Today's Nerd Thing

The Erodium Copy Robot
byu/lonyduck inBeAmazed

Uh Oh

It seems we've got us a bit of a trend here.

Orcas sink another boat in Strait of Gibraltar

For years, the region’s killer whales have been bumping, biting and, in some cases, sinking boats. But many scientists caution not to ascribe motive to the animals.

The orcas have done it again.

On Oct. 31, a pod of killer whales swarmed a Polish yacht sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar. For 45 minutes, the orcas hit the vessel’s rudder and damaged the boat, according to the company that operated it. Despite rescue efforts, the yacht never made it back to shore, sinking near the entrance of the Moroccan port of Tanger Med.

“The crew is safe, unharmed and sound,” the Polish tour company Morskie Mile wrote in a Facebook post describing the demise of its boat.

Since 2020, orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Iberian Peninsula have been bumping and biting boats — oftentimes, yachts — in dozens of incidents that have frightened mariners and confounded scientists.

A recent spate of killer whales sinking boats delighted online observers who anthropomorphize the marine mammals and hail them as working-class heroes.

Are the orcas really out to get us? What to know about recent attacks

Fishing vessels and motorboats have all had their run-ins with orcas in the region, though sailboats appear to be the most popular target, according to a 2022 study. The tour agency Morskie Mile did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

No one is quite sure what is prompting the orcas to go after vessels — whether the whales are simply being playful, or had a bad run-in with a boat in the past, prompting the aggressive behavior.

Some scientists say the incidents should not be called “attacks” at all, since the whale’s motives are unknown. Perpetuating the idea that whales are out for revenge, they fear, may lead to retaliation by boaters.

“We urge the media and public to avoid projecting narratives onto these animals,” a group of more than 30 scientists wrote in an open letter this summer. “In the absence of further evidence, people should not assume they understand the animals’ motivations.”

What we do know is that orcas are highly intelligent marine mammals that appear to learn from one another. Usually, that learned behavior is a hunting strategy, such as corralling and eating massive blue whales.

Other times, it is something stranger, such as when orcas near Seattle were observed “wearing” dead salmon as hats. Orcas, it turns out, can be victims of cultural fads, too.

One other thing is clear: Killer whales normally don’t hurt people. And humans are a bigger threat to them than they are to us.

Getting entangled in fishing gear or struck by speeding boats is a threat for all whales. With perhaps fewer than 40 individuals left, the orca population off the coasts of Spain, Portugal and Morocco is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Remember:

Nature bats last

Green-ish

Even Cynical Mike hates thinking there may be a push on the part of the Dirty Fuels Cartel to dabble a little in "greener technology in the interest of the greater good" so they can then sit back and point at its shortcomings (or outright failure), and claim, "Well, gosh, we tried to do it your way, but you end up bitchin' about that too - I guess we'll have to go back to the old way..."

Just remember - nature bats last

Huge Phillips 66 biofuels project will test the industry’s green promises

RODEO, California, March 21 (Reuters) - In the oldest refining town in the American West, Phillips 66 (PSX.N) is promising a greener future as it moves to halt crude-oil processing and build a massive renewable diesel plant, leading a global trend.

That plan, announced in 2020, was initially welcomed by residents weary from a history of pollution and toxic leaks. But some have grown skeptical as the project’s details cast doubt on the environmental benefits of revamping the 127-year-old complex on 1,100 acres in Rodeo, California.

The company’s initial claim that it would slash greenhouse gasses by half doesn’t match the project’s environmental impact report, published by county regulators, which shows a 1% reduction, according to a Reuters calculation of emissions data in the report. What’s more, refining of petroleum byproducts may continue as a side project.

And renewable-diesel production will require a surge in marine and train traffic, increasing emissions and spill risk. The conversion also requires boosting natural-gas usage to produce hydrogen required to make the biofuel.

These dynamics and other variables raise questions about Phillips 66’s marketing of renewable diesel as a green fuel and make it impossible to tell whether and how much the refinery overhaul will reduce community pollution, three independent environmental experts told Reuters.

The project’s environmental impact will be a test case for similar facilities worldwide. Several dozen new U.S. renewable diesel plants are planned, according to energy consultancy Stratas Advisors. Most will be conversions of oil refineries. Production capacity could triple, to 6 billion gallons, by 2026, Stratas says. Europe and Asia are seeing similar trends.

Phillips 66 representatives say the project, dubbed Rodeo Renewed, will significantly cut certain regulated pollutants and will lead to large cuts in greenhouse gasses when the biofuel is burned in vehicles. The refinery’s general manager, Jolie Rhinehart, said renewable diesel is the cleanest-burning option for use in transporting goods by truck.

“Heavy-haul trucking is a vital aspect to our way of life in this country and in this world,” she said. “And renewable diesel is the lowest-emission way to fuel that energy that we need to keep our trucks moving.”

Rhinehart added that emissions directly from the plant, affecting local residents, would be “significantly reduced” by the project.

Some Rodeo residents worry the overhaul could become another chapter in a long story of local pollution. Sitting across the bay from San Francisco’s glittering cityscape, Rodeo is a poster child for post-industrial problems. In addition to the Phillips 66 plant, the area has hosted a second oil refinery, a lead smelter and a dynamite factory. Vacant storefronts and rusted-out cars blight the boulevard leading to a beach too toxic for swimming. The community, in unincorporated Contra Costa County, has much higher concentrations of illness, poverty and brownfield cleanup sites than most others in California.

“It could have been the jewel of the county,” resident Janet Callaghan said of Rodeo. But over the years, industrial pollution has “turned Rodeo into the armpit of Contra Costa.”

Maureen Brennan, a member of Rodeo’s air-monitoring committee, called the biofuels project an experiment with uncertain environmental benefits. After initially cheering the plan, she said: “I started to realize that we’re actually the global guinea pigs here.”

CONFLICTING POLLUTION ESTIMATES

Renewable diesel is made from feedstocks such as soybean oil, beef tallow or used cooking oil. It can be used in heavy-duty trucks with no engine modifications. The Phillips 66 plant may also produce other biofuels.

The county board of supervisors in May approved the project, which is expected to start operations in early 2024.

Phillips 66 spokesperson Bernardo Fallas said the difference in the company and county greenhouse-gas estimates stems mostly from the fact that county regulators included pollution projections for five fossil-fuel refinery processing units for which the company intends to keep operating permits. The company excluded those units, which Fallas said would not be operating when the biofuels project starts. Phillips 66, he said, has not yet decided whether and how the fossil-fuels units would operate in the future.

Fallas confirmed, however, that Phillip 66 is considering a plan to process slurry oil, a heavy residual crude oil byproduct, using the refinery’s coker. Fallas said the slurry-oil processing would produce materials needed for electric-vehicle batteries.

The county said in a statement that slurry-oil processing “would not be consistent” with the refinery revamp it approved in May, and would require additional regulatory review.

The county’s environmental impact report estimated greenhouse gasses by assuming emissions from the coker and the four other units would remain unchanged, an approach the study called conservative. It also included emissions from the expected increase in natural-gas use and from projected increases in transportation to the plant.

The claim has also made its way into filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including an annual proxy statement and a handful of 8-K disclosures.

The company’s disclosures to the SEC, however, dropped the 50% claim after the draft environmental impact report was published in October 2021. The company said it updated its messaging to “ensure consistency” with the report.

While Phillips 66 and the county made strikingly different projections of the biofuels plant’s greenhouse-gas pollution, they agreed that the project would have a climate benefit extending beyond the facility’s local emissions. They said biofuels produce less greenhouse gasses than traditional gasoline or diesel when burned in vehicles. That reduces emissions over the total “lifecycle” of the fuel, which includes all aspects of exploration, production and consumption. Considering only local pollution from the plant, the county said, underestimates the potential greenhouse-gas emissions reductions by “orders of magnitude.”

Some researchers, however, contest that claim. They argue that carbon emissions from clearing and tilling land to farm biofuels feedstocks, such as corn or soybeans, offset any reductions in tailpipe emissions.

TRUCKS, TRAINS REPLACE A PIPELINE

Phillips 66 projects the conversion will reduce emissions of certain federally regulated air pollutants, such as benzene, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter. Sulfur oxide emissions are expected to drop 80% from 2019 levels and larger particulate matter pollution by 20%, Fallas said, citing the environmental impact report.

Three independent environmental experts said it’s likely some of those emissions - along with those of greenhouse gasses - will fall simply because of a reduction in overall capacity after the transformation. As an oil refinery, the plant processed nearly 120,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude – far more than the projected capacity of 80,000 bpd of biofuels feedstocks.

The plant’s emissions after conversion are difficult to predict, the environmental experts said, because of the lack of research on pollution from large-scale renewable-diesel processing and because the company has not publicly outlined what feedstocks it will use. The Phillips 66 operation could result in reductions of some pollutants, when compared to oil refining, but increases in others, said Mark Jacobson, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford University and director of the school's Atmosphere/Energy Program.

“I expect to see no improvement whatsoever,” Jacobson said.

“You'll just get a different set of chemicals coming out of the (biofuels) refineries compared with the traditional refineries of diesel and gasoline.”

In addition, the surge in transportation related to biofuels processing could worsen local pollution, said Ron Sahu, an independent air emissions consultant.

Phillips 66 plans to shut a 200-mile oil pipeline to the plant, leading to a doubling of tanker vessels and a tripling of rail-car arrivals, according to the environmental impact report. Truck traffic will fall overall but sharply rise to part of the refining complex closest to the most densely populated part of Rodeo, bringing residents there in contact with more particulate-matter and other transportation pollution.

The project will also cause a projected 29% increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the plant that will be using more natural gas to produce hydrogen for biofuel processing, according to the report.

Janet Pygeorge, 87, lives in view of the refinery’s smokestacks. She remembers a 1994 chemical leak at the refinery, then under different ownership, that sickened tens of thousands of people. A Phillips 66 predecessor company bought the refinery in 2001. Since then, the plant has had seven “major accidents,” including fires and toxic releases, through 2018, according to the latest available county data.

That history makes the prospect of continuing fossil-fuel operations unsettling to residents who lived through it, Pygeorge said. "It just doesn't sound safe to me.”

Today's Reddit

Uh-Oh

Tourists. Whaddaya gonna do.

Avalanche in Kyrgyzstan

Today's Big Think

Does the world embody beautiful ideas.

Frank Wilczek for Big Think

Nature uses fundamentally simple principles

to power emergent complexity.

Tornado

Like the finger of god.

Andover KS, 04-30-2022: 

Today's Reddit

Today's Reddit

Today's Reddit

Modern Dad Manual: When you hear the siren, get everybody into the basement, or the center of the house, and then stand in front of the window so you can maybe go viral with a video of the tornado ripping you to shreds with flying glass.

Today's Amaze

Yosemite National Park

Nature is magic

Flaming Earth Zits

... and other weird geology shit.

Fake lord help me, I dearly do gotta love me some SciShow nerds:

Today's Reddit

Nature can be ugly nasty and mean, but we tend to overlook all that when something like this comes along.

Today's Reddit

Eagles are like leopards with wings.

A Short Daydream

I'm not inclined to travel the world, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if some kind-hearted woman suggested we go take a look at Tuscany.

Our Mom Is Sick

There's no Ark being built for us. No one is going to whisk us all away from the mess we've made here, and magically transport us to the next green spot where life is fun and we can frolic like a buncha fuckin Eloi. Nobody - not Branson, not Musk, not Bezos - nobody.

And there are no more Green Spots. This is it. When you foul your nest, you live in your shit.

WaPo, Front page, above the fold:

Bootleg Fire: (pay wall)

As the Bootleg Fire burns, locals are faced with the realities of climate change — and remain skeptical

In a row of small conservative towns, the flames are unlike anything they’ve seen before. Instead of concerns over global warming, though, there is blame directed at environmentalists, marijuana farmers and potential looters.

- snip -

The West has been beset by historic drought and heat waves this year exacerbated by climate change, but among the small towns that have been threatened by the Bootleg Fire — Sprague River, Beatty, Bly — there is little talk of global warming. Instead, residents vent about the federal government’s water policies and forest management. They blame liberal environmentalists for hobbling the logging industry and Mexican marijuana farmers for sucking up the area’s water.

“Now the top end of the Forest Service are a bunch of flower children,” said Jim Rahi, 71, who was filling up his 3,600-gallon water tanker to deliver to firefighters in the town of Lakeview, east of the spreading fire. “That’s what the real problem is. It’s not that much hotter. It’s environmentally caused mismanagement.”

(Editor: And it's still early in the season)

Germany:

Germany comes to grips with massive flood damage as some regions brace for more rains

The death toll in the devastating floods that hit Europe climbed to 183 on Sunday as rescue workers searched for bodies amid the receding waters while new storms hit alpine areas further south.

Heavy rain drenched parts of the German states of Bavaria and Saxony overnight as flooding also spread to Austria and Switzerland.

At least 156 people have died in Germany alone since once-in-a-century summer rainfall caused rivers and dams to burst. So far 27 people have died in Belgium.

On Saturday night, areas of Bavaria were declared a disaster zone as the southern state on the border with Austria was also hit by flash floods. At least one person died in the Berchtesgadener district.

The receding waters in parts of Germany have allowed the first assessments of the scale of the damage. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he would submit a plan for at least 300 million euros in emergency aid to the cabinet this week.

As new areas prepared for flooding, others were still reeling from the earlier inundations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the village of Schuld in the state of Rhineland Palatinate on Sunday, where entire homes were swept away last week by the swollen Ahr river, a tributary of the Rhine.

She described herself as “shocked” by the devastation and said the situation was “terrifying” in the affected areas. She pledged rapid, immediate help.

“Thankfully in Germany, we are living in a prosperous country, Germany is a strong country and we will counteract this natural disaster,” she said, adding that in the long term the government would “focus policymaking more on climate protection than we have in recent years.”

Human-caused climate change is believed to have had an affect on the intensity of the rains.

Canada:

Canada’s farmers brace for new heat wave as scorching summer leaves cherries roasting on trees

As devastating heat waves sweep swaths of the globe, farmers in Canada are facing a crippling phenomenon: Crops are baking in fields.

Cherries have roasted on trees. Fields of canola and wheat have withered brown. And as feed and safe water for animals grow scarce, ranchers may have no choice but to sell off their livestock.

“It will totally upend Canadian food production if this becomes a regular thing,” said Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia.

A heat dome roasted Canada in late June, leading to hundreds of “sudden and unexpected” deaths, according to officials, and sparkedfear among Canadian farmers and climate experts. A village in British Columbia claimed the nation’s highest recorded temperature, clocking in just shy of 115 degrees. This weekend, another scorching wave is expected to return to the nation.

Newman said farmers are resilient and have been planning for slow, constant climate change. But no model predicted this summer’s spike, which she characterized as a “thousand-year” event that cannot become the norm.

“We can’t farm like this, where there’s a giant disruption every year,” she said. “Or we’re going to have to really rethink how we produce food.”

The climate stress is especially unwelcome at a time when the pandemic has put pressure on supply chains and food production. Floods, early freezes, droughts, pests and other emergencies have also strained Canada’s farming industry over the past several years. Multiple municipalities have declared states of agricultural disaster because of the heat and drought.

On the shores, shellfish have popped open, broiling by the millions. “You could smell the destruction,” Newman said.

Your actions will determine your fate - not mine

Today's Scary Shit

Nope - never going in the water again. Ever.

Ka-Boom

Zeus just loves to fuck with us.

Today's GIF

Thanks a lot, unc.

Today's Reddit

See as much of it as you can, while you still can.