Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jennifer Mathers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Aberystwyth University

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is under intense pressure from the US to take his country to the polls as early as this spring. Donald Trump is demanding elections as a condition for American security guarantees for Ukraine against any future Russian invasion.

Zelensky has faced persistent calls from Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and at times from Trump as well, to hold an election. His term expired in 2024, but the country’s constitution forbids elections during wartime. So to schedule a poll will also mean a constitutional change to enable it.

But if the US president gets his way and elections are held later this year, whoever wins and becomes Ukraine’s next president will be faced with the task of managing a country at war and perhaps steering the nation towards an uncertain peace.

It is hard to predict who might stand for the presidency – under the current circumstances, no one is declaring their candidacy. But it’s reasonable to assume that Zelensky would put himself forward for a second term. If so, he cannot be expecting to coast to victory as he did in 2019 when he won more than 74% of the popular vote.

While Zelensky has been celebrated in the west as a hero for his wartime leadership, his popularity has been damaged by a series of corruption scandals. In November 2025, several government officials and business leaders with close connections to Zelensky – including the justice minister and a former prime minister – were accused of stealing US$100 million (£73 million) from Ukraine’s energy sector by Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies.

Just a few months earlier, in July, widespread protests erupted against a new law that would place those same anti-corruption agencies under the control of an official appointed by Zelensky. This move was widely seen as an attempt to enable the president to stop any inconvenient investigations in their tracks and shield his associates from prosecution.

Zelensky acted quickly to distance himself from both of these scandals. He reversed the controversial legislation in the summer and has called for the resignation of serving officials named in the energy corruption investigation. But these events have tarnished his reputation at home.

According to surveys conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, trust in Zelensky dropped from 74% in May 2025 to 59% in December. Although incumbents in other countries might look with envy at these figures, only 26% “completely” trust him and would like to see him continue as president. The rest indicated that they would prefer a change at the top of Ukraine’s political leadership. That said, a recent poll had his support at 30.9%, with only one other potential candidate within touching distance.

That potential candidate is Valerii Zaluzhnyi, whose is often described as a potential leader and whose support was measured at 27.7% in the poll mentioned above. Currently Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Zaluzhnyi owes his high profile to his former position as head of Ukraine’s armed forces. He served in that role from 2021 until Zelensky replaced him in February 2024.

The official reason Zelensky gave for the dismissal was the need for new ideas in the military, but there was a suspicion that Zaluzhnyi, widely regarded as a war hero for leading the resistance to Russia’s mass invasion, was becoming too popular. Indeed, a poll conducted in July 2025 found that 73% of Ukrainians said they trusted him, making him the country’s most trusted public figure. Zaluzhnyi has refused to be drawn on whether he might stand for the presidency, but there is widespread speculation that he is simply biding his time.

Another possible candidate whose reputation was built by his wartime leadership is Kyrylo Budanov. Recently appointed by Zelensky as his chief of staff, Budanov led Ukraine’s military intelligence since 2020 and is credited with its effective use of drones to strike targets deep into Russian territory as well as Russian-occupied Ukraine. Like Zaluzhnyi, Budanov has not indicated that he would stand for elected office. Unlike Zaluzhnyi, Budanov has not made a breakthrough in the polls.

Veteran political rivals

A few veterans of past presidential campaigns might throw their hats into the ring again, although neither is likely to be a front runner.

Petro Poroshenko was Ukraine’s president before Zelensky, serving from 2014 until 2019. Since 2021 he has been fighting charges of treason and, more recently, has been placed under sanction by Zelensky.

Charges against him focus on alleged pro-Russian political and economic interests, such as his connection with the now-banned Party of the Regions and his slowness to sell off his assets in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine. He denies any wrongdoing and has called the sanctions “politically motivated” and “unconstitutional”.

Yulia Tymoshenko was a leading figure in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. She is a former prime minister, leader of the “Fatherhood” political party and a populist politician who has a strong following among rural voters, especially older women.

But she has recently been charged with offering bribes to lawmakers in what has been reported as an attempt to undermine the ruling Servant of the People Party. She denies the charges. She is only polling in the single digits.

Problems with a wartime election

It is important to remember that Moscow demands fresh elections in Ukraine as a condition of any peace deal. It is unlikely that Russia expects a pro-Russian candidate to be successful and take the country in a more Russia-friendly direction. But the entire process of holding fair elections in Ukraine anytime soon is fraught with difficulties that would offer opportunities for Russia to exploit.

For example, the organisational challenge of creating accurate electoral registers that include the millions of displaced Ukrainians – many of them living abroad – would invite challenges to the fairness of the election and the legitimacy of the results.

The political divisions that inevitably come to the surface during election campaigns would provide ideal grounds for stirring up dissension and dissatisfaction – a well-established practice undertaken by the Russian security services – and thereby undermining the solidarity of Ukrainian society.

So regardless of who becomes Ukraine’s next president, if the election goes ahead in the coming months as Donald Trump is demanding, the winner in a broader sense may be Russia.

Jennifer Mathers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Ukraine: if elections are held this spring, who might be the next president? – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-if-elections-are-held-this-spring-who-might-be-the-next-president-275702

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Katie Pruszynski, PhD Candidate, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield

The death of Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 was never going to be the end of his menacing presence in the American political orbit. More than six years later, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has now released millions of the “Epstein files” to a hungry and impatient audience.

But the DoJ’s conduct has set new questions in motion, this time about its own agenda in protecting powerful figures, including – according to his political opponents – the US president, Donald Trump. The unfolding saga reveals unsettling truths about elite power networks and our own ability to critically assess information in an era of extreme overload.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act compelled the DoJ to release the files to the fullest extent possible. The content is harrowing and shocking. But there are also a number of troubling implications in the DoJ’s actions in the build up to, and since, the release of the files, as well as in the manner in which sensitive information was handled.

Despite a statutory deadline of December 19 2025, the DoJ only began drip-feeding documents on the deadline day itself, drawing widespread criticism. And while an initial DoJ report identified 6 million “responsive” documents, the deputy attorney-general, Todd Blanche, claimed on January 30 that the cumulative release of 3.5 million documents met all legal obligations. This leaves 2.5 million documents effectively missing.

There were, predictably, accusations of a cover up. At the very least, in stalling the release of the files and then turning a trickle into a flood, the DoJ could reasonably be accused of malicious compliance; trying to bury damaging needles in mountainous haystacks.

Beyond the missing files, congressional oversight has been throttled. Secure “reading rooms” were established where sitting members, without staff, were able to review unredacted pages taking only hand-written notes. Quite the task with 3.5 million documents.

Most disturbingly, the DoJ’s redaction process appeared inverted. According to Democrat lawmaker, Ro Khanna, who has scrutinised unredacted versions of the files, high-profile names were shielded, yet the full names and contact details of 43 victims were published alongside graphic photographs of young women and potentially minors.

The DoJ acknowledged these “mistakes”, but in combination with the delayed release and the missing files, alarm bells are ringing that this, too, forms part of a more sinister strategy to divert attention away from the content of the files themselves through chaos.

Gambling on the attention economy

The DoJ appears to be making two significant gambles on the attention economy of the digital age. The first relies on information and crisis exhaustion. Releasing a massive data dump creates a triage and narrative challenge that few journalists or activists can meet.

This is not necessarily new: the practice, known in the US as “backing up the truck”, which involved the government when asked to divulge sensitive public documents, releasing a truckload of documents in which they hid the sensitive ones, is a time-honoured and devious tactic well known to journalists.

In a world where attention is a commodity, the Trump administration appears to be betting that the public simply lacks the bandwidth to process the Epstein revelations amid a sea of manufactured and organic distractions.

Consider the current pulls on even a mildly engaged citizen in the US. Since the start of the year, ICE and other immigration agencies have escalated their activities in US cities, most notably in Minnesota where they have killed two Americans without, critics say, probable cause or likely sanction.

The US captured the leader of Venezuela in a legally dubious military raid, and implied other Latin American leaders could face the same demise. Trump ramped up his threats to annex Greenland.

Meanwhile millions of Americans have seen their health insurance premiums soar as a result of Republicans declining to extend healthcare subsidies.

It is little wonder that there have been observations in US media outlets that the public response to the Epstein revelations has seemed muted in comparison to audiences in the UK and elsewhere. With “perma-crisis” as the baseline, the administration appears to be betting that public focus will be dragged away by the next trending issue.

The partisan shield

Americans are, in fact, responding to the revelations. And while there has been an unusually bipartisan horror at the content of the files, this issue, as with so many others, has served to entrench divisions and resentment towards the partisan “other”.

This is at the heart of the administration’s second gamble. Research demonstrates that increasingly, our partisan identity forms a crucial part of our whole social identity. In effect, who we support defines a large part of how we see ourselves in the world. So strong is the connection, that challenges to our partisan beliefs feel like an existential threat to who we are.

Confronted with such a threat, we are more likely to double down on those beliefs, even in the face of contradictory evidence. So much so, that in extreme cases, people are able to see any contrary views as evidence of a conspiracy against them, their peers and their leaders. Trump has long understood this hold he has over his base.

The Maga community produced the loudest calls for the Epstein files, believing they would expose a “deep state” paedophile ring involving the Clintons and Hollywood elites. Indeed, Bill Clinton is in the files, mentioned multiple times, although he denies any wrongdoing and there has been nothing published to suggest he has been involved in any.

But to maintain their cognitive consistency, supporters must convince themselves that while the files condemn their enemies, the more than 30,000 references to Donald Trump are part of a broad conspiracy to defenestrate their leader.

Looming on the horizon to focus minds are the 2026 midterm elections in November. Republicans and the Trump White House may be gambling once more on the attention economy having long since consigned Epstein to history. Democrats will have to fight to maintain focus on Trump’s behaviour both in the files and about the files while tackling the barrage of injustices that, in reality, feel much more relevant to Americans in their day-to-day lives.

The other names in the files, those of the victims, remain much further away from any kind of justice.

Katie Pruszynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Epstein files: why the Trump administration is taking a big gamble by releasing millions of documents – https://theconversation.com/epstein-files-why-the-trump-administration-is-taking-a-big-gamble-by-releasing-millions-of-documents-275827

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Harold Lovell, Senior Lecturer, Glaciology, University of Portsmouth

It’s difficult to forget standing in front of a glacier that is advancing towards you, towering ice pillars constantly cracking as they inch forward. The motion is too slow to see in real time, but obvious from one day to the next.

One of us (Harold) experienced this during fieldwork in 2012 at Nathorstbreen on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, which was moving forwards more than 10 metres per day.

Encounters like this are rare. Most of the world’s glaciers are retreating rapidly as the climate warms, and thousands are likely to disappear altogether within the next few decades.

However, a small fraction of glaciers do the opposite, and repeatedly speed up and advance for months or years after a long period of stagnation and retreat. This is known as glacier surging, and it has long puzzled scientists.

It might be tempting to view advancing ice as an antidote to the gloomy picture of disappearing glaciers, but the polar opposite is true. Surges can accelerate ice loss, make glaciers more vulnerable to climate change, and create serious hazards for people living downstream of them.

We have just published a global study of over 3,000 surging glaciers to find out what’s causing them to move like this. Our work also summarises, for the first time, the hazards caused by these glaciers, and how surging is being affected by climate change.

Why some glaciers surge

During surges, glaciers accelerate from a slow crawl to tens of metres per day – sometimes within weeks. The fastest phase, when ice can flow at over 60 metres a day, typically lasts a year or more – although some glaciers have surged for up to 20 years. The return to low speeds and even stagnation can happen abruptly over days, or over several years.

Nathorstbreen dramatically advanced more than 15 kilometres in roughly a decade during its surge, which began in 2008 – transforming the entire landscape in a matter of years.

The onset of surging is thought to be controlled by changes beneath the glacier. In surge-type glaciers, water generated by melting ice does not immediately drain away, but gathers at the bottom of the glacier. This reduces friction between ice and the ground, making it easier for ice to slide faster.

When that water eventually drains, the glacier slows again. Some glaciers experience repeated surges separated by years or decades of low ice flow – but the exact timing of surges is hard to predict.

Global hotspots of surging ice

Our study shows that at least 3,000 glaciers have surged at some point. That’s only about 1% of all glaciers in the world, but they tend to be large, so represent about 16% of the global glacier area.

Notably, they are found in dense geographical groupings across the Arctic, the Himalayas and other high mountains in Asia, and the Andes – but are largely absent elsewhere. This is primarily controlled by the climate: surges do not generally happen where conditions are currently too warm, such as in the European Alps or mainland Scandinavia, or too cold and dry, such as Antarctica.

Other factors such as size and underlying geology are also important for determining which glaciers surge in a region and which do not.

Some of the hotspots are found in populated regions, where surging glaciers can become hazards. The advancing ice can overrun infrastructure and farmland, and block rivers to form dangerous lakes that can release devastating floods when the ice breaks. An unstable lake formed by a surge of Shisper Glacier in the Karakoram mountain range drained multiple times from 2019 to 2022, causing extensive damage to the Karakoram Highway, a key connection between Pakistan and China.

Fast-moving ice can cause deep cracks (crevasses) to form, affecting travel in regions such as Svalbard where glaciers provide highways between isolated human settlements. It also disrupts tourism and recreation activities, such as where climbers use glaciers to approach peaks. When glaciers surge into the sea, they release numerous icebergs in a short space of time that could present a risk to shipping and tourism.

Surging is changing as the climate warms

Climate warming is already reshaping how and when glaciers surge. In some regions, surges are becoming more frequent; in others, they are declining as glaciers thin and lose the mass needed to build towards a surge. Heavy rainfall, intense melt periods or other extreme weather have also been shown to trigger earlier-than-expected surges, and these factors may become more important in a warming climate.

Together, this paints a picture of the increasing unpredictability of glacier surges. Some regions might experience less surging as the world warms, while others might see an increase. It is feasible that glaciers that have never surged before may begin to, including in areas where there are no records of past surges, such as the fast-warming Antarctic peninsula.

Surging glaciers remind us that ice does not always respond to warming in simple and predictable ways. Understanding these exceptions, and managing the hazards they create, is critical in a rapidly changing world.

Harold Lovell receives funding from NERC.

Chris Stokes receives funding from the NERC.

– ref. Some glaciers can suddenly surge forward – with dangerous consequences – https://theconversation.com/some-glaciers-can-suddenly-surge-forward-with-dangerous-consequences-273976

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ian Williams, Professor of Applied Environmental Science, University of Southampton

I grew up on the beaches of Pembrokeshire in south-west Wales. Visits to Tenby were my family’s summer ritual: sand between our toes, paddling in rockpools, strawberry syrup on ice cream.

But 30 years ago, I vividly remember walking along Tenby’s North Beach with my mother and grandmother. No crowds. No laughter. Just the hush of waves sliding over dark, tar‑smudged sand. The holiday postcards had gone grey.

At about 8pm on February 15 1996, the Sea Empress oil tanker missed her tug escort into port by minutes. The ship veered inside the mouth of Milford Haven and struck rocks near St Ann’s Head.

Over the next stormy week, it grounded and re‑grounded many times, creating more damage to the hull each time. About 72,000 tonnes of North Sea crude oil were spilled. This was Britain’s worst coastal oil disaster in a generation.

The fightback was messy. Weather worsened. Control systems to manage the spill were strained. Nine separate releases of oil stained the sea as wind and tide shoved a wounded tanker around the edges of the Pembrokeshire Coast national park.

Aircraft spread dispersants to try to break up the oil spill. Rough seas helped break oil into smaller droplets. This kept oil suspended in the water (not just floating on the surface), which can increase exposure and toxicity for sea and plant life, even as the visible surface layer declined.

At the same time, because the spilled oil contained a lot of relatively volatile petrol components and the weather was windy and the sea choppy, an estimated 35-45% evaporated in the first two days.

In all, 11,000-16,000 tonnes of water-in-oil emulsion are estimated to have reached the shore – far less than the 72,000-120,000 tonnes of emulsion that could have beached. But even so, more than 120 miles (190km) of coastline were oiled. Birds, shellfish, marine and coastal habitats and the local tourism industry all took a hammering.

The UK government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch found the immediate cause was pilot error – compounded by weak training, poor use of leading marks to help the tanker’s navigation, and no agreed master–pilot plan.

Salvage overseen by the Marine Pollution Control Unit (part of the UK Coastguard Agency) unfolded amid a stormy week. Muddled control was an issue alongside insufficient tug power and limited expert knowledge of the tidal streams. When big ships are in trouble, authority must be clear and tugs must be strong.

What’s changed since the disaster?

A lot has improved since the Sea Empress disaster.

The line of command is now much more direct. The UK created a single, empowered decision-maker – the secretary of state’s representative – to cut through competing interests in a major maritime emergency. The role dates from 1999 and exists because of lessons from the Sea Empress.

There’s also a clearer response plan in place. The national contingency plan for marine pollution incidents sets out who does what from the first call to the last waste bag. It links government, ports, regulators and science advisers, and outlines how to quickly set up a joint response centre for a coordinated approach to complex incidents.

Prevention of oil spills is high on the agenda. The UK government has identified marine environmental high-risk areas, including Pembrokeshire, to warn where a mistake can become a catastrophe.

Ships have also evolved to reduce the risk of big spills like this happening again. After the 1990s, single‑hull tankers were phased out under an amendment to international and national laws. New tankers had to be double‑hulled – designed with two completely watertight layers of steel – to reduce the risk of oil spills as the result of an accident.

By the mid‑2010s, single‑hull tankers were effectively gone from mainstream trade – a quiet revolution that prevented countless spills.

But not everything moved forward in a positive way.

In the 2000s, the UK stationed powerful government‑funded tugs around the coast. But in 2011, this fleet was axed on cost grounds, with a limited Scottish provision later restored and extended. A 2020 government‑commissioned study acknowledged that commercial towage hasn’t filled every gap, and that some sea areas are still at high risk of an oil disaster.

Risk has shifted, not vanished. Milford Haven is now one of Europe’s key liquefied natural gas (LNG) gateways. The South Hook and Dragon terminals, opened in 2009, can together meet up to a quarter of UK gas demand on peak days. That keeps homes warm and industry running. It also concentrates critical energy infrastructure in the same magnificent but exposed seascape that the Sea Empress scarred.

Lessons learnt

Three aspects of the handling of this disaster still guide my thinking as an environmental scientist today.

Hitting the oil hard at sea – and early on – can make a big difference. With the Sea Empress’s cargo of light crude in winter, rapid evaporation and dispersant‑aided dilution reduced shoreline oiling dramatically. It is often better to keep oil off beaches than have to scrape it off later – but you need surveillance, and then aircraft and trained people to be ready immediately.

Coasts need to be cleaned in a methodical way, for as long as it takes. Buried oil re‑emerges. Heavy machinery can drive residues deeper if you rush. Quiet persistence beats flashy photo ops.

The government’s Sea Empress environmental evaluation programme found that, while many habitats recovered faster than feared, some wildlife communities – from limpets to cushion stars – needed continued protection.

Prevention always costs less than compensation. Fines, funds and court cases don’t restore trust or nature quickly. Investing upfront – in trained pilots, rehearsed joint command, powerful tugs in the right places, modern kit and transparent science – is cheaper than rebuilding a reputation for clean beaches, safe seafood and thriving wildlife. That was true in 1996. It is truer now.

Thirty years on, I still see Tenby’s empty beaches when they should have been busy. I can still picture the sad faces of Pembrokeshire’s people. Wales has deep ties to the sea: trade, holidays, food, fun.

With better ships, clearer command and smarter plans, the risk of major oil spills can be minimised. But complacency is a fair‑weather friend. LNG cargoes, bigger vessels, tighter budgets and busier coasts all raise the stakes. Anything can happen after dark in a gale, when radios crackle, information is scarce, and decisions must be made quickly.

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Ian Williams receives funding from UK Research Councils, including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Impact Acceleration Account.

– ref. Three decades on from Wales’ biggest oil spill, how the Sea Empress disaster changed shipping – https://theconversation.com/three-decades-on-from-wales-biggest-oil-spill-how-the-sea-empress-disaster-changed-shipping-274882

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Benedict Carpenter van Barthold, Lecturer, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University

The forthcoming Tate Modern retrospective, Frida: The Making of an Icon, promises to go beyond the canvas to explore the construction of an artistic legend. At a recent breakfast press-briefing at KOL, a Mexican restaurant in London, co-curator Tobias Ostrander framed the exhibition as a study in how Frida Kahlo “constructed her own image and identity through her artwork and her appearance”.

The show, which arrives at Tate Modern this June following a debut at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), invites visitors to peel back the layers of a mononymic (known by just one name) myth on par with Elvis. But as Kahlo’s face becomes increasingly synonymous with consumer goods, a question remains: if we continue to “eat her up”, will any of her radical substance be left?

Since Kahlo’s death in 1954, the curators noted, the artist has come to serve the feminist and gay rights movements as a “symbol of radical criticality and self-invention”. Her refusal to adhere to traditional gender norms either in her presentation or sexual conduct, and her carefully crafted adoption of traditional Tehuana clothing (through her mother’s heritage) are just part of the appeal.

Her path-breaking adoption of a confessional mode in art, sharing her biographical and biological trauma as the central subject of her work, seems to presage the way identity is performed on social media today. If her purpose is to serve as a signifier of active agency, then Kahlo’s time has come.

As a public icon, Kahlo is a strangely open symbol. Some of the uses to which her image has been put are incompatible with what we know of her convictions. Despite being a lifelong (if intermittent) communist, Kahlo is a hugely ubiquitous brand. Alongside 80 of her works, the Tate retrospective will feature an unconventional display of licensed “merch”, from shoes and bags, to tequila and sanitary pads. The latter is bitterly ironic, given Kahlo’s own struggles with reproductive health.

The MFAH gift shop offers visitors the opportunity to “shop the collection”, with a pick of Kahlo planters, Kahlo “secular candles”, tote bags and more. The most memorable item is a strikingly weird “Two Fridas” fridge magnet. This transforms one of the artist’s most visceral paintings into a kitschy bit of kitchen bling. This is the challenge of the Kahlo legacy: the more ubiquitous her image becomes, the more its original and liberating meaning risks being flattened.

A tale of two kitchens

The exhibition’s parallel gastronomic tie-ins offer a useful way of considering the tension between the particular and the spectacular. Le Jardinier, the MFAH’s restaurant, makes a practice of creating “Culinary Canvas” desserts to honour the artists that the gallery shows. For Kahlo, they created In Bloom, “a vibrant reflection of the flowers in Mexican culture and Kahlo’s artwork … layered with guava cream, pineapple compote and hibiscus gelée.” It looks the picture.

In contrast, Tate Eat’s partnership with Santiago Lastra, the Michelin-starred founder of KOL, suggests a more grounded approach to cultural translation. Like Kahlo, Lastra is a proud Mexican, but rather than relying on imported ingredients, his method is to reinterpret from the British terroir.

The flavour of lime is recreated by the tart British berry sea buckthorn. Floral mango is reimagined through tempered butternut squash. This research-intensive translation liberates his cuisine from poor quality air-freighted produce, and, arguably, gets the British diner closer to a true Mexican experience.

I had the opportunity to enjoy Lastra’s food, after which I asked him about the common points between his cooking and Kahlo’s art. He replied that his involvement was about “showcasing Mexican culture in the UK – I think Frida, well, taking your roots somewhere else really tests them, putting them into a global city is where it is tested, and that’s how you know it’s good”. He went on to say that his mission is to share “the high quality of Mexico in terms of craft”.

Creative translation, like Kahlo’s adoption of indigenous clothing, or Lastra’s cooking, is the key to maintaining a creative legacy.

There are more than 100 artworks by artists who have been inspired by Kahlo coming to the Tate this June. Among them is Mary McCartney’s portrait of Tracy Emin as Frida Kahlo. Emin’s practice explores personal trauma and defiant survival, like Kahlo’s, and it is both fitting and disarming to be confronted by this combination of the two personae.

This is where Kahlo’s legacy finds its breath. Just as Lastra translates the tart snap of a Mexican lime into a British berry, artists like Emin translate Kahlo’s radical essence into a modern context. Without this kind of reimagination, an artist’s legacy loses its relevance. It becomes less magnetic and more of a magnet, stuck to a fridge.

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Benedict Carpenter van Barthold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How Tate Modern is serving up Frida Kahlo – from canvas to cuisine – https://theconversation.com/how-tate-modern-is-serving-up-frida-kahlo-from-canvas-to-cuisine-275345

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chloe Griffin, Research Fellow, School of Ocean & Earth Science, University of Southampton, University of Southampton

To an astronaut today, the Earth looks like a vibrant blue marble from space. But 700 million years ago, it would have looked like a blinding white snowball. This seems an unlikely cradle for life, yet new evidence suggests the frozen ocean featured restricted ice-free oases that provided a lifeline for our earliest complex ancestors.

During the Cryogenian period, from 720 million to 635 million years ago, the Earth was buried by massive ice sheets that marched from the poles to the tropics. Surface temperatures were as low as -50°C.

Because the bright, white surface of the planet reflected (rather than absorbed) the Sun’s energy – a phenomenon known as the albedo effect – the Earth remained locked in this extreme climate state, dubbed “Snowball Earth”, for tens of millions of years.

Scientists have long thought that when the ocean is sealed under a kilometre-thick shell of ice, the usual connection between the atmosphere and oceans would be prevented, muting climate variability – short-term variations in temperature, precipitation, or wind patterns.

However, our new research, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, challenges this status quo. By forensically decoding ancient rocks, we’ve discovered that the climate became briefly more dynamic than normally expected on Snowball Earth: it even oscillated to a rhythm strikingly like our own today.

Decoding climate cycles

The breakthrough came from the Garvellach Islands off the west coast of Scotland. These rocks formed during the Sturtian glaciation (720–660 million years ago), the first of two Snowball Earth events; the second of which is the Marinoan (650–635 million years ago). The Scottish islands contain a unique exquisitely preserved archive of Snowball Earth, locking in the secrets of this weird ancient world.

Specifically, laminated sedimentary rocks, or varves, act as natural data loggers. Picture a lake today: sediment settles quietly through the water column and on to the lake bed. Over time, these layers of sediment build up at the bottom of the lake. Thousands or millions of years later, geologists can use the physical, chemical and biological information trapped in the now ancient lake sediments to track how environmental conditions – including climatic ones – changed over time.

While modern sediments like this are easy to find, detailed climate archives from deep time are vanishingly rare – leaving us in the dark about how our planet’s climate behaved during Snowball Earth – until now.

We investigated a unique pile of rocks six metres thick, containing around 2,600 such varves, on the Garvellach Islands. What they revealed was, quite frankly, jaw-dropping. Microscopic and statistical analysis showed that these layers weren’t uniform, as you might expect locked in a Snowball state.

Instead, they conform to predictable cycles occurring over timescales of a few years to centuries. Perhaps yet more surprising is that almost the full suite of climate rhythms we know from today are preserved; from annual seasons to modern phenomena like El Niño (a climate pattern marked by warming of sea surface temperatures in parts of the Pacific Ocean), and longer-term cycles linked to solar activity lasting decades to centuries.

We certainly wouldn’t have expected El Niño cycles – a climate phenomenon that happens every two to seven years today – not least since this requires a seamless communication between the atmosphere and oceans, which is hard to envision on an ice-covered world.

A (partially) ice-free ocean?

The cycles in these ancient sediments do raise an intriguing possibility: could parts of the ocean have been ice-free during Snowball Earth? To get to the bottom of this, we used computer climate simulations to test different climate scenarios – put simply, seeing how changing the amount of ice on the oceans changes the patterns of surface temperature across the globe. We found that when the ocean was frozen completely solid, climate oscillations were largely suppressed.

Our simulations also show that vast areas of open water weren’t needed to restart these oscillations; if just a small fraction of the ocean surface was ice free – say, 15% or so – atmosphere ocean interactions could have resumed.

Comparing the simulated climate records to the patterns we decoded in the rock record, we think these sediments most likely document a patch of open water in the tropics, sometimes called an oasis. Such oases are used by many scientists to reconcile the survival of life with the near-global glaciation.

Interestingly, several other lines of evidence suggest a partially ice-free ocean at roughly the same time. So, could our rocks provide evidence for temporary warming during Snowball Earth? While they confirm temporary patches of warmth in the surface ocean, these rocks represent a snapshot of around 3,000 years in a multi-million-year glaciation – likely a fleeting “Slushball” state within an otherwise frozen world. Another recent study even argues that liquid water could persist at -15°C, but only if it were extremely salty.

Crucially though, our new analysis shows that the climate system has an inherent tendency to oscillate, even under the most extreme conditions. Could these oases in the sea have been life-rafts for the earliest complex animals?

Perhaps the biggest paradox of Snowball Earth is that this hostile deep-freeze triggered a biological revolution. Around this time, the diversity and abundance of multicellular life exploded – an event fuelled by phosphorus-rich dust ground up by the very glaciers that threatened to extinguish it. Scientists think this happened during the warm interval between the two Snowball glaciations.

But for life to thrive after the ice, it first had to survive the second (Marinoan) glaciation. Our study offers a viable solution to this puzzle: if tropical oceans weren’t entirely frozen over, but held pockets of open water, these oases would have acted as habitable refuges.

Rather than a planet frozen solid, our work paints a picture of an “oscillating” world where thin cracks in the ice or more expansive patches of open water formed habitats that allowed, even encouraged, the colonisation of life.

By maintaining biodiversity during Earth’s most extreme ice age, these oases ensured that when the ice finally melted away, life was ready to bloom into the complex ecosystems we see today – eventually leading to us.

Thomas Gernon receives funding from the WoodNext Foundation, a fund of a donor-advised fund program. He is affiliated with the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany.

Chloe Griffin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Snowball Earth wasn’t fully frozen: ice-free oases sheltered early life – https://theconversation.com/snowball-earth-wasnt-fully-frozen-ice-free-oases-sheltered-early-life-275240

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matt T. Clark, Visiting Research Fellow in Philosophy, University of Leeds

Just over 18 months ago, Keir Starmer said the “fight for trust is the battle that defines our age”. Now a scandal surrounding his former ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, could end his political career, precisely because of the damage it could cause to public trust.

At the heart of the story are documents released by the US government showing that Mandelson continued to be friends with Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction for sex offences. The prime minister insists Mandelson lied about the depth of his friendship with Epstein, though he has acknowledged he knew that it continued after Epstein’s conviction.

Some reporting suggests that there was a view in Downing Street that the “risk” of appointing Mandelson as ambassador to the US – his past political career, his then publicly known relationship with Epstein – was less important than the benefit to the national interest. As Peter Kyle, secretary of state for business and trade, put it in September (before further files were released): “Britain needed someone with outstanding and singular talents”.

This implies a specific view of how politicians should behave. When the national interest is at stake, actions are acceptable that would otherwise be morally questionable. Some politicians seem to think political effectiveness can outweigh standards. Philosophers sometimes agree that politics makes “dirty hands” unavoidable. Machiavelli thought politicians should learn not to be good. To achieve important political ends, it can be necessary to act badly.

It’s striking that Downing Street might have thought that this extended to Mandelson’s alleged relationship with Epstein – and that even this could be traded off against improving the UK’s relationship with the White House.

Similar views appear to have been taken when it came to Boris Johnson. He was a man of whom high standards were not expected in office, but who could effectively deliver important political outcomes (an electoral victory, Brexit).

But a large majority the public believes standards should take priority over delivery in politics – according to research from UCL’s Constitution Unit.

This suggests the public and those in politics lack a common understanding of how the latter should behave. And that poses a problem for rebuilding trust. Philosophical perspectives suggest a common understanding of this kind is central if we are to be able to trust well.

What is trust?

When we talk about trust in politics, we often pass over what trust is. And it is frustratingly difficult to set out a clear definition. Researchers significantly disagree about how to conceptualise trust.

Philosophical views vary. Trust may be a demand to be ethically considered by others or to have a deep-rooted psychological need for attachment to others satisfied. It could be to rely on others acting out of goodwill towards you or your desire to do something overlapping with someone’s desire to do something else.

By failing to define what trust is when we aim to restore it, we may act counterproductively or misdiagnose the problems we face.

A growing family of views in philosophy share a central insight. Trust requires more than just expectations about how a person will behave – it also relates to expectations about how a person ought to behave. Philosophers call these “normative expectations”.

I’m not trusting my partner to make dinner tonight simply because I think that he will. That’s just to rely on him. I trust him only if I think that there is a reason he ought to cook dinner tonight, and I think that he will act in line with this reason. Perhaps, I know he values fairness and that I cooked last night. Maybe he said he’d cook yesterday, and I know that I can take him at his word.

Philosophers debate exactly what these expectations are. Some think trust is concerned with commitments or obligations we should act in line with. Others think it’s that we expect a responsiveness to others counting on us.

All these views suggest a specific environment is required to allow us to trust well. We need some shared understanding of what we should do. If my partner recognises no reasons why he ought to cook me dinner tonight, he most likely won’t. If I come to trust him to do so and he doesn’t, then my normative expectation of him is likely to be wrong. My trust will be broken.

If that discrepancy about how we each think that we should behave grows, trust will be broken more often.

Misaligned politics

If we think about how politicians ought to behave, we can see how there might be a problem of trust.

The same Constitution Unit research shows that the public value standards like honesty and accountability. They think those in public life should behave in line with high standards.

Some politicians look at the same situation and see other reasons that suggest they ought to act differently. Where a relationship essential to Britain’s national security is at stake – or some other element of the national interest – then some politicians think they ought to overlook honesty and integrity.

This mismatch will lead to public trust being repeatedly broken.

Much discussion among politicians focuses on “delivery” as central to establishing trust. Actions will certainly matter. But more work should be done to ensure alignment between what the public expects of politicians and what they actually do. In a volatile world, a public conversation is needed on when – if ever – national need can outweigh these standards. Culture change in government and Downing Street will matter.

This is vital. Falling public trust in politics and distrust in politicians have been linked to voters switching off from politics and turning to protests or populist parties.

We need to align our expectations for high standards in public life. Then we need to require them of everyone, however useful they may be.

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Matt T. Clark is a member of the Labour Party.

– ref. Trust and ethics: the public and politicians no longer even agree on the basics – https://theconversation.com/trust-and-ethics-the-public-and-politicians-no-longer-even-agree-on-the-basics-275533