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The replica of Noah's Ark in Kentucky is in keeping with its supposed Biblical measurements: 150 meters (510 feet) long, 15 meters (51 feet) high, and 25 meters (85 feet) wide

A full-sized model of Noah’s Ark sitting in rural Kentucky promotes a worldview that draws visitors from across the United States — that the theory of evolution is false.

The Ark Encounter and the associated Creation Museum espouse the belief that God literally created the Earth in six days around 4,000 BC.

Evangelical Christians flock to see the spectacular staging and sharp denunciations of scientific facts such as that dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago.

Visitors also reflect America’s divided politics as the country heads into midterm elections, with creationists often aligned with the Republican Party on issues such as abortion and gay rights.

“Dinosaurs are often used by evolutionists to proclaim their worldview. So we’ve taken the dinosaurs back, if you will,” said Mark Looy, cofounder of the ark amusement park and the museum.

Standing a few steps from a model of an allosaurus skeleton, Looy said the site offers a different view of dinosaurs — that “most of them perished during the flood about 4,500 years ago.”

The museum opened in 2007 in Petersburg, Kentucky, financed by a donation campaign and supported by Answers in Genesis, a group that believes in strict creationism.

The Ark Encounter opened in 2016 about 70 kilometers (45 miles) away in Williamstown, and contains a replica of Noah’s Ark in keeping with its supposed Biblical measurements — 150 meters (510 feet) long, 15 meters (51 feet) high, and 25 meters (85 feet) wide.

– Bible ‘more than a story’ –

A combo ticket to the two sites costs $85, and Looys says more than a million people a year browse the exhibits — and also enjoy attractions such as zip-lining and a petting zoo 

Most visitors are committed to the cause.

“My husband and I… believe the Earth is about 6,000 years old,” said Suzanne Swindle, a 37-year-old executive from Atlanta who came to show her four-year-old daughter that the Bible “is more than just a story.”

However, she does not deny that species “adapt to their environment,” one of the pillars of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Similarly, Mike Barrington, a 70-year-old former veteran who lives in Louisiana, calls himself a creationist, but he adds that the exhibit’s explanation of dinosaurs “is new to me.”

Such contradictions are mirrored in the polls. According to a 2019 Gallup survey, 40 percent of Americans believe God created man less than 10,000 years ago.

But other polls ask subtler questions with more options and find about 15 percent reject the theory of evolution, said Adam Laats, a historian at Binghamton University in New York and author of the book “Creationism USA.”

Calling oneself a creationist in the United States is more “an identifying mark of a much broader cultural divide,” he said.

“Someone would go and say, ‘Oh, I guess I’m a creationist because I don’t like pornography, I don’t want abortion rights, and I don’t want LGBTQ rights.'”

Laats said decades of conflict over which institutions in the United States are trustworthy — ranging from justice and politics to science and the media — has created “radically different ideas about truth and reality.”

– Election issues –

The themes are at the heart of key midterm elections on November 8 and Laats sees “a correlation between the most archetypal MAGA (Donald Trump) conservatives and the most ardent museum-type creationists.”

At the two sites, “you’d find mostly Republicans,” Mark Looy said, and while the attractions must stay away from endorsing candidates, “we don’t shy away from some of the hot button issues of the day.”

In one clear example, a dummy video game at the museum reflects a binary reading of the world.

Two camps confront each other: “Man’s world,” associated with “abortion” or “gay marriage,” versus “God’s word,” synonymous with “marriage” and “sanctity of life.”

The mix of religion, activism and entertainment is also evident at the museum’s Garden of Eden.

After strolling through a bucolic landscape with Adam and Eve, visitors arrive in a screening room with projected black and white photos of the Holocaust, drug addicts and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. 

To reinforce the message, big letters spell out: “Rejection of God’s word led to corruption.”

Peggy Mast, a 74-year-old woman from Kansas, agrees.

For her, “chaos reigns” in America, where “people are now committing anarchy with the acceptance of the administration of our government.”

So the museum is “a wonderful place to reaffirm the very things that we know about God,” she added.

Most of the expected emissions from the FIFA World Cup in Qatar are from transport, infrastructure building and housing

Organisers have promised a carbon neutral World Cup next month in Qatar but environmental groups are warning that the tournament will be far more polluting than advertised.

Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of Qatar 2022, said organisers will achieve net-zero emissions for the tournament as a whole “by measuring, mitigating and offsetting all our greenhouse gas emissions”.

This promise has failed to convince sceptics, however. Former Manchester United ace Eric Cantona recently slammed what he called an “ecological aberration”, pointing to the carbon footprint of what will be eight air-conditioned stadiums.

Julien Jreissati, programme director of Greenpeace Middle East, has accused organisers of “window dressing”, insisting that claims of net-zero emissions from the tournament “could be considered greenwashing/sportswashing”.

Gilles Dufrasne, a researcher for Carbon Market Watch and author of a report into Qatar 2022’s climate credentials, said that carbon neutrality claims were “misleading and dishonest about the true climate impact that the event will have.”

Organisers of football’s marquee event said it will generate 3.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, compared with 2.1 million generated by the previous edition, in Russia in 2018.

The vast majority of these emissions, some 95 percent, are indirect from things like transport, infrastructure building and housing. 

But Carbon Market Watch says that the hosts’ estimate is incomplete. It says that Qatar has underestimated the footprint of constructing eight new stadiums, for example, by a factor of eight, generating 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 instead of the 200,000 tonnes disclosed.

Some of this difference can be explained by methodology. Qatar deems that most of the new stadiums will be used well after the tournament is over, meaning that their environmental impact shouldn’t be tied specifically to one event.

Carbon Market Watch differs, pointing out that banking on continued use of eight massive sporting venues in a country of just 2.4 million inhabitants is risky.

– ‘Huge error’ –

Stadium air conditioning in Qatar, contrary to popular belief, is expected to only contribute a minimal amount to the tournament’s climate impact.

“It’s relatively minimal compared to total emissions from constructing stadiums or from air transport,” said Dufrasne.

Given the vast amounts of infrastructure Qatar has had to build in order to accommodate the world’s largest sporting event, some experts believe the tiny Gulf nation was destined to struggle to keep emissions down.

“The huge error was made in December 2010 at the moment the World Cup wasn’t awarded to a country that already had all the infrastructure,” said Giles Pache, a specialist in logistics at France’s Aix-Marseille University, referring to the United States, which missed out on FIFA voting to Qatar.

“In Qatar we were starting with nothing, hosting a global event built on sand,” said Pache. 

“The US was really well equipped” in terms of stadiums and hotels, he said.

To achieve carbon neutrality, tournament organisers have promised that emissions will be offset in the form of carbon credits. These, in theory, balance out the emissions produced by saving emissions elsewhere in the world. 

With Qatar, organisers are working on renewable energy projects in Turkey as part of this scheme.

Jreissati said these carbon credits constituted a “distraction”. 

“They give the impression that a solution that doesn’t necessitate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through ambitious political decisions is possible,” he said.

“We need to reduce emissions at source as soon as possible.”

For future tournaments Dufrasne said he hoped for a “systemic reflection” in how World Cups are organised. 

This could include extending the gaps between tournaments or hosting global versions of the event.

“Hold matches across the world, playing in stadiums that are closest to the two teams playing,” he suggested.

Researchers in Canada wanted to investigate how climate change might affect the risk of "viral spillover" by examining samples from the Arctic landscape of Lake Hazen, seen here

A warming climate could bring viruses in the Arctic into contact with new environments and hosts, increasing the risk of “viral spillover”, according to research published Wednesday.

Viruses need hosts like humans, animals, plants or fungi to replicate and spread, and occasionally they can jump to a new one that lacks immunity, as seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Scientists in Canada wanted to investigate how climate change might affect spillover risk by examining samples from the Arctic landscape of Lake Hazen.

It is the largest lake in the world entirely north of the Arctic Circle, and “was truly unlike any other place I’ve been”, researcher Graham Colby, now a medical student at University of Toronto, told AFP.

The team sampled soil that becomes a riverbed for melted glacier water in the summer, as well as the lakebed itself — which required clearing snow and drilling through two metres of ice, even in May when the research was carried out.

They used ropes and a snowmobile to lift the lake sediment through almost 300 metres (980 feet) of water, and samples were then sequenced for DNA and RNA, the genetic blueprints and messengers of life.

“This enabled us to know what viruses are in a given environment, and what potential hosts are also present,” said Stephane Aris-Brosou, an associate professor in the University of Ottawa’s biology department, who led the work.

But to find out how likely they were to jump hosts, the team needed to examine the equivalent of each virus and host’s family tree.

“Basically what we tried to do is measure how similar these trees are,” said Audree Lemieux, first author of the research.

Similar genealogies suggest a virus has evolved along with its host, but differences suggest spillover.

And if a virus has jumped hosts once, it is more likely to do so again.

– ‘Very unpredictable’ –

The analysis found pronounced differences between viruses and hosts in the lakebed, “which is directly correlated to the risk of spillover,” said Aris-Brosou.

The difference was less stark in the riverbeds, which the researchers theorise is because water erodes the topsoil, removing organisms and limiting interactions between viruses and potential new hosts.

Those instead wash into the lake, which has seen “dramatic change” in recent years, the study says, as increased water from melting glaciers deposits more sediment.

“That’s going to bring together hosts and viruses that would not normally encounter each other,” Lemieux said.

The authors of the research, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences journal, caution they are neither forecasting an actual spillover nor a pandemic.

“The likelihood of dramatic events remains very low,” Lemieux said.

They also warn more work is needed to clarify how big the difference between viruses and hosts needs to be to create serious spillover risk.

But they argue that warming weather could increase risks further if new potential hosts move into previously inhospitable regions.

“It could be anything from ticks to mosquitoes to certain animals, to bacteria and viruses themselves,” said Lemieux.

“It’s really unpredictable… and the effect of spillover itself is very unpredictable, it can range from benign to an actual pandemic.”

The team wants more research and surveillance work in the region to understand the risks.

“Obviously we’ve seen in the past two years what the effects of spillover can be,” said Lemieux.

According to an annual survey of the Bering Sea floor carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates for the crustaceans' total numbers fell to about 1.9 billion in 2022, down from 11.7 billion in 2018

Climate change is a prime suspect in a mass die-off of Alaska’s snow crabs, experts say, after the state took the unprecedented step of canceling their harvest this season to save the species.

According to an annual survey of the Bering Sea floor carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates for the crustaceans’ total numbers fell to about 1.9 billion in 2022, down from 11.7 billion in 2018, or a reduction of about 84 percent.

For the first time ever, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the Bering Sea snow crab season will remain closed for 2022-23, saying in a statement efforts must turn to “conservation and rebuilding given the condition of the stock.”

The species is also found in the more northward Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, but they do not grow to fishable sizes there.

Erin Fedewa, a marine biologist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, told AFP the shocking numbers seen today were the result of heatwaves in 2018 and 2019. 

The “cold water habitat that they need was virtually absent, which suggests that temperature is really the key culprit in this population decline,” she said.

Historically an abundant resource in the Bering Sea, their loss is considered a bellwether of ecological disruption.

There are thought to be several ways that warmer temperatures have depleted the species.

Studies have pointed toward a higher prevalence of Bitter Crab Disease as the temperature heats up. 

The crustaceans, named for their love of cold water, are also under greater metabolic stress in warmer waters, meaning they need more energy to stay alive.

“A working hypothesis right now is that the crabs starved, they couldn’t keep up with metabolic demands,” said Fedewa.

Young snow crabs in particular need low temperatures to hide out from their major predator, Pacific cod, and temperatures in regions where juveniles typically reside jumped from 1.5 degrees Celsius in 2017 to 3.5 Celsius in 2018 (35 degrees Fahrenheit to 38 degrees Fahrenheit) — with studies indicating 3C might be an important threshold.

– Overfishing not blamed –

More research is underway and findings should be published soon, but in the meantime, “everything really points to climate change,” Fedewa said.

“These are truly unprecedented and troubling times for Alaska’s iconic crab fisheries and for the hard-working fishermen and communities that depend on them,” Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers said in a statement, lamenting that second and third generation crab-fishing families “will go out of business.”

The industry was also hit by the cancellation of Bristol Bay red king crab fishing for the second year in a row.

Fedewa also noted that overfishing isn’t a big factor in the population collapse of snow crabs. 

Fishing removes only large adult males, she said, “and we’ve seen these declines across all sizes of snow crab, which really suggest some bottom-up environmental driver is at play.”

Male Alaska snow crabs can reach six inches (15 centimeters) in shell width, but females seldom grow larger than three inches, according to NOAA.

In some good news, this year’s survey saw significant increases in the immature crabs compared to last year — but it will take four or five years before the males among them grow to fishable size.

Following the heatwave years, temperatures have returned to normal, and “the hope is that leaving crabs untouched will allow them to reproduce, there’ll be no mortalities, and we can just let the stock try to recover,” said Fedewa. 

A hope that is pinned on no further heatwaves.

The endangered okapi is also called the forest giraffe. File picture

Gold mining in a Democratic Republic of Congo national park is threatening the okapi, a stripy-legged relative of the giraffe, civil society groups warned on Tuesday.

They called for a halt to the “rapidly expanding” mining operation in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the northeast of the country.

The endangered okapi, also called the forest giraffe, is only found in this region of the DRC.

NGOs, lawyers and scientists urged the government to revoke a mining concession and protect the “unique forest ecosystem and the local communities that depend on it”.

“If the DRC government acts now, this unique World Heritage Site can still be saved”, they said in a statement from the Congolese Alert Network for the Environment and Human Rights (ACEDH) organisation.

“These miners are literally eating the reserve out of its wildlife by hunting these animals for food,” said Gabriel Nenungo, a coordinator of geologists in Ituri province.

“There is almost no wildlife left around the mine itself, and wildlife numbers are massively reduced around mining towns. There have even been cases of armed actors trafficking okapi skins and elephant ivory in and around the mines.”

The wildlife reserve is spread over nearly 14,000 square kilometres (5,400 square miles) and houses several endangered species.

Qatar has announced a target of five gigawatts of solar energy capacity by 2035

Gas-rich Qatar inaugurated Tuesday its first solar power plant stretching across the desert, a vast site planned to provide up to 10 percent of the tiny Gulf nation’s energy supply.

The solar farm in al-Kharsaah, west of the capital Doha, is “one of the biggest” in the Middle East, said Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, the emirate’s energy minister and president of QatarEnergy.

It was launched in 2016 in partnership with France’s TotalEnergies and Japan’s Marubeni as part of a broader push by Qatar — one of the world’s biggest producers of liquified natural gas — to invest in solar energy.

The project, at a cost of 1.7 billion Qatari riyals (about $467 million), consists of some 1.8 million solar panels and covers an area of more than 10 square kilometres (3.9 square miles).

Operational since June, the plant has a capacity of 800 megawatts and will “expand” further in coming years, Kaabi told a press conference. 

Kaabi said the plant is part of Qatar’s “strategic initiatives to build projects that contribute to reducing gas and thermal emissions”.

During the day, sun-tracking technology moves the panels to ensure maximum solar exposure, while at night, robotic arms clean off the dust.

Organisers of the football World Cup, which begins on November 20, have used the huge solar plant to back claims that Qatar will host the first “net zero” World Cup.

But Kaabi said he could not confirm the al-Kharsaah plant will provide power for the stadiums hosting matches during the November-December tournament.

Qatar, while lagging behind other Gulf states in the solar race, has announced a target of five gigawatts of solar energy capacity by 2035.

It announced two major solar projects in August that will more than double its energy output from the renewable source within two years.

Saudi Arabia has also announced a target of five gigawatts of solar energy capacity, but vowed to reach it by 2030. The United Arab Emirates has had solar plants for more than a decade.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced plans to offer leases for the first offshore wind energy platforms off of California

The US Interior Department announced plans on Tuesday to offer leases for the first offshore wind energy platforms in the Pacific Ocean.

An offshore wind energy lease sale will be held by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on December 6, the department said.

The leases will be to build floating offshore wind energy platforms in areas on the Outer Continental Shelf off central and northern California.

“The demand and momentum to build a clean energy future is undeniable,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

“Today, we are taking another step toward unlocking the immense offshore wind energy potential off our nation’s west coast to help combat the effects of climate change,” Haaland said.

BOEM will offer five lease areas with the potential to produce over 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy, enough to power more than 1.5 million homes.

More than two dozen commercial wind leases have previously been issued for the Atlantic Ocean, stretching from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

The Biden administration has announced plans to deploy 30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 and 15 GW of floating offshore wind energy by 2035.

It seeks to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind energy by more than 70 percent by 2035.

Floating platforms can be built in deep-water areas where turbines cannot be secured directly to the seafloor.

Two-thirds of America’s offshore wind energy potential is in deep-water areas such as off the coast of California and Oregon that require floating platforms, according to US officials.

Australian cricketer Pat Cummins has taken a high-profile stand

Stars from two of Australia’s favourite sporting codes are pushing back against lucrative energy and mining sponsorship deals, with cricket captain Pat Cummins leading the charge on Tuesday.

Cummins, whose role as Test captain makes him one of Australia’s most prominent public figures, told local media he would no longer appear in adverts for sponsor Alinta Energy.

The 29-year-old fast bowler is a vocal proponent of action on climate change, an urgent issue in fire, drought and flood-prone Australia.

Cricket Australia on Tuesday abruptly announced its four-year-old sponsorship deal with Alinta would end in 2023, citing a change in the firm’s “brand strategy”.

Cricket administrators denied the parting had anything to do with Cummins, despite reports of changing-room disquiet. 

The player said the relationship with sponsors was “a balance”.

“We’ve seen certain players make decisions based on certain religions or certain foods, they won’t partner with specific partners,” Cummins said.

Australia’s economy is heavily dependent on coal, gas and mineral exports and the companies involved are among the country’s more profitable.

Energy and mining firms channel a small percentage of their earnings into sports from cricket to rugby and netball, sparking a clash of cultures with increasingly environmentally and culturally conscious players.

Pro-fossil fuel media commentator Chris Kelly accused Cummins of “having a whinge” and carrying out an “idiotic” protest.

– Cultural sensitivities –

This week Australia’s netball team objected to wearing jerseys with a multimillion-dollar mining sponsor on them after concerns raised by an Aboriginal player. 

Hancock Prospecting, a mining company led by Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart, this year announced an Aus$15 million (US$9 million) sponsorship with Netball Australia, which has booked losses of $7 million over the past two years. 

But the sponsorship has reportedly caused turmoil inside the Australian Diamonds national team, with Aboriginal squad member Donnell Wallam raising concerns about the company’s treatment of Indigenous communities.

Her stance has reportedly been widely backed by other players. 

Lang Hancock, founder of Hancock Prospecting and Rinehart’s father, suggested in 1984 dumping chemicals in water sources to sterilise Aboriginal populations that caused trouble.

Netball Australia said it was aware of “cultural sensitivities raised by a Diamonds squad member” but said it would retain the deal with Hancock. 

“Netball Australia and Hancock Prospecting have been working tirelessly to acknowledge and recognise the sensitivities, to further understand the concerns of that squad member and to provide avenues for support,” the national body said in a statement. 

Netball Australia chair Wendy Archer denied reports the team had boycotted uniforms with the Hancock Prospecting logo during recent games in New Zealand. 

Volleyball Australia, also sponsored by Hancock Prospecting, last week said the controversy was surprising — instead praising Rinehart for her philanthropic spirit. 

“Mrs Rinehart’s selfless commitment to women’s sport deserves the accolades of our great sporting nation,” it said. 

Former Wallabies captain turned senator David Pocock has voiced his objection to Santos energy’s sponsorship of the national rugby team he once led.

“I was always proud to represent my country. As a rugby player, that’s what you dream of. It’s been difficult to watch a partnership emerge with Santos,” Pocock recently told local media.

“I really think fossil-fuel sponsorship is the new cigarette sponsorship, where they are advertising a product that we now know is destroying our home planet and our futures.”

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (R) shakes hands with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during their meeting at Parliament House in Canberra on October 18, 2022.

Australia touted a world-first project Tuesday that could help make the country a “renewable energy superpower” by shifting huge volumes of solar electricity under the sea to Singapore.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong met Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese in Canberra to ink a new green energy deal between the two countries. 

Albanese said the pact showed a “collective resolve” to slash greenhouse gas emissions through an ambitious energy project. 

He name-checked clean energy start-up Sun Cable, which wants to build a high-voltage transmission line capable of shifting huge volumes of solar power from the deserts of northern Australia to tropical Singapore.

Sun Cable has said that, if successful, it would be the world’s first intercontinental power grid.

“If this project can be made to work — and I believe it can be — you will see the world’s largest solar farm,” Albanese told reporters. 

“The prospect of Sun Cable is just one part of what I talk about when I say Australia can be a renewable energy superpower for the world.”

Lee said the green economy deal was the “first such agreement of its kind”.

“We hope that it will be a pathfinder for other countries simply to co-operate with one another to deal with what is a global problem.” 

Australia is one of the world’s largest coal and gas exporters and has been frequently criticised on the global stage for its failure to make meaningful reductions in carbon emissions. 

Coal still plays a key role in domestic electricity production. 

A family evacuates their home after a landslide in northern Venezuela that has left three dead

Intense rain in northern Venezuela caused a landslide that has killed at least three people, President Nicolas Maduro said on Monday as he visited another site where over 50 died in similar circumstances last week.

“I am informed that there are three dead in El Castano, it was a mudslide that came from the mountain,” said Maduro, referring to a neighborhood in Maracay, the capital of northern Aragua state, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of the capital Caracas.

Video footage from El Castano broadcast on Venezuelan television showed mudslides devastating everything in their path — sweeping away vehicles, trees and huge boulders.

An AFP team observed the aftermath, as responders worked through the night to clear mud and rocks from the road, with lights from vehicles illuminating the worksites as the area was left without electricity.

Jose Dos Santos, 56, said he took refuge with his family in the highest part of his house.

“I was looking towards the mountain, the rain was heavy. We heard a roar and then when I saw water coming in through the windows, I grabbed my folks and we climbed up,” he told AFP.

Fellow resident Nelida Rodriguez said the landslide “was horrible.”

“I’ve lived here for 70 years and have never seen this.”

Maduro made the announcement during a speech in Las Tejerias, 65 kilometers east of El Castano, where a landslide a week ago left 54 dead, according to the latest toll cited by the president.

In Las Tejerias “we still have a number of missing people, reported, I am told that 8 are completely confirmed and we are still searching”, said Maduro about the most devastating natural disaster in Venezuela in the last 20 years.

The president said last week that the number of victims could reach 100.

Maduro later traveled to El Castano, where he said “all this is climate change.”

“This year the rainfall has been very difficult for the whole country.” 

Maduro said that in 2022, he has seen the worst natural disasters in his nine and a half years in office.