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Scientists find new population of polar bears in sea-ice free region

16 Jun 2022 16 Jun 2022

Polar bears face an existential threat from the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice, which they rely on as platforms to hunt seals.

But in a new study, scientists have identified an isolated subpopulation of polar bears in Southeast Greenland that instead make use of freshwater ice pouring into the ocean from the region’s glaciers, suggesting this particular habitat is less susceptible than others to climate change.

Their findings, described in the journal Science on Thursday, open up the tantalizing possibility that at least some pockets of the species might be able to survive further into this century, when Arctic sea ice is expected to disappear completely during summer months.

“One of the big questions is where in the Arctic will polar bears be able to hang on, what we call ‘persist,'” first author Kristin Laidre, a polar scientist at the University of Washington and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources told AFP.

“I think that bears in a place like this can teach us a lot about where those places might be.”

Laidre and colleagues first spent two years interviewing Inuit subsistence hunters who provided input and ecological knowledge, including harvest samples for analysis.

They then began their own field work, which lasted from 2015 to 2021, in a harsh region that was long understudied because of its unpredictable weather, heavy snowfall and jagged mountains.

– Hemmed in –

Each year, the team would spend one month in springtime, staying in the nearest settlement Kuummiit, which is a two-hour helicopter ride from where the bears live. Fuel depots had to be staged along the route in advance down the coastline, creating a hopskotch-like commute to work.

The team tagged the bears with satellite tracking devices, and collected genetic samples by either capturing bears or firing biopsy darts into their rumps.

Thought to number a few hundred individuals, “they are the most genetically isolated population of polar bears anywhere on the planet,” said co-author Beth Shapiro, a geneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in a statement.

“We know that this population has been living separately from other polar bear populations for at least several hundred years.”

Unlike their cousins, the Southeast Greenland polar bears were found to be homebodies, seldom straying far to hunt.

Their isolation arises from the geography: they live in a complex landscape of fjords on the very edge of their range on the southern tip of Greenland, well below the Arctic circle, with nowhere to go.

To the west there are an enormous set of mountains and the Greenland Ice Sheet, and to the east the open water of the Denmark Strait all the way to Iceland. They also have to contend with a rapid current that flows southward along the coast.

“We see that when they get caught in this current they jump off the ice and they walk back home to their fjords,” said Laidre. The team found that some of the tracked bears accidentally caught in this situation had to trek more than a hundred miles back home.

– Climate refuges? –

While sea ice provides hunting platforms for most of the Arctic’s roughly 26,000 polar bears, the Southeast Greenland bears have access to sea ice for only four months, between February and late May.

For the remaining eight months they rely on chunks of freshwater ice breaking off the Greenland Ice Sheet in the form of marine-terminating glaciers.

“These types of glaciers do exist in other places in the Arctic, but the combination of the fjord shapes, the high production of glacier ice and the very big reservoir of ice that is available from the Greenland Ice Sheet is what currently provides a steady supply of glacier ice,” said another co-author Twila Moon of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in a statement.

There remains much to study about the Southeast Greenland polar bears. Measurements show the adult females are a little smaller than average and they appear to have fewer cubs, but it’s hard to infer much about what that means in the absence of long term data.

Laidre is keen to not oversell the study as one of hope. Polar bears — which in addition to being iconic in their own right are also a vital resource for indigenous people — aren’t going to be saved without urgent climate action.

But this population might have a better shot, and there are similar areas with marine-terminating glaciers on other parts of Greenland’s coast as well as the island of Svalbard that might become small-scale climate refugia.

“We as a community need to look at places like this and ask ourselves, is this a place where we might be able to have some small numbers of polar bears persisting in an ice-free Arctic?” said Laidre.

On US border, Mexican trans social worker offers expert advice

16 Jun 2022 17 Jun 2022

Mexican trans social worker Brigitte Baltazar saw her dreams shattered when she was deported from the United States, where she had fought for 20 years for a better life.

Now she has found herself a new role — helping other migrants to legally cross the border.

Baltazar was a 14-year-old boy when she illegally entered the United States, where she labored on farms picking tomatoes, dreaming of studying medicine.

She also transitioned from male to female, but she says that in April 2021 her life “turned to waste” when she was expelled to Mexico for not being able to regularize her residence status.

Now 35, with her long hair dyed red, Baltazar, from the impoverished southern state of Guerrero, has often faced brutal discrimination and prejudice, but says she has put her experience to good use.

“I’ve been through super tough situations, so I had always said that when I had the opportunity to help other people, I would love that life,” she told AFP.

Like thousands of others who are expelled or seek asylum in the United States, she ended up in a shelter for migrants in Tijuana, just on the Mexico side of the border.

Seeing pregnant women or people overwhelmed by lack of resources and information, she started to assist in any way she could.

– Finding a role –

In a short time, the leading NGO “Al otro lado” — which provides legal and humanitarian support to migrants — asked her to join its staff.

She now works in a camp with people who seek to enter the United States on “humanitarian parole,” a status that covers emergency medical treatment or visiting a sick family member.

“We try to handle the medical cases, the most complicated ones first,” she said, explaining she draws on her empathy for others after years of suffering derogatory comments on the street, in job interviews and from officials.

She says she is moved by the plight of Haitian migrants, who are discriminated against because of the color of their skin and are often surprised that she is willing to help.

And she says she experiences a special connection with members of the LGBTI community who want to enter the United States fleeing intolerance in their countries.

She encourages them to “defend their identity tooth and nail” and to persevere, saying “we already have that warrior soul, you know, that soul that can handle anything.”

The number of people trying to reach the United States through Mexico has soared in recent years, with the surge becoming a fierce political issue across Latin America as well as in Washington.

But in the camp, where faces of fatigue and uncertainty abound, Baltazar exudes warmth while she helps migrants fill out endless paperwork.

She even finds time to bump fists with little girls, bringing out a smile and lifting spirits.

“I have work that I love and I’m passionate about, and that’s why I’m happy. I’m living in a shelter and I’m happy, thank God I have the love of many people,” she says.

Trump election plot would have spurred 'revolution': ex-judge

16 Jun 2022 16 Jun 2022

A retired federal judge testified Thursday that Donald Trump’s demand for Mike Pence to reject the results of the 2020 US election would have triggered a “revolution” had the vice president obeyed.

J Michael Luttig had advised Pence that his role in overseeing Congress’s ratification of the 2020 election on January 6 last year was purely ceremonial — rejecting Trump lawyer John Eastman’s theory that Pence had the power to unilaterally overturn Joe Biden’s victory.

Luttig, a renowned conservative legal scholar, told a hearing of the congressional committee investigating the 2021 US Capitol assault that had Pence gone along with the plot, it would have triggered a “what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis in America.”

The jurist outlined how close he believed democracy came to collapsing as he appeared at the committee’s third June hearing, which focused on the pressure campaign mounted by Trump against Pence to help the defeated Republican leader cling to power.

“There was no basis in the constitution or the laws of the United States at all for the theory espoused by Mr Eastman. At all. None,” Luttig said.

Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, described Eastman as the architect of a “nonsensical theory” he knew was based on false claims.

“Under several of the scenarios, the vice president could ultimately just declare Donald Trump the winner, regardless of the vote totals that had already been certified by the states,” Cheney said, describing Eastman’s plan.

“However, this was false and Dr Eastman knew it was false. In other words, it was a lie.”

– Inept legal challenges –

The committee is in the middle of a run of televised hearings on the insurrection mounted by a pro-Trump mob to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and overturn the results of the 2020 election.

It has already revealed testimony from many of Trump’s closest allies who said he was told repeatedly he had lost a fair fight to Biden but declared victory and pushed his election fraud narrative anyway.

Eastman’s theory, essentially, was that Pence had the power to reject states’ results due to allegations of fraud.

This could have handed the presidency to Trump, according to Eastman’s plan, because deciding the outcome would then have fallen by an arcane procedure to the House of Representatives.

House Republicans, who had a majority of state delegations even though they didn’t control the chamber, would have selected the next president.

The committee showed testimony from Pence’s general counsel Greg Jacob saying he believed Eastman admitted in front of Trump on January 4 that his plan would violate federal law.

The insurrection took place two days later, delaying Congress certifying the election results for several hours.

The committee also played testimony from Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann, who told Eastman the day after the insurrection: “Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”

As dozens of legal challenges dismissed as inept and ethically suspect failed in courts across the land, a desperate Trump turned to Pence for illegal help, the committee heard.

Trump tried to persuade Pence to intervene in the presidential election in meetings at the White House on January 4 and 5 and in a call the morning of January 6.

– ‘Hang Mike Pence’ –

He used rally speeches and Twitter to exert intense pressure on Pence to abuse his position as president of the Senate to reject the election results as they were being ratified.

During his “Stop the Steal” rally ahead of the joint session of the House and Senate to ratify the election, Trump mentioned Pence numerous times as he told his supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.”

But Pence wrote to Congress that the Founding Fathers never intended the vice president to have “unilateral authority” to overturn election counts, adding that “no vice president in American history has ever asserted such authority.”

The mob whipped up by Trump threatened to hang Pence for failing to cooperate as they stormed the Capitol, and even erected a gallows in front of the building.

Cheney said last week that when the subject of the “hang Mike Pence” chants came up at the White House, Trump responded: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea” and that Pence “deserves” it.

“What the former president was willing to sacrifice — potentially the vice president — in order to stay in power is pretty jarring,” Democratic panel member Pete Aguilar said.

The panel attempted to draw a line from Trump’s pressure on Pence to the violence with a video clip of a rioter saying that he would “drag people through the streets” if Pence “caved” to pressure not to overturn the election.

Musk offers billion-user vision but few details to Twitter staff

16 Jun 2022 16 Jun 2022

Elon Musk pitched a vision Thursday to Twitter staff of a one-billion-user platform, but was hazy on potential layoffs, free speech limits and what’s next in his chaotic buyout bid.

While fielding questions in his first meeting with wary staffers, the Tesla chief offered no updates on his $44 billion deal that he has thrown into doubt in recent weeks.

Yet in comments from the employees-only virtual meeting of less than one hour, Bloomberg and New York Times reports based on leaks relayed his claimed passion for self-expression on the platform.

Musk said he wants to have “at least a billion people on Twitter” in what would be massive growth for a platform that has about 229 million presently.

The Tesla chief has already made comments on how he’d run the platform — including lifting Donald Trump’s ban — but his words this time were addressed directly to workers’ concerns.

Musk told Twitter employees he personally favors moderate political positions, but that users should be able to say outrageous things, reports leaked from the meeting said.

He qualified that by saying that freedom of speech doesn’t mean an intrinsic freedom for comments to reach far and wide, according to the reports.

Musk answered a question about possible layoffs by saying the company “needs to get healthy” when it comes to its financial situation.

He endorsed advertising and subscriptions as ways to make money at Twitter, saying ads should be entertaining as well as legitimate.

Musk talked anew about making money at Twitter by charging to verify identities of those behind accounts, then making verification a factor in which tweets get higher ranking at the platform.

Regarding Twitter’s policy of letting people work from home, Musk said it would be an option only for those proven to be exceptional at their jobs, he was reported to tell the gathering.

“The Musk Twitter all-hands call was the wrong call at the wrong time in our opinion,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a tweet.

“Lots of answers Musk could not provide given fluid nature of deal.”

Ives added that the virtual exchange spotlighted a contrast between the kind of culture fostered by Musk and the “Twitter DNA.”

– Market not convinced –

A would-be owner addressing the troops of a company he or she wants to buy is a routine part of the merger playbook, but Musk’s bid has been anything but ordinary.

He shocked the tech world with an unsolicited buyout bid in April for the platform that is a key exchange for news, entertainment and politics.

The board eventually came around to supporting his $54.20 per share offer, but since then he has cast doubt on the deal but clashing with the firm’s leadership over user numbers.

Musk has kept employees and Wall Street on edge over how the buyout saga will end.

Reports coming out of the meeting evidently left the market unconvinced about the buyout, with Twitter shares slipping more than two percent in mid-day trades far below the purchase price agreed to my Musk.

The proposed sale has stoked protest from critics who warn his stewardship will embolden hate groups and disinformation campaigns.

US securities regulators have also pressed Musk for an explanation of an apparent delay in reporting his Twitter stock buys.

For his part, Musk has repeatedly raised questions about fake accounts on the platform, saying on Twitter he could walk away from the transaction if his concerns were not addressed.