#CRYPTOZOOLOGY   #CRYPTID
People Say They've Seen #Bigfoot — 

Can We Really Rule Out That Possibility?
Matt Blitz 

POPMECH

5/8/2021

The film is mostly three-and-a-half minutes of grainy fall foliage, men riding horses, and jerky pans. The famous footage—used for decades afterward in every documentary about whether Bigfoot is real or fake—comes across as just someone having fun with their new camera. But, about two minutes in, the lens of a rented 16mm Cine Kodak camera catches something strange

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© Bettmann - Getty Images Is Bigfoot real? For centuries, people have reportedly seen this mythical, huge primate-like animal in the woods of North America. Here's what we know.

“We were just riding out alongside the creek, riding along enjoying the warm sunshine day,” says Bob Gimlin. “Then, across the creek, there was one standing. Everything happened so fast.”

What Gimlin's camera sees is a strange, large ape-like figure limbering on its hind legs across a clearing. For a brief moment, the animal appears to look directly at the camera, and, then, it’s gone. This is the famed Patterson-Gimlin film reportedly shot in October 1967 in the heavily wooded forests of Northern California, and it is one of the most heavily analyzed pieces of film in American history.






To some, this is definitive proof that Bigfoot is as real as mountain gorillas or narwhals. For others, it’s a hoax alongside videos claiming to show ghosts, aliens, and lizard people. But Gimlin knows exactly what he saw that day. “It walked upright and for quite a long ways. It didn’t look like a bear. I’ve been in the woods my whole life,” 86-year-old Gimlin tells Popular Mechanics. “There’s no doubt in my mind at all what it was.”
A Centuries-Old Tale

© David McNew - Getty Images Pictographs at the Carrizo Plain National Monument belonging to the Yokut aboriginal tribe in Central California.

This elusive, possibly fictitious animal goes by a number of different names—Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yowie, Skunk Ape, Yayali—and for centuries, people across North America have had sightings.

Many Native American cultures have written oral legends that tell of a primate-type creature roaming the continent's forests. In these tales, the animals are sometimes more human-like and, other times, more ape-like. In the mythology of the Kwakiutl tribe that once heavily populated the western coast of British Columbia, Dzunukwa is a big, hairy female that lives deep in the mountainous forests.

According to the legend, she spends most of her time protecting her children and sleeping, hence why she’s rarely seen. In fact, the name “Sasquatch” comes from Halkomelem, a language spoken by several First Nation peoples that occupied the upper Northwest into British Columbia.

In California, there are century-old pictographs drawn by the Yokuts that appear to show a family of giant creatures with long, shaggy hair. Called “Mayak datat” by the tribe, the image bears a resemblance to the commonly held vision of Bigfoot.

“Some tribes really love Bigfoot, they have a great relationship with him,” says Kathy Moskowitz Strain, author of the book Giants, Cannibals & Monsters: Bigfoot in Native Culture and archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “To other tribes though, like the Miwoks, he’s an absolute ogre, a monster, and something best left alone.”

To this day, Strain says, many of the tribesmen she does field research with believe that Bigfoot walks among us. “I’ve been in the field with tribal members where something strange happens and they always blame it on a Bigfoot,” says Strain.

There’s Bear Men in Them Hills

© Bettmann - Getty Images A still from the famous Patterson–Gimlin film, 1967.

Native Americans weren’t the only ones seeing this hairy, primate creature roaming the wilds of America. Nineteenth- and early 20th-century newspapers had whole sections devoted to the miners, trappers, gold prospectors, and woodsmen claiming to have seen “wild men,” “bear men,” and “monkey men.”

Most famously, in 1924, a group of prospectors hunkering down in a cabin along the shoulder of Mount St. Helen in Washington State claimed they were attacked late one night by a group of “ape-men.” Later, one of the prospectors admitted that they weren’t unprovoked attacks. He had taken potshots at the creatures earlier in the day.

Even then, as noted in Chad Arment’s 2006 book Historical Bigfoot, these accounts like the ones from the prospectors in 1924 were often regarded with a general sense of skepticism often due to the unreliable nature of the witnesses.

© Placerville Mountain Democrat - Wikimedia Commons 1895 article describing a grizzly bear with the nickname "Bigfoot."

“It’s hard to know what came out of the bottom of a whiskey bottle and what’s real,” says former NPR producer Laura Krantz, who’s a host of the new podcast Wild Thing, which digs deep into the search for Bigfoot.

There were also times when one animal was confused for another, possibly explaining the origin of the name “Bigfoot.” Newspaper accounts show that“Bigfoot” was a common nickname for particularly large, aggressive grizzly bears who ate cattle, sheep, and attacked humans. It wasn’t until 1958 when a California tractor operator named Jerry Crew “found” a series of huge muddy footprints that the term was popularized in reference to the primate-like animals.

That same year, another man named Ray Wallace also said he had discovered large prints belonging to Bigfoot. Upon his death in 2002, it was revealed that this was a hoax.

Sasquatch Goes Mainstream

 Kevin Schafer - Getty Images Neon at Night

It was in the mid 20th century when Bigfoot stepped from local lore to national phenomenon.

In 1961, naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson published his book Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life. In the book, Sanderson uses footprints, eye witnesses, and bone samples as potential evidence of “sub-humans” living on five continents across the world, including North America’s Sasquatch and the Himalayas’ Yeti (though others believe that the Yeti is a totally different species).

Sanderson’s work caught enough people’s attention that William Straus, a well-regarded primate evolutionary biologist at John Hopkins University, reviewed it for Science Magazine, saying Sanderson’s standards for evidence are “unbelievably low” and that the evidence is “anything but convincing.”

Nonetheless, Strauss admits it would be foolish and quite unscientific to say that the creatures Sanderson describes absolutely don’t exist.

ONE OF THE FOUNDATIONAL WORKS OF CRYPTOZOOLOGY

© Chilton Original cover of Ivan T. Sanderson’s book Abominable Snowman: Legend Come To Life.

Sanderson’s book was followed by the Patterson–Gimlin film six years later. Gimlin says it happened so fast that he considers himself and Roger Patterson pretty lucky that they were able to get any footage at all of the hairy, mythical animal lumbering along only yards away from them.

When he watched the footage for the first time a few days later, Gimlin was pretty pessimistic that this would be enough to convince anyone. “I didn’t think the film was that good. I saw it [with my two eyes] better than that,” says Gimlin. Yet, it became a phenomenon.

Some, like former director of the primate biology program at the Smithsonian Institution John Napier, saw it as a well-done, elaborate hoax. But not everyone saw it that way, including Grover Krantz.

A professor of physical anthropology at Washington State University and “a leading authority in hominoid evolution” and primate bone structures, Krantz also believed in Sasquatch. His unwavering belief came from eyewitnesses, the creature’s gait in the Patterson–Gimlin film, and, most importantly, the anatomical structure of found footprints. It was the dermal ridges, where sweat pores open on palms and soles, depicted in the prints that left him convinced that at least some were authentic.

His working theory was that Sasquatch was part of the hominid family, the same one humans shared with apes, and was a descendant of thought-to-be-long-extinct humongous primate species that once lived in Asia appropriately named Gigantopithecus. At some point, million of years ago, it had crossed the Bering Strait when it was still a land bridge into North America and evolved into its own species on this continent.

“Grover was eclectic. That’s a good word describe him,” says Jeff Meldrum, author of the book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, a professor of anatomy at Idaho State University, and a one-time colleague of Krantz’s. “There were many ideas that he had that were a decade or two ahead of his time and…when he pursued some of these ideas, he would be ridiculed.”

When asked about the possibility of Sasquatch existing, Krantz was always unequivocal, saying that he “guaranteed” it.

Family Ties

© Bettmann - Getty Images Grover Krantz with casts of footprints supposedly belonging to Sasquatch, 1974.

Krantz’s conviction in Bigfoot didn’t help his academic career, though. Passed over for promotions and nearly missing receiving tenure at Washington State, he knew the only way he would be able to convince his colleagues of this primate’s existence was by producing a body.

So, Krantz was known to spend his nights in the middle of the Pacific Northwest old growth forests with a shotgun quite literally hunting Bigfoot. He rationalized this by saying it was the only way to get the scientific community to believe him and that, technically, it wasn’t against the law.

“It has not yet been established that the Sasquatch exists,” Krantz once wrote. “To pass laws against harming sasquatches presently makes little more sense than protecting unicorns.”

Krantz died in 2002 as a complex figure in the eyes of the scientific community, highly respected for his work in primate evolution yet mocked for his belief in Bigfoot. However, during Krantz’s life and after it, the search for Bigfoot took on a life of its own. More sightings, films, and books, some from respected researchers, emerged. Bigfoot documentaries captured the public’s imagination. Harry lived with the Hendersons and entertained the masses. Even Jane Goodall, the famed chimpanzee expert, admits that there’s a possibility that a undiscovered large primate may exist in the world.

In 2006, Laura Krantz, at the time an NPR reporter based in D.C., read an article about the quirky anthropologist who shared her last name. “It originally didn’t ring any bells…he just seemed like an eccentric weirdo.”

But, then, she saw that he was also from Salt Lake City, like her father’s family—they were related. As Krantz’s grandfather told her at the time, “Oh, yeah. Grover. That was my cousin. He used to come to the family picnics and measure people’s heads with a caliper.” This began Krantz’s own journey into the wilderness in search of Bigfoot, which she documented for her new podcast Wild Thing, which aired its first episode on October 2, 2018.

She acknowledges, much like her cousin Grover, that without a body (or skeleton), it’s hard to convince others that this long-lost primate still exists in North America’s backwoods. “A lot of people who think Bigfoot is out there, they realize…that there’s a lack of evidence,” says Krantz. “The kind of real proof that would actually make people sit up and take notice doesn’t actually exist at this point.”

But the things she’s observed during her research for the podcast has changed her mind about the possibility of Bigfoot.

“I went from ‘Bigfoot is a legend’ to I can’t just say out of hand that Bigfoot never existed or doesn’t exist now,” says Krantz. “I can’t fully dismiss it anymore.”

Remains of Giant Vampire Bat From 100,000 Years Ago Found in Argentinian Cave

Artist's impression of D. draculae in sloth burrow. (Museo de Miramar)

The jawbone of a bat that lived 100,000 years ago has been confirmed as belonging to an extinct species of giant vampire bat.

The discovery of the jawbone of the species Desmodus draculae, found in a cave in Argentina, is helping fill in the huge gaps in the history of these amazing animals, and could provide some clues as to why these bats eventually died out

Bats today are extremely diverse. They constitute roughly 20 percent of all known mammal species, which is really quite a sizable chunk, after exploding onto the scene around 50 million years ago.

You might think, therefore, that the fossil record is filled with bats, and that charting their evolutionary history and diversification would have much data to draw on.

You'd be incorrect. The bat fossil record is notoriously poor and patchy. Which means that every discovery is valuable – especially when it comes to vampire bats.

"They are the only family of bats in the world [that] arouses curiosity from the legends of the Transylvania and its creepy Count Dracula," said paleontologist Mariano Magnussen of the Paleontological Laboratory of the Miramar Museum of Natural Sciences in Argentina.

"But in reality they are peaceful animals that feed on the blood of animals, and sometimes humans, for a few minutes without causing discomfort... The only bad thing is that they can transmit rabies or other diseases if they are infected. Surely their prehistoric representatives had similar behaviors."

Today, just three of the roughly 1,400 known bat species are vampire bats, or Desmodontinae – those that live solely on the blood of other creatures, known as hematophages.

All three can only be found in Central and South America: the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), the hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata), and the white-winged vampire bat (Diaemus youngi).

These three species seem very closely related, which suggests that hematophagy only evolved once in bats, and that all vampire bat species – extant and extinct – all diverged from a common ancestor.

Fossils from extinct vampire bat species can help us unravel why today's species survived. And the new D. draculae discovery has a lot of significance for a small bone.

The D. draculae jawbone. (Museo de Miramar)

"The significance of the fossils are several, to start with, fossil bat remains are rare in Argentina," paleontologist Santiago Brizuela of the National University of Mar del Plata in Argentina told ScienceAlert.

"It also confirms the presence of the species at mid latitudes and during the Pleistocene (the only other material of the species in Argentina is isolated but much younger). This is one of the oldest records, it is unknown in the Pliocene."

We've known about the existence of D. draculae since it was first formally described in 1988, although we don't know much more about it. It lived during the Pleistocene in Central and South America, up until fairly recently: some remains have been discovered that are recent enough not to have fossilized, suggesting that it may only have died out a few hundred years ago.

It was also the largest vampire bat known to have existed – it was around 30 percent larger than its closest living relative, today's common vampire bat, with a wingspan estimated to be around 50 centimeters (20 inches).

The jawbone is certainly special. It was recovered from Pleistocene-era sediments in a cave not far from the Buenos Aires town of Miramar. This is important because, at the time the bat lived, the cave was the burrow of a giant sloth, likely of the Mylodontidae family.

This could be a huge clue as to how the bats lived. Some researchers think that D. draculae fed on rodents or deer, but others suspect that its prey was megafauna. Finding remains of a bat so closely associated with Mylodontidae habitat could mean that the latter is correct.

If so, this would be consistent with theories that the bat species declined following the extinction of megafauna around 10,000 years ago – although, with just a single specimen, it's impossible to make a definitive ruling.

"This has two possibilities," Brizuela said. "One, that it lived there and also preyed on the inhabitants; the other possibility is that [the bat] was owl prey and was regurgitated in the cave."

Finally, the fossil could reveal something about the ancient climate of the region. The common vampire bat makes its home around 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of where the remains were discovered. This suggests, the researchers say, that the climate of the fossil site was different 100,000 years ago from what it is like today.

In turn, this suggests that the decline and eventual extinction of D. draculae likely had multiple contributing factors – not just prey unavailability, but an increasingly inhospitable climate.

The team's research has been published in Ameghiniana.

NASA astronaut reacts to 'spiders' on the ISS

An instinctive reaction to creepy-crawlies doesn't go away when you're in space.


Amanda Kooser
Aug. 5, 2021 

There really were spiders on the ISS years ago. This is a golden orb spider and its web inside a spider habitat. NASA

There have been some unusual sights on the International Space Station. Elvis. A gorilla suit. Flatworms. Yoda. But spiders free-floating around the ISS? Only in an astronaut's imagination.

NASA astronaut and current ISS crew member Megan McArthur shared what might be considered a space "shower thought" on Thursday. It's all about how she instinctively sees spiders in random tiny objects.

McArthur tweeted, "Is it weird that after 100 days on the space station, when I see a small piece of lint or food float by, my body still reacts like 'SPIDER!!' a split second before my brain can chime in with, 'Relax, you're in space, remember? No spiders."'

It goes to show how some of the familiar human reactions we have on Earth don't just disappear when we're up in orbit.

NASA's ISS research Twitter account chimed in with a history tidbit. "While there aren't spiders up with you now, there have been spiders on station for research," NASA said. "Golden orb spiders were sent to space to study if and how arachnids spin their webs differently in microgravity."

The spider mission was back in 2011 and, as far as we know, none of the web-slinging denizens escaped to run free in the wilds of the station. As for the experiment, researchers found the spiders' space webs looked very similar to the ones they weave back on Earth.

McArthur doesn't have to worry about arachnids, but she has had some other tiny lifeforms for company in orbit, including baby squid and tardigrades. At least they're cute critters.

This Cyclic Model of the Universe Has Cosmologists Rethinking the Big Bang

Meet the Big Crunch: In this theory on the origins of the universe, the Big Bang was not the beginning, but a repeating pattern of expansion and contraction.

By Sophie Putka

Jul 29, 2021 9:31 AM


(Credit: Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock)

In Paul Steinhardt’s corners of the cosmology world, to say that history repeats itself would be a laughable understatement. That’s because according to him and a handful of peers, the universe’s form might be hurtling into a new cycle every trillion years or so.

“One hundred million years sounds like a long time, but cosmically it's like tomorrow,” Steinhardt says.

The professor of physics and director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science co-authored a paper on this topic, A Cyclic Model of the Universe, with Neil Turok. The cyclic model of the universe he helped pioneer is just that: a theory that the universe forms itself again and again in cycles.

Proponents of this model are asking us to rethink the Big Bang and the rapid inflation of the universe. They contend that doing so could fill in some of the biggest gaps in our common understanding of the way space and time work.

The Big Bang and Inflation Model

The generally accepted understanding of the universe is this: About 14 billion years ago, the Big Bang happened. In its early seconds, the laws of physics as we understand them didn’t apply. All that would eventually become matter burst forth in a matter of seconds — first particles, like electrons and photons, and eventually neutrons and protons, the building blocks of our atoms. Early seeds of stars, planets, and galaxies expanded out from that momentous point in time and space. It spread in such a way that the universe became highly smooth.

Smoothness, on an enormous scale, just means that things within the universe are relatively evenly distributed. That is, if you were to put a cube around one section of the universe, it wouldn’t be much more dense than another randomly placed cube. On a smaller scale, like between galaxies or within a solar system, matter is “lumpy” and filled with clusters.

Physicists theorize that shortly after the Big Bang, something called “inflation” occurred. Essentially, what was once a tiny, packed-together universe expanded out rapidly in a fraction of a second, and it continues to expand today. Inflation is part of the current standard model of the universe, called the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model. In LCDM, the shape of the universe’s trajectory looks, in some depictions, like a funnel, its wide top growing and spreading further out over time.

(Credit: Andrea Danti/Shutterstock)

That’s one interpretation. But there are others that have arisen out of the same bits of information that scientists can actually observe and measure in real life — that is, observational astronomy. The real life information is crucial if scientists are to use models to make actual predictions about the future of our cosmos.

“Cosmology is kind of teamwork, you need some people focusing on really pragmatical and observational stuff and you need people to go sci-fi,” says Leonardo Giani, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia, whose studies focus on alternate models of the universe besides the standard model. “That's how it goes.”

What We Know for Sure

Theoretical astrophysics is all about educated guesses that are shaped by the few things we do know for certain. Something called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) contributes to a big part of that observable information. The CMB is made up of the traces of radiation left over from an early phase of the universe. Radio telescopes can pick it up, and then translate the waves into a heat-map image of sorts.

This image actually shows us how the contents of the universe were distributed about 400,000 years after the Big Bang — the earliest observable snapshot of a universe devoid of stars, solar systems and galaxies. Everything was closer together and almost uniform, except for tiny fluctuations that became the matter forming stars and galaxies. This image serves as evidence that the universe started packed together, and has expanded to where it is today.

We also know that the universe continues to expand, and can even measure, to some degree, how fast it’s doing so. The CMB also serves to confirm that an earlier version of the universe was very hot, and our era is much colder.
Problems With our Current Model

Steinhardt says a number of problems arise with the inflation model, which itself expanded and corrected previous models that arose from Big Bang theory. The inflation model was supposed to explain why, for example, the universe appears so homogenous on a huge scale without the same initial conditions. But, Steinhardt says, there are so many possibilities that arise from an inflationary model that it makes the model itself less useful.

Previous models, Steinhardt says, don’t rule out predictions about the cosmos that are wrong. “It's like I came to explain to you why the sky is blue, but then when you look at my theory more closely, ‘Oh! My theory could have also predicted red, green, polka dot, striped, random [colors],’” Steinhardt says. “And then you say ‘Okay, what good is that theory?’ ”

Then there’s the singularity problem. The inflation theory, Steinhardt argues, also gets stuck at the point “before” the Big Bang, because according to it, there is nothing before it. “The fundamental philosophical problem with the Big Bang is, there's an after but there's not a before,” Steinhardt says. “In a similar way, we don't know ‘one time only’ things that happened in history.”

Mathematically, the Big Bang looks like it came from an undefined state — something that isn’t explained by the laws of physics under Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This is also called a “singularity.” To Steinhardt — but not to everyone — that’s the mathematical equivalent of a red flag. “We all learned in school, when you get one over zero for an answer, you're in trouble, because that's a nonsense answer. You made a mistake.”

In a related problem, there’s also some difficulty in reconciling the inflation theory with string theory and quantum mechanics, says Steinhardt. If the model correctly described the universe, other accepted frameworks of physics would agree with it. Instead, Steinhardt says they’re at odds. “When one's thinking about cosmology, you’re often reaching across fields of thinking, which are quite distant, either on the astro side or on the fundamental physics side and seeing, do they fit together?” The cyclic model, he says, helps do this.

The Cyclic Model and Its Spinoffs

A cyclic model of the universe is designed to solve some of the seemingly unsolvable problems of the Big Bang and inflation models. “It allows us to go beyond the Big Bang, but without any kind of magical philosophical issues,” says Stephon Alexander, a professor of physics at Brown University, and the co-inventor of an inflation model of the universe based on string theory. “Because time has always existed in the past.”

Scientists have proposed a cyclic model that could work mathematically in a few ways. Steinhardt and Turok’s model of a cyclic universe is one of them. Its core principles are these: The Big Bang was not the beginning of time; there was a previous phase leading up to it, with multiple cycles of contraction and expansion that repeat indefinitely; and the key period defining the shape of our universe was right before the so-called bang. There you would find a period of slow contraction called the Big Crunch.

So, instead of a beginning of time arising out of nothing, the cyclic model allows for a long period of time in the lead-up. It claims to fix the same problems as the inflationary theory did, but builds even further. For one thing, the existence of time before the Big Crunch removes the singularity problem — that undefined number. It also utilizes string theory and quantum fluctuations.

Like the LCDM, a cyclic model would also account for dark energy, an unobservable force that scientists believe is behind the accelerating expansion of the universe. But in Stenhardt and Turok’s model, things get a little more like science fiction: Two identical planes, or “branes,” (in string theory, an object that can have any number of dimensions) come together and expand apart. We can observe the three dimensions of our plane, but not the extra dimensions of the other. Dark energy is both the force leading the branes into a collision, with separation between them. Expansion of the branes themselves follows, and dark energy draws them together again once they’re as flat and smooth as they can become.

Giani, the researcher, isn’t so sure, because of some of the assumptions this model brings in from string theory. He likes another cyclic model from Roger Penrose, a theoretical physicist at Oxford who came up with what Penrose himself called “an outrageous new perspective” on the universe. “I was completely amazed by it,” Giani said.

It’s hard to wrap your head around: In the distant, distant future, our solar system and galaxy will be engulfed by black holes, which eat up all the other mass in the universe, and then after an unimaginable amount of time, only black holes will exist. Eventually, only photons exist, which have no mass and therefore no energy or frequency, according to our accepted laws of physics.

Measurements of scale, Penrose explains, no longer apply at this stage, but the shape of the universe remains. At the moment of the Big Bang, he argues, when particles are so hot and close together that they also move at almost the speed of light, they also lose their mass. This creates the same conditions at the Big Bang as the cold, distant future universe. Their scale is no longer relevant, and one can beget the other. The remote future and the Big Bang become one and the same.
Disproving the Models

Ultimately, what humans can observe of our universe is limited. That’s why theories of the universe are never complete. They balance the small sliver of the universe we can observe with mathematical models and theory to fill in the rest. So, in cosmology, scientists search for observable phenomena that disprove their models, and reshape their theories again to suit the problem.

But as our technology rapidly advances, observations that support or detract from one model or another come more often. “It's completely worth making all this speculation in this work, because we are getting to the point in which this data will arrive,” Giani says. One such observation could produce compelling support for either a cyclic model or confirm the more accepted inflationary theory.

Because of how matter is distributed in our view of the oldest part of the universe (seen in the CMB), gravitational waves that reach us may be polarized, like light, at a particular frequency. Soon — within a few years, in fact — scientists may be able to determine whether this polarization exists. If it does, it will support the inflationary model. If this polarization doesn’t exist, it will undermine “slow contraction,” a hallmark of the cyclic model.

We’ll be one step closer to making sense of time and space, yet still on a journey within the cosmos that’s far from over.

Australia’s Response To “Duty Of Care” Judgement: We Have A Fossil-Fuel Heart

Image by David Waterworth

By David Waterworth

The big polluters down under are trying to work out how to make as much money as possible before time runs out for fossil fuels. In a recent judgement, High Court Judge Mordecai Bromberg determined that the Federal Environment Minister has a duty of care for the future of the children of this country.

It is worth quoting a few paragraphs, the language is quite forceful.

It is difficult to characterize in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence presented in this proceeding forecasts for the children. As Australian adults know their country, Australia will be lost and the world as we know it, gone as well. The physical environment will be harsher, far more extreme and devastatingly brutal when angry. As for the human experience – quality of life, opportunities to partake in nature’s treasures, the capacity to grow and prosper – all will be greatly diminished.

Lives will be cut short. Trauma will be far more common and good health harder to hold and maintain.

None of this will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest intergenerational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next.

To say that the children are vulnerable is to understate their predicament.

This, coupled with the recent judgement against Shell in the Netherlands and the coming carbon tariffs from the EU, mean that Australia’s ability to generate revenue from “carbon emission products” is declining rapidly.

Sadly, the minister’s response to this judgement is to appeal, and the response of big business is to ask the federal parliament to step in with urgent action to support the affected industries. In a recent opinion piece in The Australian (July 29, 2021), Robert Gottliebsen described the gas, oil, and coal industries as the heart of the nation. Is he saying that Australia has a black fossil-fueled heart? Perhaps the heart of darkness?

One must ask, aren’t our children and grandchildren the heart, the soul, and the future of the nation?

Climate crimes

Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds

Thinktank InfluenceMap accuses petroleum giants of gaming Facebook to promote oil and gas as part of climate-crisis solution

Chris McGreal

THE GUARDIAN
Thu 5 Aug 2021

Facebook failed to enforce its own rules to curb an oil and gas industry misinformation campaign over the climate crisis during last year’s presidential election, according to a new analysis released on Thursday.

The report, by the London-based thinktank InfluenceMap, identified an increase in advertising on the social media site by ExxonMobil and other fossil-fuel companies aimed at shaping the political debate about policies to address global heating.

InfluenceMap said its research shows the fossil-fuel industry has moved away from outright denying the climate crisis, and is now using social media to promote oil and gas as part of the solution. The report also exposed what it said was Facebook’s role in facilitating the dissemination of false claims about global heating by failing to consistently apply its own policies to stop erroneous advertising.

“Despite Facebook’s public support for climate action, it continues to allow its platform to be used to spread fossil-fuel propaganda,” the report said. “Not only is Facebook inadequately enforcing its existing advertising policies, it’s clear that these policies are not keeping pace with the critical need for urgent climate action.”

The report found that 25 oil and gas industry organisations spent at least $9.5m to place more than 25,000 ads on Facebook’s US platforms last year, which were viewed more than 431m times. Exxon alone spent $5m.

“The industry is using a range of messaging tactics that are far more nuanced than outright statements of climate denial. Some of the most significant tactics found included tying the use of oil and gas to maintaining a high quality of life, promoting fossil gas as green, and publicizing the voluntary actions taken by the industry on climate change,” the report said.

The report noted a rise in spending on Facebook ads in July 2020, immediately after then-presidential candidate Joe Biden announced a $2tn climate plan to promote the use of clean energy. The spending remained high until after the election four months later.

“This suggests the oil and gas industry uses Facebook advertising strategically and for politically motivated purposes,” the report said.

InfluenceMap said it found 6,782 energy industry ads on Facebook last year promoting claims that natural gas is a green or low carbon fuel, even though research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says otherwise.

The research found that Exxon in particular used the social media site to push continued use of oil as affordable, reliable and important to keep the US from relying on other countries for its energy supply.

InfluenceMap also accused the company of running misleading ads that sought to shift the greater responsibility for cutting carbon emissions from industry to the lifestyle choices of ordinary Americans. The report said that the International Energy Agency calculates that global targets to reduce emissions rely heavily on the energy industry moving to green technologies, while just 8% of reductions will come from consumer choices such as taking fewer flights.

“These messages are often packaged in adverts promoting the climate-friendliness of oil and gas companies and the necessity of oil and gas for maintaining a high quality of life,” the report said.

InfluenceMap also drew attention to the part played by industry-funded groups led by the American Petroleum Institute, which spent $3m on Facebook ads last year portraying fossil-fuel companies as climate-friendly.

InfluenceMap said that while Facebook removed some ads for making false claims or failing to include a disclaimer identifying them as about environmental politics, it permitted many others to go unchallenged.

Facebook told the Guardian it has taken action against some groups running pro- fossil-fuel ads and that multiple advertisements have been rejected because they were run without being identified as political.

“We reject ads when one of our independent factchecking partners rates them as false or misleading, and take action against pages, groups, accounts, and websites that repeatedly share content rated as false,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

Last year, a group of US senators wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, about concerns that the social media platform was permitting demonstrably false claims about the climate crisis to be posted on the grounds they were ‘opinion’.

“Given Facebook’s long and troubling history with disinformation, it is deeply concerning that Facebook has now determined that climate disinformation is reportedly “immune to fact-checking”, said the senators, including Elizabeth Warren.

“The climate crisis is too important to allow blatant lies to spread on social media without consequence.”

Little girl finds unique fossil at Alberta lake

By Sarah Ryan Global News
Posted August 3, 2021 

  WATCH ABOVE: Sarah Ryan tells us how a young girl came across a unique fossil at an Alberta lake.

At six years old, Abby Darby made an incredible discovery, all while playing with rocks.

“On the beach sand, I thought I saw a cool rock. But then I dug it out and it wasn’t a rock,” she explained.

Knowing she had something special, she ran to show her family the unusual find.

Right away, they agreed the specimen was likely a fossil.

“I thought after that it would be really cool if I could tell her exactly what it was, because we all had our guesses,” explained Darby’s aunt, Krysta Poole.

“Grandma, she had a claw guess. but all the other ones thought it was a tooth,” Darby said.

READ MORE: Friends recover ancient fossil in Edmonton’s river valley: ‘Like finding a needle in a haystack’

Poole sent a video of Darby’s find to the Faculty of Science at the University of Alberta.

Mark Powers, a PhD student in vertebrate paleontology, took a look at it and said “it’s definitely a tooth, you can see it right away. And it’s definitely mammal because it has the multiple roots. A lot of what we see in dinosaurs or lizards is a single root.

In addition to the roots, he compared the cusps and pits of the tooth to other fossils.

“Upon looking at some specimens here at the University of Alberta in our teaching collections, I can confirm it’s definitely a camel family member.”

A camel, on the Canadian Prairies? Powers said camels are believed to have originated in North America, though they would have looked very different than the ones we have today.

The University of Alberta’s collection includes a small skull from a camel found in Wyoming, for example.

It’s estimated this fossilized tooth would be between 22,000 and 25,000 years old.

“There were huge glaciers that were covering most of Alberta during that time,” Powers said.

“So there would have been some ravines where the ice sheets were retreating away from each other, where we would get a lot of water influence from the melting glaciers. That’s where animals probably would have hung out.”

Darby’s aunt was surprised to hear the news.

“I never knew camels were around here,” Poole said. “We could have never guessed that ourselves.”

She quickly shared the findings with her niece.

“I thought that it was amazing,” Darby said.

Powers said by analyzing the tooth’s enamel and isotopes, researchers could learn a lot.

“That can actually give us an indication of migration, diet and all sorts of changes in their environment as they grew,” he said. “Mammals are great for that because all of it is recorded in the enamel, and most mammals only have two sets of teeth in their life.”

Darby’s family plans to donate the tooth to the Royal Alberta Museum.

“So next year, when I’m in Grade 1, I can show my friends,” Darby explained.

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These gorgeous renewable energy hubs used to be coal plants

Across Europe, energy giant Enel is converting its old polluting infrastructure into new centers for clean power.

08-04-21

[Image: courtesy Frigerio Design]

Enel, headquartered in Rome and Europe’s largest utility company, used to depend heavily on coal. But it’s in the process of shutting down all of its coal power plants globally over the next six years and transforming the old sites for new uses, including as renewable energy hubs.

[Image: courtesy Frigerio Design]“The main goal is to create genuine energy centers that are increasingly integrated with their local environment, reducing the impact on the landscape, thanks to a new idea of what a power plant can be,” Fabio Cautadella, head of power plant repurposing at the Enel Group, said via email. “Most of the coal-fired plants are being converted to renewable energy, but in some cases, they are enjoying a new lease on life with completely different roles. These projects are being developed in collaboration with the local communities, and in some specific cases with other partners, with a view to creating jobs and improving the quality of life in the area.”



In Teruel, Spain, for example, a massive former coal plant will be converted into Europe’s largest solar power plant, with extra wind power and battery storage on site that will more than replace the power generation from coal. Other sites will transition to green hydrogen, “a highly promising solution that can serve as an alternative to electricity in the so-called “hard to abate” sectors, such as heavy industry, shipping, and aviation,” Cautadella says. “In these cases, hydrogen can be extracted through processes powered by renewable sources, a unique technology that is genuinely green.”


In Italy, the company ran a “new energy spaces” competition for architects to redesign four former coal plants that run, in part, on renewable energy. A winning design in Venice turns part of the complex into a center focused on sustainable innovation open to the public. New buildings on the site, made with recycled materials, are designed to use as little energy as possible, and new plantings will help reconnect the industrial complex with the surrounding lagoon.

[Image: Enel]

The projects aren’t all moving toward sustainability as quickly as is technically possible—some of the sites will use renewable energy in combination with gas, which still adds to climate change. Enel doesn’t plan to fully decarbonize until 2050, and arguably could reach that goal much faster. Still, the company was early to embrace renewable energy, launching Enel Green Power in 2008, now a global leader with more than 1,200 renewable power plants on five continents. And over the next decade, it’s planning to spend $190 billion to nearly triple its renewable capacity and build out the grid for a future with electric cars and other surging demands for electricity. Its investments in renewables over the next few years are nearly as much as the combined plans of BP, Total, and Shell. Finding new uses for old coal plants is one part of the larger transition.

“This repurposing is in line with the principles of the circular economy: This way, not only will they offer a new value to the areas in which these facilities are located, but they will also enable the reuse, at least in part, of the materials and some parts of the plants in order to minimize consumption of raw materials,” says Cautadella.

 ALBERTA

Heartland Petrochemical Complex Update

HPC represents Inter Pipeline’s largest growth project and is expected to create a step change in cash flow generation once fully in-service. HPC, which is in the final stages of completion in Strathcona County, Alberta, will be an industry-leading petrochemical facility converting locally sourced, low-cost propane into high-value polypropylene. Polypropylene is an easily transported and fully recyclable plastic used in the manufacturing of an extensive range of essential finished products and consumer goods such as healthcare products, medical supplies, textiles and lightweight automotive components. Despite the prolonged impact of COVID-19, with Inter Pipeline’s strong adherence to rigorous health and safety procedures, HPC has exceeded a world-class 14 million work hours without a lost time incident on-site.

Since the April 22, 2021 HPC update, Inter Pipeline has successfully negotiated an eighth take-or-pay agreement for HPC’s production capacity. The new contract is with an investment grade, multinational integrated energy producer.

Inter Pipeline has now secured 68 percent of HPC’s production capacity under long-term take-or-pay agreements, which is very near our stated objective to contract a minimum 70 percent of capacity in advance of the facility becoming operational. Negotiations are continuing with several additional counterparties. These contracts are structured to include a stable return on capital payment to Inter Pipeline plus fixed and variable operating fees, with no exposure to commodity price fluctuations. The weighted average term of the executed contracts remains approximately nine years.

If no other contracts are secured, the remaining 32 percent of HPC production capacity would be tied to merchant sales of polypropylene production. Merchant sales are exposed to the spread between North American posted polypropylene and Edmonton propane prices. The current June 2021 spread is US$2,600 per tonne and is at a record high since the Cochin pipeline discontinued Alberta propane export service in 2014. The current spread is also approximately 80 percent higher than the average spread of US$1,450 per tonne over the same time period. The current strong pricing spread provides the opportunity for additional upside to Inter Pipeline should this pricing dynamic continue post HPC start-up and is indicative of the strong competitive positioning that HPC enjoys with its abundant, low-cost Canadian propane feedstock.

Inter Pipeline is planning a staggered start-up of HPC with the commencement of polypropylene facility operations expected early in the second quarter of 2022. The propane dehydrogenation facility (PDH), which is substantially mechanically complete, is expected to be operational several months later, with definitive timing subject to the completion of final commissioning plans later this year. The estimated cost of the complex is expected to be approximately $4.3 billion subject to any final cost adjustments related to the potential capitalization of certain additional PDH commissioning expenses and interest during construction for the commissioning period.

Due to the highly integrated nature of Inter Pipeline’s NGL operations, HPC can produce polypropylene before the start-up of the PDH plant utilizing polymer grade propylene (“PGP”) feedstock production from Inter Pipeline’s adjacent Redwater Olefinic Fractionator (“ROF”). A 600,000 barrel PGP storage cavern at ROF and pipeline connectivity between ROF and HPC provide the necessary infrastructure to support a stable supply of feedstock and operational flexibility.

Inter Pipeline continues to expect that 2023 will be the first full year of HPC’s polypropylene production and reconfirms its previous guidance of annual adjusted EBITDA between $400 to $450 million for that year. However, as the definitive timing for commissioning of the full complex has not yet been finalized, the Company considers it prudent to withdraw its 2022 financial guidance for HPC. The long-term average annual adjusted EBITDA for HPC remains approximately $450 million to $500 million, based on the seven-year historical average North American posted polypropylene to Edmonton propane price spread of approximately US$1,450 per tonne.

Advisors

Inter Pipeline has retained TD Securities Inc. and the Special Committee has retained J.P. Morgan Securities Canada Inc. as financial advisors. Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP and Dentons Canada LLP are acting as legal advisors to Inter Pipeline and its Board of Directors. Kingsdale Advisors has been retained as Inter Pipeline’s strategic shareholder advisor.

About Inter Pipeline Ltd.

Inter Pipeline is a major petroleum transportation and natural gas liquids processing business based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Inter Pipeline owns and operates energy infrastructure assets in Western Canada and is building the Heartland Petrochemical Complex — North America’s first integrated propane dehydrogenation and polypropylene facility. Inter Pipeline is a member of the S&P/TSX 60 Index and its common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol IPL.  www.interpipeline.com

Inter Pipeline issues notice of change recommending Brookfield offer and provides update on Heartland Petrochemical Complex | BOE Report

WE GOT BIGGER BALLS AND FIELDS

Shane Ray warns NFL players who sign in the CFL: ‘I definitely don’t think you should take it as high school football’

OUR PLAYERS WORK FOR A LIVING EIGHT MONTHS OF THE YEAR, FOOTBALL IS THEIR PASSION

August 5, 2021

By Justin Dunk

  

Photo courtesy: Toronto Argonauts

Ultra-athletic defensive lineman Shane Ray has come to respect the talent level in the CFL since strapping up with the Toronto Argonauts.

Ray was added to the Argos’ exclusive 45-man negotiation list in December and signed his contract in February after being out of the NFL for the 2019 and 2020 seasons. The 28-year-old viewed the Canadian league as a way back onto the football field.

“The CFL game has been really fun for me, playing in the NFL I didn’t really know what to expect with all the changes. Just figuring everything out and getting in tune with how the game flows. It hasn’t been a super huge transition for me, I’ve come out ready to work everyday,” Ray said.

“These last few years have been tough for me, getting injured in 2017 and having to rebuild myself. And then years of not having the contact I wanted with NFL teams, that weighs on you mentally. It’s given me a new appreciation for the game.”

The six-foot-three, 245-pounder has the skill set to thrive in the CFL if he can learn to play on the bigger field, but he admits not knowing much about the three-down league until a workout for Argos scouts. He views the opportunity in The Six as a chance to rebound and return to the NFL or alternatively start a career in Canada.

“I can’t say that I would just come out here and run through guys, that’s not what’s going on. These guys all get paid and they come into work with their hard hats and they’re ready to go — I appreciate the competition,” Ray said.

“I definitely don’t think that if you’re a player that’s in this position to come out here and play in the CFL, that you should take it as high school football. There are talented players out here and you definitely have to come in every day with the mentality that you’re going to work your craft.”

“I feel like the thought with guys that come over here from the NFL is that they don’t take it serious. I take this very serious, this is not just something I’m doing. This is what I love to do, I’m playing the game of football and I want to win. I want to go out there and I have things that I want to do for my legacy.”

According to coaches, talent evaluators, and teammates, Ray was “nearly unblockable” for the Argos entire training camp at the University of Guelph. His consistent performance has earned him a starting position on the opposite side of future Canadian Football Hall of Famer Charleston Hughes.

“Self scouting report on my ability to get to the quarterback: exceptional. If I can’t do anything else, I can rush the passer. That’s been something I’ve always had a knack for, that’s what I love to do. I look forward to putting it on tape. I can sit here and talk about it, but guys that are on the field they can see what I’m capable of doing,” Ray said.

Hughes has been helping Ray learn the nuances of pass rushing in the Canadian game. The four-time three-down league sack leader and six-time CFL all-star has been a sounding board for the uber-talented Ray. The word “elite” has been used by people around the Argos to describe his abilities as pass rusher.

“We have a D-line group chat and he’s putting his highlights in there. We all have the opportunity to see and we all understand what he’s done in this league,” Ray said.

“My first few days here, he didn’t hesitate to give me information. He was watching some of my tape, and was explaining to me how the steps are a little bit different as far as when you want to do your move here compared to the States, it’s been working for me.”

The first-round, 23rd overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft has shifted his mentality to focus on winning the Grey Cup. Ray wants to add a CFL championship to his Super Bowl LI ring, which he won as a rookie with the Denver Broncos. Double Blue head coach Ryan Dinwiddie has noticed Ray being open to learning the CFL brand of football.

“A lot of guys that come from the NFL don’t know exactly what they’re getting into in the CFL and they’re coming up here for the wrong reasons. He’s coming up here because he loves football and he wants to play it again,” Dinwiddie said.

“I’ve really liked that approach. Those guys that have that approach coming from the NFL usually make an impact. The guys that think they’re bigger than the CFL, and they come up here and they don’t know what they’re getting into, there’s a rude awakening for them.”

Ray proved throughout camp that he was fully healthy once again. The main issue that caused him to fall out of favour in the NFL was a “complete wrist dislocation” which caused him to snap the main ligament in the joint. He went from thinking it was a six-week surgery to having a 14-week surgery amid the loss of blood flow in his wrist. Ray had to get screws to put everything back and hold it together.

“For an outside linebacker/defensive end, your hands are everything. It took a really long time just to get that strength back in my wrist and my whole arm to be honest. Nobody really knows what you go through,” Ray said.

“Nobody knows how much work I really had to put in to get to this point. My body and my weight back — all the eating, lifting, training, the rough nights, the not knowing if I would get another opportunity. For me, this is everything.”