AFP UK

Hurricane Nicholas slammed into the Texas coast early Tuesday morning, with meteorologists warning of life-threatening flooding.

The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour, and was expected to dump up to 18 inches (around 460 millimeters) of rain in the Houston area, weather officials said.

The US National Hurricane Center wrote in its latest advisory that the storm landed at around 0530 GMT.

Earlier, the national monitor warned the storm was bringing “heavy rains, strong winds, and storm surges to portions of the central and upper Texas coasts”.

“Life-threatening flash flooding impacts, especially in highly urbanized metropolitan areas, are possible,” it added.

Between six and 12 inches of rainfall is expected in parts of Texas and western Louisiana. “This rainfall may produce areas of considerable flash and urban flooding,” the center said.

Early Tuesday morning the hurricane’s center was located above the eastern part of the Matagorda Peninsula, according to the Miami-based observatory.

Matagorda is just a few miles southwest of Houston, Texas’s largest city.

The NHC also issued a storm surge warning for much of the Gulf coast, meaning “there is a danger of life-threatening inundation, from rising water moving inland from the coastline.”

“This is a life-threatening situation,” it said, warning people in the area to “take all necessary actions to protect life and property.”

– Flights canceled –

Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston — parts of which were devastated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 — said the city was on high alert.

Authorities have erected barricades, activated Houston’s office of emergency management and told residents to take extra safety precautions.

“I urge everyone to be OFF the roads by sun down and to avoid driving tonight through tomorrow as we anticipate heavy rainfall,” Turner tweeted.

Ahead of the storm’s arrival many flights were canceled at Houston-area airports, and the Houston ship channel at its busy port was closed, said a spokesman for the agency that steers ships through the waterway.

Schools closed Monday afternoon across the storm-affected area and will remain shut on Tuesday, officials said.

Customers rushed to gas stations and supermarkets across the region to fill fuel tanks and stock up on bottled water, toilet paper, and perishables such as milk and eggs.

Texas is no stranger to hurricanes, but scientists warn that climate change is making the storms more powerful, posing an increasing risk to coastal communities.

Coastlines are already suffering from flooding, which has been amplified by rising sea levels.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott had urged residents to prepare.

“It is up to all Texans in the path of this storm to take precautions, heed the guidance of officials, and remain vigilant as this severe weather moves through Texas,” he said in a statement.

Storm Nicholas strengthened to a hurricane Monday as it tracked up the Texas coast just before its expected landfall, with meteorologists warning of dangerous levels of rainfall.

Nicholas was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour, and was expected to dump up to 18 inches (around 460 millimeters) of rain in the Houston area, weather officials said.

Nicholas is bringing “heavy rains, strong winds, and storm surges to portions of the central and upper Texas coasts,” the National Hurricane Center said.

“Life-threatening flash flooding impacts, especially in highly urbanized metropolitan areas, are possible,” its latest bulletin warned.

Between six and 12 inches of total rainfall is expected in parts of Texas and western Louisiana, with isolated maximum amounts of 18 inches.

“This rainfall may produce areas of considerable flash and urban flooding,” the center said.

At 0300 GMT Tuesday, the hurricane’s center was located some 20 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of Matagorda, on the Gulf of Mexico, said the Miami-based NHC.

Matagorda is just a few miles southwest of Houston, Texas’s largest city.

The NHC also issued a storm surge warning for much of the Gulf coast, meaning “there is a danger of life-threatening inundation, from rising water moving inland from the coastline.”

“This is a life-threatening situation,” it said, warning people in the area to “take all necessary actions to protect life and property from rising water and the potential for other dangerous conditions.”

– Flights canceled –

Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston — parts of which were devastated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 — said the city was on high alert.

Authorities have erected barricades, activated Houston’s office of emergency management and told residents to take extra safety precautions.

“I urge everyone to be OFF the roads by sun down and to avoid driving tonight through tomorrow as we anticipate heavy rainfall,” Turner tweeted.

The storm’s imminent arrival forced many flights to be canceled at Houston-area airports, and the Houston ship channel at the busy port was closed, said a spokesman for the agency that steers ships through the waterway.

Schools closed Monday afternoon across the storm-affected area and will remain shut on Tuesday, officials said.

Customers rushed to gas stations and supermarkets across the region to fill fuel tanks and stock up on bottle water, toilet paper, and perishables such as milk and eggs.

Texas is no stranger to hurricanes, but scientists warn that climate change is making the storms more powerful, posing an increasing risk to coastal communities.

Coastlines are already suffering from flooding, which has been amplified by rising sea levels.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott had urged residents to prepare.

“It is up to all Texans in the path of this storm to take precautions, heed the guidance of officials, and remain vigilant as this severe weather moves through Texas,” he said in a statement.

Storm Nicholas strengthened to a hurricane Monday as it tracked up the Texas coast just before its expected landfall, with meteorologists warning of dangerous levels of rainfall.

Nicholas was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour, and was expected to dump up to 18 inches (around 460 millimeters) of rain in the Houston area, weather officials said.

Nicholas is bringing “heavy rains, strong winds, and storm surges to portions of the central and upper Texas coasts,” the National Hurricane Center said.

“Life-threatening flash flooding impacts, especially in highly urbanized metropolitan areas, are possible,” its latest bulletin warned.

Between six and 12 inches of total rainfall is expected in parts of Texas and western Louisiana, with isolated maximum amounts of 18 inches.

“This rainfall may produce areas of considerable flash and urban flooding,” the center said.

At 0300 GMT Tuesday, the hurricane’s center was located some 20 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of Matagorda, on the Gulf of Mexico, said the Miami-based NHC.

Matagorda is just a few miles southwest of Houston, Texas’s largest city.

The NHC also issued a storm surge warning for much of the Gulf coast, meaning “there is a danger of life-threatening inundation, from rising water moving inland from the coastline.”

“This is a life-threatening situation,” it said, warning people in the area to “take all necessary actions to protect life and property from rising water and the potential for other dangerous conditions.”

– Flights canceled –

Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston — parts of which were devastated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 — said the city was on high alert.

Authorities have erected barricades, activated Houston’s office of emergency management and told residents to take extra safety precautions.

“I urge everyone to be OFF the roads by sun down and to avoid driving tonight through tomorrow as we anticipate heavy rainfall,” Turner tweeted.

The storm’s imminent arrival forced many flights to be canceled at Houston-area airports, and the Houston ship channel at the busy port was closed, said a spokesman for the agency that steers ships through the waterway.

Schools closed Monday afternoon across the storm-affected area and will remain shut on Tuesday, officials said.

Customers rushed to gas stations and supermarkets across the region to fill fuel tanks and stock up on bottle water, toilet paper, and perishables such as milk and eggs.

Texas is no stranger to hurricanes, but scientists warn that climate change is making the storms more powerful, posing an increasing risk to coastal communities.

Coastlines are already suffering from flooding, which has been amplified by rising sea levels.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott had urged residents to prepare.

“It is up to all Texans in the path of this storm to take precautions, heed the guidance of officials, and remain vigilant as this severe weather moves through Texas,” he said in a statement.

On the front lines of global warming, evacuees from Lytton, a western Canadian village destroyed by wildfires in June, are detached and bitter about the upcoming September 20 snap elections.

Lytton, located 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Vancouver, gained international attention for setting a new Canadian heat record of 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.3 Fahrenheit) before being ravaged days later by a fire that killed at least two residents.

More than two months later the town is deserted, with police checkpoints stopping people, even residents, from entering. 

The town is flanked by fences that mask the devastation — a burnt tree, charred cars, the cinder outlines of a house and a single intact road sign.

A rare motorist drives along a highway that runs through the town.

Sitting on a bench outside a bakery in the town of a Lillooet, north of Lytton, Micha Kingston watches her five-year-old daughter Mimi play with her two dolls, some of the few personal items the family saved as they fled their home.

“It’s weird because I do feel like I am a refugee and that’s not something that you associate with Canada, that’s something you think of like somewhere else where there are wars,” she told AFP, gripping a donated pullover with the Vancouver Winter Olympics logo on the front.

– ‘Nothing ever changes’ –

Kingston, who is a single mother, and her daughter are among the 250 Lytton residents forced to flee when flames reached the town. 

Some 33,000 people in British Columbia have been displaced by forest fires this summer, and nearly 1,600 fires have been recorded in the province, making it the third most devastating season in terms of hectares burned.

One week before Canada’s national election around 200 fires are still active, including the fire that ravaged Lytton.

Those fires were made worse by a heat dome linked to climate change that saw hot air trapped by high pressure fronts over western Canada and United States, a heat wave that claimed hundreds of lives, experts said.

Kingston, whose political leanings have swung between the leftist New Democratic Party and the Green Party, said she is considering not voting for the first time ever.

“Everyone is talking about (climate change), but like nothing ever changes. So, it’s easy to be disillusioned with politics when nothing changes,” she said.

Voting would be “more difficult than usual” because “everything is so crazy right now,” she said, adding that her post-traumatic stress complicates every little task.

Kingston now lives with her daughter in a tent in a friend’s yard, and survives on government food stamps.

“I’m not like angry. I’m more (feeling) disconnected than anything,” she said. 

Kingston said she’s grateful for the help she received in securing unemployment insurance from the constituency office of her local Conservative MP, Brad Vis.

Nevertheless she won’t support the Tories in this election due to the party’s weaker climate plan.

For the ruling Liberals to hold an election “after the summer that British Columbia just had is a betrayal to the residents that I represent,” said Vis, who is campaigning for re-election.

Hundreds of displaced locals “are looking for a place to live this winter” and don’t even know how they’re going to be able to cast a ballot on September 20, Vis told AFP.

Elections Canada said it is working with local authorities to make sure people can vote and encourages them to do so by mail.

– ‘Some kind of hate against B.C.’ –

Fire evacuee Neil Dycke has been staying in a motel in Kamloops, about 170 kilometers northeast of Lytton, since the fire destroyed his town.

“You can’t blame the politicians” for the wildfires, Dycke said, adding no one could have predicted the fire devastation.

“It’s like someone has some kind of hate against B.C., you know… because there is an awful lot of fires this year, way more than normally and close to towns too.”

Another fire evacuee, Christine Abbott, 56, chokes back tears as she remembers the home she had lived in since 2012 with her husband Vince. 

The home, destroyed by the fire, had belonged to her father-in-law.

“The people who are in leadership have to care about the people and I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” she said, sitting on a folding chair outside her camper, parked a short distance from Lytton.

As for Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “he’s too busy for us,” so for the first time ever “I might be too busy to vote,” she said.

It is the elephant in the genomics room: can extinct species be resurrected? One bioscience firm insists they can, announcing Monday its intent to use emerging technology to restore the woolly mammoth to the Arctic tundra.

New company Colossal, capitalizing on a partnership with a Harvard geneticist, said its species “de-extinction” effort has the potential to anchor a working model for restoring damaged or lost ecosystems and thereby help slow or even halt the effects of climate change.

“Never before has humanity been able to harness the power of this technology to rebuild ecosystems, heal our Earth and preserve its future through the repopulation of extinct animals,” Colossal chief executive and co-founder Ben Lamm, an emerging technology entrepreneur, said in a statement.

“In addition to bringing back ancient extinct species like the woolly mammoth, we will be able to leverage our technologies to help preserve critically endangered species that are on the verge of extinction and restore animals where humankind had a hand in their demise.”

Woolly mammoths roamed much of the Arctic, and co-existed with early humans who hunted the cold-resistent herbivores for food and used its tusks and bones as tools.

The animals died out about 4,000 years ago. For decades, scientists have been recovering bits and pieces of mammoth tusks, bones, teeth and hair to extract and try to sequence the mammoth’s DNA.

Colossal says it aims to insert DNA sequences of woolly mammoths, collected from well-preserved remains in the permafrost and frozen steppes, into the genome of Asian elephants, to create an “elephant-mammoth hybrid.”

Asian elephants and woolly mammoths share a 99.6 percent similar DNA makeup, Colossal says on its website.

Company co-founder George Church is a renowned geneticist and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, who is using pioneering techniques, including CRISPR technology, to advance species de-extinction.

“Technologies discovered in pursuit of this grand vision — a living, walking proxy of a woolly mammoth — could create very significant opportunities in conservation and beyond,” Church said in the statement.

The woolly mammoth’s vast migration patterns were seen as critical to preserving the Arctic region’s environmental health.

Colossal says restoring the beasts has the potential to revitalize the Arctic grasslands, a vast region with major climate change-combatting properties, such as carbon sequestering and methane suppression. 

Colossal is funded in part through a $15 million seed round from investors and says its advisors include leaders in bioethics and genomics.

Tropical Storm Nicholas gained strength as it tracked up the Texas coast hours before its expected landfall late Monday, threatening to unleash a dangerous deluge of rainfall on the southern US state, meteorologists warned.

At 2100 GMT Nicholas was located some 70 miles (115 kilometers) south of Port O’Connor on the Gulf of Mexico, with Texas’s largest city of Houston squarely in the storm’s sights, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Packing maximum winds of 65 miles per hour, Nicholas was forecast to bring “life-threatening” flash flooding and storm surges when it barrels ashore, the Miami-based NHC said.

“Nicholas could be near hurricane strength when it reaches the central Texas coast,” it added, with the storm’s center due to move onshore Monday night.

Between six and 12 inches (15-30 centimeters) of total rainfall is expected to wallop parts of Texas and western Louisiana, with isolated maximum amounts of 18 inches.

“This rainfall may produce areas of considerable flash and urban flooding,” the center said.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott urged state residents to comply with warnings and directions from local authorities.

Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston, parts of which were devastated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, said the city was on high alert.

Authorities have erected barricades, activated Houston’s office of emergency management and told residents to take extra safety precautions.

“I urge everyone to be OFF the roads by sun down and to avoid driving tonight through tomorrow as we anticipate heavy rainfall,” Turner posted on Twitter.

The Lone Star State is no stranger to hurricanes, but scientists warn that climate change is making the storms more powerful, posing an increasing risk to coastal communities.

Coastlines are already suffering from flooding, which has been amplified by rising sea levels.

It is the elephant in the genomics room: can extinct species be resurrected? One bioscience firm insists they can, announcing Monday its intent to use emerging technology to restore the woolly mammoth to the Arctic tundra.

New company Colossal, capitalizing on a partnership with a Harvard geneticist, said its species “de-extinction” effort has the potential to anchor a working model for restoring damaged or lost ecosystems and thereby help slow or even halt the effects of climate change.

“Never before has humanity been able to harness the power of this technology to rebuild ecosystems, heal our Earth and preserve its future through the repopulation of extinct animals,” Colossal chief executive and co-founder Ben Lamm, an emerging technology entrepreneur, said in a statement.

“In addition to bringing back ancient extinct species like the woolly mammoth, we will be able to leverage our technologies to help preserve critically endangered species that are on the verge of extinction and restore animals where humankind had a hand in their demise.”

Woolly mammoths roamed much of the Arctic, and co-existed with early humans who hunted the cold-resistent herbivores for food and used its tusks and bones as tools.

The animals died out about 4,000 years ago. For decades, scientists have been recovering bits and pieces of mammoth tusks, bones, teeth and hair to extract and try to sequence the mammoth’s DNA.

Colossal says it aims to insert DNA sequences of woolly mammoths, collected from well-preserved remains in the permafrost and frozen steppes, into the genome of Asian elephants, to create an “elephant-mammoth hybrid.”

Asian elephants and woolly mammoths share a 99.6 percent similar DNA makeup, Colossal says on its website.

Company co-founder George Church is a renowned geneticist and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, who is using pioneering techniques, including CRISPR technology, to advance species de-extinction.

“Technologies discovered in pursuit of this grand vision — a living, walking proxy of a woolly mammoth — could create very significant opportunities in conservation and beyond,” Church said in the statement.

The woolly mammoth’s vast migration patterns were seen as critical to preserving the Arctic region’s environmental health.

Colossal says restoring the beasts has the potential to revitalize the Arctic grasslands, a vast region with major climate change-combatting properties, such as carbon sequestering and methane suppression. 

Colossal is funded in part through a $15 million seed round from investors and says its advisors include leaders in bioethics and genomics.

Reduced agricultural production, water scarcity, rising sea levels and other adverse effects of climate change could cause up to 216 million people to leave their homes and migrate within their own countries by 2050, the World Bank has warned.

The estimate from the Washington-based development lender released Monday updates a 2018 report with new figures from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, North Africa and East Asia and the Pacific to provide a more complete overview of the potential toll from rising global temperatures.

“Climate change is an increasingly potent driver of migration,” the report said. Shortages of food and water along with rising seas highlight “the urgency for action as livelihoods and human well-being are placed under increasing strain.”

Juergen Voegele, the World Bank’s vice president for sustainable development, said the data give a “global estimate” of the scale of potential migration. 

Without decisive action, there could be “hotspots” of climate migration that “will emerge as soon as within the next decade and intensify by 2050, as people leave places that can no longer sustain them and go to areas that offer opportunity,” Voegele warned.

Bank researchers in 2018 released a report on the impact of climate change on migration in South Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, and projected 143 million people in those regions could be forced to move by 2050.

The updated estimate represents about three percent of the projected population of the regions covered.

“It’s important to note that this projection is not cast in stone,” Voegele said. 

“If countries start now to reduce greenhouse gases, close development gaps, restore vital ecosystems and help people adapt, internal climate migration could be reduced by up to 80 percent — to 44 million people by 2050.”

– ‘Rise out of poverty’ –

However the true toll could be far higher, as the data does not include wealthier countries such as those in Europe or North America, nor the Middle East or small island nations.

The trend could have significant implications for host countries, which are often unprepared to cope with the influx of new migrants.

“The trajectory of internal climate migration in the next half-century depends on our collective action on climate change and development in the next few years,” Voegele wrote.

“Not all migration can be prevented and… if well managed, shifts in population distribution can become part of an effective adaptation strategy, allowing people to rise out of poverty and build resilient livelihoods.”

Breaking the data down by region, internal migrants due to climate change could hit 86 million in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, 49 million in East Asia and the Pacific, 40 million in South Asia, 19 million in North Africa, 17 million in Latin America and five million in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to the bank.

– Water stress –

The report zeros in on issues of water access in North Africa, which it calls “a main driver of internal climate migration.”

Population growth has slowed in both coastal and inland areas that are facing shortages of water, including Algeria’s northwestern coast, western and southern Morocco and the foothills of the Atlas mountains.

The city of Alexandria in Egypt and the eastern and western parts of the Nile river delta “could become out-migration hotspots due to both declining water availability and sea-level rise,” the report said.

Meanwhile, the region’s national capitals are predicted to become “climate in-migration hotspots,” the report cautioned.

Globally, the bank warned that “climate change impacts will hit the poorest and most vulnerable regions the hardest and threaten to reverse development gains. In some places, questions of habitability will arise.”

Vaccines are effective enough at preventing severe cases of Covid-19 that there is no current need for the general population to be given third doses, according to a report in The Lancet published Monday.   

Some countries have started offering extra doses over fears about the much more contagious Delta variant, causing the World Health Organization to call for a moratorium on third jabs amid concerns about vaccine supplies to poorer nations, where millions have yet to receive their first jab.  

The new report by scientists, including from the WHO, concluded that even with the threat of Delta, “booster doses for the general population are not appropriate at this stage in the pandemic”.

The authors, who reviewed observational studies and clinical trials, found that vaccines remain highly effective against severe symptoms of Covid-19, across all the main virus variants including Delta, although they had lower success in preventing asymptomatic cases of the disease. 

“Taken as a whole, the currently available studies do not provide credible evidence of substantially declining protection against severe disease, which is the primary goal of vaccination,” said lead author Ana-Maria Henao-Restrepo, of the WHO. 

She said vaccine doses should be prioritised to people around the world still waiting for a jab. 

“If vaccines are deployed where they would do the most good, they could hasten the end of the pandemic by inhibiting further evolution of variants,” she added.

– Vaccine divides –

Countries like France have started distributing third jabs to the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, while Israel has gone further, offering children 12 and older a third dose five months after receiving a second jab.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called on countries to avoid giving out extra Covid jabs until the end of the year as the UN health agency urges all nations to vaccinate at least 10 percent of their populations by the end of this month, and at least 40 percent by the end of this year.

The Lancet study concluded that the current variants had not developed sufficiently to escape the immune response provided by vaccines currently in use. 

The authors argue that if new virus mutations do emerge that are able to evade this response, it would be better to deliver specially modified vaccine boosters aimed at the newer variants, rather than a third dose of an existing vaccine.  

Commenting on the study Azra Ghani, Chair in Infectious Disease Epidemiology, at Imperial College London, described it as a “very thorough review” of current research. 

But she said that while the reduction in efficacy of vaccines against variants like Delta might be small, when considered across a population it could still lead to “a substantial increase” in people needing hospitalisation.

“Even in the most developed countries, these small differences can put a severe strain on the health system,” she said in a statement to the Science Media Centre, adding there was no “one size fits all” approach to booster vaccines. 

Animal farming accounts for twice as many greenhouse gas emissions as plants grown for consumption, according to a study published Monday that mapped agricultural activities worldwide.

What humans eat accounts for a major chunk of the emissions behind climate-change — transportation, deforestation, cold-storage and the digestive systems of cattle all send polluting gases into the atmosphere. 

Researchers looked at carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide released by food production and consumption from farming on land. And they found that, from 2007 to 2013, the emissions amounted to 17.318 billion metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases per year — or 35 percent of all human-caused emissions.

The study, which modelled net emissions for over 170 plant and 16 animal products in nearly 200 countries, calculated that 57 percent of food-related emissions were from animal-based foods — including crops grown to feed livestock. 

Plants grown for human consumption generated 29 percent of food emissions, the study published in Nature Food found, and the rest was attributed to other commodities like cotton and rubber. It did not include emissions from fisheries. 

Plant-based diets are widely thought to be better for the planet — but lead researcher Atul Jain, of the University of Illinois, said he wanted to know exactly how much, admitting he had a personal reason for wanting to dig deeper into the issue.  

“I’ve been a vegetarian since my childhood,” he told AFP. “I wanted to estimate what my carbon footprint was.” 

To come up with a consistent model for so many different products, Jain’s team set to work from the ground up, breaking down the globe’s farmland into some 60,000 grid squares.

“Once we identify the crop area in a grid cell, we determine what percentage of the area is allocated to the crop, to the forest, and to the grasses, and so on,” he said.

This allowed the researchers to model location-specific emissions data for dozens of major crops and animal products.  

They also included country-specific data related to food consumption, including importing and exporting related emissions.

– Beef is the worst offender –

Beef was the largest-contributing commodity, responsible for some 25 percent of food emissions, and rice was the worst plant offender, accounting for 12 percent.

This helped place cattle-farming South America and rice-growing Southeast Asia as the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses related to food production. 

The study measured the impact of crops grown for human consumption and those grown for animal feed separately, and factored in things like transportation and trade.

To calculate net emissions, they also accounted for the presence of plants that absorb carbon.

“You have to account for everything because there are so many feedbacks and interactions,” Jain said.

The study noted the growing demand for food worldwide and the industry’s potential to exacerbate global warming.

Jain said his next research challenge was to include more granular data on consumption trends across the world to build a tool to allow people to calculate their own food-based carbon footprint.

“You can go to your location, identify what you eat, how much you eat, and calculate your own carbon footprint,” he said.