September, 25 2019, 12:00am EDT
Oceans and Ice Caps to be Compromised Beyond Repair Unless We Put an End to Fossil Fuels Now, Finds New IPCC Report
Scientists warn that continued use of fossil fuels is already causing rapid sea level rise, decline in fish stocks, thawing of Arctic permafrost.
WASHINGTON
Today the IPCC released a special report on Oceans and the Cryospher - meaning the ice cover at high altitudes and at the poles. The findings of the report, backed by government representatives gathered in Geneva, paint a bleak picture of extensive ecosystem loss and water stress, likely to lead to loss of livelihoods and massive displacements. The report confirms that unless we start phasing out fossil fuels immediately, the consequences on our oceans and on the ice caps storing most of the planet's freshwater will be devastating, and they will hit the most vulnerable the hardest.
"Continuing our fossil fuel addiction is akin to literally drowning ourselves. Unless we start substantially reducing fossil fuel use now and go completely fossil free by 2050 at the latest, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced due to rising sea levels. Our marine ecosystems, already under stress from pollution and overfishing, will not be able to cope with unchecked climate change. We are not only damaging our life-giving oceans but we are also destroying their capacity as a carbon sink, risking even more runaway climate change. It's time to stop this madness and preserve what we have. This means enacting radical policies to protect marine ecosystems, stop all new fossil fuel infrastructure, and phase out existing ones" commented Mahir Ilgaz, Research and Grants Coordinator at 350.org.
According to scientists' assessment, the areas most vulnerable to extreme weather events today will also be the hardest hit tomorrow. There is a significant risk that the combination of extended droughts, rising sea levels and decreasing fish catches will eventually force many communities in coastal areas off their homes. Fishing supports the livelihoods of between 660 and 820 million people: globally, the maximum catch potential is predicted to decline about 16 to 25 per cent by the end of the century, if emissions continue.
Other potential risks highlighted in the report, some less likely than others, include massive disruption to ocean currents, release of hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 by way of thawing of permafrost in the Arctic and spreading of dead zones in the oceans.
Between the 20th and 27th of September a wave of global strikes for climate is seeing millions leave schools and workplaces to call for immediate and radical climate action consistent with science and for an end to the age of fossil fuels.
"Countries in the Pacific like Tuvalu, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Kiribati have very limited potential for agriculture because of their soil, and rely on the ocean as a primary source of protein," said Joseph-Zane Sikulu, Pacific Regional Campaign Specialist.
"Apart from subsistence fishery, agriculture and commercial fishing are the main sectors that contribute to economic growth in the Pacific - all of which are threatened because of the unabated use of fossil fuels. This has been an ongoing battle against polluters like our neighbours, Australia, but the Pacific will not back down. When governments like Australia keep turning a deaf ear to the plight of those living on the frontlines, people power has been proven to deliver results - to hold politicians and corporate cronies accountable for the immense damage they continue to cause."
The IPCC special report on Oceans and the Cryosphere is one of two reports coming out this year as follow-up to the landmark 1.5degC report released last October. The first one, a special report on Land and Climate Change was released in August.
In response to the evidence of the 1.5degC report, 350.org developed a People's Dossier on 1.5degC highlighting 13 stories of local resistance to fossil fuels by vulnerable communities.
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
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AI Firm Sued Over Chatbot That Suggested It Was OK for Child to Kill Parents
"In their rush to extract young people's data and sow addiction, Character.AI has created a product so flawed and dangerous that its chatbots are literally inciting children to harm themselves and others," said one advocate.
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"You know sometimes I'm not surprised when I read the news and I see stuff like 'child kills parents after a decade of physical and emotional abuse' stuff like this makes me understand a little bit why it happens."
That's a message sent to a child in Texas from a Character.AI chatbot, indicating to the boy that "murdering his parents was a reasonable response to their limiting of his online activity," according to a federal lawsuit filed in Texas district court Monday.
The complaint was brought by two families in Texas who allege that the Google-backed chatbot service Character.AI harmed their two children, including sexually exploiting and abusing the elder, a 17-year-old with high functioning autism, by targeting him with extreme sexual themes like incest and pushing him to self-harm.
The parents argue that Character.AI, "through its design, poses a clear and present danger to American youth causing serious harms to thousands of kids, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety, and harm towards others. Inherent to the underlying data and design of C.AI is a prioritization of overtly sensational and violent responses."
Google is also named as a defendant in the suit. In their filing, the plaintiffs argue that the tech company supported Character.AI's launch even though they knew that it was a "defective product."
The families, who are being represented by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, have asked the court to take the product offline.
The explosive court filing comes not long after a mother in Florida filed a separate lawsuit against Character.AI in October, arguing that the chatbot service is responsible for the death of her teenage son because it allegedly encouraged him to commit suicide, per CNN.
Character.AI is different than other chatbots in that it lets uses interact with artificial intelligence "characters." The Texas complaint alleges that the 17-year-old, for example, engaged in a conversation with a character modeled after the celebrity Billie Eilish. These sorts of "companion apps" are finding a growing audience, even though researchers have long warned of the perils of building relationships with chatbots, according to The Washington Post.
A spokesperson for Character.AI declined to comment directly on the lawsuit when asked by NPR, but said the company does have guardrails in place overseeing what chatbots can and cannot say to teen users.
"We warned that Character.AI's dangerous and manipulative design represented a threat to millions of children," said Social Media Victims Law Center founding attorney Matthew P. Bergman. "Now more of these cases are coming to light. The consequences of Character.AI's negligence are shocking and widespread." Social Media Victims Law Center is the plaintiff's counsel in the Florida lawsuit as well.
Josh Golin, the executive director of Fairplay, a nonprofit children's advocacy group, echoed those remarks, saying that "in their rush to extract young people's data and sow addiction, Character.AI has created a product so flawed and dangerous that its chatbots are literally inciting children to harm themselves and others."
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Nobel laureates rarely wade into politics as a group, but Monday marked the second time in two months that dozens of winners of the prestigious Nobel Prize have banded together to speak out against the agenda of President-elect Donald Trump—this time, calling on U.S. senators to reject his nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
More than 75 Nobel laureates signed a letter warning lawmakers about Kennedy's record of attacking the very agencies he would have power over if confirmed to be Trump's secretary of health and human services, his history of amplifying discredited conspiracy theories about public health—sometimes with deadly consequences—and his "lack of credentials or relevant experience in medicine, science, public health, or administration."
"In view of his record, placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of DHHS would put the public's health in jeopardy and undermine America's global leadership in the health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors," wrote the Nobel laureates.
Kennedy has alarmed dental experts with his proposal to remove fluoride, which prevents tooth decay, from public drinking water—a plan that Trump has said "sounds OK." The president-elect also said Sunday he would have Kennedy investigate the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism, which was the argument made by a 1998 article that has since been retracted and has been debunked by numerous international studies.
The environmental lawyer—whose views and political ambitions have been disavowed by other members of the prominent Kennedy family—has also been condemned for falsely claiming in a letter to the prime minister of Samoa in 2019 that the measles vaccine itself may have caused a measles outbreak that had killed 16 people there. By the time the outbreak was over, 80 people had died, and experts partially blamed "increasing circulation of misinformation leading to distrust and reduced vaccination uptake."
"Maybe there are some [senators] who will read this and think: 'Well, we really do want to protect the health of our citizens. They didn't elect us so that we could kill them,'" Richard Roberts, a co-author of Monday's letter and the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery of split genes, told The New York Times.
Other beliefs of Kennedy's include his rejection of the established scientific fact that the HIV virus causes AIDS and his claim that unpasteurized raw milk "advances human health" and that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has purposely suppressed that information.
Food scientists say there is no documented proof that raw milk has the health benefits proponents like Kennedy claim it does, but there is ample proof that unpasteurized milk contains bacteria and viruses, including H5N1, the avian flu that's been detected in dairy cow herds in at least 15 states.
The Nobel laureates noted that Kennedy has also been a "belligerent critic" of the FDA and other health agencies and employees that are part of DHHS, calling for vaccine scientists to be imprisoned and threatening to fire FDA and National Institutes of Health employees.
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The United Kingdom-based oil giant Shell agreed Tuesday to settle a major lawsuit the company brought against Greenpeace after activists from the group boarded and occupied a company oil platform last year to protest fossil fuel expansion.
Greenpeace said in a statement that as part of the settlement, it agreed to donate £300,000—roughly $382,000—to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a charity that helps save lives at sea, but will pay nothing to Shell and accept no liability. The donation represents a fraction of the over $11 million in damages and legal costs defendants faced, the group said.
The Greenpeace defendants have also "agreed to avoid protesting for a period at four Shell sites in the northern North Sea."
"Shell thought suing us for millions over a peaceful protest would intimidate us, but this case became a PR millstone tied around its neck," said Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace U.K. "The public backlash against its bullying tactics made it back down and settle out of court."
"This settlement shows that people power works. Thousands of ordinary people across the country backed our fight against Shell and their support means we stay independent and can keep holding Big Oil to account," Hamid added. "This legal battle might be over, but Big Oil's dirty tricks aren't going away. With Greenpeace facing further legal battles around the world, we won't stop campaigning until the fossil fuel industry stops drilling and starts paying for the damage it is causing to people and planet."
"These aggressive legal tactics, the huge sums of money, and attempts to block the right to protest pose a massive threat."
Shell brought the case, which Greenpeace characterized as a "textbook" strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), in February 2023 and sought $1 million in damages from activists who boarded a Shell-contracted ship carrying equipment to drill for oil in the North Sea.
"When the protest ended, the only damage Shell could find was a padlock which, they alleged, our activists broke. That's it," Greenpeace U.K. said Tuesday. "Yet they came after us with a million-dollar lawsuit, which they justified for their spending on safety."
The group, which warned that the case had dire implications for the right to protest, credited a "sustained, year-long campaign against the suit" for forcing the oil behemoth to back down. The campaign, according to Greenpeace, "turned the legal move into a PR embarrassment for Shell."
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Greenpeace is currently facing several other SLAPP suits, including one brought by Energy Transfer, majority-owner of the Dakota Access pipeline. The group said Tuesday that the Energy Transfer suit "threatens the very existence of Greenpeace in the U.S."
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