Hunting season came as human cases were spiking, which may have been a bad combo.

JOHN TIMMER – 11/2/2021, 2:39 PM

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/sars-cov-2-seems-to-readily-jump-to-deer-spread-among-them/

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Earlier this year, researchers found that many wild deer in Michigan had antibodies that suggested the animals had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It was a significant cause for concern, as a large population of susceptible animals could act as a reservoir that allows the virus to spread back to humans.

At the time, however, uncertainties abounded. The study looked at only a small sample of the deer population of one state—we didn’t know how the animals were exposed, and we didn’t know whether the virus was actually spreading among wild deer. Since then, a few of the blanks have been filled in. Critically, deer-to-deer transmission has been observed in captivity. On Monday, a preprint of a new paper answered some more questions, showing that infection is widespread in a second state, driven both by its spread from humans and deer-to-deer transmission.

Overall, the news is not especially good, though we still don’t understand what risks it may pose to humans.

Virus hunting

There are still many unknowns about the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to deer and its transmission among them. We know that transmission to deer is possible, but we don’t have a strong sense of how often the virus makes the jump from humans to deer or whether it does so directly or via an intermediary species. Once infected, deer show few obvious symptoms, but the virus has a similar time course: detectable after four days and remaining detectable as long as three weeks after infection.

The team included members of Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources who were inspired by the findings in Michigan to see what was going on in their state. They partnered with a variety of academic researchers to test both wild deer and deer on game reserves, with many of the animals killed by hunters or cars. Their study began in April of 2020, but most of the 283 samples came after the hunting season started in September; things wrapped up in early January 2021.Advertisement

To an extent, sampling paralleled the initial course of the pandemic in Iowa, which saw its first spike in cases in April of 2020 before reaching a peak at the end of the year. All told, 94 of the deer (33 percent) tested positive over the course of the study. But that figure obscures some obvious changes over time.

In deer, at least, the virus wasn’t detected at all until after hunting season began, although the sampling rate in this period was too low to determine how significant this finding was. But the first positive deer were detected shortly after hunting season started, and the numbers rose considerably as cases in the human population spiked. By December, over 80 percent of the deer tested were positive for the virus.

How did that get here?

Sampling rates during the months of hunting season remained relatively steady, so that surge in cases appears to be real. But it’s not possible to tell how much of the contribution came from hunters being out among the deer and how much came from the presence of a large number of humans who were infected with the virus. Hunting could also change the behavior of the deer in a way that made it easier for them to spread it among themselves.

To help figure out what might be going on, the research team obtained genomic sequences from the virus in all of their samples, allowing them to track individual lineages of virus and compare the viruses in deer to those from the surrounding human population.

The research team found a dozen different SARS-CoV-2 lineages in the deer population. The most common of these was also the most common among the strains circulating in humans in Iowa at the same time. Beyond that, there were some parallels between the deer and human strains, but the authors caution that the results represent a small sample of both populations, since genome sequencing of humans wasn’t common at the time, either.

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In any case, it’s clear that deer from the same location were almost always infected by the same variant, and in some cases, the genomes of the viruses were identical. This finding provides strong evidence that the virus spreads among deer in the wild. The fact that different locations saw different variants present suggests that the cases were the product of separate inter-species infection events. Thus, it seems that the virus can regularly spread from humans to deer.

Does that spread happen directly? It’s not possible to say, but the relatively short lag between the spike in human cases and the high levels of positivity in deer would seem to make an intermediate carrier species less likely.

While the virus doesn’t cause much in the way of obvious symptoms for deer, they become infectious by four days after infection, and the virus remains detectable for up to three weeks after infection.

What does this mean?

The big reason not to hit the panic button is that we’ve yet to determine whether the virus can move from deer back to humans. The hunters would seem to be at the greatest risk, but there’s no indication in this paper that their health was tracked following their involvement in the sampling.

Eve Hartley and Ben AdlerWed, November 3, 2021, 12:00 PM·4 min readIn this article:

https://news.yahoo.com/greta-thunberg-other-climate-change-activists-in-glasgow-slam-greenwashing-and-false-solutions-190059394.html

• Greta ThunbergSwedish climate protection activist
• Mark CarneyGovernor of the Bank of England, and former Governor of the Bank of Canada (born 1965)

GLASGOW, Scotland — Climate activist Greta Thunberg stormed out of an event at the U.N. Climate Change Conference on Wednesday afternoon, where officials and business leaders were discussing how to ensure that markets for trading carbon offsets actually achieve the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Swedish teenager, who was in the audience at a panel discussion, left the venue saying, “Thanks for greenwashing,” after a moderator thanked her for attending the session.

When Thunberg said “greenwashing,” she was using an environmentalists’ term for an organization’s false portrayal of itself as environmentally friendly. Some activists contend that corporations and governments participating in the climate summit, also known as COP26, are guilty of just that, by paying lip service to combating climate change while continuing to use the fossil fuels that cause global warming.

The panel discussion was called “High Integrity in the Voluntary Carbon Market,” with speakers including Mark Carney, vice chairman and head of impact investing at Brookfield Asset Management and a former governor of the Bank of England. Carbon offsets are credits for actions such as planting trees that are bought by polluters to compensate for emitting the gases that cause global warming, such as carbon dioxide.

Thunberg may have intended to take part in a protest of the event planned by Indigenous activists. However, the demonstration was foiled after many of the activists remained stuck outside the venue.

“Carbon offsetting violates Mother Earth and Father Sky and perpetuates the theft of Indigenous Peoples’ land and territories,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, in a statement before the planned protest. “Indigenous Peoples have been protecting lands and forests for thousands of years, but carbon offsets are tearing us apart.”

Earlier on Wednesday, hundreds of protesters from the group Extinction Rebellion gathered in the center of Glasgow, just under 2 miles from the official conference venue, to show their concern over what one protester described as “false solutions” to the climate crisis.

Story continues https://news.yahoo.com/greta-thunberg-other-climate-change-activists-in-glasgow-slam-greenwashing-and-false-solutions-190059394.html

Published1 hour agoShareRelated Topics

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-59149998

• COP26

We’ve had billionaires pledging their money, world leaders promising to cut carbon emissions and Greta Thunberg leading rebellious chants.

But one image from the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow has really got people talking.

It’s of Prime Minister Boris Johnson not wearing a face mask as he sits next to broadcaster Sir David Attenborough.

The PM has come under fire for the photo – but did he break the rules and is there more than meets the eye?

One picture does not tell the whole story.

What are the COP26 rules on face masks?

According to an official COP26 document available online, the conference’s organisers say attendees must wear a mask at all times except when eating, drinking, sitting in office/meeting spaces, conducting negotiations, giving speeches, or if medically exempt.https://buy.tinypass.com/checkout/template/cacheableShow?aid=tYOkq7qlAI&templateId=OTBYI8Q89QWC&templateVariantId=OTV0YFYSXVQWV&offerId=fakeOfferId&experienceId=EXAWX60BX4NU&iframeId=offer_0e763acc7b457c03340a-0&displayMode=inline&widget=template&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com

But it does say that “face coverings should be worn when sitting in theatre-style seating”.

That document is dated 24 October 2021.

However, the Prime Minister’s office has told Newsbeat it’s been sent a newer version of the rules, dated 29 October. These say that taking your mask off at your seat is allowed.

COP26 hasn’t responded to Newsbeat’s request to clarify what the rules are in respect to this specific situation.

Sir David Attenborough told us that he does not wish to comment.

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The conference is being held in Scotland, which also has rules on wearing masks to help stop the spread of Covid.

Essentially, everyone over 12 has to wear one in most indoor public places.

What does Boris Johnson say?

A spokeswoman for the prime minister told Radio 1 Newsbeat he had followed the coronavirus rules at COP26 “throughout” and that those attending “are not required to wear a face mask when they are seated”.

Boris Johnson has faced backlash on social media since the photo came to light.

He told CNN he’s been wearing masks in confined spaces “with people I don’t normally talk to”.

“It’s up to people to take a judgement whether they’re at a reasonable distance from someone… that’s the approach we take.”

Is there more than meets the eye?

Viral social media moments often don’t tell the full story.

In another photo, taken in the same set of images, the PM can be seen wearing a mask while Sir David has removed his.

And in a third image, neither of them are wearing a mask.

Trip to Glasgow was heavy on dire warnings but light on deep emissions cuts – and ended with him blaming China and Russia

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/biden-cop26-climate-crisis-congress

Oliver Milman@olliemilmanWed 3 Nov 2021 08.07 EDT

Joe Biden returned to the US in the pre-dawn gloom on Wednesday to a climate agenda still held in frustrating limbo by Congress, following his high-profile cameo at crunch UN climate talks in Scotland that was heavy on dire warnings but light on deep cuts to planet-heating emissions.

The US president had aimed to arrive in Glasgow for the Cop26 summit with historic climate legislation in hand, which he could use to brandish at world leaders who still harbor resentments over four turbulent years of Donald Trump, where the climate crisis was variously ignored and mocked.

Instead, the intransigence of Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat and leading beneficiary of fossil fuel industry largesse, has left the landmark climate bill pared back and not voted upon, its fate left uncertain throughout Biden’s trip.

In Glasgow, Biden vowed America will “lead by the power of our example”, but was the target of activist protests over oil and gas leases issued back home, while leaders of several major emitters either did not show up or failed to submit vastly improved emissions reduction plans.Advertisementhttps://27d4eb8e340bcbabd34986106d2047d4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Biden ended his time in Scotland by ladling blame upon China for not taking the climate emergency seriously.

“The most important thing the president needed to do was reassure the rest of the world that the US is back in addressing this global crisis,” said Christy Goldfuss, an environment adviser to Barack Obama and now a policy expert at the Center for American Progress.

“But we have to have some humility, we have ground to make up. We can’t reclaim the mantle of leadership until the US can deliver on its commitments. Every Democrat, apart from one senator, supports climate action. That is untenable and everyone understands that.”

Biden has sought to play up the positives of his time at Cop26, where he has left negotiators to thrash out a deal aimed at averting disastrous global heating of beyond 1.5C. “I can’t think of any two days where more has been accomplished on climate,” he said.

The highlights include a global pledge, led by the US and European Union, to slash methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by 30% by 2030, based on last year’s levels. More than 100 countries, including six of the 10 largest emitters of methane, have signed on to the agreement to cut methane, which is spewed out by oil and gas drilling operations and agriculture and is about 80 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

Biden backed this move with new regulations rolled out by the US Environment Protection Agency to cut methane emissions by about 75% from hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells. “The pledge to cut methane is the single biggest and fastest bite out of today’s warming,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.

There was also a sweeping accord, which Biden vowed to support with billions of dollars, to end deforestation within a decade. The pact encompasses 85% of the world’s forests, vital for biodiversity and to soak up excess carbon from the atmosphere, and is backed by Brazil, Russia and China, countries often reluctant to make such promises.

But the US was clearly piqued at how little the relentless diplomacy of John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, had done to extract deeper emissions cuts from leading carbon polluters. Neither Russia’s Vladimir Putin nor China’s Xi Jinping, who both offered barely improved new targets at the talks, traveled to Glasgow. Biden’s frustration bubbled over as he prepared to depart on Tuesday.

“The fact that China is trying assert a new role in the world as a world leader, not showing up? Come on,” Biden said. “It’s just a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to have any leadership now? Same with Putin in Russia: his tundra is burning. Literally his tundra is burning. He has serious, serious climate problems and he’s mum on his willingness to do anything.”

The blame placed at Cop upon China, which is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, comes amid frayed US-China relations on several fronts. The Global Times, a newspaper run by China’s Communist party, said in an editorial that Washington’s attitude had made it “impossible for China to see any potential to have fair negotiation amid the tensions”.

Goldfuss said: “The blame game is not something the US should be really playing right now given we have so much work to do ourselves.”

Back home, Biden has acknowledged his presidency will probably be defined by the proposed reconciliation bill that contains $555bn in climate measures. The White House says the legislation would bring the country close to the president’s goal of cutting emissions in half this decade and help curb disastrous climate breakdown that is already unleashing severe heatwaves, floods and drought at home and around the world.

The far-reaching legislation needs every Democratic vote to pass the Senate but West Virginia’s Manchin has questioned its scope, said it is filled with “gimmicks” and has already ensured that a centerpiece plan to phase out fossil fuels from the American electricity grid was axed from the bill.

Democrats continue to fret over the fate of the bill, with a vote that could take place as early as this week, with Biden saying he is “confident we will get it done”. But climate campaigners say the president could do more without the help of Congress to stem the flow of fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis.

The opening week of Cop26 saw Biden’s administration announce it will sell off oil and gas drilling leases across 730,000 acres of the US west, with a further auction of 80m offshore acres of the Gulf of Mexico, an area larger than the UK, set to commence later this month. The International Energy Agency has said that no new fossil fuel projects can commence if the world is to keep to the agreed 1.5C warming limit.

“With all eyes on Glasgow this week, the Biden administration seems to be turning its back on reality and throwing climate leadership into the toilet,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians.

And we had to try one.

M. Smith@thatmatsmithNovember 3rd, 2021In this article: themorningafter, gear, newsletter

Roughly a year since announcing it, McDonald’s is ready to test its first plant-based burger. Ahead of its trial launch in the US today, I tasted the collaboration between Beyond Meat and the Golden Arches; although the version here in the UK is entirely vegan, with pea-protein-based ‘cheese,’ a vegan sauce subbing in for mayo and even a vegan-friendly sesame-seed bun.

The US take uses a slice of American cheese and proper mayo — though you can customize your order to avoid these. The plant-based patty will also be cooked alongside meat-based products, making it not entirely vegan. Given the cheese included, however, McDonald’s USA is positioning it more like a substitute item for people looking to reduce their meat intake. But how does it taste? You’ll have to read on.

— Mat Smith

NVIDIA Broadcast is kinda underrated

How your GPU might give your streams a leg up.

NVIDIA is tapping the potential of its own GPUs to do things beyond, well, graphics. Evolving from RTX Voice, which as the name implies, is a tool for upping your microphone skills, it quietly released Broadcast — a more comprehensive tool aimed squarely at streamers and content creators. Broadcast dabbles in both audio and video improvements, and James Trew has been testing it out. Expect to see his spin-off Twitch stream dedicated to the Atari Lynx very soon.

Continue reading: https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-plant-based-mc-donalds-burgers-are-here-113040739.html

James Lovelock

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/02/beware-gaia-theory-climate-crisis-earth

Covid-19 may well have been one attempt by the Earth to protect itself. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier

Tue 2 Nov 2021 08.00 EDT

937

I don’t know if it is too late for humanity to avert a climate catastrophe, but I am sure there is no chance if we continue to treat global heating and the destruction of nature as separate problems.

That is the wrongheaded approach of the United Nations, which is about to stage one big global conference for the climate in Glasgow, having just finished a different big global conference for biodiversity in Kunming.

This division is as much of a mistake as the error made by universities when they teach chemistry in a different class from biology and physics. It is impossible to understand these subjects in isolation because they are interconnected. The same is true of living organisms that greatly influence the global environment. The composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and the temperature of the surface is actively maintained and regulated by the biosphere, by life, by what the ancient Greeks used to call Gaia.Advertisementhttps://2b4f1362857ca54edba03a00a60b6d41.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Almost 60 years ago, I suggested our planet self-regulated like a living organism. I called this the Gaia theory, and was later joined by biologist Lynn Margulis, who also espoused this idea. Both of us were roundly criticised by scientists in academia. I was an outsider, an independent scientist, and the mainstream view then was the neo-Darwinist one that life adapts to the environment, not that the relationship also works in the other direction, as we argued. In the years since, we have seen just how much life – especially human life – can affect the environment. Two genocidal acts – suffocation by greenhouse gases and the clearance of the rainforests – have caused changes on a scale not seen in millions of years.

Because subjects like astronomy, geology, and meteorology are taught separately in schools and universities, few people are aware of the natural forces affecting the Earth’s surface temperature.

For billions of years the Earth’s surface temperature has been determined mainly by the radiant heat coming from the sun. This energy increased over time because it is the nature of stars like the sun to increase their heat output as they grow older. But temperatures on Earth remained relatively stable thanks to Gaia: forests, oceans and other elements in the the Earth’s regulating system, which kept the surface temperature fairly constant and near optimal for life.

The global warming that concerns all of us, and which will be discussed this week in Glasgow, includes a great deal of extra heating that comes as a consequence of extracting and burning fossil fuels since about the middle of the 19th century. That releases methane, carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere. They absorb radiant heat and stop it escaping from Earth. This is what causes global warming.

The amount of global warming depends hugely on the properties of water. When cold ice forms, much of it is white snow. This reflects the sunlight back to space and is cooling. But when it is warm, the water vapour in the air is a powerful greenhouse gas that makes it warmer still.

Much of the confusion over global heating comes about because of the huge quantities of heat needed to change the state of water. Few are aware that to melt a gram of ice takes 80 calories, enough heat to raise the temperature of 1ml of water to 80C. Try an ice cube in your boiling hot tea.

Then imagine how much heat was needed to melt large areas of the polar ice cap during the recent summer and how much hotter the world would have been if the ice had not been there. No wonder there is confusion about whether there is global heating or not.

Warnings that once seemed like the doom scenarios of science fiction are now coming to pass. We are entering into a heat age in which the temperature and sea levels will be rising decade by decade until the world becomes unrecognisable. We could also be in for more surprises. Nature is non-linear and unpredictable, never more than at a time of transition.

Lowering these risks and adapting to those we can no longer avoid will require a mobilisation of resources on the scale of a war economy. We have no choice but to reduce the burning of fossil fuels or face even worse consequences.

But we should also not become over-reliant on renewable power, which will leave us with an energy gap. We need to build more nuclear power stations to overcome that, though the greens will first have to get over their overblown fears of radiation.

The dangers are nowhere near as bad as they are often painted. I’ve travelled millions of miles by air, and all that time I have been exposed to levels of radiation that are ten times as great as at ground level. The dangers are exaggerated.

We also need to address the problem of overpopulation and to urgently halt the destruction of tropical forests. Most of all, we need to look at the world in a holistic way.

I am not hopeful of a positive outcome at Cop26, knowing who is participating. I was not invited to Glasgow, though that is hardly a surprise. As well as being 102 years old, I am an independent scientist, and the university academics have never been comfortable with that.

But my fellow humans must learn to live in partnership with the Earth, otherwise the rest of creation will, as part of Gaia, unconsciously move the Earth to a new state in which humans may no longer be welcome. The virus, Covid-19, may well have been one negative feedback. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier.

• James Lovelock is the originator of Gaia theory and the author, most recently, of Novascene. This op-ed was told to Jonathan Watts, the Guardian’s global environment editor