People walk along a boardwalk to salt flats at Badwater Basin, Sunday, July 16, 2023, in Death Valley National Park, Calif. Death Valley’s brutal temperatures come amid a blistering stretch of hot weather that has put roughly one-third of Americans under some type of heat advisory, watch or warning. (AP Photo/John Locher)
UpdatedSun, July 16, 2023 at 7:10 PM PDT·6 min read
DEATH VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — Long the hottest place on Earth, Death Valley put a sizzling exclamation point Sunday on arecord warmsummer that is baking nearly the entire globe by flirting with some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded, meteorologists said.
Temperatures in Death Valley, which runs along part of central California’s border with Nevada, reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit (53.33 degrees Celsius) on Sunday at the aptly named Furnace Creek…
A little-known group meeting in Jamaica is causing big waves this month as it considers new rules that could open the seafloor to industrial-scale mining for precious metals used in electric car batteries and other green technology.
The possibility of a gold rush at the bottom of the sea is keeping some oceanographers up at night.
“We don’t know what’s down there. We don’t know the ecosystems. We don’t know the damage that could be done,” said Douglas McCauley, a professor of ocean science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
No sunlight ever reaches the abyssal zone that would be mined and temperatures never rise above 39 degrees. Even at those depths, the ocean floor teems with life. It’s slow-growing and often small but it is there – and some of it glows.
“Life down there operates like it’s on a different planet,” said McCauley. Because the environment is so cold and dark “the clock of life ticks more slowly.” Some of the organisms that have been documented are among the oldest on the planet, including corals that are more than 4,000 years old.
Some environmental groups say ocean floor mining could have catastrophic consequences for a vast number of critical ecosystems we know very little about – including marine food chains that feed hundreds of millions of people.
But it’s been known for decades that the sea floor also holds important mineral resources. Mining companies say without the critical metals and minerals, transitioning to green energy will be impossible and doom efforts to stop climate change.
Here’s what to know about deep sea mining – and why you might be hearing more about it soon.
Robots would prospect the area to determine where to mine. That reconnaissance would be aimed at doing as little damage as possible, said Jamal Rostami, a professor of mining engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
“The reality is you have to explore the site very thoroughly before you even send the first robot. The chance of running into the Titanic when you’re mining is next to zero,” he said. “The key issue at this point is to understand the ecosystem and the environment so you don’t accidentally do something stupid and destroy it.”
Once a site was chosen, specially hardened mining equipment would be lowered down, trailing miles-long cables to provide the power necessary to pick up the ore and crush it to a manageable size.
Some companies have suggested vacuuming material off the seabed with massive pumps. One, Impossible Metals, says it will use artificial intelligence to have remote robots selectively pluck metal-rich nodules off the seafloor while minimizing habitat destruction.
What’s happening with deep sea mining this summer?
The International Seabed Authority – the United Nations body that regulates the bottom of all the world’s oceans – has been discussing deep sea mining-related rules for years.
The first deadline to complete regulations fell on July 9, meaning countries and companies are theoretically now allowed to start applying for provisional mining licenses. The authority has issued more than 30 exploration licenses but no provisional licenses – so far.
Global leaders are meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, to try to hammer out agreements on what this would look like. These could include requiring regional environmental management plans, environmental monitoring, liability and environmental compensation funds and evaluation of applications from mining companies. On Friday, Brazil urged a 10-year precautionary pause on deep sea mining in international waters.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” said Juan José González, the authority’s council president.
Here are a few reasons these decisions are so important right now:
Valuable minerals and metals: The price of minerals and metals critical to the transition to green energy is rising. Some of those minerals and metals, including copper, lithium and nickel, are found at the ocean bottom.
Advancing technology: The technology to mine them is on the cusp of being available and economical.
Mining interest: At least one firm, The Metals Company of Canada, and several nations are pushing to begin prospecting. Other nations and companies are calling for bans or moratoriums on such mining.
The main focus area for deep sea mining is currently in what’s known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area that spans more than 3,100 miles between Hawaii and Mexico at depths of between 12,000 and 18,000 feet.
But there are environmental arguments on both sides. Mining companies say without the critical metals and minerals, transitioning to green energy could be a doomed effort.
A total of 167 nations are part of the International Seabed Authority, but not the United States because it has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and so is not a member, though it is observing in Jamaica.
Some companies see big potential at the bottom of the ocean
The current push towards deep sea mining is being driven by the belief that prices for these materials is going to continue rising.
Gerard Barron – CEO of The Metals Company, the company furthest along in pursuing this form of mining – said this week that to solve the planet’s biggest challenge, climate change, a new supply of these metals is critical.
“And I’d like to ask people, if not this, then what?” he said.
Investors seem to think ocean floor mining will be great because there are no environmental issues as no one lives there, said Ian Lange, director of the mineral and energy economics program at the Colorado School of Mines.
He disputed the notion that critical metals and minerals were in short supply from land-based systems. The real problem, he said, is environmental concerns at terrestrial mining sites.
But those urging caution point out that many creatures live in the deep seabed, including microbes, sea worms, mollusks, octopuses, other-worldly fish species, coral and the adorable Casper octopus. Very little is known about them in part because the environment is so hostile that studying it is expensive and difficult.
Just one concern: Plumes of silt kicked in the mining process. These could blanket large areas of pristine ocean floor that has never been roiled by storms or currents, said McCauley.
“It’s very, very clear water, which means the species are not at all designed to interact with sediment and waste,” he said. “They’d get fouled and suffocated very easily.”
This paper seeks to explicate sound reasons for comprehensive reform of the Ohio Division of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife (ODOW) based on the principles set forth in “A Conservation Institution for the 21st Century: Implications for State Wildlife Agencies,” co-authored by Cynthia A. Jacobson, as well as independent, scientific research and observation by Lucy McKernan concerning Ohio white-tailed deer.
In the Abstract of their Commentary, Jacobson, et al. wrote, “The wildlife conservation institution (Institution) needs to reform to maintain legitimacy and relevancy in the 21st century.”
Jacobson, et al. nailed it when they wrote the “Institution” (our current model) is tied to old school conservation assumptions such as hunting as population control. They specifically pointed out that “ . . . the Institution largely remains anchored to a paradigm (i.e., philosophy, assumptions, and related practices) that…
As part of a push to “sinicize” religion, the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a 10-year project to rewrite the Bible and other religious texts.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus famously confronts the accusers a woman caught committing adultery, saying “let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her.”
The chastened accusers slink away and Jesus says to the woman, “‘Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, sir,’ she replied. ‘Neither do I condemn you,’ said Jesus. ‘Go away, and from this moment sin no more.'”
Unless you’re a CCP official. Then it’s a story of a dissident challenging the authority of the state. A possible sneak preview of what a Bible with socialist characteristics might look like appeared in a Chinese university textbook in 2020. The rewritten Gospel of John excerpt ends, not with mercy, but with Jesus himself stoning the adulterous woman to death.
Across Henan province, local CCP officials forced Protestant churches to replace the Ten Commandments with Xi Jinping quotes. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” became diktats like: “Resolutely guard against the infiltration of Western ideology.”
The 10-year project to rewrite the Bible, Quran and other sacred texts is all part of Xi Jinping’s quest to make the faithful serve the party rather than God.
At the 19th Party Congress, Chairman Xi declared “We will… insist on the sinicization of Chinese religions, and provide active guidance for religion and socialism to coexist.”
Gordon, before we get into this,
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Xi Jinping is trying reassert totalitarianism in China: Gordon ChangUnmute
Let me translate: Xi Jinping has no problem with the first commandment, just so long as he and the CCP are playing the role of God.
You might expect the Vatican, the leaders of the largest Christian congregation in the world, to be incensed and defiant. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.
In a secret 2018 negotiation, the Vatican agreed to allow the CCP to select Catholic bishops in China, supposedly in exchange for vague reassurances of “safety” for some Catholic congregations which were immediately abrogated.
The CCP wants the authority to select the next Dalai Lama, a sacred tradition in Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhists are attempting to stand up to CCP coercion, but Beijing counters that even Pope Francis, leader of the mighty Catholic Church, accepts their authority over Church leadership.
Religion’s power is tantalizing to the CCP — what better demonstration of party supremacy than bringing global religions to heel?
The PRC constitution states that citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief,” but, of course, the CCP’s definition of “freedom” bears a much closer resemblance to what we’d call oppression.
The United Front Work Department manages religious affairs in China because religion is a tool to be coerced, co-opted and corrupted to advance party goals and, once harnessed, control people’s minds.
Only five faiths are officially recognized. Less-established faiths face even more intense persecution. The Falun Gong remains an unfamiliar spiritual practice to many outside China, but that does not make their suffering at the hands of the CCP any less real.
progress your administration has made in maintaining a relationship with
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Biden stands by calling Xi a ‘dictator’ after comment angers ChinaUnmute
The State Department estimated that at times half of the population of China’s “Reeducation through Labor” camps, or modern gulags, were Falun Gong adherents. Thousands were tortured to death and there have been widespread reports of on-demand organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners.
But it is in Tibet and Xinjiang that we see the CCP’s unsanitized, brutal attitude toward religion. While other faiths are persecuted throughout China, Buddhists and Muslims in the far west of the country are facing, quite simply, the attempted annihilation of their faith and, in some cases, their population.
The CCP is committing genocide, the crime above all crimes, in Xinjiang while some of the world’s religious leaders, like Pope Francis, barely murmur a word in opposition.
Tahir Hamut Izgil, a Uyghur poet, described in The Atlantic how the PRC government “had required all Uyghurs there to hand over any religious items they held … religious books, prayer rugs, prayer beads, articles of clothing. Some were unwilling to part with their Qurans, but with neighbors and even relatives betraying one another, those who kept them were quickly found out, detained, and harshly punished.”
One Uyghur woman related to Freedom House that “[n]ow the rule is, if I go to your house, read some Quran, pray together, and the government finds out, you go to jail.” Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, summed it up: “The [Chinese] government’s religious restrictions are now so stringent that it has effectively outlawed the practice of Islam.”
The CCP is also perpetrating a slow-motion cultural genocide across China’s west and north, targeting the Muslim and Buddhist faiths and the identities of the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Kyrgiz, southern Mongolians, and other ethno-religious minority groups.
Buddhist statues are bulldozed. Monasteries are gutted. Mosques are destroyed. Children are forcibly separated from families and packed off to colonial boarding schools where religion and native languages are often forbidden.
Yet, even under intense persecution, faith persists throughout China and the number of faithful grows. In my work in Congress, I’ve heard unthinkable stories of religious oppression. But I’ve also listened to accounts of underground churches, brave clergy, and steadfast believers every bit as courageous as saints of the early Church.
While Chairman Mao called religion “poison,” I’ve come to believe that the CCP’s blood-stained record of religious persecution is actually just a battle within their broader ongoing war on the human spirit, on our very capacity to reach for something higher.
The CCP wishes for there to be nothing higher than their authority, and views love for anything besides their Marxist-Leninist regime with vicious jealousy.
In an interview with The Guardian, the pastor of one Chinese church stated, “In this war, in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man.” The pastor ended with an assessment that we must make come true: “[The PRC rulers] are doomed to lose.”
“Mindy” is a simulated model of what the human body will look like in the year 3000.//Credit-Author-Toll-Free-Forwarding-Dot-Com
The look of humans in the Year 3000 is a projection that seems familiar. Nevertheless, the research is exploring a new look for humans in more ways than one.
Some scientists and experts believe humanity is evolvinganddevolving. That means that humanity will either adapt to its environment as a species or decline and deformity.
People’s complexion is not under inspection and though the model is not particularly dark, the human body’s future may be in more ways than one.
From 1978 to 1982, an American situation comedy,Mork and Mindy, brought down to Colorado a creature that was only partially human. More was played by the late great comedian Robin Williams andMindy by Pam…
Hydractinia, a strange, tube-shaped animal that lives on the shells of crabs, is completely immune to aging. However, the exact reasons that these immortal sea creatures are immune to aging have always baffled scientists. Now, though, new research seems to have finally given us an answer. According to the new study, which is published in Cell Reports, Hydractinia can actually use aging to grow a completely new body.
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This development gives scientists a much better understanding of how these immortal creatures continue to live on, even when they probably should have died. According to Newsweek, Charles Rotimo, co-author of the paper and the director of the Intramural Research Program at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), says studies like these can open new doors to our understanding of how aging in the human body works.
Previously, scientists discovered that Hydractinia have special stem cells that it uses to regenerate tissue within its body. These stem cells are capable of changing and transforming into any type of cell found within the creature’s body. More specialized cells, like those found in muscle and heart tissue, can’t do this. This is what allows the immortal sea creatures to grow new body parts.
The researchers continued to dig deeper, discovering that one particular set of genes seems to be related to the immortality of this weird little creature. These genes allow the creature to take part in “senescence,” which essentially allows it to repair and regrow body parts. They found that when this set of genes was removed, the Hydractinia were unable to regrow body parts and regenerate new stem cells.
The hope is that better understanding how creatures like the Hydractinia, and even other creatures that utilize similar methods to regrow body parts and repair damage, will help us understand how our own cells age and perhaps help us find a way to slow down aging.
Jul. 15—State wildlife managers are considering increased hunting limits for black bears and cougars in New Mexico, citing research that indicates their populations are growing in some areas of New Mexico.
The state Game and Fish Department will hold meetings in Albuquerque, Roswell, Las Cruces and Raton this week to gather public comment on whether the hunting limits should be raised to manage the populations.
Opening bears and cougars to more hunting is often a contentious issue throughout the West, with conservationists decrying the increased killing of animals they say are vital to the ecosystem while ranchers generally support the effort to thin the number of predators that might attack their herds.
Although the agency doesn’t mention ranchers in its proposal, they are almost always a consideration when a state looks to kill…
Fish and Wildlife is attempting to grab the otter so she can be moved to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Monterey Bay Aquarium says their plan is to capture the sea otter, reexamine and rehome it at another aquarium.
Woodward said that Fish and Wildlife was unable to grab 841 on Saturday even though photos show them coming within feet of the otter.
While 841 has reportedly been connected to surfer interactions for years, it wasn’t until June of 2023 that the pirate was caught on camera pirating surfboards. Police in Santa Cruz say 841 has had at least four encounters this summer with surfers and is known to bite, scratch and get on top of surfboards.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife told KSBW 8 that even if the otter was to bite a surfer, they would still attempt to capture and rehome her.
“Euthanasia would not be under consideration,” said Ashley McConnell with the agency, even if the otter becomes more aggressive.
Thanks to a successful court challenge by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, over 10,000 acres of grizzly bear habitat in northwestern Montana will not be decimated by commercial logging.
In late June, our lawsuit in a federal district court in Montana halted a large-scale logging project in endangered grizzly bear habitat to protect the small, isolated and imperiled Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear population from further harm.
The Ripley logging project authorized almost 17 square miles of commercial logging (10,854 acres) on publicly-owned national forest lands, including roughly 5 square miles of clearcuts (3,223 acres). By the Forest Service’s own estimate, the project would cost federal taxpayers $643,000 to implement since receipts from the commercial timber sales do not cover the cost of the post-logging ecological remediation.
The court ruled the project is illegal because the government did not analyze the…
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Exposing the Big Game 