AFP UK

Tourists at a space t-shirt store shop near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, August 27, 2022

Seeing a rocket blast off to the Moon is “a once-in-a-lifetime thing to experience,” says Joanne Bostandji. 

The 45-year-old has traveled all the way from northern England to Florida with her husband and two children for a space-themed vacation, and they’re prepared to make sure they don’t miss a second of the action as NASA’s newest and most powerful rocket is scheduled to launch for the first time Monday. 

“The plan is to drive very early in the morning and get a spot” on Cocoa Beach, she said, not far from the Kennedy Space Center. 

“I know it’s going be from a far distance, but I still think it’s going be a sight to behold,” Bostandji told AFP as the family waited to enter a park dedicated to space exploration.  

Between 100,000 and 200,000 visitors are expected to attend the launch of the mission, called Artemis 1, which will propel an empty capsule to the Moon as part of a test for future crewed flights.

The “historic nature” of Monday’s flight, the first of several as the United States returns to the Moon, “certainly has increased public interest,” Meagan Happel of Florida’s Space Coast Office of Tourism told AFP.

Traffic jams are expected to start by 4 am, with the launch scheduled at 8:33 am (1233 GMT). 

And even more people might show up if the launch faces a weather delay, as the make-up date falls on a weekend. 

– Space cruise –

Sabrina Morley was able to find an apartment to rent not far from the beach, and plans to bring her two children and a few dozen other people on a boat chartered for the occasion by a company called Star Fleet Tours. 

For $95 a ticket, “we’ll go out into the ocean as close as they can get to the launch and we’ll watch the launch from the boat,” she said

“I’ve never been this close to a launch before,” said the 43-year-old, who grew up in Orlando, less than an hour away. 

As a child, she could see space shuttles taking off from her backyard, like “an orange ball of smoke” rising into the sky.

“We would hear the sonic booms,” she remembered. 

Morley likes that NASA’s Artemis program aims to land a woman on the Moon for the first time, with a crew to head up in 2025 at the earliest.

“Representation matters,” she said, glancing at her two-year-old daughter, who is already wearing an imitation astronaut helmet on her head. 

– Good for business – 

The return of prestigious space launches is an economic boon for the region. A family of three will spend an average of $1,300 over four or five days, according to the tourism office. 

On the main road to Merritt Island, the peninsula where the Kennedy Space Center is located, Brenda Mulberry’s space memorabilia shop is packed with tourists. 

As soon as they enter, visitors are greeted with Artemis T-shirts for sale, printed in-house — there were 1,000 copies made Saturday alone. 

The last few days has seen an influx of customers, Mulberry, who founded “Space Shirts” in 1984, told AFP. 

“They’re just excited I think to see a NASA launch because the private space business is not so motivating to the people,” she said.

This rocket, called the SLS — a large model of which is displayed in front of her shop — “belongs to the people,” Mulberry said. 

“It’s their rocket. It’s not SpaceX rocket,” she added.

There is an air of nostalgia for the Apollo rocket program — it’s been 50 years since the last time a crewed mission went to the Moon, in 1972.

“My family, they had to go to the neighbor’s house to watch (the Apollo missions) because they didn’t have a television,” Bostandji, who was not yet born, said. 

“Now we’re going to see it hopefully for real.”

How the US plans to return to the Moon

The Artemis program is NASA’s plan to return humans to the Moon as a stepping stone for an eventual voyage to Mars.

Twelve men walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1972 and one of the goals of Artemis is to put the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface.  

The first test flight of an uncrewed Artemis rocket is to take place on Monday.

The name Artemis was chosen to echo that of the Apollo program.

Artemis, in Greek mythology, was the twin sister of Apollo and a goddess associated with the Moon.

Here is an overview of the Artemis program:

– Artemis 1: test flight –

Artemis 1 is a test flight of the 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket and the Orion crew capsule that sits on top.

Blastoff is scheduled for 8:33 am (1233 GMT) on Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Mannequins equipped with sensors will take the place of crew members on the flight, recording vibration, acceleration and radiation levels.

Orion will orbit the Moon before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

– Artemis 2: first crew –

Planned for 2024, Artemis 2 will be a crewed flight that will orbit the Moon but not land on the surface, similar to what Apollo 8 did.

The four members of the crew will be named before the end of the year. A Canadian is expected to be among them.

– Artemis 3: Moon landing –

The third Artemis mission will be the first to put astronauts on the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.

NASA, for the first time, will land a crewed spacecraft on the southern pole of the Moon, where water in the form of ice has been detected.

Previous Moon landings took place near the equator.

Artemis 3 is scheduled for 2025 but may not take place until 2026 at the earliest, according to an independent audit of the program.

Starting with Artemis 3, NASA plans to launch crewed missions about once a year.

– SpaceX Moon lander –

NASA has selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build the Moon lander for Artemis 3.

SpaceX’s Starship, which is still under development, will serve as a shuttle from the Orion crew capsule to the lunar surface and back.

– Gateway space station –

The Artemis program also calls for the construction of a space station called Gateway that will orbit the Moon.

The launch of the first two elements — the living quarters module and power and propulsion system — is planned for late 2024 at the earliest by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Orion crews would be responsible for assembly of Gateway.

Astronauts would spend between 30 to 60 days in Gateway and would eventually have access to a lander that would allow them to travel to the Moon and back.

Gateway would also serve as a stopping point for any future trip to Mars.

– Destination Mars –

The ultimate objective of the Artemis program is what NASA calls the “next giant leap — human exploration of Mars.”

NASA will use knowledge gained from Artemis about next generation spacesuits, vehicles, propulsion, resupply and other areas to prepare for a trip to Mars.

The goal is to learn how to maintain a human presence in deep space for a long period.

Creating a “base camp” on the Moon is part of the plan with astronauts staying on the lunar surface for up to two months.

While a trip to the Moon takes just a few days, a voyage to Mars would take a minimum of several months.

The river through Mingora had risen more than three metres and burst it banks, flooding an amusement park

Thousands of people living near flood-swollen rivers in Pakistan’s north were ordered to evacuate Saturday as the death toll from devastating monsoon rains neared 1,000 with no end in sight.

Many rivers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — a picturesque province of rugged mountains and valleys — have burst their banks, demolishing scores of buildings including a 150-room hotel that crumbled into a raging torrent.

“The house which we built with years of hard work started sinking in front of our eyes,” said Junaid Khan, 23, the owner of two fish farms in Chrasadda.

“We sat on the side of the road and watched our dream house sinking.”

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.

Officials say this year’s monsoon flooding has affected more than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis — destroying or badly damaging nearly a million homes.

On Saturday, authorities ordered thousands of residents in threatened areas to evacuate their homes as rivers had still not reached maximum capacity.

“Initially some people refused to leave, but when the water level increased they agreed,” Bilal Faizi, spokesman for the Rescue 1122 emergency service, told AFP.

Officials say this year’s floods are comparable to 2010 — the worst on record — when over 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was under water.

Farmer Shah Faisal, camped by the side of a road in Chrasadda with his wife and two daughters, described how he saw his riverside home swallowed by a river as the powerful current eroded the bank.

The Jindi, Swat and Kabul rivers flow through the town before joining the mighty Indus, which is also flooding downstream. 

“We escaped with our lives,” Faisal told AFP.

– Climate change –

Officials blame the devastation on man-made climate change, saying Pakistan is unfairly bearing the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere in the world.

Pakistan is eighth on the Global Climate Risk Index, a list compiled by the environmental NGO Germanwatch of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.

Still, local authorities must shoulder some of the blame for the devastation.

Corruption, poor planning and the flouting of local regulations mean thousands of buildings have been erected in areas prone to seasonal flooding — albeit not as bad as this year.

The government has declared an emergency and mobilised the military to deal with what Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman on Wednesday called “a catastrophe of epic scale”.

According to the National Disaster Management Authority, since the monsoon started in June more than two million acres of cultivated crops have been wiped out, 3,100 kilometres (1,900 miles) of roads have been destroyed and 149 bridges have been washed away.

In Sukkur, more than 1,000 kilometres south of Swat, farmlands irrigated by the Indus were under water, and tens of thousands of people were seeking shelter on elevated roads and highways as they waited for fresh torrents from the north.

“We have opened the gates fully,” dam supervisor Aziz Soomro told AFP, adding the main rush of water was expected Sunday.

The flooding could not come at a worse time for Pakistan, whose economy is in free fall and whose politics are gripped by crisis following the ousting of former prime minister Imran Khan by a parliamentary vote of no confidence in April.

It was hoped that a fifth session of negotiations on a marine biodiversity treaty for international waters would end with a treaty

UN member states ended two weeks of negotiations Friday without a treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas, an agreement that would have addressed growing environmental and economic challenges.

After 15 years, including four prior formal sessions, negotiators have yet to reach a legally binding text to address the multitude of issues facing international waters — a zone that encompasses almost half the planet.

“Although we did make excellent progress, we still do need a little bit more time to progress towards the finish line,” said conference chair Rena Lee.

It will now be up to the UN General Assembly to resume the fifth session at a date still to be determined.

Many had hoped the session, which began on August 15 at the United Nations headquarters in New York, would be the last and yield a final text on “the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction,” or BBNJ for short.

“While it’s disappointing that the treaty wasn’t finalized during the past two weeks of negotiations, we remain encouraged by the progress that was made,” said Liz Karan of the NGO Pew Charitable Trusts, calling for a new session by the end of the year.

One of the most sensitive issues in the text revolved around the sharing of possible profits from the development of genetic resources in international waters, where pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic companies hope to find miracle drugs, products or cures.

Such costly research at sea is largely the prerogative of rich nations, but developing countries do not want to be left out of potential windfall profits drawn from marine resources that belong to no one.

-‘Missed opportunity’-

Similar issues of equity arise in other international negotiations, such as on climate change, in which developing nations that feel outsized harm from global warming have tried in vain to get wealthier countries to help pay to offset those impacts.

The high seas begin at the border of a nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) — which by international law reaches no more than 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from its coast — and are under no state’s jurisdiction.

Sixty percent of the world’s oceans fall under this category.

And while healthy marine ecosystems are crucial to the future of humanity, particularly to limit global warming, only one percent of international waters are protected.

One of the key pillars of an eventual BBNJ treaty is to allow the creation of marine protected areas, which many nations hope will cover 30 percent of the Earth’s ocean by 2030.

“Without establishing protections in this vast area, we will not be able to meet our ambitious and necessary 30 by 30 goal,” US State Department official Maxine Burkett said at an earlier press conference.

But delegations still disagree on the process for creating these protected areas as well as how required environmental impact assessments will be implemented before new high seas activity begins.

“What a missed opportunity…”, tweeted Klaudija Cremers, a researcher at the IDDRI think tank, which, like multiple other NGOs, has a seat with observer status at the negotiations.

The delegate from Samoa, addressing the conference on behalf of the smaller developing island nations of the Pacific, said they were “disappointed.”

“We live very far and it is not cheap to travel all this way. This money was not spent on roads, on medicine, schools,” she added.

“The Pacific came here in good faith and will continue to do so until we conclude this conference in the very near future,” she said on the verge of tears, to applause from the room.

Laura Meller, of Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign, said: “Time has run out. Further delay means ocean destruction. We are sad and disappointed. While countries continue to talk, the oceans and all those who rely on them will suffer.”

The Isar Nuclear Power Plant in southern Germany. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has raised the possibility of extending the lifetime of such plants

As the costs of importing energy soars worldwide and climate crises wreak havoc, interest in nuclear power is on the rise with nations scrambling to find alternative sources.

Investment in nuclear power declined after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster, the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, as fears over its safety increased and governments ran scared.

But following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the subsequent squeeze on energy supplies and Europe’s push to wean itself off of Russian oil and gas, the tide is now turning back in favour of nuclear.

Governments face difficult decisions with rising gas and electricity bills and scarce resources threatening to cause widespread suffering this winter.

Some experts argue that nuclear power should not be considered an option, But others argue that, in the face of so many crises, it must remain part of the world’s energy mix.

One of the countries reconsidering nuclear energy is Japan, where the 2011 accident led to the suspension of many nuclear reactors over safety fears.

This week Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called for a push to revive the country’s nuclear power industry, and build new atomic plants.

Other countries that were looking to move away from nuclear have discarded those plans — at least in the short term.

Less than a month after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Belgium delayed by a decade its plan to scrap nuclear energy in 2025.

While nuclear power, currently used in 32 countries, supplies 10 percent of the world’s electricity production, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) raised its projections in September for the first time since the 2011 disaster.

The IAEA now expects installed capacity to double by 2050 under the most favourable scenario.

– Climate reasoning –

Even in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, sticking with nuclear is no longer a taboo subject as the energy crisis rekindles debate on shutting down the country’s last three nuclear power plants by the end of 2022.

Berlin said last month it would await the outcome of a “stress test” of the national electric grid before deciding whether to stick with the phaseout.

Greenpeace Germany’s climate and energy expert, Gerald Neubauer, said turning to nuclear was “not a solution to the energy crisis”.

He said nuclear energy would have “limited” efficacy in replacing Russian gas since it is mainly “used for heating” in Germany not for electricity production.

“The reactors would only save the gas used for electricity, it would save less than one percent of the gas consumption,” he added.

But according to Nicolas Berghmans, energy and climate expert at the IDDRI think tank, extending the use of nuclear “can help”.

“Europe is in a very different energy situation, with several overlapping crises: the problem of Russian gas supply, the drought that has reduced the capacity of dams, the French nuclear plants’ weak output… so all the levers matter,” he said.

The pro-nuclear lobby says it is one of the world’s best options to avoid climate change since it does not directly emit carbon dioxide.

In fact, nuclear energy accounts for a bigger share of the world power mix in most of the scenarios put forward by the IPCC, the UN’s climate experts, to alleviate the global climate crisis.

– Divided opinions –

As the need for electricity booms, several countries have expressed a desire to develop nuclear infrastructure including China — which already has the largest number of reactors — as well as the Czech Republic, India and Poland since nuclear offers an alternative to coal.

Likewise, Britain, France and the Netherlands have similar ambitions, and even the United States where President Joe Biden’s investment plan encourages the sector’s development.

The IPCC experts recognise that the deployment of nuclear energy “can be constrained by societal preferences” since the subject still divides opinion because of the risk of catastrophic accidents and the still unresolved issue of how to dispose of radioactive waste safely.

Some countries, like New Zealand, oppose nuclear, and the issue has also been hotly debated in the European Union over whether it should be listed as a “green” energy.

Last month, the European Parliament approved a contentious proposal giving a sustainable finance label to investments in gas and nuclear power.

Other issues remain over nuclear infrastructure including the ability to build new reactors with costs and delays tightly controlled.

Berghmans pointed to “long construction delays”.

“We’re talking about medium-term solutions, which won’t resolve tensions in the market”, as they will arrive too late to address climate crises, he said, but suggested focusing on the “dynamic” renewable energies sector that can be immediately helpful.

Around 300 tonnes of dead fish have been removed from the Oder river since the start of August

Appearing tired and stressed, Piotr Wloch looks out dejectedly at his empty tourist boats on the Oder river after an environmental disaster that has killed thousands of fish.

Like many local businesses, Wloch has seen bookings plunge by 90 percent following the as yet unexplained catastrophe on the lush banks of a river between Poland and Germany.

“I’m just starting to realise the scale of what happened,” Wloch told AFP.

“Yesterday, I slept all day because I was depressed, unable to move,” he said.

In the empty tourist marina of Cigacice in Poland, firefighters in a rubber dinghy are still removing dead fish while environmental agency workers take water samples for tests.

The stench of dead fish fills the air.

Between 200 and 300 kilograms (440-660 pounds) of dead fish have been removed in Cigacice in the past few days — out of around 300 tonnes in total from the Oder since the start of August, officials said.

“Everyone is afraid. Only some curious people pop in to have a look, but life has stopped,” said Lukasz Duch, director of a local sports centre.

“Before the pollution, on a good weekend, Cigacice would draw between 5,000 and 10,000 tourists.

“This place was full of life… Now businesses are making nothing in high season,” he said.

– ‘Afraid of the river’ –

While the first signs of pollution appeared at the end of July, the area around Cigacice was only affected on August 8.

Thousands of dead fish began appearing in the water. In the region as a whole, residents and firefighters rushed to their river in an effort to clean it up.

Poland’s government only reacted on August 12, sparking widespread criticism from both local Polish authorities and Germany.

“If we had had the information two weeks earlier, we would have prepared,” said Wojciech Soltys, the mayor of Sulechow, the municipality where Cigacice is located.

“Now we are still waiting for clear and concrete information. What happened? When will we be able to go back to the river?”

The Oder begins in the Czech Republic before passing into Poland where it forms a natural border with Germany and then ends up in the Baltic Sea.

Until the end of the 1990s, it was heavily polluted — an industrial legacy of the communist era.

In 1997, following massive flooding, the river cleaned up naturally and people began returning to its banks.

Wloch was part of this movement.

“We worked for a long time for people to come and bathe in the river, relax here. In the 1980s and 1990s it looked terrible,” he said.

“Now, people are afraid of the river again. It will be difficult to restore this confidence,” said Wloch, who has seen 12 years of work disappear in a moment.

– Toxic algae from pollution –

Krzysztof Feodorowicz, owner of a vineyard in the Polish village of Laz near the river, said it looks like “an industrial waste canal”.

Like many others, he had been expecting an environmental disaster.

“The Oder was a time bomb. We knew very well that numerous industrial enterprises in Silesia were pouring their wastewater directly into it,” he said.

Feodorowicz said environmental checks are carried out but they are not working well.

German and Polish officials say the disaster could have been triggered by toxic algae caused by industrial waste in Poland.

“Uncontrolled pollution led to a chain of events that it is impossible to comprehend,” said Grzegorz Gabrys, head of the zoology department at the University of Zielona Gora in Poland.

“Apart from the fish, we have seen the death of other filtering organisms such as clams. If all these organisms have disappeared from the ecosystem, the consequences of this catastrophe could play out over a period of many years,” he said.

Gabrys criticised Poland’s general approach to protecting its waterways.

“Many people consider rivers part of the technical infrastructure,” he said.

Paraphrasing former US president Bill Clinton’s famous phrase, he added: “It’s nature, stupid!”

It was hoped that a fifth session of negotiations on a marine biodiversity treaty for international waters would end with a treaty

UN member states ended two weeks of negotiations Friday without a treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas, an agreement that would have addressed growing environmental and economic challenges.

After 15 years, including four prior formal sessions, negotiators have yet to reach a legally binding text to address the multitude of issues facing international waters — a zone that encompasses almost half the planet.

“Although we did make excellent progress, we still do need a little bit more time to progress towards the finish line,” said conference chair Rena Lee.

It will now be up to the UN General Assembly to resume the fifth session at a date still to be determined.

Many had hoped the session, which began on August 15 at the United Nations headquarters in New York, would be the last and yield a final text on “the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction,” or BBNJ for short.

“While it’s disappointing that the treaty wasn’t finalized during the past two weeks of negotiations, we remain encouraged by the progress that was made,” said Liz Karan of the NGO Pew Charitable Trusts, calling for a new session by the end of the year.

One of the most sensitive issues in the text revolved around the sharing of possible profits from the development of genetic resources in international waters, where pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic companies hope to find miracle drugs, products or cures.

Such costly research at sea is largely the prerogative of rich nations, but developing countries do not want to be left out of potential windfall profits drawn from marine resources that belong to no one.

-‘Missed opportunity’-

Similar issues of equity arise in other international negotiations, such as on climate change, in which developing nations that feel outsized harm from global warming have tried in vain to get wealthier countries to help pay to offset those impacts.

The high seas begin at the border of a nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) — which by international law reaches no more than 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from its coast — and are under no state’s jurisdiction.

Sixty percent of the world’s oceans fall under this category.

And while healthy marine ecosystems are crucial to the future of humanity, particularly to limit global warming, only one percent of international waters are protected.

One of the key pillars of an eventual BBNJ treaty is to allow the creation of marine protected areas, which many nations hope will cover 30 percent of the Earth’s ocean by 2030.

“Without establishing protections in this vast area, we will not be able to meet our ambitious and necessary 30 by 30 goal,” US State Department official Maxine Burkett said at an earlier press conference.

But delegations still disagree on the process for creating these protected areas as well as how required environmental impact assessments will be implemented before new high seas activity begins.

“What a missed opportunity…”, tweeted Klaudija Cremers, a researcher at the IDDRI think tank, which, like multiple other NGOs, has a seat with observer status at the negotiations.

The delegate from Samoa, addressing the conference on behalf of the smaller developing island nations of the Pacific, said they were “disappointed.”

“We live very far and it is not cheap to travel all this way. This money was not spent on roads, on medicine, schools,” she added.

“The Pacific came here in good faith and will continue to do so until we conclude this conference in the very near future,” she said on the verge of tears, to applause from the room.

Laura Meller, of Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign, said: “Time has run out. Further delay means ocean destruction. We are sad and disappointed. While countries continue to talk, the oceans and all those who rely on them will suffer.”

It was hoped that a fifth session of negotiations on a marine biodiversity treaty for international waters would end with a treaty

UN member states ended two weeks of negotiations Friday without a treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas, an agreement that would have addressed growing environmental and economic challenges.

After 15 years, including four prior formal sessions, negotiators have yet to reach a legally binding text to address the multitude of issues facing international waters — a zone that encompasses almost half the planet.

“Although we did make excellent progress, we still do need a little bit more time to progress towards the finish line,” said conference chair Rena Lee.

It will now be up to the UN General Assembly to resume the fifth session at a date still to be determined.

Many had hoped the session, which began on August 15 at the United Nations headquarters in New York, would be the last and yield a final text on “the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction,” or BBNJ for short.

“While it’s disappointing that the treaty wasn’t finalized during the past two weeks of negotiations, we remain encouraged by the progress that was made,” said Liz Karan with the NGO Pew Charitable Trusts, calling for a new session by the end of the year.

One of the most sensitive issues in the text revolved around the sharing of possible profits from the development of genetic resources in international waters, where pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic companies hope to find miracle drugs, products or cures.

Such costly research at sea is largely the prerogative of rich nations, but developing countries do not want to be left out of potential windfall profits drawn from marine resources that belong to no one.

-‘Missed opportunity’-

Similar issues of equity arise in other international negotiations, such as on climate change, in which developing nations that feel outsized harm from global warming have tried in vain to get wealthier countries to help pay to offset those impacts.

The high seas begin at the border of a nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) — which by international law reaches no more than 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from its coast — and are under no state’s jurisdiction.

Sixty percent of the world’s oceans fall under this category.

And while healthy marine ecosystems are crucial to the future of humanity, particularly to limit global warming, only one percent of international waters are protected.

One of the key pillars of an eventual BBNJ treaty is to allow the creation of marine protected areas, which many nations hope will cover 30 percent of the Earth’s ocean by 2030.

“Without establishing protections in this vast area, we will not be able to meet our ambitious and necessary 30 by 30 goal,” US State Department official Maxine Burkett said at an earlier press conference.

But delegations still disagree on the process for creating these protected areas, as well as on how to implement a requirement for environmental impact assessments before new activity on the high seas.

“What a missed opportunity…”, tweeted Klaudija Cremers, a researcher at the IDDRI think tank, which, like multiple other NGOs, has a seat with observer status at the negotiations.

25,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from the leaking pipeline, affecting a large strecth of Southern California's coast

The operators of a pipeline that leaked crude oil onto California beaches has agreed to plead guilty to environmental pollution charges and pay $13 million, these companies said Friday.

Amplify Energy, a Texas company operating the pipeline off Huntington Beach, and two of its subsidiaries — Beta Operating Co. and San Pedro Bay Pipeline Co. — said they will admit to allowing oil to foul the waters off southern California in October last year.

As part of plea agreements entered in federal court, they will pay a $7.1 million fine and hand over $5.8 million to compensate federal agencies involved in cleaning up 25,000 gallons of crude oil that spewed from their pipeline.

The spill blackened 18 miles (24 kilometers) of coast south of Los Angeles between Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach, spots popular with surfers and a habitat for dolphins.

Underwater inspections revealed that a large segment of the pipeline had been displaced and showed a rupture in the pipe. 

Investigators said last year they suspected the damage could have been caused by the anchor of a ship, as the area is often packed with cargo vessels waiting to enter the busy ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. 

Martyn Willsher, Amplify’s president and chief executive officer, said the company had worked “cooperatively” to resolve the problem as soon as it was discovered. 

“We believe this resolution, which is subject to court review and approval, reflects the commitments we made immediately following the incident to impacted parties and is in the best interest of Amplify and its stakeholders. 

“We are committed to safely operating in a way that ensures the protection of the environment and the surrounding communities.”

Amplify has also agreed to install a new leak detection system and to increase inspections along sections of the pipeline.

“This oil spill affected numerous people, businesses and organizations who use the Southern California coastal waters,” said Acting US Attorney Stephanie Christensen. 

“The companies involved are now accepting their responsibility for criminal conduct and are required to make significant improvements that will help prevent future oil spills.”

The October disaster reignited the debate over the presence of oil platforms just a few miles from the densely populated southern California shore. 

A total of 23 oil and gas platforms operate in federal waters just off the coast.

Storms that dropped as much as 12 inches of rain in some parts of Eastern Kentucky caused devastating floods

A series of “once-in-a-millennium” rainstorms have lashed the United States in recent weeks, flooding areas baked dry by long-term droughts, as human-caused climate change brings weather whiplash.

And scientists warn that global warming means once-rare events are already much more likely, upending the models they have long used to predict possible disasters — with worse to come.

At least 40 people have been killed in the last month by storms in Kentucky, Illinois, Texas and Missouri, inundating areas that in some cases had seen little to no rain for months.

Up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) fell in one of these storms — the kind of downpour that statistical models say should only happen once in a thousand years.

“This is ‘weather whiplash’,” tweeted Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a non-governmental organization that works on water issues around the world.

It is “caused by an intensification of the global hydrological cycle & how it distributes water around the planet, influenced by human-caused climate change.” 

The warnings scientists have been sounding for decades about the effects of unchecked fossil fuel use are suddenly coming into focus for millions of people.

A warming planet is not a benign place in a far-off future where it is always a bit sunnier; it’s a place of wild swings, where the wets are wetter and the dries are drier. And it’s now.

“The commonality between these and other extreme rainfall events is you need just the right set of ingredients to come together,” said David Novak, director of the Weather Prediction Center at the National Weather Service.

“You need moisture, you need instability in the atmosphere. And you need some sort of… feature to kind of ignite the storms.”

While a rainstorm in Texas or Kentucky or Illinois is not unheard of at this time of year, these events were supercharged by an oversupply of atmospheric moisture — a direct consequence of the planet being hotter.

“There’s scientific consensus absolutely on the fact that warmer air can hold more moisture,” Novak told AFP.

“There is more moisture available… for these fronts to tap, and so you can get these really intense rainfall events.”

The science is uncontroversial — if a little complicated for those not familiar with linear equations and difficult-to-pronounce chemistry.

The Clausius–Clapeyron equation shows that for every one degree celsius (1.8 F) the air warms, it can hold seven percent more moisture.

That’s what makes hot, equatorial places noticeably more humid than cooler climes, says Novak.

And it’s also what’s messing with the statistics and making the one-in-1,000-year storms — like the five that hit the US in the last month — a lot more common.

Storms like these had a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in any given year in pre-industrial conditions, meaning that on average they would happen once every 1,000 years.

But their percentage chance of happening in a warmer environment that holds more moisture rises dramatically.

In other words, the recurrence interval — the periods expected between these once relatively rare events — is shrinking.

“Something that really wasn’t very likely at all, just a little bit more moisture can make that quite a bit more likely,” said Novak.