands is not an easy decision, but climate change is having irreversible impacts on the islands, said Seru, the regional policy coordinator with the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network.

“Climate change is threatening the very social fabrics of our Pacific communities,” Seru said. “This is why these funds are required. This is a matter of justice for many of the small island developing states and countries such as those in the Pacific.”

A major reason this type of fund is contentious is that wealthy nations are concerned that paying for such a fund could be seen as admission of liability, which may trigger legal battles. Developed nations like the US have pushed back on it in the past and are still tiptoeing around the issue.

Khan said he understands why rich developed nations are “dragging their feet.” But he added that it’s “very important for them to empathize and take responsibility.”

There has also been confusion about its definition – whether loss and damage is a form of liability, compensation or even reparations.

“‘Reparations’ is not a word or a term that has been used in this context,” US Climate Envoy John Kerry said on a recent call with reporters. He added: “We have always said that it is imperative for the developed world to help the developing world to deal with the impacts of climate.”

Kerry has committed to having a conversation on a fund this year ahead of a 2024 deadline to decide on what such a fund would look like. And US officials still have questions – whether it would come through an existing financial source like the Green Climate Fund, or an entirely new source.

Kerry also sparked some controversy on the topic at a recent New York Times event, when in response to a question on loss and damage, Kerry seemed to suggest that no country has enough money to help places like Pakistan recover from devastating climate disasters.

“You tell me the government in the world that has trillions of dollars, cause that’s what it costs,” Kerry said at the event.

But others say the money is there. It’s more a matter of priorities.

“Look at the annual defense budget of the developed countries. We can mobilize the money,” Alden Meyer, senior associate at E3G, told CNN. “It’s not a question of money being there. It’s a question of political will.”

At COP27, the biggest debate will be over whether to create a dedicated financial mechanism for loss and damage – in addition to existing climate finance meant to help countries adapt to climate change and transition to clean energy.

After climate-ravaged nations called for a new loss and damage finance facility at COP26 in Glasgow last year, it’s likely it will be an official COP27 agenda this year. But even as wealthier countries like the US and EU nations have committed to talk about it, there’s not a lot of hope countries will emerge from Sharm in agreement about a fund.

“Do we expect that we’ll have a fund by the end of the two weeks? I hope, I would love to – but we’ll see how parties deliver on that,” Egypt ambassador Mohamed Nasr, that country’s main climate negotiator, told reporters recently.

But Nasr also tamped down expectations, saying that if countries are still haggling over whether to even put loss and damage on the agenda, they’re unlikely to have a breakthrough on a financing mechanism.

He said it’s more likely that the loss and damage conversation will continue over the two weeks of Sharm, perhaps ending a framework established for a financing mechanism – or clarity on whether funds might come from new or existing sources.

Some officials from climate-vulnerable nations warned that if countries fail to come to an agreement now, the problem will be much worse later.

“For countries not on the front line, they think it’s sort of a distraction and that people should focus on mitigation,” Avinash Persaud, special envoy to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, told CNN. “If we had done mitigation early enough, we wouldn’t have to adapt and if we’d adapted early enough, we wouldn’t have the loss of damage. But we haven’t done those things.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated how much money has been spent to relocate communities in Fiji because of sea level rise. It’s an average of $1 million per community, according to Lavetanalagi Seru.

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World

COP27 climate summit: Here’s what to watch

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CNN
 — 

As global leaders converge in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the UN’s annual climate summit, researchers, advocates and the United Nations itself are warning the world is still wildly off-track on its goal to halt global warming and prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

Over the next two weeks, negotiators from nearly 200 countries will prod each other at COP27 to raise their clean energy ambitions, as average global temperature has already climbed 1.2 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution.

They will haggle over ending the use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, which has seen a resurgence in some countries amid the war in Ukraine, and try to come up with a system to funnel money to help the world’s poorest nations recover from devastating climate disasters.

But a flood of recent reports have made clear leaders are running out of time to implement the vast energy overhaul needed to keep the temperature from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists have warned the planet must stay under.

Reports from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Association show carbon and methane emissions hit record levels in 2021, and the plans countries have submitted to slash those emissions are beyond insufficient. Given countries’ current promises, Earth’s temperature will climb to between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Ultimately, the world needs to cut its fossil fuel emissions nearly in half by 2030 to avoid 1.5 degrees, a daunting prospect for economies still very much beholden to oil, natural gas and coal.

“No country has a right to be delinquent,” US Climate Envoy John Kerry told reporters in October. “The scientists tell us that what is happening now – the increased extreme heat, extreme weather, the fires, the floods, the warming of the ocean, the melting of the ice, the extraordinary way in which life is being affected badly by the climate crisis – is going to get worse unless we address this crisis in a unified, forward-leaning way.”

Here are the top issues to follow at COP27 in Egypt.

Developing and developed countries have for years tussled over the concept of a “loss and damage” fund; the idea which suggests countries causing the most harm with their outrageous planet-warming emissions should pay poorer countries, which have suffered from the resulting climate disasters.

It has been a thorny issue because the richest countries, including the US, don’t want to appear culpable or legally liable to other nations for harm. Kerry, for instance, has tiptoed around the issue, saying the US supports formal talks, but he has not given any indication of what solution the country would sign on to.

Meanwhile, small island nations and others in the Global South are shouldering the impact of the climate crisis, as devastating floods, intensifying storms and record-breaking heat waves wreak havoc.

The deadly flooding in Pakistan this summer, which killed more than 1,500 people, will surely be an example the countries’ negotiators point to. And since September, more than two million people in Nigeria have been affected by the worst flooding there in a decade. At this very moment, Nigerians are drinking, cooking with and bathing in dirty flood water amid serious concerns over waterborne diseases.

It is likely loss and damage will have space on the official COP27 agenda this year. But beyond countries committing to meet and talk about what a potential loss and damage fund would look like, or whether one should even exist, it is unclear what action will come out of this year’s summit.

“Do we expect that we’ll have a fund by the end of the two weeks? I hope, I would love to – but we’ll see how parties deliver on that,” Egypt’s chief climate negotiator Ambassador Mohamed Nasr recently told reporters.

Former White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy told CNN she thinks loss and damage will be the top issue at the UN climate summit this year, and said nations including the US will face some tough questions about their plans to help developing nations already being hit hard by climate disasters.

“It just keeps getting pushed out,” McCarthy said. “There’s need for some real accountability and some specific commitments in the short-term.”

People will be watching to see if the US and China can repair a broken relationship at the summit, a year after the two countries surprised the world by announcing they would work together on climate change.

The newfound cooperation came crashing down this summer when China announced it was suspending climate talks with the US as part of broader retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

Kerry recently said the climate talks between the two countries are still suspended and will likely remain so until China’s president Xi Jinping gives the green light. Kerry and others are watching to see whether China fulfills the promise it made last year to submit a plan to bring down its methane emissions or updates its emissions pledge.

The US and China are the world’s two largest emitters and their cooperation matters, particularly because it can spur other countries to act, too.

Separate from a potential loss and damage fund, there is the overarching issue of so-called global climate finance; a fund rich countries promised to push money into to help the developing world transition to clean energy rather than grow their economies with fossil fuels.

The promise made in 2009 was $100 billion per year, but the world has yet to meet the pledge. Some of the richest countries, including the US, UK, Canada and others, have consistently fallen short of their allocation.

President Joe Biden promised the US would contribute $11 billion by 2024 toward the effort. But Biden’s request is ultimately up to Congress to approve, and will likely go nowhere if Republicans win control of Congress in the midterm elections.

The US is working on separate deals with countries including Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia to get them to move away from coal and toward renewables. And US officials often stress they want to also unlock private investments to help countries transition to renewables and deal with climate effects.

COP27 is intended to hold countries’ feet to the fire on fossil fuel emissions and gin up new ambition on the climate crisis. Yet reports show we are still off-track to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A UN report which surveyed countries’ latest pledges found the planet will warm between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius. Average global temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.

Records were set last year for all three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

There is a spot of encouraging news: the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles is surging and helping to offset the rise in fossil fuel emissions, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

But the overall picture from the reports shows there is a need for much more clean energy, deployed swiftly. Every fraction of a degree in global temperature rise will have stark consequences, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

“The energy transition is entirely doable, but we’re not on that pathway, and we have procrastinated and wasted time,” Andersen told CNN. “Every digit will matter. Let’s not say ‘we missed 1.5 so let’s settle for 2.’ No. We must understand that every digit that goes up will make our life and the life of our children and grandchildren much more impacted.”

The clock is ticking in another way: Next year’s COP28 in Dubai will be the year nations must do an official stocktake to determine if the world is on track to meet the goals set out in the landmark Paris Agreement.

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World

Egypt faces criticism over crackdown on activists ahead of COP27 climate summit

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CNN
 — 

Egypt is facing a barrage of criticism over what rights groups say is a crackdown on protests and activists, as it prepares to host the COP27 climate summit starting Sunday.

Rights groups have accused the Egyptian government of arbitrarily detaining activists after Egyptian dissidents abroad called for protests to be held against President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on November 11, during the United Nations climate talks.

According to rights groups, security forces have been setting up checkpoints on Cairo streets, stopping people and searching their phones to find any content related to the planned protests.

The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), an NGO, said Wednesday that 93 people had been arrested in Egypt in recent days. It said that according to national security prosecution investigations, some of those arrested have allegedly sent videos calling for protests over social messaging apps. Some were also charged with abuse of social media, spreading false news and joining terrorist organizations – a repressive charge commonly used by the security apparatus against activists.

Indian climate activist Ajit Rajagopal was detained in Cairo last Sunday after setting off on a protest walk from the Egyptian capital to Sharm el-Sheikh, the Red Sea resort where the COP27 conference will be held from November 6 to 18. Rajagopal was released after a brief detention in Cairo along with his friend, lawyer Makarios Lahzy, a Facebook post by Lahzy said. Reuters, which spoke to Rajagopal following his release Monday, cited the Indian activist as saying he was still trying to get accredited for COP27 but did not plan to resume his march.

CNN has reached out to the Egyptian authorities for comment.

Egypt went through two mass uprisings in 2011 and 2013 which eventually paved the way for then-military chief Sisi to take power. Thousands of activists have since been jailed, spaces for public expression have been quashed and press freedom diminished.

While protests are rare – and mostly illegal – in Egypt, a looming economic crisis and a brutal security regime have spurred renewed calls for demonstrations by dissidents seeking to exploit a rare window of opportunity presented by the climate summit.

One jailed activist, British-Egyptian citizen Alaa Abdelfattah, escalated his hunger strike in an Egyptian prison this week, amid warnings by relatives over his deteriorating health. “Alaa has been on hunger strike for 200 days, he’s been surviving on only 100 calories of liquid a day,” said Sanaa Seif, Abdelfattah’s sister, who is staging a sit-in outside the UK Foreign Office in London.

COP, the annual UN-sponsored climate summit that brings together the signatories of the Paris Agreement on combating climate change, is traditionally a place where representatives of civil society have an opportunity to mingle with experts and policy makers and observe negotiations firsthand.

It is not uncommon to see a young activist approaching a national delegation walking down the corridor to their next meeting or an indigenous leader chatting to a minister on the sidelines of a debate.

And while security is always strict – this is, after all, a gathering attended by dozens of heads of states and governments – peaceful protests have always been part of COP. Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of last year’s host city of Glasgow, Scotland, during the summit.

Yet Egypt has tightened the rules on who can access the talks.

As in the past, this year’s COP conference will take place across two different sites. The official part of the summit is run by the UN and is only accessible to accredited people, including the official delegations, representatives of NGOs and other civil society groups, experts, journalists and other observers.

Then there is a separate public venue where climate exhibitions and events take place throughout the two weeks of the summit. But while this public part of the summit was in the past open to anyone, people wishing to attend this year will need to register ahead of time.

The chance to protest will also be restricted.

While the Egyptian government has pledged to allow demonstrations, it has said protests will have to take place in a special “protest zone,” a dedicated space away from the main conference site, and will have to be announced in advance. Guidelines published on the official COP website say that any other marches would need to be specially approved.

Anyone wanting to organize a protest will need to be registered for the public part of the conference – a requirement that may scare off activists fearing surveillance. Among the rules imposed by the Egyptian authorities on the protests is a ban on the use of “impersonated objects, such as satirical drawings of Heads of States, negotiators, individuals.”

The UN has urged Egypt to ensure the public has a say at the conference.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said it was “essential that everyone – including civil society representatives – is able to participate meaningfully at the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh” and that decisions about climate change need to be “transparent, inclusive and accountable.”

Separately, a group of five independent human rights experts, all of them UN special rapporteurs, published a statement last month expressing alarm over restrictions ahead of the summit. They said the Egyptian government had placed strict limits on who can participate in the talks and how, and said that “a wave of government restrictions on participation raised fears of reprisals against activists.”

“This new wave follows years of persistent and sustained crackdowns on civil society and human rights defenders using security as a pretext to undermine the legitimate rights of civil society to participate in public affairs in Egypt,” the group said in a statement.

A group of Egyptian civil rights groups has launched a petition calling for the Egyptian authorities to end the prosecutions of civil society activists and organizations and end restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

“The Egyptian authorities have for years employed draconian laws, including laws on counter terrorism, cyber crimes, and civil society, to stifle all forms of peaceful dissent and shut down civic space,” the groups said in the petition.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth and scores of other groups have also spoken up, demanding the release of detained activists.

In the lead-up to the climate conference, the Egyptian government presented an initiative pardoning prisoners jailed for their political activity. Authorities also pointed to a new prison, Badr-3, 70 kilometers (43 miles) northeast of Cairo, where other prisoners were moved to purportedly better conditions.

But rights groups said the government’s initiatives amounted to little change.

“Ahead of COP27, Egypt’s PR machine is operating on all cylinders to conceal the awful reality in the country’s jails, where prisoners held for political reasons are languishing in horrific conditions violating the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.

“Prisoners are facing the same human rights violations that have repeatedly blighted older institutions, exposing the lack of a political will from the Egyptian authorities to bring an end to the human rights crisis in the country.”

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World

Peru oil spill protest: tourists held by indigenous group are freed, says official

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CNN
 — 

A group of tourists traveling in the Peruvian Amazon, who were detained on Thursday by an indigenous community demanding government action over an oil spill, were freed on Friday, according to Abel Chiroque, head of the ombudsman office in Loreto.

Chiroque told CNN on Friday that 140 travelers in total were released.

Earlier, Wadson Trujillo, leader of the Cuninico community, confirmed to Peruvian local media RRP that his community stopped the boats in a bid to pressure the government to take action over the oil spill, which has disrupted their water supply. They were demanding the government declare a state of emergency over the oil spill.

Among the freed tourists on Friday was Angela Ramirez, a 28-year-old woman from Trujillo, Peru. She told CNN in a phone call that around 20 foreigners and dozens of local travelers were held on boats along the Marañon river in Cuninico by the indigenous community.

She said we were all freed at approximately 2 p.m. local time (3 p.m. ET) and were headed towards the town of Nauta, in the Loreto province, in the upcoming hours.

“We hope to arrive there tomorrow morning; we had to change boat because the boat we were traveling with remains detained by the indigenous groups, but we were allowed to leave on another vessel,” Ramirez said.

Their release came after more than 28 hours of negotiations, she said. “Finally it’s over, I am very happy, very relieved,” she told CNN.

Ramirez was traveling with a group of tourists consisting of women, children, and foreigners. She added among the passengers “were children, including a month-old baby, pregnant women and the elderly.”

On Friday, Peru’s vice minister for the environment, Marilu Chahua, traveled to the area to mediate with the indigenous groups who have been protesting against an oil spill along the Marañon river for almost two months.

The government announced the expansion of an environmental emergency decree to address the oil spill and persuade the indigenous groups to release the tourists.

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World

Glaciers at Yellowstone and Yosemite National Park on track to disappear in the next 30 years, report says

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CNN
 — 

The climate crisis is touching nearly every region of the world. But perhaps one of the most visible indicators of its impact is its effect on Earth’s iconic glaciers, a major source of freshwater supply. Glaciers have been melting at a breakneck pace in recent decades, leading to around 20% of global sea level rise since 2000.

Now researchers at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization have found that glaciers in one-third of the planet’s most beautiful parks and protected areas are set to disappear by 2050 – whether or not global warming is slowed.

Among the glaciers on the brink of vanishing at World Heritage sites are those in two of the most visited and most beloved parks in the United States – Yellowstone National Park, which saw unprecedented flooding earlier this year, and Yosemite National Park.

The list also includes some of the largest and most iconic glaciers in Central Asia and Europe as well as the last remaining glaciers in Africa, namely Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro.

Glaciers at World Heritage sites shed around 58 billion tons of ice each year, UNESCO reports, which is equivalent to the total volume of water used annually in France and Spain combined. And these glaciers have already contributed nearly 5% of global sea level rise in the last 20 years.

The study provides the first global assessment of both the current and future scenario of glaciers in World Heritage sites, according to Tales Carvalho Resende, project officer at UNESCO’s natural heritage unit and author of the report.

“This report brings a very powerful message in the sense that World Heritage Sites are iconic places – places that are extremely important for humanity, but especially for local communities and Indigenous peoples,” Resende told CNN. “Ice loss and glacial retreat is accelerating, so this sends an alarming message.”

Only by limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels can we save glaciers at the other two-thirds of these parks, scientists report – a climate target that recent reports say the world is far from achieving. The global average temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.

Glaciers cover around 10% of land, providing fresh water supply for households, agriculture and industry downstream. Under normal conditions, they take as long as a millennium to fully form; each year, they gain mass through snow or rain, and lose mass by melting in the summer.

Melting glaciers may seem like a faraway problem, but Resende said it’s a serious global issue that can hit downstream communities hard. He highlighted Pakistan’s deadly floods this year, which left nearly one-third of the country underwater. Reports say the multiweek floods were likely triggered by a combination of heavier than usual monsoon rains and several glacial lake outbursts due to melting that followed the recent extreme heat that enveloped the region.

“As water melts, this water will accumulate in what we call glacial lakes; and as water comes, these glacial lakes might burst,” he said. “And this outburst can create catastrophic floods, which is something we can see very recently in Pakistan.”

Thomas Slater, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in London, noted that these glaciers are contributing a small fraction of sea level rise compared to the amount of ice loss the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets could generate. Researchers like Slater have already found those ice sheets to be the major contributors to global sea-level rise this century.

“While it’s sad to hear some of these glaciers could be lost, we should take hope in the fact that reducing emissions can save the majority of them and avoid disruption to the water supply of millions of people worldwide who live downstream,” Slater, who is not involved with the UN report, told CNN.

With the rate at which the climate crisis is accelerating, more water will be released from glaciers. In drought-stricken areas like the Western US, an increase in meltwater may be a good thing, but Resende said it is only temporary.

Once a glacier’s peak water – the maximum meltwater it contributes to the system – has been reached, annual runoff decreases as the glacier shrinks to the point where it’s no longer able to produce water supply.

According to the report, many small glaciers in the Andes, Central Europe and Western Canada either have already reached peak water or are expected to in the coming years. Meanwhile, in the Himalayas, annual glacier runoff is forecast to jump around 2050, before it plunges steadily afterward.

If countries fail to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees, or even 2 degrees, glaciers will only continue to recede, the report shows. In that future, places would see significant glacier runoff during the wet periods, with little to no flow to quench drier and hotter conditions.

“This is a hot topic currently in the research community – to see what will be the landscape after glacier melting,” Resende said. “Unfortunately, glaciers will keep melting because there’s always a delay. Even if we stop or drastically cut our emissions today, they will keep retreating because there’s this inertia – and it is extremely important that we manage to set up adaptation measures.”

The report comes as world leaders gather in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, next week for the UN-brokered international climate negotiations, where the focus will be on getting countries to commit to stronger fossil fuel cuts that would limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. They will also discuss plans to adapt to worsening extreme weather events including heat waves, floods and storms.

“We need to really unite ourselves, to make as much as possible this 1.5 objective feasible,” Resende said. “The impacts might be irreversible, so this is really a pledge to take urgent action.”

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Science

A space rock that slammed into Mars revealed a surprise

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CNN
 — 

You never forget your first Mars mission.

When NASA’s InSight spacecraft arrived at the red planet on November 26, 2018, it was the first time I covered the landing of a spacecraft on Mars. The robotic lander made a graceful, ballet-like touchdown on the Martian surface.

Moments later, it sent back a “beep” and a photo of its landing site to mission control, as if to say, “I made it!” As the InSight team erupted into cheers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, I was dancing right along with them thousands of miles away at my desk.

The mission has made incredible discoveries about quakes on the red planet and what Mars’ core might be like.

But the InSight mission is nearing an end as dust obscures its solar panels. In a matter of weeks, the lander won’t be able to send a beep to show it’s OK anymore.

Before it bids farewell, though, the spacecraft still has some surprises in store.

When Mars rumbled beneath InSight’s feet on December 24, NASA scientists thought it was just another marsquake.

The magnitude 4 quake was actually caused by a space rock slamming into the Martian surface a couple thousand miles away.

The meteoroid left quite a crater on the red planet, and it revealed glimmering chunks of ice in an entirely unexpected place — near the warm Martian equator.

Meanwhile, researchers tested a microbe nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” under Mars-like conditions. The hardy organism’s ability to withstand harsh conditions led the scientists to believe ancient microbial life might be sleeping deep beneath the Martian surface.

Humans aren’t the only beings that pick their nose.

For the first time, an aye-aye, an unusual-looking lemur species, was documented rooting around in its nose — and then licking its finger clean.

Other nonhuman primates sample their own snot, too — but the critter’s incredibly long middle finger means it can reach all the way back into its throat, as depicted in a CT scan taken by the researchers.

Local legends associate the nocturnal aye-aye’s lengthy digit with prophecies of death in its native Madagascar. But researchers hope people will see the value in saving this misunderstood and highly endangered creature.

Emperor penguins may reign supreme at the South Pole, but the iconic species is at risk of going extinct due to the climate crisis.

As greenhouse gas and carbon emissions warm the Earth, the floating world in the Southern Ocean these marine birds call home melts. Sea ice is where they breed and raise their chicks, remain safe from predators and forage for food.

When sea ice disappears, entire emperor penguin colonies can vanish.

The flightless seabirds have now been listed as threatened by the US Fish and Wildlife Service — that means they’ll receive new protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Marine archaeologists have finally located an elusive 17th century shipwreck in Sweden.

The researchers found the Äpplet, one of four warships created on the order of King Gustavus Adolphus in 1625. The vessel was a sister ship to the Vasa, which capsized on its maiden voyage and is on display in a Stockholm museum.

The Äpplet served in Europe’s Thirty Years’ War and then was deliberately sunk in 1659 after being deemed unseaworthy. Researchers now plan to make a 3D image of the shipwreck as it rests on the seabed.

The James Webb Space Telescope showcased last week a sparkling view of the star-forming region called the Pillars of Creation.

A new image of the same feature, captured in mid-infrared light, reveals the dark underbelly of the normally ethereal scene where dust has drowned out the starlight. Only a few red stars pierce the darkness.

The towering columns resemble a tangle of ghostly figures clawing their way across the cosmos. With Halloween around the corner, it would be a fitting illustration of “the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir” from Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ulalume.”

Additionally, Webb spied a distant surprise that might be an ancient merger between two galaxies during the early days of the universe. And planetary scientists made a startling discovery about exoplanets that may narrow the search for habitable worlds.

Check out these intriguing stories:

— A mysterious field in China’s Hengduan Mountains is filled with dozens of species of rhododendrons. Rather than competing with one another, they’ve evolved to live in harmony. (add link Friday)

— Retired astronaut Scott Kelly is part of a new expert team that will delve into the mysteries of UFOs. The highly anticipated NASA study kicked off Monday.

— Meet some adorable additions to the tree of life. After years of effort, researchers have discovered six new species of rainfrogs on the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes.

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World

COP27: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pulls out of climate summit

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London
CNN
 — 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is no longer expected to attend the COP27 climate summit in Egypt next week due to “other pressing commitments,” a Downing Street spokesperson said on Thursday.

The UK will still be represented by other senior ministers, as well as by COP26 President Alok Sharma, at the climate summit in Sharm El Sheikh, the statement said.

“The government is absolutely committed to supporting COP27 and leading international action to tackle climate change and protect nature,” a Downing Street spokesperson said.

“The Prime Minister is not expected to attend the summit in Egypt due to other pressing domestic commitments, including preparations for the autumn statement.”

Sharma and the senior ministers who are attending will be working to ensure countries continue to make progress on the commitments made at COP26 in Glasgow, the statement continued.

The news comes weeks after British media reports at the beginning of October said noted environmentalist King Charles III would miss COP27 after then-Prime Minister Liz Truss advised him to drop his plans to attend.

CNN understands that the King’s attendance at COP27 had not been confirmed and, following consultations with the government, there was a joint agreement that this would not be the right occasion for Charles’s first overseas visit as a sovereign.

King Charles attended the climate change conference as Prince of Wales in 2021.

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US

Alaska crab season cancelled after billions vanish

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CNN
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The Alaska snow crab harvest has been canceled for the first time ever after billions of the crustaceans have disappeared from the cold, treacherous waters of the Bering Sea in recent years.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries and North Pacific Fishery Management Council announced last week that the population of snow crab in the Bering Sea fell below the regulatory threshold to open up the fishery.

But the actual numbers behind that decision are shocking: The snow crab population shrank from around 8 billion in 2018 to 1 billion in 2021, according to Benjamin Daly, a researcher with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“Snow crab is by far the most abundant of all the Bering Sea crab species that is caught commercially,” Daly told CNN. “So the shock and awe of many billions missing from the population is worth noting – and that includes all the females and babies.”

The Bristol Bay red king crab harvest will also be closed for the second year in a row, the agencies announced.

Officials cited overfishing as their rationale for canceling the seasons. Mark Stichert, the groundfish and shellfish fisheries management coordinator with the state’s fish and game department, said that more crab were being fished out of the oceans than could be naturally replaced.

“So there were more removals from the population than there were inputs,” Stichert explained at Thursday’s meeting.

Between the surveys conducted in 2021 and 2022, he said, mature male snow crabs declined about 40%, with an estimated 45 million pounds left in the entire Bering Sea.

“It’s a scary number, just to be clear,” Stichert said.

But calling the Bering Sea crab population “overfished” – a technical definition that triggers conservation measures – says nothing about the cause of its collapse.

“We call it overfishing because of the size level,” Michael Litzow, the Kodiak lab director for NOAA Fisheries, told CNN. “But it wasn’t overfishing that caused the collapse, that much is clear.”

Litzow says human-caused climate change is a significant factor in the crabs’ alarming disappearance.

Snow crabs are cold-water species and found overwhelmingly in areas where water temperatures are below 2 degrees Celsius, Litzow says. As oceans warm and sea ice disappears, the ocean around Alaska is becoming inhospitable for the species.

“There have been a number of attribution studies that have looked at specific temperatures in the Bering Sea or Bering Sea ice cover in 2018, and in those attribution studies, they’ve concluded that those temperatures and low-ice conditions in the Bering sea are a consequence of global warming,” Litzow said.

Temperatures around the Arctic have warmed four times faster than the rest of the planet, scientists have reported. Climate change has triggered a rapid loss in sea ice in the Arctic region, particularly in Alaska’s Bering Sea, which in turn has amplified global warming.

“Closing the fisheries due to low abundance and continuing research are the primary efforts to restore the populations at this point,” Ethan Nichols, an assistant area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told CNN.

Stichert also said that there might be some “optimism for the future” as a few, small juvenile snow crabs are starting to appear in the system. But it could be at least three to four more years before they hit maturity and contribute to the regrowth of the population.

“It is a glimmer of optimism,” Litzow said. “That’s better than not seeing them, for sure. We get a little bit warmer every year and that variability is higher in Arctic ecosystems and high latitude ecosystems, and so if we can get a cooler period that would be good news for snow crab.”

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Science

Meet the International Space Station’s new diverse crew

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When astronauts venture aboard the International Space Station, they see a world without borders. They work together while orbiting Earth, and no boundaries are visible between them, even as member countries contend with geopolitics on the planet below.

This week, a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft with a diverse crew lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The capsule carried NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, astronaut Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos — the first Russian to travel on a SpaceX spaceflight.

“We live in the same world, we live in the same universe,” Cassada said. “Sometimes we experience it in a very different way from our neighbors. We can all keep that in mind … and continue to do amazing things. And do it together.”

The NASA SpaceX Crew-5 mission, now safely ensconced on the space station, is one of firsts.

Nicole Aunapu Mann is the first Native American woman to go to space as well as the first woman to serve as mission commander for a SpaceX mission.

Mann grew up in Northern California and is a registered member of the Wailacki tribe of the Round Valley reservation. She has been a pilot and colonel in the US Marine Corps. But it wasn’t until her mid-20s that she realized she wanted to be an astronaut and that it was even possible.

“I realized that being an astronaut was not only something that was a possible dream but actually something that’s quite attainable,” Mann said. “I think as a young girl, I just didn’t realize that that was an opportunity and a possibility.”

A monster tsunami rippled across the planet when a dinosaur-killing asteroid crashed into Earth 66 million years ago.

The impact caused 75% of animal and plant life to go extinct and created a chain of cataclysmic events.

Waves more than a mile high pushed away from the impact crater near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and scoured the ocean floor thousands of miles away from the asteroid strike. The tsunami was thousands of times more energetic than those generated by earthquakes.

Sediment cores also showed that the tsunami’s powerful force even disturbed coasts of New Zealand’s islands halfway around the globe.

We get by with a little help from our friends.

The James Webb Space Telescope recently teamed up with two other space observatories to produce dazzling new images of the cosmos. By working together, these telescopes can provide a more complete portrait of the universe.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory added X-ray data to some of Webb’s first images to reveal previously hidden aspects. The X-rays pinpointed exploded stars, a shock wave and superheated gas, all highlighted in glowing pinks, purples and blues.

Additionally, astronomers combined Webb and Hubble data to showcase a pair of galaxies about 700 million light-years away from Earth. Webb scientists also spied a celestial surprise, in the form of a distant galaxy, within the image.

Composting your produce scraps can be great for the environment, but there’s an art to this environmentally friendly practice.

Food waste creates harmful greenhouse gases inside a landfill — and little to none of it is composted. Composting means mixing food and yard waste with nitrogen, carbon, water and air to help scraps decompose and turn into fertile soil that your garden will love.

A compost pile that stinks isn’t getting enough oxygen and is emitting methane. To prevent the formation of this harmful gas, and the smell, turn your compost pile every two to five weeks.

Learn more about lifestyle changes to minimize your personal role in the climate crisis and reduce your eco-anxiety in our limited Life, But Greener newsletter series.

Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo won the Nobel Prize for medicine this week for his pioneering use of ancient DNA to answer questions about human evolution.

In 2010, Pääbo sequenced the first Neanderthal genome and discovered that Homo sapiens interbred with them. Pääbo was also able to extract DNA from fossil fragments, which revealed Denisovans, a new kind of extinct human.

His work has allowed researchers to compare human genetics with the DNA of Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to scientists who discovered how to snap molecules together, and the Nobel Prize for physics went to quantum physicists for unlocking the eerie behavior of particles.

Check out these new finds:

— Archaeologists have uncovered the pieces of a nearly 2,000-year-old classical statue depicting the mythical hero Hercules in northeastern Greece.

— The Pacific Ocean is shrinking and making way for a new supercontinent, called Amasia, that will likely form in about 200 million to 300 million years.

— A new image from a telescope in Chile may look like a comet, but it’s actually an incredibly long debris trail created when the DART spacecraft slammed into an asteroid last month.

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