Biden campaign launches abortion ad in Arizona days after court ruling
The Biden-Harris team are doing a great job prioritizing how to spend all the money we’ve been donating to them. They got this ad up only two days after the appalling AZ Supreme Court ruling.
From Arizona’s Family:
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign launched a new abortion ad on Thursday targeting Arizona voters two days after the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated a Civil War-era law that bans nearly all abortions.
The 30-second spot, called “Power Back,” features the president blasting Donald Trump for appointing U.S. Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“Because of Donald Trump, millions of women lost the fundamental freedom to control their own bodies,” Biden said while he looked directly into the camera. “I will fight like hell to get your freedom back.”
The seven-figure ad buy will run on Arizona television, cable and digital media platforms through the end of April, according to a statement from the Biden campaign.
Biden plans to expand two national monuments in California
🎩 to the indefatigable T Maysle for mentioning this story in a comment on Friday.
President Biden created a marvelous win-win here: protecting some gorgeous wild areas and giving inner-city residents a closer connection to nature. As chloris creator noted in a reply to T Maysle: “I love how this administration notices those who are ‘park-deprived’! Greenery is important for both physical and mental health.”
From The Washington Post (gift link):
San Gabriel Mountains
President Biden plans to expand the boundaries of two national monuments in California in the coming weeks, aiming to bolster his conservation record and increase access to nature for disadvantaged communities, according to two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Biden is expected to sign proclamations expanding the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, both of which were originally designated by President Barack Obama, the two people said. The exact timing and location of the announcement have not yet been finalized, although it could coincide with Earth Day on April 22, they said. ✂️
Conservation groups, Native American tribes and California lawmakers have all called on Biden to expand these monuments. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) have championed legislation to enlarge the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, east of Los Angeles, but the measure has stalled in the divided Congress. Biden plans to use his executive authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to bypass the gridlock on Capitol Hill. ✂️
“The San Gabriel Mountains are among the most pristine and beautiful public lands in the country, with more visitors annually than Yellowstone, and they are right next to one of the nation’s densest and most park-deprived population centers,” Chu said in an emailed statement.
And finally, all these good policy decisions look like they’re increasing voters’ support for the President. Of course, take these polling numbers with the usual heap of salt.
Biden sees highest approval rating since November
From The Hill:
President Biden saw his highest approval rating since November on Monday, ticking up to 43 percent.
A new poll from the Financial Times and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business that found Biden’s approval rating at 43 percent marks a 4-point increase from the same poll in March.
The poll also found that 41 percent of registered voters approved of his handling of the economy, which was a 5-point increase from March. ✂️
The new poll was conducted April 4-8 and included 1,010 registered voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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The media messing up
Today we have examples from WaPo and the NYTimes. Shame on both of ‘em!
It’s good to see that Kossacks are paying attention to these media mess-ups.
Disgraceful: WaPo explains why the economy “revving up” is “terrible” for Biden
By davidkc on Daily Kos:
Once again we have the mainstream media lazily trying to continue a narrative that the economy is a problem for Biden. If there are weak economic numbers, it’s bad for Biden. If there are strong economic numbers, it’s bad for Biden.
The latest example is the pathetic front page headline in today’s Washington Post: The economy, and inflation, are revving up at a terrible time for Biden. [Note: WaPo changed the headline later to “Strong economy can be double-edged sword for Biden if rates stay high” — probably after seeing pushback from readers.]
The article starts by pointing out that there are “unexpectedly strong job growth, wages and consumer spending” right now. Sounds good, right? But no, WaPo cries that these numbers come at a “terrible time” for Biden and are “bad luck” for him.
WaPo’s key point for trying to explain that these numbers are “terrible” for Biden is that they prevent inflation from dropping. Yes, inflation went up by a small 0.3% in March, but WaPo describes this blip with overblown language like “inflation revving up” and “ inflation heating back up.”
Nevermind that inflation is down from 9.1% in June 2022. Nevermind that inflation was higher at similar points in President Bill Clinton’s and President Ronald Reagan’s tenures, when year-on-year inflation was at 3.6% and 4.8%, respectively, and both went on to win reelection. Nevermind that, as WaPo points out, that “so far Americans have been more than happy to splurge on services like dining out, travel and hotel stays, despite inflation.” Nevermind that, as WaPo also points out, “big-ticket items like cars, furniture and appliances, have actually gotten cheaper in the past year.” Still, the newspaper decided to cast all of this in an extremely negative framing for Biden. That’s an intentional and manipulative choice, imho.
The New York Times Does it Again.
“Beyond satire” is precisely right.
By sharecare on Daily Kos:
And here is the pitchbot mocking the headline. Because some things are beyond satire.
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Good news from my corner of the world
Salinas, USDA meet with Oregon farmers to talk renewable energy development
Andrea Salinas is a terrific Rep. who really does work tirelessly for her constituents. I love her focus here: “How do we make sure that these growers thrive, that they do have multiple sources of income, and that we’re meeting our climate goals?” BTW, her likeliest R opponent in November is Mike Erickson, a notorious loser who has run three times and been beaten each time.
From Oregon Capital Chronicle:
On the heels of U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas announcing that five Oregon farms will receive money from the federal government for solar energy projects, other farmers told Salinas and representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that they’ll need more aid to move away from fossil fuels.
Salinas and USDA officials met Friday with about a dozen farmers, electric cooperative utilities managers and rural leaders... . The gathering, billed as a discussion about climate resilience and renewable energy, quickly became one about the economics of moving Oregon farms and plant nurseries off fossil fuels for the health of the planet and to save them money while harnessing those farmlands and buildings as sources of renewable energy and extra revenue.
“89% of farms need off-farm income, just to make them make a living,” said Andrew Berke, an administrator for USDA’s Rural Utilities Service who attended the roundtable. “How can we make sure that the farm is the second job, rather than somebody having to go off the farm to get the second job?” The answer, for many of the farmers present,was to develop renewable energy projects on agricultural land.
Salinas, a Democrat who represents the 6th Congressional District and serves on the House Committee on Agriculture, called the roundtable a “triple-bottom-line kind of discussion… How do we make sure that these growers thrive, that they do have multiple sources of income, and that we’re meeting our climate goals?” she asked.
One way to help, she said, was through five new solar energy projects USDA will fund on farms in Oregon this spring, on top of 38 projects the agency funded last year through its Rural Energy for America Program.
Activists protest in trees, file lawsuit to block old growth logging on BLM land
I like this approach: tree-sitting to get publicity, lawsuits to force transparency and get policy changes.
From Oregon Capital Chronicle:
A coalition of environmental groups and regional activists are attempting to stop the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from allowing old growth trees to be logged in southern Oregon by waging a complaint in court and sitting in trees slated to be cut. On [April 1], activists from the environmental group Pacific Northwest Forest Defense climbed high into several Douglas fir trees in a 10,000-acre forested area near Grants Pass. The bureau...has sold more than 2,200 acres in it to six companies to log. Activists say some of the trees due to be harvested are up to 400 years old.
The protest comes a week after Oregon Wild in Portland and Eugene, Ashland-based Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and Eugene-based Cascadia Wildlands filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Medford against the federal bureau for allowing “heavy commercial logging” in another southern Oregon area...that has old growth trees and acreage designated as a Late Successional Reserve. The designation is meant to protect old growth trees from being logged and to allow mature trees to become old growth stands. The area is also home to threatened and endangered species, the complaint said.
Sarah Bennett, a spokesperson for the bureau in Oregon and Washington, said it is rare for officials to allow the sale of acreage with old growth trees and that environmental assessments have shown both contested harvest areas are low-risk for habitat destruction. “We are committed to protecting trees above the age and diameter limits established,” she said in an email. “Generally, those that are greater than 36 inches in diameter and established prior to 1850.”
George Sexton, conservation director of Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, said the bureau is being dishonest. “BLM is saying we don’t log old growth trees. Well, they (protestors) are sitting in old-growth trees that the BLM wants to log,” he said.
Sexton said allowing old growth trees to be cut is contrary to the Biden administration’s recent executive order to end old-growth logging on public lands by 2025. “The BLM should be implementing Biden’s executive order to protect old growth forests, and if the BLM wants to log those trees, the very least they should do is stop lying about it.”
Oregon’s art groups get a $52M boost to revive after pandemic shutdowns
This lifeline for Oregon’s arts community comes at a critical time.
From Oregon Public Broadcasting:
Arts and culture organizations — still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic — will see a major infusion of cash over the next three years, thanks to a plan by Oregon’s two largest arts donors and politicians. The Oregon Community Foundation and the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation have joined with the state Legislature to provide a combined $52 million for the arts. ✂️
Exhibitions, performances and other live art gatherings experienced seismic drops in attendance during the height of the pandemic, and the sector has been slow to revitalize.
Over the last year alone, Portland Opera announced plans to sell its headquarters to pay debts; the Artists Repertory Theatre suspended performances due to a lack of money; and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival launched a fundraiser to save its season.
Arts leaders told politicians about diminished ticket sales during this year’s legislative session and in response, lawmakers approved $11.8 million to be distributed among arts organizations. “Oregon legislators took a major step toward building back the vibrancy of the arts in Oregon,” [Lisa] Mensah [the president of the Oregon Community Foundation] said. “They’re not settling for merely ‘keeping the lights on’ and neither are we. Arts are essential to what makes Oregon, Oregon.”
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Good news from around the nation
Florida loses legal bid to resume wetlands permitting
According to commentary in the Florida Phoenix, the EPA under TFG had allowed Florida to skirt endangered species laws using “a blanket statement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the state’s permits wouldn’t threaten the future existence of any of Florida’s more than 100 imperiled species.” That’s the sleazy permitting that has now been halted.
From E&E News:
Florida’s wetlands permitting program will remain on ice after a federal judge Friday ruled against the state Department of Environmental Protection’s bid to retain authority over some permit applications.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss halted the program in February, ruling that EPA had erred in handing Clean Water Act permitting authority over to the state without sufficiently analyzing the impact it would have on endangered species. But he had left open in that ruling the possibility that the state could temporarily retain control over permit applications that didn’t involve species listed under the 1973 law.
Florida requested a limited stay of the ruling, but the Department of Justice opposed the move, arguing it would be unduly burdensome even just to figure out how to divvy up the workload. In his Friday ruling, Moss agreed.
Connecticut To Make Insurance Companies That Enable Fossil Fuel Projects Foot Bill For Climate Disasters
It’s past time to hold insurance companies fully accountable for enabling fossil fuel projects.
From Insure Our Future:
[On March 15], the Connecticut General Assembly Environment Committee voted to approve the Governor’s Climate Resiliency bill (SB11) with an amendment that advances a climate resiliency fund to support communities in Connecticut harmed by extreme weather disasters fueled by climate chaos. The measure instructs the Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection to propose by the end of the year how the new fund would be financed with a surcharge on insurers’ policies offered to fossil fuel projects.
The exact language of the clause reads:
Sec. 35. (Effective from passage) Not later than January 1, 2025, the Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection, in consultation with the Insurance Commissioner, shall submit a report, in accordance with the provisions of section 11-4a of the general statutes, to the joint standing committee of the General Assembly having cognizance of matters relating to the environment on the requirements to create a climate resiliency fund that is funded by a surcharge on insurance policies issued in this state for property damage, general liability, business interruption, and any other form of business loss or similar mechanism in relation to fossil fuel projects.
Such report shall include, but not be limited to, an inventory of relevant fossil fuel projects, recommendations for structuring any such assessment and fund, and mechanisms to ensure maximum compliance with such assessment. For purposes of this section, ‘fossil fuel project’ means any project intended to facilitate or expand the exploration, extraction, processing, exporting, transporting other than by truck storage, or any other significant action with respect to oil, natural gas or coal and includes, but is not limited to, the construction of any infrastructure related to such activities including, but not limited to, wells, pipelines, terminals, refineries or utility-scale generation Facilities.
A coalition of climate activists attended an Environmental Advocacy Day at the State Capitol today, where they met with legislators to advocate for a number of bills, including the Governor’s Climate Resiliency bill.
Tom Swan Executive Director of Connecticut Citizen Action Group: “This is a huge opportunity for Connecticut to establish itself as a leader in holding the fossil fuel and insurance industry accountable for their roles in fomenting climate destruction. … Polluters must pay for the damage they cause, and the insurance industry’s duplicity has gone under the radar for far too long.”
Could Colorado's political journalism be the best in the nation in 2024?
The concept of a “news collaborative” is brilliant. I hope this model takes hold all over the country.
From Inside the News in Colorado:
More than two dozen Colorado newsrooms have launched an unprecedented collaboration to better cover the 2024 elections. Led by the Colorado News Collaborative, also known as COLab, the statewide initiative, called Voter Voices 2024, is the latest recognition that lazy political coverage is failing the electorate.
At newsrooms large and small across the country, insider, horse-race coverage of elections that prioritizes process and personality is, more and more, dissolving in favor of something more meaningful. That’s a commitment to serious, thoughtful reporting on the real-world stakes about what would actually happen to the everyday lives of residents if one candidate wins over another. And it comes with prioritizing issues voters want to hear about over what candidates are saying.
Examples of cut-rate political coverage, which is easy and quick to do, include uncritical publicity of internal campaign polls, focusing on process and campaign strategy, context-free some-say-this-some-say-that dreck, and stenographic write-ups about the latest campaign ad to hit the airwaves.
A better form of political journalism has been taking root, proselytized by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen with his “Citizens Agenda” approach to covering U.S. elections. In Colorado, the new collaboration announced this week is “without precedent in the history of the citizens agenda approach to campaign coverage, which goes back to 1990-92,” Rosen said in responding to the news.
Megan Verlee at Colorado Public Radio has the background:
Newsrooms across Colorado are teaming up and embarking on an effort to reach out to voters and learn what they want candidates to focus on, the issues they are most concerned with in this election, and how much trust they have — or don’t — in the system itself. …
The organizations participating in Voter Voices are large and small, urban, suburban and rural. Many of us are long standing-competitors, whose reporters compete every day for audience and stories. But at this moment, when the political landscape is as divided as it’s ever been and finding common ground is increasingly rare, all of us are committed to working together to ensure that the concerns of Coloradans, not the talking points of politicians, drive our election coverage.
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Good news from around the world
There’s a better way to make communities safer — and it’s taking off around the world
In my first job after college, I worked as a researcher/editor at an educational publishing firm, and in the course of that job I read the work of several “futurists.” One of them made a suggestion that stuck with me — i.e., that socio-cultural forces behave a lot like physical forces in Newtonian physics, meaning that a push in one direction will prompt an equal and opposite push back. The push toward increasing armed police presence to prevent crime is being challenged by a movement around the world for nonviolent protection and accompaniment.
From Waging Nonviolence:
Although largely unreported, a growing number of creative and courageous people are building community safety from the ground up without introducing more violence. And a complementary infrastructure of research, training and communication is emerging to support their work. ✂️
According to a database kept by Selkirk College, there are currently 61 civil society organizations providing nonviolent protection and accompaniment in 30 areas of the world. And that’s just the groups that they know about. Many more groups are doing this work in communities, neighborhoods, barangays and barrios around the globe.
Huibert Oldenhuis, Nonviolent Peaceforce’s global head of programming, has observed that the growth is more of a scaling out than scaling up. “By scaling out autonomous initiatives that are locally driven but globally connected, we preserve the adaptive power and nimbleness of UCP/A and facilitate locally driven responses.”
These groups are now forming a UCP/A [Unarmed Civilian Protection/Accompaniment] Community of Practice, which met for the first time in Geneva last October. They are sharing training and lessons learned, as well as common struggles like decolonizing their work, ecological violence and the spreading of rumors and hate speech on social media.
The United Nations has started to recognize that peacekeeping can be done without guns. In 2015, an independent panel on peace operations convened by the U.N. made the groundbreaking recommendation that “unarmed strategies must be at the forefront of U.N. efforts to protect civilians.” Since then, more than two dozen U.N. policies, recommendations and resolutions have recognized unarmed approaches for the protection of civilians. Ten U.N. agencies have also since funded UCP/A projects.
Canada Announces $600 Million Effort to Fund New Construction Technology
Smart housing policy from Canada.
From Built Worlds:
[On April 2]...the Ottawa administration promoted a $600 million mix of investment funds and loans designed to encourage modular and other technologies that will allow the industry to “build more homes, faster.”On top of a $6 billion housing infrastructure fund announced a couple days earlier, the administration published a webpage outlining its effort aimed at “unlocking housing construction and launching Canada Builds.” The aim of this program is “bold action to build more homes, faster, improve access to housing and make homes more affordable.”
In particular, the administration intends to spur construction of tens of thousands of new apartment units over the next decade. Recognizing the pressure this increased building activity could create on construction pricing where labor supplies are already tight, the government is also trying to implement measures to promote new ways of building that will hopefully lower construction costs while improving quality. ✂️
In its effort to build faster and cheaper, the Canadian government seems willing to invest in a broad range of approaches. Among the types of solutions named are “prefabricated housing factories, mass timber production, panelization, 3D printing and pre-approved home design catalogues.” The latter initiative refers to a previously established program inspired by a similar post-World War II effort to create a series of standard housing prototypes pre-approved for construction. Additionally, Canada has provided $38 million to promote green construction through wood, $13.5 million to promote more standardized and streamlined building codes, and $191.8 million to promote new, lower carbon materials.
The announcement of the Canadian fund is significant, and it is just the latest example of how governments around the world are increasingly investing in construction technology. The government of Singapore has established a $250 million construction productivity and capability fund. The government of Japan has established a $13 billion green innovation fund to invest in promising technologies including technologies in the housing materials and construction sector.
With construction now more than a $14 trillion industry with costs growing at an average annual rate of about 5 percent per year, new technology will have to prove out savings of nearly a trillion dollars a year just to arrest the annual increases.
Destructive Gold Miners Work Overtime to Restore Thousands of Acres of Amazon Rainforest
I love stories about workers in industries that harm the environment becoming advocates for healing the planet. That has happened here in the Northwest, where some former loggers have become environmental activists.
From Good News Network:
In the Madre de Dios region of southern Peru, small, artisanal gold mines and the miners that work them have become a source of inspiring environmental work. Once slashing and burning tens of thousands of acres of jungle in search of gold which they extracted with mercury, they’re now focused on restoring the land they excavated by planting a biodiverse rainforest—and swapping the toxic mercury for more sanitary methods of mining.
Behind the project is the environmental NGO Pure Earth which sought to achieve with a delicate touch what local and national governments failed to achieve with aggressive legislation and police raids. Realizing that the miners, despite coming mostly from the Andes regions, took no pleasure in the clearing of pristine tropical rainforest, and that even after the price of gold skyrocketed following the 2008 Financial Crisis, they were operating on “a lot of stick but not much carrot,” Pure Earth gradually gained their trust enough to set up a pilot program.
“It feels good to see the forest grow back,” Pedro Ynfantes, a 66-year-old miner whose legal mining concession of 1,110 acres included a 10-acre patch of land for the pilot program, told NPR. “We don’t want to deforest. When we had the opportunity to let the forest grow back, we took it. It’s much better this way.”
There are dozens of understory and canopy species growing now in Ynfantes’ land, each tagged with scientific and local names in order to raise just a little bit the collective sense of knowledge and responsibility the miners have while operating in the mighty Amazon. ✂️
Recently, Pure Earth helped four artisanal and small-scale gold mining communities in Madre de Dios achieve the internationally-recognized Fairmined Certification, which proves their mining efforts are minimally damaging to the environment and human health by pairing their reforestation efforts with a switch away from using mercury to extract gold.
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Good news in medicine
New Blood Test Promises Hope for Pancreatic Cancer
A diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is usually a death sentence, because it takes so many years for symptoms to appear, so this is truly miraculous news.
From WebMD:
Researchers are getting closer to being able to reliably screen for pancreatic cancer by conducting tests on a person’s blood.
Preliminary results were presented [last] week at a cancer research conference in California and showed that a type of blood test called a “liquid biopsy” was key to achieving a 97% accuracy rate at diagnosing the most common type of pancreatic cancer during early stages.
Currently, it’s difficult to diagnose pancreatic cancer during early, more treatable stages and is often only discovered after the disease has advanced, making treatment more difficult. ✂️
The study, which included 523 people with pancreatic cancer and 461 healthy people, combined two existing blood tests to achieve the high rate of accuracy. The liquid biopsy, which detects particles shed by tumors, can link the particles back to where the tissue originated in the body, such as the pancreas.
The liquid biopsy alone has previously been shown to be between 88% and 93% accurate, according to a news release from City of Hope. But when researchers added information from a blood biomarker test, diagnostic accuracy increased to detecting 97% of stage I or stage II pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
'Virtual Biopsy' Tests Skin Lesions Without a Scalpel
Another amazing medical breakthrough.
From US News:
Folks with a suspicious-looking mole or questionable skin lesion often have to endure a scalpel or shaver so their doctor can cut off a sample to send in for biopsy. But a new, noninvasive “virtual biopsy” might soon allow doctors to instead scan the spot to determine if it contains any cancer cells, researchers at Stanford Medicine report.
The new method, which measures how light waves from a laser bounce off human tissue, works in much the same way as ultrasound uses sound waves to visualize organs, researchers said. And while it will be useful in dermatology, the new scan could also help doctors detect cancer in other ways, they added.
For example, surgeons could use the scan during breast cancer surgery to make sure they’ve removed all of a tumor, rather than waiting on a pathologist to analyze the tissue later.
“We’ve not only created something that can replace the current gold-standard pathology slides for diagnosing many conditions, but we actually improved the resolution of these scans so much that we start to pick up information that would be extremely hard to see otherwise,” said senior researcher Adam de la Zerda, an associate professor of structural biology at Stanford.
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Good news in science
Novel hydrogel removes microplastics from water
Getting rid of microplastics is an urgent need, and this approach looks promising.
From Phys.org:
Microplastics pose a great threat to human health. These tiny plastic debris can enter our bodies through the water we drink and increase the risk of illnesses. They are also an environmental hazard; found even in remote areas like polar ice caps and deep ocean trenches, they endanger aquatic and terrestrial lifeforms.
To combat this emerging pollutant, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have designed a sustainable hydrogel to remove microplastics from water. The material has a unique intertwined polymer network that can bind the contaminants and degrade them using UV light irradiation. The research is published in the journal Nanoscale.
Scientists have previously tried using filtering membranes to remove microplastics. However, the membranes can become clogged with these tiny particles, rendering them unsustainable. Instead, the IISc team led by Suryasarathi Bose, Professor at the Department of Materials Engineering, decided to turn to 3D hydrogels.
The novel hydrogel developed by the team consists of three different polymer layers—chitosan, polyvinyl alcohol and polyaniline—intertwined together, making an Interpenetrating Polymer Network (IPN) architecture. The team infused this matrix with nanoclusters of a material called copper substitute polyoxometalate (Cu-POM).
These nanoclusters are catalysts that can use UV light to degrade the microplastics. The combination of the polymers and nanoclusters resulted in a strong hydrogel with the ability to adsorb and degrade large amounts of microplastics.
New Method That Pinpoints Wood’s Origin May Curb Illegal Timber
The combination of field work and AI is powerful. I hope that the success of this effort prompts the use of similar two-pronged strategies in other areas.
From The New York Times:
Using a unique combination of old-fashioned field work and sophisticated computer modeling, scientists in Sweden have found a way to trace a single beam of lumber to the forest in Europe where it originated.
The researchers said the new method, described in a recent paper in the Nature Plants journal, could significantly curb the sale of Russian timber, which is prohibited in the European Union because of the war in Ukraine. But birch, oak, pine and other types of lumber from Russia are still finding European buyers amid surging demand. Last month, the novel approach was used to identify large shipments of illegal Russian lumber in Belgium.
The new study looked at the chemical composition of 900 wood samples collected from 11 countries in Eastern Europe. The data was fed into a model powered by machine learning, which found patterns that could predict the geographic origin of the samples. Overall, the model caught 60 percent of the samples that had been intentionally labeled with the wrong country of origin. The model could also narrow the wood’s origin to a roughly 125-mile radius, a remarkable feat in a continent that’s roughly 40 percent covered by forest. ✂️
Under the direction of Victor Deklerck, a lead author of the study, researchers with Preferred by Nature, a nonprofit based in Copenhagen, fanned out across Europe to collect tree samples by using a long, tubelike device that pulls out wood tissue. A tree is not harmed when a sample is extracted from its trunk, Dr. Deklerck said, because the rest of the organism “walls off” the wounded tissue. The samples were analyzed for the minerals they pulled in from the soil, as well as elements, like nitrogen and carbon, that they absorbed through rainfall. The result was a “chemical fingerprint” for each tree sample in the study, said Dr. Deklerck, who is also the chief scientist at World Forest ID, a nonprofit in Washington that fights deforestation.
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Good news for the environment
To slash building emissions, biomaterials are our friends
I love the idea of replacing fiberglass with straw or hemp!
From Anthropocene Magazine:
Buildings should be front and center in efforts to tackle climate change. Buildings account for 40 percent of global energy demand and a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Efforts to renovate buildings to make them more energy-efficient are slowly underway. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers from Switzerland take a deeper look at two common renovation strategies: changing the fossil fuel-based heating system and better building insulation. Their finding: switching to heat pumps or wood pellets, and the use of bio-based insulation materials such as straw or hemp could slash greenhouse gas emissions of buildings in Switzerland by up to 87 percent. ✂️
The team from ETH Zürich addresses the question of how to renovate a building so that its greenhouse gas emissions are minimal over its entire lifecycle. They used an AI-based model to identify the best renovation strategies for the most impact. They take into account emissions and cost related to the strategies, but also uncertainties related to the evolution of climate, costs, and user behaviors.
Switzerland has about 1.8 million residential buildings and a further million non-residential ones. For their study, the researchers chose six buildings that have not changed much since they were first built between 1911 and 1988.
Carbon emissions from the manufacture of conventional insulation materials can be high enough sometimes to cancel out the positive effects they have on energy consumption. So for each building, they calculated the emissions from various renovation strategies over a 60-year building life cycle, starting at the time of the renovation. This included replacing existing heating systems with those powered by gas, wood pellets, or a heat pump. The other strategy they analyzed was conventional insulation materials such as fiberglass as well as bio-based insulation materials made from straw or hemp. “As the energy consumption of residential buildings in Switzerland is, on average, closely aligned with that of Northern European countries, it makes Switzerland an informative case study for exploring energy retrofitting scenarios in Europe,” the authors write.
How Two Committed Conservationists Revitalized a River With Beer
A lovely win-win story.
From Modern Farmer:
Global environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy has been working on the Verde River for more than 50 years, and as the issue of low water flow became increasingly critical about 15 years ago, it began working with local communities to effect change and save water. This was the launch of Sinagua Malt, Arizona’s first malt house, a Certified B Corp public benefit corporation, which works by incentivizing farmers to transition from water-intensive summer crops such as corn and alfalfa to barley, by providing them with a stable market and offering local breweries and distilleries the opportunity to use locally sourced malt. This measure has saved more than 725 million gallons of Verde River water between 2016 and 2023, according to data from The Nature Conservancy—or more than 50 gallons per pint of beer.
It was a 2015 meeting between The Nature Conservancy’s Kim Schonek and the Verde Conservation District’s Chip Norton that resulted in the game-changing plan to conserve the Verde River flow. The idea for Sinagua Malt came about through Schonek’s and Norton’s shared goals, approached from different perspectives. For Schonek, the key objective was elevating flows in the river, along with protecting farmland and ensuring its viability. Having tried fallowing agreements, where farmers were paid not to farm, and drip irrigation, which was hard for farmers to manage in large areas, they needed a new initiative. “We were also looking for a crop that would still be profitable while using significantly less water in the area—and barley was an obvious choice,” explains Schonek.
Barley is planted in January and February, so it receives a lot of water from the winter rains as it irrigates. It dries out through May and is harvested in June, when the river is at its lowest. Conversely, alfalfa or corn need one foot of water per acre of irrigation during June, which places a significant burden on the river. ✂️
[Sinagua Malt has] been able to grow to 610 acres this year from 95 acres of barley produced in 2016. Sinagua Malt now works with five farms… . They estimate they will be able to supply upwards of 25 local breweries and distilleries by the end of 2024.
Schonek says there has definitely been more water in the last few years. “You can go boating again now,” she says, “and we expect the impact on the river to at least triple with the new production facility.”
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Good news for and about animals
Brought to you by Rascal and the beautiful spirits of Rosy and Nora.
Rascal, Rosy, and Nora.
How Singapore Became an Unexpected Stronghold for a Critically Endangered Bird
Rascal sends chirps and kiss noises to the straw-headed bulbuls and congratulates them on thriving in the big city. And he really likes their song!
From Good News Network:
From the sprawling urban city-state of Singapore comes the unlikely story of a critically endangered songbird and a dedicated group of environmentalists helping it thrive as the population collapses overseas.
The straw-headed bulbul is a victim of its beautiful song, which has seen it extirpated from the wilds of Thailand, Myanmar, and Java as poachers capture it for the illegal songbird trade. But as early as 1990, conservationists, birdwatchers, and government workers in Singapore have taken action on this species’ behalf. ✂️
Because of [local conservationists], the peripheral wetlands of Singapore, the offshore island of Pulau Ubin, and the large green spaces in the city state’s interior together play host to 600 straw-headed bulbuls. Nature Society Singapore...was the first to push for nature protections on Pulau Ubin, the site of an old granite quarry, where nevertheless a concentrated population of these birds could be found.
This resulted in a Nature Area designation for the island in 1993, achieved through advocacy and outreach among millions of Singaporeans. Smithsonian lists this as an early victory in the history of environmentalism on the cramped peninsular city-state.
Dog That Flunked Out of Police Academy Becomes a Hero in Taiwan’s Earthquake Response
Rosy, who was always delightfully jubilant, would have loved this story.
From Good News Network:
To be a drug-sniffing dog you have to be impassionate, which is exactly what this golden retriever was not.
Roger flunked out of police academy for being too jubilant!
Though Roger flunked out of the Kaohsiung City police academy in Taiwan, his career in public service was not over, and has now captured the hearts of his people with his rescue efforts during Taiwan’s recent earthquake. ✂️
8-year-old Roger was quickly deployed to the area, where his exuberance and independent streak put him in good stead for locating the body of a 21-year-old victim who hadn’t been found.
...Chen Chih-san, captain of the rescue dog unit of the Kaohsiung Fire Department has other dogs that assisted in the rescue efforts, [but] it was only Roger who captured the island nation’s hearts because of his earlier career setback and subsequent redemption arc.
“I’m not saying he was not good or that he didn’t get along with others. But the requirement for narcotic detection dogs is that they can’t be too restless and independent,” Chen said. “But (these attributes) are what we want in rescue dogs.” ✂️
Having participated in 7 rescue organizations throughout his career, which included his being certified by the International Rescue Dog Organization in 2022, an accolade last achieved by a Taiwanese rescue dog in 2019, Roger’s retirement is fast approaching. CNN reports that he will have a wonderful home suitable for an active precocious dog...
‘The Javan tiger still exists’: DNA find may herald an extinct species’ comeback
🎩 to Mokurai for briefly mentioning this story last Thursday. I thought Nora would want you to have a more detailed version.
From Mongabay:
Ripi Yanuar Fajar and his four friends say they’ll never forget that evening after Indonesia’s Independence Day celebration in 2019 when they encountered a big cat roaming a community plantation in Sukabumi, West Java province.
Immediately after the brief encounter, Ripi, who happens to be a local conservationist, reached out to Kalih Raksasewu, a researcher at the country’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), saying he and his friends had seen either a Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas), a critically endangered animal, or a Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica), a subspecies believed to have gone extinct in the 1980s but only officially declared so in 2008.
About 10 days later, Kalih visited the site of the encounter with Ripi and his friends. There, Kalih found a strand of hair snagged on a plantation fence that the unknown creature was believed to have jumped over. She also recorded footprints and claw marks that she thought resembled those of a tiger.
Kalih then sent the hair sample and other records to the West Java provincial conservation agency, or BKSDA, for further investigation. She also sent a formal letter to the provincial government to follow up on the investigation request. The matter eventually landed at BRIN, where a team of researchers ran genetic analyses to compare the single strand of hair with known samples of other tiger subspecies, such as the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) and a nearly century-old Javan tiger pelt kept at a museum in the West Java city of Bogor.
“After going through various process of laboratory tests, the results showed that the hair sample had 97.8% similarities to the Javan tiger,” Wirdateti, a researcher with BRIN’s Biosystemic and Evolutionary Research Center, said at an online discussion hosted by Mongabay Indonesia on March 28.
Photograph of a live Javan tiger taken in 1938 in Ujung Kulon, at the western tip of Java Island.
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