Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said Monday.

“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.

They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.

Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe.

Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.

“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.”

Mainstream scientists say the burning of fossil fuels is causing more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.

U.S. President Donald Trump has often cast doubt on global warming and plans to pull out of the 197-nation Paris climate agreement which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century by shifting to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.

Sixty-two percent of Americans polled in 2018 believed that climate change has a human cause, up from 47 percent in 2013, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Satellite data

Monday’s findings, by researchers in the United States, Canada and Scotland, said evidence for global warming reached the five sigma level by 2005 in two of three sets of satellite data widely used by researchers, and in 2016 in the third.

Professor John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville which runs the third set of data, said there were still many gaps in understanding climate change. His data show a slower pace of warming than the other two sets.

“You may see a certain fingerprint that indicates human influence, but that the actual intensity of the influence is minor [as our satellite data indicate],” he told Reuters.

Separately in 2013, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that it is “extremely likely,” or at least 95 percent probable, that human activities have been the main cause of climate change since the 1950s.

‘Virtually certain’

Peter Stott of the British Met Office, who was among the scientists drawing that conclusion and was not involved in Monday’s study, said he would favor raising the probability one notch to “virtually certain,” or 99-100 percent.

“The alternative explanation of natural factors dominating has got even less likely,” he told Reuters.

The last four years have been the hottest since records began in the 19th century.

The IPCC will next publish a formal assessment of the probabilities in 2021.

“I would be reluctant to raise to 99-100 percent, but there is no doubt there is more evidence of change in the global signals over a wider suite of ocean indices and atmospheric indices,” said Professor Nathan Bindoff, a climate scientist at the University of Tasmania.
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The $8 billion Green Climate Fund, set up to help developing nations tackle global warming, named Yannick Glemarec of France as its new executive director Monday after his predecessor quit.

Former leader Howard Bamsey of Australia stepped down in July after what the fund described as a “difficult” board meeting marred by disputes between rich and poor nations about how to select projects in developing nations.

“Yannick Glemarec brings 30 years of experience in climate change, development, finance and their inter-relationships,” the fund said in a statement. He has previously had senior jobs at U.N. Women and the U.N. Development Program.

The fund, set up in South Korea in 2014, is trying to help developing nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt their economies to extremes such as floods, droughts, downpours and rising sea levels.

It has been plagued by internal disputes and U.S. President Donald Trump denounced it as a waste of taxpayer dollars. He halted U.S. contributions as part of his decision to leave the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Trump’s decision cut the fund to $8 billion from $10 billion originally pledged. The United States under President Barack Obama promised a total of $3 billion but had provided just $1 billion by the time Trump took office.

The fund has a portfolio of 93 projects in developing nations worth about $4.6 billion. It had been led by interim chief Javier Manzanares of Spain since Bamsey quit.
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The first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates will blast off into space on Sept. 25 on a trip to the International Space Station, authorities announced Monday.

Either military pilot Hazza al-Mansoori or engineer Sultan al-Neyadi will be the first Emirati in space, part of an ambitious space program for this Gulf Arab nation home to the world’s tallest building and the busiest airport for international travel.

But the two men, selected from over 4,000 applicants, say they aren’t worried after the recent failure of another Russian rocket carrying astronauts to the space station.

“After the incident we were more confident with the preparedness of the mission,” al-Mansoori told The Associated Press. “In case of any failure there is equipment onboard the rocket to ensure the safety of the crew, which made us more confident that the system works with a high level of adequacy.”

That incident happened Oct. 11, which saw a Soyuz-FG rocket carrying U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin fail shortly after launch due to a damaged sensor. The two men landed safely in Kazakhstan.

“The astronauts who were involved will go into space soon,” al-Neyadi said. “This shows how safe the Soyuz is, that astronauts are able to survive in case of any accident.”

Both men have undergone intensive training at the Star City space center outside of Moscow, which included pressure chamber tests, centrifuge tests, parabolic flight training, and winter survival training. Parabolic flights allow astronauts to train for being weightless in space.

“Since I’m a pilot, I was able to withstand a gravitational force of 9-G,” al-Mansoori said. “Now I must train in this sort of gravitational force, 0-G, the lack of gravity.”

Al-Neyadi said the biggest challenge he faced was not a physical one.

“The most difficult thing perhaps was learning Russian, since it’s the only language which we will use to communicate with the crew onboard the vessel,” he told the AP. “It was also the language they used while training at the center in Russia.”

The Russian Soyuz spacecraft is currently the only vehicle that can ferry crews to the International Space Station after the U.S. space shuttle fleet retired.

Organizers had said they’d announce the name of the astronaut going Monday. They didn’t, without offering an explanation. It remains unclear when authorities will choose the first astronaut to go in September.

The first astronaut will travel in September with the Russian space mission aboard Soyuz MS-15 and spend eight days at the International Space Station. The selected astronaut will return onboard the Soyuz MS-12 and then be replaced by the second astronaut.

The UAE has a fledgling space program with big ambitions. It launched its first locally made satellite, KhalifaSat, in October from Japan. It also wants to launch a probe to Mars in 2020.

The UAE also says it wants to colonize Mars by 2117, with a fully functioning city of 600,000.

Though the men will be over 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the Earth’s surface while on their trip, the Emirati astronauts will have a taste of home when they travel closer to the stars. Russia’s state-owned RIA Novosti news agency quoted an unnamed industry source saying that UAE space travelers have been offered a menu of Arab dishes to select from when they go into space. The men have chosen maqloubeh, a one-pot rice dish, salona, a lamb stew, and the standard hummus, the agency reported.
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One of the unintended consequences of the space race is the amount of junk that’s now floating around our planet. Most of it is little stuff, but even something as small as a screw can do a lot of damage when it’s moving at 17,000 kilometers per hour. That’s why there are now plans to clean up the mess. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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An independent advisory body convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends pregnant women and breastfeeding women in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo be vaccinated against the deadly Ebola virus.  Latest WHO figures put the number of Ebola cases in the DRC at 853, including 521 deaths since the beginning of the outbreak in August.

More than 80,000 people so far have been vaccinated against Ebola in the African country’s conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces during the current outbreak.  The vaccine is still in its experimental stage. But since 2015 it has been given to thousands of people in Africa, Europe and the United States.  

The studies of the efficacy of the vaccine are not conclusive.  However, they indicate the serum is safe and protects people against Ebola.  On the basis of accumulated evidence, the group of immunization experts recommends continued ring vaccination for Ebola in DRC.

Ring vaccination is a strategy that prevents the spread of the disease by vaccinating only those likely to be infected with the virus.  WHO  spokesman, Tarek Jasarevic says the experts advise pregnant women at high risk of infection and death from Ebola should be given the vaccination.

“So, this aim, this vaccinating of women would protect them, provide them with more protection.  But we also know that if we use this ring vaccination that women who are in the community that is vaccinated then have a low risk.  So, it is really between risk and benefits and we hope that the use of the vaccine in pregnant women will generate some data for the future,” Jasarevic said.

The group of experts advise the vaccine be given to pregnant women in their second or third trimester as well as to breastfeeding women and babies under one year old.  

The experts also recommend that one or more of three other new experimental Ebola vaccines be tested in areas neighboring the affected regions.  They say pregnant and breastfeeding women should be included in these trials.

The WHO says all vaccinated pregnant women will be closely monitored until the birth of their babies to see if there are any adverse effects.

 
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Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft reached an altitude of more than 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) on Friday, carrying for the first time a passenger in addition to its two pilots.

SpaceShipTwo, built by British billionaire Richard Branson to carry tourists into space, launched from California’s Mojave desert and flew to an altitude of 55.87 miles (89.9 kms), the company said. 

The US definition of space is anything over an altitude of 50 miles. The Virgin craft made it past that for the first time in December, reaching an altitude of 50.9 miles.

Branson announced with great fanfare at the time that it was the first time since NASA ended its space shuttle program in 2011 that an American vessel had carried humans into space.

However, the Virgin craft still has not crossed the internationally accepted boundary between Earth’s outer atmosphere and space, known as the Karman Line, which is set at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kms).  

“SpaceShipTwo, welcome back to space,” wrote Virgin Galactic as it Tweeted updates throughout the event, without sending out any live footage.

The spacecraft travelled at a speed of Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound in its ascent, and landed without incident at the Mojave spaceport.

It is designed to carry six passengers, but test flights are years behind schedule in large part because of an accident that killed a test pilot in 2014.

Branson told AFP earlier this month that he hoped the test flights would be far enough ahead by July that he would be able to join a flight.

For the first time Friday, the flight carried a passenger, Virgin Galactic’s Beth Moses, who will be in charge of training the company’s future space tourists. 

To take off from the ground, SpaceShipTwo is carried by another larger plane, WhiteKnightTwo, which resembles a combination of two airplanes attached by their wing tips. 

When it is high enough, it releases the spaceship which then fires up its own rocket engine and ascends for roughly a minute into space.

At the apogee, its passengers float in zero-gravity for several minutes. It then descends and glides back to the landing strip.

Branson’s main rival is Blue Origin, created by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Bezos told an audience in New York this week that his New Shepard suborbital vehicle would start flying people later this year and to a greater altitude than SpaceShipTwo. 

“One of the issues that Virgin Galactic will have to address, eventually, is that they are not flying above the Karman Line, not yet,” Bezos said, quoted by Space News. 

New Shepard has already flown above the Karman Line, but not with people on board. 
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Two U.S. senators launched an investigation into rising insulin prices on Friday, sending letters to the three leading manufacturers seeking answers as to why the nearly 100-year-old drug’s cost has rapidly risen, causing patients and taxpayers to spend millions of dollars a year.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee’s top Democrat, sent letters to the heads of Eli Lilly and Co., Novo Nordisk A/S and Sanofi SA, the longtime leading manufacturers of insulin. 

The senators pointed to similar, large insulin price increases at all three companies. Eli Lilly’s Humalog, for instance, rose from $35 to $234 per dose between 2001 and 2015, a 585 percent increase, they wrote. Insulin has been available since the early 20th century. 

The senators asked for information on the process used to determine list prices and the process used to determine net prices after negotiations with pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) and health insurance plans. Their letters also asked for information about the cost of research and development, production, revenues and gross margins from insulin sales. 

“These hardships can lead to serious medical complications that are entirely preventable and completely unacceptable for the world’s wealthiest country,” the senators wrote in similarly worded letters. 

‘Increasingly severe hardships’

“We are concerned that the substantial increases in the price of insulin over the past several years will continue their upward drive and pose increasingly severe hardships not only on patients that require access to the drug in order to stay alive but also on the taxpayer,” they wrote. 

While Democratic lawmakers have launched several drug price investigations, this is one of the first bipartisan inquiries. 

The Senate Finance Committee has the power to subpoena drugmakers. 

The letters came just days before the same committee is scheduled to hold a hearing with seven pharmaceutical company executives, the latest congressional hearing on rising drug prices. 

U.S. lawmakers have intensified scrutiny on prescription medicine costs as the issue consistently polls as a top voter concern. In January, top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee also wrote to the three insulin manufacturers asking for information on why their prices have rapidly risen. 

About 1.2 million Americans have type 1 diabetes, requiring daily insulin. Type 2 diabetes, which affects nearly 30 million Americans, according to the American Diabetes Association, is treated with a variety of other medicines. But those patients may also eventually become dependent on insulin. 
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NASA gave its final go-ahead Friday to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX company to conduct its first unmanned test flight of a newly designed crew capsule to the International Space Station on March 2.

NASA has awarded SpaceX $2.6 billion and Boeing Co $4.2 billion to build rocket and capsule launch systems to return astronauts to the orbiting research laboratory from U.S. soil for the first time since America’s space shuttle program ended in 2011.
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The Trump administration said Friday that it would bar taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from referring women for abortions, a move certain to be challenged in court by abortion rights supporters.

The final rule released Friday by the Health and Human Services Department pleased religious conservatives, a key building block of President Donald Trump’s political base.

The administration plan also would prohibit federally funded family planning clinics from being housed in the same location as abortion providers.

Planned Parenthood has said the administration appears to be targeting them, and calls the policy a “gag rule.”

The regulation was published Friday on an HHS website . It’s not official until it appears in the Federal Register and the department said there could be “minor editorial changes.” A department official confirmed it was the final version.

Known as Title X, the family-planning program serves about 4 million women annually through independent clinics, many operated by Planned Parenthood affiliates, which serve about 1.6 million women. The grant program costs taxpayers about $260 million annually.

Abortion is a legal medical procedure, but federal laws prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the woman.

Abortion opponents praised the administration’s move.

“We are celebrating the newly finalized Title X rules that will redirect some taxpayer resources away from abortion vendors,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement. Although federal family planning funds by law cannot be used to pay for abortions, religious conservatives have long argued that the program indirectly subsidizes Planned Parenthood.

A group representing family planning clinics decried the administration’s decision.

“This rule intentionally strikes at the heart of the patient-provider relationship, inserting political ideology into a family planning visit, which will frustrate and ultimately discourage patients from seeking the health care they need,” Clare Coleman, head of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, said in a statement. 
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Researchers at Israel’s Tel Aviv University who are monitoring the effects of plastics on animals have found an ocean dwelling helper. They’re using a tiny nuisance of a creature called the sea squirt. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A Japanese spacecraft touched down on a distant asteroid Friday on a mission to collect material that could provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth. 

Workers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency control center applauded Friday as a signal sent from space indicated the Hayabusa2 spacecraft had touched down.  

During the touchdown, Hayabusa2 is programmed to extend a pipe and shoot a pinball-like object into the asteroid to blow up material from beneath the surface. If that succeeds, the craft would then collect samples to eventually be sent back to Earth. Three such touchdowns are planned.  

Japanese Education Minister Masahiko Shibayama said the space agency had concluded from its data after the first touchdown that the steps to collect samples were performed successfully.  

JAXA, as the Japanese space agency is known, has likened the touchdown attempts to trying to land on a baseball mound from the spacecraft’s operating location of 20 kilometers (12 miles) above the asteroid. 

The asteroid, named Ryugu after an undersea palace in a Japanese folktale, is about 900 meters (3,000 feet) in diameter and 280 million kilometers (170 million miles) from Earth. 
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From homeowners facing higher flood insurance premiums to investors putting money into coal-fired power plants, financial risks related to climate change are growing, analysts say. 

But working out how a switch to lower-carbon train travel could affect an airline or what an insurance firm should do to weather more flood claims is neither clear nor simple, they say. 

Help may be at hand, however, from guides published Friday to assess financial risks from the physical threats of climate change, as well as the risks and opportunities of a global transition away from fossil fuels. 

“What is the exposure financial institutions have to natural catastrophes? I don’t think that question traditionally has been asked,” said Greg Lowe, global head of resilience and sustainability for Aon, a London-based insurance and risk firm. 

Traditional ideas may fall short

For disasters, “there’s always been an assumption we have insurance for that,” said Lowe, whose firm contributed to the reports by ClimateWise, an initiative of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership that aims to better disclose and respond to climate-related insurance risks. 

With those risks growing — particularly as heat-trapping emissions continue to rise — traditional methods of dealing with them may not be enough as the world tracks toward 2 degrees Celsius or more of global warming, the twin reports warn. 

“If indeed people think we’re headed on that path [past 2 C], it’s going to be a hugely difficult task for the financial system to manage,” Lowe predicted. 

Over the next 30 years, the risks from heat waves, storm surges and floods will increase substantially because of warming already underway, the physical threats report noted. 

In Britain, that could lead to higher flood insurance premiums and people more often made homeless by floods, as well as greater investment by cities and towns in flood defenses. 

That homeowners understand changing flood risks and will respond adequately to them “is probably a generous assumption,” Lowe said. 

But even for those who do grasp the shift, simply boosting insurance coverage is unlikely to be an answer, he said. 

“I don’t think buying more insurance is a politically or financially sustainable thing to do,” he said. “Even with insurance, this is still a tremendous hardship on people if they are out of their homes.” 

Who foots the bill?

Rather, there should be honest discussions about who foots the bill for the growing risk and damage, he said. 

“Someone is going to pay for this. How that gets distributed through the financial system is the question,” he added. 

The new reports aim to demonstrate that it is possible to start taking a more precise look at the risks and their financial impacts, and to give experts tools to do that, said Bronwyn Claire, senior program manager for ClimateWise. 

For instance, they could explore how changes in transport demand between trains and planes, or a carbon tax that is influencing fuel prices, might affect an airport in Germany. 

The guides could also help investors spot opportunities, she added. 
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