AFP UK

US climate envoy John Kerry will embark on a visit to Japan and China Tuesday as Washington tries to build momentum ahead of a key summit on combatting global warming set for November.

Kerry, who already visited China in April, will go to Tianjin to “continue discussions on key aspects of the climate crisis,” the State Department said in a statement on Monday.

During the trip that is due to end on Friday, the former secretary of state will also meet international counterparts in Tokyo, the statement added, to “discuss efforts to drive collective climate action”.

The US envoy’s Asian tour “bolsters the United States’ bilateral and multilateral efforts to raise climate ambition” ahead of the COP26 climate summit, to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November. 

After Kerry’s visit to Shanghai in mid-April, the two countries pledged to “cooperate… to face the climate crisis,” according to a joint statement, but Beijing said at the end of July that this cooperation would depend on “the overall health” of bilateral relations.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, published in August, warned the world is on course to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by around 2030, a decade earlier than predicted just three years ago.

Years in the making, the sobering report approved by 195 nations shines a harsh spotlight on governments dithering in the face of mounting evidence that climate change is an existential threat.

Families of a giant rodent native to South America have been invading a luxury gated community in Argentina, highlighting the country’s controversial environmental and social policies.

Nordelta is a 1,600 hectare (3,950 acre) luxury private urban complex built on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, on a wetland from the Parana river that is the capybara’s natural habitat.

Many Nordelta residents have complained about capybara’s ruining manicured lawns, biting pets and causing traffic accidents.

Also known as a carpincho or chiguire, the capybara is the largest rodent in the world and can measure up to 1.35 meters (53 inches) in length and reach 80 kilograms (176 pounds) in weight.

“Nordelta is an exceptionally rich wetland that should never have been touched,” biologist Sebastian di Martino, conservation director at the Rewilding Argentina foundation, told AFP.

“Now that the damage has been done, the residents need to reach a certain level of coexistence with the carpinchos,” said Di Martino.

Built 20 years ago, Nordelta has homes, offices, a shopping center, schools, a church, a synagogue and an artificial lake that is home to aquatic birds.

But since work to build a clinic began on the last remaining piece of natural land, many residents have noted a sudden capybara “invasion.”

“Carpinchos were always here. We always saw them from time to time. But three or four months ago (builders) went for their last remaining stronghold and the stampede began,” Perla Paggi, a Nordelta resident and capybara activist, told AFP.

Nordelta and similar luxury developments on wetlands have also been a controversial topic in Argentina.

As well as eating into the capybara’s natural habitat, large scale development of the wetland means the soil can no longer absorb heavy rains, which then end up flooding poorer surrounding neighborhoods.

In politically polarized Argentina, leftists have long attacked Nordelta as an example of elite exploitation, while jokingly presenting the capybara as a hero of the working classes.

– Lack of predators –

Di Martino says the proliferation of capybaras is harmful to the environment, but that too is the fault of humans.

Capybaras are prey for jaguars, pumas, foxes, wild cats and wild dogs but all of these animals are now virtually extinct in Argentina.

“It’s happening all over the country, in urbanized and non-urbanized areas. It is caused by the alteration and degradation of ecosystems. We’ve extinguished a ton of species that were their natural predators,” Di Martino told AFP.

“The carpincho needs a predator to reduce its population and also make it afraid,” said Di Martino.

“When there’s a herbivore without a predator threatening it, it doesn’t hide and can spend all day eating, thereby degrading the vegetation which traps less carbon and contributes to climate change.”

In the wild, capybaras live between eight and 10 years and give birth to litters of up to six young, once a year.

Not everyone in Nordelta views them as a nuisance. In fact they have become the main attraction in the residential complex.

Drivers slow down to take pictures of them, while children seek them out at nightfall for selfies.

Some Nordelta residents want to create a natural reserve for the capybaras to live in.

“We have to learn to live beside them, they’re not aggressive animals,” said Paggi.

“A 20 to 30 hectare reserve is enough to maintain diversity. They are defenseless animals, we corner them, we take away their habitat and now we complain because they’re invading.”

Di Martino, though, says a natural reserve would change nothing.

“It’s complicated, you need to keep them away from children and pets. And then you’re going to have to find a way to reduce the population, maybe moving them to other places.”

Gulf cities such as Dubai are known for their scorching summers, but experts warn climate change could soon make parts of the fossil fuel-rich region unlivable for humans.

Daily temperatures in the coastal metropolis regularly top 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for several months of the year and are exacerbated by high humidity.

“I work from 9 am until 4 pm in this heat,” Pakistani scooter driver Sameer said, sweat dripping from his forehead.

“Sometimes, the company or people give us water to drink, and we get a break every three hours,” added Sameer, who works for a mobile delivery app and declined to provide his surname.

A new report this month by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed unequivocally that the climate is changing faster than previously feared, and because of human activity.

Even now, Dubai residents often leave for cooler climates during the hottest months, while many who stay spend their time scurrying between air-conditioned locations — or rely on delivery drivers for a panoply of services.

The UAE is also one of the world’s most arid countries, and for the past several years it has used aircraft for cloud seeding to artificially produce rain.

One expert has warned of the risks for the region as climate change progresses.

“In general, the level of heat stress will increase significantly,” said Elfatih Eltahir, a professor of hydrology and climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

With higher temperatures and humidity towards the end of this century, some parts of the Gulf will experience periods of “heat stress conditions that will be incompatible with human survival”, he warned.

– ‘Wake-up call’ –

“That will not happen all the time, they will be episodes that would happen once or twice every seven years,” he added.

The combination of heat and relative humidity has the potential to be deadly if the human body is unable to cool off through sweating.

Scientists have calculated that a healthy human adult in the shade with unlimited drinking water will die if so-called “wet-bulb” temperatures (TW) exceed 35C for six hours. 

It was long assumed this theoretical threshold would never be crossed, but US researchers reported last year on two locations — one in the United Arab Emirates, another in Pakistan — where the 35C TW barrier was breached more than once, if only fleetingly.

Calls to reduce carbon emissions pose major economic challenges for oil and gas-rich Gulf countries, from OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia to Oman and Qatar.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has said the IPCC report “must sound a death knell” for coal, oil and gas, and warned that fossil fuels were destroying the planet.

But some Gulf states in recent years have taken up greener rhetoric as they try to improve their environmental credentials and diversify their economies away from oil.

Tanzeed Alam, managing director of Dubai-based Earth Matters Consulting, said there was increasing interest in the environment and the impact of climate change in the UAE.

“But we are yet to see the large, family-owned businesses really taking this issue to the core of their business models,” he told AFP.

“Businesses don’t often understand how they can cope with increased heatwaves, storms, flooding and other physical impacts,” Alam said.

He expressed hope that the UN report would act as a “wake-up call”. 

– ‘Clear decisions’ –

The United Arab Emirates aims to increase its reliance on clean energy to 50 percent by 2050 and reduce its carbon footprint for power generation by 70 percent.

Abu Dhabi, one of seven emirates along with Dubai that make up the country, says it is building the world’s largest single-site solar plant.

Once fully operational, the Al Dhafra solar project will have the capacity to power some 160,000 households nationwide, according to the WAM state news agency. It is scheduled to commence operations in 2022.

In Bahrain, where average summer temperatures range between 35C and 40C, Mohammed Abdelaal’s company Silent Power uses solar technology to cool water tanks.

He said demand had increased in several Gulf countries this summer, noting that the region’s ample supply of sunlight facilitates the production of “clean, sustainable, low-cost energy”.

Bahrain aims for 10 percent renewable energy by 2035, according to state media, while neighbouring Saudi Arabia — with ambitious plans to diversify its oil-reliant economy — in March unveiled a campaign to generate half of its energy from renewables by 2030.

In Kuwait, Khaled Jamal al-Falih expressed concern at what runaway climate change could mean for his country.

“In Kuwait today, a person who needs to run an errand can’t do so until after six o’clock in the evening, and leaving the house means being in an air-conditioned car to go to an air-conditioned place,” he told AFP.

Almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels, the country has a 15 percent renewable energy target by 2030, according to state media. 

Falih said his house ran solely on solar power, and urged the government to make “clear decisions” to combat climate change.

The idea of being able to escape the reality of global warming has “become impossible”, Falih said.

aem-burs/dm/lg

As scientific warnings of dire climate change-induced drought grow, many in Israel and Jordan cast worried eyes at the river running between them and the critical but limited resources they share.

This month the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed unequivocally that the climate is changing faster than previously feared, heaping pressure on finite water supplies even as demands grow greater than ever before.

But experts say that instead of provoking argument, Israel and Jordan could be poised for an unprecedented boom in water cooperation amid technological advancements, climate pressures and stronger ties.

Warnings about looming “water wars”, including in the Middle East, were often inflated, said Duke University professor Erika Weinthal. 

“Water is a resource that allows for adversaries to actually find ways to cooperate,” said Weinthal, a specialist in global environmental politics, who has worked extensively on Israel-Jordan issues.

“If you look at the data, you see more cooperation over water than conflict, and where there is conflict, it is usually verbal,” Weinthal added, a leader in the emerging academic field of environmental peace-building.

Jordan is one of the world’s most water-deficient countries, suffering from extreme droughts, and water cooperation with Israel long pre-dates a 1994 peace deal between them.

The issue came to prominence in 1921, when Pinhas Rutenberg, a Russian Jewish engineer who had moved to Palestine, convinced British authorities and Hashemite royals to approve a hydropower station where the Yarmuk tributary meets the Jordan River.

It continued after Israel’s founding in 1948, through decades when the nations were officially at war. 

– Solar power for water swap? –

Water deals, like all bilateral ties, suffered in recent years under former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom critics have accused of neglecting Jordan as he pursued deeper ties with Iran’s foes in the Gulf. 

But there have been signs of progress since Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government took office in June, with the countries agreeing to their largest-ever water transaction.

New technologies reducing costs have made seawater desalination “a profitable concern”, with investors from Israel, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates — which just normalised ties with the Jewish state — showing interest, said Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director at EcoPeace Middle East.  

“The people that are going to invest in more desalination very much see the opportunities for profit,” Bromberg said.

It means that Israel — one of the world’s desalination leaders — can sell more water, including natural freshwater from the Sea of Galilee, to Jordan without threatening domestic demand, he said.

And Israel has new incentive to do so, because it now needs something from Jordan in return, according to experts.

To meet the 2015 Paris climate accord commitments, Bennett’s government has approved a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector by at least 85 percent.

Multiple assessments show Israel does not have enough land to ramp up the necessary solar production, so will have to buy solar power from Jordan to hit its targets.  

“For the very first time, all sides will have something to sell and something to buy,” said Bromberg, whose organisation works in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, which is also struggling from a worsening water crisis.

This unprecedented alignment of interests could help repair semi-fractured diplomatic relations, he argued. 

“There are relatively few opportunities to try and rebuild trust,” Bromberg added. 

“Water and energy are one of those rare opportunities.”

– Palestinian issue key –

Not long after taking office, Bennett flew to Amman to meet King Abdullah II, who told CNN he was “very encouraged” by several recent talks with top Israeli officials. 

The July deal binds Israel to sell an additional 50 million cubic metres of water to Jordan.

Israel and Jordan have held meetings on water cooperation since the mid 1950s, including the “Picnic Table Talks” — US and UN mediated discussions that helped shape water agreements in the 1994 peace deal.

Weinthal described those talks as “a lifeline for when these countries were technically at war”.

But Weinthal also cautioned against investing too much hope in environmental diplomacy.

“This (latest) water agreement really breathes life into rekindling relations but… unless it is couched in the broader political process of dealing with the (Israeli) occupation, it will only go so far,” she said.

The July water purchase also saw Israel increase by fourfold the permitted value of Jordanian exports to the occupied West Bank.

In announcing the historic deal, Amman’s top diplomat Ayman Safadi stressed the need to establish a Palestinian state along Israel’s pre-1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as its capital. Those are terms that are anathema to Bennett’s government. 

But water pressures are mounting.

“Jordan… is now the second-most water insecure country in the world, by some measures,” The Century Foundation, a US think tank, wrote in December report.

“Water needs are expected to exceed resources by more than 26 percent by 2025.”

When the world’s leading conservation congress kicks off Friday in the French port city of Marseille it will aim to deliver one key message: protecting wildlife must not be seen as a noble gesture but an absolute necessity — for people and the planet.

Loss of biodiversity, climate change, pollution, diseases spreading from the wild have become existential threats that cannot be “understood or addressed in isolation,” the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said ahead of the meeting in a vision statement endorsed by its 1,400 members.  

Over nine days, government ministries, indigenous groups and NGOs — backed by a network of 16,000 scientists — will hammer out conservation proposals that could help set the agenda at critical upcoming UN summits on food systems, biodiversity and climate change. 

Previous congresses paved the way for global treaties on biodiversity and the international trade in endangered species.

“This is the only place where both governments and conservation organisations, big and small, are all members,” said Susan Lieberman, a 30-year conservation veteran and vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society. 

“When IUCN says ‘this is our position’, that’s not just one more conservation group,” she added. 

“It’s a position informed by almost every government and every conservation organisation in the world.” 

– ‘Mass extinction’ –

The World Economic Forum has put a hard number on our vulnerability: $44 trillion of economic value generated every year — half of global GDP — largely dependent on services rendered by nature, from water for agriculture to healthy soil in which to grow our food.

The creatures with which we share the planet are at high risk too — from us.

As the human population climbs toward nine billion by mid-century, many creatures are being crowded, eaten, snared, poisoned, poached, hawked and hunted out of existence.

Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN’s Red List Unit, said that if species’ destruction continues on its current trajectory, “we’ll be facing a major crisis soon”.

“I would certainly say that we’re on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction event,” he told AFP.

In each of the previous mass die-offs over the last half-billion years, at least three-quarters of all species were wiped out.

The IUCN has assessed nearly 135,000 species over the last half-century for its Red List of Threatened Species, the gold standard for measuring how close animal and plant life are to vanishing forever.

Nearly 28 percent are currently at risk of extinction, with habitat loss, overexploitation and illegal trade driving the loss.

Big cats, for example, have lost more than 90 percent of their historic range and population, with only 20,000 lions, 7,000 cheetahs, 4,000 tigers and a few dozen Amur leopards left in the wild.  

Invasive species are also taking a toll, especially in island ecosystems where unique species of birds have already fallen prey to rodents, snakes and disease-bearing mosquitos that hitched rides from explorers, cargo ships or passenger planes.

An update of the Red List on September 4 is likely to show a deepening crisis.

– ‘Our right to exist’ –

For the first time in the IUCN’s seven-decade history, indigenous peoples will share their deep knowledge on how best to heal the natural world as voting members. 

One proposal calls for a global pact to protect 80 percent of Amazonia by 2025.

“We are demanding from the world our right to exist as peoples, to live with dignity in our territories,” said Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, lead coordinator for COICA, which represents indigenous groups in nine Amazon-basin nations.

Recent research has warned that unbridled deforestation and climate change are pushing the Amazon towards a disastrous “regime change” which would see tropical forests give way to savannah-like landscapes.

Rates of tree loss drop sharply in the forests where native peoples live, especially if they hold some degree of title — legal or customary — over land. 

“Indigenous peoples have long stewarded and protected the world’s forests, a crucial bulwark against climate change,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.

– An ocean of plastic pollution –

Other motions offer a lifeline to ailing oceans, including one calling for an end to plastic pollution by 2030. 

Plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals, from otters to whales. 

Wildlife trafficking, a multi-billion-dollar business that has flourished in the internet era, will also be in the spotlight. 

This year’s congress was delayed from 2020 and will still be hampered by the pandemic, with a hybrid format of in-person and online attendance.

And then there’s the question of money, and the fact that so little of it has been earmarked for nature.

Current global spending of about $80 billion a year needs to be increased 10-fold, said Sebastien Moncorps, director of France’s IUCN committee. 

“That’s about one percent of global GDP, but when you realise that half of all economic activity depends on nature being healthy, that’s a good return on investment.”

For Sherri Tenpenny, God is on the side of those who spurn Covid-19 vaccines. Making money, critics say, is the Ohio osteopath’s higher calling.

From a $240 premium podcast annual membership to $165 webinars on why people “should not take the shot,” health supplements and ticketed public speaking, Tenpenny runs a sprawling enterprise based on anti-vaccine activism, disdain for masks and testing, and denials that Covid-19 is real.

An AFP investigation has found that the 63-year-old widow developed a business around coronavirus skepticism at the same time as she owes US tax authorities at least half a million dollars.

Earlier this year, Tenpenny was named one of the worst known spreaders of falsehoods, myths and misleading statements about vaccines — a group the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen.”

A separate study put her in the cadre of America’s biggest anti-vaccine profiteers.

But in comments to AFP, Tenpenny stood by her claims, maintaining that she is not spreading misinformation and is simply making “a living.”

Her business is an alchemy fueled by social media and mistrust of public health officials, two factors blamed for more than 25 percent of eligible American adults declining to be vaccinated.

While US President Joe Biden’s administration pleads with the vaccine-hesitant to take the shot, Tenpenny brands Covid-19 a manufactured crisis and a means of government control.

In an address to Ohio lawmakers in June, the osteopath pointed to online images purporting to show people who were “magnetized” after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

“They put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick,” she said in remarks that were soon debunked, but only after gaining a national audience.

YouTube removed that footage of Tenpenny, saying it broke the platform’s rules on information likely to cause harm. Many of Tenpenny’s other videos have been fact-checked as misleading or false, and several of her social media accounts were suspended or removed.

But much of her prolific output remains accessible — illustrating the whack-a-mole problem of weeding out dangerous online content, which Big Tech has yet to solve.

– ‘Rabbit hole’ –

Rachelle Eaton, who lives a half-hour drive from Tenpenny in the Cleveland area, watched the doctor’s remarks to lawmakers in horror.

“No one wants this life,” said Eaton, who suffered heart and lung damage, has to take oxygen intermittently, and is incapable of remembering simple things because of Covid-19.

“This doctor pulled a lot of people down this rabbit hole of misinformation,” said the 52-year-old, who eight months later is struggling with what is known as “long Covid,” after contracting the disease despite doing “everything right” — wearing a mask and leaving home only to work.

Eaton — who later quit her job as an accountant due to her illness — cut herself off from neighbors and co-workers who did not take the pandemic seriously. She saw people in her community succumb to the “insanity” of Tenpenny’s ideas about vaccines.

“She’s dangerous, and what makes her so dangerous is that I think her audience are these young moms who only want to do what is best for their children,” Eaton said of Tenpenny.

In defense of her claim that Covid-19 vaccines are killing people, the osteopath cites data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal government database.

But VAERS is no more than a collation of unverified reports of vaccine side effects, which do not prove causality. AFP has repeatedly fact-checked inaccurate claims about the system.

After watching Tenpenny’s testimony, Eaton says she was puzzled “as to why her governing board didn’t pull her license right then and there.”

A group representing medical regulators, the Federation of State Medical Boards, warned in July that doctors spreading inaccurate Covid-19 vaccine information risk disciplinary action, including suspension or revocation of medical licenses. Tenpenny has so far faced no such sanction.

– ‘Boot camp’ –

Although she is not trained in epidemiology, Tenpenny’s status as a physician — Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine confirmed she graduated in 1984 — lends her posts credibility with followers, despite their medical implausibility.

But her critics describe her as a quack whose online business contributes to needless loss of life by undermining public faith in vaccines — especially the Covid-19 shots that she casts as “deadly.”

Tenpenny sold a weeks-long “boot camp” on vaccines for several hundred dollars, in the autumn of 2020 and then again earlier this year. More recently she promoted an August 5 “Freedom Crusade” event in California at $57 a ticket.

Her products are marketed through two companies, Choonadi, LLC and Requeza, LLC. Public records show them registered in Ohio in 2015 and 2018 respectively.

Tenpenny, who spent years battling the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in court, refused to comment on whether there is a connection between her business activities and her tax debts.

– Tax battle –

Public records have for more than two decades given Tenpenny’s address as a property near Cleveland’s international airport, with Google images showing a tree-shaded suburban house set back on a wide lawn.

It is the address listed on tax liens repeatedly issued to her. One recorded debts exceeding $1.5 million, but IRS documents currently show unpaid assessments of more than $500,000.

In 2013, a judge cited precedent of dismissing “irrational or wholly incredible” claims in rejecting her argument that she is a “non-taxpayer.” Tenpenny had sought an order that the IRS close its books on her and that “all outstanding amounts are zeroed out.”

“The amount that the IRS originally claimed I owed has ballooned by year-after-year compounded interest and penalties to the present amount, which looks exorbitant,” Tenpenny said.

When asked for additional details on her finances, she replied: “None of your business.”

Based on public and proprietary data, business information provider Dun & Bradstreet reported that Tenpenny’s clinic, known as the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, has $4.04 million in estimated annual sales.

As well as the “Disinformation Dozen,” she was named in a separate Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) list of “Pandemic Profiteers,” anti-vaccine figures who operate businesses or organizations with significant revenues.

A Facebook page set up a decade ago to mock the osteopath puts it more bluntly. 

Its title: “‘Doctor’ Tenpenny: Getting Rich Off Stupidity.”

Questioned on the accusation of profiteering, Tenpenny wrote: “We do not apologize for earning a living.”

– Christian message –

Known in the anti-vaccine movement for more than 20 years, Tenpenny published a 2008 book titled “Saying No To Vaccines,” which pushed the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.

She underpins her stance with a Christian message, in step with many of the American conservatives who have railed against lockdowns, masking and other measures to contain the pandemic. Tenpenny starkly displayed these views in a June 15 video broadcast titled “The Satanic Goal Behind the Covid Plandemic.”

In it, she linked “rulers, authorities, cosmic powers in the darkness around us and evil spiritual forces in the heavenly realm” to the disease that has killed more than 630,000 people in the United States, and 4.5 million worldwide.

Those who succumbed and got shots “need to go to the Lord with a really heavy heart and the deepest regret that they could possibly muster. They need to repent for the sin of fear,” she said on stage at a July event dubbed “Reawaken America.”

However far-fetched, her ideas have won a massive audience.

The CCDH earlier this year reported that Tenpenny and other anti-vaccine campaigners had a combined 59 million followers across social media platforms.

The “Disinformation Dozen,” the research found, were responsible for 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories circulating on Facebook and Twitter between February and March 2021.

Biden referred to the dozen in July as he urged online tech giants to crack down on the spreaders of misinformation that, he said, is “killing people.”

Asked to respond to Biden’s criticism, Tenpenny said: “It’s not just 12. There are millions who have done our research — and are posting all over the internet. This is not misinformation.”

As to whether her advice could be harmful — even fatal — to her followers, she replied: “How responsible will you feel as millions die from this shot?”

– Still spreading –

Pamela Glasner, a Connecticut-based author and filmmaker, filed a complaint with Facebook after watching news coverage of Tenpenny’s false statements on magnetism, and hearing others repeat them.

“It’s irresponsible, and it is harmful,” she said.

For Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s chief executive, “Tenpenny serves up a lethal mix of misinformation and wackadoodle conspiracy.”

In her viral address to lawmakers, Tenpenny referred to the debunked conspiracy theory that there is an “interface” between Covid-19 shots and 5G network towers. The remarks drew attention from social media giants, with consequences for Tenpenny.

Her Twitter account was permanently suspended on July 1 for violating rules on Covid-19 misinformation.

Facebook says it has removed three dozen pages, groups and accounts linked to members of the “Disinformation Dozen.”

Specifically, it said it has “taken action against many of the pages associated with Dr Tenpenny” on Facebook and Instagram, and taken down an account associated with another of her businesses, Vaxxter.

But Tenpenny’s message continues to spread through other online outlets, including the Vaxxter.com website, where she solicits donations starting at $25, two Instagram channels and a personal Facebook account.

She is particularly active on Telegram, a messaging app banned in some countries over its encryption methods. Her followers there have grown from 100,000 to more than 120,000 in recent weeks. Thousands more have turned to her on Gab, a forum that says it champions free speech.

Tenpenny has also flirted with politics, speaking at the “Reawaken America” event alongside Mike Lindell, chief executive of the My Pillow company, who endorses former president Donald Trump’s baseless 2020 election fraud claims. Lindell’s products are marketed on Tenpenny’s personal website.

But sales remain the core of her activities.

Callers to Tenpenny’s Cleveland-area clinic are directed to “please dial three” for a supplement order. Other options offer a “paid vaccine consult” or a speaking engagement.

“If you are calling in regards to ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, please dial four,” the message adds, referring to unproven Covid-19 treatments.

For the likes of Eaton, such a business is irreconcilable with legitimate health care.

“She’s a grifter in a lab coat and those are the most dangerous kind,” she said of Tenpenny.

For Sherri Tenpenny, God is on the side of those who spurn Covid-19 vaccines. Making money, critics say, is the Ohio osteopath’s higher calling.

From a $240 premium podcast annual membership to $165 webinars on why people “should not take the shot,” health supplements and ticketed public speaking, Tenpenny runs a sprawling enterprise based on anti-vaccine activism, disdain for masks and testing, and denials that Covid-19 is real.

An AFP investigation has found that the 63-year-old widow developed a business around coronavirus skepticism at the same time as she owes US tax authorities at least half a million dollars.

Earlier this year, Tenpenny was named one of the worst known spreaders of falsehoods, myths and misleading statements about vaccines — a group the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen.”

A separate study put her in the cadre of America’s biggest anti-vaccine profiteers.

But in comments to AFP, Tenpenny stood by her claims, maintaining that she is not spreading misinformation and is simply making “a living.”

Her business is an alchemy fueled by social media and mistrust of public health officials, two factors blamed for more than 25 percent of eligible American adults declining to be vaccinated.

While US President Joe Biden’s administration pleads with the vaccine-hesitant to take the shot, Tenpenny brands Covid-19 a manufactured crisis and a means of government control.

In an address to Ohio lawmakers in June, the osteopath pointed to online images purporting to show people who were “magnetized” after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

“They put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick,” she said in remarks that were soon debunked, but only after gaining a national audience.

YouTube removed that footage of Tenpenny, saying it broke the platform’s rules on information likely to cause harm. Many of Tenpenny’s other videos have been fact-checked as misleading or false, and several of her social media accounts were suspended or removed.

But much of her prolific output remains accessible — illustrating the whack-a-mole problem of weeding out dangerous online content, which Big Tech has yet to solve.

– ‘Rabbit hole’ –

Rachelle Eaton, who lives a half-hour drive from Tenpenny in the Cleveland area, watched the doctor’s remarks to lawmakers in horror.

“No one wants this life,” said Eaton, who suffered heart and lung damage, has to take oxygen intermittently, and is incapable of remembering simple things because of Covid-19.

“This doctor pulled a lot of people down this rabbit hole of misinformation,” said the 52-year-old, who eight months later is struggling with what is known as “long Covid,” after contracting the disease despite doing “everything right” — wearing a mask and leaving home only to work.

Eaton — who later quit her job as an accountant due to her illness — cut herself off from neighbors and co-workers who did not take the pandemic seriously. She saw people in her community succumb to the “insanity” of Tenpenny’s ideas about vaccines.

“She’s dangerous, and what makes her so dangerous is that I think her audience are these young moms who only want to do what is best for their children,” Eaton said of Tenpenny.

In defense of her claim that Covid-19 vaccines are killing people, the osteopath cites data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal government database.

But VAERS is no more than a collation of unverified reports of vaccine side effects, which do not prove causality. AFP has repeatedly fact-checked inaccurate claims about the system.

After watching Tenpenny’s testimony, Eaton says she was puzzled “as to why her governing board didn’t pull her license right then and there.”

A group representing medical regulators, the Federation of State Medical Boards, warned in July that doctors spreading inaccurate Covid-19 vaccine information risk disciplinary action, including suspension or revocation of medical licenses. Tenpenny has so far faced no such sanction.

– ‘Boot camp’ –

Although she is not trained in epidemiology, Tenpenny’s status as a physician — Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine confirmed she graduated in 1984 — lends her posts credibility with followers, despite their medical implausibility.

But her critics describe her as a quack whose online business contributes to needless loss of life by undermining public faith in vaccines — especially the Covid-19 shots that she casts as “deadly.”

Tenpenny sold a weeks-long “boot camp” on vaccines for several hundred dollars, in the autumn of 2020 and then again earlier this year. More recently she promoted an August 5 “Freedom Crusade” event in California at $57 a ticket.

Her products are marketed through two companies, Choonadi, LLC and Requeza, LLC. Public records show them registered in Ohio in 2015 and 2018 respectively.

Tenpenny, who spent years battling the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in court, refused to comment on whether there is a connection between her business activities and her tax debts.

– Tax battle –

Public records have for more than two decades given Tenpenny’s address as a property near Cleveland’s international airport, with Google images showing a tree-shaded suburban house set back on a wide lawn.

It is the address listed on tax liens repeatedly issued to her. One recorded debts exceeding $1.5 million, but IRS documents currently show unpaid assessments of more than $500,000.

In 2013, a judge cited precedent of dismissing “irrational or wholly incredible” claims in rejecting her argument that she is a “non-taxpayer.” Tenpenny had sought an order that the IRS close its books on her and that “all outstanding amounts are zeroed out.”

“The amount that the IRS originally claimed I owed has ballooned by year-after-year compounded interest and penalties to the present amount, which looks exorbitant,” Tenpenny said.

When asked for additional details on her finances, she replied: “None of your business.”

Based on public and proprietary data, business information provider Dun & Bradstreet reported that Tenpenny’s clinic, known as the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, has $4.04 million in estimated annual sales.

As well as the “Disinformation Dozen,” she was named in a separate Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) list of “Pandemic Profiteers,” anti-vaccine figures who operate businesses or organizations with significant revenues.

A Facebook page set up a decade ago to mock the osteopath puts it more bluntly. 

Its title: “‘Doctor’ Tenpenny: Getting Rich Off Stupidity.”

Questioned on the accusation of profiteering, Tenpenny wrote: “We do not apologize for earning a living.”

– Christian message –

Known in the anti-vaccine movement for more than 20 years, Tenpenny published a 2008 book titled “Saying No To Vaccines,” which pushed the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.

She underpins her stance with a Christian message, in step with many of the American conservatives who have railed against lockdowns, masking and other measures to contain the pandemic. Tenpenny starkly displayed these views in a June 15 video broadcast titled “The Satanic Goal Behind the Covid Plandemic.”

In it, she linked “rulers, authorities, cosmic powers in the darkness around us and evil spiritual forces in the heavenly realm” to the disease that has killed more than 630,000 people in the United States, and 4.5 million worldwide.

Those who succumbed and got shots “need to go to the Lord with a really heavy heart and the deepest regret that they could possibly muster. They need to repent for the sin of fear,” she said on stage at a July event dubbed “Reawaken America.”

However far-fetched, her ideas have won a massive audience.

The CCDH earlier this year reported that Tenpenny and other anti-vaccine campaigners had a combined 59 million followers across social media platforms.

The “Disinformation Dozen,” the research found, were responsible for 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories circulating on Facebook and Twitter between February and March 2021.

Biden referred to the dozen in July as he urged online tech giants to crack down on the spreaders of misinformation that, he said, is “killing people.”

Asked to respond to Biden’s criticism, Tenpenny said: “It’s not just 12. There are millions who have done our research — and are posting all over the internet. This is not misinformation.”

As to whether her advice could be harmful — even fatal — to her followers, she replied: “How responsible will you feel as millions die from this shot?”

– Still spreading –

Pamela Glasner, a Connecticut-based author and filmmaker, filed a complaint with Facebook after watching news coverage of Tenpenny’s false statements on magnetism, and hearing others repeat them.

“It’s irresponsible, and it is harmful,” she said.

For Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s chief executive, “Tenpenny serves up a lethal mix of misinformation and wackadoodle conspiracy.”

In her viral address to lawmakers, Tenpenny referred to the debunked conspiracy theory that there is an “interface” between Covid-19 shots and 5G network towers. The remarks drew attention from social media giants, with consequences for Tenpenny.

Her Twitter account was permanently suspended on July 1 for violating rules on Covid-19 misinformation.

Facebook says it has removed three dozen pages, groups and accounts linked to members of the “Disinformation Dozen.”

Specifically, it said it has “taken action against many of the pages associated with Dr Tenpenny” on Facebook and Instagram, and taken down an account associated with another of her businesses, Vaxxter.

But Tenpenny’s message continues to spread through other online outlets, including the Vaxxter.com website, where she solicits donations starting at $25, two Instagram channels and a personal Facebook account.

She is particularly active on Telegram, a messaging app banned in some countries over its encryption methods. Her followers there have grown from 100,000 to more than 120,000 in recent weeks. Thousands more have turned to her on Gab, a forum that says it champions free speech.

Tenpenny has also flirted with politics, speaking at the “Reawaken America” event alongside Mike Lindell, chief executive of the My Pillow company, who endorses former president Donald Trump’s baseless 2020 election fraud claims. Lindell’s products are marketed on Tenpenny’s personal website.

But sales remain the core of her activities.

Callers to Tenpenny’s Cleveland-area clinic are directed to “please dial three” for a supplement order. Other options offer a “paid vaccine consult” or a speaking engagement.

“If you are calling in regards to ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, please dial four,” the message adds, referring to unproven Covid-19 treatments.

For the likes of Eaton, such a business is irreconcilable with legitimate health care.

“She’s a grifter in a lab coat and those are the most dangerous kind,” she said of Tenpenny.

Seeing her ceiling caved in, her garage door smashed and the basketball hoop overturned in her yard, Lxchelle Arceneaux looked on with despair Monday at the devastation left behind by powerful Hurricane Ida, which swept through her town near New Orleans the night before.

“My children were terrified,” the 46-year-old told AFP in LaPlace, Louisiana, dressed all in blue and standing at the front door of her wrecked home. “I never heard wind like this before”.

Arceneaux, her husband and children took shelter in a bedroom after Ida — which blasted ashore with winds around 150 miles (240 kilometers) per hour — blew in a window that they had tried to barricade with wooden planks and duct tape.

“We started taking water inside from the roof. The fire alarm started ringing,” she said, her voice battling against the drone of emergency generators that were fired up after the town’s power went down. 

The family tried to bale out some of the water, but did not have enough buckets.

Towards Sunday night, part of the ceiling sagged in, allowing the downpour into her living room, leaving moisture bubbles that were still visible Monday on her white wallpaper.

– Exasperation –

Arceneaux was angry with local authorities who, she said, had not given sufficient information on the course of the hurricane and the danger facing this city of 30,000, nestled on the east bank of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and the state capital Baton Rouge.

“We were advised of the hurricane but we didn’t know the eye of the storm had shifted closer to us,” she said, exasperation in her voice.

“We didn’t receive the flash flood warning until before the storm was already here,” she added.

The parish of St. John issued voluntary and non-mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Ida, which killed at least one person and knocked out electricity for over one million customers.

“I really wish I would have left and not experienced this,” she said.

Her neighbor, Carlo Barber, 22, was also surprised by the ferocity of Ida, which filled his house with almost five inches (12 centimeters) of water, scattered rooftiles all over his yard and destroyed his fence.

“When the place flooded, I took my truck and slept in the parking lot of Home Depot,” a nationwide DIY store, said the fresh-faced student.

“It was worst than what I expected,” he said. “When hurricane Isaac happened last year we didn’t get water in the house.”

“We were not prepared for Ida, but next time we will be,” Barber added.

– Submerged –

Many of LaPlace’s roads were still underwater on Monday, or blocked by downed trees, power lines and toppled utility poles.

“We rescued more than a hundred people,” said Jonathan Walker, a deputy with the St. John Parish sheriffs office and who was moving around town in the back of an army truck.

Among those rescued was Anderson Martinez, 17, who was taken out aboard a National Guard helicopter that landed in the parking lot of a shopping area with about 10 people on board, including three young children. 

Martinez, together with his 14-year-old brother and their mother, had taken refuge in a hotel in the city when Ida hit. But when they wanted to leave their makeshift shelter after the storm, they found they were cut off by floodwater.

“The water was two meters deep,” he said, pushing a cart with all his belongings wrapped up in plastic bags. The teenager was desperately trying to reach his house, just a 10-minute drive away, to see if it was still standing.

Rescuers on Monday combed through the “catastrophic” damage Hurricane Ida did to Louisiana, a day after the fierce storm killed at least two people, stranded others in rising floodwaters and sheared the roofs off homes.

The city of New Orleans was still mostly without power over 24 hours after Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast as a Category 4 storm, exactly 16 years to the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall, wreaking deadly havoc.

“The biggest concern is we’re still doing search and rescue and we have individuals all across southeast Louisiana… who are in a bad place,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards told NBC’s “Today”.

Two deaths have been confirmed as crews began fanning out in boats and off-road vehicles to search communities cut off by the hurricane.

Images of people being plucked from flooded cars and pictures of destroyed homes surfaced on social media, while the damage in New Orleans itself remained limited.

Ida — which was downgraded to a tropical depression on Monday — knocked out power for all of New Orleans, with more than a million properties across Louisiana without power, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.US.

“I was there 16 years ago. The wind seems worse this time but the damage seems less bad,” said French Quarter resident Dereck Terry, surveying his neighborhood in flip flops and a t-shirt, umbrella in hand.

“I have a broken window. Some tiles from the roof are on the streets and water came inside,” the 53-year-old retired pharmacist added.

According to Edwards the levee system in the affected parishes had “really held up very well, otherwise we would be facing much more problems today.”

– ‘Total devastation’ –

In the town of Jean Lafitte, just south of New Orleans, mayor Tim Kerner said the rapidly rising waters had overtopped the 7.5-foot-high (2.3-meter) levees.

“Total devastation, catastrophic, our town levees have been overtopped,” Kerner told ABC-affiliate WGNO.

“We have anywhere between 75 to 200 people stranded in Barataria,” after a barge took out a bridge to the island.

Cynthia Lee Sheng, president of Jefferson Parish covering part of the Greater New Orleans area, said people sheltered in their attics.

Several residents of LaPlace, just upstream from New Orleans, posted appeals for help on social media, saying they were trapped by rising flood waters.

“The damage is really catastrophic,” Edwards told Today, adding that Ida had “delivered the surge that was forecasted. The wind that was forecasted and the rain.”

President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for Louisiana and Mississippi, which gives the states access to federal aid.

One person was killed by a falling tree in Prairieville, 60 miles northwest of New Orleans, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

A second victim died while trying to drive through floodwaters in New Orleans, the Louisiana Department of Health tweeted.

Edwards reported on Twitter that Louisiana had deployed more than 1,600 personnel to conduct search and rescue across the state.

US Army Major General Hank Taylor told journalists at a Pentagon briefing that military, federal emergency management officials and the National Guard had activated more than 5,200 personnel in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama.

– ‘Way less debris’ –

Most residents had heeded warnings of catastrophic damage and authorities’ instructions to flee.

“I stayed for Katrina and from what I’ve seen so far there is way less debris in the streets than after Katrina,” Mike, who has lived in the French Quarter, told AFP Monday, declining to give his last name.

The memory of Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, is still fresh in the state, where it caused some 1,800 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

The National Hurricane Center issued warnings of storm surges and flash floods over portions of southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi and southern Alabama as Ida travels northeast.

As of 2100 GMT Monday, Ida was located about 20 miles northwest of Jackson, Mississippi, with maximum sustained winds of 20 miles per hour.

The storm system is expected to track across the United States all the way to the mid-Atlantic through Wednesday, creating the potential for flash flooding along the way.

Scientists have warned of a rise in cyclone activity as the ocean surface warms due to climate change, posing an increasing threat to the world’s coastal communities.

Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate Monday as a huge wildfire loomed over a major US tourist spot, filling the air with choking smoke.

The Caldor Fire has already torn through more than 270 square miles (700 square kilometers), razing hundreds of buildings.

On Monday it was roaring towards South Lake Tahoe, the main resort town in the popular holiday area that straddles the California and Nevada border.

“The firefighting conditions, the fuels, are historic,” said Cal Fire Incident Commander Jeff Veik, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “We will put this fire out. (But) it’s not going to be today.”

The western United States is burning at an alarming rate, with over 2,700 square miles blackened by late August in California alone — more than double the area consumed by this time in an average year.

The fires are being driven by a historic drought that has left swathes of the region parched, as man-made climate change takes a visible — and painful — toll, and people living in the area are forced to flee.

“I got a knock at 10 pm last night with a warning to be ready,” South Lake Tahoe resident Corinne Kobel told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“At 10 am this morning, it was the sheriffs kicking us out. I am freaking out.”

Kobel was among the 22,000 people ordered out of their homes on Monday morning, joining tens of thousands of others trying to escape the fire’s relentless march.

– Traffic jam –

An AFP journalist witnessed streams of traffic leaving the city, with cars and RVs clogging the main roads.

Among those stuck on the road was Mel Smothers, 74, who was whiling away the time spent in a traffic jam by playing his violin.

Smothers, who has lived in Tahoe since the 1970s, said this was the first time wildfires had chased him out. But it wouldn’t be the last.

“This is paradise, but you know with the recent fires, Lake Tahoe changed,” he told AFP.

“This is the way it’s going to be from now on. Every year now we have these fires.

“August is beautiful but probably it’s going to be smokey from now on.”

On Sunday as the fire tore through the Twin Bridges area, there were incongruous scenes as flames raged around ski lifts.

Snow cannon — usually used to help keep the pistes covered in winter — were turned on to try to keep the area wet.

Cal Fire director Thom Porter, said the fire had grown by more than 30 square miles overnight after the air above it cleared.

“When air clears, it’s taking the lid off your pot of boiling water; all of a sudden there’s that plume of heat and steam that comes out,” he said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

“Same thing happens on a fire. Also sucks in oxygen from all directions, puts fire and spot fires in all directions.”

– Winter sports spot –

The Caldor Fire began on August 14, and quickly spread through the Eldorado National Forest.

Smoke from the blaze has been threatening tourist spots around Lake Tahoe for a week, filling the air with a choking haze.

The alpine lake is known for its clear waters, and the areas surrounding it boasts spectacular scenery, including some of the most popular winter sports resorts in the western United States.

The blaze is one of scores across the region that are stretching the resources of local firefighters.

Further north, the huge Dixie Fire has ripped through more than 1,100 square miles in the six weeks since it erupted.

Thousands of firefighters and other emergency personnel are involved in battling the fires, which are fanned by gusting winds and fed by tinder-dry fuel.