Crystal clear: Lepidopterans have many ways of being transparent

ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

Research News

IMAGE: THE ICONIC GLASSWING BUTTERFLY, GRETA MORGANE OTO, IS A MEMBER OF THE ITHOMIINI BUTTERFLY TRIBE THAT IS NATIVE TO CENTRAL AMERICA AND MEXICO. view more 

CREDIT: NIPAM PATEL

Butterflies and moths have beautiful wings: the bright flare of an orange monarch, the vivid stripes of a swallowtail, the luminous green of a Luna moth. But some butterflies flutter on even more dramatic wings: parts of their wing, or sometimes the entire wing itself, are actually transparent.

Many aquatic organisms, including jellies and fish, are transparent. But transparent butterfly and moth wings are so arresting that merely catching a glimpse of one typically causes a human to lunge for a camera or at least point it out to their friends. These enigmatic, transparent butterfly wings have not been studied comprehensively.

Doris Gomez and Marianne Elias (French National Center for Scientific Research) set out to change that. Last week, along with a multidisciplinary team of ecologists, biologists and physicists, they published a massive survey on the optics and ecological implications of moths and butterflies with transparent wings in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecological Monographs. They discovered that transparency has evolved in Lepidoptera more than once, and that there are many ways to be transparent.

Gomez, an ecologist who has studied the physics and ecological aspects of iridescence in hummingbird wings and other bird coloration, was intrigued by these so-called "glasswing" butterflies and moths when she met Elias, an evolutionary biologist who worked on the ecology and evolution of the tropical butterflies Ithomiini, which have transparent wings. Gomez was startled to find that almost nothing had been written about transparency in Lepidoptera, nor in any other terrestrial animal.

"This paper is a breakthrough because everything that's been known so far on transparency was about aquatic organisms," Gomez said. "Transparency is so rare in terrestrial organisms that people never bothered to study it comprehensively."

She and her team analyzed 123 species of Lepidoptera from samples in the French Museum of Natural History's collection. They found transparency, or "clearwing" species, in 31 out of 124 families. But not all species accomplish transparency in the same way. They examined the extent to which transparency affects thermoregulation and provides protection against ultraviolet radiation.

Many insects, including wasps, flies and dragonflies, have clear wings. Their wings consist of a transparent membrane made of chitin. Butterfly and moth wings are made of the same kind of transparent membrane, but in most cases moths and butterflies have opaque scales obscuring the membrane. The scales are what are responsible for their mesmerizing patterns and coloration.

Gomez and her team discovered that clearwing species have a number of ways to make their wings transparent. Some transparent moths and butterflies have no scales on their wings at all, leaving the chitin membrane to show through. Many other species do have scales, which can be transparent, upright, narrow or hair-like, allowing light through the wing.

Physicists have studied instances of transparency in individual species or genera, in the hopes of understanding the physics of how to adapt biological concepts to make people, vehicles and even structures invisible or transparent. But before now, no one had appreciated the wealth of approaches lepidopterans can take to achieve transparency, or the fact that it has evolved multiple times in different groups.

"This is the first comparative analysis of transparent butterfly wings," said Elias. "What is notable is that transparency has evolved several times independently. But the way the wings become transparent can be dramatically different, from highly packed transparent scales to the mere absence of scales, through scale reduction in size and density. There are many ways of being transparent. We don't know why this diversity exists."

In some cases, different strategies lead to the same level of transparency, leaving researchers pondering why such diversity exists at all. They theorize that transparency may be beneficial in different ways for different species, including as camouflage or to mimic wasp and bees. Transparency also seems to help moths and butterflies regulate their body temperature, but does not protect them from UV radiation.

Gomez, who has a passion for working with scientists from across other disciplines, included physicists in the study to explore the optical properties of the wings including discerning what birds, their would-be predators, see when they look at a transparent butterfly. They found that the more light that can pass through a wing - i.e., the more transparent it is - the less visible the butterfly is to predators. Transparency acts like the ultimate camouflage.

Like the butterflies themselves, the results are compelling. However, the scientists emphasize that the study has raised more questions and avenues of exploration to continue to uncover the evolutionary role and ecological implications of transparency.

"Butterflies are such iconic organisms," said Gomez. "They're so wonderful to study. I like to study complex concepts, like iridescence and transparency because there is so much to explore - and it's so easy to get everyone excited about them."

CAPTION

Pseudophalde cotta, native to Central America, uses flat transparent scales to keep its wings transparent.

CREDIT

Jonathan Pairraire

The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world's largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 9,000 member Society publishes five journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach, and education initiatives. The Society's Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at https://www.esa.org.

ESA is offering complimentary registration at the 106th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America for press and institutional public information officers (see credential policy). The meeting will feature live plenaries, panels and Q&A sessions from August 2-6, 2021. To apply for press registration, please contact ESA Public Information Manager Heidi Swanson at heidi@esa.org.

#BOYCOTTPALMOIL

Palm oil snaps three-day rally as crude oil declines

PLANTATIONS
Tuesday, 13 Jul 2021


The benchmark palm oil contract for September delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange closed down 28 ringgit, or 0.72%, at 3, 864 ringgit ($922.42) a tonne, after rising as much as 1.8% earlier

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil reversed early gains to end lower on Monday, snapping a three-day rally, as crude oil prices fell but better than expected July 1-10 exports capped losses.

The benchmark palm oil contract for September delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange closed down 28 ringgit, or 0.72%, at 3, 864 ringgit ($922.42) a tonne, after rising as much as 1.8% earlier.

Crude futures fell as concerns over slowing global growth outweighed the prospect of 

tightening supply, making palm a less attractive option for biodiesel feedstock.

Exports of Malaysian palm oil products for July 1-10 rose 2%-4% from a month ago, cargo surveyors said on Saturday, beating market expectations of a decline.

Stockpiles expanded to a nine-month high of 1.61 million tonnes at end-June, as rising production and imports offset a sharp rebound in exports, Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) data showed.

Production gained 2.2% from May while exports jumped 11.8%, which was within market expectations.

"MPOB data is neutral for the market and now attention is turned to the July production and export numbers, " said Anilkumar Bagani, research head of Mumbai-based vegetable oils broker Sunvin Group.

But investors will mostly look at external markets, particularly soy and canola oils for price action trend, he added.

Palm oil is affected by price movements in related oils as they compete for a share in the global vegetable oils market.

Dalian's most-active soyoil contract rose 1.4%, while its palm oil contract jumped 1.6%. Soyoil prices on the Chicago Board of Trade were up 0.8%.

Palm oil prices in top buyer India have risen more than 6% despite the government cutting import tax and allowing refined palm oil shipments as prices jumped overseas on strong demand hopes, industry officials said.

China raised its forecast on imports of edible oils in 2020/21 marketing year, on increase of palm oil and sunflower oil shipments.


($1 = 4.1890 ringgit)- Reuters

Big Oil keeps brakes on spending even with crude rally windfall

Monday, 12 Jul 2021





LONDON: Leading international energy companies are resisting the temptation to rush and spend an unexpected windfall from rallying oil and natural gas prices as they focus on longer-term energy transition challenges, executives and analysts said.

Benchmark crude oil prices more than doubled in the second quarter of 2021 from a year earlier and have risen further in recent weeks to close to $78 a barrel, their highest in almost three years as OPEC and other major producers failed to strike an agreement to lift output.


That, along with higher global natural gas prices because of supply issues, will boost the coffers of oil companies after firms like Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP sharply cut costs in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

"The cash flow for majors is looking very strong, they're certainly firing on the oil and natural gas cylinders," Redburn analyst Stuart Joyner said, adding that things could improve further once demand for refined products fully recovers.


The companies are expected to provide updates on their spending plans in second quarter earnings reports over coming weeks, but are unlikely to significantly shift tack with investors laser-focused on securing higher returns from the sector after a disappointing decade. (Graphic: Big Oil's spending) https://tmsnrt.rs/2UCOnVT

While the heads of top energy companies said last month $100-a-barrel oil was achievable again in coming years, they added prices would be volatile, meaning there is little incentive, at least for now, to commit billions to projects that could take a decade or more to show a return on investment.

Also dampening the bullish mood is huge uncertainty over near-term energy demand due to the resurgence of COVID-19 in parts of the world and longer-term with the shift to lower carbon fuels to fight climate change.

"The international oil companies are still rebuilding their balance sheets," Brian Gilvary, CEO of INEOS' oil and gas division INEOS Energy and a former BP chief financial officer told Reuters.

Shell said last week it will increase returns to shareholders earlier than expected thanks to higher revenue, holding its annual capital expenditure at no more than $22 billion.

TRANSITION BREAK

For companies such as BP and Shell, France's TotalEnergies and Spain's Repsol, the coronavirus crisis has already accelerated the roll-out of new strategies aimed at lowering carbon emissions and growing renewables businesses.

So, unlike previous cycles when rising oil prices loosened purse strings, executives will likely stick to their spending discipline and focus on their energy transition strategies.

"Higher oil prices allow us to extract more value from our existing businesses, which in turn will generate more resources for our spending on transformation in line with our energy transition roadmap," Repsol Chief Executive Josu Jon Imaz told Reuters in a statement.

BP will stick to its plan to reduce oil output by 40%, or roughly 1 million barrels per day, by 2030, including through the sale of oil and gas assets, CEO Bernard Looney said at the Reuters Energy Transition conference last month.

"Strong oil prices are very positive for our strategy," Looney said. "Those assets that we sell, will be selling in a much higher price environment, potentially, and therefore will generate more proceeds."

A commodity price rally in the late 2000s drove oil prices to record highs above $140 a barrel and sparked a wave of investments including in huge, complex deepwater oilfields, giant gas liquefaction plants and a U.S. shale drilling boom that upended oil supplies.

Capital spending by the majors is likely to edge up from next year as companies pay down debt and fully recover from the pandemic, Redburn's Joyner said.

"There will be more capex, but not much of the increase will go into upstream (oil and gas production), it's going to go into renewables."

U.S. shale producers have also promised investors they will keep a tight rein on spending in 2021.

In contrast, smaller international oil and gas drillers are expected to slowly ramp up spending in response to the higher prices, INEOS Energy's Gilvary said.

"Smaller exploration and production companies will increase spending but in a more measured way because they tend to be more focused on the short- to medium-term." - Reuters

 

Solar Has An Unlikely New Enemy

By Irina Slav - Jun 23, 2021

Wind and solar generation capacity topped new capacity additions in 2020 despite the pandemic, prompting praise from energy authorities and environmentalists, as well as urges for picking up the pace so wind and solar—especially solar—could become the dominant source of energy for the world sooner than 2030. The narrative of the cheap solar panel is so common, few question it at all, especially when it features data about the declining cost curve of panels. According to this narrative, solar farm electricity is already cheaper than the electricity produced by gas-fired plants.

What the narrative omits is that this is not universally true as of yet. The other thing the narrative omits, perhaps out of genuine lack of awareness, is that the cost curve for any product, be it a photovoltaic panel, a wind turbine, or a barrel of crude oil, depends on many factors. And some of these factors are not exactly favorable.

For all the benefits of solar power—cheap, emission-free energy from a virtually endless supply except during the night and when it’s overcast, raining, or snowing—the technology has some drawbacks. While these are a favorite topic of discussion among renewable power skeptics, they don’t normally draw any attention from the industry itself. Now, one of the big problems of solar—that is, land use—has drawn the attention of a perhaps unlikely opponent: environmentalists.

Utility-scale solar farm projects are increasingly drawing opposition from environmentalist groups, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month, citing the Battle Born Solar Project, which will cover—literally—14 square miles, or, as the WSJ puts it, 7,000 football fields. That’s a lot of land to cover with solar panels, which would render it useless for any other purpose.

Related: Is OPEC+ Ready To Open The Taps?
Opponents of the Battle Born Solar Project from the nearest community are not among renewable power skeptics that mock solar farms. They are, in fact, environmentally conscious people who are, however, concerned that the massive solar farm will spoil the land, upset ecosystems, and last but not least, make their beautiful views less beautiful.

It’s a Beautiful Problem 

It was really bound to happen. Anyone who’s had the chance of seeing a utility-scale solar farm knows they are not exactly works of art that one would enjoy seeing on a daily basis. The logic, as with so many other things, seems to be, “It’s great, but I don’t want it in my backyard.” And it’s not all about aesthetics, either. Build enough massive solar farms, and we might have a climate problem on our hands.

Solar’s En Fuego

Earlier this year, two researchers from Sweden and Australia challenged an idea that has been circulating in the public space for a while. They challenged the notion that building a few giant solar farms in the Sahara desert will solve the world’s energy problems. 

Not so, Zhengyao Lu from Sweden’s Lund University and Benjamin Smith from Western Sydney University warned. Solar farms have a heat problem, and the bigger the farm, the bigger the problem becomes.

Solar panels convert light into electricity at an average rate of 15 and 20 percent. So, 15-20 percent of the light solar panels absorb, they convert into electricity. The rest appears to be the problem, according to Lu and Smith.

The energy that solar panels cannot convert into electricity gets released back into the environment in the form of heat, the climate researchers explain. While their focus is on the Sahara, with its light-colored sand, the fact that solar panels release energy back as heat remains regardless of what the environment is.

Inconvenient Truth: Costs are Rising

Besides emerging environmentalist opposition, however, the solar industry has a much more immediate problem: costs are rising. Because of the global supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, the cost of virtually all raw materials are soaring, reversing the steady trend of cost declines we have witnessed in solar panels for more than a decade. Besides evidence that nothing should be taken for granted, even solar panel prices, this fact threatens what many like to call a renewable energy revolution.

Related: Reuters: U.S. Agrees To Lift Iran Oil Sanctions

This is happening at the worst possible time for that revolution. The International Energy Agency, in its Net Zero by 2050 roadmap, said it will require adding 23,000 Twh of the total 71,000 TWh the world will need by 2050. But Norwegian Rystad Energy went further. The consultancy recently estimated that the world could add some 50,000 TWh because it is so cheap.

“The world needs to grow its power generation capacity further in order to fulfill electrification goals in buildings, transportation and industry and solar PV is the cheapest and most convenient way,” Rystad analysts said.

This no longer appears to be the case. A recent Financial Times report noted that the shares of solar power companies have shed some 18 percent since the start of the year as the prices of steel, polysilicon, and transportation have all soared. The chief executive of the U.S. Solar Fund expects these higher raw material prices to boost new solar installation costs by as much as 20 percent. And the US Solar Industries Association warned this is only the beginning: “compounding cost increases across all materials are just beginning to affect installers,” the association said.

Perhaps S&P Platts analyst Bruno Brunetti put it best, as quoted by the FT: “The narrative in the solar industry has shifted,” Brunetti said. “We have seen steep declines in costs over the past decade, but we are seeing that stabilise now and even increase in some cases.”

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

 

How COVID-19 Triggered The Mother Of All Oil Crises

By Haley Zaremba - Jul 11, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic certainly wasn’t the first historic crash or economic crisis for the oil and gas industry, and it (probably) won’t be the last. Four huge historic oil crises come to mind immediately: the 1980s oil glut which followed the gas lines of the ‘70s, the turmoil of the Gulf War, the 2008 financial crisis, and the ensuing oil glut of the 2010s. The only thing that’s consistent about oil markets is their very volatility. It’s a boom-and-bust business by nature. And yet, somehow, this time it’s different.  Oil markets and the energy industry as a whole have been hit by all kinds of crises and disasters in the last century. There was the Suez Canal crisis of the ‘50s, in which Egypt nationalized the pivotal waterway which controlled two-thirds of the oil used by Europe at the time of the conflict. The oil embargo of 1973, in which Arab members of OPEC imposed an embargo on the United States for their involvement in the Arab-Israeli War, leading to those aforementioned gas lines and gas rationing. Then the Iranian revolution caused the second global oil shock in 5 years, leaving consumers stuck in oil lines once again. But, according to oil giant BP, all of these momentous and market-changing moments “pale in comparison” to the havoc wreaked by the novel coronavirus pandemic. 

Related: Oil Price Plunge Continues Amid OPEC+ DeadlockThe supermajor oil company released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy on Thursday, and the document compiled data from the past year which led the company to describe 2020 as “a year like no other” with left indelible marks on the energy industry as a whole. The pandemic has led to the loss of 4 million lives at the very least, and those numbers continue to rise, with the number of reported cases (and scores more of unreported ones) totalling to well over 185 million. The economic toll has also been enormous, with global gross domestic product contracting around 3.3 percent in 2020 --  “the largest peacetime recession since the Great Depression,” according to reporting from CNBC. 

While the pandemic has left a lasting mark on nearly every industry and economic sector out there, few have been as hard-hit and re-shaped as the energy industry. 2020 started off with a huge drop in global oil demand as industrial sectors around the world slowed down or closed down, and cars sat idle in driveways as people retreated inside to shelter in place. This oil market volatility soon led to a spat between the OPEC+ members of Saudi Arabia and Russia as to how to respond to the challenge, which devolved into an all-out oil-price war and severe supply glut which put global oil storage at capacity and made owning oil a liability -- so much so that on April 20, 2020, the unthinkable happened and oil prices went negative. The West Texas Intermediate crude benchmark plummeted well below zero, bottoming out at nearly negative $40 per barrel, a historic first which would leave waves in the global oil market that are still reverberating today. 

Related: U.S. Shale On Track For One Of Its Best Years Ever

But the massive change in global oil demand and industrial activity also had huge positive externalities. In their report, BP notes that the 2020 global health crisis resulted in falling rates of primary energy and carbon emissions at levels that we haven’t seen since World War II. World energy demand is estimated to have dropped by a whopping 4.5 percent and worldwide carbon emissions resulting from energy use contracted by 6.3 percent -- massive changes by any historical measure. 

A new, greener world seemed possible and the clean energy transition was catalyzed as green energy had a gangbusters year and world leaders in all corners of the globe got serious about meeting emissions goals and working renewables and energy efficiency into their economic recovery packages. Solar power had its biggest growth year ever, and as a whole the renewable energy sector emerged from the pandemic’s economic turmoil “relatively unscathed.”

Some of that hope, however, that the pandemic would provide enough perspective and enough of a break in the momentum of industry and status quo to seriously change the trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, is falling away as the world rather hastily returns to business as usual. While the hope of the green revolution is fading, however, it’s more urgent than ever before. Hopefully it won’t take another taste of the end of days to bring back the human energy needed to power the clean energy revolution. 

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

The Ongoing Transformation Of ‘Big Oil’

By Irina Slav - Jul 12, 2021, 

When last year BP (-0.50%) vowed to reduce its oil and gas output by 40 percent by 2030 as it shifts to renewable energy, it came as a shock to many, pushing the company's share prices down sharply. Yet since then, pressure on Big Oil to stop doing what it does has only been growing. And Big Oil is responding.

The Houston Chronicle's Paul Takahashi in a recent article detailed supermajors positioning to effectively move away from their core business and into low-carbon energy. Takahashi noted several examples of Big Oil partnering with majors from other industries to effectively reduce these other industries' consumption of Big Oil's principal products: fuels.

One such example was Total—recently renamed TotalEnergies (0.25%)—partnering with BP (-0.50%) and Uber (-1.35%) to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles. TotalEnergies (0.25%) already has a growing footprint in EV charging infrastructure, as does BP. And they have a solid reason for doing so: European governments are dead set on achieving their net-zero goals.

Just last week, the European Commission said that it planned to propose that internal combustion engine cars be phased out beginning 2035 EU-wide. Before that, the EC plan envisages a reduction in vehicle emissions by 65 percent by 2030.

"There's no way around it, reaching net-zero by 2050 means phasing out combustion vehicle sales by 2035 at the latest," Bloomberg quoted Colin McKerracher, BloombergNEF's head of advance transport research, as saying.

This would mean Big Oil would lose a solid chunk of its biggest market—that for fuels, meaning, in turn, they would need to find a replacement. EVs are one logical replacement for fuel sales, so no wonder Europe's Big Oil majors have been quite active in building a presence in charging infrastructure.

Pressure is not coming only from governments. Asset managers are getting increasingly restless about emissions and ESG investments.

Earlier this month, asset management firms worth a combined $6 trillion in client assets called for a global carbon price as a way of accelerating the energy transition. They did not stop there, either. The group, which calls itself The Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance, also said the cost of carbon emissions needed to treble by 2030 if we are to reach global climate change targets.

What this effectively means for Big Oil is that their client pool will shrink considerably over the next couple of decades, assuming the transition drive continues. If carbon costs rise, more and more companies will opt for low-carbon energy alternatives to fossil fuels, especially with governments subsidizing these. With the timeframes cited by various energy transition proponents, Big Oil doesn't really have much time. So it is moving away from being Big Oil and into Big Energy territory.

Some are venturing into alternative fuels. The Chron's Takahashi noted Chevron's (0.20%) partnership with Toyota (0.62%) in developing transport and storage systems for hydrogen-powered cars. The partnership, according to the two companies' press release, aimed to "catalyze and lead the development of commercially viable, large-scale businesses in hydrogen, with the goal to advance a functional, thriving global hydrogen economy."

These partnerships and shifts come not a moment too soon. Reuters reported last week that even central banks are joining the ESG investment chorus. Citing a survey by Invesco, the report said a third of central banks and sovereign wealth funds have started paying more attention to environmental, social, and governance investment priorities during the past year. More than half had specific ESG policies, up from 44 percent a year earlier.

Related: Natural Gas Prices Still Have Room To Run

Then, of course, there was the unprecedented ruling of a Dutch court against Shell (-0.95%), which obliged the company to reduce its carbon emissions by 45 percent within ten years. This will effectively force the supermajor to move from Big Oil to Big Energy. More court cases like that are not out of the question, either.

Some see this shift as an opportunity for the industry, however. An Oilman magazine article penned by Benjamin Beberness listed the opportunities that the energy transition is opening up to oil and gas companies, and they are taking advantage of this. These include entering solar and wind power through state acquisitions in already existing businesses and hydrogen production and distribution. Power utilities are also fair game for oil and gas companies that want to survive in a shifting energy world.

Be that as it may, Big Oil will hardly give up on the business that gave it its name entirely, even in 2050.

"As people understand we're going to be in the hydrocarbons business for decades to come, that concern has gone away a little bit," BP's Bernard Looney said in response to investor criticism the company might miss on the oil price rally because of its production cut plans.

"We want to run the best hydrocarbons business possible. We don't want to run the biggest hydrocarbons business possible," Looney clarified, as quoted by Reuters last month. Chances are that if the green transition drive continues at current rates, this business will by 2050 be only a small portion of BP's overall business. The same might be true for its peers.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com