The head of the U.S. space agency said Tuesday he’s sure that investigators will determine the cause of a mysterious hole that appeared on the International Space Station, which his Russian counterpart has said was deliberately drilled.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine also said collaboration with Russia’s Roscosmos remains important, despite recent comments by agency head Dmitry Rogozin that Russia wouldn’t accept a “second-tier role” in a NASA-led plan to build an outpost near the moon.

The hole that appeared in a Russian Soyuz capsule docked to the ISS caused a brief loss of air pressure in August before being patched. The incident sparked wide speculation and consternation.

“I strongly believe we’re going to get the right answer to what caused the hole on the International Space Station and that together we’ll be able to continue our strong collaboration,” Bridenstine said. “What we’ve got to do is we’ve got to very dispassionately allow the investigation to go forward without speculation, without rumor, without innuendo, without conspiracy.”

Although the U.S. is working toward commercial launches to the ISS, Russia shouldn’t regard itself as sidelined, he said.

“There is coming a day when we’re going to have our own access to the International Space Station through a commercial crew. I want to be really clear — that is not a replacement for the Russian Soyuz capabilities. We see it as redundancy and we want to make sure that even when a commercial crew is up and running we are still going to be launching American astronauts on Soyuz rockets and we would love to have Russian cosmonauts launching on commercial crew rockets in the United States,” Bridenstine said.

Regarding the NASA-led Gateway project to build an orbiting moon outpost, Rogozin said recently that Russia couldn’t afford to participate in other countries’ projects in a secondary role. But Bridenstine said international involvement in the project was key.

“We’re going to build an architecture between the earth and the moon where we can go back and forth a lot with robots and landers and rovers and humans … the entire architecture between the Earth and the moon requires reusability. It requires international partners,” he said.

Bridenstine met with Rogozin in Moscow on Tuesday and both will attend the Thursday launch of a manned capsule to the space station from Russia’s space complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
…

your ads here!

Despite its middle income status, Indonesia is dealing with what experts say are unexpectedly high rates of childhood stunting.  Now, its government – starting with the the president – is declaring war on the issue and committing to boost its response to the challenge following a World Bank publication that says 37 percent of Indonesia’s children were stunted in 2013, a rate on par with some far more impoverished nations of Sub-Saharan Africa.   

Stunting is the medical condition that the World Health Organization defines as “impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition, repeated infection, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation.”

While Indonesia’s health ministry and other agencies have been battling to address the problem for years, the administration of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has now elevated the issue to be a national priority, making it a point to include it in last year’s Independence Day address.

“Before he mentioned it in the speech, I doubt it has ever been mentioned by a president in Indonesia,” said Claudia Rokx, a lead health specialist at the World Bank and one of the authors of the landmark book released last month.

First 1,000 days

Health experts emphasize that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are vital for preventing stunting, requiring adequate breastfeeding and nutrition, stimulation and activity, clean water and sanitation, and timely treatment of conditions like diarrhea and malaria.

With more than one in three Indonesian children being stunted, this means around 9 million children in Southeast Asia’s most populous country are suffering from developmental limitations.

Nusa Tenggara Timur, an impoverished province of eastern Indonesia, has the highest rate of stunting in Indonesia at 52 percent. Fifi Sumanti is a midwife on Komodo Island, known for its famous dragons and home to just 2,000 people. It is arid and most food must be brought in from other islands.

“Mothers here aren’t used to giving their children enough vegetables and fruit. They’re happier to give instant food to the children,” Sumanti told VOA.  Hygiene awareness and access to clean water are also major problems, she said.

While the poorest parts of Indonesia suffer the highest rates of stunting, even among the richest proportion of Indonesians stunting is as high as 29 percent.

Dr. Brian Sriprahastuti, a senior advisor to the office of the President of Indonesia on the issue of stunting, said the reasons for Indonesia’s stunting problem today go beyond the traditional factors of poverty and limited access to public services.  “Now we have another hypothesis that behavior is the main problem of this stunting issue,” Sriprahastuti said.

Sumanti, the midwife, agrees.

“We need to speak with [mothers] more about what stunting is and give greater care from the time mothers are first pregnant until they give birth, until the time the child is three years old,” she said.

International donors are taking notice and urgent efforts are under way to address the issue.

“If you’re malnourished during that first thousand days, the likelihood is that you would have suffered from irreversible brain damage,” said Simon Flint, a donor with the Asian Philanthropy Circle, a Singapore-based charity.  “Any intervention or expenditure on education,” Flint said, “could be so much more effective later on in a person’s life.” 

The group plans to launch a $10 million 1000 Days Fund by this March to support anti-stunting programs in Indonesia.

A new commitment

In the forward to the World Bank publication, the Indonesian president called current stunting rates “unacceptable” and pledged to prevent two million children from being stunted by 2021. “Eliminating stunting is therefore a main priority for our Government,” he wrote. “The Government is fully committed to do whatever it may take to achieve this goal.

Jim Tong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, said the government is investing in what he said are “evidence-based interventions” across 100 districts, to be expanded to the country’s 541 districts by 2021.  “This initiative marks a decisive step up in the ambitions of the world’s fourth-most populous nation to tackle stunting as part of its commitment to sustained, inclusive economic growth,” he wrote.

According to Flint, Indonesia’s “reasonably high average income conceals a fair amount of underlying inequality. Just for example, according to government figures, in 2016 around 30 million Indonesians were still living on less than a dollar a day. There’s obviously a huge problem of inequality and lack of access among the poorest people.”

Sriprahastuti of the President’s Office said that the government was adopting a human rights-based approach. “For all pregnant women in Indonesia, everywhere, for all children under two, everywhere, we have to support them.”

“They know they have a huge problem, they’ve recognized it now. They are ready to do something about it. They’ve thrown a lot of money into it. They have the highest-level commitment, and they know it can be done in Indonesia as well,” said Rokx.

“Everything is in place for them to do it well, they just have to coordinate better, be persistent and make sure that these kids get the best start in life they can get.”
…

your ads here!

Israelis will no longer be able to buy new gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles after 2030, the Energy Ministry said Tuesday, unveiling a plan to replace them with electric cars and trucks that run on natural gas.

The challenge will be creating an initial “critical mass” of cars that will move the local industry away from gasoline and diesel engines, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said.

“We are already encouraging by funding charging stations, more than 2,000 new charging stations around the country,” Steinitz told Reuters.

The government, he said, will also “reduce taxation on electric cars to almost zero, so they are going to be much cheaper.”

The electric vehicle campaign is part of a broader plan to completely wean Israel off gasoline, diesel and coal. Israel in recent years discovered huge deposits of natural gas, a cleaner-burning fossil fuel, and it is converting its power stations accordingly.

The plan was released a day after a U.N. report on climate change called for major changes in the way humankind uses energy.

The tipping point is expected around 2025, when, according to the ministry’s target, there will be about 177,000 electric cars on the road in Israel. Today there are just a few dozen.

After that, it will become easier and cheaper to own electric cars, so the ministry expects the number should jump to nearly 1.5 million by 2030.

“From 2030, we won’t allow anymore the import of diesel or gasoline cars to Israel,” Steinitz said.

All new cars will be electric. Buses and trucks will be either electric or run on compressed natural gas.

“We are forcing companies to bring electric cars to Israel and for oil and gasoline companies to shift to charging stations in their gasoline or petrol stations,” he said.

The government, he said, is expected to approve the plan by the end of the year.
…

your ads here!

The Japanese online retail tycoon who plans to travel to the moon on the SpaceX rocket says he respects and trusts Elon Musk as a fellow entrepreneur, despite his recent troubles.

“Twitter can get you into trouble,” Yusaku Maezawa, chief executive of Zozo Inc., said Tuesday at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo. “And that can be said of Elon Musk, too.”

Musk’s tweet in August that declared he had secured financing for a Tesla buyout got him in trouble with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Under a settlement, Tesla and Musk each must pay a $20 million penalty. Musk also stepped down as Tesla’s chairman.

Maezawa, 42, who is also quite active on social media, intends to be a passenger on Musk’s Space X, the first-ever private commercial space trip, scheduled for blastoff in 2023, to orbit the moon, in what Maezawa has dubbed his “#dearMoon Project.”

Maezawa said he got a good feel for Musk’s character by visiting Tesla, and seeing the relationship Musk had developed with his employees.

“They believe in Elon Musk,” he said. “That kind of company is marvelous. I felt that as another entrepreneur.”

Although Maezawa said nothing was decided yet on who was going with him on the space travel, he said he wanted to take visual artists, fashion designers and musicians from a variety of backgrounds, including the actress he was dating, Ayame Goriki, “if she proves to be a good match for the mission.”

Maezawa said his company has a twitter policy, and experts go over his tweets in advance. Sometimes he gets emotional on social media, but he is careful not to say anything that might hurt his company, he said.

Recently, he took to his twitter and Instagram accounts to lash out at online hecklers, who had ridiculed his halting rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on an expensive Stradivarius violin he had just purchased.

Maezawa is known for lavish purchases, including artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. But he is equally known for sharing them with the public.

He shrugged off the possible dangers of space, just as he brushed off the risks of tweets and associations with Musk.

“There is no end if you start thinking about that,” he said of the risks.

Maezawa said he has not yet started training for the mission, but he has been getting regular medical checkups and is brushing up on his English.

In a nation where people tend to be focused on blending in and getting along, Maezawa has stood out. Forbes magazine estimates his wealth at $2.9 billion.

Maezawa ran an import CD business and played in a rock band before he embarked on his online fashion business with his shopping site Zozotown.

Recently, he has begun making clothes, such as a wearable technology called Zozosuit. The suit, splattered with hundreds of dots, takes body measurements with a software application, ensuring a good fit.

Maezawa said nicely fitting clothes bring smiles and the moon trip’s purpose also is to add to happiness.

The world remembers the first words of the 1969 Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” he said.

Maezawa has a message of his own that he says will be more casual, akin to the lyrics he loved playing in rock bands growing up.

All I want to say is this: Wouldn’t the world be a better place if there is peace?” said Maezawa.
…

your ads here!

Drink companies Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle were found to be the world’s biggest producers of plastic trash, a report by environmental group Greenpeace said on Tuesday.

Working with the Break Free From Plastic movement, Greenpeace said it orchestrated 239 plastic clean-ups in 42 countries around the world, which resulted in the audit of 187,000 pieces of plastic trash. The aim was to get a picture of how large corporations contribute to the problem of pollution.

Coca-Cola, the world’s largest soft drink maker, was the top waste producer, Greenpeace said, with Coke-branded plastic trash found in 40 of the 42 countries.

“These brand audits offer undeniable proof of the role that corporations play in perpetuating the global plastic pollution crisis,” said Von Hernandez, global coordinator for Break Free From Plastic.

Overall, the most common type of plastic found was polystyrene, which goes into packaging and foam coffee cups, followed closely by PET, used in bottles and containers.

“We share Greenpeace’s goal of eliminating waste from the ocean and are prepared to do our part to help address this important challenge,” a Coke spokesman said in a statement. The company has pledged to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one it sells by 2030.

All three companies have made pledges about their packaging for 2025. Coke says all its packaging will be recyclable, Nestle says it will be recyclable or reusable and PepsiCo says it will be recyclable, compostable or biodegradable.

They are all also working to use recycled content in their packaging.

Nestle, the world’s largest food and drink maker, said it recognized the issue and is working hard to eliminate non-recyclable plastics. It said it was also exploring different packaging solutions and ways to facilitate recycling and eliminate plastic waste.

PepsiCo was not immediately available to comment outside regular U.S. business hours. 
…

your ads here!

When SpaceX launched a rocket carrying an Argentine Earth-observation satellite from California’s Central Coast, both the night sky and social media lit up.

 

People as far away as San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix and Reno, Nevada, posted photos of the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch and return on Sunday night. It was the first time SpaceX landed a first-stage booster back at its launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

 

The Air Force warned residents on the Central Coast that they might see multiple engine burns by the first stage and hear one or more sonic booms as it returned.

 

But many far beyond the region were taken by surprise when the launch illuminated the sky, wondering what the otherworldly looking sight was. Some speculated it was a comet or an alien aircraft.

 

“Something exploded in the sky west of Phoenix,” Laura Gadbery wrote on Twitter. “Anyone catch it or know what it was?”

 

Lloyd Lawrence, another user in Phoenix — about 490 miles (790 kilometers) away from the launch site — said he was driving on Interstate 10 when he saw the launch and “couldn’t believe my eyes.”

 

“I wondered who was holding the gigantic flashlight in the sky,” he wrote.

 

Others in Reno, Nevada — about 340 miles away (550 kilometers) — also saw the galactic wonder.

 

Jill Bergantz Carley wrote : “OK Twitter, what the heck is this #UFO #brightlight #plume-a-licious thing we just saw in the sky above #Reno — it radiated beams of light!”

 

Debi Hammond wrote : “Strangest thing I’ve ever seen in the sky. Anyone know what this is?”

 

Californians from Los Angeles to Sacramento — about 270 miles (435 kilometers) from the launch site — also posted their confusion.

 

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was among those trying to clear up the speculation, tweeting a photo of the launch and writing: “Nope, definitely not aliens.”

 

Those who knew they were watching a satellite launch posted videos they captured of the stunning spectacle, including one taken over the downtown Los Angeles skyline and a timelapse from Kern County.

 

The primary purpose of the SpaceX mission was to place the SAOCOM 1A satellite into orbit, but SpaceX also wanted to expand its recovery of first stages to its launch site at Vandenberg.

 

SpaceX had previously flown first-stage rockets back to land after Florida launches but had not done so on the West Coast.

 

SpaceX also has successfully landed Falcon 9 first stages on so-called drone ships off the coasts of Florida and California, all as part of its effort to decrease the cost of space launches by reusing rockets rather than allowing them to fall into the ocean.

 

The satellite is the first of two for Argentina’s space agency, the Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, and will work in conjunction with a constellation of Italian space agency satellites. Its acronym is short for Satelite Argentino de Observacion Con Microondas.

 

SAOCOM 1A carries a high-resolution instrument called a synthetic aperture radar that will be used for emergency management during disasters and for land monitoring. The second satellite will be SAOCOM 1B.
…

your ads here!

A new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns the world is heating up faster than predicted.  If the pace of global warming is not scaled back drastically, the panel says climate-related risks to human well-being, ecosystems and sustainable development will escalate to dangerous, unreversable levels.

Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report global warming since pre-industrial times already has exceeded one degree Celsius.  At the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, it says the the level of warming will reach 1.5 degrees during the next few decades.

The report says the world needs to reach zero net emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050 to prevent a further rise in temperature.    

It warns a further increase to two degrees Celsius would greatly escalate the number of natural disasters, accelerate the melting of the Arctic sea ice, cause islands to disappear under rising seas, and make it impossible to produce enough food to feed the world’s growing population.

World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas says there is still time for people to change their behavior to keep carbon emissions from rising.  He says preventing the global temperature from going up by one half degree would make a huge difference in the well-being of the planet.

“One of the major issues is that there would be 420 million people less suffering because of climate change if we would be able to limit the warming to 1.5-degree level,” said Taalas. “And, we have certain areas in the world, which are extremely sensitive.  Small island states, Mediterranean region and also Sub-Saharan Africa, which are already suffering and will suffer the most in the future.”

Taalas recommends several actions governments and individuals can take to lower the world’s temperature.  He says fossil fuels, which are the greatest emitter of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, must be phased out.  

He says solar power, hydro power, wind power and other forms of so-called green energy are available to meet peoples’ energy needs.  He says more emphasis should be placed on using electric powered public and private modes of transportation.

He tells VOA people can help save the planet by changing their lifestyles.  He points to diet as one area that could lessen the problem.

“For example, the fact that we eat so much meat means that we are using a fairly large fraction of our agriculture for the cattle instead of for using vegetarian food that would be more carbon friendly,” said Taalas.

Taalas says governments have a 30-year window in which to stop using fossil energy and limiting global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.  He says this is not impossible, but agrees that it is a major challenge.
…

your ads here!

Preventing an extra single degree of heat could make a life-or-death difference in the next few decades for multitudes of people and ecosystems on this fast-warming planet, an international panel of scientists reported Sunday. But they provide little hope the world will rise to the challenge.

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its gloomy report at a meeting in Incheon, South Korea.

In the 728-page document, the U.N. organization detailed how Earth’s weather, health and ecosystems would be in better shape if the world’s leaders could somehow limit future human-caused warming to just 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (a half degree Celsius) from now, instead of the globally agreed-upon goal of 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C). Among other things:

• Half as many people would suffer from lack of water.

• There would be fewer deaths and illnesses from heat, smog and infectious diseases.

• Seas would rise nearly 4 inches (0.1 meters) less.

• Half as many animals with back bones and plants would lose the majority of their habitats.

• There would be substantially fewer heat waves, downpours and droughts.

• The West Antarctic ice sheet might not kick into irreversible melting.

• And it just may be enough to save most of the world’s coral reefs from dying.

“For some people this is a life-or-death situation without a doubt,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, a lead author on the report

Limiting warming to 0.9 degrees from now means the world can keep “a semblance” of the ecosystems we have. Adding another 0.9 degrees on top of that – the looser global goal – essentially means a different and more challenging Earth for people and species, said another of the report’s lead authors, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia.

But meeting the more ambitious goal of slightly less warming would require immediate, draconian cuts in emissions of heat-trapping gases and dramatic changes in the energy field. While the U.N. panel says technically that’s possible, it saw little chance of the needed adjustments happening.

In 2010, international negotiators adopted a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) since pre-industrial times. It’s called the 2-degree goal. In 2015, when the nations of the world agreed to the historic Paris climate agreement, they set dual goals: 2 degrees C and a more demanding target of 1.5 degrees C from pre-industrial times. The 1.5 was at the urging of vulnerable countries that called 2 degrees a death sentence.

The world has already warmed 1 degree C since pre-industrial times, so the talk is really about the difference of another half-degree C or 0.9 degrees F from now.

“There is no definitive way to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 above pre-industrial levels,” the U.N.-requested report said. More than 90 scientists wrote the report, which is based on more than 6,000 peer reviews.

“Global warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate,” the report states.

Deep in the report, scientists say less than 2 percent of 529 of their calculated possible future scenarios kept warming below the 1.5 goal without the temperature going above that and somehow coming back down in the future.

The pledges nations made in the Paris agreement in 2015 are “clearly insufficient to limit warming to 1.5 in any way,” one of the study’s lead authors, Joerj Roeglj of the Imperial College in London, said.

“I just don’t see the possibility of doing the one and a half” and even 2 degrees looks unlikely, said Appalachian State University environmental scientist Gregg Marland, who isn’t part of the U.N. panel but has tracked global emissions for decades for the U.S. Energy Department. He likened the report to an academic exercise wondering what would happen if a frog had wings.

Yet report authors said they remain optimistic.

“We have a monumental task in front of us, but it is not impossible,” Mahowald said Sunday. “This is our chance to decide what the world is going to look like. ”

To limit warming to the lower temperature goal, the world needs “rapid and far-reaching” changes in energy systems, land use, city and industrial design, transportation and building use, the report said. Annual carbon dioxide pollution levels that are still rising now would have to drop by about half by 2030 and then be near zero by 2050. Emissions of other greenhouse gases, such as methane, also will have to drop. Switching away rapidly from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas to do this could be three to four times more expensive than the less ambitious goal, but it would clean the air of other pollutants. And that would have the side benefit of avoiding more than 100 million premature deaths through this century, the report said.

“Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth are projected to increase with global warming” the report said, adding that the world’s poor are more likely to get hit hardest.

Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said extreme weather, especially heat waves, will be deadlier if the lower goal is passed.

Meeting the tougher-to-reach goal “could result in around 420 million fewer people being frequently exposed to extreme heat waves, and about 65 million fewer people being exposed to exceptional heat waves,” the report said. The deadly heat waves that hit India and Pakistan in 2015 will become practically yearly events if the world reaches the hotter of the two goals, the report said.

Coral and other ecosystems are also at risk. The report said warmer water coral reefs “will largely disappear.”

The outcome will determine whether “my grandchildren would get to see beautiful coral reefs,” Princeton’s Oppenheimer said.
…

your ads here!

Large scale agriculture creates large scale pollution, especially from animal waste. The waste from poultry farms, for example, is bad for the environment, but it contains nutrients that are good for fertilizer. Faith Lapidus reports that scientists in Maryland are developing a new technology to separate the good from the bad … and turn a profit in the process.
…

your ads here!

Delegates from 148 parties to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control are calling for new heated tobacco products on the market to be regulated in the same way cigarettes and other tobacco products are.

Heated tobacco products (HTPs) are not e-cigarettes. They are products that contain nicotine and other chemicals, which are inhaled by users, through the mouth. The tobacco industry markets these devices as being less harmful than regular cigarettes.

But the head of the convention secretariat, Vera da Costa e Silva, said there was no evidence that HTPs are less harmful than conventional tobacco products. She said they are tobacco products in the same way as cigarettes and should be subject to the same regulations imposed on standard tobacco products under the treaty.

“Governments should implement … a ban on advertisement, promotion and sponsorship” of heated tobacco products, da Costa said. “Parties to the treaty are legally bound to the provisions of the treaty and they should regulate heated tobacco accordingly.”

Da Costa told VOA the tobacco industry is marketing heated tobacco products as a harm-reduction strategy. She said many are sold with flavors, which appeal to young people. For now, she said, the products are mainly being marketed in developed countries.

“But they are already being marketed very aggressively with high lobbying, and there are many, many concerns,” she said. “Lots of concerns raised by African countries, Latin American countries, Asian countries that do not feel they are prepared for this epidemic of heated tobacco products.”

Da Costa said evidence is accumulating that the nicotine inhaled from HTPs is unhealthy, causing dependence and disease. The long-term health impact from vaping is not yet clear. But the World Health Organization notes illnesses related to regular tobacco products prematurely kill more than 7 million people every year.
…

your ads here!

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to sign legislation soon that will add a third gender category to birth certificates. The city council passed legislation on the issue in September, and the mayor announced his intention to sign it after a public hearing. Faiza Elmasry reports on that, with an interview by Genia Dulot, the first American to have her birth certificate list a third gender. Faith Lapidus narrates.
…

your ads here!

Four more cases of Ebola have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the past two days. And the World Health Organization says officials are now concerned the virus will spread beyond the DRC. The total number of cases is now 165, with 106 deaths. But some new drugs are being deployed to fight the deadly virus. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

your ads here!

A new study is blaming 2017’s unusually high number of hurricanes on the Atlantic Ocean’s rising surface temperatures. The report is one of the first to suggest that human-driven global warming is actually causing more hurricanes.

The study published in last week’s journal Science also predicts that as warming increases over the next 50 to 100 years, about two more hurricanes on average will form annually than we get now. In addition, those hurricanes will be stronger and wetter.

‘The new normal’

It’s a common refrain in these days to refer to outrageous weather events as “the new normal,” but those claims have been hard to quantify. Scientists do know the Earth is getting warmer, and evidence shows humans are contributing to the problem. But scientists have warned against attributing individual weather events to changes in climate, explaining that weather and climate are two different things.

But by any standard, 2017 was a tough year for people living on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. Hurricane Harvey turned parts of coastal Texas and the city of Houston into a watery mess. And Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico so badly, the island only completed its power restoration projects in August of this year.

Using a new climate model, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began studying a particular swath of warming tropical Atlantic water near the equator. Speaking to VOA, author Hiro Murakami says water was especially warm last year and their model predicted about two more major hurricanes than usual. In reality, there were two more than average.

Get used to it, Murakami says. When this area of Atlantic water gets unusually warm, as it did in 2017, the U.S. should expect at least two extra hurricanes a year, he explains, adding that as the planet warms, that area of the Atlantic should heat up more and more often.

“Last year we saw six major hurricanes,” he said. “But these six could be eight major hurricanes in the future given the same summer conditions.”

That’s bad news for people who live near the coast and for the government officials who have to prepare for the massive storms.

Tom Delworth, another NOAA researcher who contributed to the study, says the new model can predict not only what’s going to happen this season, but also “100 years in the future.” And, he says, “50 to 60 years in advance, later in this century, the most intense storms will become even more intense category 4 and 5. They will be even stronger.”

Delworth and Murakami say their model is also applicable to typhoons in the Pacific, and warming waters there should have a similar effect in regions getting battered by those late summer storms.

Future hurricanes

Both researchers pointed to the unique value of the model in being able to predict hurricanes in the next week, the next month and the next century. However, they admit that while their model can fairly accurately predict what the hurricane seasons will look like in the months and years ahead, it can’t predict specific storms.

What good is it to know that more hurricanes are coming if we don’t know exactly where and when? Delworth says it can be incredibly empowering for first responders as they prepare for any given hurricane season. “Let’s have a lot of emergency supplies on hand,” he suggested, as an example, “because we think this is going to happen.”

He also says that every year, little by little, modelers and climate scientists are getting better and better at what they do. “That’s a very optimistic thing,” Delworth said. So, even as hurricanes get stronger and more numerous, forecasters may be able to get ahead of the game, or ahead of the storm, and ultimately save lives.
…

your ads here!

People who regularly engage in light to moderate physical activity — like walking four hours a week or swimming two hours weekly — might have less severe strokes than individuals who aren’t as active, a Swedish study suggests.

Researchers examined data on 925 patients who were treated for strokes at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, between 2014 and 2016. Overall, four in five of these patients had mild strokes.

Slightly more than half of the patients were inactive before their strokes. Compared with this inactive group, people who got at least some exercise before their strokes were twice as likely to have mild strokes, researchers reported in Neurology.

“We knew from earlier research that physical activity could reduce stroke incidence,” lead study author Malin Reinholdsson of the University of Gothenburg said by email. “However, whether or not pre-stroke physical activity could also influence stroke severity was not clear.”

Patients in the study were 73 years old on average and most of them had what’s known as an ischemic stroke, the most common kind, which occurs when a clot blocks an artery carrying blood to the brain. About 6 percent of patients had hemorrhagic strokes, a less common type that is caused by a ruptured blood vessel in the brain.

Surveyed about exercise

To assess pre-stroke activity levels, researchers surveyed participants about the duration and intensity of any exercise they got before they were hospitalized.

Researchers defined “light” activity as walking at a leisurely pace for at least four hours a week, and classified exercise as “moderate” intensity when people did things like swimming, running or walking briskly for two to three hours weekly.

Among 481 people who were inactive, 354, or 74 percent, had mild strokes.

For those who managed light physical activity, 330, or 86 percent, had mild strokes. And among the 59 participants who got moderate intensity exercise, 53, or 90 percent, had mild strokes. 

Age also mattered, with higher odds of a mild stroke for younger people in the study.

The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how the amount or intensity of exercise might influence stroke severity.

Another limitation is that researchers relied on stroke survivors to accurately recall their previous exercise habits, and memory is often compromised after a stroke.

Even so, the results add to evidence suggesting that an active lifestyle can both lower the risk of stroke and reduce the chances that a stroke will be severe, said Nicole Spartano, co-author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at Boston University School of Medicine.

“Regular exercise helps the brain to maintain healthy arteries that have more complex networks,” Spartano said by email. “So when a blockage [stroke] happens in one area, there may be another route to provide oxygen to the affected area.”

Being physically active can also help prevent risk factors for stroke, like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, Spartano noted.

“This study is exciting because it suggests that you might not have to do a lot of intense exercise to see an effect,” Spartano said.
…

your ads here!

Newer birth control for men is beginning to fill the gap between the traditional condoms and sterilization.

One new technology involves inserting a hypodermic needle into the scrotum. It is said to decrease libido.

For men, contraception had remained fairly stagnant for the past century, primarily limited to condoms (85 percent effective when used correctly) and vasectomy, which is usually permanent. New methods are trying to move beyond centuries-old contraception applications, and some younger men say they are enthusiastic about the prospects.

But they want them to be safe.

“Contraceptives are necessary regardless of which partner is using them,” said Shane Sullivan, a senior at Colgate University in New York. But, “I’m adverse to solutions that may induce side effects.”

But as with contraception for women, methods free of side effects are hard to come by.

Nestorone-Testosterone is a hormonal birth control gel for men that’s been in the making for more than a decade. The gel is applied to the arms and shoulders every day and works to shut down hormones responsible for sperm production. But because it drops testosterone levels, reported side effects include a low libido or problems with ejaculation.

Meanwhile, scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland have developed a daily birth control pill called DMAU. It lowers testosterone and sperm production, which decreases the likelihood of pregnancy, according to a study by the University of Washington Medical Center and at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California.

All participants who tried DMAU noted some weight gain and a decrease of high-density lipoproteins (HDL, “good” cholesterol responsible for healthy cardiovascular functioning).

“Despite having low levels of circulating testosterone, very few subjects reported symptoms consistent with testosterone deficiency or excess,” said the study’s senior investigator, professor of medicine Stephanie Page at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“DMAU is a major step forward in the development of a once-daily ‘male pill,’” Page said. “Many men say they would prefer a daily pill as a reversible contraceptive, rather than long-acting injections or topical gels, which are also in development.”

Contraceptives such as Vasalgel block the vas deferens, or the tubes through which sperm travel, with the injection of a gel into the scrotum. The Indian developer of Vasalgel licensed it to non-profit company Parsemus Foundation in the U.S., which focuses its development on innovative but neglected pharmaceutical advances.

Vasalgel can last a few months to a few years. It has shown minimal adverse impacts and the developer calls it the “IUD for men” because it is non-hormonal.

Robert McLachlan, professor of men’s health at Monash University in Melbourne, found another injectable option for men. McLachlan designed an intramuscular shot delivered in the buttocks, increasing testosterone, which greatly reduces sperm production.

The most common side effects for the injectable hormonal contraceptive included acne, injection site pain, mood disorders, and an increased libido.

In a survey conducted with 134 young adults aged 18-27, of which 61 were male, their average likelihood of supporting male contraceptives was 8.6 on a scale from 1 to 10, (1 being the least likely and 10 being the most like to support.) Of all the respondents, 29 percent were quick to note that hormonal contraceptives for women already include the side effects that some of the newer drugs would present for men.

Brennan Sullivan, a 24-year-old research assistant from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (JHMI) noted the impact a male-dominated medical field has on women. He emphasized that “male contraceptives should not be seen as equivalent to female birth control,” and explained how many scientists have not considered these biological differences between men and women when developing medications.

Ahead of Food and Drug Administration approval for oral contraceptives for women in 1960, couples relied on withdrawal and condoms to prevent pregnancy. Soon, women on the early forms of the Pill began to complain of side effects that included hormone imbalance, weight gain, acne, and mood changes because of high estrogen levels. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC), nearly 30 percent of users stopped oral contraceptives, and dosage was modified to balance contraception with user tolerance.

Despite successful findings and trials, the pharmaceutical industry thinks there is a relatively small market for male contraceptives, so it may be a while before these drugs actually hit the shelves. McLachlan noted the industry was “involved in this research until about five years ago and both the big companies that were involved — one pulled out [of research] about a decade ago.”

“Seeing as they’re the same side effects as most female birth control options, it’s not too bad,” said Pavan Devraj, a sophomore at the University of Georgia.

Jameson Carter, a research assistant at the Library of Congress, also expressed support.

“I think this stuff has to start somewhere. I understand it won’t be as convenient as just using a condom, given the side effects. I’d try it.”

Some men see birth control as an opportunity to be equally accountable for contraception.

“Men should absolutely engage in the same difficult choices that women do if they choose to engage in sexual activity,” said Mishka Naiker, 22 and a recent graduate from the University of Alabama. “Women are biologically more responsible for the existence and welfare of a child, even though the creation of a fetus takes both a man and a woman. That is the only time the responsibility is honestly 50/50.”

Wazir Hossain, a 24-year-old recent graduate from the University of Georgia, agrees and says it’s great for men to “have some form of control over the outcome of a situation and hold themselves accountable.”

Computer programmer Kaden Weaver, 23, expressed concerned about potential side effects.

“I am fully supportive of male contraceptive options similar to birth control, but… I feel as though things with these side effects don’t belong in the human body. ”

That attitude is not embraced in all parts of the world. The responsibility for family planning routinely falls to women, and contraception is not accessible to an estimated 214 million women in developing countries, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute.
…

your ads here!

A scrawny dwarf planet nicknamed “the Goblin” has been discovered well beyond Pluto.

A round frozen world just 186 miles (300 kilometers) across, the Goblin was spotted by astronomers in 2015 around Halloween, thus its spooky name. But it wasn’t publicly unveiled until Tuesday following further observations with ground telescopes.

Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, one of the astronomers who made the discovery, said the Goblin is on the small end for a dwarf planet. It is officially known as 2015 TG387 by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

This is the third dwarf planet recently found to be orbiting on the frigid fringes of our solar system.

Goblin’s orbit is extremely elongated — so stretched out, in fact, that it takes 40,000 years for it to circle the sun.

At its most distant, the Goblin is 2,300 times farther from the sun than Earth. That’s 2,300 astronomical units, or AU. One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun, or roughly 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

At its closest, the Goblin is 65 times farther from the sun than Earth, or 65 AU. Pluto, by comparison, is approximately 30 to 50 AU.

Sheppard, along with Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo and the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen, spotted the Goblin in October 2015 when it was relatively nearby — around 80 AU.

The two other dwarf planets are Sedna, discovered in 2003, which is about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) across, and 2012 VP113, about 310 miles (500 kilometers). They were found by some of the same astronomers.

Thousands — even a million — more such objects could be way out there orbiting in the so-called Inner Oort Cloud, according to the researchers. They’re in hot pursuit of them, as well as a potentially bigger-than-Earth planet known as Planet 9, or Planet X, believed by some scientists to be orbiting at a distance of hundreds of AU.

“These objects are on elongated orbits, and we can only detect them when they are closest to the Sun. For some 99 percent of their orbits, they are too distant and thus too faint for us to observe them. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” Sheppard said in an email.

Sheppard said the faraway objects are “like bread crumbs leading us to Planet X.”

“The more of them we can find, the better we can understand the outer solar system and the possible planet that we think is shaping their orbits — a discovery that would redefine our knowledge of the solar system’s evolution,” he said in a statement.
…

your ads here!

A study of the African bush elephant’s vast network of deep wrinkles has found it is intricately designed to help the animals keep their cool, fight off parasites and defend against sun damage, scientists said on Tuesday.

The fine pattern of millions of channels means the elephant’s skin can retain five to 10 times more water than a flat surface, the scientists said.

The research, conducted by scientists at Switzerland’s University of Geneva and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, was published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday.

“Because of their huge body size, and their warm and dry habitat, African elephants can avoid over-heating only by losing calories through evaporation of the water they collect in and on their skin,” researchers wrote.

The scientists found that elephant skin channels are not just folds or wrinkles, but actual fractures in the animal’s brittle outermost layer of skin. The skin grows on a tiny lattice framework, they said, causing it to fracture under mechanical stress when the animals move.

African elephants are known to love bathing, spraying and mud-wallowing, and since they have no sweat and sebum glands to keep their skin moist and supple, the tiny crevices trap and hold on to water and mud, helping to regulate body temperature.

They also form a barrier against bugs and solar radiation.
…

your ads here!

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is swinging by Venus on its unprecedented journey to the sun.

 

Launched in August, the spacecraft gets a gravity assist Wednesday as it passes within 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) of Venus. The flyby is the first of seven that will draw Parker ever closer to the sun.

 

By the end of October, Parker will shatter the current record for close solar encounters, set by a NASA spacecraft in 1976 from 27 million miles (43 million kilometers) out.

Parker will get within 15 million miles (25 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface in November.

Twenty-four such orbits — dipping into the sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona — are planned over the next seven years. The gap will eventually shrink to 3.8 million miles (6 million kilometers).
…

your ads here!

The United States is working with governments across Latin America to help prevent the spread of diseases like diphtheria and measles from Venezuela as refugees flee the chaotic country, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on Tuesday.

Azar, a former executive at drugmaker Eli Lilly, said it was important to effectively treat infirm Venezuelan migrants before diseases like malaria spread through neighboring countries.

“Disease knows no boundaries. And as we’ve had the complete collapse of the public health infrastructure in Venezuela and then migrants fleeing Venezuela to neighboring countries, they’re bringing their health conditions with them,” Azar told Reuters during a stop in Brazil ahead of a G20 meeting of health ministers in Argentina this week.

“We’re working with our health ministerial counterparts … because we want to ensure that these individuals are vaccinated, that they get the care that they need, because we of course don’t want measles to become endemic in the Western Hemisphere again. We don’t want diphtheria to become widespread.”

Venezuela is now in the fifth year of an economic crisis that has caused its healthcare system to collapse and sparked malnutrition, hyperinflation, and a migration crisis.

Refugees have ignited health emergencies in neighboring countries, including in Brazil. Almost 300 cases of measles were recorded in the Brazilian border state of Roraima between February and early August, spurring the government to launch a nationwide campaign to vaccinate 11 million children.

While in Brazil, Azar visited a popular type of 24-hour health clinic known as a UPA, where patients can receive basic medical treatment.

UPAs have helped reduce the number of hospital visits for patients whose issues can be dealt with locally. Azar said they could serve as a useful model for some U.S. communities.

Brazil, particularly the nation’s northeast, was hard-hit by the 2015-16 outbreak of the Zika virus, in which some infected pregnant women gave birth to children with abnormal smallness of the head, a condition known as microcephaly.

Azar said that collaboration between the United States and Brazil on developing a Zika vaccine continued. He added that the United States and Brazil were to sign an agreement Tuesday under which they would contribute 14 million reais ($3.5 million) each for research next year into a range of diseases including dengue and AIDS.
…

your ads here!

The Trump administration is quietly moving to weaken U.S. radiation regulations, turning to scientific outliers who argue that a bit of radiation damage is actually good for you — like a little bit of sunlight.

The government’s current, decades-old guidance says that any exposure to harmful radiation is a cancer risk. And critics say the proposed change could lead to higher levels of exposure for workers at nuclear installations and oil and gas drilling sites, medical workers doing X-rays and CT scans, people living next to Superfund sites and any members of the public who one day might find themselves exposed to a radiation release.

The Trump administration already has targeted a range of other regulations on toxins and pollutants, including coal power plant emissions and car exhaust, that it sees as costly and burdensome for businesses. Supporters of the EPA’s new proposal argue the government’s current no-tolerance rule for radiation damage forces unnecessary spending for handling exposure in accidents, at nuclear plants, in medical centers and at other sites.

“This would have a positive effect on human health as well as save billions and billions and billions of dollars,” said Edward Calabrese, a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts who is to be the lead witness at a congressional hearing Wednesday on EPA’s proposal.

Calabrese, who made those remarks in a 2016 interview with a California nonprofit, was quoted by EPA in its announcement of the proposed rule in April. He declined repeated requests for an interview with The Associated Press. The EPA declined to make an official with its radiation-protection program available.

The regulation change is now out for public comment, with no specific date for adoption.

Radiation is everywhere, from potassium in bananas to the microwaves popping our popcorn. Most of it is benign. But what’s of concern is the higher-energy, shorter-wave radiation, like X-rays, that can penetrate and disrupt living cells, sometimes causing cancer.

Risk from ‘any exposure’

As recently as this March, the EPA’s online guidelines for radiation effects advised: “Current science suggests there is some cancer risk from any exposure to radiation.”

“Even exposures below 100 millisieverts” — an amount roughly equivalent to 25 chest X-rays or about 14 CT chest scans — “slightly increase the risk of getting cancer in the future,” the agency’s guidance said.

But that online guidance — separate from the rule-change proposal — was edited in July to add a section emphasizing the low individual odds of cancer: “According to radiation safety experts, radiation exposures of … 100 millisieverts usually result in no harmful health effects, because radiation below these levels is a minor contributor to our overall cancer risk,” the revised policy says.

Calabrese and his supporters argue that smaller exposures of cell-damaging radiation and other carcinogens can serve as stressors that activate the body’s repair mechanisms and can make people healthier. They compare it to physical exercise or sunlight.

Mainstream scientific consensus on radiation is based on deceptive science, says Calabrese, who argued in a 2014 essay for “righting the past deceptions and correcting the ongoing errors in environmental regulation.”

EPA spokesman John Konkus said in an email that the proposed rule change is about “increasing transparency on assumptions” about how the body responds to different doses of dangerous substances and that the agency “acknowledges uncertainty regarding health effects at low doses” and supports more research on that.

The radiation regulation is supported by Steven Milloy, a Trump transition team member for the EPA who is known for challenging widely accepted ideas about man-made climate change and the health risks of tobacco. He has been promoting Calabrese’s theory of healthy radiation on his blog.

But Jan Beyea, a physicist whose work includes research with the National Academies of Science on the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, said the EPA proposal on radiation and other health threats represents voices “generally dismissed by the great bulk of scientists.”

The EPA proposal would lead to “increases in chemical and radiation exposures in the workplace, home and outdoor environment, including the vicinity of Superfund sites,” Beyea wrote.

At the level the EPA website talks about, any one person’s risk of cancer from radiation exposure is perhaps 1 percent, Beyea said.

“The individual risk will likely be low, but not the cumulative social risk,” Beyea said.

Accent on protection

“If they even look at that — no, no, no,” said Terrie Barrie, a resident of Craig, Colorado, and an advocate for her husband and other workers at the now-closed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, where the U.S. government is compensating certain cancer victims regardless of their history of exposure.

“There’s no reason not to protect people as much as possible,” said Barrie.

U.S. agencies for decades have followed a policy that there is no threshold of radiation exposure that is risk-free.

The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements reaffirmed that principle this year after a review of 29 public health studies on cancer rates among people exposed to low-dose radiation, via the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan in World War II, leak-prone Soviet nuclear installations, medical treatments and other sources.

Twenty of the 29 studies directly support the principle that even low-dose exposures cause a significant increase in cancer rates, said Roy Shore, chief of research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a joint project of the United States and Japan. Scientists found most of the other studies were inconclusive and decided one was flawed.

None supported the theory there is some safe threshold for radiation, said Shore, who chaired the review.

If there were a threshold that it’s safe to go below, “those who profess that would have to come up with some data,” Shore said in an interview.

“Certainly the evidence did not point that way,” he said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates electronic devices that emit radiation, advises, broadly, that a single CT scan with a dose of 10 millisieverts may increase risks of a fatal cancer by about 1 chance in 2,000.

The EPA tucked its proposed relaxation of radiation guidelines into its “transparency in science” proposal in April.The proposal would require regulators to consider “various threshold models across the exposure range” when it comes to dangerous substances.

While the EPA rule change doesn’t specify that it’s addressing radiation and chemicals, the EPA’s official press release announcing the change does.

Supporters of the proposal say it’s time to rethink radiation regulation.

“Right now we spend an enormous effort trying to minimize low doses” at nuclear power plants, for example, said Brant Ulsh, a physicist with the California-based consulting firm M.H. Chew and Associates. “Instead, let’s spend the resources on minimizing the effect of a really big event.”
…

your ads here!

A trio of American, French and Canadian scientists won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for breakthroughs in laser technology that have turned light beams into precision tools for everything from eye surgery to micro-machining.

They include the first female physics prize winner in 55 years.

Canada’s Donna Strickland, of the University of Waterloo, becomes only the third woman to win a Nobel for physics, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963.

Arthur Ashkin of Bell Laboratories in the United States won half of the 2018 prize for inventing “optical tweezers,” while Strickland shared the remainder with Frenchman Gerard Mourou, who also has U.S. citizenship, for work on high-intensity lasers.

“Obviously we need to celebrate women physicists,” Strickland said shortly after learning of the prize.

The Nobel prizes have long been dominated by male scientists, and none more so than physics.

Strickland is the first woman Nobel laureate in any field in three years. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said last year it would seek to more actively encourage nominations of women researchers to begin addressing the imbalance.

Strickland later spoke of how her predecessor, Goeppert Mayer, had been “allowed to follow her husband from job to job while he … went up the ranks as a professor,” while she was only allowed to teach or do unpaid research.

“Women have come a long way,” she told a news conference in Canada.

Her win comes a day after Europe’s physics research center CERN suspended an Italian scientist, Alessandro Strumia, for telling a seminar at the organization’s Swiss headquarters last week that physics was “invented and built by men” and that women were now being favored in hiring for research positions.

Jessica Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London who was at the CERN event and unhappy about Strumia’s comments, said having a woman Nobel winner was also important given the current fight over U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who is facing sexual misconduct allegations.

“This news could not come at a better time,” Wade told Reuters. “After a week where a woman has been forced to describe her sexual assault to a live television audience of billions, and an academic at a prestigious university has said that women are unfairly promoted into senior positions in physics, even I — the eternal optimist — was starting to lose hope.”

Precision instruments

The inventions by the three scientists awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics date back to the mid-1980s and over the years they have revolutionized laser physics.

“Advanced precision instruments are opening up unexplored areas of research and a multitude of industrial and medical applications,” the academy said on awarding the nine million Swedish crown ($1 million) prize.

Ashkin’s work was based on the realization that the pressure of a beam of light could push microscopic objects and trap them in position. A breakthrough came in 1987, when he used the new optical tweezers to grab living bacteria without harming them.

At 96, Ashkin is the oldest ever Nobel prize winner, but he is still busy with fresh research.

“I am busy working right now, writing an important paper on solar energy,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“I’m surprised,” Ashkin said about winning the prize. “A guy called me up on the phone and woke me up.”

Mourou and Strickland’s research centered on developing the most intense laser pulses ever created by humans, paving the way for the precision instruments used today in corrective eye surgery and industrial applications.

The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace have been awarded since 1901 in accordance with the will of Swedish business tycoon Alfred Nobel, whose discovery of dynamite generated a vast fortune used to fund the prize.

Physics is the second of this year’s crop of prizes and comes after the medicine prize was awarded on Monday for discoveries about how to harness and manipulate the immune system to fight cancer.

However, for the first time in decades no Nobel Prize for literature will be given this year after a scandal over sexual misconduct allegations saw a string of members leave the board of the Swedish Academy that awards it.
…

your ads here!

Technologies to reflect some of the sun’s rays away from Earth, as a way to cool future runaway climate change, are moving closer to becoming a reality, and rules are needed now to govern them, scientists and other experts said Monday.

“There is no risk-free path at this point” in dealing with climate change, said David Morrow, research director for the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at the Washington-based American University.

Around the globe, research is pushing forward on potential cooling techniques such as spraying particles into the upper atmosphere to mimic volcanic eruptions or artificially brightening sea clouds, experts said in a report.

Such sun-dimming technology is designed to reduce the risks associated with accelerating warming in coming decades, from fiercer storms to harsher heat waves.

But the report by a group of international climate and governance experts warned the technology could create new risks — “including climatic, environmental, social, geopolitical and ethical risks.”

For example, it might dissuade countries from curbing their climate-changing emissions, in the hope a technological fix is on the way.

Or a single nation might deploy the technologies in its own interests, without international rules in place, in an effort to quell a political outcry at home or shift scarce rainfall to drought-hit farmers, the experts said.

“Desperate people do desperate things,” warned Andy Parker, who runs a governance initiative on solar engineering technologies backed by Britain’s Royal Society, the World Academy of Sciences and the Environmental Defense Fund.

The report aims to guide research and policy on “solar radiation management” (SRM) through 2025 with a set of principles.

It recommends that efforts to curb climate change and adapt to its impacts must remain the top priority, ahead of technological fixes.

The report also calls for the risks and benefits of SRM to be “thoroughly and transparently” evaluated, and for research to focus on the social needs of the world’s poor.

It says “robust” governance, including a mechanism to resolve conflicts, must be in place before any deployment of the technologies is considered.

“The starting point was that research is happening and we need to talk about it,” said Aarti Gupta, an expert on governance of technological risk at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and one of the report authors.

The 14-member panel that developed the principles included academic experts in fields such as policy and governance, social sciences, international relations and conflict resolution.

The group “fundamentally disagreed” on whether research on the technologies should even be allowed to go ahead but accepted the need to discuss them publicly, said Simon Nicholson, co-head of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment.

Warming ‘overshoot?’

The paper comes ahead of the release of a report on Oct. 8 by the world’s leading climate scientists, who will say the world is not on track to meet its emissions-cutting goals.

If global warming continues at the same pace, it will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius — the most ambitious goal set in the Paris Agreement — by 2040, the report is expected to say, threatening everything from world food supplies to economic growth.

Growing fears of an “overshoot” of climate targets are one reason research is expanding on efforts to dim the sun and suck carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere.

Such research, once confined to laboratories, “is beginning to move outdoors,” the report noted.

“Whether or not this [technology] is part of our toolbox … the debate has to be had” on whether it should play a role, said Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative.

The report recommends that a code of conduct should be created governing research on the technologies, and that researchers make public the sources of their funding.

Intellectual property around the technologies would not have to be in the public domain, “but it should be in the public interest,” said Prakash Kashwan, a University of Connecticut political science professor and report author.

‘Foresight’ key

Governing bodies charged with making decisions about the technologies should put in place “foresight” capabilities to predict how and where they might be researched or used rather than reacting after the fact, he said.

Poorer countries on the frontline of climate impacts — from worsening water shortages to crop failures — must have a significant say in how the technologies are researched and potentially used, the authors added.

Both pushing ahead with research on sun-dimming technologies or rejecting them present significant risks, the report warned, ranging from investors in the technology having a financial incentive to see it used, to banned research moving underground.

SRM technology “is likely very far off” in terms of use, the report noted, but “the need for governance is imperative.”
…

your ads here!