Tidal action on the underside of the Thwaites Glacier in the Antarctic will “inexorably” accelerate melting this century, according to new research by British and American scientists. The researchers warn the faster melting could destabilize the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, leading to its eventual collapse.
The massive glacier—which is roughly the size of Florida—is of particular interest to scientists because of the rapid speed at which it is changing and the impact its loss would have on sea levels (the reason for its “Doomsday” moniker). It also acts as an anchor holding back the West Antarctic ice sheet.
Yasin Demirci—Anadolu/Getty Images
More than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick in places, Thwaites has been likened to a cork in a bottle. Were it to collapse, sea levels would rise by 65 centimeters (26 inches). That’s already a significant amount, given oceans are currently rising 4.6 millimeters a year. But if it led to the eventual loss of the entire ice sheet, sea levels would rise 3.3 meters.
While some computer models suggest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement may mitigate the glacier’s retreat, the outlook for the glacier remains “grim,” according to a report by the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), a project that includes researchers from the British Antarctic Survey, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.K.’s Natural Environment Research Council.
Thwaites has been retreating for more than 80 years but that process has accelerated in the past 30, Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist who contributed to the research, said in a news release. “Our findings indicate it is set to retreat further and faster.” Other dynamics that aren’t currently incorporated into large-scale models could speed up its demise, the new research shows.
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Using a torpedo-shaped robot, scientists determined that the underside of Thwaites is insulated by a thin layer of cold water. However, in areas where the parts of the glacier lift off the seabed and the ice begins to float, tidal action is pumping warmer sea water, at high pressure, as far as 10 kilometers under the ice. The process is disrupting that insulating layer and will likely significantly speed up how fast the grounding zone—the area where the glacier sits on the seabed—retreats.
A similar process has been observed on glaciers in Greenland.
The group also flagged a worst-case scenario in which 100-meter-or-higher ice cliffs at the front of Thwaites are formed and then rapidly calve off icebergs, causing runaway glacial retreat that could raise sea levels by tens of centimeters in this century. However, the researchers said it’s too early to know if such scenarios are likely.
A key unanswered question is whether the loss of Thwaites Glacier is already irreversible. Heavy snowfalls, for example, regularly occur in the Antarctic and help replenish ice loss, Michelle Maclennan, a climate scientist with the University of Colorado at Boulder, explained during a news briefing. “The problem though is that we have this imbalance: There is more ice loss occurring than snowfall can compensate for,” she said.
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Increased moisture in the planet’s atmosphere, caused by global warming evaporating ocean waters, could result in more Antarctic snow—at least for a while. At a certain point, though, that’s expected to switch over to rain and surface melting on the ice, creating a situation where the glacier is melting from above and below. How fast that happens depends in part on nations’ progress to slow climate change.
Botswana is the model of democracy, good governance and pragmatic policy. In the words of The Economist Foreign Editor Robert Guest, the country has “been governed sensibly, cautiously, and more or less honestly” since its independence. In an age where democracies have been backsliding, Botswana has maintained its democratic reputation and continued to engage stakeholders down to the rural level of governance through its Kgotla system. This political culture is based on public meetings, community councils and traditional law courts. It continues to promote confidence in the country’s institutions and governance.
Though its strong principles have propelled the country through decades of political and economic success, Botwana’s responses to current struggles will determine whether this success will continue. The greatest challenges include the ruling party’s diminishing dominance and economic fault lines.
Botswana is the oldest continuous multiparty democracy in Africa. Its democratic roots trace back to the colonial era, when the British only exercised indirect rule over its Bechuanaland Protectorate. This allowed its indigenous institutions and leadership of its chiefs to flourish.
Seretse Khama, Botswana’s first president and pioneer of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), came to power at the country’s founding in 1966. While in office, he translated those effective tribal structures into Botswana’s post-independence governance. He prioritized the role of local leaders, upheld protections for citizens and secured freedom of expression for the media.
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After his death in 1980, the legacy of the BDP has carried on — the party has won every general election since. Ironically, this means that despite Botswana’s status as a thriving multiparty democracy, only one party has ruled throughout the country’s 57-year history. Today, this legacy of BDP dominance is challenged by Khama’s son, Ian.
The BDP’s dwindling dominance
Upon his death, Seretse Khama passed the office to Vice President Ketumile Masire, who reigned from 1980 to 1998. Festus Mogae, his vice president starting in 1992, took command from 1998 to 2008. Then Ian Khama took over for him from 2008 to 2018. As per the constitution, after serving his maximum two five-year terms, Khama relinquished power to his Vice President, Mokgweetsi Masisi. Against the backdrop of this legacy of succession within the BDP, support for opposition parties had steadily grown, with 45% of the popular vote in favor of all opposition parties combined, against a dwindling 53% for the BDP.
A falling out between President Masisi and Ian Khama further fueled this rise in opposition support. Khama claims that Masisi has “totally undermined democracy, human rights, [and] the rule of law” since becoming president. Khama resultantly departed from the BDP to form a new political party: the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF). The strife between these politicians came partly from Masisi’s refusal to appoint Ian’s brother, Tshekedi Khama, as vice president in 2019, among other requests that would give Ian a more active role in Botswana’s leadership.
This splintering of the BDP and Khama’s opposition against Masisi could challenge the party’s dominance ahead of October’s upcoming general elections. If the opposition parties are able to overcome factionalism and slightly increase their popular support, 2024 may mark the end of the 57-year legacy of the BDP’s rule in Botswana.
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An end to diamond dependency?
Post-independence, Botswana’s consistent economic growth was driven almost entirely by its most precious resource: diamonds. Alongside the partially state-owned De Beers Group, Botswana established Debswana, a joint venture that quickly grew to become one of the world’s largest diamond suppliers by value. Botswana’s rich diamond reserves fueled decades of growth — the best in the region. However, the slow pace of diversification has kept Botswana’s economy dependent on diamond revenue.
In the first quarter of 2024, Debswana’s diamond sales fell 48% due to decreased demand and competition from lab-grown diamonds. This came with major consequences including rising unemployment and economic uncertainty. This uncertainty has only been exacerbated by the BHP mining group’s recent takeover attempt of Anglo American, the majority shareholder of De Beers. This triggered a hasty attempt by Anglo American to sell its majority stake in De Beers. The groups held many negotiations entailing complex restructuring that would directly impact their work in Botswana.
Although the acquisition attempt failed, it underscores the extent of exposure Botswana’s government has to De Beers and other major players in the diamond space. Not surprisingly then, despite its strong GDP per capita numbers, more nuanced economic indicators point in a different direction. For example, the country’s score for socioeconomic development in the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) has recently fallen from five points out of ten to four, due to extremely high income inequality. This is further underlined by a Gini index score of 53.3 and a high poverty rate of 38%.
Hoping to limit this diamond-dependency and trigger growth in high-value sectors that were stifled by the Covid-19 pandemic, Botswana has adopted the Reset Agenda. This project aims to accelerate economic diversification, empower youth and increase employment opportunities. Further, it attempts to promote local industry and economic self-sufficiency through import bans of fresh produce and water; the government seeks to use this to develop economic resilience and prepare for extreme weather conditions caused by climate change. Given the country’s high dependence on rain-fed agriculture, it is particularly vulnerable to changes in rainfall and droughts.
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Simultaneously, Botswana’s strong financial institutions are promising indicators that the country has the tools required to overcome looming economic turmoil. Its robust banking system and relatively effective monetary stability from the Bank of Botswana exemplify this. Still, diversification and inequity remain pressing issues that will undoubtedly persist for years to come. They will be central issues in the upcoming general elections, which are shaping up to be the most competitive in the nation’s history.
The ebb and flow of the global economy means that, as some people migrate to the UK, others leave it, creating opportunities for international financial advice.
The new Labour government has confirmed that the current tax regime for non-UK domiciled individuals will be replaced with a residence-based test from 6 April 2025, so international advice firms can expect more enquiries.
If UK advice firms want to develop a global presence, how should they go about it?
Working out the options
Branching out internationally is not something that can be achieved on a whim. Advisers must obtain the relevant permissions to advise in different parts of the world, and know how to navigate the quirks of various tax jurisdictions.
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We’ve all heard horror stories of people moving out [of the UK] and it not being what they expected
Qualifications and regulatory requirements can vary greatly between countries and the location in which an adviser is based will also have practical implications for the areas they can cover.
“If I wanted to live in the US, doing a load of Australian exams would be pointless,” says Chris Ball, co-founder of international advice firm Hoxton Capital Management.
“It would be impossible — or at least very difficult — to be on the same time zone. But I could do the UK and Europe from there.”
One way for UK firms to start out is by partnering another firm that is already established in the international advice market. But this market comprises a wide range of businesses, with varying reputations and ways of operating, which means that, to do it properly, there is no fast-track entry.
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A basic UK Level 4 qualification would be expected by most companies now
“You’ve got companies that are very commission and sales driven; then you’ve got companies that are fee based and more financial planning focused,” says Ball.
Being selective
Ball says UK advisers should ensure they do their homework on prospective partners and be wary of whom they get into bed with.
“I think a lot of people do that, but we’ve all heard horror stories of people moving out [of the UK] and it not being what they expected,” he says. “No one wants to be in that position.”
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According to Academy of Life Planning chief executive Steve Conley, the advice industry in some countries resembles that of the UK as it was 20 years ago, with product sales being incentivised by commission, and ‘bad apples’ appearing in different guises through phoenix firms.
You’ve got companies that are very commission and sales driven; then you’ve got companies that are fee based and more financial planning focused
Conley believes international advice firms should charge fixed fees for financial planning to “eliminate conflicts of interest, promote trust and advocate market integrity”. He suggests UK advice firms seek to partner a well-established firm that has highly qualified advisers and good, independent customer reviews.
“Don’t go by the awards they have won because there are a lot of vanity awards in this industry. They can be paid for rather than be voted for by the public,” he says.
A question of quality
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Diane Bentley, a former nurse, lost half her pension when an international advice firm advised her to transfer her National Health Service pot to an overseas Qrops pension scheme when she moved to France. Now back in the UK, she runs a Facebook group providing support to others who have experienced bad offshore advice.
Bentley says that, because the international advice market is commission led, the incentive to get more UK pensions offshore becomes extremely risky.
The stereotype of a second-hand car salesman going to Dubai to become a financial adviser is pretty much gone
“It is poorly regulated and the advisers are badly trained. We want them trained to the UK standard — a minimum of Level 4,” she says.
“Why shouldn’t we expect the same standards as people onshore are getting?”
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Ball acknowledges that the international advice market has had its problems, but says it is cleaning itself up.
“A basic UK Level 4 qualification would be expected by most companies now,” he says.
“And the stereotype of a second-hand car salesman going to Dubai to become a financial adviser is pretty much gone. The quality of people here in the Middle East and in Australia advising British expats is really good.”
This article featured in the September 2024 edition of Money Marketing.
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Former President Donald Trump vowed to reinstate his travel ban that barred people from some predominantly Muslim countries and expand it to prevent refugees from war-torn Gaza from entering the U.S.
“I will ban refugee resettlement from terror infested areas like the Gaza Strip, and we will seal our border and bring back the travel ban,” Trump said Thursday evening in Washington at an event alongside Republican donor and billionaire Miriam Adelson.
“Remember the famous travel ban? We didn’t take people from certain areas of the world,” Trump added “We’re not taking them from infested countries.”
Trump initially put in place a version of his travel ban—one of the signature measures of his presidency—a week after taking office, triggering chaos at airports and sparking protests. Judges blocked the initial ban but changes to the policy eventually led to it being upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected claims that it targeted Muslims.
The Republican presidential nominee’s remarks came at an event focused on combating antisemitism, as he sought to enhance his outreach to Jewish voters before November’s election against Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent.
Throughout the speech, Trump frequently suggested his backing for Israel should result in better political support among Jewish Americans.
He repeatedly complained he had not “been treated right” because polls showed a majority of Jewish Americans supported his opponent, and said that he believed “Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss” in the presidential election.
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“There’s no way that I should be getting 40% of the vote—I’m the one who is protecting you,” Trump said.
Trump at one point suggested that Israel itself should defeat Harris. “More than any people on Earth, Israel has to defeat her,” he said.
The former president added that Israel’s very existence could hinge on the election: “If I don’t win, I believe Israel will be eradicated,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly come under criticism for remarks asserting that American Jews ought to be unquestioningly supportive of the Israeli government.
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In an interview in March, Trump accused Jewish people who support Democrats of hating their religion and Israel. Trump has sought to seize on divisions among Democrats over Israel’s war against Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and European Union.
In a July radio interview, Trump attacked Harris, saying she “doesn’t like Jewish people” and that she had appeared annoyed during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When the radio host criticized Harris’ husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, calling him a “crappy Jew,” Trump responded “yeah.”
Emhoff is the first Jewish spouse of a U.S. president or vice president and has been a vocal advocate against antisemitism, including leading the administration’s strategy on the issue.
After Trump’s speech on Thursday night, Amy Spitalnick, chief executive officer of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs issued a rebuke of his remarks. “Trump continues to label Jews who don’t support him as disloyal and crazy, to play into dangerous dual loyalty tropes, and to blame Jews for a potential electoral loss,” she said. “At the same time, he continues to normalize antisemitic extremism.”
Trump has drawn criticism for interactions with antisemites and white supremacists, including a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022 with Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted from Aug. 26 to Sept. 2 found 65% of Jewish registered voters support or are leaning toward Harris, with 34% for Trump.
The war in Gaza has presented a political challenge for Harris, with progressives and younger voters critical of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel. Harris, while backing Israel’s right to defend itself has expressed more empathy for Palestinian suffering than Biden during the war.
Government borrowing in August rose to the highest level for the month since the Covid pandemic in 2021.
Official figures show that borrowing – the difference between spending and tax revenue – reached to £13.7bn last month, £3.3bn more than in August last year.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that tax income “grew strongly” but this was outweighed by some benefits being increased and higher spending public services, including pay.
The figures are released as the government prepares for the Budget at the end of October, which Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has warned will be “painful”.
The ONS said higher benefits spending was largely due to payments being increased in line with inflation. A number increased including the carer’s allowance and the disability living allowance.
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Inflation also pushed up running costs for public services, it added.
Increased borrowing in August means that national debt remained at levels last seen in the early 1960s, with the ONS estimating it to be equivalent to the entire size of the UK’s economy.
Left to right: Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt; Denis Haman, chief executive of Glide Publishing Platform; Barry Adams, SEO consultant, Polemic Digital; Carly Steven, global head of SEO, Mail Online; and Madhav Chinnappa, senior executive consultant. Picture: ASV Photography Ltd
Publishers have been urged to “band together” to challenge big tech’s power over news industry revenues as an executive revealed the impact of recent Google updates at Mail Online.
Speaking at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference last week, a group of industry experts warned there is a mismatch between how the news industry and tech platforms calculate value that means publishers are powerless addressing them alone.
Carly Steven, the global head of search engine optimisation (SEO) at Mail Online, said a June anti-spam update rolled out by Google had hit affiliate revenue from, for example, publisher voucher code and betting offers, which she said “effectively turned off a very significant revenue stream for a lot of publishers”.
“All of that content – that was really valuable, and we genuinely believe our readers find it very valuable too – it was just gone overnight.”
She said it spoke to a broader trend wherein publishers have less control in an increasingly unpredictable online landscape.
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“We used to have a lot of control, as SEO editors or people working in this industry… We used to be able to tweak a headline, add some links and get something back. It used to be so easy… All that control is gone. I could not do that anymore.
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“If an editor says to me: ‘I want this story to rank at the start of the top stories rail’ – I cannot make that happen in the way that we used to do.”
Googe deployment of AI Overviews varies wildly from week to week
“We’ve taken part in studies where we’ve analysed our own keywords and seen that AI Overviews have been present for 23% of all the keywords that drive traffic to our website. And then the next week that’s 5%.
“So it’s very hard to be able to make decisions right now based on the data that we have.”
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AI Overviews concern some publishers because they are displayed above links in Google’s search results, pushing publishers further down the page and potentially answering user enquiries without sharing any traffic.
But Steven said for now their impact on traffic was unclear, asking: “Do people ever click if you have a link within an AI overview? Probably not, but right now, we just don’t know…
“What’s taking up my time at the moment, in terms of trying to understand the AI landscape, is developing the tools to enable us to track it on an ongoing basis.”
SEO consultant Barry Adams said from what he’d seen AI Overviews “don’t really present a threat, yet, to publishers – at least not in the context of news, where AI Overviews are mostly absent from news topics”. He said they are presented more often for “evergreen” information.
Adams said overviews did not “seem to be cannibalising as much traffic as maybe some had expected – it tends to be low single-digit percentage traffic losses, which basically makes AI Overviews just another search feature like you had before… So it’ll be just another thing to optimise for. Which means more work for everybody, yay.”
Mismatch between how publishers and platforms assess value
Denis Haman, the chief executive of Glide Publishing Platform, described the relationship between publishers and platforms as “abusive” and questioned whether big tech could ever meaningfully value news.
“We’re not friends, we’re not even frenemies,” he said. “That’s the reality… it doesn’t matter whether you’re exposing corruption or whether you’re telling life stories, the media plays a role in society which has a greater value than what some random number cruncher at Meta will assign to it.”
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Madhav Chinnappa, a senior executive consultant at AI data marketplace Human Native and previously the director of news ecosystem development at Google, said: “The reality is that the tech companies, from their California headquarters, look at the industries that they touch and they value them based on the revenue that they bring in.”
In the news industry’s case, he said “it’s de minimis, right?
“I actually was on a panel with an ex-Facebook person who talked about it, and he said: ‘Look, actually, the value of news to Facebook is zero if not negative, because when they took news off, their revenues went up.’
“So they’re valuing it based on dollars in. But I think the news industry and news people value the news industry on societal value…. I think that’s actually one of the fundamental factors about why this relationship has been so difficult.”
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‘Green shoots’ resulted from collective industry attempts to cajole big tech
On a more optimistic note, Mail Online’s Steven said that “a really positive unintended consequence” of June’s Google spam SEO update for publishers was that “it’s forced us together a lot more”.
“While that was a terrible thing that happened… publishers all came together to put pressure on Google, to insist on having conversations with them.
“I’m not saying that we’ve got the solution that we wanted to, but it was really productive, and not just because it’s a bit of a therapy session.”
She said there had been “green shoots” from those discussions.
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“I feel like, personally, our relationship with Google – while it can be frustrating because we don’t get answers – I feel like there’s been some small victories.
“And maybe I need to be more ambitious with my targets, but on the back of some of the things that we collectively as publishers have raised, Google… clarified things, they tweak the rules.”
Steven said Google is “not really interested in you individually as a publisher”.
“But when you have a whole industry coming together and being able to provide evidence and proof that ‘you made this change, and something collectively happened to all of us, and the consequences of that are really bad for your users who are searching for this information on Google’ – then they pay a little bit more attention.”
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SEO expert Adams said: “You need to hold them accountable, because if you just let them get away with it, they aren’t just going to care about us.”
He added: “It is not true that all of Google search results are purely algorithmic. There are some specific aspects, like for example, around Covid information, where Google will manually whitelist websites…
“We need to lift that veil off of it and understand these are just human-coded algorithms – coded by people who make editorial decisions on what works and what doesn’t work, and it is okay to hold them to account.”
Chinnappa agreed that publishers needed to work together to influence big tech, saying tech companies are “culturally different” from the news industry and that the way to sway them was “at scale, with data”.
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‘Don’t get split up by bits of money here and there’
On the question of whether publishers should licence their content to artificial intelligence companies, Chinnappa noted that away from giants like Google and OpenAI, “there’s actually an entire AI developer ecosystem of small and not so small developers who also need access to content, and they want it for specific reasons, whether it’s niche content or it’s hard to find in a big data set, or, quite selfishly, they don’t want to get sued into oblivion…
“I think we need to be helping get that ecosystem that’s sustainable for both sides. Because I hope that data licensing becomes a sustainable revenue stream for publishers going forward, but we need to push in that direction together.”
And Haman, similarly, said “there’s an opportunity nowadays, with a new crop of big tech companies emerging, where we should come together as an industry and see whether we can influence the governments, band together, don’t get split up by bits of money here and there.
“But what about smaller publishers? Who’s going to compensate them for the content that’s been taken from them without permission?…
“I don’t think that they’re going to have a breakthrough and all of a sudden see the value that that media industry [adds to] society, and it’s something that needs to be protected.”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our “Letters Page” blog
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