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PARIS — More than four billion people could be overweight by 2050, with 1.5 billion of them obese, if the current global dietary trend towards processed foods continues, a first-of-its-kind study predicted on Wednesday.

Warning of a health and environmental crisis of “mind-blowing magnitude”, experts from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said that global food demand would leap 50 per cent by mid-century, pushing past Earth’s capacity to sustain nature.

Food production already hoovers up three-quarters of the world’s fresh water and one-third of its land — and accounts for up to a third of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Providing a long-term overview of changing global eating habits between 1965 and 2100, the researchers used an open-source model to forecast how food demand would respond to a variety of factors such as population growth, ageing, growing body masses, declining physical activity and increased food waste.

They found that “business as usual” — a continuation of current trends — will likely see more than 4 billion people, or 45 per cent of the world’s population, overweight by 2050. 

The model predicted that 16 per cent would be obese, compared with nine per cent currently among the 29 per cent of the population who are overweight. 

“The increasing waste of food and the rising consumption of animal protein mean that the environmental impact of our agricultural system will spiral out of control,” said Benjamin Bodirsky, lead author of the study published in Nature Scientific Reports.

“Whether greenhouse gasses, nitrogen pollution or deforestation: we are pushing the limits of our planet — and exceeding them.”

While trends vary between regions, the authors said that global eating habits were moving away from plant- and starch-based diets to more “affluent diets high in sugar, fat, and animal-source foods, featuring highly-processed food products”.

At the same time, the study found that as a result of increasing inequality along with food waste and loss — food that is produced but not consumed due to lack of storage or overbuying — around half a billion people will still be undernourished by mid-century.

“There is enough food in the world — the problem is that the poorest people on our planet have simply not the income to purchase it,” said co-author Prajal Pradhan. 

“And in rich countries, people don’t feel the economic and environmental consequences of wasting food.”

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in a special report last year that humanity will face increasingly painful trade-offs between food security and rising temperatures within decades unless emissions are curbed and unsustainable farming and deforestation are halted.

WASHINGTON — Four astronauts carried into orbit by a SpaceX Crew Dragon boarded the International Space Station on Tuesday, the first of what NASA hopes will be many routine missions ending US reliance on Russian rockets.

The “Resilience” spacecraft docked autonomously with the space station some 400 kilometres above the Midwestern US state of Ohio at 11:01pm on Monday (04:01 GMT Tuesday), completing a 27.5-hour journey.

The crew’s three Americans — Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker — along with Japan’s Soichi Noguchi, each floated in zero gravity through a hatch and onto the ISS, where they were cheered and embraced by the station’s three crew members.

“Thank you for letting me get to say hello to you all,” said NASA chief of human spaceflight programmes Kathy Leuders, in a video message beamed up to the astronauts. “I just want to tell you how proud we are of you.”

Earlier, mission commander Hopkins gave pilot Glover his “gold pin”, a NASA tradition when an astronaut first crosses the 100-kilometre Karman line marking the official boundary of space.

Glover is the first Black astronaut to make an extended stay at the ISS, while Noguchi is the first non-American to fly to orbit on a private spaceship.

The crew joins two Russians and one American aboard the station, and will stay for six months.

SpaceX briefly transmitted live images from inside the capsule showing the astronauts in their seats, something neither the Russians nor the Americans had done before.

US President-elect Joe Biden hailed the launch on Twitter as a “testament to the power of science and what we can accomplish by harnessing our innovation, ingenuity, and determinationx”. while President Donald Trump called it “great”.

The Crew Dragon capsule earlier this week became the first spacecraft to be certified by NASA since the Space Shuttle nearly 40 years ago. Its launch vehicle is a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. 

At the end of its missions, the Crew Dragon deploys parachutes and then splashes down in water, just as in the Apollo era.

SpaceX is scheduled to launch two more crewed flights for NASA in 2021, including one in the spring, and four cargo refuelling missions over the next 15 months.

NASA turned to SpaceX and Boeing after shuttering the chequered Space Shuttle programme in 2011, which failed in its main objectives of making space travel affordable and safe.

The agency will have spent more than $8 billion on the Commercial Crew programme by 2024, with the hope that the private sector can take care of NASA’s needs in “low Earth orbit” so it is freed up to focus on return missions to the Moon and then on to Mars.

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, leapfrogged its much older rival Boeing, whose programme floundered after a failed test of its uncrewed Starliner last year. 

Russians unimpressed

But SpaceX’s success won’t mean the US will stop hitching rides with Russia altogether, said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. The goal is to have an “exchange of seats” between American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts.

Bridenstine also explained it was necessary in case either programme was down for a period of time.

The reality, however, is that space ties between the US and Russia — one of the few bright spots in their bilateral relations — have frayed in recent years.

Russia has said it will not be a partner in the Artemis programme to return to the Moon in 2024, claiming the NASA-led mission is too US-centric.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency, has also repeatedly mocked SpaceX’s technology, telling a state news agency he was unimpressed with the Crew Dragon’s “rather rough” water landing and saying his agency was developing a methane rocket that can be reused 100 times.

But the fact that a national space agency feels moved to compare itself to a company arguably validates NASA’s public-private strategy.

SpaceX’s emergence has also deprived Roscosmos of a valuable income stream.

The cost of round-trips on Russian rockets had been rising and stood at around $85 million per astronaut, according to estimates last year.

Biden incoming

Presidential transitions are always a difficult time for NASA, and the ascension of Joe Biden in January is expected to be no different.

The agency has yet to receive from Congress the tens of billions of dollars needed to finalise the Artemis programme.

Bridenstine has announced that he will step down to let the new president set his own goals for space exploration.

So far, Biden has not commented on the 2024 timeline.

Democratic party documents say it supports NASA’s Moon and Mars aspirations, but also emphasise elevating the agency’s Earth sciences division to better understand how climate change is affecting our planet.

Something of an eye raiser when first launched as a small, upright sub-compact — front driven and seemingly on stilts — the Mercedes-Benz A-Class was a departure for the much celebrated luxury saloon and truck manufacturer back in 1997. Since then, the A-Class graduated to a lower-riding, bigger and more up-market and conventional Volkswagen Golf and Audi A3 rivalling C-segment hatchback by 2013.

Supplemented by a sportier coupe-like low roof CLA-Class sister model in its previous iteration, an A-Class Saloon proper, however, only arrived for the current fourth generation model, launched in 2018.

Taking over from the now larger, pricier and more luxurious rear-driven C-Class as Mercedes-Benz’ entry-level traditional saloon, the new A-Class Saloon is a more sophisticated car than its immediate predecessor, and comes with significant tech and infotainment improvements, a more “premium” cabin ambiance and more efficient, downsized, engines. An attractive design claimed to be the world’s most aerodynamically efficient regular production car with a drag co-efficient of CD0.22, the A-Class saloon also adopts angrier, more dramatically aggressive design elements, in current vogue, and diametrically opposite to the 1997 original.

Squinting and snouty

Slightly larger than its predecessor, the new A-Class has a tauter, leaner and more athletic demeanour, with sharper lines and snouty forward jutting fascia. With scalloped bonnet ridges and slimmer, squinting and more heavily browed headlights flanking its broad, gaping grille — now wider at the bottom edges — the new A-Class has a distinctly sportier aesthetic. And with such aggressive looks and a low, coupe-like arcing roofline, the A-Class arguably brings into question the necessity for the so-called “four-door coupe” CLA-Class, with which it shares platform, engines and much design cues.

Only just taller and slimmer than the stylistically sportier CLA-Class, the A-Class Saloon shares the same downsized turbocharged direct injection 1.3-litre four-cylinder engine, replacing outgoing models’ 1.6-litre. Offered in three states of tune for the A160, A180 and driven A200 models and dubbed M282 for service with Mercedes-Benz, the A-Class’ entry-level engine series comes courtesy of the German manufacturer’s on-going collaborations with the Renault-Nissan Alliance. A derivative of the French automaker’s TCe branded engine line, it is tuned to produce slightly more power but less torque in top 1.3-litre iterations.

Punchy delivery

Developing 161BHP at 5,500rpm and 184lb/ft torque throughout 1,620-4,000rpm, the A200 Saloon can carry its not insubstantial 1,390kg mass through 0-100km/h in reasonably brisk 8.1-seconds and onto a 230km/h maximum. Driving the front wheels through a smooth, quick-shifting 7-speed dual-clutch automated gearbox with numerous ratios to best utilise available power for performance, versatility and efficiency, the A200 Saloon returns low 5.2-5.5l/100km combined cycle fuel efficiency. More efficient and slightly more powerful than its 1.6-litre predecessor, the 1.3-litre is responsive, but is best in its broad and generous mid-range torque plateau.

Confident, willing and punchy in mid-range and eager towards its comparatively low power peak, the A200’s turbocharged engine spins up quickly after a brief moment of turbo lag from idling, and pulls hard from low down in the rev range. Fun car to drive spiritedly, especially using its gearbox’ manual shift mode to keep the engine revving in its sweet spot, the A200 may be a refined and confident cruiser, but is nevertheless rewardingly agile through winding country lanes, where its quick well-weighted steering is best in meatier sport mode.

Agile ability

Tidy into corners with its steering proving direct and accurate, if not the most nuanced for road feel, the smaller A200 is nevertheless more nimble through switchbacks than larger — albeit better weighted — rear-drive Mercedes saloons. Confident, quick and with composed body control from its fixed rate suspension, the A200 is eager into corners and grips well, but has a tendency to under-steer earlier than rear-drive sisters. That said, its rear seems to have greater mechanical rear grip, with less reliance on electronic stability control corrections on smooth low traction switchbacks.

Riding on MacPherson strut front suspension and either an independent multi-link rear for more powerful variants or a more basic torsion beam design for 1.3-litre models, the A-Class proved quick, confident and rewarding through winding routes with a certain old school fun factor that shines through its refined and well-damped demeanour, when driven briskly, if not quite at its handling limits. The A200 Saloon is settled, smooth and reassuring at speed, and manoeuvrable in town. A comfortable ride, it does, however, feel somewhat firm over more jagged road imperfections.

Sporting flavours

Distinctly sporty yet up-market in its interior flavours with its thick steering wheel, three round centre vents and jutting dashboard, the A200 delivers a well-adjustable, comfortable and supportive driving position with good front visibility, while rear visibility is aided by its reversing sensors, camera and parking assistance system. But with its low roofline and compact wheelbase, the A-Class Saloon’s rear space is adequate for most, but not spacious for larger or taller occupants. Otherwise decent boot space is, meanwhile, hampered by an intrusive optional above floor strap-down spare tyre.

Well-equipped, the A200 Saloon features numerous convenience, safety and infotainment systems, including a wide all-digital instrument display and infotainment screen combo. Highly configurable and with numerous instrumentation set-ups, the menus can take a few minutes to get used to. Likewise, one soon adapts to the sensitive centre console and steering wheel touchpad controls, as unintentional brushes can re-configure preferred screen set-ups. Seemingly well-made and using good materials the A200’s sportier side was highlighted with its dark mixed leather and fabric upholstery, while a rear armrest was a welcome convenience.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.3-litre, turbocharged, transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 72.2 x 81.4mm

Compression ratio: 10.6:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed dual-clutch automated, front-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 161 (163) [120] @5,500rpm

Specific power: 120.8BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 115.8BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 184 (250) @1,620-4,000rpm

Specific torque: 187.7Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 179.8Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 8.1-seconds

Top speed: 230km/h

Fuel consumption, combined: 5.2-5.5-litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 119-127g/km

Fuel capacity: 43-litres

Length: 4,549mm

Width: 1,796mm

Height: 1,446mm

Wheelbase: 2,729mm

Track, F/R: 1,567/1,547mm

Overhangs, F/R: 914/906mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.22

Headroom, F/R: 1,024/944mm

Legroom, F/R: 1,062/861mm

Shoulder width, F/R: 1,400/1,372mm

Elbow room, F/R: 1,457/1,446mm

Luggage volume (without spare tyre): 420-litres

Kerb weight: 1,390kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning Circle: 11-metres

Suspension, F/R: MaxPherson struts/torsion beam

Brakes: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres: 205/55R17

The floral impulse of the Indian Coral Jasmine to bloom only at night, spreading sweet fragrances, arouses my curiosity.

Did you k now? This rare plant is popularly known as Parijat and Shefali in India and Yasmineh in Arabic. The name originates from the Persian word “Yasmin”, meaning the gift from God.

Flower facts

A native of South East Asia, Coral Jasmine comes in the form of a perennial shrub or a small tree that grows up to 10 metres tall in most tropical climatic regions of Asia. It blooms from August to December and is also known as the Night Queen. This tree reminds me of Amman where the Night Queen adorned the entrance to our home and also created an ornamental landscape to my home in North America. Unlike the tropics, they behave a little differently in North America as they don’t shed after blooming but remain in bloom for ten days then whither away in September, marking the end of summer.

Clinical complexity

You can use all parts of this plant for different purposes. The leaves and the flowers are often boiled with rice and consumed to gain resistance and boost immunity against seasonal ailments. It has proven to be effective against body pain, inflammation, seasonal flu-like malaria and the common cold. Since the leaves are bitter, they are boiled with a pinch of sugar. Extracts of the flowers, leaves and seeds are popularly used in Indian medicine for essential oils in treating arthritis and inflammation. The tree is known to have antioxidant properties and reduces radical damage due to ageing. Its calming effect works as a stress reliever and helps in the treatment of vertigo.

Cosmetic curiosity

The flowers are plucked from the tree during the night to make essential oils. A few drops of concentrated jasmine oil is diluted with other oils and used externally for aromatherapy. It also makes the best homemade facial mask for flawless glowing skin. A powerful antioxidant, it helps regenerate and rejuvenate the skin by clearing blemishes and tightening the skin pores reducing oiliness. It further helps in treating acne, blackheads as well as pimples.

Culinary contribution

In India, since it has myriad health benefits, coral Jasmine is used for creating culinary delicacies. The flowers are usually picked from the ground and washed in bulk during the blooming season then sun-dried. I often add them to my fish curries and traditional side dishes where I boil them with rice and season them with onions and chillies.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine.

Swing Time

Zadie Smith

UK: Penguin/Random House, 2017

Pp. 453

Despite covering a lot of ground geographically and thematically, British author Zadie Smith’s “Swing Time” is from start to finish the story of a deep, but contentious friendship between two brown-skinned girls growing up in 1980s-90s London. They meet at age seven, when their mothers enrol them in dancing school. As hinted by the book title — the name of a 1936 film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, both are obsessed with music and dance. It is the driving force in their friendship and in the novel, but their talents are not equal; nor are their backgrounds, despite living in adjoining, dilapidated housing estates. Throughout the novel, the question is posed as to who will survive, much less succeed, in the perilous world of alienation, state neglect, poor schools, drugs, violence and abandonment.

Tracey, the more outgoing of the two, is a natural show-woman; encouraged by her mother, she trains incessantly to make dancing her career. The second girl may be a more talented singer and her appreciation of music is broader, but her inclinations are not developed as she follows her friend’s lead and later the lead of others. It is she that narrates the novel, but the reader never knows her name. Paradoxically, her anonymity generates an intimacy that makes the reader identify more closely with her. But it also signifies a truth that she herself only realises much later: “I had always tried to attach myself to the light of other people... I had never had any light of my own. I experienced myself as a kind of shadow.” (p. 4)

Yet, as narrator, she has a strong, independent voice dissecting childhood experiences and relations with her parents frankly and vividly. She is a perceptive observer of the racial, class and gender factors at play in human behaviour, and thus best qualified to tell the story that the author wants to tell. She and Tracey share these factors, but with important differences. Both are mixed race: Tracey’s father is originally Jamaican, a petty criminal who is mainly absent, while her mother is white and has little education. In the narrator’s family, the situation is reversed: Her father is white and easy-going, a family man who is content with his job in the postal service, while her mother is Jamaican-born and highly ambitious for herself, her daughter, the black community in the UK, and black people generally. A non-stop reader, she puts herself through school and obtains a university degree in sociology and politics, engages in community organising, and after years of standing up for the underdog, is elected to parliament. To the narrator, however, she is an unsatisfactory parent unwilling to indulge her daughter’s taste in music, stylish clothing, and regular meals. Yet, in her own way, via watching old-fashioned musicals, the narrator discovers some truth in her mother’s feminist and black-history orientation, discovering talented black women who were seldom cast as more than servants. 

The narrator is jealous when Tracey goes to stage-school, heading straight for performance, but her own enrolment in a comprehensive school paves her way to a university education with a degree in media. This lands her a job as personal assistant to international superstar Aimee, a dynamic but self-centred woman who demands total loyalty from her staff. Entering the world of the super-rich for the first time, the narrator’s life becomes one of incessant travel, facilitating Aimee’s performances. Soon she is as much at home in New York as in London. When Aimee, who thinks one can change the world with sheer will power and sufficient funds, decides to open a girl’s school in The Gambia, the narrator travels there repeatedly, and questions of poverty and equality, posed in the narrator’s life in Britain, take on global dimensions. Many misconceptions about development aid are exposed, and a number of racial myths explode as the narrator is not considered black by Africans, but lumped together with the rest of Aimee’s staff as “the Americans”, though only one of them was born in the US. On the other hand, the narrator finds the unexpected in the midst of poverty: Watching how people respond to a traditional dance, she thinks: “here is the joy I’ve been looking for all my life”. (p. 165)

Living in the shadow of three strong women, the narrator chronicles her attempts to carve out her own space amidst the issues of loyalty and betrayal posed by each of these relationships; she has to make hard choices. 

“Swing Time” is a dazzling, post-colonial novel, highlighting the changes experienced by successive generations of immigrants and the persistent gap between the ex-colonial powers and former colonies. Spanning three decades, it also traces how media has changed personal relationships, from the television and videos watched by the two little girls to the fax, e-mail, digital, cell phones and the internet. Most of all, it chronicles the importance of music in creating happiness.

Smith’s writing is superb throughout. Every scene is vividly painted with details that are never superfluous but add layer-upon-layer to one’s understanding of the characters, their situations and the power relations among them. There are few polemics but rather a steadily-building, underground current bearing witness to just how absurd racism is, in addition to being cruel and unjust. “Swing Time” is available at Readers Bookshop.

FRANKFURT AM MAIN — Progress on a COVID-19 vaccine has propelled the modest husband-and-wife team behind German firm BioNTech into the global limelight, with attention inevitably focussing on their background as the children of Turkish immigrants.

Ugur Sahin and his wife Ozlem Tureci founded BioNTech in the western German city of Mainz in 2008, and together with US giant Pfizer are developing the leading candidate in the worldwide chase for a vaccine.

The announcement on Monday that their vaccine was more than 90 per cent effective in trials led news bulletins around the world and sent stock markets and hopes soaring.

BioNTech is now worth $25.8 billion (21.8 billion euros), more than Germany’s largest lender Deutsche Bank.

Sahin, the chief executive, came to the country when he was four years old and his father got a job at a Ford plant in Cologne as a member of the “Gastarbeiter” (guest worker) generation of migrant workers, many of whom ended up staying in Germany.

Tureci, BioNTech’s chief medical officer, is the daughter of a Turkish doctor who emigrated from Istanbul.

Described as hard-working and passionate, the pair appear to be wary of superlatives or the temptation to set up their journey as a model of successful integration.

“I am not sure I really want that,” Sahin told British newspaper The Guardian.

“As a society we have to ask ourselves how we can give everyone a chance to contribute to society. I am an accidental example of someone with a migration background. I could have equally been German or Spanish.”

‘Simply authentic’

Although the general public has only now discovered them, the two have long been known in the scientific community as leading figures in cancer research, with the self-declared goal of “revolutionising” cancer medicine.

Specialising in molecular medicine and immunology, Sahin, 55, first trained at the University of Cologne and then at Saarland University Hospital, where he crossed paths with medical student Tureci.

They married in 2002, even returning to the lab on the day of their wedding, and have a daughter.

Tureci has described her childhood as closely linked to medicine. “My father’s practice was in the family home,” she once told a German science website, adding that she “could not imagine” any other job than that of a doctor.

Neither saw themselves managing a company, but their lines of research seemed “too daring” for the pharmaceutical industry to take notice, she told the Tagesspiegel daily.

They founded their first biotechnology company, Ganymed, in 2001, selling it in 2016, while their second, BioNTech, developed a new generation of individual therapies for cancer patients — based on the same technology now used in their coronavirus vaccine.

With some 1,500 employees today, it is supported by major private investors.

Two of them, Thomas Struengmann and Michael Motschmann, described the couple this week as “simply authentic people, with great integrity, hardworking and exceptionally intelligent”.

At BioNTech’s headquarters in Mainz, on a street with the auspicious name “An der Goldgrube” (At the Goldmine), scientists work on a novel technology known as messenger RNA, which involves injecting strands of genes into the body that dictate to cells the defence mechanism to be manufactured against a disease.

BioNTech teams have since January put their work on cancer on hold, focussing their efforts on the fight against COVID-19, calling it project “Speed of Light”.

No vaccine based on this technology has yet been brought to market.

Having identified promising vaccine blueprints, the company formed a partnership in March with American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

With their vaccine breakthrough, Sahin and Tureci have made it into the top 100 of Germany’s richest people.

But when the couple learned of the encouraging results of their late-stage vaccine trial, they told The Guardian of their relief and how they “celebrated a little”, before settling down to “cups of tea”.

How much of robots have we become?

Never has the combination of computer and Internet technologies been so much needed as now. Over the past eight months the trend towards more “everything online and remotely” has increased significantly, probably exponentially.

And yet, until this very point in time, the human factor seems impossible to erase or to avoid completely. One way or another, in countless situations, only a direct interaction between human beings, in person or over the phone, bypassing any automated process, can help solve a problem or bring the answer that the machines and the network cannot bring.

One of the most striking examples is when dealing with the biggest online shopping system of them all, Amazon.com. If most the time – about 99.9 per cent of the time – their system works flawlessly, there are exceptional cases when we need to speak to a client service representative on the phone, to a real person, to address a specific issue. Despite the gigantic size of the organisation, it is not only possible but also easy. This human plan B has tremendously added to Amazon’s credibility and contributed to its unprecedented success.

On a level that is technically higher and more complex than online shopping, Amazon through one of its subsidiaries, provides very advanced professional IT services, cloud services called AWS (Amazon Web Services). Here too, human interaction is possible, when everything else fails. The cloud is never entirely virtual!

From another viewpoint, purely human, manual work has also proven that it is far from being a thing of the past, in the US presidential elections that took place a few days ago. Many thought that the final results of the polls would be known in a matter of few hours, given the advanced level of networking and automation in the country. It took about a week for that, because counting the votes was carried out manually in countless places and cases, regardless of why it was done that way: security, tradition, available resources or other.

Some ten of fifteen years ago there was still a minority that was clinging to the moderately automated system, that didn’t trust the cloud and that felt much more comfortable dealing with tangible material, with people instead of systems, virtual networks and the like. This dinosaurian attitude of the old guard stemmed not only from rational belief, but because they were not able to fully understand and make good use of the advanced technological functionalities. This minority has practically disappeared today.

There are just two reasons left today to revert to and to justify human intervention. The first is when the system fails, does not have a provision to address a given situation, or provide an answer automatically. The second is to train the population on properly and efficiently using newly introduced applications and features.

Scholars may argue that there may be a third reason, which is just to keep our sanity – but this is another story.

PARIS — Even if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, Earth will warm for centuries to come and oceans will rise by metres, according to a controversial modelling study published Thursday.

Natural drivers of global warming — more heat-trapping clouds, thawing permafrost, and shrinking sea ice — already set in motion by carbon pollution will take on their own momentum, researchers from Norway reported in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

"According to our models, humanity is beyond the point-of-no-return when it comes to halting the melting of permafrost using greenhouse gas cuts as the single tool," lead author Jorgen Randers, a professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, told AFP.

"If we want to stop this melting process we must do something in addition — for example, suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it underground, and make Earth's surface brighter."

Using a stripped-down climate model, Randers and colleague Ulrich Goluke projected changes out to the year 2500 under two scenarios: the instant cessation of emissions, and the gradual reduction of planet warming gases to zero by 2100.

In an imaginary world where carbon pollution stops with a flip of the switch, the planet warms over the next 50 years to about 2.3 C above pre-industrial levels — roughly half-a-degree above the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement — and cools slightly after that.

Earth's surface today is 1.2C hotter than it was in the mid-19th century, when temperatures began to rise.

But starting in 2150, the model has the planet beginning to gradually warm again, with average temperatures climbing another degree over the following 350 years, and sea levels going up by at least three metres.

Under the second scenario, Earth heats up to levels that would tear at the fabric of civilisation far more quickly, but ends up at roughly the same point by 2500.

'Tipping points'

The core finding — contested by leading climate scientists — is that several thresholds, or "tipping points", in Earth's climate system have already been crossed, triggering a self-perpetuating process of warming, as has happened millions of years in the past.

One of these drivers is the rapid retreat of sea ice in the Arctic.

Since the late 20th century, millions of square kilometres of snow and ice — which reflects about 80 per cent of the Sun's radiative force back into space — have been replaced in summer by open ocean, which absorbs the same percentage instead.

Another source is the thawing of permafrost, which holds twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere. The third is increasing amounts of water vapour, which also has a warming effect.

Reactions from half-a-dozen leading climate scientists to the study — which the authors acknowledge is schematic — varied sharply, with some saying the findings merit follow-up research, and others rejecting it out of hand.

"The model used here is ... not shown to be a credible representation of the real climate system," said Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the University of Exeter.

"In fact, it is directly contradicted by more established and extensively evaluated climate models."

Mark Maslin, a professor of climatology at University College London, also pointed to shortcomings in the model, known as ESCIMO, describing the study as a "thought experiment."

"What the study does draw attention to is that reducing global carbon emissions to zero by 2050" — a goal championed by the UN and embraced by a growing number of countries — "is just the start of our actions to deal with climate change".

Even the more sophisticated models used in the projections of the UN's scientific advisory body, the IPCC, show that the Paris climate pact temperature goals cannot be reached unless massive amounts of CO2 are removed from the atmosphere.

One way to do that is planting billions of trees. Experimental technologies have shown that sucking CO2 out of the air can be done mechanically, but so far not at the scale required.

TOKYO — At a Tokyo clinic, a woman in a white coat carefully records the particulars of the newest patient: a sheep-shaped stuffed toy.

The Natsumi Clinic specialises in restoring much-loved teddies and other cuddly toys to their original glory, delighting deeply attached owners like Yui Kato, who brought in the sheep, Yuki-chan.

“I thought I had no choice but to throw her away as she’s absolutely worn out, but then I heard there’s a hospital that deals with this sort of thing,” the 24-year-old told AFP.

“Maybe she won’t be exactly how she once was, but I came here hoping to see her healthy again.”

The clinic offers treatments ranging from “eye surgery” and hair transplants to stitching up injuries, explained founder Natsumi Hakozaki.

She began treating stuffed toys four years ago in her hometown, northern Sendai city, after working at a clothes alteration shop where customers often asked if she could repair their treasured toys.

“Customers saw stuffed toys as family members, partners or best friends, not mere objects. After their stuffed toys were fixed, many of them hugged [the toys], or burst into tears,” Hakozaki said.

The experience inspired her to open a shop offering specialised treatment, and every animal is prescribed its own course.

For Yuki-chan the sheep, Hakozaki first removed the stuffing then bathed her with a special soap, which she described as a “spa” treatment.

The clinic carefully documents each stage of the treatment, posting images online so owners can keep tabs.

Hakozaki is conscious of how attached people can become to their stuffed animals, and considers it key to treat the toys as if they were alive.

Transferring a ‘soul’

“It looks like she was very tired. Please relax and enjoy!” the clinic captioned a photo of Yuki-chan soaking in a foamy bath.

Yuki-chan was in such bad shape that she needed to be virtually reconstituted from scratch. The bath returned her tattered skin to its original shape, allowing Hakozaki to use it to pattern new fabric.

Once sewn together, the fabric was filled with fresh stuffing, effectively creating an entirely new Yuki-chan, except for the “heart” — fashioned from pink cloth and filled with a bit of original stuffing.

Hakozaki sees it as a way of transferring the toy’s “soul” into the new body.

The 34-year-old moved her business to Tokyo two years ago, and now repairs 100 stuffed toys a month with five other “doctors”.

Clients have sent toys from Hong Kong, Taiwan, France and Britain for treatment, and customers have had to wait up to a year for a spot.

Repairs take about 10 days, and the clinic’s website features pictures of recovered “patients” photographed together at “a party to celebrate being discharged”.

There is only one other “clinic” for repairing stuffed toys in Japan, in Osaka, and the demand comes despite prices that range from 10,000 to 500,000 yen ($95-$4,800) depending on the injuries.

Yuki-chan’s makeover cost Kato 100,000 yen, but for her it was money well spent.

“My memories [with her] are more important than money, so I don’t regret it,” she said, recalling the “tough times” the stuffed sheep helped her get through.

“I talked to her when I went to sleep to sort out my feelings and I used to cry in front of her,” she said.

‘Beyond just a thing’

She said she cried again, but this time tears of joy, when she saw photos of Yuki-chan’s transformation, and was delighted when she came to pick up her old friend.

“I’m genuinely surprised!... She’s back to like she was when I got her for the first time,” she said.

“She has a ‘heart’ of stuffing inside, so she has a new look but a part of the memory is still in her,” Kato added.

“I’m so happy I can keep the memories with me.”

Other clients also express deep emotional attachments to their stuffed animals, including Kota Sano, who describes his 40-year-old sea otter toy “Racchan” as “an indispensable family member”.

“She saved me when I was under pressure at work... she forgives me and accepts me,” he told AFP, adding that his wife and son also adore the otter.

Sano admitted he sometimes feels embarrassed about his affection for the toy, but noted that traditional Japanese folklore says objects can acquire their own spirit.

They “can go beyond just being a thing and possess personality,” he said.

And Hakozaki understands the feelings owners have towards their toys.

“We don’t just replace a father because he got sick. It’s the same thing” for stuffed toys, she said, describing the attachment as something “universal”.

“There are people who consider their stuffed toys as family members not only in Japan but also around the world.”

PARIS — Coronavirus transmission from minks to humans does not necessarily mean the disease will become more dangerous, but scientists are on their guard in the wake of an astounding announcement from Denmark.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that the country will kill more than 15 million minks and that a variant of the SARS-Cov-2 virus that had been transmitted from the animals to 12 people could impact a vaccine’s effectiveness.

Global media reacted with shock, especially given the high level of fear already caused by the COVID-19 epidemic that has claimed more than 1.2 million lives in less than a year.

Specialists are not convinced however that the danger is much greater and are waiting for more evidence.

“I really wish that the trend of science by press release would stop,” commented Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York.

“There’s no reason why the genomic data couldn’t be shared, which would allow the scientific community to evaluate these claims,” she added on Twitter.

Viruses such as the one that emerged in China late last year mutate constantly and new variants are not necessarily worse than the previous ones.

So far, no study has shown newer SARS-Cov-2 variants to be more contagious or dangerous than their predecessors.

The contamination of minks is not new either, with breeders in several countries, including the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United States reporting cases.

A few cases of humans being infected by minks have also been reported.

Denmark has been specific in describing how the different strain of the virus jumped from mink to man.

“According to the information from Danish authorities, this virus is neither more pathogenic, nor more virulent,” specialist Gilles Salvat at the French health agency Anses told AFP.

There is concern however that a variant “emerges like a second virus and dominates the population,” he noted.

“Coming up with a vaccine for one strain is already complicated, and if we have to do it for two, four or six strains it is even more complicated,” the specialist noted.

He considered the decision to cull Danish mink to be a “precaution”.

‘Justifiable’

Francois Balloux, who teaches at University College London, agreed, telling AFP: “This measure is entirely justifiable from a health perspective to eliminate the transmission source of a serious virus.”

He nonetheless also felt that “evoking the risk that mink could generate a second pandemic seems excessive and counter-productive in the current fearful climate.”

Balloux noted that similar mutations exist within the population already and have not spread.

“We know this virus with the same mutations emerged on mink farms, was transmitted to humans and did not spread widely,” the professor said.

All the same, it was not “completely impossible” that the new strain “could spread and render vaccines less effective,” he acknowledged.

Meanwhile, “the true implication of the changes in the spike protein have not yet been evaluated by the international scientific community and are thus unclear,” remarked James Wood, head of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge.

“It is too early to say that the change will cause either vaccines or immunity to fail,” he told the Science Media Centre.

Cases have also been noted of contamination by the COVID-19 virus from cats, dogs and even lions and tigers at the New York zoo.

But at this point, “the risk of animals spreading COVID-19 to people is considered to be low,” according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dogs and cats are dead-ends from an epidemiologist’s point of view, Salvat explained, because “they can provisionally host the virus, but cannot multiply it enough to be contagious.”

French authorities have nonetheless urged Covid patients to “avoid all contact” with their pets, especially ferrets, which belong to the same family as minks.

Virologist Rasmussen expressed concern about the chances of the coronavirus being spread by wild cats.

“Cats are susceptible to infection and there are millions of feral cats in the US [and millions more globally]. If cats become an established reservoir, we may be stuck with SARS-CoV-2 for years to come,” she warned.