22 June 20
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 21 June 20 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation!
Greta Thunberg on Black Lives Matter Protests: People Are Starting to Find Their Voice
 Jessica Murray, Guardian UK Murray writes: "Greta Thunberg has said the Black Lives Matter protests show society has reached a tipping point where injustice can no longer be ignored, but that she believes a 'green recovery plan' from the coronavirus pandemic will not be enough to solve the climate crisis." READ MORE  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Jerrold Nadler: Trump AG Barr Will Escape Impeachment Thanks to 'Corrupt' Republicans
Martin Pengelly, Guardian UK Pengelly writes: "Attorney general William Barr 'certainly deserves' to be impeached and removed but will escape that fate because Republicans who control the Senate are 'corrupt against the interests of the country', the chairman of the House judiciary committee said on Sunday." READ MORE  Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon leaves a courthouse in Washington, DC, on November 8, 2019. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Breitbart 2.0? The Purge of the US Agency for Global Media, Explained
Alex Ward, Slate Ward writes: "Earlier this month, a Steve Bannon ally and conservative filmmaker appointed by President Donald Trump took over running the vast global network of news agencies funded and operated by the US government." READ MORE  Geoffrey Berman, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was unceremoniously fired after he refused to resign. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
How to Stop Presidents From Corrupting US Attorneys
Austin Sarat, Slate Sarat writes: "Berman’s firing has highlighted the Trump Administration's eagerness to once again subjugate the apparatus of American justice to the president’s personal and political agenda. It is the latest post-impeachment purge of officials deemed insufficiently loyal to the president." READ MORE  The St. Mary entrance into Glacier National Park, which borders the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, remained closed on June 5. Park officials and tribal leaders say they are negotiating when it will be safe to reopen the east side of the park. (photo: Aaron Bolton/Montana Public Radio)
Your Road Trip Is Not More Important Than Indian Country
Nick Martin, The New Republic Martin writes: "Having altered virtually everything else about American life, the coronavirus is now having its way with our summer vacation plans." EXCERPT:
Prior to European colonization, most of the public spaces now overseen by the National Parks Service and the National Forest Service were not free of human contact. The national parks system in the United States, much like the country itself, was created by the federal government’s violent removal of Indigenous nations and communities—nations and communities that are still here. As Montana attorney Isaac Kantor wrote in a 2007 paper reflecting on his visit to Glacier National Park—land long used and inhabited by the now-neighboring Blackfeet Nation—these spaces, “are built upon an illusion. They seem to offer us a rare chance to experience the continent as it was, to set eyes on a vista unspoiled by human activity. This uninhabited nature is a recent construction.”
Upon the creation of the first national park, Yellowstone, in 1872, the lands still belonged to the Crow, Shoshone, Bannock, and Tukudeka peoples, among others, per Kantor. Within seven years of Yellowstone’s creation, the federal government forcibly removed all those inhabiting the new park’s borders, as the tribes frightened the white tourists who came to vacation in their homelands. America did not stop at land theft. As Native people were erased from the public eye through forced assimilation efforts in the twentieth century—another organized effort to steal all remaining Native land—the national parks began to use Indigenous people, not just their land, as a draw for visitors.
As recently as 30 years ago, American tourists could go to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and gawk in awe at the bodily remains of people hailing from 24 tribal nations. The park’s museum openly displayed their bones until 1990, when Congress passed the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act. The legislation sought to return the remains of Indigenous people to their tribes so they could be respectfully honored by their ancestors. The law was no swift remedy: Native skeletons and artifacts from Mesa Verde that were stolen and displayed by the U.S. government are still being returned for reburial to this day.
READ MORE  Cuban doctors attend a farewell ceremony before departing to Kuwait to assist the country's ongoing fight against COVID-19, Havana, Cuba on June 4, 2020 (photo: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuter)
Cuba's Two Pandemics: The Coronavirus and the US Embargo
Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, Al Jazeera Ferreiro writes: "As soon as the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Cuba, our country mobilised all its resources to contain the spread of the virus."
Our healthcare workers go door to door checking people for possible symptoms. Those with symptoms are transferred to specially designated centres to receive treatment, mostly with medication developed by Cuba's own pharmaceutical and biotech industry. The medical examinations and treatments are all provided free of charge.
As of June 20, 85 people have died of COVID-19 in Cuba. Our mortality rate of 3.9 percent is very low compared to the rest of the world. We reached the peak of the disease on April 24
, but we are still encouraging people to respect physical distancing, isolation and sanitary measures.
Internationally, Cuba has responded to requests for collaboration from more than 20 countries, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean, but also in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Cuba has a long history and tradition of international solidarity with other countries in the health sector that dates back to the 1960s, when we started sending healthcare workers to help other countries. From then on, more than 400,000 Cuban doctors and health professionals have provided services in 164 countries. We have helped strengthen local healthcare systems, provided services in remote areas and trained doctors.
Based on this long experience, in 2005 Cuba decided to create the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to respond to natural disasters and serious epidemics across the world. Since then, this brigade of over 7,000 doctors, nurses and other health specialists has provided services in more than 20 countries.
We sent doctors and nurses to staff 32 field hospitals after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. We sent a medical team to Indonesia in 2006 after the devastating tsunami. We sent more than 1,700 health workers to Haiti in 2010 after the catastrophic earthquake and the ensuing cholera epidemic. In 2014, we sent brigades to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone to combat Ebola.
Even Samantha Power, former US President Barack Obama's UN Ambassador, praised Cuba for its outstanding role in the fight against Ebola.
We even had brigades ready to assist Louisiana after New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina but the US government rejected our cooperation.
Assisting others has always been part of who we are as a country and part of the ethical training Cuban doctors and health professionals receive.
In response to the current pandemic, Cuba has dispatched 28 contingents of the Henry Reeve Brigade to help 26 countries. This is in addition to the more than 28,000 Cuban doctors, nurses and health professionals who were already overseas before the pandemic.
Unfortunately, Cuban doctors and the Henry Reeve Brigade, in particular, have come under increasing attacks by the Trump administration, which has gone so far as to falsely accuse Cuba of human trafficking through its doctor programme.
It is a shame that the United States government has been trying to discredit Cuba's international assistance, including using pressure and threats against countries to force them to cancel these medical cooperation agreements.
They have even tried to pressure governments to reject Cuba's help during the coronavirus pandemic. They claim the Cuban government is exploiting these doctors because in the case of countries that can afford to provide monetary compensation, a portion of it is kept by the Cuban government.
However, working overseas is completely voluntary, and the portion the Cuban government keeps goes to pay for Cuba's universal health system. It goes to purchasing medical supplies, equipment and medication for Cuba's 11 million people, including for the families of the doctors who are providing their services abroad. This is how we are able to provide free, high-quality healthcare for the Cuban people.
Instead of exacerbating conflict during a pandemic, our countries need to work together to find solutions. For years, Cuba has been developing pharmaceuticals and vaccines to treat different diseases, from psoriasis and cancer to heart attacks. Now we are helping patients recover from COVID-19 with Interferon Alfa2b Recombinant, one of 19 medications being developed or under clinical trial in Cuba by our biotech and pharmaceutical industries to treat different stages of COVID-19. Globally, we have received more than 70 requests for pharmaceuticals developed by Cuba.
This would be a clear avenue for Cuba-US cooperation but unfortunately, the Trump administration is wasting this opportunity by dismantling the limited progress made by Cuba and the US during the Obama administration.
President Trump strengthened the 60-year US blockade against my country, implementing 90 economic measures against Cuba between January 2019 and March 2020 alone. These measures have targeted the main sectors of the Cuban economy, including our financial transactions, tourism industry, energy sector, foreign investments - which are key for the development of the Cuban economy - and the medical cooperation programmes with other countries.
These unilateral coercive measures are unprecedented in their level of aggression and scope. They are deliberately trying to deprive Cuba of resources, sources of revenue and income needed for the development of the Cuban economy. The effects of these measures are being felt in Cuba, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The blockade is stopping Cuba from getting much-needed medical supplies. For example, if more than 10 percent of the components in the medical equipment or medications we want to buy are of US origin, then Cuba is not allowed to purchase them.
In addition, the US has imposed restrictions on banks, airlines and shipping companies to stop Cuba from receiving materials that other countries are donating or sending to Cuba.
In April, the Alibaba Foundation of China tried to donate masks, rapid diagnostic kits and ventilators to Cuba, but the airline contracted by Alibaba to transport those items to Cuba refused to take the goods because they were afraid the US would sanction them.
A ship recently arrived in Cuba with raw materials to produce medications but it decided not to unload because the bank involved in the transaction decided not to make the payment out of fear it would be sanctioned by the US government.
So this is why we say we are suffering from two pandemics: COVID-19 and the US blockade. For that reason, it is so important that people of goodwill around the world continue to raise the demand to end the blockade of Cuba and to forcefully assert that these are times for solidarity and cooperation, not sanctions and blockades. In the meantime, Cuba, as a country that understands the value of solidarity, will continue to do our best to stop the spread of coronavirus at home and globally.
READ MORE  CO2 is released in the process of aluminium smelting, even if the plant is powered by renewable energy (photo: Alamy)
How Iceland Is Undoing Carbon Emissions for Good
Lowana Veal, BBC News Veal writes: "Carbon emissions are causing climate change – so rather than sending carbon dioxide into the sky, in Iceland, some are turning it into stone."  he two red-and-white silos of the aluminium smelter at Straumsvík are conspicuous from afar to everyone travelling from Iceland’s international airport to the capital city, Reykjavík. These silos house a mineral called alumina, the raw material used to produce aluminium. The alumina makes its way via an automated system to potrooms – three grey, long, low-lying buildings – where the manufacture of aluminium happens. These potrooms are perhaps less noticeable than the towers, yet they are playing a crucial role in reducing Iceland’s carbon emissions.
Heavy industry in Iceland contributes 48% of the country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, according to the Environment Agency of Iceland, excluding greenhouse gases from land use and forestry. Even though these industrial facilities run on renewable energy from hydroelectricity and geothermal power, CO2 is released as part of the process of producing metals like aluminium. The larger of the country’s industrial facilities produces silicon metals, which are used in steel manufacturing, as well as aluminium, much of which is exported and used in the automobile industry.
At present, three aluminium smelters, two manufacturing plants and the energy company Reykjavik Energy are investigating becoming carbon neutral by 2040. Together, the facilities release about 1.76 million tonnes of CO2 each year. Getting from that figure to zero might seem like a tall order, especially when much of Iceland’s heavy industry already runs on renewables.
But for the remaining carbon there is another way – capturing the CO2 released from the facilities’ smokestacks, injecting it into the Icelandic basalt rock nearby and waiting for it to turn into stone.
The concept is known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), and versions of the technology have been tried and tested for years. Typically, carbon capture and storage involves capturing the CO2 and separating it from other gases, transporting it by pipeline or ship to a suitable site, and then injecting it deep underground. It can be injected into in large areas of sedimentary rock or depleted oil and gas fields, among other sites. There it is stored, usually at depths of at least one kilometre, and over time it is turned into a harmless carbonate mineral, such as calcite – one of the main components of marble and limestone. Many carbon capture and storage plants are now in operation, either for harnessing CO2 from power plants or from other industrial facilities. However, most of these are small-scale or still under construction. Only two large-scale power plants with CCS currently in operation, Petra Nova Carbon Capture in the US and Boundary Dam CCS in Canada. A dozen or so more plants are at various stages of development around the world. The technology works best when there is a high concentration of CO2 to be extracted. At a large coal-fired power plant, CCS can capture at least 800,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. At natural gas power stations, which typically emit less CO2, the figure is closer to 400,000 tonnes per year.
In Iceland, the uptake of carbon capture and storage has been adapted for the black basalt rock that the volcanic island is famous for. ON Power, a subsidiary of Reykjavik Energy, has employed an adapted method called CarbFix to work with the Icelandic rock. It has been in operation since 2014 at Hellisheiði geothermal power plant, about 30km east of Iceland’s capital, and by January 2020 had fixed over 50,000 tonnes of CO2.
Cutting carbon
In conventional carbon capture and storage, CO2 is injected at high pressure into sedimentary basins in a gaseous, liquid or supercritical phase (where the liquid is at a temperature and pressure beyond the point it usually turns into a gas). An impermeable cap rock ordinarily prevents the CO2 from leaking back to the surface. But in Iceland, there is no such impermeable cap. Here, an alternative method is being developed where CO2 is dissolved in water prior to or during injection into the porous basalt rock. Dissolving the CO2 makes it less buoyant, and the CO2-charged fluid tends to sink down through the rock, lessening the risk of the CO2 escaping into the atmosphere.
In Iceland, the dissolved gas is injected into basalts and reactive rock formations at a depth of about 500m, where the CO2 can turn rapidly into minerals. At Hellisheiði, it takes about two years for 95% of the CO2 to be mineralised. The process can take more or less time at other sites, depending on a few factors. One is the depth at which the carbon is injected, and another is the temperature of the rock formation – the rate of the mineralisation process is generally faster at higher temperatures.
Iceland sits on a major fault line in the Earth’s tectonic plates, leading to the formation of hundreds of volcanoes on the island. As a result, the island has a number of high-temperature zones, where the underground temperature reaches 250C within 1km depth, and in its “low-temperature” zones, the temperature reaches up to 150C within 1km depth. But at Hellisheiði, the temperature of the rock formation was around 20-50C, which is enough for speedy mineralisation.
Permeability, or how porous or fractured the rock is, also plays a role in how fast mineralisation of CO2 can happen, with more porous rock leading to a faster reaction, says Edda Aradottír, project manager for CarbFix. Together these factors make a big difference; elsewhere in the world at sites with less favourable geology, the mineralisation of CO2 would take thousands of years.
The method can be used near emission sources in other parts of the world too, as long as the bedrock contains sufficient amounts of calcium, magnesium and iron. These metals are necessary because they react with the CO2 to form carbonate minerals needed to permanently store the CO2.
CarbFix can also be used to get rid of other water-soluble gases, such as hydrogen sulphide. This gas is frequently emitted from geothermal power stations and in high concentrations it is toxic and corrosive. It also has the unappealing odour of rotten eggs. At Hellisheiði, hydrogen sulphide is injected along with the CO2. The treatment plant at Hellisheiði can handle 12,000 tonnes of CO2 and 7,000 tonnes of hydrogen sulphide annually, which is about 33% and 75% of the annual emissions from the power plant respectively.
Elsewhere, the pollutants known as SOx and NOx (sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides) could also conceivably be captured using CarbFix, according to Aradóttir. Both of these are components of vehicle exhaust, while SOx are also commonly produced from power plants and industrial processes, including aluminium smelters, and can cause a variety of respiratory problems. Because Carbfix can capture impure mixtures of gas, it is more economically feasible.
There are some environmental drawbacks to the process, though. CarbFix is water-intensive: at Hellisheiði, it uses about 27 tonnes of water for each tonne of CO2 injected into the bedrock. Would this cause problems for areas with limited access to water? No, says Aradóttir, because the water can be reused after mineralisation. Conventional carbon capture and storage methods have also raised questions about contamination of groundwater that is used as a source of drinking water. Theoretical studies have shown that if the dissolved gases escaped before being mineralised, they could raise levels of contaminants in groundwater sources above safe levels. But the method of dissolving the CO2 in water before injection helps to reduce this risk, because the CO2-laden water has a higher density and will tend to sink rather than escape upwards.
Another challenge is the scarcity of freshwater in many regions around the world, which is why Aradóttir and her colleagues are developing the process to use seawater for use at coastal sites. However, seawater is more water-intensive than freshwater. Seawater makes the process more complicated because of dissolved elements in the seawater, which interferes with the chemistry of the process, says Sandra Ósk Snæbjörnsdóttir, a researcher at CarbFix.
Aradóttir is optimistic about capturing CO2 from Iceland’s heavy industries but admits that it might be complicated when the gas is less concentrated. “There might be minor adjustments, particularly when it comes to the capture stage,” she says. But as long as the concentration of CO2 is above a threshold level, the process should work.
Others are keenly watching the Icelandic project’s progress. It is “a fantastic example of what can be achieved with the right set of mind”, says Alexander Richter, president of the International Geothermal Association and founder of the geothermal energy news site ThinkGeoEnergy. In the meantime, Aradóttir is investigating using their technology in Germany, Italy and Turkey, where trial CO2 injection is due to begin next year.
Clearing the air
It’s one thing to fix carbon at a facility where CO2 concentrations are high. But the big goal is removing CO2 straight from the atmosphere and fixing it, known as direct-air capture.
At the moment direct-air capture is too expensive to be used on any large scale, although it has attracted a great deal of interest and emphasis has been put on the development of such technologies – 15 plants are currently in operation globally. However, the cost of these plants is very high due to the particularly dilute stream of CO2 they are capturing compared to capturing at point sources.
Nonetheless, Aradóttir says that direct air capture is “inevitably part of the solution, particularly when we look at the second half of the 21st Century”. She points out that there have been drastic reductions in the cost of renewable energy, such as wind and solar, and suggests direct-air capture may well go the same way. “It will always be cheaper to capture on-site for point sources,” she says. “But for aviation and other types of emissions where we can’t use capture on site, then direct air capture is part of the solution.”
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that methods to remove CO2 from the atmosphere will be necessary if we are to limit warming to 1.5-2C this century. When it comes to carbon capture and storage, realistically that means installing between 10,000 and 14,000 injection wells around the world in the next 30 years, by one estimate.
Aradóttir foresees using offshore facilities to fix carbon and store it under the ocean. “Of course, we can use rigs in a similar way that the oil and gas industry now use for oil and gas production and simply revert the process, inject the CO2 and aim at basalt formations and then it mineralises within the ocean floor,” she says. Indeed, Norway has already dug its first well at a large planned carbon capture and storage facility in an oil and gas field in the North Sea.
Iceland is a small country, with a population of just 364,000 and a well-tapped abundance of renewable energy. But, even though Iceland’s baseline for emissions is relatively low, other larger and more carbon-intensive countries may have something to learn from the way it is easing even its heaviest industries away from CO2 emissions.
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