A personal view of Australian and International Politics : December 2020

Thursday, 31 December 2020

While there have been setbacks, in Australia at least it would be hard to find many people distrusting of scientists

Being an epidemiologist in 2020 has been a very odd experience. This time last year, when I told people my job title, more than half the time I’d be met with a blank look and then the tentative question: “Is that … like a skin doctor?”

Explaining that it was more like a spreadsheet doctor rarely went down that well.

But the past 12 months have brought epidemiology, and science in general, into the spotlight like never before. Suddenly epidemiologists were appearing on TV daily to explain things like the basic and time-variant reproductive numbers (R0 and R(t) respectively), or popping up in people’s social media feeds to tell them about handwashing technique and why it’s important.

Perhaps more importantly, behind the scenes scientists were conducting a truly staggering amount of research on Covid-19, to the point where there are about 200,000 published academic works concerning the disease that was only officially recognised 11 months ago. About 500 papers per day looking at everything from the basic science of the virus to how people feel about government restrictions and misinformation, and millions of people working across the world to find answers to the questions that we were desperately asking throughout the pandemic.

Looking at it one way, 2020 has been the year that science shone brightest. On 12 January, China publicly released the genetic sequence of Covid-19 to the world. Just under 340 days later, on 8 December, the first person received the vaccine against the coronavirus in the UK outside of a clinical trial, a fact that will surely go down in history as one of our greatest scientific achievements of the past 100 years. Yes, this built on earlier work, and yes, it was a monumental, global effort, but we put in place all of the necessary components to have not one but several 90%+ efficacious vaccines rolled out within a year of the onset of a new disease. Even the rapid dissemination of evidence has been impressive – imagine a pandemic without preprint servers or open scientific practices, where it could take months between scientists making a finding and it being disseminated. The effort that has gone into scientific research this year is nothing short of remarkable.

But the pandemic has also laid bare systemic issues in the way in which we gather evidence. The Surgisphere debacle, which led to retractions at two of the biggest journals in the world, was a huge problem. It was quickly corrected, but the fact that major journals could simply miss such fundamental flaws in the data underpinning the study cast a pall over much of the work done up until then in the pandemic. The retraction-based site RetractionWatch has chronicled more than 40 Covid-related retractions so far this year, which is a large but probably not entirely comprehensive list. Recently, a colleague and I raised concerns about a paper published in one of the biggest journals in the world – thus far there has been no action taken to address these nor much engagement with the issues from the authors or editors at all.

In many ways, 2020 has been the ultimate year of contrast for science. We have had some of the most amazing highs, including some incredibly impressive basic science and epidemiology, as well as lows that sometimes are almost comical. In a decade’s time, when we’re looking back, it’ll probably seem a bit funny that someone predicted 53 million deaths by May 2020 using “AI”, or that actual doctors have spent so much time promulgating the total myth that rising Covid-19 cases are nothing to worry about because of false positives. We might even laugh, perhaps a touch bitterly, at the terrible science that caused us to focus so intently on hydroxychloroquine, which after worldwide attention and countless billions spent on research we now know is probably useless for coronavirus.

Ultimately however, the proof is in the pudding, and in Australia I suspect it would be hard to find many people distrusting of science. There may have been setbacks, but when – despite the current outbreak – you live in one of the safest countries in the world, while our friends across the globe are struggling with uncontrollable outbreaks, it is easy to be a bit more trusting of the system that got us here. Trust in science in Australia is high, and while there are still lessons to learn for the next pandemic – because there will be a next pandemic – there are many places where we have clearly done a pretty good job.

And that’s really the story of science this year. Setbacks galore, and problems that we really need to fix, but also some of the most amazing work that has ever been done. As with most things in 2020, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

• Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist working in chronic disease

Donald Trump's influence will evaporate once he leaves office. Here's why.

Opinion

Donald Trump

Those who believe in the invincibility of Trump’s personality cult hold a view of American democracy that is at once too cynical and too naïve

Julius Krein

Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election has fueled intense speculation about his post-presidency: will he start a new conservative cable network? Will he act as a kingmaker in the Republican party? Will he run for president again in 2024?

Underlying all of these rumors is the assumption that Trump will continue to hold sway over a significant voter base. But this is by no means assured. It seems just as likely that, over time, Trump’s trajectory will land him closer to associates like Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani – hosting a middling podcast and hawking branded merchandise while trying to fend off prosecution.

The media echo chamber which now insists that Trump will be a titanic political force for years to come sounds increasingly similar to the one that, five years ago, claimed he was no more than a flash-in-the-pan celebrity candidate. The glaring underestimation of Trump in the past and probable overestimation of his prospects today actually stem from the same error: the belief that Trump’s political appeal rests mainly on his personality cult, not on any association with a certain set of policy arguments.

Trump did not win the presidency in 2016 simply because he had a cameo in Home Alone 2 and an uncanny talent for Twitter. He also outlined a wide-ranging, if inchoate, critique of the bipartisan policy consensus that had dominated American politics since the end of the cold war: a failed combination of “neoliberal” economics at home and military adventurism abroad. Moreover, Trump’s critique was based on national interests rather than the (often treacly) left-liberal moralism of progressive Democrats, thus scrambling ideological categories and establishing himself as a candidate with a unique appeal among key constituencies.

Trump’s larger-than-life persona, ubiquitous presence in pop culture and peculiar media savvy were certainly assets in 2016, as they are today. But the critical policy factors that set Trump apart in his first campaign have diminished considerably since then.

First, after one term in office, it is clear that the Republican establishment changed Trump more than he changed the party. Although his administration’s policy record is a mixed bag, the shift in rhetoric over four years was unmistakable. Attacks on hedge fund managers and pharma executives became rarer and rarer, replaced with praise for tax cuts, cheering on the Dow, bashing “socialism” and lauding supreme court appointments. To be sure, arguments can be made for all of these things, at least among conservatives, but they are arguments that Ted Cruz or even Jeb Bush could make, albeit less theatrically. Of late, Trump’s combativeness has focused almost exclusively on allegations of election fraud and cringe-inducing self-pity; most people are already tuning it out.

Meanwhile, as Trump has drifted away from the more substantive themes of 2016, others have embraced them. Up-and-coming politicians like Senator Josh Hawley and pundits like Tucker Carlson have articulated more coherent right-populist arguments than Trump ever has. Senator Marco Rubio is leading an ambitious attempt to rethink Republican economic policy, while figures like Representative Matt Gaetz have emerged as passionate critics of foreign interventionism. It made little sense for these and other prominent Republicans to criticize the 45th president while he was in office. Should Trump enter the 2024 race, however, he will find the populist “lane” of the Republican primaries far more crowded. The Democratic party has also changed. Joe Biden campaigned on a “Made in America” industrial policy program, something Trump never really countered in the 2020 campaign.

Politics, of course, is about much more than policy. Yet those who believe in the invincibility of Trump’s personality cult – including, it seems, the president himself – hold a view of American democracy that is at once too cynical and too naïve.

On the one hand, the average voter is not motivated entirely by tribal loyalties and subrational impulses (though the average media personality might be). Even if wonkishness is an undesirable trait for presidential candidates, big-picture policy visions matter.

On the other hand, turning out enthusiastic audiences at rallies and commanding a large social media following are much less important than is commonly believed. Joe Biden proved that in both the Democratic primaries and the general election of 2020. Furthermore, when it comes to policy formation, the effectiveness of mass politics is often constrained by an increasingly oligarchical system. Institutional power often outweighs popular appeal.

Trump’s 2016 victory proved the concept that Republican voters are tired of zombie Reaganism, but his presidency did almost nothing to reorient Republican institutions and donors, which supported his administration out of convenience, not conviction. Despite four years in office, Trump built essentially no new long-term infrastructure or donor networks that could sustain a distinctive and lasting political movement, even one centered entirely around himself.

On his own, Trump may never lack an audience or fail to draw a crowd. Yet as an aficionado of professional wrestling, he should understand the limitations of a genre in which advertising rates historically tend be quite low relative to ratings, presumably because wrestling’s core audience has comparatively little discretionary spending power. Unfortunately, the parallels between pro wrestling and American politics go beyond the entertainment spectacle; they extend to economics and influence as well.

Accordingly, claims that the Republican party is “afraid” of Trump are grossly exaggerated. Republican members of Congress recently voted overwhelmingly for the National Defense Authorization Act, in spite of Trump’s public opposition to it, just as they steamrolled Trump on the recent Covid-19 stimulus and spending bill. The Republican party might give Trump a wide berth on symbolic gestures like his frivolous election lawsuits, and he could still be a factor in close races like the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs. But on significant matters of policy, the party’s attitude is closer to contempt than to fear.

Like Nietzsche’s Socrates, Trump was “the buffoon who got himself taken seriously”. Unlike a Socratic buffoon, however, Trump never overcame himself. Bereft of the wider critique that once confounded political elites, his personality cult is no longer compelling even as a vessel for ressentiment. Its chief acolytes today are the legacy media operations whose fortunes his nonstop controversies helped revive, opportunistic scribblers hoping to cash in on one more #Maga or #Resistance potboiler, and those who prefer that the media focus on anything except the substantive issues raised in 2016. They will happily ride the Trump gravy train as far as it goes, but it’s already running out of steam.

Julius Krein is the editor of American Affairs

Trump's Blackwater pardons an affront to justice, say UN experts.

Extract from The Guardian

Trump administration

Rights experts say pardon of four contractors over Iraq killings undermine humanitarian law

Reuters in Geneva

Donald Trump’s pardon of four American men convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007 violated US obligations under international law, United Nations human rights experts have said.

Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder and Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter over an incident in which US contractors opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians.

The four contractors, who worked for the private security firm Blackwater, owned by the brother of Trump’s education secretary, were included in a wave of pre-Christmas pardons announced by the White House.

“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” said Jelena Aparac, the chair of the UN working group on the use of mercenaries.

The group said the Geneva conventions obliged states to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes, even when they are acting as private security contractors. “These pardons violate US obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level,” it said.

By allowing private security contractors to “operate with impunity in armed conflicts”, states would be emboldened to circumvent their obligations under humanitarian law, the group said.

The pardons have been strongly criticised by many in the US. Gen David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, respectively the commander of US forces and the US ambassador in Iraq at the time of the incident, called Trump’s pardons “hugely damaging, an action that tells the world that Americans abroad can commit the most heinous crimes with impunity”.

In a statement announcing the pardons, the White House said the move was “broadly supported by the public” and backed by a number of Republican lawmakers.

Wednesday, 30 December 2020

Six reasons to look on the bright side about Australian politics after a grim 2020.

Australian politics

From expert guidance to a just cause, there are reasons to be hopeful if you know where to look

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese bump elbows after delivering their 2020 Christmas messages in the House of Representatives

It was hard to maintain hope in a year when Australia lurched from catastrophic bushfires to a pandemic to its first recession in 30 years but, when it came to politics, there were reasons to be hopeful if you knew where to look. Here’s a smattering of bright sides from politics over the past 12 months.

1. The return of experts

It was the year when Australia and the world battled the coronavirus and the most significant global economic shock since the Great Depression. There is obviously not much upside to be found in either of these events. But there was one plus. In this country, the governments of the federation weren’t perfect. At various points they were manifestly deficient – Victoria’s mismanagement of hotel quarantine and the commonwealth’s failure to fortify the vulnerable aged care sector are two examples.

But when the threat of the pandemic reached our shores in the first couple of months of 2020, the national response was guided by evidence and by a phalanx of experts. Governing with due regard for facts and evidence should be a given in any advanced democracy. But if we look around the world, we can see this baseline was not a given. In countries where the response to the public health and economic crisis was shaped by post-truth populism and hyper-partisanship, by fecklessness or incompetence, by delusions or chronic indecision, millions of people suffered, and that unconscionable suffering continues.

2. Albanese put the country first

The federal Labor leader could have used the opportunity of the crisis to dial up partisan attacks on Scott Morrison and the Coalition with the express purpose of energising his political base: the partisans demoralised by an election defeat in 2019. Instead of bowling up measured critique that periodically had a substantive impact, Anthony Albanese could have spent the past 12 months ruthlessly undermining public confidence in the various policy responses to the crisis in an effort to advance his own public profile. We have seen some opposition leaders in the states plough into that sinkhole.

Instead, Albanese understood the gravity of the moment required a commitment to pursuing something larger than relentless, zero-sum self-advancement. As a consequence, he exhibited a basic altruism that some of his restive Labor colleagues, hungry for the knockout blow, sometimes confuse with passivity or haplessness. To my observation, this makes Albanese something of a rarity in public life – a throwback to the quieter national interest politics that existed before Tony Abbott broke the template for opposition in Australia.

3. A brave policy battle

Pick a legislative fight with Google and Facebook, the bullies of the internet? Are you freaking bonkers? Well, apparently Australia is bonkers, because this year the Morrison government brought forward legislation to counter the market power of the digital platforms, at least in their dealings with traditional media companies. Adding to the astonishment to see some courage from a very busy government, Australia’s perpetually pugnacious media companies have thus far managed not to derail the proposal by descending into a fake culture war about who does or does not deserve help.

The regulation being proposed will force Google and Facebook to negotiate a fair payment with news organisations for using their content in Facebook’s news feed and Google’s search. (A bit like evidence-based policy, fair compensation for services rendered really should be a given, but it isn’t now.) The behemoths are worried this law, if passed in 2021, will create a global precedent. Anya Schiffrin, director of technology, media and communications at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, has said there is “huge hope” the plucky Australian regulation will actually work. Dare to dream.

4. Someone kept watch

It’s true Australia lacks an integrity commission at the federal level (anti-corruption commissions were “a fringe issue”, Scott Morrison sniffed a couple of years back). It’s true that we absolutely need one, and the model the government has bowled up (grudgingly) remains less than compelling. But in the absence of the body we need, please send flowers to the Australian National Audit Office. This year the ANAO more than proved its worth – unearthing the sports rorts imbroglio.

The exposure of the Coalition’s pre-election pork barrelling prompted a gritted-teeth ministerial resignation, which in part triggered a major eruption in the National party and a rolling effort by Morrison to inoculate himself from the fallout, as well as serious questions about whether the grants had been made lawfully, and a court action. The ANAO also shone a light on the Leppington land purchase, where federal officials paid $30m for land worth $3m – a transaction so freewheeling and so dubious it prompted the auditor to refer the transaction straight to the Australian federal police. When you send the flowers, please attach a card that says: “Thank you for watching, we are grateful, democracy needs you.”

5. Sometimes a just cause wins

Community campaigners including the NotMyDebt group have been dogged in pursuit of the government’s botched robodebt scheme. My Guardian Australia colleague Luke Henriques-Gomes was equally dogged when he encountered persistent stories of vulnerable Australians being pursued by private debt collectors and having their tax returns garnisheed as part of the scheme. The response to all the organising and the prodding was stonewalling. But eventually the persistence won out.

The government first settled a landmark challenge conceding a $2,500 debt raised against Deanna Amato, a 34-year-old local government employee, was not lawful because it relied on income averaging. Four months after the government settled that case, Henriques-Gomes revealed that the government was drawing up secret plans to repay victims of the scheme. Labor’s Bill Shorten brokered a class action by Gordon Legal challenging the legality of the scheme. Several months later the government agreed to a $1.2bn settlement. It is extraordinary (in the worst sense of that word) that ministers and public servants who inflicted this debacle on the community have kept their jobs, but there was some justice for the victims.

6. A glimmer of hope for climate action

Proving conclusively that 2020 was not 12 months of unremitting hell, even though it often felt that way, the Republican demagogue lost his bid for re-election, and much of the world and millions of Americans exhaled properly for the first time in four years. There are many reasons to celebrate the end of Donald Trump – too many to list here – but from an Australian perspective, the election of Joe Biden had an immediate impact on the way Morrison spoke about climate change.

His rhetorical shift from grudging to cautiously tepid to bursts of warm really was instant, which suggests Australia is concerned about being isolated diplomatically if Biden (with the help of Boris Johnson and Europe) manages to reinvigorate the global climate change process. Whether Morrison’s more constructive language is matched by anything approximating positive practical action remains moot, and we all know that hope can be dangerous, given the bin fire of Australia’s climate politics. But this remains the story to watch in 2021.

Australia has lots of ancient volcanoes. But how did they form?

Extract from ABC News

Science

ABC Science

By Genelle Weule

Posted Yesterday at 6:38am, updated Yesterday at 12:56pm

The back of a girl, sitting on the summit, looking out over the Glass House Mountains.

Mount Ngungun, in the Glass House Mountains, is part of Australia's ancient volcanic past.(Supplied)

If you are heading on a road trip this summer, you might drive past several ancient sentinels of Australia's volcanic past.

Many of them, like the Glass House Mountains, are hard to miss.

These ancient volcanic plugs are all that is left of eruptions that occurred around 25 million years ago.

They are among hundreds of ancient volcano remnants that extend 3,500 kilometres from Tasmania to northern Queensland.

While the Glass House Mountains stand out in the landscape, other remnants are just weathered nubs hidden in the bush or a series of caves hollowed out by lava.

But just why there have been so many eruptions over the past 100 million years in eastern Australia — some of them as recent as a few thousand years ago — is a mystery. The Glass House Mountains located in the hinterland of SE Qld's Sunshine Coast

The Glass House Mountains are examples of volcanism in eastern Australia.(Giulio Saggin, file photo: ABC News)

How are Australia's volcanoes different to others in the world?

Massive volcanoes, such as those in the Pacific Ocean's "Ring of Fire", usually occur near the edges of tectonic plates as one plate slips beneath another.

But Australia is bang in the middle of a tectonic plate.

"Australia's volcanoes are not really tied to any plate boundaries ... and most of them don't form part of a larger island chain," said Ben Mather, a geologist at the University of Sydney.

Chains of smaller volcanoes also can pop up away from the edges of tectonic plates if the plate slides over a hotspot.

And in fact, Australia is home to three ancient volcano chains, created as the continent moved north-east over the top of the Pacific plate after splitting from Antarctica.

The Cosgrove Track, which stretches more than 2,000 kilometres from Cape Hillsborough in Queensland to Cosgrove in Victoria, is the world's longest chain of ancient volcanoes.

There are two other chains off the east coast in the Tasman and Coral Seas.

But most volcanoes in Australia were not created this way, Dr Mather said.

"You would normally expect that volcanoes [created by hotspots] would be quite old in the north of the continent and get younger towards the south," he said.

Yet most volcanoes across eastern Australia and Zealandia — a piece of continental crust that includes New Zealand and is mostly submerged underneath the Tasman and Coral Seas — are of random ages.

"The volcanoes we've studied are much smaller eruptions, and they are far more frequent."

Previously, scientists have proposed that some volcanic regions such as those around Mount Gambier in South Australia were formed by magma eddies left in the wake of the edge of the continent — much in the same way as a boat leaves an eddy of water behind it as it glides over a lake — or by multiple plumes of molten rock cracking through the crust.

But these mechanisms also fail to explain how all Australia's volcanoes formed. An aerial view of the Blue Lake, Mt Gambier

Mount Gambier erupted just 5,000 years ago.(User submitted: David Kemp)

A new theory to explain Australia's volcanoes

Now, after studying how tectonic plates moved over time and analysing the chemistry of rock samples from several volcanoes, Dr Mather and colleagues developed a new hypothesis.

"[Our mechanism] can apply to volcanoes from the southern tip of Tasmania all the way up to northern Queensland," Dr Mather said.

The answer lies in the nature of the seafloor that was pushed under the continent from the east, they reported in the journal Science Advances.

"During the past 120 million years, lots and lots of seafloor has been shoved underneath Australia and Zealandia," Dr Mather explained.

"But what's special is this seafloor is imbued with water and carbon."

Usually, the plate that is pushed underneath sinks towards the centre of the Earth, but the material pushed under the Indo Australian plate has continued to hang around in the upper mantle for the past 60 million years.

"So occasionally that volatile cocktail gets released and that percolates to the surface in the form of volcanoes."

Organ pipes geological feature in Victoria

Basalt columns known as the Organ Pipes in Victoria formed about 1 million years ago.(Wikimedia commons: Nick Carson)

The team found peaks in volcanic activity over the past 2 million to 20 million years coincided with fluxes of movement along the Tonga-Kermadec Trench in the Pacific Ocean to the east.

"The plate that is beneath Zealandia and Australia ... has been shaken and it's liberated all those volatiles from that reservoir in the Earths' mantle."

These volatiles bubble up through the crust, which is much younger and thinner in the east than in other parts of Australia.

"You only get volcanism along the eastern third of Australia," Dr Mather said.

Some of the volcanoes you might encounter on a road trip that the researchers believe were created by this process include:

Mount Gambier, South Australia
Organ Pipes, Victoria
Sawn Rocks, near Narrabri New South Wales
Barrington shield volcanoes (at Barrington Tops Park, New South Wales)
Belmore Volcanic Province, near Baryugil, New South Wales
Mount Canobolas, New South Wales
Glass House Mountains, Queensland
Undara Lava Tubes, Queensland

"Most of the volcanoes you encounter along the Pacific Highway are going to be these sorts of volcanoes," Dr Mather said.

"But we probably haven't completely identified all the eruption locations yet." Undara Lava Tubes in Queensland

Undara Lava Tubes in Far North Queensland formed around 190,000 years ago. They are all that are left of a massive shield volcano that covered the area with rivers of lava.(Wikimedia commons: Lobster1)

'No shoe fits all'

Volcanologist Ray Cas of Monash University said the new model put forward by Dr Mather and colleagues gives us a better understanding of Australia's volcanoes at a regional scale and adds a few other factors such as the timing of eruptions and composition of the rocks.

"But no shoe fits all," Professor Cas said.

"It doesn't definitively give us the absolute answer as to why we've got volcanism and why we have these variations."

Different volcanoes and different volcanic provinces probably originated through different influences.

For example, there are a range of other factors that come into play in the area around Mount Gambier.

At 5,000 years old, Mount Gambier is the youngest volcano on the Australian mainland.

It is just one of about 400 volcanoes in an area in Victoria and South Australia known as the Newer Volcanics Province.

"There are other factors such as the upwelling of CO2 in the mantle and geophysical anomalies beneath the mantle which suggest to us that that is a good candidate for some further eruption activity in the future," Professor Cas said.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story was based on information that included Cradle Mountain in Tasmania as a location that had been formed by this volcanic process. This has been corrected.

ATLAS research project discovers new species in lowest depths of the ocean.

Extract from ABC News

By the Specialist Reporting Team's Alison Branley

Posted Yesterday at 2:38pm, updated Yesterday at 5:34pm

The ATLAS research expedition discovered new species in the deep Atlantic Ocean.(Supplied: Alex Ingle)

In 2019, the Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker Amundsen travelled through some of the iciest waters of the north Atlantic Ocean just off Greenland.

On board were scientists from one of the largest oceanic research projects in the world.

It is called the ATLAS project and it has just handed down the findings of its five-year study of the Atlantic Ocean.

After sending special robotic landers to the lowest depths of the ocean, it brought back a trove of scientific riches.

Among them was the discovery of 12 new deep-sea species, including a coral growth called Epizoanthus martinsae.

The species lives on black corals up to 400 metres below the ocean surface.

A moss animal, or bryozoan, named Microporella funbio was also discovered. The researchers found it in an undersea mud volcano off the Spanish coast.

Another moss animal called Antropora gemarita, which feeds on particles of food suspended in the water, was identified.

The team also found up to 35 new examples of species in areas where they were previously not known to exist.

The research was not limited to new species, with scientists also mapping currents and discovering a field of hydrothermal vents, or hot springs, in an area known as the Azores.

Robots 'hands and eyes' of scientists

The sea mosses, molluscs and corals have previously gone undetected because the deep ocean has been explored so little.

Two researchers with equipment onboard the expedition ship.

Researchers studied the deep Atlantic Ocean for five years.(Supplied: Alex Ingle)

Murray Roberts from the University of Edinburgh led the ATLAS project and said the research showed how little was understood about the ocean.

Professor Roberts said the robotic landers used as part of the project were remotely operated vehicles tethered to the surface and included cameras and lights.

"They truly are the hands and the eyes of the scientists in the study," he said.

But the new species may already be under threat. Play Video. Duration: 1 minute 55 seconds

Professor Roberts says the ATLAS project demonstrates how little is understood about the ocean.

Coral condition 'like osteoporosis'

The researchers found 50 per cent of cold-water coral habitats were at risk from climate change as oceans absorbed up to one-third of the carbon in the atmosphere.

Further, they found 19 per cent of deep-sea ecosystem services were at high risk from ocean acidification and fisheries.

They found major currents of the Atlantic had been slowed because of climate change. Colourful corals are seen on the ocean floor.

Cold water corals were found at the Rockall Bank in North Atlantic Ocean.(Supplied: University of Edinburgh)

Professor Roberts said their study demonstrated the impact of the sea becoming slightly more acidic from absorbing carbon.

"We face the prospect that the corals of the deep sea are changing," he said.

"Their skeletons are getting more porous as that slightly acidic sea water corrodes and damages their skeleton.

"That's attacking the very foundations of huge deep-sea coral reefs. Predictions are showing the suitability of the habitats really collapsing over the next 100 years."

The project included more than 70 scientists from 13 countries.

The project has concluded, but researchers have launched a new study involving South American researchers to look at the south Atlantic until 2023.

ATLAS project 'gold standard' in research

The Canadian Coast Guard's Amundsen vessel was used on the ATLAS research expedition.(Supplied: Alex Ingle)

Marine geologist at James Cook University Robin Beaman said the ATLAS project was the "gold standard" in marine research because it brought together many researchers and government agencies.

"These are effective because you involve a lot more people, a lot more equipment and you can do time-series," Dr Beaman said.

His work with The Schmidt Ocean Institute has done similar mapping and data collection in a year-long project across reefs off the Australian coast in both the Pacific and Indian oceans.

It includes deep ocean reefs off Perth and Ningaloo in Western Australia all the way around to the Great Barrier Reef.

"It brought together many, many people including students, which is really important," Dr Beaman said.

"When you're going into the deep ocean, you're going into places that haven't really been explored before, so there are all these fauna that have been there for perhaps millions of years but it's just we haven't discovered them.

"We've found new species here — fish, deep-water corals and other invertebrate sponge species.

"It's quite fascinating to shine light into these depths. I understand the excitement of the ATLAS project."

Dr Beaman said southern hemisphere oceans did not appear to have as many deep water mounts of corals, but it might be they simply had not discovered yet.

"It could be we haven't looked as much in the southern oceans — it's not explored as much as north Atlantic.

"There are lots of cold water corals species found in these depths — in parts of southern Tasmania they've found great fields of these cold water corals."

Monday, 28 December 2020

How real is the threat of prosecution for Donald Trump post-presidency?

Extract from The Guardian

Surrounded by Army cadets, Donald Trump watches the first half of the 121st Army-Navy Football Game at West Point earlier this month. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Legal threats range from investigations into his business dealings in New York to possible obstruction of justice charges – but all come with a political cost

by Ed Pilkington in New York

At noon on 20 January, presuming he doesn’t have to be dragged out of the White House as a trespasser, Donald Trump will make one last walk across the South Lawn, take his seat inside Marine One, and be gone.

From that moment, Trump’s rambunctious term as president of the United States will be over. But in one important aspect, the challenge presented by his presidency will have only just begun: the possibility that he will face prosecution for crimes committed before he took office or while in the Oval Office.

“You’ve never had a president before who has invited so much scrutiny,” said Bob Bauer, White House counsel under Barack Obama. “This has been a very eventful presidency that raises hard questions about what happens when Trump leaves office.”

For the past four years Trump has been shielded from legal jeopardy by a justice department memo that rules out criminal prosecution of a sitting president. But the second he boards that presidential helicopter and fades into the horizon, all bets are off.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, is actively investigating Trump’s business dealings. The focus described in court documents is “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization” including possible bank fraud.

The government is going to have decisions to make about how to respond

A second major investigation by the fearsome federal prosecutors of the southern district of New York has already led to the conviction of Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. He pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations relating to the “hush money” paid to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who alleged an affair with Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

During the course of the prosecution, Cohen implicated a certain “Individual 1” – Trump – as the mastermind behind the felony. Though the investigation was technically closed last year, charges could be revisited once Trump’s effective immunity is lifted.

It all points to a momentous and fiendishly difficult legal challenge, fraught with political danger for the incoming Biden administration. Should Trump be investigated and possibly prosecuted for crimes committed before and during his presidency?

Richard Nixon gestures in the doorway of helicopter after leaving White House following his resignation over the Watergate scandal, on 9 August 1974.

Any attempt to hold Trump criminally liable in a federal prosecution would be a first in US history. No exiting president has ever been pursued in such a way by his successor (Richard Nixon was spared the ordeal by Gerald Ford’s contentious presidential pardon).

Previous presidents have tended to take the view that it is better to look forwards in the name of national healing than backwards at the failings of their predecessor. And for good reasons – any prosecution would probably be long and difficult, act as a huge distraction, and expose the incoming president to accusations that they were acting like a tinpot dictator hounding their political enemy.

If you do nothing you are saying that though the president of the United States is not above the law, in fact he is

That a possible Trump prosecution is being discussed at all is a sign of the exceptional nature of the past four years. Those who argue in favor of legal action accept that there are powerful objections to going after Trump but urge people to think about the alternative – the dangers of inaction.

As head of one of the three main teams answering to the special counsel Robert Mueller, Weissmann had a ringside seat on what he calls Trump’s “lawless White House”. In his new book, Where Law Ends, he argues that the prevailing view of the 45th president is that “following the rules is optional and that breaking them comes at minimal, if not zero, cost”.

Weissmann told the Guardian that there would be a price to be paid if that attitude went unchallenged once Trump leaves office. “One of the things we learnt from this presidency was that our system of checks and balances is not as strong as we thought, and that would be exacerbated by not holding him to account.”

As a candidate, Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris said the Department of Justice would have ‘no choice’ but to bring charges against Donald Trump when he leaves office.

“And so the president is immune coming and going, and I think that would be very difficult to square with the idea that he or she is not above the law.”

Biden has made clear his lack of enthusiasm for prosecuting Trump, saying it would be “probably not very good for democracy”. But he has also made clear that he would leave the decision to his appointed attorney general, following the norm of justice department independence that Trump has repeatedly shattered.

Other prominent Democrats have taken a more bullish position, adding pressure on the incoming attorney general to be aggressive. During the Democratic primary debates, Elizabeth Warren called for an independent taskforce to be set up to investigate any Trump corruption or other criminal acts in office.

Kamala Harris also took a stance that may come to haunt the new administration. The vice president-elect, asked by NPR last year whether she would want to see charges brought by the Department of Justice, replied: “I believe that they would have no choice and that they should, yes.”

Trump issued a series of pardons largely characterized by political self-interest

There are several possible ways in which the justice department could be forced to confront the issue of whether or not to take on Trump. One would be through a revelation as yet unknown, following the emergence of new information.

Weissmann points out that the Biden administration will have access to a wealth of documents that were previously withheld from Congress during the impeachment inquiry, including intelligence agency and state department files. Official communications sent by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump through their personal emails and messaging apps – an ironic move given the flak Hillary Clinton endured from the Trump family in 2016 for using her personal email server – may also become available for scrutiny.

But the two most likely avenues for the pursuit of any criminal investigation would relate to Trump’s use of his presidential pardon power and alleged obstruction of justice. “Trump issued a series of pardons largely characterized by political self-interest,” Weissmann said.

Demonstrators display a banner urging Donald Trump to pardon his former campaign adviser Roger Stone, as the presidential motorcade passes through West Palm Beach, Florida, in March.

For Weissmann, the way Trump continually teased his associates – including Roger Stone and Paul Manafort – with the promise of pardons in the middle of federal prosecutions was especially egregious. “There may be a legitimate reason to give somebody a pardon, but what’s the legitimate reason for dangling a pardon other than to thwart that person from cooperating with the government?”

Perhaps the most solid evidence of criminal wrongdoing compiled against Trump concerns obstruction of justice. John Bolton, the former national security adviser, went so far as to say that for Trump, obstruction of justice to further his own political interests was a “way of life”.

In his final report on the Russia investigation, Mueller laid out 10 examples of Trump’s behavior that could be legally construed as obstruction. Though Mueller declined to say whether they met the standard for charges – the US attorney general, Bill Barr, suggested they did not, but gave no explanation for his thinking – he did leave them in plain sight for any future federal prosecutor to revisit.

In one of the starkest of those incidents, Trump tried to scupper the special counsel inquiry itself by ordering his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fire Mueller. When that became public he compounded the abuse by ordering McGahn to deny the truth in an attempt at cover-up.

Weissmann, who played a key role in gathering the evidence against Trump in the Mueller report, said that such obstruction goes to the heart of why Trump should face prosecution.

“When the president, no matter who it is, obstructs a special counsel investigation there have to be consequences. If you can obstruct an investigation criminally but you don’t have to worry about ever being prosecuted, well then, there’s no point in ever appointing a special counsel.”

A personal view of Australian and International Politics