AFP UK

Jonathan Toebbe, 44, and his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, were sentenced to long prison terms for plotting to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country

A US Navy nuclear engineer and his wife were sentenced to long prison terms on Wednesday for plotting to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country.

Jonathan Toebbe, 44, and his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, pleaded guilty in February to conspiring to sell information related to naval nuclear propulsion systems.

Jonathan Toebbe was sentenced to 19 years and three months in prison while his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, received a prison term of 21 years and eight months, the Justice Department said.

According to court documents, Diana Toebbe acted as a lookout while her husband delivered highly classified information on nuclear submarine technology to the foreign buyer in a series of “dead drops” in the region around their Annapolis, Maryland, home.

The foreign buyer was not identified by the US authorities but The New York Times, citing people briefed on the investigation, said the country was Brazil.

A teacher at a private school, Diana Toebbe initially pleaded innocent to the charge of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.

But she changed her plea after her husband pleaded guilty and in doing so admitted that his wife took part in the plot.

Jonathan Toebbe was a nuclear engineer for the US Navy dealing with nuclear submarine propulsion systems when the two were arrested on October 9, 2021 after he hid a small SD card carrying US secrets at a dead drop location in West Virginia.

Court documents described a tantalizing, spy-novel-like plot in which they traveled hundreds of miles to secretly hand over information, took payments in cryptocurrency, and followed signals made from an embassy building in Washington.

In one message, Toebbe indicated that he had been considering his actions for several years and was happy to work with “a reliable professional partner.”

He also wrote that he had divided all the data he had collected into 51 “packages” of information, and sought $100,000 for each.

But the FBI was following the plot, after having been alerted to it by the target nation in December 2020, though that was nearly nine months after the Toebbes first mailed their offer to the country’s military intelligence.

“The Toebbes betrayed the American people and put our national security at significant risk when they selfishly attempted to sell highly sensitive information related to nuclear-powered warships for their own financial benefit,” Brice Miller, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said in a statement.

Jonathan Toebbe, 44, and his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, were sentenced to long prison terms for plotting to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country

A US Navy nuclear engineer and his wife were sentenced to long prison terms on Wednesday for plotting to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country.

Jonathan Toebbe, 44, and his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, pleaded guilty in February to conspiring to sell information related to naval nuclear propulsion systems.

Jonathan Toebbe was sentenced to 19 years and three months in prison while his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, received a prison term of 21 years and eight months, the Justice Department said.

According to court documents, Diana Toebbe acted as a lookout while her husband delivered highly classified information on nuclear submarine technology to the unidentified foreign buyer in a series of surreptitious “dead drops” in the region around their Annapolis, Maryland, home.

A teacher at a private school, she initially pleaded innocent to the charge of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.

But she changed her plea after her husband pleaded guilty and in doing so admitted that his wife took part in the plot.

Jonathan Toebbe was a nuclear engineer for the US Navy dealing with nuclear submarine propulsion systems when the two were arrested on October 9, 2021 after he hid a small SD card carrying US secrets at a dead drop location in West Virginia.

Court documents described a tantalizing, spy-novel-like plot in which they traveled hundreds of miles to secretly hand over information, took payments in cryptocurrency, and followed signals made from an embassy building in Washington.

In one message, Toebbe indicated that he had been considering his actions for several years and was happy to work with “a reliable professional partner.”

He also wrote that he had divided all the data he had collected into 51 “packages” of information, and sought $100,000 for each.

But the FBI was following the plot, after having been alerted to it by the target country in December 2020, though that was nearly nine months after the Toebbes first mailed their offer to the country’s military intelligence.

The country, which cooperated in the FBI investigation, has not been identified.

One of the Toebbes’ communications indicated that English might not be the country’s native tongue, and others suggest that the country’s navy is familiar with nuclear propulsion technology.

Russia, China, Britain, France and India operate nuclear-powered naval vessels, and Australia is planning to buy one or more from the United States.

US climate envoy John Kerry admitted carbon credit schemes had been abused and 'discredited' before

The United States launched Wednesday a partnership with private funds aimed at supporting the transition to renewable energy in developing nations, based on a carbon credit system criticised by climate activists. 

The government scheme, launched at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt along with the Bezos Earth Fund and Rockefeller Foundation, would help emerging economies attract finance “to support their clean energy transitions”, Washington said.

Companies, like Microsoft and Pepsi who have expressed interest in the plan, would invest in renewable energy projects, allowing countries to show reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that could then be sold back to those companies as carbon credits.

“Our intention is to put the carbon market to work to deploy capital… to speed the transition from dirty to clean power,” US climate envoy John Kerry said, promising “safeguards” against greenwashing.

Kerry said he hoped the project, which Chile and Nigeria already said they may join, would get off the ground within a year.

Climate campaigners have criticised the US scheme, launched a day after a UN expert panel said carbon credits should not be used to “offset” emissions instead of actually cutting them.

– ‘Accounting trick’ –

Earth has warmed on average nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, provoking an accelerating onslaught of climate change impacts like storms, floods and heat waves.  

Under the Paris climate deal, countries have agreed to limit warming to well under 2C, preferably 1.5C.

That more ambitious goal requires slashing global emissions in half by 2030 and reducing them to net zero by mid-century, scientists say.

“We need to see deep emissions reductions in both the global north and south — not rich polluting companies in the north paying for the privilege of continuing to destroy the planet,” said Mohamed Adow of the think tank Power Shift Africa.

“These carbon offsets are an accounting trick which will create loopholes for polluters to carry on polluting.” 

Harjeet Singh of Climate Action Network told AFP similar schemes had not helped reduce emissions in the past.

The UN expert report said some offsets could be effective, like supporting energy transitions in developing countries — but stressed this should only be an additional measure after companies cut their own emissions.

Kerry acknowledged that prior abuses of carbon credit schemes had “discredited” these tools in the eyes of many.

He said the programme would only be open to companies ready to also commit to short-term reduction targets.

“We believe we shouldn’t let the mistakes of the past keep us from employing a powerful tool for steering private capital where it’s most needed.”

Angela Churie Kallhauge of the US-based non-profit Environmental Defense Fund said the scheme could help boost energy transitions.

“We’ve spoken for so long about the need to scale up — here is a big opportunity to explore and innovate.”

Flared natural gas is burned off at Apache Corporations operations at the Deadwood natural gas plant in the Permian Basin in 2015

Planet-heating emissions from oil and gas production could be three times higher than reported, according to a satellite monitoring project launched Wednesday that the UN chief said made it harder to “cheat”.

The new tool — unveiled at United Nations COP27 climate talks in Egypt — has pinpointed more than 70,000 sites spewing emissions into the atmosphere.

The project, run by a group of research institutions, charities and companies, monitors sites including heavy industry, energy production, agriculture, transport, waste and mining.

Using artificial intelligence to analyse data from more than 300 satellites, as well as thousands of sensors on land and in the sea, the Climate TRACE monitor found that the top 14 largest emitters are all oil and gas extraction sites.

Of those, the biggest emitter on the planet is the Permian Basin in Texas — one of the largest oilfields in the world — said former US vice president Al Gore, a project founder.

“With new data on methane and flaring, we now estimate that the actual emissions are three times higher than what they have reported,” Gore said.

Flaring is the burning off of unwanted natural gas from oil and gas wells.

Methane, emitted by leaks from fossil fuel installations as well as from other human-caused sources like livestock and landfills, is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the global rise in temperatures to date. 

Dozens of countries last year pledged to act to cut pollution from the potent greenhouse gas.

– ‘Wake-up call’ –

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres praised the initiative for shining a light on actual emissions using direct observations. 

“You are making it more difficult to greenwash or — to be more clear — to cheat,” he said.

“This should be a wake-up call to governments and the financial sector, especially those that continue to invest in and underwrite fossil fuel pollution,” he said. 

Climate TRACE first determined what industrial activity was at a given site and therefore what type of emissions to look for, said Gavin McCormick, another co-founder and director of the US environmental technology nonprofit WattTime.

Every time a satellite passes over, they can then interpret “what are we seeing”.

Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his climate advocacy, said the top 500 sources identified emit more per year than the United States — and half of the pollution is from power plants. 

All the data from the project is available free online at climatetrace.org to increase “transparency, collaboration and accountability for climate action”, Gore added.

The International Energy Agency has decried the enormous amount of methane that leaks from fossil fuel operations, estimating the amount lost last year globally was broadly similar to all the gas used in Europe’s power sector.

In October, NASA said a methane plume about two miles (3.3 kilometres) long was detected southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin.

A dead Caspian seal on a Russian beach in 2020. The seal population of the Caspian Sea has for decades suffered from over-hunting and the effects of industrial pollution

More than 130 endangered seals have been found dead on Kazakh beaches of the Caspian Sea, officials said Wednesday.

“Carcasses of dead seals have been found,” a spokesman for Kazakhstan’s ecology ministry told AFP.

His ministry said 131 seals had been found dead on Caspian Sea beaches in the country’s west.

Autopsies will be carried out and Kazakh environmental experts said soil and water samples from the area would be analysed.

The Caspian seal, the only such species present in the Caspian Sea, the world’s largest inland body of water, was placed by the Kazakh government in November 2020 on the list of endangered species threatened with extinction.

The Caspian Sea, the world’s largest inland body of water, is bounded by five countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan.

The seal population of the Caspian Sea has for decades suffered from over-hunting and the effects of industrial pollution.

Experts say there are now about 68,000 Caspian seals, down from more than one million in the early 20th century.

The Greenland ice sheet is currently the main factor in swelling the Earth's oceans

Part of Greenland’s ice sheet is thinning further inland than previously believed, which will likely lead to greater sea level rise by the end of this century, a new study found Wednesday.

The findings pertain to a northeast section of the giant ice block covering, but the trend is likely happening elsewhere on Greenland and Earth’s other ice sheet, in Antarctica. 

The implications are worrying, as sea level rise already threatens millions of people living along coasts that could find themselves underwater in the decades and centuries to come. 

Scientists have previously focused on the edges of Greenland’s ice sheet to examine active melting as global temperatures rise, largely using satellite data.  

But the authors of Wednesday’s study looked further inland, over 100 kilometres from the coast.

What they found was alarming: thinning from Greenland’s coast stretched back 200 to 300 kilometres (125 to 185 miles).   

“What we see happening at the front reaches far back into the heart of the ice sheet,” said first author Shfaqat Abbas Khan in a press release about the study, published in Nature. 

“The new model really captures what’s going on inland, the old ones do not… you end up with a completely different mass change, or sea level projection,” he told AFP in an interview. 

The researchers installed GPS stations on the ice sheet to gather more precise information, and also used satellite data and numerical modelling, all of which provided a new set of data likely to alter global sea level rise projections. 

The research was conducted at the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS), which covers an estimated 12 percent of Greenland, according to co-author Mathieu Morlighem. 

It found that the thinning could add between 13.5 and 15.5 millimetres to sea levels by the end of this century — equivalent to the entire Greenland ice sheet’s contribution during the past 50 years. 

“The NEGIS could lose six times more ice than existing climate models estimate,” the report found.

– ‘Reduce CO2’ –

One reason for the inland thinning is the intrusion of warm ocean currents, which in 2012 caused the floating extension of the NEGIS to collapse. 

That event “has accelerated ice flow and triggered a wave of rapid ice thinning that has spread upstream”. 

The Greenland ice sheet is currently the main factor in swelling the Earth’s oceans, according to NASA, with the Arctic region heating at a faster rate than the rest of the planet.

In a landmark report on climate science last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the Greenland ice sheet would contribute up to 18 centimetres to sea level rise by 2100 under the highest emissions scenario. 

The massive ice sheet, two kilometres thick, contains enough frozen water to lift global seas by over seven metres (23 feet) in total.  

The researchers will now extend their methods to look at other glaciers on Greenland and Antarctica, and some new data could be available in a year or so. 

Earth’s surface has warmed, on average, nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, unleashing a catalogue of impacts from heatwaves to more intense storms.  

Under the Paris climate deal, countries have agreed to limit warming to well under 2C. 

World leaders are currently meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for UN climate talks aimed at slashing harmful emissions and boosting funding to green developing country economies. 

Khan said the thinning trend on Greenland’s ice sheet will be near impossible to reverse, but can at least be slowed with the right policies in place. 

“I really hope that they agree on a reduction on CO2 and as soon as possible,” he said in a message to leaders at the COP27 climate talks. 

US President Joe Biden speaks on the eve of the US midterm elections, at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland, on November 7, 2022

The US midterms made waves Wednesday at a UN climate summit on the shores of Egypt, with activists urging President Joe Biden to take bolder action against global warming regardless of the election outcome.

Campaigners were confident that Republicans would not be able to undo Biden’s $370 billion green energy legislation even if they take one or both houses of Congress.

But with Biden due to join the UN’s COP27 climate conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Friday, some had a strong message for the US leader.

“I think it would be a catastrophic mistake if President Biden does not seize this literally once-in-the-universe opportunity now to be the climate president that the world needs him to be,” said Jean Su, energy justice programme director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a US environmental group.

“We are literally at the tipping point for an unlivable world,” she said at a news conference, urging Biden to phase out fossil fuel production and use his presidential powers to declare a climate emergency.

But Su and others were also pleased to see candidates who campaigned on climate change gain seats in Congress.

“A lot of climate champions did win across states, governorships, legislatures and more,” said Frances Colon, climate policy director at the Center for American Progress.

“What we expect is that they will turn these winds into more climate action,” she said.

– ‘Dodged a bullet’ –

Republicans are on track to reclaim the House of Representatives, but Biden’s Democrats appear to have a decent chance of keeping their Senate majority.

“We may have dodged a bullet,” US climate envoy John Kerry said at COP27 talks, a day after telling the summit that Biden’s climate policy “cannot be changed by anybody else who comes along”.

Colon said Republicans had campaigned on the issues of soaring inflation and high fuel prices.

“Being propped up by fossil fuels, election denying, and climate denying really didn’t work out so well for them,” she said.

Republicans will not be able to reverse the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s flagship programme to green the US economy.

“What you might see from them is that they try to slow down things, try to present some obstacles to what the Biden administration will do for the next two years,” Colon said.

But activists said a Republican victory in the House would endanger Biden’s pledge to contribute $11.4 billion to a $100 billion per year fund from rich countries to help developing ones green their economies.

Colon said Democrats need to pass the legislation before the new Congress is sworn in in January.

– Trump shadow –

After the new Congress is known, all eyes will quickly turn to the 2024 presidential election, with Donald Trump hinting that he will announce his intentions on November 15.

Climate activists fear a Trump comeback. The former US leader pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement in 2017 — a move that Biden reversed as soon as he took office.

“We know that there’s a huge climate denier that may announce (his candidacy) pretty soon,” said Ramon Cruz, president of the Sierra Club, a major US non-government organisation.

“We knew how difficult that was not only for the US, but for the whole world,” he said.

The Sierra Club, which supported candidates in this year’s election, already has 2024 on the “horizon”, he said.

But one campaigner had a different take on the impact of US elections on the climate agenda.

“The US has acted in bad faith irrespective of elections,” said Harjeet Singh, senior adviser at Climate Action Network.

Singh said that, for years, the United States has blocked attempts to create a “loss and damage” mechanism through which rich polluters would compensate developing countries for the destruction caused by climate-induced disasters.

The United States has dragged their feet on the issue, but loss and damage has taken centre stage at COP27 as it was finally put on the official agenda following intense negotiations.

“The US has been an obstructionist, always,” Singh said.

“Please look at the US role beyond what happens in this election. It is for the US to change course and be more constructive in its approach.”

Cracked earth at a dam in Morocco's Ouled Essi Masseoud village, south of Casablanca, amid the country's worst drought in at least four decades, seen on August 8, 2022

A trickle of climate “loss and damage” funding pledges from rich countries at the COP27 summit in Egypt have been welcomed by observers and developing nations, who say they must pave the way for a broad global financing deal. 

The controversial issue is a key focus of the UN meeting, as a relentless surge of impacts wreak death, destruction and mounting economic losses on developing nations least responsible for planet-heating emissions. 

A handful of European nations and regions have announced small funding pledges during the Sharm el-Sheikh talks, with Germany, Austria, Ireland and Belgium saying they would make contributions. 

“These are good gestures. It shows that the issue has been acknowledged after years of advocacy,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network.

But he said that this should not distract from calls by developing nations for a robust framework that can pay out when countries are hit by increasingly ferocious floods, heatwaves and droughts, along with slow-onset impacts such as sea level rise. 

Pledges so far are miniscule in comparison to the damages already incurred. 

Austria has offered $50 million and Belgium says it will give $2.5 million to Mozambique, adding to $13 million that Denmark has earmarked for loss and damage in North Africa and the Sahel. 

Scotland, which kicked off the loss and damage pledges last year when Britain hosted the COP26 summit, has also upped its contribution to $8 million. 

Meanwhile, Germany is touting its “global shield” project, due to be officially launched in Egypt next week, as a way to provide climate risk insurance and prevention to vulnerable countries. 

It announced $170 million for the project this week, while Ireland said it would contribute $10 million for 2023. 

– Heatwaves, droughts, floods –

These countries “have begun to show the way” by recognising the need to provide funds to countries already being slammed by the impacts of climate change,” Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, told delegates on Tuesday. 

“It would be right for the major polluters — particularly those that have been involved in the historical use of fossil fuel energies — to follow this example.”

The summit is taking place at as a devastating drought is threatening millions with starvation in the Horn of Africa. 

Heatwaves and droughts have caused crops to wither on four continents, while Pakistan is still reeling from catastrophic flooding that destroyed homes, roads and bridges and swallowed vast areas of farmland. 

The World Bank has estimated the Pakistan floods alone caused $30 billion in damages and economic loss. Millions of people were displaced and two million homes destroyed.

Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program, Union of Concerned Scientists, said climate disasters and rocketing fossil fuel prices were hurting countries already burdened with “crushing debt”.  

She said that while measures like Germany’s insurance programme are important additions to loss and damage, they would be “inadequate” to deal with loss and damage more broadly.  

“We’re talking about losing land to sea level rise and desertification. Insurance can help you up to a point but climate change is now creating conditions in many parts of the world that are beyond the bounds of what’s insurable,” she said. 

“In a year like this, on this climate vulnerable continent of Africa, it would just be unconscionable to come away without an agreement on a loss and damage facility.”

Morocco's Noor solar power plant, near the town of Ouarzazate, pictured in 2016. Africa has huge potential for solar power but it only represents 1.3 percent of global capacity, experts said Wednesday

Investment in renewable energy in Africa fell to its lowest level in more than decade last year despite the continent’s huge potential, experts said Wednesday at the COP27 climate conference.

Only $2.6 billion of capital was rolled out for new wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable power-generating projects in 2021, the lowest level of funding in 11 years, research group BloombergNEF (BNEF) said.

This amounted to 0.6 percent of the $434 billion invested in renewables across the world, said the report, released at the United Nations meeting in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Renewable energy investments rose nine percent worldwide between 2020 and 2021 to reach a record high, but they fell 35 percent in Africa, it said.

This occurred “despite Africa’s outstanding natural resources, rapidly growing electricity demand and improving policy frameworks,” the report said.

“Clean energy investment in Africa is at an alarming low level,” Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire philanthropist and former New York mayor, said in a statement.

“Changing that requires new levels of collaboration to identify viable clean energy projects and bring more private financing and public support to them,” said Bloomberg, who is also the UN chief’s special envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions.

Africa has huge potential for solar power but it only represents 1.3 percent of global capacity.

Investment is also largely concentrated in a few countries, including Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and South Africa, which together account for three quarters of the total.

“The ingredients are there for Africa to be a major market for clean energy growth, including outstanding natural resources and massive demand,” said Luiza Demoro, head of energy transition research at BNEF.

“But incomplete policy regimes and reluctant investors continue to keep investment levels below where they could and really should be.”

US President Joe Biden speaks on the eve of the US midterm elections, at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland, on November 7, 2022

The US midterms made waves Wednesday at a UN climate summit on the shores of Egypt, with activists urging President Joe Biden to take bolder action against global warming regardless of the result.

Campaigners were optimistic that Biden’s $370 billion green energy legislation would not be thwarted even if Republicans take one or both houses of Congress.

But with Biden due to join the UN’s COP27 climate conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Friday, they also had a message for the US leader.

“I think it would be a catastrophic mistake if President Biden does not seize this literally once-in-the-universe opportunity now to be the climate president that the world needs him to be,” said Jean Su, energy justice programme director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a US environmental group.

“We are literally at the tipping point for an unlivable world,” she said at a news conference, urging Biden to phase out fossil fuel production and use his presidential powers to declare a climate emergency.

But Su and others were also pleased to see candidates that campaigned on climate change gain seats in Congress.

“A lot of climate champions did win across states, governorships, legislatures, and more,” said Frances Colon, climate policy director at the Center for American Progress.

“What we expect is that they will turn these winds into more climate action,” she said.

– Split Congress? –

With a majority of races called, Biden’s Democrats appeared to have countered Republican hopes of riding a “red wave” to take full control of Congress. 

While Republicans seem on track to reclaim the House of Representatives, Democrats appear to have a decent chance of keeping their Senate majority.

“Republicans really ran on platforms of inflation and increased gas prices,” Colon said.

“Being propped up by fossil fuels, election denying, and climate denying really didn’t work out so well for them.”

Republicans will not be able to reverse the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s flagship programme to green the US economy.

“What you might see from them is that they try to slow down things, try to present some obstacles to what the Biden administration will do for the next two years,” Colon said.

But activists said a Republican victory in the House would endanger Biden’s pledge to contribute $11.4 billion to a $100 billion per year fund from rich countries to help developing ones green their economies.

Colon said Democrats need to pass the legislation before the new Congress is sworn in January.

– Trump shadow –

After the new Congress is known, all eyes will quickly turn to the 2024 presidential election, with Donald Trump hinting that he will announce his intentions on November 15.

Climate activists fear a Trump comeback. The former US leader pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement in 2017 — a move that Biden reversed as soon as he took office.

“We know that there’s a huge climate denier that may announce (his candidacy) pretty soon,” said Ramon Cruz, president of the Sierra Club, a major US non-government organisation.

“We knew how difficult that was not only for the US, but for the whole world,” he said.

The Sierra Club, which supported candidates in this year’s election, already has 2024 on the “horizon”, he said.

But one campaigner had a different take on the impact of US elections on the climate agenda.

“The US has acted in bad faith irrespective of elections,” said Harjeet Singh, senior adviser at Climate Action Network.

Singh said that, for years, the United States has blocked attempts to create a “loss and damage” mechanism through which rich polluters would compensate developing countries for the destruction caused by climate-induced disasters.

The United States has dragged their feet on the issue, but loss and damage has taken centre stage at COP27 as it was finally put on the official agenda following intense negotiations.

“The US has been an obstructionist, always,” Singh said.

“Please look at the US role beyond what happens in this election. It is for the US to change course and be more constructive in its approach.”