Tuesday, February 2, 2021

IN CASE YOU FORGOT? TEMPERATURE IS STILL RISING!

2019 Was the Second Warmest Year on Record.

2019PNG

According to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Earth’s surface temperatures in 2019 were the second warmest since

modern recordkeeping began in 1880. Globally, 2019 temperatures were second only to those

in 2016 and continued the planet’s long-term warming trend. The past five years have been the warmest of the past 140 years.

In 2019, global temperatures were 0.98 degrees Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s

Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The map above depicts global temperature anomalies in 2019. It does not show absolute temperatures; instead, it shows how much warmer or cooler each region of Earth was compared to that baseline average.

“The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record,” said GISS director Gavin Schmidt. “Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before.”

The animated plot below shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2019 with respect to the 1981-2000 mean, as recorded by NASA, NOAA, the Berkeley Earthresearch group, the Met Office Hadley Centre (UK), and the Cowtan and Way analysis. Though there are minor variations from year to year, all five temperature records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in. the past few decades, and all show that the past decade has been the warmest.

1880 - 2019

Since the 1880s, the average global surface temperature has risen more than 1 degree Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) above the late 19th century. For reference, the last Ice Age was about 5.5 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than pre-industrial temperatures.

Using climate models and statistical analysis of global temperature data, scientists have concluded that this increase mostly has been driven by increased emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by human activities.

“We crossed over into more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back,” Schmidt said. “This shows that what’s happening is persistent, not a fluke due to some weather phenomenon. We know that the long-term trends are being driven by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Because weather station locations and measurement practices change over time, the interpretation of specific year-to-year global mean temperature differences has some uncertainties. Taking this into account, NASA estimates that the global mean

change in 2019 is accurate to within 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit, with a 95 percent certainty level.

Weather dynamics often affect regional temperatures, so not every region on Earth experienced similar amounts of warming. NOAA found the 2019 annual mean temperature for the contiguous 48 United States was the 34th warmest on record, giving it a “warmer than average” classification.

The Arctic has warmed three times faster than the rest of the planet since 1970. Rising temperatures in the atmosphere and ocean are contributing to the continued mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica and to increases in some extreme events, such as heat waves, wildfires, and intense precipitation.

NASA’s temperature analyses incorporate surface temperature measurements from more than 20,000 weather stations, ship- and buoy-based observations of sea surface temperatures, and temperature measurements from Antarctic research stations. These in situ measurements are analyzed using an algorithm that considers the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and urban.

heat island effects that could skew the conclusions. These calculations produce the global average temperature deviations from the baseline period of 1951 to 1980.

NOAA scientists used much of the same raw temperature data, but with a different interpolation into the Earth’s polar and other data-poor regions. The NOAA analysis found 2019 global temperatures were 0.95 degrees Celsius...

(1.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average.

NASA’s full 2019 surface temperature data set and the complete methodology used for the temperature calculation and its uncertainties are available here.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data courtesy of Gavin Schmidt/NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Story by Maria-Jose Vinas Garcia, NASA Earth Science News Team.

News and Blogs

Provincial Leadership on a National Pharmacare Program

Broadbent Institute | Institut Broadbent / February 02, 2021

February 2, 2021

The Honourable John Horgan, M.L.A., Premier of British Columbia

The Honourable Adrian Dix, M.L.A., Minister of Health

Re: Provincial Leadership on National Pharmacare Program

Dear Premier Horgan and Minister Dix,

Canadians cherish their Medicare system. This support crosses all geographic, demographic and political divides. There is a reason that Tommy Douglas was famously voted the “Greatest Canadian”: and that reason is his role – and that of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) – in bringing single-payer public health insurance to this country.

Since the introduction of the 1947 Saskatchewan Hospitalization Act, the CCF/NDP have – as a core mandate – advanced the vision of Medicare as a right of citizenship for Canadians.

We are writing you to ask you to once again fulfill this historic mission through ensuring the government of British Columbia becomes a leading voice in the national effort to achieve universal, public Pharmacare.

Tommy Douglas’s vision for Medicare wasn’t supposed to end at the hospital door. As you know, Canada is the only nation with a single-payer healthcare system that does not include the cost of drugs in that system. Canadians, by an overwhelming margin, believe this flaw in Medicare needs to be fixed.

In a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute conducted in partnership with UBC’s School of Population and Public Health; St. Michael’s Hospital and University of Toronto; the Carleton University Faculty of Public Affairs and School of Public Policy and Administration; andWomen’s College Hospital, Toronto, nearly 9 in 10 Canadians support a national Pharmacare program.

This near unanimity is at least partly explained by the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same poll, nearly one quarter of Canadians reported that they have recently decided not to fill a prescription or not to renew one due to cost or taken measures to extend it because they could not afford to keep the recommended dosage schedule.

In the September 23, 2020 Speech from the Throne, the federal government again committed to a universal national Pharmacare program and to “accelerate steps to achieve this system.”

This federal commitment was affirmed again earlier this year in the new mandate letter to the federal minister of health, issued on January 15, which asked that the federal minister work “with provinces and territories that are willing to move forward without delay, [to] accelerate steps to achieve a national, universal pharmacare program”, recognizing that the work needs to be accelerated given “COVID-19 has intensified the health inequities and barriers to care across the country”.

It is imperative that this commitment be made real through a line item in the upcoming federal budget and in keeping with the recommendations from the final report of the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare.

As per the timeline in the Advisory Council’s final report, a national formulary of essential medicines should come into force by January 1, 2022. Considering the growing and urgent need for universal Pharmacare – with hundreds of thousands of people having lost access to employer-sponsored drug plans in recent months – we are calling for this process to be expedited, so that essential medicines can be made available on a universal basis by July 1, 2021.

In the midst of COVID-19, we cannot delay access to essential medicines any further. Hospitals are overwhelmed with patients across the country, and the risk of airborne transmission of the virus has been firmly established. To avoid unnecessary hospital visits that result from a lack of access to prescribed medications, we urgently need universal access to a list of essential medicines.

We have called upon the federal government to dedicate $3.5 billion toward universal coverage for a list of essential medicines – as recommended by the Advisory Council’s final report – in the 2021 Federal Budget. We have also called upon the federal government to usher in this program by July 1 to speed up access for those in need.

On July 1, 1958, the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act came into force, and on that day in 1968, the Medical Care Act came into force. Having a list of essential medicines accessible to all people in Canada by July 1, 2021, would begin the fulfillment of an essential yet missing piece of Medicare. And it would do so on the most fitting of days – marking 153 years since Confederation – for our country’s most cherished achievement.

We recognize that Pharmacare cannot move ahead without the participation of the provinces and territories. We are encouraged by the federal government’s Speech from the Throne commitment to work “…with provinces and territories willing to move forward without delay”. We are also pleased with your government’s recent platform commitment to universal pharmacare and the stipulation in Minister Dix’s mandate letter that he continue to fight to make sure the federal government remains focused on a national pharmacare program so you can bring down the cost of pharmaceuticals to make life more affordable for all British Columbians.

At this critical moment, Canadians need British Columbia to lead. Your government can play a key role in the creation of this new social program for all Canadians. Your voice, your actions, will be central to the debate in the weeks and months ahead.

We look forward to working with you to accelerate the implementation of a national, universal, public and single-payer Pharmacare program, and to the completion of Tommy Douglas’s Medicare vision.

Sincerely,

Rick Smith
Executive Director, Broadbent Institute

Laird Cronk
President, BC Federation of Labour

Anita Huberman
CEO, Surrey Board of Trade

Jeff Sommers
Director, Health and Policy Systems, BC & Yukon Heart and Stroke Foundation

Mark Hancock
National President, Canadian Union of Public Employees

Steve Morgan, PhD
Professor of health policy at UBC and Founder of Pharmacare 2020

Pauline Worsfold, RN
Chair, Canadian Health Coalition

Marie Clarke Walker
Secretary-Treasurer, Canadian Labour Congress

Danyaal Raza
Chair, Canadian Doctors for Medicare

Christina Warner and Ravi Joshi
Co-Executive Directors, Council of Canadians

Josh Bizjak
Executive Director, Douglas-Coldwell Foundation

Linda Silas
President, Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions

Larry Brown
President, National Union of Public and General Employees

Sunday, January 31, 2021

TIPS COULD TIP THE TABLE ON COVID-19

DEAR DR. LEOR WEINBERGER:

HOW FAR ALONG ARE YOU AND YOUR TEAM IN CREATING "TIPS" AS A VIRAL "HIJACK" THERAPY?

WHEN DO YOU EXPECT THERAPEUTIC INTERFERING PARTICLES OR "TIPS" TO BECOME A MAINSTREAM THERAPY AGAINST COVID-19?

WHICH LARGE COMPANIES ARE INTERESTED IN PRODUCING "TIPS"?

Leor Weinberger, PhD, senior investigator and virologist has pioneered an innovative approach to fighting the spread of viral pathogens. His approach is called therapeutic interfering particles or (TIPs), which could be an alternative to a vaccine. He also directs the Center for Cell Circuitry.

"Prevention

A Gladstone team is investigating the potential of an innovative alternative to a vaccine. Therapeutic interfering particles (TIPs) could turn the tables on the virus by hijacking its machinery to transform virus-infected cells into factories that produce more therapeutic particles than virus, slowing its spread.

Dr. Leor Weinberger has developed a new approach to fight the spread of viruses. It is called therapeutic interfering particles (TIPs) and could be an alternative to a vaccine. TIPs are defective virus fragments that mimic the virus but are not able to replicate. They combat the virus by hijacking the cell machinery to transform virus-infected cells into factories that produce TIPS, amplifying the effect of TIPs in stopping the spread of virus. TIPs targeting COVID-19 would transmit along the same paths as the virus itself, and thus provide protection to even the most vulnerable populations.

Treatment

Gladstone researchers mapped interactions between human host cell proteins and the virus, and are now using this information to identify therapeutic targets. Others are screening libraries of FDA-approved drugs and testing their effects on the virus in human lung “organoids” and human heart cells. Additional projects include investigating how the virus affects the brain, leading to cerebrovascular complications and stroke, and studying ways to rejuvenate the immune system to improve its ability to fight infection.

Diagnostics

Gladstone scientists are collaborating to develop a CRISPR-based method to rapidly measure COVID-19 RNA. By combining the technique with smartphone technology, they aim to develop a diagnostic that could deliver rapid results and be widely deployed even far from traditional labs, such as in airports and other ports of entry, and in remote communities throughout the world. Another team is applying machine learning to discover biomarkers that will predict which patients are most likely to experience severe disease, and which may have an asymptomatic course."

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A coronavirus uses a protein on its membrane—shown here in red in a molecular model—to bind to a receptor—shown in blue—on a human cell to enter the cell. Once inside, the virus uses the cells' machinery to make more copies of itself. (Juan Gaertner / Science Source)

How does coronavirus infect humans?

In mammals, such as humans, DNA contains genetic instructions that are transcribed—or copied—into RNA. While DNA remains in the cell’s nucleus, RNA carries the copies of genetic information to the rest of the cell by way of various combinations of amino acids, which it delivers to ribosomes. The ribosomes link the amino acids together to form proteins that then carry out functions within the human body.

Many diseases occur when these gene expressions go awry.

What does RNA stand for?

RNA stands for ribonucleic acid.

What is RNA?

RNA delivers the genetic instructions contained in DNA to the rest of the cell.

COVID-19, short for “coronavirus disease 2019,” is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Like many other viruses, SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus. This means that, unlike in humans and other mammals, the genetic material for SARS-CoV-2 is encoded in ribonucleic acid. The viral RNA is sneaky: its features cause the protein synthesis machinery of our cells to mistake it for RNA produced by our own DNA.

While SARS-CoV-2 is a new coronavirus, “it likely replicates and functions similar to related coronaviruses that infect animals and humans,” says Douglas Anderson, an assistant professor of medicine in the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute and a member of the Center for RNA Biology, who studies how RNA mutations can give rise to human disease.

A graphic created by the New York Times illustrates how the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 enters the body through the nose, mouth, or eyes and attaches to our cells. Once the virus is inside our cells, it releases its ribonucleic acid. Our hijacked cells serve as virus factories, reading the virus’s ribonucleic acid and making long viral proteins to compromise the immune system. The virus assembles new copies of itself and spreads to more parts of the body and—by way of saliva, sweat, and other bodily fluids—to other humans.

“Once the virus is in our cells, the entire process of infection and re-infection depends on the viral RNA,” Maquat says.

“Understanding RNA structure and function helps us understand how to throw a therapeutic wrench into what the COVID-19 RNA does—make new virus that can infect more of our cells and also the cells of other human beings,” says Lynne Maquat, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center and the director of Rochester’s Center for RNA Biology.

Saturday, January 30, 2021

Dear CANADIAN GOVERNMENT.

Money money money makes the world go down...the world go down...the world go down. Your political policies are defensive and unimaginative and stifled by protocols created during past years of POLITICAL indoctrination. I am not an industrial polluting CAPITALIST nor a dangerous dominating COMMUNIST nor a middle of the road SOCIALIST. I am a HUMAN BEING! A HOMO SAPIEN NATURALIST AND AN ECOLOGIST and I am forced to survive under Americanized federal Imperialism mixed with corporate business Fascism. I am constantly bombarded by COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING attempting to literally indoctrinate me into becoming a subservient CONSUMER. MY OWN CANADIAN GOVERNMENT attempts to sell dangerous polluting Oil to the World in order to maintain an ECONOMY based on AN IMPERIAL SOCIAL ORDER. ON TOP OF OUR POLITICAL SOCIAL ORDER SITS HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, WHO believes an invisible DEITY knows all and sees all and gives her (THE QUEEN) absolute power over her Empire. She believes her dominance is a God given right. The fact that Life evolved and created CLEVER MEN who then created dozens of Gods to pacify AND DOMINATE humanity continues to escape the intelligence of millions of brainwashed people. The fact that industrial pollution creates a friendly environment for DANGEROUS pandemic causing viruses, also seems to be outside the moral and mental capacity of millions of people! Specifically, corrupt money and power hungry BUSINESS IMPERIAL imitators WHO ARE are the most dangerous people on Earth! WHY? Because they want to maintain the status-quo by selling Oil based products to the world. Thanks for reading... signed: Grumpy old man. P.S. I dare you to throw these concepts into your political agenda.

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Happy New Year, Nelson!

January is here, a special time for reflection and resolutions for many.

For me, it’s also a time for sharing gratitude for all the generous support we received from over 57,000 people in 2020. Thanks to the amazing outpouring of support — including at the very end of the year — Greenpeace is beginning 2021 with our own resolution to scale up our campaigns for the planet.

As we plan for the busy year ahead, I want to share some reasons I’ve found for optimism after a tough 2020. The environmental victories, campaign updates, and new publications you’ll discover below have given me a boost to kick-start what I expect to be a momentous year. I hope they’ll do the same for you!

An update on GNL Québec

On December 8th, 2020, Greenpeace and allied organizations presented a 110,000-signature petition to the Quebec National Assembly in an effort to signal widespread public opposition to the project.

First, I want to give you a quick update on our campaign against GNL Québec — the proposed fossil fuel megaproject that, if approved, would be the largest in Quebec’s history.

Originally scheduled to conclude this month, the public consultation committee has postponed its deadline to review the project’s social acceptability until March.[1]

Earlier this month, two more GNL Québec managers added their names to a growing list of high-profile employee resignations.[2] And in its 2020 report, the International Gas Union admitted that a “strong headwind of ardent anti-fossil fuel activism in Quebec makes it unlikely this project will go forward.”[3]

But approval is still a very real possibility. And if it does move ahead, GNL Québec is predicted to emit 50 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year — the equivalent of adding ten million more cars to our roads.[4][5] So while the Quebec government’s decision on the future of the project is delayed, let’s keep up the pressure!

Biden scraps Keystone XL pipeline permits

In November, Greenpeace and artist Robin Bell projected the message "Biden: Build a Fossil Fuel Free Administration" on the Department of Energy building in Washington, DC to urge Biden to champion climate action in his new government’s policies.

In his first day in office, President Biden announced that he would revoke federal permits for Keystone XL — an $8-billion cross-border project meant to funnel over 800,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil per day along 1,897 kilometres of leak-prone pipelines.[6]

For over a decade, Greenpeace has supported Indigenous-led opposition to the Keystone XL project, helping grow the resistance movement on the ground. And our work has paid off: one by one, big banks are refusing to provide funding to risky, destructive projects of this kind.

This is such great news for the climate, for Indigenous rights, and protecting land and water from dangerous oil spills. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put a lot of pressure on the new administration to uphold this project. With the Biden administration demonstrating an early willingness to take decisive climate action, it’s time for the Canadian government to step up its game.

Greenpeace scores victories in Arctic protection

This past September, a Greenpeace team aboard the Arctic Sunrise documented and witnessed the 2020 sea ice minimum — the second lowest on record.

Last month, a United States Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s approval of the first offshore oil-drilling project in federal Arctic waters. This news comes after Greenpeace and ally organizations challenged the license approval process with a lawsuit, highlighting the administration's failure to consider the project’s impacts on polar bears and the climate.[7]

At the same time, many miles away, major oil producer Denmarkannounced it would both ban all future oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and phase out its entire oil production in the region by 2050.[8] This announcement comes after Greenpeace activists peacefully occupied a North Sea oil rig with these demands, showing just how impactful direct action can be!

Greenpeace-supported investigation reveals BP behind Mauritius oil spill

The scene of the oil spill in the waters around Mauritius after Japanese bulk carrier, MV Wakashio, ran aground on July 25th, 2020.

Ten years after British Petroleum’s (BP) disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a six-month international investigation initiated by Forbes and supported by Greenpeace revealed that the same company was involved in covering up what went wrong in the 2020 oil spill in Mauritius — a small island off the Southeast African coast.

While this is not a good news story, I wanted to share it with you to highlight just how critical Greenpeace’s investigative work is in bringing transparency to environmental disasters. I invite you to read more about this scandal here.

More Greenpeace stories you should check out

This past October, Greenpeace unleashed a big cat (not a live one, however realistic looking!) onto the streets of Hackney in London. The purpose was to highlight the role that industrial meat being sold in supermarkets and fast food chains is playing in trashing forests where jaguars are found.

Before I sign off, I’d like to shine a light on the inspiring campaign work of our fellow Greenpeacers around the world.

First to the United Kingdom, where our global campaign against deforestation continues to roll out in some really innovative and impactful ways. Unearthed — Greenpeace UK's journalism team — was able to show that chicken sold in UK supermarkets had been fed on soy grown on farms in the Brazilian Cerrado that use fire to clear their land. The investigationinvolved identifying codes on packs of chicken that led back to companies importing soya from recently burned areas of the Cerrado.

It’s clear that although structural change is needed, including bans on imports linked to reckless deforestation, there’s plenty that supermarkets can do now — like dropping forest destroyers from their supply chains — to end forest destruction for meat and dairy.

Next, let’s turn to South Africa, Australia, and South Korea. In our recent survey, supporters like you told us you wanted to learn more about Greenpeace’s scientific investigations. To honour that request, here are some research reports and other great resources produced by Greenpeace teams that I’d recommend checking out if you’ve got a few (or many!) minutes:

A new Greenpeace report and video on extreme weather events in Africa (favourite quote: “Africa is not only the stage where the worst climate impacts will play out; it is a continent of millions of citizens determined to stop climate change.”)
A landmark Greenpeace report and panel discussion on the climate crisis in Oceania.
An informative plastics mythbusting video from Greenpeace in the United States.
And recent Greenpeace reports exposing the myth of plastics recycling and the truth behind biodegradable plastics.

If you’re still in the mood for some reading, I’d also recommend a series of new blogs written by our campaigners here in Canada, responding to an announcement by the Quebec government that it plans to double its forestry output by 2080.

Nelson, there is a lot of work ahead of us in the months to come, and I want you to know how grateful I am to have you by our side. Your support makes so many good news stories possible, both here in Canada and around the world.

Have a wonderful start to 2021, and thank you for everything you do.

Christy

Executive Director, Greenpeace Canada

SOURCES

[1] https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1761230/etudes-consultation-gaz-naturel-saguenay (Available only in French)

[2] https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/environnement/593126/energie-encore-des-departs-chez-gnl-quebec (Available only in French)

[3] https://www.igu.org/resources/2020-world-lng-report/ (p. 46)

[4] https://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/press-release/41055/what-gnl-quebec-is-and-why-you-must-say-no-to-it/

[5] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/federal-court-rejects-trumps-approval-of-offshore-oil-drilling-project-in-arctic/

[6] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/keystone-pipeline-does-as-experts-predicted-spills-383000-gallons-of-oil-in-north-dakota/

[7] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/federal-court-rejects-trumps-approval-of-offshore-oil-drilling-project-in-arctic/

[8] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/04/denmark-to-end-new-oil-and-gas-exploration-in-north-sea

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supporter

Friday, January 22, 2021

A NEW REGULATION FOR MODERATING VIOLENCE IN SPORTS.

THE FOLLOWING IS A NEW REGULATION FOR MODERATING AGGRESSIVE AND UNWARRANTED VIOLENCE IN SPORT:

ANY PLAYER WHO DELIBERATELY STEPS OUTSIDE THE LEGAL REGULATIONS OF HIS OR HER SPORT WITH THE INTENT TO BLIND-SIDE AND INJURE ANOTHER PLAYER, WILL BE REMOVED FROM PLAYING THAT SPORT, WITHOUT PAY, FOR THE SAME LENGTH OF TIME IT TAKES FOR THE INJURED PLAYER TO RECOVER AND RETURN TO THE GAME, AND ONLY AFTER HE OR SHE HAS GIVEN A FULL APOLOGY TO THE INJURED PLAYER AND COVERED ALL MEDICAL EXPENSES NEEDED FOR THE FULL RECOVERY OF THE INJURED PLAYER.

SIGNED: International Sports Regulators.

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