AFP

The UN’s cultural agency UNESCO on Wednesday added a Welsh slate mining landscape to its list of world heritage sites, making it the 32nd location in the UK to be awarded the status.

The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales in the county of Gwynedd was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site at the remotely-held 44th session of the World Heritage Committee.

The designation comes one week after the world heritage body stripped the city of Liverpool’s waterfront of the accolade to the dismay of local and national politicians.

“The quarrying and mining of slate has left a unique legacy in Gwynedd which the communities are rightly proud of,” said Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford.

“This recognition by UNESCO will help preserve that legacy and history in those communities for generations to come and help them with future regeneration.”

British heritage minister Caroline Dinenage called the decision “a huge achievement” and hoped it would create economic opportunities in the mostly rural region.

UNESCO’s heritage list features more than 1,100 sites, which must meet at least one of its 10 criteria and demonstrate “outstanding universal value” to be included.

Other heritage sites include India’s Taj Mahal palace, the Grand Canyon National Park in the United States and Peru’s Machu Picchu landscape and ruins.

Gwynedd’s slate mining past has left quarries, steam railways, industrial buildings and water systems in a mountainous region that encompasses Snowdonia National Park.

The northwest Wales slate landscape is the fourth Welsh site to receive UNESCO recognition alongside the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape in south Wales, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, plus four 13th-century castles and two town walls in Gwynedd.

Slate quarrying has been carried out in the area for more than 1,800 years, with the material used to roof public buildings, homes and factories.

Northwest Wales became a centre of global slate production in the 19th century, and Wales provided about one-third of the world’s roofing slate at the industry’s peak.

Welsh slate was used to build landmarks including Westminster Hall in London’s parliament building, Copenhagen City Hall in Denmark and Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building.

UNESCO also awarded a double listing to the city of Bath in southwest England, which is now one of 12 European spa towns designated by the UN body.

Last week, Liverpool became only the third place to lose its world heritage status after UNESCO judged that development plans threatened its historic port.

Regional mayor Steve Rotheram said the decision was “a retrograde step” taken by officials “on the other side of the world”.

Fossilised structures discovered in northwestern Canada may be from sponges that lived in oceans as long as 890 million years ago, making them the earliest known animal life on Earth, research showed on Wednesday.

The findings also challenge the long-held idea that animals did not arise on Earth until after a major infusion of oxygen into the atmosphere and oceans.

Sponges are simple animals with an ancient history. Genetic evidence gathered from modern sponges has shown they likely emerged between 1 billion and 500 million years ago.

But until now there has been no evidence of fossilised sponge bodies from this period, known as the early Neoproterozoic era.

Elizabeth Turner, a professor at Canada’s Laurentian University’s Harquail School of Earth Sciences, looked for evidence of sponges in 890-million-year-old reefs that were constructed by a type of bacteria that deposited calcium carbonate. 

She found networks of tiny tube-shaped structures containing crystals of the mineral calcite — suggesting they were contemporaneous to the reef — that closely resemble the fibrous skeleton found within some modern sponges.

If her structures Turner identified end up being verified as sponge samples, they will outdate the current oldest known sponge fossils by 350 million years.

Although the implications of her possible discovery, published in the journal Nature, Turner said she was not getting carried away.

“The earliest animals to emerge evolutionarily were probably sponge-like. This too is not surprising, given that sponges are the most basic animal in the tree of animal life,” she told AFP. 

“The nature of the material is familiar from the bodies of much younger body fossils of sponges,” Turner said.

She said the possible sponges were around one centimetre across, and “would have been tiny and inconspicuous, living in shadowy nooks and crannies below the upper surfaces of the reefs”

If the structures do turn out to be confirmed as sponge specimens, that means they would have lived roughly 90 million years before Earth’s oxygen levels reached levels thought to be necessary to support animal life.

Turner said that if confirmed to be sponges, she believed that they lived before the Neoproterozoic oxygenation event, during which oxygen levels increased, subsequently leading to the emergence of animal life. 

“If I am correct in my interpretation of the material, the earliest animals appeared before that event and may have been tolerant of comparatively low oxygen levels, relative to modern conditions,” she said. 

“It is possible that the earliest animals were tolerant of low oxygen — some modern sponges are — but that more complex animal types that require a higher oxygen level did not appear until after the Neoproterozoic oxygenation event,” Turner added.

A 64-year-old beekeeper was arrested on Wednesday accused of causing a fire that damaged homes and destroyed cars in the northern suburbs of Athens, a fire department official said.

The blaze raged on Tuesday at the base of Mount Penteli, where a fire in July 2018 went on to claim 102 lives in Greece’s worst-ever toll from a forest inferno.

However Tuesday’s fire did not cause any casualties and was now “under control”, firefighters told AFP.

The beekeeper was due to appear before a prosecutor on Wednesday, the fire department official told AFP. 

He is suspected of burning foliage near his hives in the town of Stamata, where the fire started, according to the ministry of civil protection.

Four other people arrested on Tuesday as part of the investigation were quickly released by Greek police.

The ministry said that “one house was burnt down, 12 others suffered damage, notably to their roofs” in the blaze, and around 10 cars were torched.

A total of 310 firefighters were mobilised to the area 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of Athens, backed by 10 helicopters and eight firefighting planes, the fire service said, with strong winds complicating operations.

Greece is hit by forest fires every summer, but experts have warned that global warming increases both their frequency and intensity.

Another heatwave is forecast for the country starting Thursday, with temperatures expected to rise above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung erupted on Wednesday, spewing a massive column of smoke and ash into the sky.

The eruption of the volcano in North Sumatra province lasted about 12 minutes, a local geological agency said.

“The volcanic material reached 4,500 metres into the air,” the head of the agency’s Sinabung monitoring post, Armen Putra, told AFP.

An image shared by the agency showed a column of thick, dark smoke coming from the crater.

Clouds of smoke and ash travelled 1,000 metres away from the peak, the agency added.

No evacuation orders were issued because the debris did not reach the nearest villages and there was no reported disruption to flights in the area.

But authorities have instructed people to avoid a five-kilometre zone around the crater that has been left unoccupied for years as volcanic activity increased.

Sinabung, a 2,460-metre (8,070-foot) volcano, was dormant for centuries before roaring back to life in 2010 when an eruption killed two people.

It erupted again in 2013 and has remained highly active since. 

The following year an eruption killed at least 16 people, while seven died in a 2016 blast.

Indonesia — an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands — has nearly 130 active volcanoes. 

It sits on the “Ring of Fire”, a belt of tectonic plate boundaries circling the Pacific Ocean where frequent seismic activity occurs.

At a new playground in central Warsaw, algae feast on pollutants and carbon dioxide to provide a bubble of clean oxygen in a city ranked as one of the most polluted capitals in the EU.

“There is untapped value in bringing the bio-intelligence of natural systems into cities,” said Marco Poletto, co-founder of the ecoLogicStudio urban design firm behind the project.

He suggests “turning buildings into living machines that produce energy, store CO2 and clean the air,” according to a statement.

The Polish capital was selected for the inaugural edition of the AirBubble as the city is in particular need of clean air. 

According to data released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) last month, Warsaw ranks 269th for air quality on a list of 323 European cities.

The list was created based on the average level over the past two years of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), the air pollutant with the highest impact on health.

The EEA blames air pollution — caused in large part by the burning of coal — for an estimated 50,000 premature deaths per year in the country of 38 million people. 

The bubble is outfitted with dozens of glass cylinders containing algae immersed in water that feast on air being pumped in from below. 

The green organisms consume polluting molecules and carbon dioxide before releasing clean oxygen out the top of the bioreactors.

The small circular playground is located next to the riverside Copernicus Science Centre, which stations an employee there to answer any questions and make sure no one gets hurt. 

On a recent warm afternoon, children of various ages monkeyed around in the bubble: shrieking, laughing, they hopped on rubber bubbles and swung from rope.

“This is fun,” shouted eight-year-old Ania, while jumping.

Her mother, Malgorzata Wrona, also applauded the eco-friendly concept.

“It’s pretty cool. Especially in a big city right? Because you know: pollution and smog and everything,” the 42-year-old English teacher told AFP.

“This gives the kids, at least, a chance to breathe some fresh air.”

She said that where they live, in the western city of Wroclaw, many people still heat their homes with coal, so the air quality is “terrible”. 

The AirBubble will be in place until November for now, but could possibly become a permanent fixture. There are plans to install bubbles in other cities too.

India, the world’s third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, skipped a key climate meeting of more than 50 countries, the environment ministry said Wednesday, citing technical and other difficulties.

The two-day conference in London was the first face-to-face talks among governments in more than 18 months and offered a chance of compromise ahead of the pivotal COP26 climate summit in November.

The talks on Sunday and Monday followed a G20 meeting last week in Naples where the leaders failed to reach a consensus, with India, a big player in climate negotiations, resisting a timeline to phase out coal power generation.

Other countries such as Russia, China and Turkey also resisted such efforts.

The London meeting also ended without an agreement to phase out the polluting fossil fuel, according to Britain’s COP26 president, Alok Sharma.

Gaurav Khare, spokesman of India’s environment ministry, said the government had decided against attending the London conference as it had already made its views known at the G20 in Naples.

“We attended the G20 ministerial and made our stand clear. The UK Climate ministerial was right after that,” Khare said in a statement.

“It was being held in the middle of the parliament session (in India) so it was decided that this time we cannot be present.”

Khare also said India wanted to participate virtually but couldn’t “because of various technical issues”.

The London event covered the goal of keeping to the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise limit, exploring topics such as climate finance on which India has been vocal.

The United Nations is pushing for a global coalition committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 which will cover all countries.

At the G20 ministers’ meeting in Naples however India’s new environment minister Bhupender Yadav resisted international pressure to announce such a target.

He reiterated India’s stand that the richest countries should lead in cutting emissions and urged G20 nations to make a pledge that focused on per-capita emissions.

While India is the third-largest emitter, its emissions per head are low owing to its huge population of 1.3 billion. 

India is a signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement that aims at cutting down greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming.

It currently generates more than 40 percent of its electricity from coal.

One of the annoying things about global warming — besides the likelihood it will ravage life on Earth — is all the new words we are expected to learn in order to track our descent into climate chaos.

Rising temperatures have not only boosted the intensity or frequency of major storms and heatwaves, they have spawned rare or novel weather phenomena, accompanied by new more-or-less scientific names.

“Firenados”, for example, occur when searing heat and turbulent winds rise above out-of-control forest fires in tornado-like columns. 

California and Australia have seen plenty of these vertical flame-throwers, and will likely see a lot more, scientists say. 

So-called “dry thunderstorms” in drought-stricken regions such as the southwestern United States are a big tease, producing thunder and lightning, but no rain. 

The air below these high-altitude light-shows is so parched that any moisture produced evaporates on the way down.

Then there are the fire-induced, smoke-infused “pyrocumulonimbus” clouds that darkened Australian skies during the Black Summer of 2019-2020; or “urban heat islands” in big cities everywhere that run a couple degrees Celsius hotter than surrounding areas.

But nothing is more terrifying, perhaps, than the potentially deadly combination of heat and relative humidity.

A healthy human adult in the shade with unlimited drinking water will die if so-called “wet-bulb” temperatures (TW) exceed 35C for six hours, scientists have calculated. 

It was long assumed this theoretical threshold would never be crossed, but US researchers reported last year on two locations — one in Pakistan, another in the United Arab Emirates — where the 35C TW barrier was breached more than once, if only fleetingly.    

– ‘Savannafication’ –

An increase in algae blooms — sometimes known as “sea snot” — is one thing, at least, that can’t be blamed on climate change, according to a recent study. 

A critical UN assessment of climate science currently under review by 196 nations, meanwhile, will highlight the rising threat of “tipping points” in Earth’s climate system, according to sources who have seen drafts of the report.

Anyone who has tried to balance in a chair leaning back on two legs knows there is a point-of-no-return beyond which things crash to the floor.  

And so it is with kilometres-thick ice sheets atop Greenland and West Antarctica holding enough frozen water to lift oceans more than a dozen metres (40 feet). It may take centuries or longer, but some scientists say that big chunks are already “committed”, and the melting “locked-in”.

Likewise with the Amazon basin. 

Climate change coupled with fires set ablaze to clear land for cattle and crops are pushing the world’s largest tropical forest — a process dubbed “savannafication” — into arid expanses of grasslands.

These shifts are accelerated by vicious cycles of warming that scientists call “feedbacks”. 

As the thin crust of snow-covered ice floating on the Arctic Ocean, for example, gives way over the years to deep blue sea, the Sun’s planet-warming radiation is absorbed rather than bounced back into space. The reflective capacity of white surfaces is called “albedo”.   

– ‘Flight shaming’ –

As for increasingly misnamed “permafrost,” trust me, you don’t want to know. (If you insist: shallow tundra in Siberia and other sub-Arctic regions contains twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere. We’d all be better off if it stayed there.)

How do humans reacts to all these grim tidings?

Some slip into “doomism”, the understandable but useless idea that the “Earth system” — now a branch of science — is in a terminal nose dive.

Humanity, they will point out, has almost used up its “carbon budget”, and is on track to massively “overshoot” the Paris treaty goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels.  

Others are suffering from a mental state known as “solastalgia”, which combines melancholy, grief and nostalgia for a world that seems to be slipping from our grasp.

At the other extreme, the “Greta effect” has given rise to a generation of uncompromising climate warriors inspired by the young Swedish activist, and known in Italy as “Gretini”. 

Post-Covid, their parents dream of escaping to Bali or The Maldives for some “last chance tourism” before all the coral reefs die. 

But “flight shaming” for the carbon foot print of flying half-way across the globe may prevent them from getting off the ground.

So the family might as well settle in for a “CliFi” movie on Netflix — Interstellar and Snowpiercer perhaps — or a documentary on how “blue carbon” in the ocean could save us all.

At a nature reserve in southern Spain, four baby Iberian lynxes sleep peacefully beside their mother, part of a captive breeding programme that has brought the species back from the brink of extinction.

The El Acebuche breeding centre at the Donana National Park, home to one of Europe’s largest wetlands, is one of five breeding sites set up in the 2000s to boost their numbers in the wild. Four are in Spain and one in Portugal.

Slightly larger than a red fox, the Iberian lynx is distinguished by a white-and-black beard and black ear tufts.

There were around 100,000 of them in the two nations at start of the 20th century, but urban development, hunting and road kill all took their toll.

Most damaging of all however was a dramatic decline in the numbers of wild rabbits, their main prey, due to disease. By 2002, the wild cat’s numbers had plummeted to fewer than 100.

That prompted warnings from the WWF that the Iberian lynx — found only in Spain and Portugal — risked becoming the first big cat to fall into extinction since the sabre-tooth tiger died out 10,000 years ago.

The authorities and conservation groups have managed to reverse the trend by fighting poaching, reintroducing rabbits into the wild and — most important of all — through the breeding programme.

By the end of last year there were just over 1,100 Iberian lynxes living in the two countries, most of them in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia.

The conservation programme has also reintroduced captive-bred animals across southern and central Spain in the regions of Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and Murcia — as well as in Portugal.

– Lynx ‘factories’ –

“We are very pleased and surprised by the results,” the coordinator of the El Acebuche breeding centre, Antonio Rivas, told AFP.

The five breeding centres have managed to become “lynx-producing factories”, he said.

The lynxes live and breed in a large, enclosed park that recreates their natural habitat. Their caretakers try to disturb them as little as possible to prevent the animals from getting used to the presence of humans.

These days, the main cause of death for wild lynxes is related to human activities such as poaching, said Rivas: “So the less interaction they have with humans, the better it will be.”

The lynxes live off a diet of live rabbits, which staff place in a box that only opens several hours later. That delay prevents the lynx from associating the presence of the rabbits with humans, said caretaker Antonio Pardo.

He and all the other staff members wear face masks at all times because the lynxes, like other feline species, can catch Covid-19.

A system of cameras and microphones help staff monitor the animals around the clock to study their behaviour.

Sitting in front of a wall of screens, Blanca Rodriguez points to one showing Nota and her litter: Sismo, Sicilia, Senegal and Susurro.

“It’s nap time, we’re going to see them rest,” she said.

– ‘Freedom!’ –

In March 2005, El Acebuche recorded its first births of Iberian lynxes in captivity — three cubs, two of which survived.

The first litters remained in captivity for several years until they reached breeding age, so as to avoid having to capture more felines in the wild.

But since 2011 the breeding centres have released just over 300 lynxes.

When they are about one year old the lynxes are tagged with a GPS tracker and taken to their natural habitat “where we open the cage and… freedom!” said Rivas.

Eighty-five percent of Iberian lynxes born in captivity are released into the wild.

About 70 percent of them survive and each female lynx has up to six kittens per year.

Despite these encouraging results however, the International Union for Conservation of Nature still lists the animal as “endangered”.

The WWF estimates the species will be out of danger only when its population surpasses 3,000, including 750 breeding females.

Derided by purists, evangelised by innovators: “super shoes” are the tools of the trade for today’s athletes and will continue to radically change the landscape of track and road running, experts have told AFP.

A mass of not only new world records, but also a slew of national records and startling personal bests since the 2016 Rio Olympics show athletes are thriving on new technology that has pushed the biomechanics of the running shoe to a new level.

When the Olympic athletics programme starts in Tokyo on Friday, many athletes will be wearing the super-light shoes that contain a rigid plate and unique foam that lend a propulsive sensation to every stride.

Critics claim the shoes, first developed by Nike, are the equivalent of mechanical doping, while supporters hail them as a revolutionary advance after decades of stagnation.

“There seems to be an acceptance now that the new generation of shoes are part of the sport moving forward,” Geoff Burns, a biomechanics and sport performance researcher at the University of Michigan and an expert in running shoe technology, told AFP.

“We definitely don’t hear of people calling for the shoes to be banned so much anymore.”

US-based journalist Brian Metzler, author of “Kicksology: The Hype, Science, Culture and Cool of Running Shoes”, said there was a broader acceptance, largely because “all brands have caught up to Nike and because there is a greater understanding of how the school technology works”.

“The key factors in acceptance are making sure there is a fair playing field and also the notion that there is no additional energy being created by the shoes, but instead a greater return of energy from the force the runner is applying with each stride,” Metzler told AFP.

Athletes, added Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston marathon and a former editor-in-chief of Runner’s World magazine, “only care about running fast, and they have realised they must wear new shoes — from whatever company — if they are to keep up with the competition”.

He said: “I doubt the general public cares very much about the shoes, or understands them. That leaves only the sports historians and sports statisticians to debate what they should do about the fast new performances.”

– ‘A real time difference’ –

The technology, which exists in ‘flat’ running shoes and in spikes, is approved by track and field’s governing body, World Athletics, albeit with parameters set on foam thickness, among other things.

The designs “have proven that they allow a runner to be more efficient and that’s a big change, especially from 800m to 10,000m,” said Metzler.

“Some athletes have told me that the new spikes can provide a five to 15-second boost in the 5,000m, so that’s a real time difference.”

Burns said time was needed to understand the rarity of a performance, saying the sport was “still adapting to the faster times”.

Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia was wearing the shoes when she broke the women’s 10,000m world record in June. Her time of 29min 1.03sec sliced over a minute off her previous best.

And Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei used the shoes to set the men’s 5,000m world record of 12:35.36 last year.

“The way the fast performances in the distance and mid-distance races are celebrated by fans, announcers and the media is still likely overdone for their respective importance,” said Burns.

“That is, the sport still hasn’t completely re-calibrated what’s good and what’s great. That will take a bit more time and more racing. 

“I suspect by the end of next year, we’ll be close, and by two years from now, we’ll have a good feeling of what’s truly an exceptional performance in the new era.”

The more advanced technology is, Burns continued, the more it invites “complexity in the sport, for the athletes, fans and governing bodies.”

Metzler added: “With running events, the die has been cast and we’re already at a place where the new shoes have elevated human performance.

“Mostly that’s a good thing, I think, but we must realise that a sub-13 minute 5,000m (for men) today is not the same as it was in the era of David Moorcroft, Said Aouita or Bob Kennedy” in past decades.

Burns feels however there will “probably not” be world records in Tokyo.

“The spikes and shoes right now are predominantly beneficial in the distance races, and distance records are rarely set in championships, as they’re often tactical.”

Burfoot agreed: “The Olympics are about winning and losing.

“World records are more likely to happen in one-day events under optimal conditions.”

All three experts agreed many top athletes had not seen their form dip during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying many had benefitted from the extra rest and training.

“Athletes are healthy, ready, eager, and wearing super shoes!” said Burfoot.

After battling increasingly large and deadly wildfires non-stop for weeks, and with no respite in sight, firefighters in California are admitting they are burnt out.

“After a point, you start getting a little screwy, your mental health doesn’t do well,” said 55-year-old fire captain David Tikkanen.

“We’ve been up 14 days with no end in sight,” he said as he fought back the flames in Twain, a small community nestled in the California pines, which his team was hosing with water to stop it being consumed by the huge Dixie Fire.

They are in a race to prevent any sparks from spreading in an area so desiccated by drought that the vegetation is a veritable tinderbox.

It is grueling work, carried out in the middle of a conflagration covering some 200,000 acres (80,000 hectares).

– Fire season all year round –

A veteran of 35 years on the job, Tikkanen has found himself facing increasingly massive blazes, a phenomenon he attributes to climate change. 

“It’s becoming a year-round fire season in California, it’s just a matter of time before we have fires going 24/7, all year long,” he told AFP.

“It makes it more stressful and it’s more dangerous,” he said, leaning on a rake, his red firefighter helmet perched on his head.

No fewer than 5,400 men and women are battling the Dixie Fire, the biggest conflagration to ravage the state this year. 

On the steep roads of northern California, a succession of billboards pay homage to all the “fire heroes.”

But with each passing year, their missions get longer and more dangerous, and that takes a mental toll. 

“It takes what it takes, everybody has their breaking point, you know,” Tikkanen said. “Some people use alcohol, I don’t. I go mountain biking or find some other fun things to do.”

“Sometimes you need the external help,” he said, without judgment. “I’ve used it in the past, it saved me.”

– ‘Don’t bring it home’ –

At the bottom of the hill leading up to Twain, Patrick Dellenback, 36, recuperates after trying to quell several heat sources. 

His unit came straight from the Bootleg Fire, a gigantic blaze in neighboring Oregon, and is on its 12th day on the job. He admits the work can be exhausting, both physically and mentally.

“We’ve got peer support at work, so if something is really bad we can go to people who are specialized in mental health,” he said.

“I try not to bring it home to my wife,” said the firefighter, his face blackened with soot.

Behind him, Tikkanen climbed behind the wheel of his car: one of the firefighters from his unit has been taken to the hospital. Nothing serious, but he has to rush to his bedside to check up on him, before driving back up these winding and smoky roads and starting work again. 

“It’s part of the job,” he sighed as he drove off.