AFP UK

Rivers of molten rock are issuing from Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano

Fountains of lava and rivers of molten rock were spewing from the world’s biggest volcano Friday, as the first eruption there in almost four decades showed no signs of abating.

Two fissures on Mauna Loa were venting huge volumes of viscous rock and gases from deep within the Earth, in a thunderous display of the power of nature.

Vulcanologists said they were watching lava flows heading towards a highway on Hawaii’s largest island, though they still believe the eruption, which began Sunday, posed no immediate threat to humans.

“The Northeast Rift Zone eruption of Mauna Loa continues, with two active fissures feeding lava flows downslope,” the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said on Thursday.

“Fissure 3 remains the dominant source of the largest lava flow. The fissure 3 lava flows are traveling to the north toward the Daniel K. Inouye Highway (Saddle Road) but have reached relatively flatter ground and have slowed down significantly as expected.”

The molten rock was travelling at around 130 feet (40 meters) per hour and was still a few miles (kilometers) from the road.

“Advance rates may be highly variable over the coming days and weeks due to the way lava is emplaced on flat ground,” the USGS said.

“At the rate observed over the past 24 hours, the earliest the lava flow might be expected to reach the Daniel K. Inouye Highway (Saddle Road) is one week.”

But, the agency warned, volcanoes can be unpredictable and these calculations could change.

The other fissure still producing lava is sending it northeast, while plumes of volcanic gas were lofting high into the air and Pele’s Hair was falling to earth.

Pele’s Hair is fine strands of volcanic glass formed when lava skeins cool quickly in the air.

Named after Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, the strands can be very sharp and pose potential danger to skin and eyes.

Scientists say their seismic monitoring equipment was detecting a large number of earthquakes around the two active fissures.

“This indicates that magma is still being supplied, and activity is likely to continue as long as we see this signal,” the USGS said.

Pressure has been building at Mauna Loa for years, but it has not erupted since 1984.

Fountains of lava as high as 200 feet have been observed this week, lighting up the night sky in a spectacle that could be seen from Kona, a town 45 miles away.

– ‘Long Mountain’ –

The largest volcano on Earth by volume, Mauna Loa, whose name means “Long Mountain,” is larger than the rest of the Hawaiian islands combined.

The volcano’s submarine flanks stretch for miles to an ocean floor that is in turn depressed by Mauna Loa’s great mass — making its summit some 11 miles above its base, according to the USGS. 

One of six active volcanoes on the Hawaiian islands, Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843.

Its most recent eruption, in 1984, lasted 22 days.

Kilauea, a volcano on the southeastern flank of Mauna Loa, erupted almost continuously between 1983 and 2019, and a minor eruption there has been ongoing for months.

Renowned conservationist Wayne Lotter was a founder of the PAMS Foundation, which worked to stop the poaching of elephants

A court in Tanzania sentenced 11 people to death on Friday over the 2017 murder of renowned conservationist Wayne Lotter.

Lotter, a 51-year-old South African based in Tanzania, was a founder of the PAMS Foundation which worked to stop the poaching of elephants and trafficking of ivory in the east African country.

He was shot dead in Dar es Salaam while in a taxi on his way back from the airport.

The exact motive for his killing is still unknown but colleagues of Lotter believe he was targeted for his work on protecting elephants.

“Some of the suspects, in their statements recorded by police officers, confessed to have taken part in the conspiracy meetings and in killing,” the judge, Laila Mgonya, told the court.

“The evidence provided was strong enough to convict them.”

The handing down of death sentences is not uncommon in Tanzania but they are generally commuted to life in prison. 

The last execution carried out in the country was in 1994.

Tanzania has been one of the African countries worst hit by elephant poaching, losing more than 66,000 elephants in a decade, but interdiction efforts mean poaching has declined in recent years.

French Finance Bruno Le Maire (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron, attend a meeting with US Vice President Kamala Harris, not pictured, on French-US cooperation in Space, at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, in November 2022.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Friday said Washington’s $430 billion plan to spur climate-friendly technologies in the United States must be seen as a wake-up call for Europe.

The EU “must be able to sweep in front of our own door” before worrying about the effects of the US climate plan on European industry, Le Maire told AFP in Washington, where he was part of French President Emmanuel Macron’s US state visit.

Even though the EU has already “changed its approach” on promoting green industry, the US climate plan must be seen as a “wake-up call” in the European Union, he added.

Le Maire’s comments came as EU countries have poured criticism on Washington’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), seeing it as anti-competitive and a threat to European jobs, especially in the energy and auto sectors.

The act, designed to accelerate the US transition to a low-carbon economy, contains around $370 billion in subsidies for green energy as well as tax cuts for US-made electric cars and batteries. 

Macron on Wednesday slammed the plan’s “Made in USA” provisions as “super aggressive” for European businesses.

But at a joint press conference with Macron, Biden said that he and the French leader had agreed to “discuss practical steps to coordinate and align our approaches”, though he said he would not apologize for the US plan.

Biden added the IRA was never intended to disadvantage any US allies.

Last month, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened to appeal to the World Trade Organization and consider “retaliatory measures” if the United States did not reverse its subsidies.

Le Maire also criticized the EU’s own climate spending plans, arguing that they were too cumbersome and loaded with red tape.

“If the ambition is the same” as the Europeans, the United States relies on methods that “are simpler and faster”, he said.

“They put immediate and massive tax credits where we provide state aid (to specific projects) which sometimes take two years to be adopted and are too complex to implement,” said Le Maire.

A blue-footed booby sits on a rock in the Galapagos Islands, in 2021

Ecuador has put in place a plan to try and protect its unique wild bird species on the Galapagos islands from the H5N1 virus also rampaging through Europe and North America.

The bird flu virus reached South America via migratory wild birds in recent weeks, impacting mainly Peru, where thousands of pelicans and other seabirds have died, and Ecuador, which has ordered the culling of 180,000 farm birds.

The director of the Galapagos National Park, Danny Rueda, said in a statement that “permanent monitoring has been arranged in areas with the most seabirds,” including all tourism hotspots.

The Galapagos is a bird-watchers paradise for the scores of unique and colorful birds found on the archipelago, such as the blue-footed booby with its quirky mating rituals, and endemic penguin, cormorant and albatross species.

English naturalist Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution after studying finches and mockingbirds on the Galapagos islands in 1835.

On Wednesday, Ecuador declared a 90-day animal health emergency after detecting the highly contagious bird flu on some farms, which includes a ban on transporting any bird products from affected areas.

In Peru, authorities have culled at least 37,000 chickens to try and control an outbreak which has killed more than 14,000 seabirds, mostly pelicans.

The current bird flu outbreak began in Canada and spread to the United States, which has seen a record 50 million avian deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Europe is also experiencing its worst-ever outbreak of the virus, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

There is no treatment for bird flu, which spreads naturally between wild birds and can also infect domestic poultry. Avian influenza viruses do not typically infect humans, although there have been rare cases.

The IEA said one in every eight cars sold globally is now electric

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven countries across the world to boost energy efficiency, creating “huge potential” to tackle high prices, security and climate change, the IEA said on Friday.

Governments have scaled up fossil fuel subsidies to cushion the impact of rising energy costs on households in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, which has disrupted gas supplies and stoked prices.  

But a new report from the International Energy Agency found that it had also prompted policymakers and consumers to shrink their power use, causing record investment in energy efficiency measures, like building renovations, and infrastructure for public transport and electric cars.

IEA executive director Fatih Birol said after the oil shocks of the 1970s, governments pushed “substantial improvements” in energy efficiency, particularly in cars, appliances and buildings. 

“Amid today’s energy crisis, we are seeing signs that energy efficiency is once again being prioritised,” he said.

“Energy efficiency is essential for dealing with today’s crisis, with its huge potential to help tackle the challenges of energy affordability, energy security and climate change.”

According to the IEA research, governments, industry and households invested a record $560 billion this year in energy efficiency measures.

Preliminary IEA data for 2022 also suggests that the global economy used energy two percent more efficiently than it did in 2021, almost double the rate of the past five years. 

Annual improvements would need to rise to four percent to meet decarbonisation goals by mid-century, the IEA said. 

But it said if current trends continue to improve, 2022 “could mark a vital turning point” for efficiency, adding that developments this year have “changed the dynamics of energy markets for decades to come”.

Recent government initiatives to boost efficiency in buildings, cars and industry have included legislation in Europe, Japan and the United States that add up to hundreds of billions of dollars in spending. 

– ‘Hyper-efficient and climate-friendly’ –

The IEA said that one in every eight cars sold globally is now electric. 

Building codes are also being updated across the world, it said, while there is growing energy efficiency awareness among consumers. 

In Southeast Asia, all governments were developing policies for efficient cooling, which the IEA said was “vital for a region with one of the fastest rates of growth in electricity demand”.

Meanwhile, global sales of heat pumps are expected to hit record levels in 2022, driven by surging demand in Europe, where almost three million are expected to be sold this year — up from 1.5 million in 2019. 

“Heat pumps are an indispensable part of any plan to cut emissions and natural gas use, and an urgent priority in the European Union today,” said Birol in a press statement this week.

If governments meet all their energy and climate targets, the IEA said “hyper-efficient and climate-friendly” heat pumps could meet nearly a fifth of global heating needs in buildings by 2030, up from a tenth in 2021.

Its first special report on the future of heat pumps, released Wednesday, said the technology, if powered by low-emissions electricity, was “central” to the global transition to sustainable heating. 

The report estimated that heat pumps have the potential to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by at least 500 million tonnes in 2030 — equal to annual CO2 pollution from the cars in Europe today.

The IEA said one in every eight cars sold globally is now electric

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven countries across the world to boost energy efficiency, creating “huge potential” to tackle high prices, security and climate change, the IEA said on Friday.

Governments have scaled up fossil fuel subsidies to cushion the blow of rising energy costs on households in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, which has disrupted gas supplies and stoked prices.  

But a new report from the International Energy Agency found that it had also prompted policymakers and consumers to shrink their power use, causing record investment in energy efficiency measures, like building renovations, and infrastructure for public transport and electric cars.

IEA executive director Fatih Birol said after the oil shocks of the 1970s, governments pushed “substantial improvements” in energy efficiency, particularly in cars, appliances and buildings. 

“Amid today’s energy crisis, we are seeing signs that energy efficiency is once again being prioritised,” he said.

“Energy efficiency is essential for dealing with today’s crisis, with its huge potential to help tackle the challenges of energy affordability, energy security and climate change.”

According to the IEA research, governments, industry and households invested a record $560 billion this year in energy efficiency measures.

Preliminary IEA data for 2022 also suggests that the global economy used energy two percent more efficiently than it did in 2021, almost double the rate of the past five years. 

Annual improvements would need to rise to four percent to meet decarbonisation goals by mid-century, the IEA said. 

But it said if current trends continue to improve, 2022 “could mark a vital turning point” for efficiency, adding that developments this year have “changed the dynamics of energy markets for decades to come”.

Recent government initiatives to boost efficiency in buildings, cars and industry have included legislation in Europe, Japan and the United States that add up to hundreds of billions of dollars in spending. 

The IEA said that one in every eight cars sold globally is now electric. 

Building codes are also being updated across the world, it said, while there is growing energy efficiency awareness among consumers. 

In Southeast Asia, all governments were developing policies for efficient cooling, which the IEA said was “vital for a region with one of the fastest rates of growth in electricity demand”.

Meanwhile, global sales of heat pumps are expected to hit record levels in 2022, driven by surging demand in Europe, where almost three million are expected to be sold this year — up from 1.5 million in 2019. 

The fuzzy, critically endangered orangutan is threatened by industrial development and Covid-19

More than a dozen NGOs have issued a letter accusing Indonesia of stymieing scientific research, after Jakarta banned a group of foreign academics who opposed an official claim that orangutan numbers are increasing.

Indonesia is home to the world’s oldest tropical rainforest where the critically endangered apes are losing tracts of their habitat to logging, palm oil plantations and mining.

The legal letter of objection, filed to the environment ministry Thursday by 18 groups including Greenpeace and Amnesty International, called on authorities to lift a ban imposed in September on the five Western scientists and allow researchers to work freely.

The NGOs could decide to file a lawsuit if their demands are not met.

The five academics — all based outside Indonesia — had penned an op-ed in a local newspaper citing studies showing the orangutan population is in decline, countering official claims their numbers were set to grow. 

They were banned from the country the day the piece was published.

The NGOs called the ban anti-science and said it restricted academic freedom. They demanded a public apology from the government for what they said was an abuse of power by silencing dissenting opinions. 

“It is a manifestation of power control of knowledge production, which has violated the academic freedom principle,” they said in a statement Thursday.

Arie Rompas, Greenpeace Indonesia’s forest campaign team leader, said the ministry’s move was “authoritarian”, stressing that credible data was essential for sound environmental policies. 

“If the data lacks credibility, policies will not solve issues such as deforestation, forest fires, or the orangutan population,” Rompas told AFP Friday. 

The environment ministry did not respond to a request from AFP for comment.

“We are still waiting on the ministry’s response to see what are the next steps,” said Rompas.

Poaching and habitat loss had already decimated the orangutan population in the Southeast Asian nation before the coronavirus emerged as another threat to the mammals, who share 97 percent of their DNA with humans.

Fewer than 120,000 orangutans were estimated to remain in the wild before the recent dispute erupted, but the exact number was unknown.

The population of orangutans in Borneo alone plummeted from about 288,000 in 1973 to around 100,000 by 2017, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The letter by the NGOs calls on the government to work with scientists to reach an agreed estimate on current numbers.

With its sleek design, the Tesla Semi has been highly anticipated since Musk unveiled a prototype in 2017, but the launch of full-scale production was delayed well past the initial 2019 expectation

US automaker Tesla on Thursday delivered its first battery-powered heavy duty truck, dubbed “Semi,” and built to tackle long hauls with the handling of a sporty sedan.

“That thing looks like it came from the future,” Telsa chief Elon Musk said while handing over the keys to PepsiCo executives at the vehicle maker’s Nevada manufacturing plant.

With its sleek design, the Semi has been highly anticipated since Musk unveiled a prototype in 2017, but the launch of full-scale production was delayed well past the initial 2019 expectation.

“The sheer amount of drama between five years ago and now is insane,” Musk told a small audience invited to the factory for an event marking the occasion.

“A lot has happened in the world. But, here we are. It’s real.”

In the meantime, other manufacturers have entered the market, from traditional truck makers such as Daimler, Volvo and China’s BYD, to startups like US company Nikola.

The competition has also begun to roll out their deliveries, and have many orders of their own waiting to fill.

However, the truck that “the market has been waiting for… is the one from Tesla,” says Dave Mullaney, a transportation specialist with sustainability think tank RMI.

Legacy manufacturers have primarily converted their diesel-designed trucks to electric.

Tesla’s Semi, on the other hand, “was designed to be electric from the very first design,” says Mullaney.

If the vehicle lives up to expectations, “it’s going to be a huge difference,” he adds.

Musk reiterated the claim Thursday that a Semi had driven 500 miles (800 kilometers) with a total weight of nearly 82,000 pounds (more than 37 metric tons).

The range of electric vehicles currently on offer is only between 250 to 300 miles.

“You have all the power you need to get the job done,” Musk said of the Tesla Semi.

“This is a game changer.”

– Climate conscious hauling –

The use of electric light duty vehicles for short-haul deliveries has been steadily growing, but new regulations are pushing manufacturers and transporters to speed up the transition and build out long-haul capabilities.

The most populous US state, California, has passed a law phasing out combustion engine trucks, which has since been followed by other states.

The European Union is also expected to debate similar standards in the coming months.

And on the PR front, companies are also facing pressure to take more environmentally conscious actions.

They “want to be on the right side of history,” says Marie Cheron of the Europe-based association Transport & Environment.

Those who do not commit to a decarbonization strategy, some of whom say they are waiting for technologies to improve, “are falling behind,” she says.

While making up a scant portion of vehicles on the road, diesel-powered semi trucks account for about a fifth of climate-harming emissions spewed by traffic, according to Musk.

“So from a health standpoint, particularly in cities, this is a huge impact,” Musk said of the shift to electric semis.

Mike Roeth, director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency, says that another motivation to transition is that drivers who have been able to test them, “love the electric trucks a lot.”

“They’re very quiet, they don’t have the smells of the exhaust, and they are comfortable to drive.”

– Cost considerations –

For the adoption of electric trucks to accelerate, their range must truly live up to promises and batteries ideally would shrink, several analysts told AFP.

The charging infrastructure must also be built out to handle multiple trucks powering up simultaneously and have storage capacity to work during power outages.

The biggest factor, however, will be the price. The Semi price was not disclosed at the Tesla event.

RMI’s Mullaney says that an electric truck currently costs about 70 percent more to buy than a diesel truck, but in terms of fuel and maintenance, it’s cheaper.

With the first delivery accomplished, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives says that Tesla must now “prove they can produce at scale, they need to execute.”

In late October, Musk said that Tesla is aiming to build 50,000 Semis by 2024.

Ives says Musk’s attention is unfortunately focused on his newest acquisition, Twitter, and “the circus show there takes away a monumental moment in Tesla history.”

Dogs pass by a pelican suspected to be sick from H5N1 avian influenza on a beach in Lima

Peruvian authorities have culled at least 37,000 birds on a chicken farm due to bird flu, officials said Thursday.

After previously affecting wildlife in several areas nationwide, this outbreak took place at a farm in Huacho, north of Lima, the national agricultural health agency SENASA said Thursday. 

“They have all been slaughtered; this infectious focus has already ended on a small farm in Huacho (north of Lima), with a population of approximately 37,000 birds,” said Jorge Mantilla, head of SENASA’s disease control, quoted by state news agency Andina. 

Killing infected birds is part of the protocol to control avian flu outbreaks. 

“The aim is to prevent the disease, which is highly lethal in birds, from spreading to other locations,” said veterinarian Mantilla.

Some 14,000 seabirds, mostly pelicans, have died from bird flu in the country in recent weeks. 

In addition to the slaughter of the poultry in Huacho, another cull took place in the city of Lambayeque, in northern Peru, where some 700 birds were slaughtered to prevent the spread of the virus. 

The Peruvian Poultry Association ruled out that the outbreak puts “the consumption of birds and eggs” in the country at risk.   

Peru declared a 90-day national health emergency on Wednesday after confirming cases of H5N1 avian influenza in farm-raised poultry. 

According to SENASA, the disease is being transmitted from “wild birds that come from North America” and reach Patagonia. 

The first outbreak of avian influenza in the Americas occurred in Canada last year, and in January 2022 the virus was detected in the United States, affecting poultry production, according to Peruvian authorities. 

Avian flu is a disease that has no cure or treatment and causes high mortality in wild and domestic birds such as ducks, chickens and turkeys, among others.   

Adam Thompson, senior scientist, works at LanzaTech lab on November 28, 2022, in Skokie, Illinois

At LanzaTech’s lab in the Chicago suburbs, a beige liquid bubbles away in dozens of glass vats.

The concoction includes billions of hungry bacteria, specialized to feed on polluted air — the first step in a recycling system that converts greenhouse gases into usable products.

Thanks to licensing agreements, LanzaTech’s novel microorganisms are already being put to commercial use by three Chinese factories, converting waste emissions into ethanol.

That ethanol is then used as a chemical building block for consumer items such as plastic bottles, athletic wear and even dresses, via tie-ins with major brands such as Zara and L’Oreal.

“I wouldn’t have thought that 14 years later, we would have a cocktail dress on the market that’s made out of steel emissions,” said microbiologist Michael Kopke, who joined LanzaTech a year after its founding.

LanzaTech is the only American company among 15 finalists for the Earthshot Prize, an award for contributions to environmentalism launched by Britain’s Prince William and broadcaster David Attenborough. Five winners will be announced Friday.

To date, LanzaTech says it has kept 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, while producing 50 million gallons (190 million liters) of ethanol.

That’s a small drop in the bucket when it comes to the actual quantities needed to combat climate change, Kopke concedes.

But having spent 15 years developing the methodology and proving its large-scale feasibility, the company is now seeking to ramp up its ambition and multiply the number of participating factories.

“We really want to get to a point where we only use above ground carbon, and keep that in circulation,” says Kopke — in other words, avoid extracting new oil and gas.

– Industry partnerships –

LanzaTech, which employs about 200 people, compares its carbon recycling technology to a brewery — but instead of taking sugar and yeast to make beer, it uses carbon pollution and bacteria to make ethanol.

The bacteria used in their process was identified decades ago in rabbit droppings.

The company placed it in industrial conditions to optimize it in those settings, “almost like an athlete that we trained,” said Kopke.

Bacteria are sent out in the form of a freeze-dried powder to corporate clients in China, which have giant versions of the vats back in Chicago, several meters high.

The corporate clients that built these facilities will then reap the rewards of the sale of ethanol — as well as the positive PR from offsetting pollution from their main businesses.

The clients in China are a steel plant and two ferroalloy plants. Six other sites are under construction, including one in Belgium for an ArcelorMittal plant, and in India with the Indian Oil Company.

Because the bacteria can ingest CO2, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, the process is extremely flexible, explains Zara Summers, LanzaTech’s vice president of science.

“We can take garbage, we can take biomass, we can take off gas from an industrial plant,” said Summers, who spent ten years working for ExxonMobil.

Products already on the shelves include a line of dresses at Zara. Sold at around $90, they are made of polyester, 20 percent of which comes from captured gas.

“In the future, I think the vision is there is no such thing as waste, because carbon can be reused again,” said Summers.

– Sustainable aviation fuel –

LanzaTech has also founded a separate company, LanzaJet, to use the ethanol to create “sustainable aviation fuel” or SAF.

Increasing global SAF production is a huge challenge for the fuel-heavy aviation sector, which is seeking to green itself.

LanzaJet is aiming to achieve one billion gallons of SAF production in the United States per year by 2030.

Unlike bioethanol produced from wheat, beets or corn, fuel created from greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t require the use of agricultural land.

For LanzaTech, the next challenge is to commercialize bacteria that will produce chemicals other than ethanol. 

In particular, they have their sights set on directly producing ethylene, “one of the most widely used chemicals in the world,” per Kopke — thus saving energy associated with having to first convert ethanol into ethylene.