From The Daily Caller

Chris White Tech Reporter July 06, 2020 12:21 PM ET

A federal judge Monday ordered the shut down of the Dakota Access Pipeline while federal regulators conduct a review of the multi-billion dollar pipeline.

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and three other Native American tribes requested the shutdown, arguing that the pipeline harms the environment and tramples on tribal lands. North Dakota officials believe shuttering the pipeline could damage the state’s economy, which is highly dependent on gas and oil production.

The pipeline has been shipping North Dakota oil to Illinois for the past three years. President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders in 2017 advancing the construction of the pipeline, along with another oil project that former President Barack Obama scuttled in 2015.

Trump asked the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline to resubmit its application for a cross-border permit bringing oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. (RELATED: Here’s The Actual Text Of Trump’s Executive Orders On Keystone XL, Dakota Pipelines)

Obama argued that approving the pipeline would tarnish the U.S.’s image as a global warming crusader. He blocked the Dakota Access Pipeline in November 2016 shortly before leaving office for similar reasons.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing Standing Rock’s lawsuit, ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in March to complete a full review. The pipeline’s future has been in limbo ever since, stuck between an activist-led lawsuit that threatens to disrupt the flow of oil and a presidential decree keeping the project online.

“Given the seriousness of the Corps’ … error, the impossibility of a simple fix, the fact that Dakota Access did assume much of its economic risk knowingly, and the potential harm each day the pipeline operates, the Court is forced to conclude that the flow of oil must cease,” Boasberg wrote in his opinion Monday.

The judge acknowledged that the move “will cause significant disruption to DAPL, the North Dakota oil industry, and potentially other states.”

Boasberg is directing the Army Corps of Engineers to complete a thorough Environmental Impact Statement on the pipeline, which could take upward of 13 months to complete and is more time consuming than the Environmental Assessment the corp completed before the project was completed.

The Dakota Access Pipeline carries more than half-a million barrels of oil across the country, representing roughly 40% of North Dakota’s daily productive capacity before the pandemic resulted in an oil crunch and economic destruction, according to a Monday report from the Bismarck Tribune.

Supporters of the project lashed out at the judge Monday, with Grow America’s Infrastructure Now (GAIN) spokesman Craig Stevens hitting Boasberg’s decision to “side with environmental activists to shut in our nation’s critical natural resources.”

“While we are disappointed with the judge’s decision, the GAIN Coalition is hopeful that common sense will prevail and this decision will be stayed or overturned,” Stevens wrote in a press statement addressing the move. “We remain confident the Corps’ additional review will affirm its previous findings on DAPL.”

Activists and members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe staged months of protests against Energy Transfer Partners, the company building Dakota Access, and law enforcement officials. The demonstrations gained celebrity support even while turning violent at times.

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July 6, 2020 at 08:28PM

by Judith Curry

Latest roundup of interesting articles.  I’m running out of steam on this topic, here are some random articles I’ve flagged over the last few weeks.

New study in Spain addes evidence against herd immunity [link]

Very good article: Key ingredients of good science in times of complex crises? Pluralism, analytical rigor + an appreciation decisions must be made under uncertainty. [link]

A guide to R:  The pandemic’s misunderstood metric [link]

Hypothesis: Restrictions on Hydroxychloroquine Contribute to the COVID-19 Cases Surge [link]

How mask filter fleece is made [link]

7 year coronavirus trail from bat cave via Whan lab [link]

Experts are indicating that a new coronavirus mutation spreads faster but doesn’t make people sicker, and perhaps may, over time, be less severe. [link]

This is good:  How masks went from don’t wear to must have [link]

Two weeks after Russia’s home-grown Covid-19 vaccine was administered to a group of volunteers, there have been no negative side-effects. Hopes are now high that mass immunization could be possible within a few months. [link]

Here is another new study (N=518) showing the Zelenko protocol (HCQ + AZ + Zinc) dramatically reduces hospitalization rates of Covid-19 patients. (p<0.001) https://preprints.org/manuscript/202007.0025/v1

HCQ for prophylaxis in India over 342,000 healthcare workers. Out of 66649 close contacts of covid+ve patients, apparently just 0.2% actually got the disease. [link]

Coronavirus autopsies: A story of 38 brains, 87 lungs and 42 hearts [link]

Sunlight inactivates the airborne virus that causes Covid  [link]

The tricky math of herd immunity for COVID-19 [link]

New data on the Multi-system Inflammatory Syndrome in 186 kids. [link]

Evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was already circulating in Northern Italy in December 2019, based on the analysis of wastewater. [link]

How the world missed COVID-19’s silent spread [link]

Rheumatologists’ view on the use of HCQ [link]

The risk of rushing the vaccine development [link]

COVID-19 pandemic and mental health consequences: systematic review of the current evidence [link]

via Climate Etc.

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July 6, 2020 at 07:45PM

Don’t expect to hear this news from polar bear activists busy promoting the supposed threat to polar bears from declining Arctic sea ice but ice cover over Hudson Bay so far this summer has been very similar to what it was in the 1980s – often promoted as ‘the good old days’ for Western Hudson Bay polar bears. As of the end of June 2020, very concentrated ice (9/10-10/10) more than 1 metre thick still covered most of the bay and there was still no open water near Churchill along the west coast down into James Bay.

Polar bear activists don’t like to have current Hudson Bay sea ice reality ruin their social and news media narrative that ‘polar bears are all gonna die’, so they instead emphasize the obsolete ‘declining trend’ for Western Hudson Bay breakup dates that haven’t been updated since 2015 (e.g. Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017; Lunn et al. 2016). They do this despite the fact their colleagues admit polar bears don’t catch many seals after late June (regardless of sea ice conditions) because it is past the peak spring feeding period (Obbard et al. 2016; Lippold et al. 2019). Like in the 1980s, in 2015 and 2019 some bears stayed on the ice until early August and 2020 is shaping up to be another 1980’s-like summer.

Here is the same chart as above (last week in June) but in black and white (which was all the was available in the 1980s). These are harder to interpret but look at the over-all pattern and note that stippled areas (dots close together) represent open water:

And here is the chart for the same week in 1986:

And here is the same week in 1980:

How this will affect the dates that polar bears come ashore for the summer is unclear because there is always more of a lag between official WH ‘breakup’ dates and the dates that polar bears come ashore. Castro de la Guardia et al. (2017:230-231) found that WH polar bears come ashore approximately 20 days after sea ice ‘breakup’ hits a threshold of 50% sea ice concentration, which meant that in 1979-1989 most bears were off the ice about 31 July (±4 days) but from 2005-2015 most bears were ashore about 18 July (± 9 days), about 14 days earlier.

This year, all tagged WH polar bears were still on the ice as of early July, according to Andrew Derocher:

Last year, by 17 July most of Derocher’s bears (see below) were still out on the ice even though there didn’t appear to be much ice for them to access and at least half were still on the ice by the end of July (i.e. similar to the 1980s).

In 2018, most bears were off the ice near Churchill by the third week in July (16-22) – only a week or so earlier than 2019 – with a few bears similarly reported off the ice the week before (9-15). And in 2017, most bears were off the ice near Churchill by the fourth week of July (24-30) and reported to be in “great shape”.  In 2016, most bears near Churchill were off the ice and in great shape by mid-July (11-17). However, 2015 appeared to be more like 2019: there were a few bears around Churchill by the third week of July (20-26) but like 2019, there was lingering ice on the bay until mid-August. Also like 2019, most of Derocher’s tagged bears were still on the ice at 15 July. I presume based on this information that most bears were not off the ice until the end of July (i.e. like they were in the 1980s and in 2019).

In other words, for 2020 sea ice breakup in Western Hudson Bay is looking very similar to the 1980s which means polar bears will likely not be ashore until the end of July or early August, as they were in the 1980s (and in 2015 and 2019).

In closing, I have copied below the chart for daily ice cover for Hudson Bay on 6 July, which shows a tiny patch of open water north of Churchill but still a lot of ice over the western half of Hudson Bay:

Last year at that time, when WH bears stayed on the ice into late July/early August, the ice looked like this:

References

Castro de la Guardia, L., Myers, P.G., Derocher, A.E., Lunn, N.J., Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A.D. 2017. Sea ice cycle in western Hudson Bay, Canada, from a polar bear perspective. Marine Ecology Progress Series 564: 225–233. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v564/p225-233/

Lippold, A., Bourgeon, S., Aars, J., Andersen, M., Polder, A., Lyche, J.L., Bytingsvik, J., Jenssen, B.M., Derocher, A.E., Welker, J.M. and Routti, H. 2019. Temporal trends of persistent organic pollutants in Barents Sea polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in relation to changes in feeding habits and body condition. Environmental Science and Technology 53(2):984-995. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b05416

Lunn, N.J., Servanty, S., Regehr, E.V., Converse, S.J., Richardson, E. and Stirling, I. 2016. Demography of an apex predator at the edge of its range – impacts of changing sea ice on polar bears in Hudson Bay. Ecological Applications 26(5): 1302-1320. DOI: 10.1890/15-1256

Obbard, M.E., Cattet, M.R.I., Howe, E.J., Middel, K.R., Newton, E.J., Kolenosky, G.B., Abraham, K.F. and Greenwood, C.J. 2016. Trends in body condition in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the Southern Hudson Bay subpopulation in relation to changes in sea ice. Arctic Science 2: 15-32. DOI: 10.1139/AS-2015-0027

via polarbearscience

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July 6, 2020 at 05:53PM

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

One of the saddest stories I have read in a long time; starving Venezuelan socialism refugees who were welcomed into neighbouring Colombia, are now heading back home to a bleak future in Venezuela, after the Colombian Covid lockdown prevented them from earning a living in their new home.

‘Get me back to Caracas’: desperate Venezuelans leave lockdown Bogotá

Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá @joeparkdan
Sat 4 Jul 2020 17.30 AEST

…

“I left Venezuela because the situation was so bad that I couldn’t feed my family,” Vera says, as cars whizz along the highway that cuts through the impromptu camp. “I never thought that here I wouldn’t be able to feed myself.”

Venezuela, despite having the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, is mired in economic and social ruin. Hyperinflation is rampant, rendering the currency, the bolivar, practically useless, while food shortages are a daily reality.

More than 4 million Venezuelans have now left, with about 5,000 crossing into neighbouring Colombia each day at the end of last year, according to data from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Nearly 2 million live in Colombia.

But now, with lockdown shuttering businesses and keeping customers away, there is little work for Venezuelans such as Vera. Unable to pay rent, she was evicted from the house she shared with other migrants in the south of Bogotá. She has spent the past month camped outside a bus terminal on the northern outskirts of the city. Vera, like the 430 others here, would rather be home in Venezuela, where at least shelter is guaranteed. “I can knock on doors but if there’s no work, what can I do?” Vera asks, as she washes her clothes in a stream. “Going home is the only option I have.

…

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/04/get-me-back-to-caracas-desperate-venezuelans-leave-lockdown-bogota

In 2011, Bernie Sanders described Venezuela as the new home of the American Dream. From Bernie Sanders’ website;

These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who’s the banana republic now?

Nobody knows what will happen when the refugees return home to Venezuela. Distributing any kind of aid in Venezuela is difficult, because the Maduro government frequently refuses external help, as part of a brutal, pointless effort to maintain the fiction that Venezuela is not suffering severe economic problems.

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July 6, 2020 at 04:32PM