The Green Digest: The rise of renewable energy in Africa and European adopted of biofertilizers

AFRICA: Africa is set to realize consecutive growth rates of renewable energy in the next five years. Africa currently has a renewable energy capacity of 12.6 GW and it is projected to increase to 51.2 GW by 2025. South Africa is currently the leading country with combined wind and solar installed energy capacity of 5.9 GW while Egypt and Morocco are second and third with solar capacity of 1.6 GW and 0.8 GW respectively. According to Rystad Energy, nearly 40 out of 50 countries have installed, or plan to install solar and wind renewable energy. Egypt has been the quickest country since 2017 to install wind and solar energy, followed by Morocco. In the coming years, Ethiopia will also take a big leap in renewable energy installation. Summarily, due to rising demand in electricity, Africa will adopt renewable energy with solar becoming the most preferred in the next five years.

EUROPE: In Europe where majority of farming operations are done by chemical fertilizers, bio-based fertilizers are debated to be a potential move towards a circular economy. The principle of a circular economy has been founded on the recycle and reuse of raw materials and products. Therefore, the recovery of requisite nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from waste streams will substitute conventional fertilizers and serves as a revenue stream for upcycling and clean-tech companies.

FOOD: The world must rise to the challenge of feeding two billion people by 2050 in keeping with its vision for zero hunger and tackling malnutrition. According to reports by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World is off track in achieving targets for zero hunger and malnutrition by 2030, and people suffering from hunger have been on the steady rise since 2014. For us to confront these challenges, agriculture would have to be “productive and greener” taking into consideration issues ranging from gender parity to skills acquisition and development.

UNITED STATES: John Kerry has been named special presidential envoy for climate by President-elect Joe Biden on Monday. According to a transition team statement, Kerry “will fight climate change full time” and sit in the council of National Security, thereby confirming Biden’s commitment to tackling climate change as an issue of national security.  Kerry is the co-founder of World War Zero, a bipartisan coalition of global leaders and celebrities, dedicated to halting carbon emission by 2050. His primary role will be to lead Biden’s $ 2trillion climate investment package and work to rejoin the US with the Paris Climate Agreement

Supersized wind turbines generate clean energy--and surprising physics

American Physical Society

Twenty years ago, wind energy was mostly a niche industry that contributed less than 1% to the total electricity demand in the United States. Wind has since emerged as a serious contender in the race to develop clean, renewable energy sources that can sustain the grid and meet the ever-rising global energy demand. Last year, wind energy supplied 7% of domestic electricity demand, and across the country -- both on and offshore -- energy companies have been installing giant turbines that reach higher and wider than ever before.

"Wind energy is going to be a really important component of power production," said engineer Jonathan Naughton at the University of Wyoming, in Laramie. He acknowledged that skeptics doubt the viability of renewable energy sources like wind and solar because they're weather dependent and variable in nature, and therefore hard to control and predict. "That's true," he said, "but there are ways to overcome that."

Naughton and Charles Meneveau at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, organized a mini-symposium at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics, where researchers described the promise and fluid dynamics challenges of wind energy.

In order for wind energy to be useful -- and accepted -- researchers need to design systems that are both efficient and inexpensive, Naughton said. That means gaining a better understanding of the physical phenomena that govern wind turbines, at all scales. Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) brought together 70 experts from around the world to discuss the state of the science. In 2019, the group published grand scientific challenges that need to be addressed for wind energy to contribute up to half of the demand for power.

One of those challenges was to better understand the physics of the part of the atmosphere where the turbines operate. "Wind is really an atmospheric fluid mechanics problem," said Naughton. "But how the wind behaves at the levels where the turbines operate is still an area where we need more information."

Today's turbines have blades that can stretch 50 to 70 meters, said Paul Veers, Chief Engineer at NREL's National Wind Technology Center, who provided an overview of the challenges during the symposium. These towers tower 100 meters or more over their environs. "Offshore, they're getting even bigger," said Veers.

The advantage to building bigger turbines is that a wind power plant would need fewer machines to build and maintain and to access the powerful winds high above the ground. But giant power plants function at a scale that hasn't been well-studied, said Veers.

"We have a really good ability to understand and work with the atmosphere at really large scales," said Veers. "And scientists like Jonathan and Charles have done amazing jobs with fluid dynamics to understand small scales. But between these two, there's an area that has not been studied all that much."

Another challenge will be to study the structural and system dynamics of these giant rotating machines. The winds interact with the blades, which bend and twist. The spinning blades give rise to high Reynolds numbers, "and those are areas where we don't have a lot of information," said Naughton.

Powerful computational approaches can help reveal the physics, said Veers. "We're really pushing the computational methods as far as possible," he said. "It's taking us to the fastest and biggest computers that exist right now."

A third challenge, Naughton noted, is to study the behavior of groups of turbines. Every turbine produces a wake in the atmosphere, and as that wake propagates downstream it interacts with the wakes from other turbines. Wakes may combine; they may also interfere with other turbines. Or anything else in the area. "If there's farmland downwind, we don't know how the change in the atmospheric flow will affect it," said Naughton.

He called wind energy the "ultimate scale problem." Because it connects small-scale problems like the interactions of turbines with the air to giant-scale problems like atmospheric modeling, wind energy will require expertise and input from a variety of fields to address the challenges. "Wind is among the cheapest forms of energy," said Naughton. "But as the technology matures, the questions get harder."

Researchers overcome barriers for bio-inspired solar energy harvesting materials

City College of New York

Inspired by nature, researchers at The City College of New York (CCNY) can demonstrate a synthetic strategy to stabilize bio-inspired solar energy harvesting materials. Their findings, published in the latest issue of Nature Chemistry, could be a significant breakthrough in functionalizing molecular assemblies for future solar energy conversion technologies.

Inspired by nature, researchers at The City College of New York (CCNY) can demonstrate a synthetic strategy to stabilize bio-inspired solar energy harvesting materials. Their findings, published in the latest issue of Nature Chemistry, could be a significant breakthrough in functionalizing molecular assemblies for future solar energy conversion technologies.

In almost every corner of the world, despite extreme heat or cold temperature conditions, you will find photosynthetic organisms striving to capture solar energy. Uncovering nature's secrets on how to harvest light so efficiently and robustly could transform the landscape of sustainable solar energy technologies, especially in the wake of rising global temperatures.

In photosynthesis, the first step (that is, light-harvesting) involves the interaction between light and the light-harvesting antenna, which is composed of fragile materials known as supra-molecular assemblies. From leafy green plants to tiny bacteria, nature designed a two-component system: the supra-molecular assemblies are embedded within protein or lipid scaffolds. It is not yet clear what role this scaffold plays, but recent research suggests that nature may have evolved these sophisticated protein environments to stabilize their fragile supra-molecular assemblies.

"Although we can't replicate the complexity of the protein scaffolds found in photosynthetic organisms, we were able to adapt the basic concept of a protective scaffold to stabilize our artificial light-harvesting antenna," said Dr. Kara Ng. Her co-authors include Dorthe M. Eisele and Ilona Kretzschmar, both professors at CCNY, and Seogjoo Jang, professor at Queens College.

Thus far, translating nature's design principles to large-scale photovoltaic applications has been unsuccessful.

"The failure may lie in the design paradigm of current solar cell architectures," said Eisele. However, she and her research team, "do not aim to improve the solar cell designs that already exist. But we want to learn from nature's masterpieces to inspire entirely new solar energy harvesting architectures," she added.

Inspired by nature, the researchers demonstrate how small, cross-linking molecules can overcome barriers towards functionalization of supra-molecular assemblies. They found that silane molecules can self-assemble to form an interlocking, stabilizing scaffold around an artificial supra-molecular light-harvesting antenna.

"We have shown that these intrinsically unstable materials, can now survive in a device, even through multiple cycles of heating and cooling," said Ng. Their work provides proof-of-concept that a cage-like scaffold design stabilizes supra-molecular assemblies against environmental stressors, such as extreme temperature fluctuations, without disrupting their favorable light-harvesting properties.

The Green Digest: Achieving the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement in the Post-COVID world

AFRICA: Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray have escalated the ongoing conflict, extending it to the refugee crises in the region. The conflict exerts more pressure on the region that has had over a decade of refugee crises, causing tens of thousands of people to flee for safety.

ASIA: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking at the G20 Riyadh summit spoke of the need for a reformed multilateralism in a post-COVID world. During the second day of the summit which focused on building an inclusive, sustainable and resilient future, Modi stressed on the importance of Agenda 2030 and “leaving no one behind.” He made mention of the development strategy: Reform-Perform-Transform which India has adopted in order to become self-reliant and a major contributor to global economy and supply chains. Modi, during a side event at the summit, underscored the need for climate change to be fought in an “integrated, comprehensive and holistic way.” At the close of the summit, the issuance of a G20 leaders’ declaration called for “coordinated global action, solidarity, and multilateral cooperation to combat 21st century global challenges.

ENERGY: Scientists have proffered the establishment of space-based solar system as the solution to global energy crisis. According to their argument, since climate change is a prominent global disaster and energy is inevitable, we cannot continue to rely on fossil fuels for our energy supply. They supported the space-based solar system by highlighting the limitation of wind and solar energy systems on earth. Although much work still needs to be done, advances made by China is encouraging, as China plans to set up a space-based solar system by 2050 that will distribute 2 GW of power into earth’s grid at peak time. The scientific world hopes that this innovation will be pivotal in our fight against climate change.

SDGs: The sustainable development goals are helping to fight global poverty by solving the root causes of world crisis. Despite the progress being made, SDGs report of 2019 has stated emphatically that the goal of zero poverty by 2030 is unachievable. However, only 6% of the world will be in poverty by that time. One of the primary challenges is as a result of climate change which is accelerated through greenhouse gas emission. Also, gender inequality has left women vulnerable to the perils of poverty, extending developmental challenges and slowing down the actualization of “leaving no one behind.”

USA: Trump has bashed the Paris Climate Agreement at the G20 summit on Sunday, stating to global leaders that it was “draconian” and detrimental to the US economy. His statement read that his withdrawal was to protect the American workers from an Agreement which was one-sided and unfair. President Trump withdrew from the Agreement few months after his election into the white house in June 2017. However, President-elect Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the pact when he resumes the Oval office in January 2021.

Source:nrdc.org

Does air pollution increase women's risk of dementia?

American Academy of Neurology

Older women who live in locations with higher levels of air pollution may have more brain shrinkage, the kind seen in Alzheimer's disease, than women who live in locations with lower levels, according to a new study published in the November 18, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at fine particle pollution and found that breathing in high levels of this kind of air pollution was linked to shrinkage in the areas of the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease.

Fine particle pollution consists of microscopic particles of chemicals, smoke, dust and other pollutants suspended in the air. They are no larger than 2.5 micrometers, 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

"Smaller brain volume is a known risk factor for dementia and Alzheimer's disease, but whether air pollution alters brain structure is still being researched," said study author Diana Younan, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "Our study found that women in their 70s and 80s who were exposed to the higher levels of air pollution had an increased risk of brain changes linked to Alzheimer's disease over five years. Our research suggests these toxins may disrupt brain structure or connections in the brain's nerve cell network, contributing to the progression toward the disease."

The study involved 712 women with an average age of 78 who did not have dementia at the start of the study. Participants provided health histories as well as information on race/ethnicity, education, employment, alcohol use, smoking and physical activity. All women received MRI brain scans at the start of the study and five years later.

Researchers used the residential addresses of each participant to determine their average exposures to air pollution in the three years before the first MRI scan. They then divided participants into four equal groups. The lowest group was exposed to an average of 7 to 10 micrograms of fine particle pollution per cubic meter of air (μg/m3). The highest group was exposed to an average of 13 to 19 μg/m3. The U.S. Environmental Pollution Agency (EPA) considers average yearly exposures up to 12 μg/m3 to be safe.

Researchers used a machine learning tool to measure signs of Alzheimer's disease in the brain, a tool that had been trained to identify patterns of brain shrinkage specific to an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease by reading the brain scans of people with the disease.

Participants' MRI brain scans at the start of the study and five years later were assigned scores based on how similar they were to Alzheimer's disease patterns identified by the machine learning tool, specifically brain changes in regions found to be vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease. Scores ranged from zero to one, with higher scores showing more brain changes. Overall, the women's scores changed from 0.28 at the start of the study to 0.44 five years later.

For each 3 μg/m3 increase in air pollution exposure levels, researchers found a broader range of scores between the two scans and an average increase of 0.03, showing a greater extent of brain shrinkage over five years, which was equivalent to a 24% increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. The increases remained the same even after adjusting for age, education, employment, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, physical activity and other factors that could affect brain shrinkage.

"Our findings have important public health implications, because not only did we find brain shrinkage in women exposed to higher levels of air pollution, we also found it in women exposed to air pollution levels lower than those the EPA considers safe," said Younan. "While more research is needed, federal efforts to tighten air pollution exposure standards in the future may help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease in our older populations."

Limitations of the study include that it only looked at the brains of older women, so results may not be the same for men or younger women. It also examined only regional fine particle pollution, not other sources of pollution such as traffic emissions. Researchers were also not able to estimate participants' exposure to fine particle pollution in middle-age and young adulthood due to nationwide data not being available for those years.

The Green Digest: Impact of food production on climate change

AFRICA: In October, firefighters in Tanzania had to tackle a number of fires on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest mountain and the largest free-standing mountain in the world. The mountain and surrounding forests fall into Kilimanjaro National Park, named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. According to studies done by Andreas Hemp and his colleagues, fires always played a role in shaping the vegetative belts of the mountain.

ENERGY: Renewable energy has increased its market share by displacing fossil fuels in power generation. Global leaders are gradually transitioning to the clean energy act as the brunt of the pandemic gradually lessens. According to Reuters, renewables accounted for 44 percent of power generation in the European Union in the second quarter, compared against 37.2 percent in the same period a year earlier

EUROPE: Europe has become a pacesetter towards achieving the sustainable development goals. Although specific gaps, such as gender equality (SDG 5), have widened, the region has nonetheless made progress in Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions (SDG 16).

FOOD: Crop and grazing land for food production cover about one third of the global land area; our food system is responsible for up to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. The study from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) projects that -- if current trends continue -- global food demand will increase by about 50% between 2010 and 2050, the demand for animal products like meat and milk will approximately double, a development that requires more and more land. According to their findings, by 2050, more than 4 billion people could be overweight, 1.5 billion of them obese, while 500 million people continue to be underweight.

SDGs: In the wake of the Great Reset Initiative, reconsideration about improving geospatial skills to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs has been adopted. Prior to this development, there has been little understanding of the imperative of geography as a crucial factor in underpinning the SDGs. Thankfully, Walker Kosmidou-Bradley, a geographer on the Afghanistan team in the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Global Practice, has made it his mission to map every road across the country to ramp up sustainable development initiatives.

Megaprojects risk pushing forests past tipping point – report

Damian Carrington

Timber operations in Mindourou, Cameroon, run by Pallisco, a sustainable logging company. Photograph: Brent Stirton/Getty Images

Infrastructure megaprojects risk pushing the world’s remaining forests past a “dangerous tipping point” and making climate targets unachievable, a report says.

Tens of thousands of miles of roads and railways are planned alongside mines and dams, opening up the forests of South America, south-east Asia and central Africa to destruction, according to the report by a coalition of 25 research and conservation organisations called the New York Declaration on Forests Assessment Partners. Today, almost half of all large mines – more than 1,500 – are in forests.

In 2014, 50 countries and 50 of the world’s biggest companies backed the declaration, pledging to cut deforestation by 50% by 2020 and end the destruction of forests by 2030.

But the 2020 goal has been missed and deforestation is rising.

The report found that many countries and businesses had introduced regulations and plans but implementation remained poor. Only 10% of 225 companies that mine in forests responded to the report’s authors’ request for information about their biodiversity commitments.

“Forests are at a dangerous tipping point and these large-scale projects could push us over the edge,” said Erin Matson, a senior consultant at Climate Focus and co-author of the report. “There’s a very small – and closing – window of opportunity now to rethink these projects. Governments, companies and investors need to step up and act quickly to avoid further harm to people, wildlife, and nature.”

The new forest wars: 'This is something we didn't expect' – video

Franziska Haupt, the lead author of the report and also at Climate Focus, said: “Forests are absolutely essential. If we don’t stop deforestation, we won’t meet our climate targets. Infrastructure and mining are probably the biggest threat to forests, maybe even more important than farming, because they really open up forests for these other drivers and create access for global markets to these remote areas.”Robert Nasi, the head of the Center for International Forestry Research (Cifor), one of the NYDF assessment partners, said: “We are living in a dream world of pledges but a reality of little progress, lack of transparency, vested interests and short termism. Alas, reality will always catch us up.”

Aidan Davy, at the International Council on Mining and Metals, which has 27 mining company members, said: “We need mining companies across the industry to commit to higher standards of performance on biodiversity, and other environmental, social and governance areas which is the purpose of ICMM’s mining principles.”

The ICCM also called on governments to ban mines in forest areas of greatest conservation value and enforce stronger protective measures.

The report by the NYDF assessment partners, including the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Chatham House, and the World Wildlife Fund, found that megaprojects involving transport corridors were planned or under development in most of the critical tropical forest regions. “Even just planned projects already create an incentive for land speculators,” Haupt said.

The governments of five Amazon countries are investing $27bn (£20bn) over the next five years to build or upgrade more than 7,500 miles (12,000km) of roads, the report says, which would lead to deforestation of about 2.4m hectares.

In Indonesia, the 2,500-mile Trans-Papua highway will cut through Lorentz National Park, increasing access to more than 50,000 hectares of mining concessions inside the park, while a railway planned for Kalimantan would open areas for coalmining and palm oil production. In Papua New Guinea, two plans would double the length of the country’s road network by late 2022, the report says.

A burnt area of the Amazon rainforest in Rondônia state, Brazil. Vast tracts of rainforest on three continents went up in smoke in 2018, with an area roughly the size of Switzerland cut down or burned to make way for cattle and commercial crops, reports based on satellite data show. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images

An infrastructure boom in sub-Saharan Africa involves dozens of international development corridors to export minerals and energy, the report says. The corridors would cut across 400 protected areas and degrade an additional 1,800.

“People need improved access, but these are not highways designed to prioritise linking communities to health care or economic opportunities,” said Anthony Bebbington, a mining and expert and report author. “Their purpose is to make it easier and cheaper to extract natural capital in ways that benefit economic elites above all.”

The report said some governments had improved regulations, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo reforming land planning and Indonesia setting ambitious goals, though the latter have since been weakened.

Brazil’s government has opened indigenous territories to mining and the Trump administration in the US has ended the requirement of federal agencies to consider the indirect environmental impacts of new infrastructure.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an NYDF assessment partner, invited 225 mining companies to report on their biodiversity efforts. Of the 23 that replied, and a further 22 that were analysed, few shared specific targets for action, said Morgan Gillespy, the global director of forests at CDP.

The report sets out steps to deliver forest protection. “We can do things differently,” Haupt said. “What we’re talking about is not pie in the sky.”

One step is ensuring the benefits of forests are included when assessing megaprojects. Matson said: “If the true value of forests was factored in – reducing climate change, protecting animal habitats and reducing the spread of zoonotic diseases [like the coronavirus], keeping water sources clean and a long list of other benefits without a price tag – then many of these projects would never get the green light,.”

Another step is considering alternative ways to develop poorer areas. Anne Larson, a team leader at Cifor, said: “There is still a fundamental disconnect between what governments and companies think development has to look like and the kind of actions needed for healthy livelihoods and a healthy planet.

“Securing rights and supporting sustainable livelihoods of indigenous people and other local communities would go a long way toward reducing deforestation.”

Reducing aerosol pollution without cutting carbon dioxide could make the planet hotter

University of California - Riverside

Solving one environmental problem could create another.

Aerosol pollution refers to particles in the air emitted by vehicles and factories that burn fossil fuels. This pollution contributes to asthma, bronchitis, and long-term irritation of the respiratory tract, which can lead to cancer.

"The conundrum," explained UC Riverside climate scientist and study co-author Robert Allen, "is that aerosols cause poor air quality and lead to premature deaths. However, these particles have a net cooling impact on the climate, so when you cut them that leads to a net warming effect."

Much research has examined aerosol impacts on air quality and land surface temperatures. Less explored is the way aerosols might impact the oceans, which is the focus of a UC Riverside study now published in the journal Science Advances.

The research team created detailed computer models to determine the impact on oceans under two different scenarios -- one in which there is only a reduction in aerosols, and another scenario in which greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are also reduced.

"The first scenario leads to the surprising result that fewer aerosols in the atmosphere could shift the region where most of the ocean is taking up heat, from the Southern Ocean toward the North Atlantic," Allen said.

In particular, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC, would be disturbed as aerosols are removed from the atmosphere, the study found. The AMOC pulls warm water further north and pushes colder water south, ensuring the climate on land areas at higher latitudes, such as Europe, are relatively mild.

Roughly half the carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere -- mostly through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation -- stays there, and the remaining half is taken up by land and vegetation, as well as the ocean.

One of the ways the ocean takes up our carbon dioxide emissions is through AMOC circulation.

"A projected decline in humanmade aerosols potentially induces a weakening of the AMOC, which plays an important role in ocean heat uptake and storage in the North Atlantic," said Wei Liu, an assistant professor of climate change and sustainability at UCR.

In addition, the researchers said a rise in sea level would occur if the North Atlantic Ocean were to get warmer.

This current study focused on ocean heat uptake and circulation via the AMOC. However, Allen explained the study did not attempt to rigorously identify the mechanisms by which aerosol reductions weaken the AMOC. Those mechanisms will be the focus of future studies.

Ultimately, the researchers conclude that even without a more in-depth explanation of the weakening mechanisms, it is necessary to reduce greenhouse gases and aerosols in tandem.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends making every attempt to prevent the planet from reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in order to mitigate the worst effects of global warming.

Humans have already increased carbon dioxide levels by almost 50% since the 1850s, and it continues to increase worldwide. Stabilizing carbon dioxide at current levels would require zero net emissions before the year 2070, which is ambitious, but critical.

"Assuming complete removal, aerosols at most will cause warming of about 1 K," said Allen. "However, aerosol-induced warming, as well as the associated ocean circulation changes, can be moderated by rigorous cuts in greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide."

Bill Gates says more than 50% of business travel will disappear in post-coronavirus world

Noah Higgins-Dunn

The coronavirus will fundamentally alter the way people travel for and conduct business, even after the pandemic is over, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said Tuesday.

“My prediction would be that over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away,” Gates told Andrew Ross Sorkin during the New York Times’ Dealbook conference.

Moving forward, Gates predicted that there will be a “very high threshold” for conducting business trips now that working from home is more feasible. However, some companies may be more extreme with their efforts to reduce in-person meetings than others, he said.

Source: CNN

Gates, whose foundation has been working to deliver a coronavirus vaccine to people most in need, said during a new podcast, “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions,” that he’s had a “simpler schedule” due to the pandemic now that he doesn’t travel for business.

The philanthropist and tech executive, who appeared alongside Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the livestreamed conference on Tuesday, said he’s already held five virtual roundtables this year with pharma executives — a meeting that’s usually held in person in New York.

“We will go to the office somewhat, we’ll do some business travel, but dramatically less,” Gates said.

The pandemic has devastated air travel demand, particularly for lucrative business trips. Business travelers before the virus accounted for half of U.S. airlines’ revenue, but just 30% of the trips, according to Airlines for America, an industry group that represents most U.S. carriers.

However, Microsoft executives have predicted that business trips will make a rebound, even as the company moves to make air travel more sustainable.

“We believe that as we return to the skies, the travel routes we’ve had ... will resume at the level they had been before,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s worldwide commercial business, said in October.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

An epidemic outbreak of Mesoamerican Nephropathy in Nicaragua linked to nickel toxicity

For more than 20 years, an epidemic of chronic kidney disease (CKD) of unknown origin has severely affected specific coastal communities along South America's Pacific coastline from Mexico to Panama leading to more than 50,000 deaths. The condition, known as Mesoamerican Nephropathy (MeN), has a perplexing clinical presentation. Unlike traditional forms of CKD, it affects healthy young working-age individuals who do not have other traditional risk factors for kidney disease, such as diabetes or hypertension. The underlying cause of this devastating public health crisis has remained a mystery.

Causality candidate for Mesoamerican Nephropathy
Source: sciencedirect.com

A "CSI-style" scientific investigation led by Dr. Kristy Murray, professor of pediatrics, immunology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, revealed evidence for nickel toxicity as the underlying cause of this disease in a Nicaraguan "hotspot," which is among the worst-hit areas in the continent. The study provides new, compelling evidence that low-dose exposure to nickel can cause systemic inflammation, anemia and kidney injury -- hallmarks of acute MeN that progresses to chronic kidney disease in around 90% of the patients. The study appeared in PLoS ONE this week.

"A few years back, based on my reputation of investigating many new outbreaks and my laboratory's expertise in studying tropical medicine and infectious diseases among vulnerable populations, we were called to investigate the possible causes of this horrific epidemic that plagued vulnerable agricultural areas in the Pacific lowlands for decades," Murray, who is also the assistant Dean at the National School of Tropical Medicine Baylor College of Medicine and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics at Texas Children's, said. She initially received her outbreak experience twenty years ago at the CDC as part of the elite group of disease detectives known as the Epidemic Intelligence Service.

Although agricultural toxins were proposed as a possible factor, based on the prevalence of this disease only in specific coastal populations, the team ruled it out. Genetic mutations, as the sole cause, were also excluded because of the relatively recent emergence of this disease (in decades versus centuries, which is typical of inherited genetic disorders) and a sharp increase in cases in the region.

"Although it was thought to be a chronic condition, after we reviewed hundreds of clinical records and conducted surveillance for new cases, we were struck by the acute 'flu-like' presentation in the initial stages of this disease. At the onset, the disease looked remarkably like a classic hyper-inflammatory response to an infection. So, we screened for several pathogens but could not pin it down to any particular infectious agent," Murray said. "We then turned our attention to clinical and pathological tests that led us to the most important clues to crack this case. Majority of the affected individuals had recently developed anemia and their kidney biopsies showed extreme inflammation in the tubules and cortico-medullary junctions of the kidney, indicative of heavy metal or trace element toxicity. The pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together."

Dr. Rebecca Fischer, who was Dr. Murray's postdoctoral fellow at the time and now assistant professor of Epidemiology at Texas A&M University, worked to pull together these complex analyses, and nephrologists, Drs. Sreedhar Mandayam and Chandan Vangala at Baylor College, helped to guide the team in their clinical interpretation of acute cases.

The team then collaborated with Drs. Jason Unrine and Wayne Sanderson at the University of Kentucky who specialize in trace element toxicity. Since the easiest way to test the levels of heavy metals is through toenails, they collected toenail clippings of individuals about three months after they experienced an acute kidney injury event and analyzed them for 15 trace elements, including heavy metals. Most importantly, they compared these analyzes to controls they recruited from the same population who had no evidence of kidney disease. They found affected cases to have significantly increased levels of nickel. They also identified higher levels of aluminum and vanadium in affected cases than control subjects, but nickel was by far the strongest correlate, and biologically, it made sense with the clinical presentation.

Nickel is an abundant, naturally occurring heavy metal and like iron, it is essential for the human body, but is needed only in very trace quantities. Excess recurrent exposure to nickel, by incidental ingestion through contaminated water, food or soil, can cause several toxic and carcinogenic effects. Since people who work a lot with soil such as agricultural field laborers, miners and brick-makers were found to have the highest risk of acquiring this disease, the researchers theorize their source of the nickel exposure was likely geologic in nature and possibly linked to a volcanic chain in the area that became active in the late 90s, after which incidence of this chronic kidney disease began to skyrocket in lowland areas downstream from the volcanoes in this chain.

"While we still need to validate these findings in other areas impacted by MeN, such as El Salvador or Guatemala, and to confirm the geologic source of nickel contamination, we are very excited to have found a strong lead in this challenging public health problem. Based on this study, several public health strategies were implemented, such as finding ways to protect drinking water sources from soil and runoff water contamination and educating community members about the need to frequently wash their hands after working with soil. It is gratifying to see our efforts are starting to pay off. After these measures were put in place, we noticed a dramatic reduction in the number of new cases, an indication that we are moving in the right direction. This is the first-ever downward trend in this outbreak since its emergence two decades ago. Considering the sobering death toll in the affected communities, I am relieved we can finally do something about it," Murray shared.

Scientists link record-breaking hurricane season to climate crisis

Jeff Ernst

Evidence is not so much in the number of tropical storms the Atlantic has seen, but in their strength, intensity and rainfall

A man wades through rubbish and flood waters caused by Hurricane Eta in Honduras. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

Paddling in a canoe through the flood waters left by Hurricane Eta in his rural village near the north coast of Honduras, Adán Herrera took stock of the damage.

“Compared with Hurricane Mitch, this caused more damage because the water rose so fast,” said Herrera, 33, a subsistence farmer who is living on top of a nearby levee with his wife and child while they wait for the water to recede. “We’re afraid we might not have anything to eat.”

Hurricane Mitch in 1998 was the most destructive storm to hit Central America. But hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers across the region have lost everything in flooding caused by Eta, which made landfall in Nicaragua as a category 4 hurricane on 3 November. Now, with a second hurricane projected to make landfall on Monday near where Eta did, even more could find themselves in the same situation.

Climate scientists say that this year’s record-breaking hurricane season and the “unprecedented” double blow for Central America has a clear link to the climate crisis.

“In a 36-hour period [Eta] went from a depression to a very strong category 4,” said Bob Bunting, CEO of the non-profit Climate Adaptation Center. “That is just not normal. Probably it was the fastest spin up from a depression to a major hurricane in history.”

The evidence of the influence of the climate crisis is not so much in the record-breaking 30 tropical storms in the Atlantic so far this year, but the strength, rapid intensification and total rainfall of these weather systems.

“The warmer ocean waters that climate change brings are expected to make the stronger storms stronger and make them rapidly intensify more frequently and at a greater rate,” said Dr Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and contributor to Yale Climate Connections. “These things have already been observed, particularly in the Atlantic, and it’s going to be increasingly so in coming decades.”

Central America has been one of the regions most affected by the climate crisis to date, first with Hurricane Mitch, and in recent years with more extreme weather patterns, particularly in what’s known as the dry corridor, which extends from northern Costa Rica all the way to southern Mexico.

“Heat is energy,” said Masters. “Depending on the prevailing weather conditions you’re going to intensify those conditions.”

In the dry corridor, that has meant more frequent, prolonged and intense droughts as well as heavier rainfall when it does come, often causing flash flooding that washes away crops.

Subsistence farmers in the region have struggled to adapt to the new reality, and many in the region have simply given up and left. The climate crisis – and the hunger it brings – is increasingly being recognized as a major driver of emigration from the region.

“I don’t see a lot of options for Central America to deal with the global warming issue,” said Masters. “There are going to be a lot migrants and in fact, a lot of the migration that’s already happening in recent years is due to the drought that started affecting Central America back in 2015.”

Hondurans migrated to the US in significant numbers for the first time following Hurricane Mitch. In the year before the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 250,000 Hondurans were apprehended at the US south-west border, more than double any previous year and surpassed only by its neighbor to the north, Guatemala.

According to the Red Cross, at least 2.5 million people were affected by Hurricane Eta, including 1.7 million in Honduras. Many who have lost everything are already considering or making plans to migrate to the US and groups are beginning to organize caravans via social media.

Unable to fulfill the needs of their citizens before the pandemic, the economic downturn has stretched the finances of Central American governments to the brink. And unlike following previous natural disasters, the international community is dealing with pandemic-related problems of its own and is unlikely to step in to fill the gap.

Hurricane Iota could lead to even more widespread devastation across the region. Many areas still have high water levels from Eta, levees have been damaged or destroyed, dams are at or near capacity, and the saturated land could lead to more landslides like in Guatemala, where dozens are feared dead after part of a mountainside community was buried in mud.

The Atlantic hurricane season is expected to last until December this year, meaning that Iota might not be the last.

“When a season like 2020 keeps on cranking these things out, it’s going to keep on doing that,” said Masters.

The Green Digest: Ghana mourns Jerry John Rawlings; and other Global updates

AFRICA: As Ghana mourns the loss of Jerry John Rawlings, report has it that his political influence in Ghana is second to that of Kwame Nkrumah. He has been a major figure in Ghana’s political and economic transition from the colonial era. Unlike the contemporary dubious elections depicted in Burkina Faso and Kenya, Rawlings electoral success in 1992 and 1996 was an indication that Ghana was consolidating as a liberal democracy. These periods significantly illustrated Ghana’s movement from military to democratic rule. Ghanaian politics in the 1990s was greatly affected by the presence of a strong and effective opposition facilitated during Rawlings’ regime. Rawlings revolutionary rule from chaotic to authoritarian, and then to democratic left people wondering if he was hero or villain. Some people liked him. Others do not.

BIODIVERSITY: A recent report published by the Union for Ethical BioTrade (UEBT), 2020 UEBT Biodiversity Barometer reveals that a vast majority of consumers feel that companies are morally obligated to protect biodiversity. An increasing awareness of biodiversity by Generation Z and Millennials make them investigate if companies “walk the walk” through ethical sourcing. Consumers feel more confident to buy from companies that have been independently certified as eco-friendly, thereby increasing consumer trust and patronage. When asked about the informational details of product packaging that was a priority to them, respondents gave the order: the list of product ingredients; origins of ingredients; and the impact on biodiversity.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: With a shortfall of USD 700 billion in external financing to developing countries, achieving sustainable development hangs in the balance. However, a joint partnership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is aimed at helping private and public sectors align their investments to the SDGs. The OECD-UNDP Framework for SDG Aligned Finance which was presented at the Paris Peace Forum proffers solutions on how to allocate the trillions of international dollars to sustainable and resilient investments in developing countries.

UNITED STATES: Pope Francis has sent his congratulatory message to president-elect Joe Biden as they discussed about climate change and other shared beliefs. In a spirit of camaraderie, Joe Biden also appreciated the efforts of his Holiness in “promoting peace, reconciliation, and the common bonds of humanity around the world.” Joe Biden would become the second catholic president of the United States after John F. Kennedy. He made known his agenda of tackling climate change, integrating immigrants and refugees into communities, and taking care of the poor and marginalized, as a shared belief of human dignity and equality.

The world's largest wetlands are on fire. That's a disaster for all of us

Ivana Kottasová, Henrik Pettersson and Krystina Shveda

The world watched as California and the Amazon went up in flames this year, but the largest tropical wetland on earth has been ablaze for months, largely unnoticed by the outside world.

South America's Pantanal region has been hit by the worst wildfires in decades. The blazes have already consumed about 28% of the vast floodplain that stretches across parts of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. They are still not completely under control.

The fires have destroyed unique habitats and wrecked the livelihoods of many of the Pantanal's diverse indigenous communities. But their damaging impact reaches far beyond the region.

Wetlands like the Pantanal are Earth's most effective carbon sinks -- ecosystems that absorb and store more carbon than they release, keeping it away from the atmosphere. At roughly 200,000 square kilometers, the Pantanal comprises about 3% of the globe's wetlands and plays a key role in the carbon cycle.

When these carbon-rich ecosystems burn, vast amounts of heat-trapping gases are released back into the atmosphere, contributing to the greenhouse effect.

"The Pantanal is very important for the planet, it has unique wild areas that are fundamental to life on Earth," said Andre Luiz Siqueira, the CEO of ECOA, an environmental NGO based in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. "It is vital that it [receives] as much attention as the Amazon."

Brazil's National Institute of Space Research (INPE) has detected more than 21,200 fires in the Pantanal biome so far this year, a figure that is already 69% higher than the full-year record from 2005, when INPE recorded roughly 12,500 fires. There were 8,106 fires in September alone -- more than four times the historic average for the month.

Alberto Setzer, a senior scientist at INPE, said satellite data shows the fires are the worst since records began in 2002, both in terms of the number of individual blazes and the area burnt.

The Pantanal's distinctive habitats rely on what scientists call the "flood pulse." During the wet season between November and March, three quarters of the plain gets flooded, only for much of the water to drain away during the dry months, from April to September. This seasonal flooding makes the Pantanal a unique biome where large swaths of land regularly turn from terrestrial into aquatic habitats and back again.

An aerial view of fires in the Pantanal, near the Transpantaneira park road which crosses the world's largest tropical wetland, on September 12, 2020.

The area is home to thousands of endangered or unusual species, including jaguars, capybaras, black caimans, giant otters and hyacinth macaws. It's also an important stop on the routes of around 180 species of migratory birds.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (known as the World Wildlife Fund in the US and Canada), the Pantanal boasts the greatest concentration of wildlife in South America -- higher than that of its more famous northern neighbor, the Amazon.

But this year's dry season has been the most severe since the 1970s. "There has been a climate emergency situation, with a great drought, never seen before," Siqueira said.

Occasional wildfires are normal in the Pantanal, so much so that some plants in the region developed resistance to fires -- for example by growing thick bark or covering their seeds with hard shells. But the unusually dry conditions this year have seen the blazes spread further and faster because there were fewer natural water barriers. Even areas that normally stay wet have turned into tinderboxes.

It's all connected

A recently-burned area of the Encontro das Aguas park in the Pantanal wetlands, pictured on September 12, 2020.

The fires ripping through the Pantanal are an example of a natural disaster that is exacerbated by climate change while simultaneously making the problem worse.

Extreme weather events, such as drought and floods, are becoming more frequent and more severe around the world, and the Pantanal is no exception. There are indications that the region is getting drier and warmer as the global temperatures rise.

This year's record dry season can be traced back to 2019, when the Upper Paraguay Basin experienced unusually low rainfall.

Biologist Debora Calheiros, who has been researching ecosystems in the Pantanal for decades, said official data showed precipitation had been below the long-term average over the past decade, but in the past two years had dropped further to just 70% of the average.

The region's rain patterns are also changing. While the amount of overall precipitation might not be dramatically different, the rains are becoming more extreme and concentrated over shorter periods of time.

Climate change is just one part of the problem. Large-scale deforestation in the Amazon rainforest to the north and the Cerrado savanna to the east are also having profound effects on the Pantanal.

Ecology and conservation expert Leticia Larcher said deforestation was shortening rainy seasons and making droughts more severe in central and southeastern Brazil. She explained that it was impacting the "flying rivers" phenomenon, a crucial process in which a stream of moisture arising from the forest travels to other areas such as the Pantanal, where the water-filled air becomes colder and turns into rain.

"As the forest decreases and loses its ecological functions, the environmental service it provides is also being lost," Larcher said.

Mostly man-made

While fires ignited by lightning sometimes occur naturally in the Pantanal, Larcher, who works for environmental NGO Instituto Homem Pantaneiro, said this year's fires have mostly been caused by people. This is despite the Brazilian government's ban on fires for 120 days in the Amazon and the Pantanal that was issued in July.

But Siqueira said the ban wasn't being enforced strictly enough. "There are extensive areas (where) livestock farmers have regularly used fire as a way to clear farm fields," said Siqueira. "This year, even with the governmental ban ... these producers set fire that ended up spreading for thousands of acres due to the great drought."

As the global demand for agricultural products rises, so commercial farmers clear more of the Pantanal's native vegetation for growing and grazing. Brazil is already the world's leading exporter of beef. As the demand for meat rises around the world, so does deforestation in the Amazon.

Sugarcane, cotton and soybeans are other lucrative options. When US President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese exports in 2018, Beijing retaliated by placing a new 25% tariff on American soybeans, forcing Chinese buyers to look for alternative sources of the protein-rich commodity.

Brazil was ready to step in. The US Department of Agriculture expects the South American country to have record soybean production this year, and the land area used keeps growing. A soy moratorium, in place since 2006, banned deforestation for the crop in the Amazon -- but those protections don't apply in the Pantanal and Cerrado.

Siqueira and many others, including global environmental advocacy groups such as Greenpeace, Wetlands International and the WWF, blame the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his Environment Minister Ricardo Salles for the devastation.

"It's a direct result of the dismantling of the Brazilian environmental agenda and its institutions under the current government," Siqueira said, pointing to deregulation and funding cuts for monitoring agencies.

Out of control forest fire burns the area of the Brazilian Pantanal in rural Mato Grosso.

"[There are] less actions to prevent fires, dismantling of responsible federal institutions, and omission at federal and state levels," said biologist Debora Calheiros, who has been researching ecosystems in the Pantanal for decades. "Actually, it was the civil society that readily responded to rescue, save, feed and offer water to the surviving animals and help traditional riverine and indigenous people with food and mineral water," she added.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September, Bolsonaro refused to accept any blame for the fires, claiming instead that they were an "inevitable consequence of high local temperature, coupled with the accumulation of decaying organic matter."

Out of control forest fire burns the area of the Brazilian Pantanal in rural Mato Grosso.

Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly rejected criticism of his government's stance on the environment and has accused foreign actors of a "brutal disinformation campaign" on the issue, told the UNGA that no other country protected as much wild territory as Brazil.

Speaking to CNN's affiliate CNN Brasil last month, Salles, the environmental minister, doubled down on Bolsonaro's message. He blamed the fires on the drought and said farmers had no interest in burning the land, because they rely on it economically.

The government eventually recognized the Pantanal fires as a federal emergency and sent funding into the area, but for many, this was too little, too late.

The government's policies, Siqueira says, send a "clear message of impunity of environmental crimes."

Staff members treat a wounded leopard at an animal protection center in Goias State, Brazil, on September 27, 2020.

Parts of the Pantanal have been designated a biosphere conservation area and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site, but overall, less than 5% of the region is under formal protection, according to the WWF. More than 90% is privately owned by ranchers, farmers and conservation groups, with 80% of that private land used for cattle farming, according to Brazil's environment ministry.

The fires burned millions of acres of flowering plants, starving pollinators and leaving no food for other animals.

The blazes are hurting local people too. The Pantanal is home to a number of indigenous and traditional communities, which have settled on the banks of the rivers and make their living from fishing and small-scale agriculture. "Riverside communities, which traditionally survive on artisanal fishing, build their culture there strictly linked to the biome," Larcher said.

Fires are still raging in parts of the Pantanal, but recovery efforts are already underway.

The biome has gone through periods of harsh drought in the past. However, Calheiros said the ecosystems are much more fragile than they were just a few decades ago and their capacity to recover is uncertain. The environmental damage inflicted on the Pantanal is also much greater, she added.

Siqueira said it could take decades to restore what the blazes took. "This will only be possible if we have a normal rainfall from 2020 to 2021," he said. If there is more drought, he added, the recovery of the plants and animals living in the Pantanal will be much more difficult.

Governments urged to go beyond net zero climate targets

Matthew Taylor

Spring leaf growth on young birch trees growing in a forestry plantation. Photograph: MediaWorldImages/Alamy

Leading scientists and campaigners say cutting emissions alone is not enough

Leading scientists, academics and campaigners have called on governments and businesses to go beyond “net zero” in their efforts to tackle the escalating climate and ecological crisis.

The former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the leading climate scientist Michael Mann are among a group of prominent environmentalists calling for the “restoration of the climate” by removing “huge amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere”.

Net zero targets have been a focus of governments, local authorities and campaigners in their attempts to address global heating. The authors of Friday’s letter, however, say that although stopping emissions is “a necessary prerequisite”, governments and businesses must be more ambitious and work to “restore the climate” to as safe a level as possible.

“The climate crisis is here now,” the letter states. “No matter how quickly we reach zero emissions, the terrible impacts of the climate crisis will not just go away … As such, no matter how quickly it is done, solely cutting emissions is not enough.”

The idea of removing emissions from the atmosphere – either directly from the air or by capturing it from power plants – has been a strongly debated subject among environmentalists and engineers for years.

Critics point out that it has proved difficult to replicate the technology at scale and that constructing the necessary machinery would itself be environmentally damaging.

Many fear that the idea of carbon capture is a “technological fix” used as an excuse by corporations which are opposed to the radical changes needed to move to a zero-carbon economy.

Pollution and pandemics: A dangerous mix

Washington University in St. Louis

Pollution may bear part of the blame for the rapid proliferation in the United States of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the spread of COVID-19, according to new research.

The United States may have set itself up for the spread of a pandemic without even knowing it.

According to new research from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, pollution may bear part of the blame for the rapid proliferation in the United States of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the spread of COVID-19.

The research, from the lab of Rajan Chakrabarty, associate professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, was published online ahead of print in the journal Science of The Total Environment.

When it comes to how ill someone gets after contracting COVID-19, medical professionals believe that a person's health -- having certain medical conditions, for example -- can play a vital role. When it comes to how fast the virus can spread through the community, it turns out the health of the environment is directly correlated to the basic reproduction ratio R0, which denotes the expected number of people each sick person can infect.

The reproduction ratio R0 of COVID-19 associates directly with the long-term ambient PM2.5 exposure levels. And the presence of secondary inorganic components in PM2.5 only makes things worse, according to Chakrabarty.

"We checked for more than 40 confounding factors," Chakrabarty said. Of all of those factors, "There was a strong, linear association between long-term PM2.5 exposure and R0."

PM2.5 refers to ambient particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less; at that size, they can enter a person's lungs and cause damage. For this reason, PM2.5 can be detrimental to respiratory health. But how this relates to the spread of COVID-19 through a population had yet to be explored.

Chakrabarty and his graduate student Payton Beeler, both aerosol researchers who have done previous coronavirus modeling, became interested in the relationship after two papers were published in quick succession. First, a July paper in the journal Science found that levels of susceptibility to COVID-19 is a driving factor for the pandemic; it is more important than temperature, which researchers initially thought might play an outsized role.

Then in August, research published in the Journal of Infection found that the highest number of cases of COVID-19 with severe illness were in places with higher pollution levels.

"I was thinking, why, in the majority of the U.S. states, have we had such a rapid spread of the virus?" Chakrabarty said. Particularly in the earlier stages of the pandemic. "We wanted to confine our study to the point in time when the shutdown was in place. For the most part, people did remain confined from early March until the end of April."

The team decided to look at places where R0 was greater than one -- that's the point at which one person can spread an illness to more than one person, and the illness takes off. In those places, they looked at 43 different factors -- including population density, age distribution, even time delays in states' stay-at-home orders.

Then, using pollution estimates across the U.S. between 2012 and 2017 published by Randall Martin, professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, the team looked for any relationships.

Modeling revealed an increase of almost 0.25 in R0 corresponding to a 10% increase in sulfate, nitrogen dioxide and ammonium, or SNA composition and an increase of 1 ?g/m3 in PM2.5 mass concentrations, respectively.

They found these linear correlations to be strongest in places where pollution levels were well below National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), the levels of air pollutants that are considered safe for humans.

"Annual mean PM2.5 national standards are set at or below 12 micrograms per cubic meter, below that you are supposed to be safe," Chakrabarty said. "What we saw, the correlation we're seeing is well below that standard." In fact, they saw a rapid increase in R0 when PM2.5 exposure levels were below 6 micrograms per cubic meter.

Chakrabarty hypothesizes this initial increase in R0, which is followed by a plateau once levels hit 6 micrograms per cubic meter, is a result of initial changes in condition; when the air is free of PM2.5 , an individual is unaffected. The initial exposure is the catalyst for change in lung health resulting in a change from non-susceptibility to susceptibility, which is reflected in the increasing R0.

And although there was no direct correlation between black carbon -- a.k.a. soot -- and R0, researchers did find a connection.

"Our collaborators at Saint Louis University suggested a mediation/moderation statistical approach," a detailed analysis that looks at the way additional variables affect the outcome of the initial relationship. In this case, researchers looked at soot's effect on R0, considering SNA's effect.

"We found black carbon acts as a kind of catalyst. When there is soot present, PM2.5 has more of an acute effect on lung health, and therefore on R0."

The mediation/moderation study was not superfluous -- one of the common ways people are exposed to SNA is through pollution emitted from cars and coal-fired power plants. Both of which also emit soot.

"Although decades of strict air quality regulations in the U.S. have resulted in significant reductions of nitrogen dioxide levels," the authors wrote in the paper's conclusion, "recent reversal of environmental regulations which weaken limits on gaseous emissions from power plants and vehicles threaten the country's future air quality scenario."

"Instead of working to resolve this issue, these reversals may be setting us up for another pandemic," Chakrabarty said.

The Green Digest: COVID-19 cure; Building resilient cities; One Health approach-Indonesia; Green hydrogen.

AFRICA: African cities are encouraged to emulate Cape Town’s response strategy to climate change. Though the climate change strategy in Cape Town is not perfect, other African cities have a lot to learn. Africa’s economic malaise and vulnerability to heat, drought and floods make it the most likely continent to be impacted by climate change.  Despite its vulnerability and inadequacy in combating climate change, only 13 cities in Africa are committed to taking measurable changes against climate change while only five in South Africa have climate change strategies. Cape Town has become the latest city to redraft its climate change strategy which contains 35 goals, aimed towards adaptation and mitigation. However, a major drawback is the omission of nature’s role in their proposed climate action, making the strategy self-defeating.

ASIA: Environmental health scientists are calling for a One Health approach to climate and disease crises. Recent studies have shown that the outbreak of diseases is due to human encroachment of the natural habitats of wild animals. Jatna Supriatna, a conservation biologist in the University of Indonesia, speaking in support of the One Health approach said, “Integrated prevention and mitigation measures were vital to outbreaks resulting from zoonotic pathogens.” The primary causes of these outbreaks, according to Jatna were deforestation and forest conversion.  Deforestation has driven wild animals away from their natural habits to live in proximity with human established settlements. Also Sofia Mubarika of Yogkarta-based Gadjah Mada University suggested that Indonesia should reinforce the One Health approach in order to “address overlapping issues of ecological stability and public health”

COVID-19: German Biotech Company, BioNTech and United States pharmaceuticals, Pfizer have announced a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. However, these early results are known as “interim analysis” and we await the data to undergo “peer-review” through scientific publication. In an analysis carried out on 94 volunteers with COVID-19, the vaccine was suggested to have an efficacy of over 90%. This means that one out of ten people, prone to have COVID-19 will be infected with the disease when the vaccine is administered. The success rate of this vaccine is astounding because the US Food and Drug Administration have announced that they will only approve of a 50% efficacy rating. This latest development has encouraged more vaccines that work better in certain demography to be tested.

RENEWABLE ENERGY: Green hydrogen could be the latest innovation in the energy industry. Although hydrogen has been flaunted as a carbon-free fuel source, its traditional production process is not remotely zero carbon. In this process of production, fossil fuels are exposed to steam, and this is called gray hydrogen. If the CO2 is captured and sequestered, it is known as blue hydrogen. However, green hydrogen is an exception, produced from the process of electrolysis where hydrogen and oxygen are split without any by-product. Companies are currently working to produce electrolyzers that will produce green hydrogen as cheaply as blue and gray hydrogen.

Scientists unravel how and why Amazon trees die

University of Birmingham

The capacity of the Amazon forest to store carbon in a changing climate will ultimately be determined by how fast trees die -- and what kills them. Now, a huge new study has unraveled what factors control tree mortality rates in Amazon forests and helps to explain why tree mortality is increasing across the Amazon basin.

Source: popularmechanics.com

Source: the portugal news

This large analysis found that the mean growth rate of the tree species is the main risk factor behind Amazon tree death, with faster-growing trees dying off at a younger age. These findings have important consequences for our understanding of the future of these forests. Climate change tends to select fast-growing species. If the forests selected by climate change are more likely die younger, they will also store less carbon.

The study, co-led by the Universities of Birmingham and Leeds in collaboration with more than 100 scientists, is the first large scale analysis of the causes of tree death in the Amazon and uses long-term records gathered by the international RAINFOR network.

The results published in Nature Communications, show that species-level growth rates are a key risk factor for tree mortality.

"Understanding the main drivers of tree death allows us to better predict and plan for future trends -- but this is a huge undertaking as there are more than 15,000 different tree species in the Amazon," said lead author Dr Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert, of the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research.

Dr David Galbraith, from the University of Leeds added "We found a strong tendency for faster-growing species to die more, meaning they have shorter life spans. While climate change has provided favourable conditions for these species, because they also die more quickly the carbon sequestration service provided by Amazon trees is declining."

Tree mortality is a rare event so to truly understand it requires huge amounts of data. The RAINFOR network has assembled more than 30 years of contributions from more than 100 scientists. It includes records from 189 one-hectare plots, each visited and monitored on average every 3 years. Each visit, researchers measure all trees above 10cm in diameter as well as the condition of every tree.

In total more than 124,000 living trees were followed, and 18,000 tree deaths recorded and analysed. When trees die, the researcher follows a fixed protocol to unravel the actual cause of death. "This involves detailed, forensic work and amounts to a massive 'CSI Amazon' effort conducted by skilled investigators from a dozen nations," noted Prof. Oliver Phillips, from the University of Leeds.

Dr Beatriz Marimon, from UNEMAT, who coordinates multiple plots in central Brazil added: "Now that we can see more clearly what is going on across the whole forest, there are clear opportunities for action. We find that drought is also driving tree death, but so far only in the South of the Amazon. What is happening here should serve as an early warning system as we need to prevent the same

Large volcanic eruption caused the largest mass extinction

Tohoku University

Researchers in Japan, the US and China say they have found more concrete evidence of the volcanic cause of the largest mass extinction of life. Their research looked at two discrete eruption events: one that was previously unknown to researchers, and the other that resulted in large swaths of terrestrial and marine life going extinct.

There have been five mass extinctions since the divergent evolution of early animals 450 -- 600 million years ago. The third was the largest one and is thought to have been triggered by the eruption of the Siberian Traps -- a large region of volcanic rock known as a large igneous province. But the correlation between the eruption and mass extinction has not yet been clarified.

Sedimentary mercury enrichments, proxies for massive volcanic events, have been detected in dozens of sedimentary rocks from the end of the Permian. These rocks have been found deposited inland, in shallow seas and central oceans, but uncertainty remains as to their interpretation. Mercury can be sourced from either direct atmospheric deposition from volcanic emissions and riverine inputs from terrestrial organic matter oxidation when land/plant devastation -- referred to as terrestrial ecological disturbance -- occurs.

The largest mass extinction occurred at the end of the Permian -- roughly 252 million years ago. This mass extinction was marked by the transition from the divergence of the Paleozoic reptiles and marine animals like brachiopods and trilobites to Mesozoic dinosaurs and marine animals such as mollusks. Approximately 90% of species disappeared at the end of the Permian.

Current professor emeritus at Tohoku University, Kunio Kaiho led a team that looked into possible triggers of the largest mass extinction. They took sedimentary rock samples from two places -- southern China and Italy -- and analyzed the organic molecules and mercury (Hg) in them. They found two discrete coronene-Hg enrichments coinciding with the first terrestrial ecological disturbance and the following mass extinction in both areas.

"We believe this to be the product of large volcanic eruptions because the coronene anomaly was formed by abnormally high temperature combustion," says professor Kaiho. "High temperature magma or asteroid/comet impacts can make such a coronene enrichment.

From the volcanic aspect, this could have occurred because of the higher temperature combustion of living and fossil organic matter from lava flows and horizontally intruded magma (sill) into the sedimentary coal and oil. The different magnitude of the two coronene-mercury enrichments shows that the terrestrial ecosystem was disrupted by smaller global environmental changes than the marine ecosystem. The duration between the two volcanic events is tens of thousands of years."

Huge volcanic eruptions can produce sulfuric acid aerosols in the stratosphere and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which causes global climate changes. This rapid climate change is believed to be behind the loss of land and marine creatures.

Coronene is a highly condensed six-ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, which requires significantly higher energy to form as compared to smaller PAHs. Therefore, high temperature volcanic combustion can cause the coronene enrichments. This means that high temperature combustion of hydrocarbons in the sedimentary rocks by lateral intrusion of magmas formed CO2 and CH4 causing high pressure and eruption to induce global warming and the mass extinction. The coronene-mercury concentration firstly evidenced that volcanic hydrocarbon combustion helped contribute to the extinction through global warming.

Kaiho's team is now studying other mass extinctions in the hopes of further understanding the cause and processes behind them.

Climate heroes: the countries pioneering a green future

Jonathan Watts

From Spain to South Korea, there are several global success stories in the drive to become carbon neutral

While the world must wait to see whether US president-elect Joe Biden can fulfil his election promise of a $2tn Green New Deal, nations elsewhere in the world are setting carbon-neutral targets and pushing ahead with mega-programmes to cut emissions, create jobs and reduce energy prices. Here are some of the regional frontrunners.

Last week, the government was the latest to announce plans to go carbon neutral by 2050 and it is overseeing one of the fastest shifts away from coal the world has seen.

Over the coming three years, Spain has committed €27bn to green energy spending – a downpayment on the €750bn investment it forecasts will be needed to fund the move away from fossil fuels. By 2050, the decarbonisation strategy envisages a 90% reduction in emissions, the reforestation of 20,000 hectares and the recovery of 50,000 hectares of wetlands. Renewable power, meanwhile, will rise from 20% of the energy mix to 97%.

Action is already under way. In May, the cabinet approved a draft law on climate change, which outlined more ambitious goals than the EU at the time on renewables and energy efficiency. The bill would ban new coal, oil and gas extraction projects and end direct fossil fuel subsidies.

Spain is also shutting down 69% of its coal-fired power plants this year and next – a pace of decommissioning not seen anywhere else in the world. Last year, Spain installed more new onshore wind than any other country in Europe.

Far from being a drain on employment and economy, the Spanish government says its decarbonisation plan will increase the workforce by 1.6%. But the country will have to convince investors that its legal framework is more stable this time than during the “solar garden” bubble that followed subsidy promises in 2007. When those were abolished, confidence in the sector took at hit along with jobs.

The ecological transition minister, Teresa Ribera, predicts the country will go well beyond the 2030 targets set by the European commission and has promised to push for still more ambitious policies in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

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This is part of a broader trend. In Europe, renewables have generated more power than coal for the first time this year. The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has said she wants Europe to be the world’s first carbon-neutral continent. Over the next 10 years, the commission forecasts investment of at least €1tn to achieve this goal, including a quarter of the EU budget. This month, the European parliament voted in favour of climate neutrality by 2050 and 60% cuts in emissions by 2030 (compared with 1990 levels). Further progress has been seen in individual countries, including Denmark, Germany, France and (outside the EU) Britain.

Asia: South Korea

Four years after being labelled the world’s biggest carbon villain, South Korea has bid to be one of the heroes this year with a $61bn Green New Deal and a commitment to go carbon neutral by 2050.

President Moon Jae-in has moved to end South Korea’s dependence on coal and create green jobs as his party promised in April’s successful election campaign for the national assembly.

By 2025, the Green New Deal would bring about 230,000 more energy-saving buildings, 1.13m electric and hydrogen-powered cars, and an increase in renewable energy capacity to 42.7 GW from 12.7 GW last year.

Money will also be made available to upgrade public rental housing and schools to make them zero-energy, and to expand green areas in cities. To improve energy efficiency, smart meters will be fitted in an additional 5 million apartments and communities will be given incentives to connect to micro-grids supplied with decentralised, low-carbon energy.

The plan aims to support Korean industrial conglomerates that have been hard hit by the pandemic. Hyundai, Kia, Samsung and EM Korea will be among the biggest beneficiaries of plans to build 45,000 new electric vehicle charging points and 450 hydrogen refuelling units.

Tempering the optimism is South Korea’s past record of high emissions and false hopes. The last time the country promised “green growth” – after the 2008-9 financial crisis – it led to an environmentally disastrous policy of more concrete riverbanks and higher emissions. Today, coal supplies about 40% of Korea’s electricity and seven new coal power plants are under construction. In 2016, activists labelled South Korea the world’s biggest carbon villain.

A new generation of campaigners believe South Korea has turned a new page. They want to see an early halt to overseas coal financing and a strong 2030 target to reduce domestic emissions.

They are encouraged by signs of a climate race-to-the-top in east Asia, where the opposite has long been true. China and Japan are also major users and funders of coal, but both countries have committed this year to carbon-neutral goals.

Latin America: Uruguay

Last year, Uruguay was ranked fourth in the world in the proportion of electricity it supplies from wind and solar. The International Energy Agency said the country’s 36% share was behind only Denmark (50%), Lithuania (41%) and Luxembourg (37%). If hydropower is added, Uruguay leaps ahead of them all with 97%.

This represents a spectacular transition. Twenty years ago, this South American country burned oil to produce almost a third of its electricity and had to import power from Argentina. The change came between 2008 and 2015 under former presidents Tabaré Vázquez and José Mujica, who wanted to reduce costs and make energy more affordable.

The secret was a proactive state rather than a big-spending one. Government encouraged investors by promising fixed feed-in tariffs and stable policies. More than US$7bn poured into the sector, helping Uruguay to reduce its emissions by 20%. Droughts have also been rarer because the grid is less dependent on hydropower.

Asad Rehman, the co-organiser of Global Green New Deal Campaign, said the success of Uruguay’s transition reflects an ideal balance of social and climate priorities. “It is not just about carbon, but also cutting energy prices and tackling energy poverty. Social justice is an imperative.”

The picture is mixed elsewhere in South and Central America. Costa Rica has won international kudos for generating almost all of its electricity with renewables, particularly geothermal and hydropower. The latter also provides most of the power for Brazil and Paraguay though it often has a devastating impact on ecosystems and wildlife.

Africa: Kenya

Renewables already provide more than 93% of Kenya’s electricity and the government plans to expand further so everyone in the country has access either to the grid or community solar power by 2022.

The carbon footprint of the population of 47 million is tiny compared with wealthy nations in the northern hemisphere so economic – rather than climate – considerations are the main drivers for an energy transition. Solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal energy is increasingly cheaper and more practical than fossil fuels. The main challenge is securing the initial investment.

The country has substantial renewable resources to tap, prompting many observers to say it has the potential to bypass fossil fuel-driven economic development. Last month, the African Development Bank announced the completion of the 105 MWe Menengai geothermal power plant in the Rift Valley, cementing Kenya’s leading role on the continent for geothermal electricity production, which has increased more than fourfold in the past six years.

Kenya is also home to east Africa’s biggest solar generation plant – the $128.5m China-funded Garissa Plant where more than 200,000 PV panels soak up the energy from the sunshine each day. In many remote areas, small villages that are far from the grid are able to generate electricity with just a few dozen rooftop panels.

These developments – along with expanded wind and hydropower – have pushed the proportion of the population with electricity from 63% in 2017 to 75% today.

Heymi Bahar, the lead author of the International Energy Agency’s Renewables market report, said Kenya along with other African nations, such as Rwanda and Nigeria, “have a chance to leapfrog” fossil fuel energy systems if they can draw in more private investment. That once meant expensive subsidies, but Bahar said this is no longer the case. Good regulations and policies are enough.

“Renewables are becoming cheaper and more accessible. In Africa, the potential is there, the willingness is there,” he said. “Renewables do not need subsidies any more. They just need long-term revenue streams. That is determined by clear policies.”

The Green Digest: Constitutional coup in Africa; Climate; Investment shortfalls; Educational reformation

AFRICA: Democracy in Africa is threatened by the rise of constitutional coup, resulting from Africa’s inadequacy to deal with abuses of power and human rights. Constitutional coup is a term used when leaders subvert their constitutions to remain in power for an extended period. Subservient legislators loyal to African dictators have been crucial to the annulment of the “two-term limit” accorded to politicians. Many of these dictators have capitalized on this annulment to stay in power indefinitely becoming tyrants in the process. Such presidents that have changed their constitution to extend their rule include but not limited to Presidents; Gnassingbe (Togo), Museveni (Uganda), Kagame (Rwanda) and the late Nkurunziza (Burundi).

CLIMATE CHANGE: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on climate discussions has led to the postponement of the meeting of Conference of the Parties (COP) to November 2021. For the first time ever, the world will go without climate talks since the formation of COP. However, the successes of these meetings held by COP are difficult to measure or hidden in national climate policies. An example of this hidden success is found in Chile’s ambitious plan to phase out coal-generated electricity. In trying to sign the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) agreement, the Chilean minister of environment, Marcelo Mena was opposed by Chile’s electricity generation companies. Their argument was that “Chile was not ready to take on such a bold commitment without further analysis”, and provided an alternative where Chile would phase out coal on its own terms. Moving forward, what does the future hold for climate discussions?

SDGs: Standard Chartered research has uncovered an investment shortfall in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. According to a survey conducted between July and August 2020 amongst 300 of the world’s top investment firms, 20 percent are unaware of the UN’s SDGs. These firms are reported to have in their possession assets under management (AUM) of over USD 50 trillion, of which only 13 percent are attributed to the SDGs. Some 55 percent claim that the SDGs are not important to mainstream investment while 47 percent claim that the SDGs are too hard to measure. Finally, the report showed that two-thirds (64 percent) of investments are channeled into developed markets seeing a massive shortfall in emerging markets (10 percent) of Africa, Middle East and South America.

UNITED STATES: The current system of education in America has been referred to as the “horse and buggy” model of education dating back to the industrial revolution. Analysts argue that this system does not prepare children to thrive in the 21st century. According to their reports, the highest quality of education is reserved for the most affluent students, while their peers are considered “products” to a “factory model” of education that emerged in the early 20th century. However, various educational reforms such as the development of the Common Core State Standards (2009) which were adopted have proven insufficient.