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Tag: environment and natural resources

  • As young conservatives try to get climate on the agenda in 2024, denial takes the spotlight instead | CNN Politics

    As young conservatives try to get climate on the agenda in 2024, denial takes the spotlight instead | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    During this week’s Republican primary debate on Fox News, a young voter notably asked about the climate crisis: How would these presidential candidates assuage concerns that the Republican Party “doesn’t care” about the issue?

    The question was all but unavoidable after weeks of extreme, deadly weather. Global temperature records have been shattered, extreme heat has soared off-the-charts in the US and the Maui wildfire death toll continues to climb.

    What followed the question was one of the night’s most chaotic exchanges, demonstrating the challenge some conservatives face in getting climate policy on the 2024 GOP agenda, even as extreme weather takes its toll on millions of people across the country.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the leader of a state that has been thrashed by deadly extreme weather in recent years, refused the moderators’ show-of-hands question on whether climate change is caused by humans. He used the moment to deride the media and President Joe Biden’s response in Maui.

    Then 38-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy – notably the youngest candidate on stage – called the “climate change agenda” a “hoax,” an answer that elicited intense boos from the audience.

    A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents – 55% – say human activity is causing changes to the world’s climate, according to a recent Washington Post/University of Maryland poll. It also found a majority of Americans and Republicans say their area has been impacted by extreme heat in the past five years.

    But connecting the dots between climate and extreme weather is proving a more partisan issue. The poll found there are deep divides between Republicans and Democrats on the question of whether human-caused climate change is contributing to extreme weather: just 35% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they think climate change is a major factor in extremely hot days, compared with 85% of those who lean Democrat.

    After the debate, a prominent conservative climate group said Ramaswamy tried to clarify his position.

    “He came to our after-party and he blatantly told us that he believes climate change is real,” Benji Backer, founder of the American Conservation Coalition, told CNN. “So, he changed his position again.”

    Asked by CNN on Friday whether he believes climate change is real, Ramaswamy responded, “Climate change has existed as long as the Earth has existed. Manmade climate change has existed as long as man has existed on the earth.” In an email, Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN the candidate does believe climate change is real, but policies to address it “have little to do with climate change and more to do with penalizing the West as a way to achieve global ‘equity.’”

    Yet for Republicans working to make climate policy more mainstream in the GOP, Ramaswamy’s language at the debate echoed a climate crisis-denying candidate who wasn’t onstage, former President Donald Trump. Trump has called climate change itself a “hoax” and falsely claimed wind turbines cause cancer.

    “The fact that he chose the word hoax, to me, he’s emulating what President Trump had said before,” Heather Reams, president of conservative nonprofit Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, told CNN. Reams, who was sitting in the audience in Milwaukee, noted that Ramaswamy calling the “climate change agenda” a hoax didn’t go over well in a room full of Republicans.

    “The whole place booed him, so it wasn’t well received,” Reams said. “Hearing booing was actually heartening to hear that the party is really moving on, they’re seeing the economic opportunities that can be had for the United States being a leader in lowering emissions.”

    Ramaswamy’s response was an attempt to go after the older GOP voting base in the primary, Backer said. It’s the kind of audience that Fox News has historically played to when it hosts climate deniers on some of its shows or casts doubt on the connection between extreme weather and the climate crisis – but Backer said the fact the network even asked this question “just shows that the pendulum is shifting.”

    Backer warned Ramasway’s response to the question risks alienating younger conservative voters who are increasingly concerned about climate impacts.

    “I’ve in two presidential elections and I’ve never voted for a Republican president in my life, because I don’t vote for climate deniers,” Backer said, adding that climate denial “is the way of the past.”

    Several Republican presidential candidates have said they believe climate change is real and caused by human activity – a shift from previous elections.

    Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley acknowledged its reality but said foreign nations, including India and China, bear larger responsibility for addressing it. Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum have all engaged frequently with conservative groups, Reams and Backer said.

    “I think that Nikki Haley provided a very clear, very positive response,” Danielle Butcher Franz, CEO of the American Conservation Coalition, told CNN. “We need to see more responses like that in the Republican Party. I think it’s important that we show the conservative environmental movement is here to stay.”

    Backer warned that Ramaswamy and other candidates risk losing young voters if they continue to engage in climate denial – or anything that sounds remotely like it.

    “There’s a lot of Republicans leading on this, but the narrative is that we don’t care,” Backer said. “And if we nominate another person who doesn’t care, young people are not going to forget that. There’s not going to be a lot of baby boomers in 20 years, so you better start thinking about the next generation.”

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  • Antarctica is missing an Argentina-sized amount of sea ice — and scientists are scrambling to figure out why | CNN

    Antarctica is missing an Argentina-sized amount of sea ice — and scientists are scrambling to figure out why | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    As the Northern Hemisphere swelters under a record-breaking summer heat wave, much further south, in the depths of winter, another terrifying climate record is being broken. Antarctic sea ice has fallen to unprecedented lows for this time of year.

    Every year, Antarctic sea ice shrinks to its lowest levels towards the end of February, during the continent’s summer. The sea ice then builds back up over the winter.

    But this year scientists have observed something different.

    The sea ice has not returned to anywhere near expected levels. In fact it is at the lowest levels for this time of year since records began 45 years ago. The ice is around 1.6 million square kilometers (0.6 million square miles) below the previous winter record low set in 2022, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

    In mid-July, Antarctica’s sea ice was 2.6 million square kilometers (1 million square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average. That is an area nearly as large as Argentina or the combined areas of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado

    The phenomenon has been described by some scientists as off-the-charts exceptional – something that is so rare, the odds are that it only happens once in millions of years.

    But Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that speaking in these terms may not be that helpful.

    “The game has changed,” he told CNN. “There’s no sense talking about the odds of it happening the way the system used to be, it’s clearly telling us that the system has changed.”

    Scientists are now scrambling to figure out why.

    The Antarctic is a remote, complex continent. Unlike the Arctic, where sea ice has been on a consistently downwards trajectory as the climate crisis accelerates, sea ice in the Antarctic has swung from record highs to record lows in the last few decades, making it harder for scientists to understand how it is responding to global heating.

    But since 2016, scientists have begun to observe a steep downwards trend. While natural climate variability affects the sea ice, many scientists say climate change may be a major driver for the disappearing ice.

    “The Antarctic system has always been highly variable,” Scambos said. “This [current] level of variation, though, is so extreme that something radical has changed in the past two years, but especially this year, relative to all previous years going back at least 45 years.”

    Several factors feed into sea ice loss, Scambos said, including the strength of the westerly winds around Antarctica, which have been linked to the increase of planet-heating pollution.

    “Warmer ocean temperatures north of the Antarctic Ocean boundary mixing into the water that’s typically somewhat isolated from the rest of the world’s oceans is also part of this idea as to how to explain this,” Scambos said.

    In late February of this year, Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent since records began, at 691,000 square miles.

    This winter’s unprecedented occurrence may indicate a long-term change for the isolated continent, Scambos said. “It is more likely than not that we won’t see the Antarctic system recover the way it did, say, 15 years ago, for a very long period into the future, and possibly ‘ever.’”

    Others are more cautious. “It’s a large departure from average but we know that Antarctic sea ice exhibits large year to year variability,” Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center told CNN, adding “it’s too early to say if this is the new normal or not.”

    Sea ice plays a vital role. While it doesn’t directly affect sea level rise, as it’s already floating in the ocean, it does have indirect effects. Its disappearance leaves coastal ice sheets and glaciers exposed to waves and warm ocean waters, making them more vulnerable to melting and breaking off.

    A lack of sea ice could also have significant impacts on its wildlife, including krill on which many of the region’s whales feed, and penguins and seals that rely on sea ice for feeding and resting.

    More broadly, Antarctica’s sea ice contributes to the regulation of the planet’s temperature, meaning its disappearance could have cascading effects far beyond the continent.

    The sea ice reflects incoming solar energy back to space, when it melts, it exposes the darker ocean waters beneath which absorb the sun’s energy.

    Parts of Antarctica have been seeing alarming changes for a while. The Antarctic Peninsula, a spindly chain of icy mountains which sticks off the west side of the continent, is one of the fastest warming places in the Southern Hemisphere.

    Last year, scientists said West Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier – also known as the “Doomsday Glacier” – was “hanging on by its fingernails” as the planet warms.

    Scientists have estimated global sea level rise could increase by around 10 feet if Thwaites collapsed completely, devastating coastal communities around the world.

    Scambos said that this winter’s record low level of sea ice is a very alarming signal.

    “In 2016, [Antarctic sea ice] took the first big down-turn. Since 2016, it’s remained low, and now the bottom has fallen out. Something major in a huge part of the planet is suddenly behaving differently from what we saw for the past 45 years.”

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  • It’s the summer of changed climate. Get used to it | CNN Politics

    It’s the summer of changed climate. Get used to it | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a hot take on the summer of 2023: The climate you grew up in is gone, replaced by something new and changing, but also inalterably different – where the Atlantic Ocean can reach hot-tub temperature, heat is a recurring public health concern and people will have to adapt their way of living.

    In this year of epic heat, it’s time to start thinking about how the climate changed rather than the fact of its changing.

    From a historical standpoint, we are in uncharted territory. This is not just the hottest month in human history. It may be the hottest month in 120,000 years, according to scientists in Europe.

    Nearly half the US is under a heat advisory this week, and the country’s largest power grid was on alert.

    The warnings that more fires, floods and storms would occur as the atmosphere heated up are here.

    A large portion of the country has seen smoke come and go from those Canadian wildfires. Tourists in Greece were forced to flee in the country’s largest-ever evacuation.

    Towns unused to flooding were under water this year in Vermont. Torrential rain flooded Boston’s Fenway park.

    The West Coast of the US, for instance, has gotten a respite so far from wildfires thanks to epic rainfall earlier in the year.

    But we can expect more heat more often. Asked by CNN’s Zain Asher about a heat index in Iran that approached 150 degrees Fahrenheit, Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, said to prepare for more.

    “What we know is the heat will become much more intense, much more frequent, and that if we don’t act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then the outlook will be very serious with, as you said, temperatures that are beyond the limits of physiological survival.”

    Are we acting urgently? Asher pointed out California is phasing out gas-powered car sales. Romanello said the basic move would be to commit to phase out fossil fuels. But countries are not yet on that path or anywhere close to it.

    Take a look at Arizona, where Phoenix has endured nearly a full straight month of 110-plus-degree days.

    Cacti can’t stand the heat and are dying. Hospitals have been taxed. Doctors are treating people burned just by falling on the ground, according to one CNN report.

    The Phoenix area medical examiner has brought in extra refrigerated containers for bodies, like it did during spikes of Covid-19, to deal with potential overflow. Maricopa County has 25 heat-related deaths so far, but another 249 are under investigation.

    The urban density that creates economic opportunity also makes cities hotter than their surrounding areas. There can be variation up to 8 degrees between portions of a city with trees and green space and those that are mostly pavement.

    “These giant swings in temperature over short distances in cities, known as the urban heat island effect, make heat waves even worse,” writes CNN’s Rachel Ramirez of a new report by the nonprofit research group Climate Central. “Areas blanketed with asphalt, buildings, industry and freeways tend to absorb the sun’s energy then radiate more heat, while areas with abundant green space – parks, rivers, and tree-lined streets – radiate less heat and provide shade.”

    Ramirez notes that cities are looking for new ways to adapt, like painting roads white in Los Angeles, painting roofs in New York and more.

    Coral reefs off the Florida Keys, unable to stand the 100-plus-degree temperatures charted in some areas, are suffering a mass bleaching event, according to CNN’s Eric Zerkel, who writes experts were stunned at the two-week escalation that could kill some reefs off.

    That’s a very real and grim consequence. More theoretical is the possibility that the series of currents that circulates water around the oceans simply collapses.

    A study published in the journal Nature this week suggested the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, which includes the Gulf Stream, could collapse as early as 2025. Melting ice could dilute ocean water and alter the currents, which would affect everyone on the planet.

    The reason gas prices have spiked in recent days? On top of OPEC holding back supply, excessive heat is affecting productivity at oil refineries.

    In the US, while President Joe Biden has made pledges to make the US carbon neutral in the coming decades, he is not completely opposed to new oil projects. It was seen as a political win for him and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, that the Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for a new pipeline running through West Virginia.

    That news came the same day the White House announced new relief measures for people suffering from the record heat, including the creation of a new “heat hazard alert” system to clarify precautions for workers.

    “I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of climate change anymore,” Biden said, announcing the measures.

    A majority of Americans – 52% – said in Gallup survey in March, before this heat wave, that protecting the environment should be prioritized even if it hurts the economy. That’s compared with 43% who said the government should prioritize economic growth even if it hurts the environment.

    However.

    The numbers may fluctuate depending on how people feel about the health of the economy. But the share who prioritize economic growth over the environment has on the whole risen in Gallup’s polling over the long term. Between 1985 and 2002, that number never topped 40%. The partisan divide over climate change is also the largest it has ever been.

    The geophysicist Bill McGuire, a professor at University College London and author of “Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide,” writes for CNN Opinion this week that people’s vacations as we know them are over.

    He points to tourists who had to flee the island of Rhodes in Greece to get away from wildfires.

    “It would be a big mistake to regard these as freak events and to continue holidaying as usual in the years ahead,” McGuire writes. “On the contrary, the extreme weather conditions across southern Europe this summer are a wake-up call – a reminder that not even our vacations are insulated from the growing consequences of global heating.”

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  • Melting ice reveals remains of climber lost on glacier 37 years ago | CNN

    Melting ice reveals remains of climber lost on glacier 37 years ago | CNN

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    Berlin
    CNN
     — 

    The remains of a German mountain climber who went missing 37 years ago while hiking along a glacier near Switzerland’s iconic Matterhorn have been recovered, as melting glaciers lead to the re-emergence of bodies and objects thought to be long lost.

    Climbers hiking along the Theodul Glacier in Zermatt on July 12 discovered human remains and several pieces of equipment, police in the Valais canton said in a statement Thursday.

    “DNA analysis enabled the identification of a mountain climber who had been missing since 1986,” police said in a statement. “In September 1986, a German climber, who was 38 at the time, had been reported missing after not returning from a hike.”

    Police said that searches for the disappeared climber at the time proved unsuccessful.

    The climber’s remains underwent a forensic analysis at Valais Hospital, allowing experts to link them to the 1986 disappearance, police added Thursday.

    Police did not provide additional information of the German alpinist’s identity nor on the circumstances of his death.

    Authorities released a photograph of a lone hiking boot with red laces sticking out of the snow, along with some hiking equipment that had belonged to the missing person.

    “The recession of the glaciers increasingly brings to light missing alpinists who were reported missing several decades ago,” police concluded in the statement.

    The discovery of the remains of the German climber comes as scientists revealed earlier this week that this month is on track to be the planet’s hottest in around 120,000 years.

    Glaciologist Lindsey Nicholson at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, told CNN Friday that shrinking glaciers due to climate change have led to the discovery of bodies of climbers who disappeared.

    “As the glaciers retreat, any material – including people who have fallen into or onto them and have been buried by subsequent snow – will emerge. All glaciers are melting very fast and receding across the European Alps,” Nicholson said.

    Last year, Swiss glaciers recorded their worst melt rate since records began more than a century ago, losing 6% of their remaining volume in 2022, nearly double the previous record of 2003, Reuters reported.

    The melt was so extreme in 2022 that bare rock that had remained buried for millennia re-emerged at one site while bodies and even a plane lost elsewhere in the Alps decades ago were recovered.

    In 2015, the remains of two Japanese climbers who went missing on the Matterhorn in a 1970 snowstorm were found and their identities confirmed through the DNA testing of their relatives.

    “The glaciers are undergoing a long-term trend of melting,” Nicholson said, adding the trend is expected to continue, with “low snow years” contributing to the problem.

    “The reduced snow amount is also partly coupled to the change in temperatures, because what happens is some of the precipitation that … would have come in the form of snow, now comes in the form of rain. That does not help the glaciers, it works against them,” she added.

    Even if ambitious climate targets are met, up to half of the world’s glaciers could disappear by the end of the century, according to recent research.

    “If we continue with the emissions we are transmitting now, we are looking at a largely deglaciated Alps region for generations to come – and that is very sad,” Nicholson warned.

    The disappearance of glaciers will have cascading impacts.

    Glaciers play a vital role in providing fresh water for nearly 2 billion people and they are also a key contributor to sea level rise.

    “Some regions of the world are much more dependent on the glacier mountains than we are here – in some cases they are much more vulnerable than the Alps,” Nicholson added.

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  • Inside efforts to avert environmental ‘catastrophe’ in the Red Sea | CNN

    Inside efforts to avert environmental ‘catastrophe’ in the Red Sea | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.



    CNN
     — 

    Moored five miles off the coast of Yemen for more than 30 years, a decaying supertanker carrying a million barrels of oil is finally being offloaded by a United Nations-led mission, hoping to avert what threatened to be one of the world’s worst ecological disasters in decades.

    Experts are now delicately handling the 47-year-old vessel – called the FSO Safer – working to remove the crude without the tanker falling apart, the oil exploding, or a massive spill taking place.

    Sitting atop The Endeavor, the salvage UN ship supervising the offloading, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen David Gressly said that the operation is estimated to cost $141 million, and is using the expertise of SMIT, the dredging and offshore contractor that helped dislodge the Ever Given ship that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week in 2021.

    How to remove one million barrels of oil from a tanker

    Twenty-three UN member states are funding the mission, with another $16 million coming from the private sector contributors. Donors include Yemen’s largest private company, HSA Group, which pledged $1.2 million in August 2022. The UN also engaged in a unique crowdfunding effort, contributing to the pool which took a year to raise, according to Gressly.

    The team is pumping between 4,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil every hour, and has so far transferred more than 120,000 barrels to the replacement vessel carrying the offloaded oil, Gressly said. The full transfer is expected to take 19 days.

    The tanker was carrying a million barrels of oil. That would be enough to power up to 83,333 cars or 50,000 US homes for an entire year. The crude on board is worth around $80 million, and who gets that remains a controversial matter.

    Here’s what we know so far:

    The ship has been abandoned in the Red Sea since 2015 and the UN has regularly warned that the “ticking time bomb” could break apart given its age and condition, or the oil it holds could explode due to the highly flammable compounds in it.

    The FSO Safer held four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 which resulted in a slick that covered 1,300 miles of coastline. A potential spill from this vessel would be enough to make it the fifth largest oil spill from a tanker in history, a UN website said. The cost of cleanup of such an incident is estimated at $20 billion.

    The Red Sea is a vital strategic waterway for global trade. At its southern end lies the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where nearly 9% of total seaborne-traded petroleum passes. And at its north is the Suez Canal that separates Africa from Asia. The majority of petroleum and natural gas exports from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal pass through the Bab el-Mandeb, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

    The sea is also a popular diving hotspot that boasts an impressive underwater eco-system. In places its banks are dotted with tourist resorts, and its eastern shore is the site of ambitious Saudi development projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

    The first step of the mission was to stabilize and secure the vessel to avoid it collapsing, Gressly said. That has already been achieved in the past few weeks.

    “There are a number of things that had to be done to secure the oil from exploding,” Gressly told CNN, including pumping out gases in each of the 13 compartments holding the oil. Systems for pumping were rebuilt, and some lighting was repaired.

    Booms, which are temporary floating barriers used to contain marine spills, were dispersed around the vessel to capture any potential leaks.

    The second step is to transfer the oil onto the replacement vessel, which is now underway.

    exp Yemen tanker United Nations cnni world 072611ASEG1_00001402.png

    Oil being removed from tanker near Yemen in Red Sea

    After The Safer is emptied, it must then be cleaned to ensure no oil residue is left, Gressly said. The team will then attach a giant buoy to the replacement vessel until a decision about what to do with the oil has been made.

    “The transfer of the oil to (the replacement vessel) will prevent the worst-case scenario of a catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, but it is not the end of the operation,” Gressly said.

    While the hardest part of the operation would then be over, a spill could still occur. And even after the transfer, the tanker will “continue to pose an environmental threat resulting from the sticky oil residue inside the tank, especially since the tanker remains vulnerable to collapse,” the UN said, stressing that to finish the job, an extra $22 million is urgently needed.

    A spill would shut the Yemeni ports that its impoverished people rely on for food aid and fuel, impacting 17 million people during an ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the country’s civil war and a Saudi-led military assault on the country. Oil could bleed all the way to the African coast, damaging fish stocks for 25 years and affect up to 200,000 jobs, according to the UN.

    A potential spill would cause “catastrophic” public health ramifications in Yemen and surrounding countries, according to a study by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea would bear the brunt.

    Air pollution from a spill of this magnitude would increase the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular or respiratory disease for those very directly exposed by 530%, according to the study, which said it could cause an array of other health problems, from psychiatric to neurological issues.

    “Given the scarcity of water and food in this region, it could be one of the most disastrous oil spills ever known in terms of impacts on human life,” David Rehkopf, a professor at Stanford University and senior author of the study, told CNN.

    Up to 10 million people would struggle to obtain clean water, and 8 million would have their access to food supplies threatened. The Red Sea fisheries in Yemen could be “almost completely wiped out,” Rehkopf added.

    The tanker has been an issue for many people in Yemen over the past few years, Gressly said. Sentiment on social media surrounding the removal of oil is very positive, as many in Yemen feel like the tanker is a “threat that’s been over their heads,” he said.

    The tanker issue remains a point of dispute between the Houthi rebels that control the north of Yemen and the internationally recognized government, the two main warring sides in the country’s civil conflict.

    While the war, which saw hundreds of thousands of people killed or injured, and Yemen left in ruins, has eased of late, it is far from resolved.

    Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst for Yemen at the International Crisis Group think tank in Brussels, sees the Safer tanker issue as “an embodiment of the conflict in Yemen as a whole.”

    “The government sees the Houthi militias as an illegitimate group controlling the tanker, and the Houthis do not recognize (the government),” Nagi told CNN.

    The vessel was abandoned after the outbreak of the Yemeni civil war in 2015. The majority of the oil is owned by Yemeni state firm SEPOC, experts say, and there are some reports that it may be sold.

    “From a technical point of view, the owner of the tanker and the oil inside it is SEPOC,” Nagi said, adding that other energy companies working in Yemen may also share ownership of the oil.

    exp un yemen oil spill tanker achim steiner vause intv FST 071912ASEG2 cnni world_00003204.png

    U.N. begins high-risk operation to prevent catastrophic oil spill from Yemen tanker

    The main issue, Nagi added, is that the Safer’s headquarters are in the government-controlled Marib city, while the tanker is in an area controlled by the Houthis. The Safer is moored off the coast of the western Hodeidah province.

    Discussions to determine the ownership of the oil are underway, Gressly said. The rights to the oil are unclear and there are legal issues that need to be addressed.

    The UN coordinator hopes that the days needed to offload the oil will buy some time for “political and legal discussions that need to take place before the oil can be sold.”

    While the UN may manage to resolve half of the issue, Nagi said, there still needs to be an understanding of the oil’s status.

    “It still poses a danger if we keep it near a conflict zone,” he said.

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  • Unprecedented ocean heat is changing the way sharks eat, breathe and behave | CNN

    Unprecedented ocean heat is changing the way sharks eat, breathe and behave | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Sharks have been made villains in most stories, whether it’s fact or fiction. But as the planet’s climate and oceans rapidly change, these boneless, aquatic, apex predators are also misunderstood victims — under severe environmental pressure yet historically capable of incredible adaptation.

    Sharks are among the most endangered marine animals on the planet, with 37% of the world’s shark and ray species threatened with extinction, primarily due to overfishing, coupled with habitat loss and the climate crisis, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.

    And as ocean temperatures climb, researchers say many sharks are beginning to change their behaviors — shifting where they live, what they eat and how they reproduce — which could cause cascading effects for the rest of the marine ecosystem.

    “Sharks and rays are fascinating species that have been misunderstood and underappreciated for far too long,” Heike Zidowitz, shark and ray expert at the World Wildlife Fund-Germany, told CNN, noting that they are essential for the health of the oceans.

    “If these beautiful animals were to be wiped out from our oceans, it would not only be a heartbreaking loss, it would trigger ocean imbalances with ecosystem consequences that we cannot yet imagine.”

    The oceans are heating to record levels this year — a shocking temperature increase that shows no sign of ceasing. Rising ocean surface temperatures began to alarm scientists in March. Temperatures then skyrocketed to record levels in April, leaving scientists scrambling to analyze the heat’s potentially dire ripple effects.

    As with most creatures, sharks need certain conditions to thrive. With the climate crisis impacting the temperatures and acidity of the oceans, these agile ocean creatures are sheering off their normal paths and traveling to unknown, often taxing, territories.

    Valentina Di Santo, an ecophysiologist and biomechanist who studies swimming performance in fish, said temperature changes play a dominant role in the ways they breathe, digest food, grow and reproduce.

    For sharks in particular, these physiological processes speed up as ocean temperatures get warmer, doubling in speed every 10 degrees, according to Di Santo’s research.

    “An increase in metabolic rates means that sharks are using more energy to just be alive and swim,” Di Santo told CNN. “Every activity needs extra energy. An increase in digestion rates often mean that they absorb fewer nutrients as digestion becomes less efficient and they possibly need to eat more frequently.”

    Sharks always seem to be on the hunt, maneuvering their way through the water in search of new fish or other sharks to eat. But research has shown that warming oceans have pushed many fish populations northward to cooler waters, which has disrupted the ocean’s availability of food. Some fish species are not able to find new, suitable habitats, which causes a decline in their population. Overfishing also intensifies the issue by pushing fish stocks to drop.

    Di Santo said understanding the interplay between predator and prey behavior is critical when considering how sharks respond to the climate crisis.

    “It is important to consider that sharks are very much tuned in the behavior of their prey,” Di Santo said. “Therefore, it is not surprising that they may track the geographic shifts of their preferred food sources.”

    A great white shark swims just off the Cape Cod National Seashore in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on July 15, 2022.

    Di Santo also said that sharks respond to ocean warming in two ways: shifting their latitudinal range or choosing deeper, cooler waters to enhance their physiological processes.

    A climate vulnerability assessment from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that sharks off the Northeast coast have a high likelihood of shifting their distributions or expanding into new habitats to follow preferable ocean conditions.

    “These small-scale movements can be just as crucial for their survival as poleward relocations,” Di Santo said. But “the shift in depth has been found to be more pronounced than the latitudinal shift,” and some temperate species are already exhibiting seasonal shifts toward deeper waters.

    As the climate crisis escalates, sharks’ paths will only become further strained, Zidowitz said, which could ultimately close off vast swaths of the ocean to sharks.

    But sharks also have “a remarkable history of survival,” Di Santo said, having withstood all five major mass extinction events in the last 400 million years. It’s the never-before-seen compounding consequences of overfishing, climate change, prey scarcity and habitat destruction that has shark experts worried about whether they can adapt and survive these huge planetary changes.

    Zidowitz said progress on conservation to protect shark species is “too slow to keep pace” with the numerous threats they face, yet she remains hopeful.

    “If we can find the last remaining refuges around the world where the most threatened sharks and rays live, and work together with local communities, we can bend the curve towards their recovery,” Zidowitz said.

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  • Florida ocean temps surge to 100 degrees as mass coral bleaching event is found in some reefs | CNN

    Florida ocean temps surge to 100 degrees as mass coral bleaching event is found in some reefs | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    An urgent rescue operation is underway to save Florida coral species from extinction as a mass bleaching event and die-off from unprecedented water temperatures spreads across reefs in the the Florida Keys.

    Multiple reefs around the Florida Keys are now completely bleached or dead in a grim escalation that took place in as little as two weeks, coral experts told CNN.

    Experts now say they expect “complete mortality” of the bleached reefs in just a week, and worry reefs at greater depths could face the same fate if the unprecedented ocean warmth continues to escalate.

    Extreme heat and a lack of rain and wind pushed water temperatures around Florida to some of the highest levels ever observed anywhere. A buoy in the Florida Bay hit 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit at a depth of 5 feet Monday, in an area where coral is scant. Many other stations in the area topped 96 degrees, including one that hit 99 degrees, according to the National Data Buoy Center.

    The most significant concentration of coral isn’t located in the shallower Florida Bay, where the readings were taken, but that matters little for coral around the Florida Keys baking in water temperatures topping 90 degrees.

    Coral is extremely sensitive to temperature changes. Temperatures that are too hot for too long cause coral to bleach and turn white as they expel their algal food source and slowly starve to death. The water is typically in mid-80s in the region, experts said.

    Temperatures at a reef managed by the Florida Aquarium were 91 degrees on July 6. The coral was completely healthy then, but when aquarium teams returned on July 19, all of the coral was bleached and an estimated 80% of it was dead. Another report from the Coral Restoration Foundation found “100% coral mortality” at Sombrero Reef off the coast of Marathon in the Florida Keys.

    “This is akin to all of the trees in the rainforest dying,” Keri O’Neal, the director and senior scientist at the Florida Aquarium, told CNN. “Where do all of the other animals that rely on the rainforest go to live? This is the underwater version of the trees in the rainforest disappearing. Corals serve that same fundamental role.”

    Andrew Ibarra was worried about his “favorite reef,” Cheeca Rocks, he told CNN. So he grabbed his snorkeling gear and his camera, hopped in his kayak and paddled the short mile and a half off Islamorada to the site.

    “I found that the entire reef was bleached out,” said Ibarra, a NOAA monitoring specialist at Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. “Every single coral colony was exhibiting some form of paling, partial bleaching or full-out bleaching. Including recent mortality for some corals that have already died.”

    Coral bleaching as seen at Cheeca Rocks off Islamorada in the Florida Keys.

    Ibarra’s photos and videos show a ghastly graveyard of corals sapped of color and life.

    “The pictures are frankly horrifying,” Katie Lesneski, the monitoring coordinator for NOAA’s Mission: Iconic Reefs told CNN. “It’s hard for me to put into words how I’m feeling right now.”

    Lesneski said that she found two other reefs with “very, very high mortality” but also found a “a little hope spot” on a dive in a deeper reef on Monday, where only 5% of the coral was starting to bleach because water temperatures are slightly cooler in what are called “depth refuges.”

    But even those corals could bleach and die if there’s no respite from the intense water temperatures. Previous mass bleaching events in Florida happened weeks later than this event, when ocean temperatures typically peak.

    Dead Coral at Sombrero Reef

    Reef restoration experts are now plucking genetically important species from their nurseries – where they plant and cultivate coral bred to be more resilient – and taking them to land where they will wait out the extreme heat.

    “Scientists are just really scrambling to keep what we have alive. It’s pretty crazy that at this point the best solution we have is to take as much coral out of the ocean as we can,” O’Neal told CNN. “It’s shocking when you think about that.”

    It includes corals like Staghorn and Elkhorn that are “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act because there are just a few hundred genetically unique individuals left, O’Neal said. Florida has lost 90% of its Elkhorn, which is mighty and grows all the way to the surface and is therefore vital in reducing destructive waves from hurricanes.

    Coral bleaching as seen at Cheeca Rocks off Islamorada in the Florida Keys.

    The thousands of saved coral bits end up in rows of climate-controlled water-filled tables at places like the Florida Institute of Oceanography’s Keys Marine Laboratory. KML has already taken in at least 1,500 corals and expects the number to grow to 5,000 or more as the great rescue operation plays out.

    “At this point we’re in emergency triage mode,” Cynthia Lewis, a biologist and the director of KML told CNN. “Some of these corals that came in last week were looking very bad, and we may lose them.”

    Lewis said that while a lot of the coral was in OK shape, up to 10% of it was dying at the lab.

    But experts said every piece saved would help them learn which corals can survive warmer oceans, and also be the foundation for rebuilding Florida’s reefs after this year’s bleaching event.

    “If anything our work is more important than ever because we’re really depending on aquarium facilities to keep these species from going extinct in Florida,” O’Neal told CNN.

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  • Smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires blankets northern US cities with air pollution | CNN

    Smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires blankets northern US cities with air pollution | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Smoke from more than 1,000 wildfires burning across Canada has wafted over the northern US, bringing poor air quality and pollution that threaten residents’ health to northern US cities including Chicago, Illinois, and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

    Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit, Michigan, are now among at least three major US cities that are ranked in the top 20 most polluted cities in the world, according to global pollution tracker IQAir.

    The smoke has drifted over the Great Lakes region, in particular, as about 1,090 active fires blaze throughout Canada, more than 670 of which are considered “out of control,” according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. That’s up from more than 880 fires there last week.

    The bulk of the country’s wildfires are burning in British Columbia, where more than 460 fires are ongoing, the agency reports.

    In the US, the National Weather Service (NWS) has issued air quality alerts for millions of people across Michigan and parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

    The blanket of hazy skies follows a belt of Canadian wildfire smoke which stretched across the US last week, triggering air quality alerts for more than a dozen states from Montana to Vermont, with some smoke reaching as far South as Alabama.

    The smoke is expected to shift eastward through the Great Lakes region through Tuesday and disperse by Wednesday – just as the upper Midwest is forecast to see some of its hottest temperatures so far this year. Minneapolis could reach 100° and Chicago will be in the upper 90s.

    The EPA in Illinois has declared an “Air Pollution Action Day” through Tuesday due to the “persistent” wildfire smoke causing elevated air pollution in the region. Similar advisories have been declares in Michigan and Wisconsin.

    The city is recommending that those with chronic respiratory issues limit their activities outdoors and is advising against strenuous activity for children, teens, seniors, people with heart or lung disease, and pregnant people.

    “All Chicagoans may also consider wearing masks, limiting their outdoor exposure, moving activities indoors, running air purifiers, and closing windows,” the city said in a release Monday.

    Wildfire smoke is packed with tiny pollutants – known as particulate matter – that can infiltrate the lungs and blood stream if inhaled. Particulate matter can commonly cause difficulty breathing and eye and throat irritation, but has also been linked to more serious long-term health issues such as lung cancer, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The US is likely to see the downwind effects of Canada’s prolonged wildfires as the country continues to experience its worst fire season on record.

    Almost 29 million acres of Canadian land have been scorched so far this year, according to the national fire center. Smoke from the blazes this summer have so far touched the American South and traveled across the Atlantic and into Europe.

    The crisis has elicited a flood of international support, as fire and emergency response personnel have deployed to the country from nations including the US, Australia and Brazil. At least two Canadian firefighters have died while battling the flames.

    Hard-hit British Columbia will receive federal assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces, Public Safety Canada announced last week.

    Hundreds of British Columbia’s fires have been ignited by lightning strikes from thunderstorms, according to the British Columbia Wildfire Service. Some of those thunderstorms were “dry,” producing insufficient amounts of rain to help quench any fires – a dangerous prospect in a province experiencing severe drought.

    As the human-driven climate crisis intensifies, scientists expect wildfire seasons will increase in severity, especially as droughts and heat become more common and more severe across the world.

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  • Deadly extreme heat is on the rise in national parks — a growing risk for America’s great outdoors | CNN

    Deadly extreme heat is on the rise in national parks — a growing risk for America’s great outdoors | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Extreme heat appears to be killing people in America’s national parks at an alarming pace this year, highlighting both its severity and the changing calculus of personal risk in the country’s natural places as climate change fuels more weather extremes.

    More people are suspected to have died since June 1 from heat-related causes in national parks than an average entire year, according to park service press releases and preliminary National Park Service data provided to CNN. No other year had five heat-related deaths by July 23, park mortality data that dates to 2007 shows, and the deadliest month for heat in parks – August – is yet to come.

    The deaths reported so far are still under investigation, but all five died in temperatures that hit 100 degrees, a searing microcosm of a much more widespread pattern of extreme heat that has broken more than 3,000 high temperature records across the US since early June.

    That kind of heat has proven an indiscriminate killer in the nation’s parks:

    • A 14-year-old boy died on a trail in southwest Texas’ Big Bend National Park in 119-degree heat, his 31-year-old father died seeking help to save him.
    • A 65 year-or-older man died hiking on June 1 in Big Bend.
    • A 57-year-old woman died hiking a trail in Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park.
    • A 71-year-old man collapsed and died outside a restroom in California’s Death Valley National Park after park rangers believe he hiked a nearby trail.
    • A 65-year-old man was found dead in his disabled vehicle on the side of the road in Death Valley National Park, with park rangers suspecting he succumbed to heat illness while driving and then baked in temperatures as high as 126 degrees.

    Heat is the deadliest type of weather, killing on average more than twice as many people each year as hurricanes and tornadoes combined. But heat deaths are notoriously difficult to track in the US, with one 2020 study estimating that they were undercounted in some of the most populous counties.

    The National Park Service faces the same challenges, and told CNN that the true toll of this year’s extreme heat and recent past heat may be even higher. They need to collect and corroborate death reports with hundreds of individual parks and the equally vast and complex web of local and state officials that medically determine cause of death.

    As a result, some of the most recent death statistics from 2020 to 2023 could “change significantly,” park spokespeople said.

    That’s already proven true. Two of this year’s five deaths happened after the park service provided the data to CNN in early July. Still, the current statistics offer a glimpse into the deadly potential of this unrelenting heat, especially in its epicenter: the Southwest.

    All of this year’s suspected heat-related deaths took place in just three national parks: Grand Canyon, Death Valley and Big Bend. These three parks are also responsible for more than half of the 68 heat-related deaths reported by the park service since 2007.

    And that’s no surprise – all three parks are located in the nation’s oven, the Southwest, and all but one of the deaths happened west of the Mississippi River.

    It’s normal for the Southwest to be hot. But the heat this year, especially the longevity of it, is far from normal. Phoenix, just a few hours south of the Grand Canyon, shattered its record for consecutive days at 110 degrees-plus and only dropped to 97 degrees overnight at times during the streak, a record warm low temperature.

    A recent report from Climate Central, a non-profit research group, found that the Southwest heat wave in the first half of July was made at least five times more likely by human-caused climate change.

    Average annual temperatures across the Southwest increased by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit between 1901 and 2016, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s periodic climate change report. The climate crisis has also worsened the region’s most severe drought in centuries, which created an ongoing crisis over water supplies from the river that etched the Grand Canyon into the earth. And projections show that temperatures will continue to rise to the tune of 8.6 degrees – resulting in 45 more days over 90 degrees each year for parts of the region by 2100 under the worst-case scenarios.

    The country’s national parks are ground zero for this warming. A 2018 study found that they had warmed twice as fast as the rest of the US from 1895 to 2010 due to human-caused climate change.

    National parks in the Southwest and in Alaska were the “most severely damaged by human-caused climate change” and experienced the most pronounced warming, said Patrick Gonzalez, climate scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and the study’s author. But he also said that damage was happening “all across America and all across our national parks.”

    “Carbon pollution from cars, power plants and deforestation – human sources – has already damaged our national parks, and in years like this we see the potential acute damage, severe one year damage,” Gonzalez told CNN.

    Heat risk and damage to national parks will only increase if unabated carbon pollution continues, Gonzalez said. That’s changing the personal risk calculus for summer recreation now and in the future in increasingly hotter national parks.

    The 300 million-plus people who visit the parks each year are already encountering warmer temperatures and are at a greater risk for heat illness as a result. Park visitation also peaks during the summer, furthering that risk.

    The park service doesn’t universally keep track of heat-related illnesses that don’t result in death, but multiple park representatives said the number of heat illnesses was much greater than heat mortality. Multiple medical responses a week that are “probably heat-related” happen during the summer at Death Valley National Park, park spokesperson Abby Wines told CNN.

    Grand Canyon National Park doesn’t track heat-specific illness, but carries out hundreds of rescues and so-called “hiker assists” for less-severe issues most commonly because of “lack of physical conditioning,” park spokesperson Joelle Baird told CNN.

    Baird said they see a spike in ranger responses to heat-related illnesses when temperatures reach 95 degrees on trails at the midway point between the top and the bottom of the canyon.

    Extreme heat can trigger heat illness in as little as 20 to 30 minutes for people doing anything strenuous outdoors, like hiking, because heat acts as a “perfect storm,” which overloads the body until it eventually short-circuits and shuts down, Dr. Matthew Levy, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told CNN.

    Hiking was the most common cause of heat-related death in the national parks data, representing more than 60% of all deaths. Park spokespeople said that typically, less-experienced hikers find themselves in compromising situations by overestimating their abilities or underpreparing for the heat, but heat illness and death can and has happened in experienced hikers, too.

    Maggie Peikon is a self-proclaimed “avid hiker” who has climbed some of the country’s highest mountains and even scaled an active volcano in Indonesia.

    She said part of the allure of hiking for experienced hikers is to “challenge my will.” But even so, she said, hiking in this kind of heat isn’t worth it.

    “Most of the challenges I’ve pushed myself to do, there’s a level of enjoyment there, and it just feels like a punishment to go out when it’s that hot,” said Peikon, who works as the manager of communications at the American Hiking Society.

    “I think I’ve just learned what I’m capable of, and that’s not just from a physical standpoint, hiking is very mental as well,” Peikon told CNN. “That was something that has stuck with me on every single hike that I do, especially the challenging ones: What you’re capable of is entirely up to you.”

    Tourists stand next to an unofficial heat reading at Furnace Creek Visitor Center during a heat wave in Death Valley National Park.

    Personal responsibility weighs heavily in the policy direction the individual national parks take when dealing with the heat.

    Parks proactively message visitors about the heat online and in signage posted at the trails that warns of the dangerous and “tragic” consequences of high temperatures. Death Valley posts bright red “STOP Extreme Heat Danger” signs at low elevation trailheads, which urge people to stay off trails after 10 a.m. and to hike only at high elevations, where temperatures are lowest.

    “People are responsible for their own safety,” Death Valley spokesperson Abby Wines told CNN. “We try to get information out to people so they’re aware, but one of the problems with heat, I think, is that often people think it’s a matter of being tough enough. They think ‘oh, I might be uncomfortable, but that’s all and I can push through it.’ But heat is deadly.”

    It’s so hot in Death Valley that the park warns visitors that it can’t and won’t rescue people.

    “We don’t want to put our own staff at risk of heat fatality by doing a physical carry out in extreme heat conditions,” Wines said, adding that the medical helicopter can’t get enough lift to take off because temperatures are so hot.

    That was the case in the most recent death in Death Valley on July 19 when the temperature was 117 degrees, a park release notes.

    What parks seem to rarely do is close trails because of the heat. The park representatives CNN spoke to said there is no national policy or guidance to close if temperatures reach a certain level.

    Trails do close because of other kinds of extreme weather, including winter storms and tropical systems. Park officials said those decisions are made at the individual park level based on the hazards there and that it was technically possible individual parks could choose to close trails or limit access if the heat got too extreme.

    Trails in Lake Mead National Recreational area in Arizona and Nevada do close seasonally because of the heat, and Grand Canyon National Park has at least entertained the idea to close trails.

    “It is something that I’ve heard come up every single year, this time of year, so I don’t think it’s beyond the National Park Service or Grand Canyon,” Baird, Grand Canyon National Park’s spokesperson, told CNN. “I think the thought and stance has always been to push out more hiker education to try to change and influence people’s behavior rather than having a reactionary decision to close trails, because people can hike successfully. We just have to provide enough information and tools for them to be successful.”

    Grand Canyon is the deadliest park for extreme heat with 16 deaths since 2007, the preliminary data from the National Park Service would suggest, a toll Baird said would be “much higher” if the park didn’t also have one of the most robust and proactive responses to heat.

    Grand Canyon pioneered a Preventative Search and Rescue team after a particularly dangerous and taxing year for rescue teams in 1996.

    Emergency Services Coordinator James Thompson observes and directs operations during a search and rescue training exercise at the Grand Canyon.

    The teams are medically trained and meet hikers at the start of trails to make sure they are adequately prepared for the journey, provide assistance with water or snacks and even contact and check in with hikers once they’re on the trails.

    This preventative approach has decreased the number of expensive, “last resort” search and rescues that are typically done via helicopter. But despite these efforts, there are still between 300 and 350 search and rescues each year at Grand Canyon and there have been 172 so far this year, with around 70 coming since Memorial Day.

    “Grand Canyon is an amazing place, everyone should hike into the canyon if they have the ability to do so,” Baird said. “However, this time of year is not optimal.”

    Park officials and hiking experts recommended checking the weather and park alerts before going out on the trail, to get acclimated to heat before your trip and know your personal limits, to shorten activities outdoors, carry more water than you think you might need, find shadier trails, tour the park by air-conditioned car or even just skip the hike altogether to reduce the chance that heat continues to turn deadly.

    “It’s not worth the risk of experiencing heat illness because of the outcomes,” Andrea Walton, Southeast Region Public Affairs Specialist for the park service, told CNN. “At minimum you’re going to feel really bad the next day” or worse, “potentially ending up in the hospital, or worst case, experiencing a fatal incident.”

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  • Xi says China will follow its own carbon reduction path as US climate envoy Kerry meets top officials in Beijing | CNN

    Xi says China will follow its own carbon reduction path as US climate envoy Kerry meets top officials in Beijing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    China will follow its own path to cut carbon emissions, leader Xi Jinping vowed Tuesday, as US climate envoy John Kerry called for faster action to confront the climate crisis in a high-profile visit to Beijing.

    Xi told a national conference on environmental protection that China’s commitment to its duel carbon goals – reaching a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 – is “unwavering,” according to state news agency Xinhua.

    “But the path, method, pace and intensity to achieve this goal should and must be determined by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others,” he said.

    The comments came as Kerry met China’s Premier Li Qiang and top diplomat Wang Yi Tuesday, with Washington and Beijing – the world’s two largest polluters – resuming their long-stalled climate talks amid scorching heat waves across much of the globe.

    In the meeting with Li, Kerry stressed the “need for China to decarbonize the power sector, cut methane emissions, and reduce deforestation,” a spokesperson for the US State Department said in a statement.

    He also urged China to “take additional steps to enhance its climate ambition in order to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.”

    China has invested heavily in clean energy in recent years. Its solar capacity is now greater than the rest of the world combined, and the country is also leading the world in wind capacity and electric vehicles.

    On the other hand, it has accelerated the approval of new coal plants due to a renewed focus on “energy security,” sparking concerns from environmentalists that these new projects will make the shift away from coal slower and more difficult.

    But Xi’s remarks at the conference suggest that China has no desire to be pushed, or be seen to cave to pressure – especially from the United States.

    China and the US are the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, so any attempt to address the climate crisis will need to involve deep emissions cuts from these two powerhouse nations.

    China’s emissions are more than double those of the US, but historically, the US has emitted more than any other country in the world.

    China and other fast developing nations have long argued that the world’s richest countries, especially those in the West, were able to become wealthy while churning out huge carbon emissions for decades.

    Relations between the US and China are at their worst in years with the world’s two largest economies feuding over a host of issues, from geopolitics to trade and technology.

    The US has said climate cooperation with China should be a standalone issue, separate from their disputes.

    But Beijing views it differently. Last year, it cut off climate talks with the US in protest at then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan – in the middle of the worst heat wave China had seen in six decades.

    It also halted cooperation on other common causes issues, including communications between military and law enforcement.

    That difference in views has been on full display in Beijing, even as the two sides return to the table to restart talks.

    When meeting Wang, China’s top diplomat, on Tuesday, Kerry stressed the two countries “cannot let bilateral differences stand in the way of making concrete progress” on climate cooperation.

    But Wang insisted this cooperation “cannot be separated from the overall environment of Sino-US relations.” He urged the US to pursue a “rational, pragmatic and positive policy toward China” and “properly handle the Taiwan issue,” referring to the democratic self-ruled island that Beijing claims sovereignty over.

    On Wednesday, Kerry reiterated his message to Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng that climate should be handled separately from broader diplomatic issues, Reuters reported.

    Acknowledging the diplomatic difficulties between the two sides in recent years, Kerry said climate should be treated as a “free-standing” challenge that requires the collective efforts of the world’s largest economies to resolve, according to Reuters.

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  • Taiwan reports record number of Chinese warships in waters around the island | CNN

    Taiwan reports record number of Chinese warships in waters around the island | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A record 16 Chinese warships were spotted in waters around Taiwan in a 24-hour period late last week, the island’s Defense Ministry reported, in what analysts said was the latest sign of an intimidation campaign against Taipei by China’s ruling Communist Party.

    The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) activity in the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. local time Saturday followed exercises earlier last week that saw dozens of Chinese warplanes fly past the median line of the Taiwan Strait and into the key regions of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ).

    Over 72 hours in the middle of last week, 73 PLA aircraft either crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line – an informal demarcation point that Beijing does not recognize but until recently largely respected – or entered the southeastern or southwestern parts of the island’s ADIZ.

    During that same period, nine PLA vessels were reported in waters around Taiwan in three consecutive days.

    The 16 Chinese ships around Taiwan on Friday into Saturday was the most since the island’s Defense Ministry began providing daily updates of PLA activity around the island in August 2022.

    “It is a growing military effort,” Carl Schuster, a Hawaii-based analyst and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, told CNN on Monday.

    The military operations indicate Beijing’s efforts are twofold, he said.

    One, constant PLA activities around the island present its defenders with a range of possible attack routes to design defenses for, and two, to “practice, rehearse and train for the ‘moment’ should it come,” Schuster said.

    That moment would be a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

    China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy as its territory despite never having controlled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically. Beijing has not ruled out using force to take control of the island.

    Chinese state media on Sunday touted the naval activity, noting the PLAN “breaking the record for the number of vessels deployed in its drills in the region,” in a story in Global Times.

    “Analysts said Sunday that the recent intensive exercises demonstrate the PLA’s capabilities in encircling the island,” the Global Times story said.

    Neither Taiwan’s Defense Ministry nor the Global Times article gave details on what PLA warships were in the waters around Taiwan.

    But Chinese state-run media said the PLA exercises “likely featured amphibious landing training” and the story was topped with a picture of a PLAN amphibious assault ship it said was taken “during a maritime real-combat training exercise recently.”

    Schuster said he expects the PLA to keep increasing the pressure on Taiwan.

    “We will see more such exercises and next year’s will more complex and larger in terms of units involved and extent of their activities,” he said.

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  • The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

    The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Jesse Short Bull grew up a mile from an Indian reservation in South Dakota not realizing the ground he was stepping on was once soaked with the blood of his ancestors.

    Less than a century ago, the Indigenous people of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation were killed defending themselves from the United States government, which broke a treaty that vowed the sacred lands, including the Black Hills, would belong to the tribes forever.

    “I was like any other kid in America. The real history didn’t exist to me. I had no clue, and the truth was never taught to us,” Short Bull, whose Lakota name is Mni Wanca Wicapi (Ocean Star), told CNN. “When I became older, I wanted to understand what happened and why, and I started to fill in all the missing pieces.”

    These missing pieces, which led to Short Bull’s revelation of the violent injustices that led to the creation of South Dakota, is the topic of his documentary, “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” which was released Friday.

    The documentary, co-produced by actor Mark Ruffalo, is an in-depth and seldom-heard account of American history – a history that begins with the theft of land and the sacrifice of the Indigenous people who refused to surrender it.

    “This film is very much a push for land back, for the return of land, there’s no misunderstanding that’s what they’re looking for,” said film co-director Laura Tomaselli.

    Woven together by interviews with community leaders and activists, historical footage and racist Hollywood film depictions, the IFC Films documentary is split into three parts: extermination, assimilation and reparations.

    “It’s not about being angry, it’s not about being bitter. It’s about a lot of people appreciating this country and its constitution. Not realizing our treaty, which was bound to that constitution, is negated to being an old dusty antique that has no meaning,” Short Bull said. “Nothing exists to them from our country or our land or our people. But to us, it exists. We’re real.”

    The documentary, elegantly narrated by Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier, begins with a string of broken treaties by the federal government.

    Within the land legally protected by these treaties are the Black Hills, a holy site described in the film by Milo Yellow Hair, an Oglala Lakota elder and activist, as “our cradle of civilization, the heart of everything that is.”

    The Black Hills are a place of emergence, the birthplace of dozens of Indigenous tribes who consider it to be the most sacred place in the world.

    “It is one of the oldest places on the Earth, over 5 billion years old,” Yellow Hair said. “So we say from the Black Hills and the Wind Cave is that place, that opening on this mother Earth that breathes.”

    When gold was discovered on this land in 1851, war broke out for 17 years, forcing Indigenous leaders to fight gun-holstered soldiers with bows and arrows.

    In 1868, in efforts to make peace after consistently losing battles against Indigenous tribes, the US government signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The treaty designated millions of acres west of the Missouri River for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Great Sioux Nation, which encompasses over a dozen tribes.

    The treaty says the US government “solemnly agrees that no person, except those herein designated and authorized so to do…shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article.”

    But it became another broken promise.

    In 1980, the US Supreme Court ordered over $100 million to be paid to the Great Sioux Nation because of the broken treaty. But the nation hasn’t taken the money. Since 1980 that original $100 million has accrued interest and grown to more than $2 billion.

    The Black Hills of South Dakota, a holy site for dozens of Indigenous tribes who are fighting to see the land returned to them.

    But despite the poverty they face, the Great Sioux Nation still refuses the money. Because the land was never for sale.

    “We are nothing without the Black Hills, that’s why the Black Hills are not for sale, because we are not for sale,” Sicangu Lakota historian Nick Estes says in the documentary. “How can you sell your very identity of what makes you an Indigenous person?”

    The documentary also offers in-depth analysis into forced assimilation tactics deployed by the US government to weaken Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes who were still fighting back. One method was killing off their buffalo and depleting their resources, so they began to starve and had no choice but to depend on the government, according to the film.

    Another method was taking away their children and enrolling them in boarding schools, stripping them of their Indigenous names and clothing, banning them from speaking their languages and forcing them to cut their hair. If they resisted, they were punished, often violently.

    With the intention of conquering their people by destroying their culture, says Oglala Lakota activist Nick Tilsen, “they outlawed our language, they made our ceremonies illegal, they criminalized us for living our way of life.”

    After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022, “Lakota Nation vs. United States” has played on the screens at Indigenous reservations where the tragic story takes place.

    At Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, nearly 200 people, including elders who still carry stories of dark days, attended the screening, and many were in tears, says Hunkpapa Lakota elder Cedric Good House.

    “We were impressed with Jesse and everybody else because it took real bravery to do this, a lot of courage,” Good House told CNN. “It’s coming at a time when people think they can know it all in a matter of a minute. They’ll read a little clip on Facebook and that’s it.”

    “But here is this lengthy documentary and people are getting captivated by the truth, and after they finish watching they can see this is still applicable to us today. We can point it out for them,” he continued. “Look what’s happening today here and here and here, we are still fighting.”

    The Standing Rock Sioux have been recently entangled in another battle against the federal government, mainly the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for approving the Dakota Access Pipeline.

    A violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, the pipeline is a 1,172-mile underground conduit that would transport some 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day – stretching across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

    The Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation resides near where the pipeline runs, say it will not only endanger their main source of drinking water – the Missouri River – but also their sacred tribal grounds.

    “This movie is about our history, but here in the present we see nothing has changed,” Good House said. “This is our sacred land, and we try to get ourselves into the process, but the process still doesn’t address us.”

    In a desperate fight to protect their land and Unci Maka, or Mother Earth, Native tribal members alongside non-Indigenous allies and environmentalists demonstrated for years against the construction of the oil pipeline until they were forcibly removed from the protest site in 2017.

    “We’re not here to chase people off land. We’re not here to take over their farms and ranches and start charging people for crossing our territory,” Good House said. “We are protecting this Earth, we’re not here to do what the government has done to us.”

    In the land where ceremonies were once held and their ancestors bones now lay, Indigenous holy sites are still being exploited for profit, elders and activists say in the film.

    After killing those who attempted to protect it, the US government has turned stolen land into tourist attractions, Short Bull says, making money off the ongoing pain and suffering of Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes.

    Deep in the Black Hills stands a mountain known as the Six Grandfathers, or Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, whose peaks were blown up to carve the faces of four presidents – now known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

    Mt. Rushmore, in Keystone, South Dakota, is carved into the Black Hills, which had been occupied by Lakota Sioux Natives.

    “Mount Rushmore represents and is the ultimate shrine to White supremacy,” activist Krystal Two Bulls of the Northern Cheyenne and Oglala Lakota says in the film. “Our sacred mountain, the Six Grandfathers, of course they carved four racist White men into our sacred mountain, who believed in slavery, who actually removed us from our lands.”

    Today the children of the Indigenous leaders who died to preserve whatever land they could continue their ancestors’ purpose: demanding their land back.

    And as the world suffers a climate crisis where Indigenous traditions, like controlled burning, are now being used to fight it, “it’s a no brainer” to return the land to those who can actually care for it, says Tomaselli, the film’s co-director.

    “If you are a non Indigenous person and you’re concerned about the climate, it should be obvious to throw all of your energy behind people that were living here before any of our ancestors showed up, tribes who have been taking care of this environment better than anyone has before,” Tomaselli said.

    As calamities happen around them for the sake of money, Short Bull says – gold mining, coal mining, the pipeline development, deforestation – the Indigenous people living there still have no say.

    But with their demand for land back comes a warning.

    “I want people to remember that there is bloodshed on Earth and our relatives’ blood is on this ground,” Short Bull said. “This planet was not created for you to just take, take, take. The Earth is an extension of you, and if you’re not going to take care of it, disaster is coming.”

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  • A suspect was charged in the Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case. Here’s a timeline of the case and the investigation | CNN

    A suspect was charged in the Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case. Here’s a timeline of the case and the investigation | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For more than a decade, a string of unsolved killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders terrorized residents and confounded authorities on Long Island’s South Shore after a woman’s 2010 disappearance led investigators to find at least 10 sets of human remains and launched the hunt for a possible serial killer.

    Authorities announced a major breakthrough in the case on Friday, charging New York architect Rex Heuermann, 59, with murder in connection to the killings of three of the four women who became known as the “Gilgo Four.”

    The suspect was taken into custody Thursday night, authorities said. He has been indicted on one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of the three killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney.

    Heuermann, who told his attorney he is not the killer, is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from prosecutors. He has not been charged in that homicide but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document says.

    Authorities said once Heuermann was identified in early 2022 as a suspect, they watched him and his family, getting DNA samples from items in their trash as they built a case.

    He was remanded without bail Friday. He entered a not guilty plea through his attorney. His next court date is scheduled for August 1.

    Here is a timeline of the Gilgo Beach murders, how the investigation unfolded and what ultimately led to Heuermann’s arrest.

    Police discovered the first set of female remains in bushes along an isolated strip of waterfront property on Gilgo Beach while searching for another missing woman: Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old from Jersey City, New Jersey who hadn’t been seen since May 2010.

    The remains of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, were the first to be discovered in the case during the search on December 11, 2010, according to Suffolk County officials. Two days later, investigators discovered the remains of three additional victims – Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman – strewn across a half-mile stretch on Gilgo Beach.

    The four women, who were wrapped in camouflaged burlap, worked as escorts who advertised on Craigslist and were last seen between July 2007 and September 2010, officials said.

    On March 29, 2011, the partial skeletal remains of another woman were found several miles east of where the bodies of the “Gilgo Four” were discovered.

    The woman was first known as Jane Doe #5 before investigators identified her as Jessica Taylor, another escort whose partial remains were previously discovered in Manorville in 2003, police said.

    The following month, on April 4, 2011, three more sets of remains were found on a stretch of Ocean Parkway in Suffolk County near the beach. They included a female toddler, an unidentified Asian male and a woman initially referred to as Jane Doe #6, investigators said.

    One week later, two additional sets of human remains were found in Nassau County, about 40 miles east of New York City, one of which was identified as the mother of the toddler through DNA analysis. The mother’s partial remains were first discovered in 1997, officials said.

    The other set of remains “genetically matched” with remains found in 1996 on Fire Island, “significantly expanding the timeline and geographic reach” of the investigation, officials said.

    In December 2011, Gilbert’s body was found in the wooded marshes of Suffolk County’s Oak Beach. That beach is about 9 miles from where the 10 other sets of human remains were found.

    Authorities later said they believed Gilbert’s death may have been accidental and not related to the Gilgo Beach slayings.

    In January 2020, Suffolk County police released photos of what it said could be a significant piece of evidence: a black leather belt embossed with the letters “WH” or “HM.” The department also launched a website to collect new tips in the investigation.

    “We believe the belt was handled by the suspect and did not belong to any of the victims,” former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart told reporters at the time.

    On May 28, 2020, New York’s Suffolk County Police Department identified “Jane Doe #6” as Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old Philadelphia mother who went missing two decades earlier.

    The FBI helped identify Mack’s remains using advanced forensic DNA technology, officials said.

    Using samples from her remains, Suffolk County investigators were able to find Mack’s biological relatives through genetic genealogy, which ultimately led to her adoptive family and son, Hart said to reporters at the time.

    In February 2022, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison formed a multi-agency task force to investigate the Gilgo Beach killings.

    The task force included the Suffolk County Police Department, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office, the New York State Police and the FBI.

    On March 14, 2022, Heuermann was first mentioned as a possible suspect in the Gilgo Beach murder case after a New York state investigator identified him in a database, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.

    On July 13, 2023, a suspect connected to some of the Gilgo Beach murders was taken into custody in New York City, marking the first arrest in the case, according to Harrison. He was transported back to Suffolk County Police headquarters in the hamlet of Yaphank on Long Island, the police commissioner said.

    A day later, authorities identified the suspect as Heuermann, a registered architect who has owned the New York City-based architecture and consulting firm, RH Consultants & Associates, since 1994, according to his company’s website.

    The case against Heuermann came together over two years with the restart of the investigation, in which investigators used “the power of the grand jury,” including more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, to collect evidence and tie Heuermann conclusively to the murders, Tierney said during a news conference.

    And authorities have hinted more charges could be coming, noting in court documents Heuermann has been tied to at least one other disappearance – that of Brainard-Barnes – of a woman who was later found dead.

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  • Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

    Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After the remains of four women were found near a beach in Long Island, New York, more than a decade ago, investigators say DNA evidence and cellphone data now point to a murder suspect – a local architect whose internet history showed him often searching the status of the case and details about the victims.

    Rex Heuermann was arrested in New York City on Thursday, more than a year after a police task force explored his possible connection to the cold case known as the “Gilgo Four,” named for the beach where the remains were found.

    Heuermann, 59, was indicted on one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of three of the killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010, according to the indictment. He pleaded not guilty Friday during his first court appearance on Long Island and was remanded without bail.

    The defendant, who told his attorney he did not carry out the killings, is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from Suffolk County prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged in the case, but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document states.

    “Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us. A predator that ruined families. If not for the members of this task force, he would still be on the streets today,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said during a news conference Friday, and offered his condolences to the victims’ families.

    “To the family members of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman. I can only imagine what you’ve had to endure over the last decade regarding knowing that your killer was still loose. God bless you,” Harrison said before hugging a few people standing behind him.

    Authorities had been left with little information after a search for a missing woman in 2010 led to the discovery of multiple sets of human remains at Gilgo Beach. By the time the remains of the missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, were found the following year, at least 10 sets of human remains had been recovered across two Long Island counties.

    As they searched for a suspect in the “Gilgo Four” case, investigators combed through phone records from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area in Long Island – places where the suspect is believed to have used a burner phone, court documents show.

    “For each of the murders, he got an individual burner phone, and he used that to communicate with the victims. Then shortly after the death of the victims, he then would get rid of the burner phone,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said during a news conference Friday.

    In February 2022, Harrison created a task force to focus on solving the cold case. By mid-March, Heuermann’s name showed up on authorities’ radar after a New York state investigator identified him in a database, according to Tierney.

    Investigators say they narrowed cell tower records from thousands of possible individuals down to hundreds and then to a handful of people. Next, authorities focused on residents who also matched a physical description provided by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    As the search pool narrowed, they zeroed in on anyone with a connection to a green pick-up truck a witness had seen the suspect driving, according to two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. Later, authorities learned Heuermann drives a green pickup truck registered to his brother.

    Eventually, investigators found Heuermann matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    Cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victims “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and Barthelemy’s cellphones when they were used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared,” Suffolk County prosecutors allege.

    The defendant’s next court appearance is scheduled on August 1.

    A major factor in the case that helped point investigators to Heuermann as a suspect is DNA evidence, which was made possible due to the latest scientific innovations in the field.

    After Heuermann was identified as a suspect in March 2022, authorities placed him and his family under surveillance and would obtain DNA samples from discarded items. A team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, according to Tierney.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to prosecutors. Analysis of the DNA found on the victim and the pizza showed the samples matched.

    Additionally, hair believed to be from Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    The hairs, found in 2010, were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results. But as technology progressed, mitochondrial DNA testing allowed investigators to make the connection, Tierney explained.

    The victims’ remains “were out in a tough environment for a prolonged period of time. So, there was not a lot of forensic evidence,” Tierney told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday, and credited the FBI and one of its agents for a “phenomenal job” with extracting the evidence.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were out of the state when the three women are believed to have been killed, Tierney said during Friday’s news conference.

    A search of Heuermann’s computer revealed he had scoured the internet at least 200 times, hunting for details about the status of the investigation, Tierney added. Heuermann’s internet history also turned up searches for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    Heuermann was also compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives, and he was trying to track down relatives, the district attorney said.

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    While the 10 sets of human remains found are all being investigated as victims of suspected homicide, four of the women found have garnered specific attention due to the similarities found in their deaths.

    The victims known as the “Gilgo Four” were all last seen alive between 2007 and 2010, and their remains were found along a quarter-mile stretch of road in a span of three days in December 2010.

    The women, who all worked in the sex industry, were also buried in a similar fashion, Tierney noted.

    “All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes,” he said. The killer concealed their bodies by wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    Authorities have said they believe the death of Gilbert, whose disappearance sparked the searches that found the other victims, may have been accidental and not related to the other killings.

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  • Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

    Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A New York architect was charged with murder in connection to the killings of three of the women who became known as the “Gilgo Four,” according to the Suffolk County District Attorney, in a case that baffled authorities for more than a decade in suburban Long Island.

    Rex Heuermann – who told his attorney he is not the killer – was taken into custody for some of the Gilgo Beach murders, an unsolved case tied to at least 10 sets of human remains discovered since 2010, authorities said.

    The case was broken open thanks to cell phone data, credit card bills and DNA testing, which ultimately led them to arrest Heuermann, 59, authorities said.

    Heuermann was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of the three killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010 – according to the indictment. A grand jury made the six charges, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.

    He is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged with that homicide but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document says.

    This is the first arrest in the long-dormant case, which terrorized residents and sparked conflicting theories about whether a serial killer was responsible.

    Tierney said authorities, fearing the suspect might be tipped off they were closing in, moved to arrest him Thursday night.

    “We were playing before a party of one,” he told reporters. “We knew the person responsible for these murders would be looking at us.”

    See our live coverage here

    Authorities said once Heuermann was identified in early 2022 as a suspect, they watched him and his family and got DNA samples from items that were thrown away.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to the bail application.

    A surveillance team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, the district attorney said.

    Hair believed to be from Rex Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were outside of the state at the times when the three women were killed, Tierney said.

    The hairs found in 2010 were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results but improvements in technology eventually gave investigators the DNA answers they needed.

    Heuermann was in tears after his arrest, his court appointed attorney, Michael Brown, said Friday.

    “I did not do this,” Brown said Heuermann told him during their conversation after his arrest.

    Rex Heuermann

    Heuermann was remanded without bail. He entered a not guilty plea through his attorney. His next court date is scheduled for August 1.

    Police were still searching his home Friday night, according to a CNN team outside the house.

    Heuermann, who a source familiar with the case said is a father of two, is a registered architect who has owned the New York City-based architecture and consulting firm, RH Consultants & Associates, since 1994, according to his company’s website.

    In 2022, Heuermann was interviewed for the YouTube channel “Bonjour Realty.” He spoke about his career in architecture, and said he was born and raised in Long Island. He began working in Manhattan in 1987.

    CNN has reached out to Heuermann’s company for comment.

    The remains of the Gilgo Four were found in bushes along a quarter-mile stretch of Ocean Parkway in Oak Beach over a two-day period in 2010.

    The skeletal remains of Barthelemy were discovered near Gilgo Beach on December 11. Barthelemy, who was a sex worker, was last seen July 12, 2009, at her apartment when she told a friend she was going to see a man, according to a Suffolk County website about the killings.

    The remains of three other women were found on December 13, 2010: Brainard-Barnes, who advertised escort services on Craigslist and was last seen in early June 2007 in New York City; Amber Lynn Costello, who also advertised escort services and was last seen leaving her North Babylon home in early September 2010; and Waterman, who also advertised as an escort and was last seen in early June 2010 at a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge.

    Tierney said of the women, “They were buried in a similar fashion, in a similar location, in a similar way. All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes.”

    Tierney said the killer tried to conceal the bodies, wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    The suspect made taunting phone calls to Barthelemy’s sister, “some of which resulted in a conversation between the caller, who was a male, and a relative of Melissa Barthelemy, in which the male caller admitted killing and sexually assaulting Ms. Barthelemy,” according to the bail application.

    The court document alleges cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victim,s “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and (Barthelemy’s) cellphones when they use used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared.”

    The district attorney said the killer got a new burner phone before each killing.

    The case against Heuermann came together in the two years since the restart of the investigation by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, authorities said.

    Harrison put together a task force including county police detectives, investigators from the sheriff’s office, state police and the FBI.

    Tierney said the task force held its first meeting in February 2022.

    “Six weeks later, on March 14, 2022, the name Rex Heuermann was first mentioned as a suspect in the Gilgo case,” Tierney said. “A New York state investigator was able to identify him in a database.”

    Investigators had gone backward through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area – two areas where a “burner phone” used by the alleged killer were detected, according to court documents.

    Rex Heuermann is seen purchasing extra minutes for one of the burner cell phones connected to some of the crimes at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan, prosecutors allege.

    Authorities then narrowed records collected by cell towers to thousands, then down to hundreds, and finally down to a handful of people who could match a suspect.

    From there, authorities worked to focus on people who lived in the area of the cell tower who also matched a physical description given by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    In the narrowed pool, they searched for a connection to a green pickup a witness had seen the suspect driving, the sources said.

    Investigators found Heuermann, who matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    They also learned he had often driven a green pickup, registered to his brother. But they needed more than circumstantial evidence.

    When investigators searched Heuermann’s computer, they found a disturbing internet search history, including 200 searches aimed at learning about the status of the investigation, Tierney said Friday.

    His searches also included queries for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    The DA said the suspect was still compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives.

    Heuermann was trying to find the relatives, he added.

    The murder mystery had confounded county officials for years. In 2020, they found a belt with initials that may have been handled by the suspect and launched a website to collect new tips in the investigation.

    Police said some victims identified had advertised prostitution services on websites such as Craigslist.

    The mystery began in 2010 when police discovered the first set of female remains among the bushes along an isolated strip of waterfront property on Gilgo Beach while searching for Shannan Gilbert, a missing 23-year-old woman from Jersey City, New Jersey.

    An aerial view of the area near Gilgo Beach and Ocean Parkway on Long Island where police have been conducting a prolonged search after finding 10 sets of human remains in April 2011 in Wantagh, New York.

    By the time Gilbert’s body was found one year later on neighboring Oak Beach, investigators had unearthed 10 sets of human remains strewn across two Long Island counties.

    The grim discoveries generated widespread attention in the region and sent waves of fear across some communities on Long Island’s South Shore.

    Authorities later said they believe Gilbert’s death may have been accidental and not related to the Gilgo Beach slayings.

    Still, Gilbert’s disappearance led to the discovery of others.

    Crime scene investigators use metal detectors to search a marsh for human remains in December 2011 in Oak Beach, New York.

    Additional remains were uncovered in neighboring Gilgo Beach and in Nassau County, about 40 miles east of New York City. They included a female toddler, an Asian male and a woman initially referred to as “Jane Doe #6,” investigators said.

    In 2020, police identified “Jane Doe #6” was as Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old Philadelphia mother who went missing two decades earlier.

    Mack’s partial remains were first discovered near Gilgo Beach in 2000, with additional dismembered remains found in 2011, according to the Suffolk County police.

    John Ray, a lawyer who represents the family of Shannon Gilbert – whose disappearance and search led to the discovery of “Gilgo Four” and other remains – said Friday he does not know if Heuermann is also responsible for her death.

    “We breathe a great sigh of relief,” Ray said. “We’re happy the police are finally taking a positive step in this respect, but this is just the beginning … This is just the edge of a bigger body of water, shall we say, of murder that has taken place.”

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    Ray also represents the family Gilgo Beach victim Jessica Taylor.

    “We don’t know if he is connected to Jessica Taylor’s murder,” he said.

    Jasmine Robinson, a family representative for Taylor, said she’s “hopeful for the future and hopeful that a connection is made” to resolve the other cases.

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  • A Florida wildlife center says it lost ‘nearly all’ of its animals in a fire: ‘We are devastated’ | CNN

    A Florida wildlife center says it lost ‘nearly all’ of its animals in a fire: ‘We are devastated’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Florida wildlife center was badly damaged and “nearly all” of its animals were killed in an overnight fire, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the wildlife center said.

    Over 250 animals “including lizards, small mammals, amphibians, turtles and tortoises, fresh and saltwater marine life, and of course …. alligators,” were housed at the Alligator & Wildlife Discovery Center in Madeira Beach, its website states.

    The animals came from several sources, according to the center, including the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and individual owners “who can no longer care for their pets,” the center said.

    Pinellas County deputies on foot patrol at the John’s Pass Village Boardwalk saw flames coming from a building around 3 a.m. Thursday and requested assistance from the fire department, authorities said.

    The wildlife center, as well as surrounding businesses, sustained “major damage,” Cpl. Dave Brenn of the sheriff’s office said.

    “We suffered from a tragic fire last night. Nearly all of the animals are gone. We are devastated,” the center said in a Facebook post Thursday morning.

    The cause of the fire is under investigation, the sheriff’s office said.

    Madeira Beach is about 27 miles southwest of Tampa.

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  • Climate change is making our oceans change color, new research finds | CNN

    Climate change is making our oceans change color, new research finds | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The color of the ocean has changed significantly over the last 20 years and human-caused climate change is likely responsible, according to a new study.

    More than 56% of the world’s oceans have changed color to an extent that cannot be explained by natural variability, said a team of researchers, led by scientists from the National Oceanography Center in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, in a statement.

    Tropical oceans close to the equator in particular have become greener in the past two decades, reflecting changes in their ecosystems, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

    The color of the ocean is derived from the materials found in its upper layers. For example, a deep blue sea will have very little life in it, whereas a green color means there are ecosystems there, based on phytoplankton, plant-like microbes which contain chlorophyll. The phytoplankton form the basis of a food web which supports larger organisms such as krill, fish, seabirds and marine mammals.

    It’s not clear exactly how these ecosystems are changing, said study co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Center for Global Change Science. While some areas are likely to have less phytoplankton, others will have more – and it’s likely all parts of the ocean will see changes in the types of phytoplankton present.

    Ocean ecosystems are finely balanced and any change in the phytoplankton will send ripples across the food chain. “All changes are causing an imbalance in the natural organization of ecosystems. Such imbalance will only get worse over time if our oceans keep heating,” she told CNN.

    It will also affect the ocean’s ability to act as a store of carbon, Dutkiewicz said, as different plankton absorb different amounts of carbon.

    While the researchers are still working to unpick exactly what the changes mean, what is clear, they said, is that the changes are being driven by human-induced climate change.

    The researchers monitored changes in ocean color from space by tracking how much green or blue light is reflected from the surface of the sea.

    They used data from the Aqua satellite which has been monitoring ocean color changes for more than two decades and is able to pick out differences that are not visible to the human eye.

    They analyzed color variation data from 2002 to 2022 and then used climate change models to simulate what would happen to the oceans both with additional planet-heating pollution and without.

    The color changes matched almost exactly what Dutkiewicz predicted would happen if greenhouse gases were added to the atmosphere – that around 50% of our oceans would change color.

    Dutkiewicz, who has been running simulations that showed the oceans were going to change color for years, said she is not surprised at this finding.

    “But still I found the results very sobering; yet another wake-up call that human induced climate change [has] significantly impacted the earth system,” she told CNN via email.

    Dutkiewicz told CNN it was difficult to say whether color changes could become visible to humans if the process continues.

    “If a big tipping point was reached in some places: maybe. Though you’d have to study the colors for a while to be able to pick up on the changes,” said Dutkiewicz.

    Next up, Dutkiewicz will try to better understand the color changes in different ocean regions, as well as looking into what might be causing them, she said.

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  • IAEA chief ‘completely convinced’ it’s safe to release treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater | CNN

    IAEA chief ‘completely convinced’ it’s safe to release treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater | CNN

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    Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water into the ocean is safe and there is no better option to deal with the massive buildup of wastewater collected since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog told CNN.

    Japan will release the wastewater sometime this summer, a controversial move 12 years after the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown. Japanese authorities and the IAEA have insisted the plan follows international safety standards – the water will first be treated to remove the most harmful pollutants, and be released gradually over many years in highly diluted quantities.

    But public anxiety remains high, including in nearby countries like South Korea, China and the Pacific Islands, which have voiced concern about potential harm to the environment or people’s health. On Friday, Chinese customs officials announced they would ban food imports from ten Japanese prefectures including Fukushima, and strengthen inspections to monitor for “radioactive substances, to ensure the safety of Japanese food imports to China.”

    Speaking in an interview during a visit to Tokyo Friday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said that while fears over the plan reflect a “very logical sense of uncertainty” that must be taken seriously, he is “completely convinced of the sound basis of our conclusions.”

    “We have been looking at this basic policy for more than two years. We have been assessing it against … the most stringent standards that exist,” he said. “And we are quite certain of what we are saying, and the scheme we have proposed.”

    Grossi told CNN he had met with Japanese fishing groups, local mayors and other communities affected by the 2011 disaster – and whose livelihoods may be hurt by the release – to listen to those concerns.

    “My disposition … is one of listening, and explaining in a way that addresses all these concerns they have,” he said.

    “When one visits Fukushima, it is quite impressive, I will even say ominous, to look at all these tanks, more than a million tons of water that contains radionuclides – imagining that this is going to be discharged into the ocean. So all sorts of fears kick in, and one has to take them seriously, to address and to explain.

    “This is why I’m here, to listen to all those who in good faith have questions and criticism and question marks, and to address them.”

    On Tuesday, Grossi formally presented the IAEA’s safety review to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The report found the wastewater release plan will have a “negligible” impact on people and the environment, adding that it was an “independent and transparent review,” not a recommendation or endorsement.

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    IAEA approves plan for Fukushima’s wastewater

    Japanese authorities have said the release is necessary because they are running out of room to contain the contaminated water – and the move will allow the full decommissioning of the Fukushima plant.

    The 2011 disaster caused the plant’s reactor cores to overheat and contaminate water within the facility with highly radioactive material. Since then, new water has been pumped in to cool fuel debris in the reactors. At the same time, ground and rainwater have leaked in, creating more radioactive wastewater that now needs to be stored and treated.

    That wastewater now measures 1.32 million metric tons – enough to fill more than 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

    Japan has previously said there were “no other options” as space runs out – a sentiment Grossi echoed on Friday. When asked whether there were better alternatives to dispose of the wastewater, the IAEA chief answered succinctly: “No.”

    It’s not that there are no other methods, he added – Japan had considered five total options, including hydrogen release, underground burial and vapor release, which would have seen wastewater boiled and released into the atmosphere.

    But several of these options are “considered industrially immature,” said Grossi. For instance, vapor release can be more difficult to control due to environmental factors like wind and rain, which could bring the waste back to earth, he said. That left a controlled release of water into the sea – which, Japanese officials and some scientists point out, is frequently done at nuclear plants around the world, including those in the United States.

    The IAEA will also remain on site for years to come, with a new permanent office set up in Fukushima to help monitor progress.

    “We have the benefit of science,” Grossi said. “Either you have a certain radionuclide in a water sample or you don’t have it … it’s a measurable thing. We have the science, we have the laboratories … to ensure the credibility and the transparency of the process.”

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    CNN goes inside the Fukushima nuclear plant where wastewater is being treated

    But some critics have cast doubt on the IAEA’s findings, with China recently arguing that the group’s assessment “is not proof of the legality and legitimacy” of the wastewater release.

    Many countries have openly opposed the plan; Chinese officials have warned that it could cause “unpredictable harm,” and accused Japan of treating the ocean as a “sewer.” The Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, an inter-governmental group of Pacific island nations that includes Australia and New Zealand, also published an op-ed in January voicing “grave concerns,” saying more data was needed.

    And in South Korea, residents have taken to the streets to protest the plan. Many shoppers have stockpiled salt and seafood for fear these products will be contaminated once the wastewater is released – even though Seoul has already banned imports of seafood and food items from the Fukushima region.

    IAEA chief Rafael Grossi during an inspection in Fukushima, Japan, on July 5, 2023.

    International scientists have also expressed concern to CNN that there is insufficient evidence of long-term safety, arguing that the release could cause tritium – a radioactive hydrogen isotope that cannot be removed from the wastewater – to gradually build up in marine ecosystems and food chains, a process called bioaccumulation.

    While Grossi said he takes these objections seriously, he added that he “cannot exclude” the possibility some are driven more by politics than science.

    “We understand that there is a political environment … which is tense. Geopolitical divisions are very, very strong these days so we cannot exclude these things,” he said.

    Grossi also denied media reports that the IAEA had shared a draft of its final report with the Japanese government ahead of its publication. “It’s absurd,” he said. “This is the DNA of the IAEA – to be the nuclear watchdog for nuclear operations, the nuclear watchdog for nuclear safety and security. When we come to a conclusion, it is our independent conclusion.”

    And more broadly, the future of nuclear as an alternative energy source relies on the success of the Fukushima release, he said. Though there has been heightened public alarm toward nuclear plants recently – for instance, regarding the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine – “the problem there is war, the problem is not nuclear energy,” Grossi said.

    “If there was one lesson that came clearly after the Fukushima accident, it’s that the nuclear safety standards should be observed to the letter,” he added. “If you do that, the probability of having what happened in Fukushima is extremely low.”

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  • The planet saw its hottest day ever this week. The record will be broken again and again | CNN

    The planet saw its hottest day ever this week. The record will be broken again and again | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    This week saw the hottest global temperature ever recorded, according to data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

    On Monday, the average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 Fahrenheit), the highest since records began. On Tuesday, it climbed even further, to reach 17.18 degrees Celsius. The previous record of 16.92 degrees Celsius was set in August 2016.

    Experts warn that the record could be broken several more times this year. Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, said in a Twitter post on Tuesday that the world “may well see a few even warmer days over the next 6 weeks.”

    This global record is a preliminary one, but it’s another indication of how fast the world is heating up, as the arrival of the natural climate phenomenon El Niño, which has a warming effect, is layered on top of climate change-fueled global heating.

    “It’s not a record to celebrate and it won’t be a record for long, with northern hemisphere summer still mostly ahead and El Niño developing,” said Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in the UK.

    This year has already seen heat records broken around the world, with devastating consequences.

    In the US, Texas and the South sweltered in a brutal heat wave in late June, with triple-digit-Fahrenheit temperatures and extreme humidity. Soaring temperatures in Mexico have killed at least 112 people since March.

    A searing heat wave in India killed at least 44 people across the state of Bihar. China, too, has experienced several blistering heat waves and it registered the highest number of hot days – where the maximum daily temperature exceeded 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) – over a six-month period since records began.

    This is what happens to your body when temperatures soar

    The UK recorded the hottest June since records began in 1884, according to the country’s national weather service, the Met Office. The average temperature for the month was 15.8 degrees Celsius (60.4 Fahrenheit), breaking the previous record by 0.9 degree Celsius.

    “Alongside natural variability, the background warming of the Earth’s atmosphere due to human induced climate change has driven up the possibility of reaching record high temperatures,” Paul Davies, Met Office climate extremes principal fellow and chief meteorologist, said in a statement.

    As the climate crisis intensifies, scientists are clear that record-breaking heat waves are set to become more frequent and more severe.

    The new global average temperature record is another wake-up call, Otto told CNN. “It just shows we have to stop burning fossil fuels, not in decades, now. This day is just a number, but for many people and ecosystems it’s a loss of life and livelihood.”

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  • California man sentenced to over 6 years in prison for $8.7 million cow manure Ponzi scheme, US attorney’s office says | CNN Business

    California man sentenced to over 6 years in prison for $8.7 million cow manure Ponzi scheme, US attorney’s office says | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A man from California who ran a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme where he claimed to turn cow manure into green energy has been sentenced to over six years in prison, the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California announced this week.

    Ray Brewer, 66, stole over $8.7 million from investors, court records from between March 2014 and December 2019 showed.

    Brewer’s scam involved convincing investors he could build anaerobic digesters – large machines that create methane through microorganisms breaking down biodegradable material – on dairies in several California and Idaho counties, the US attorney’s office said in a news release. This methane can “then be sold on the open market as green energy,” the release stated.

    Brewer’s investors were meant to receive tax incentives and 66% of all net profits as part of the scheme, authorities said.

    Brewer gave the investors tours of the dairies where he claimed he’d build the digester machines and “sent them forged lease agreements with the dairy owners,” according to the US attorney’s office release.

    “He also sent the investors altered agreements with banks that made it appear as though he had obtained millions of dollars in loans to build the digesters,” the release said.

    Wanting to appear as though he had secured revenue streams, Brewer also sent investors forged contracts with multinational companies, authorities said, and showed them fake photos of the digesters under construction.

    After receiving investors’ funds, authorities said he transferred the money to bank accounts opened in the names of an alias, his relatives and different entities.

    In some cases, Brewer offered refunds that came from “newly received money from other investors who had not authorized Brewer to use their money in this way,” the US attorney’s office said.

    Brewer assumed a new identity and relocated to Montana after his investors became aware of his fraud, authorities said.

    When he was arrested, Brewer attempted to trick authorities by telling him they had the wrong person.

    He also told officers stories about being in the Navy and “how he once saved several soldiers during a fire by blocking the flames with his body so that they could escape” – tales he later admitted were lies “meant to curry favor with law enforcement,” the news release stated.

    Some of Brewer’s purchases with the stolen money included two plots of land of 10 or more acres, a custom 3,700 square-foot home and new pickup trucks, according to authorities.

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