Trudeau questions business case for natural gas exports from Canada to Europe


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government is open to easing regulatory requirements for projects that would facilitate the export of Canadian natural gas to Europe, but questioned whether a business case exists for such investments.



The comments came Monday during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Montreal as the prime minister hosted the German leader during a visit that will also include stops in Toronto and Newfoundland.

The question of what role Canada could play floated like a cloud over the proceedings as the two leaders accused Russia of using its energy exports to Europe as a weapon to undermine public support for Ukraine on the continent.

They went on to underscore the importance of weaning Germany and the rest of Europe off Russian oil and gas over the short term, and transitioning away from such energy sources over the medium-to-long term.

The federal government is ready to do its part by making it easier for companies to get regulatory approval to transport liquified natural gas from other parts of Canada to the east coast for export to Germany, Trudeau told reporters as Scholz looked on.

“From the government’s standpoint, easing the processes ⁠— because of the difficulty that Germany is facing ⁠— to make sure that we can move through regulatory hurdles more quickly is something we're willing to do,” he said.

Yet the prime minister suggested it will ultimately be up to industry to determine whether it makes business sense to invest in the facilities and other infrastructure needed to transport Canadian gas to Europe.

“There are a number of potential projects, including one in Saint John, and some others that are on the books for which there has never been a strong business case because of the distance from the gas fields,” he said.

“We are looking right now ⁠— and companies are looking ⁠— at whether or not, in the new context, it makes it a worthwhile business case, to make those investments. ... It needs to make sense for Germany to be receiving LNG directly from the east coast.”

Canada could also export its LNG to other markets around the world and in the process free up gas from other sources that could be used by Germany and Europe, Trudeau added.

“We are certainly aware that even as the world needs to decarbonize and get off fossil fuels, there is a need right now to counter the energy crisis created by Russia,” he said.

Canadian Gas Association president and CEO Timothy Egan welcomed the prime minister’s talk about easing regulatory hurdles for industry, which he described as critical for moving ahead with various projects.

“I don't think industry is looking for any financial support from government, but it is looking to see the regulatory process clarified and made more expeditious,” he said.

“The prime minister indicated a willingness to make the regulatory process quicker and clearer. That’s enormous.”

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland first raised the idea of government action to make it easier for LNG exports from Canada while visiting Saint John in early July, where she met with representatives from across industry.

Yet while the government has since held a handful of meetings and consultations, Egan said much engagement is needed.

“We certainly have been in touch with Natural Resources Canada on various occasions about the situation, and we know that the government is meeting with European counterparts,” he added.

“But I would say that we've had more overtures from European governments and industry ... than we have from our own government.”

During Monday’s news conference, both Trudeau and Scholz underscored the need to transition from fossil fuels clean energy over the medium-to-long term. The two leaders are expected to sign a deal on hydrogen later this week.

Yet Scholz painted a picture of Germans taking extreme measures to shore up their energy supplies in the short term to survive the coming winter as the country struggles with a decline in Russian energy exports.

Russia has cut gas flows in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany to 20 per cent of capacity and recently announced it would shut down the line entirely for three days at the end of the month, citing the need for unscheduled maintenance.

Measures taken by Germany include massive new investments in ports and pipelines to receive gas from Norway, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe, and a reversal on recent moves to phase out oil and coal use in the country.

The leaders also defended Canada’s decision to grant a permit allowing gas turbines repaired in Montreal to be sent back to Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, which operates the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

Ukraine has criticized Trudeau and his government for agreeing last month to Germany’s request to exempt Siemens Canada from sanctions against Russia so it could return a turbine for use in the pipeline.

The turbine had been under repairs at Siemens’ Montreal facility, the only location in the world capable of maintaining the equipment. It was delivered to Germany and was supposed to go to Russia from there, but Russian authorities have refused to accept it.

Trudeau and Scholz accused Russia of trying to use the issue as a cover for cutting gas exports. They also said Moscow was trying to pit Canada and Germany against each other, and divert public anger at the resulting increase in energy prices away from itself.

Yet while they claimed to have effectively called Russia's bluff, as evidenced by Gazprom's refusal to take the turbine, Trudeau sidestepped questions about whether his government would now block the import, repair and return of five other turbines.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 22, 2022.

Lee Berthiaume and Virginie Ann, The Canadian Press

Adam Pankratz: Natural gas is the elephant in the room that Trudeau and Scholz are ignoring

Special to National Post - 

This week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is visiting Canada. Many items will be on his agenda with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau but one critical item is blatantly missing: liquified natural gas. Failure to discuss an LNG deal during this meeting is a further demonstration of a wanton and failing energy policy from both sides. The only question is, who is worse? The one whose country is currently paying €250 per megawatt hour for gas (more than 10 times what it was last year) or the one whose country is sitting on trillions of cubic meters of the stuff, yet can’t get it to market?


© Provided by National PostPipes at a natural gas plant near Fort St. John, B.C., Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018.

Canada’s proven gas reserves as of 2020 amounted to 2.4 trillion (yes, with a “T”) cubic meters of gas. That’s 83 trillion cubic feet if you prefer imperial. We also produce 165 billion cubic meters of gas annually, making us the fifth largest producer of gas in the world. Yet, despite our incredible reserves and large production we fail time and time again to get market value for our product.

Current price differentials in the LNG market boggle the mind. AECO, the Alberta or Canadian reference price, has fluctuated between $4 and $5 per gigajoule in recent months, most recently dropping below $2. They could even turn negative in September. Meanwhile, in the United States, the reference price of Henry Hub currently sits at a touch over $12 or US$9/MMBtu. While this differential may be enough to drive Canadian producers mad, it pales in comparison to what Europe is paying for gas with current prices over the equivalent of $90/MMBtu.

The reason for this differential blowout is simple: Canada lacks the infrastructure to get our gas to the world. With Canada’s LNG unable to be exported due to lack of pipelines and terminals our gas is held captive by our own domestic market. Our LNG should be transported all over the world to get the highest price but right now it remains largely trapped within our borders. Since Russia’s Ukraine invasion oil and gas prices worldwide have risen enormously. But in Europe, gas prices have soared more than anything else because of the lack of supply options other than Russia. Europe deserves heavy blame for their lack of gas substitutes and Europeans will suffer heavily this winter because of bad political judgement, particularly in Germany.

Canada may not have been able to affect European decision making but we do control our own destiny. Regardless, in past years, governments have shirked and ignored the huge LNG opportunity for enviro-political gain.

In British Columbia, there were multiple LNG projects proposed in recent years, but ultimately only one, with much delay and struggle — LNG Canada — has made it through the province’s byzantine regulatory and consultation process. Still not complete, LNG Canada will allow Canadian gas to access the world market for the first time, ever. On the East Coast there is no LNG export terminal, despite multiple attempts to build one. In February, Ottawa nixed Énergie Saguenay’s proposed LNG facility, which had been in the works since 2014. It was crushed just in time to watch Russia invade Ukraine two weeks later and use gas as an economic weapon.

We can bowdlerize with polite insinuations of a missed LNG opportunity, but the reality is that Canada’s performance on LNG has been short-sighted, ideological, unrealistic and foolish. There has been little concrete leadership by politicians who have more broadly preferred a starry-eyed, half baked approach to LNG policy discussions. Oil and gas are not disappearing anytime soon and it’s time Canadian policy started to reflect that reality.

Even those resistant to oil should be able to recognize that LNG is the next enormous economic opportunity for Canada. LNG is the bridge fuel which can replace coal, while producing at least 40 per cent fewer emissions than coal and about 25 per cent less than oil. This gives us a cleaner burning alternative as we transition (over decades) towards fully renewable energy. If there is a more economically and environmentally compelling argument in the world today, I have not seen it.

But there is also a moral and societal argument here in Canada as well. That argument is the huge economic opportunity LNG represents for First Nations communities in Canada, and particularly in British Columbia. LNG Canada and the Coastal Gas Link (CGL) will bring in billions of dollars in royalties and jobs to these communities. Multiple Indigenous leaders have spoken on the importance of this issue for their communities, including Crystal Smith of the Haisla Nation, Karen Ogen-Toews, CEO of the First Nations LNG Alliance, and Ellis Ross, Haisla member and MLA for Skeena.

LNG is here to stay as an important energy source for longer than many unrealistic politicians would like to admit. For over a century we have been using fossil fuels to grow and prosper; that will not change overnight. LNG will have a decades-long run ahead as a reliable, transition fuel. This is an opportunity Canada cannot miss. We must develop, in conjunction with indigenous communities, more pipelines, more gas wells and more LNG export terminals so that our precious resources find equitable prices in the growing world market. Any politician who can’t find space for an LNG discussion in their agenda today is woefully failing their citizens.

Adam Pankratz is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business and is on the board of directors of Rokmaster Resources.

WHO Reports Breakthrough Monkeypox Cases, Says Vaccines Are 'Not a Silver Bullet'

Vanessa Etienne - 5h ago

The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed there have been a number of breakthrough cases of monkeypox after preliminary reports detail the efficacy of the vaccine.


Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC via AP Monkeypox virions

In a press briefing, Dr. Rosamund Lewis, WHO's technical lead for monkeypox, discussed reports of breakthrough monkeypox cases in people who received a prophylaxis vaccine following exposure to the virus.

"We have known from the beginning that this vaccine would not be a silver bullet, that it would not meet all the expectations that are being put on it and that we don't have firm efficacy data or effectiveness data in this context," Lewis explained.

"The fact that we're beginning to see some breakthrough cases is also really important information because it tells us that the vaccine is not 100% effective in any given circumstance, whether preventive or post-exposure," she continued. "We cannot expect 100% effectiveness at the moment based on this emerging information."

Related video: Monkeypox vaccinations proceed despite scientists' debate

Duration 1:50 View on Watch

Monkeypox can be prevented with the Jynneos smallpox vaccine, which can also be effective after a person is infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health officials noted that the efficacy data on the vaccine is not surprising because a study from the 1980s found that the shots could provide about 85% protection against monkeypox.

"What we're seeing are breakthrough cases, which are not really surprises, but it reminds us that vaccine is not a silver bullet, that every person who feels that they are a risk, and appreciates their own level of risk, and wishes to lower their own level of risk have many interventions at their disposal, which includes vaccination where available but also protection from activities where they may be at risk," Lewis said.

Monkeypox spreads primarily through skin-to-skin contact, direct contact with bodily fluids or lesions, and can also be transmitted by respiratory droplets. While the respiratory transmission may sound similar to COVID-19, monkeypox does not spread nearly as easily as the coronavirus.

The CDC states that individuals can protect themselves from the virus by avoiding skin-to-skin contact with people who have a rash that looks like monkeypox, avoiding contact with objects and materials that a person with monkeypox has used, and washing hands often.

As of Friday, there are 41,358 confirmed global cases of monkeypox across 94 countries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The United States counts more infections from the virus than any other country in the world with 14,115.

RELATED: Can Monkeypox Spread Through Objects like Doorknobs? An Expert Explains as U.S. Cases Surpass 6,500

 RELATED: United States Confirms 9th Pediatric Case of Monkeypox as National Total Reaches 13,571

Will climate investments work — or open a door for fossil fuel defenders?

Noah Gordon, opinion contributor - THE HILL

For the first time in its history, Congress has passed a comprehensive climate bill. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that was just signed into law will make gigantic investments in low-carbon energy, making access to lower emission energy cheaper for people all over the world. What’s more, modelers expect the bill to put the United States within striking distance of its Paris Agreement emissions-cutting target of 50 percent (on 2005 levels) by 2030.


Will climate investments work — or open a door for fossil fuel defenders?

The U.S. Congress finally acting to slow the climate crisis is a really big deal. And these investments will set up a new period of U.S. climate politics, centered not on whether financing climate action is worth doing, but whether it is working.

In order to explain, it’s worth reviewing the science of how greenhouse gases heat up the planet and when global warming might stop. Paris Agreement signatories pledged to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) — or ideally to the safer but now essentially unachievable target of 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), limiting warming to 2 Celsius requires global greenhouse gas emissions to reach net-zero in around 2100, with emissions peaking by 2025 and then declining steadily over the following seventy years.

Here is the crucial point: Global warming does not begin to stop until emissions reach net-zero. After that point, global temperatures should stabilize within a few years, as methane disappears from the atmosphere and the land and oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, although it would take several centuries for these natural processes alone to start cooling the Earth, as the scientist Zeke Hausfather has written in Carbon Brief. So, everything that people do on the way to net-zero — say, the United States cutting its emissions in half — merely slows down the rate at which the planet is warming. While temperature change can be stopped relatively quickly after emissions hit zero, other aspects of the climate system will unfortunately have suffered more committed or “baked-in” damage: after net-zero, melting glaciers would keep melting, and sea levels would keep rising, likely for centuries.

In short, there is a lag between cause and effect, which scientists call “hysteresis.” Think of the delay between turning down a thermostat and the room actually reaching your desired temperature. In U.S. climate politics, this lag will lead to some serious irritation — if not hysteria.

That’s partly because people overstate how important the U.S. is to the trajectory of the global climate: after the Senate passed the IRA on Aug. 7, the Financial Times editorial board wrote that “the planet might have a future after all,” while Paul Krugman’s New York Times op-ed asked whether Democrats had just “saved civilization”. The U.S., though, is responsible for only about 13 percent (and falling) of global greenhouse gas emissions.

But it’s also because even the most climate-conscious Americans underestimate the extent to which the effort to mitigate climate change is more of an Ironman triathlon than a marathon, let alone a sprint. The IRA contains about $400 billion in climate and energy spending over 10 years. Regardless of how effective those investments are, there is zero chance that the rate of global warming even slows down until the end of President Biden’s current term. Again, even in a best-case scenario where the climate bill helped jumpstart a global transition and put the world on track to miraculously hold warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, humans would not stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere before 2060. Until then, the fires and droughts that already have a majority of Americans worried about global warming are expected to keep getting worse.

While the climate bill gives us a running start, we know one climate package won’t be enough. What does this mean for the politics of climate change in the long term? In the U.S. debate, defenders of fossil fuels will probably switch to new rhetoric. Once denying the reality of human-caused climate change became passé, even gauche, these politicians started pointing out that other countries would simply catch a free ride on the American mitigation train. In criticizing the Green New Deal, for example, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argued that the climate package would “tie America’s hands for no benefit, while China and our international competitors go roaring by.”

Now that the U.S. is taking action, and China’s incredible buildout of renewables has it on pace to peak emissions by 2025, climate obstructionists will have to take a new tack. “Sure, climate change made those floods worse,” they might say, “but all these expensive climate programs still aren’t worth it. It’s not just that other countries keep emitting more and more, it’s that all our emission cuts do nothing to stop floods,” floods like the ones that killed dozens in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky in early August.

In countries like Germany that have long had a serious national climate policy, such deflection of responsibility on the grounds that domestic policy “affects only 2 percent of emissions” is a common rhetorical tactic. While the IRA does not contain some of the climate policies that might be most invidious to the average consumer, such as a carbon tax, it will still lead to noticeable changes in American life as new government-subsidized wind turbines and transmission lines go up around the country.

For those who support the climate bill and climate mitigation, it will be important to emphasize that things are getting better even when they don’t seem to be. That messaging needs to start now. The day that the U.S. keeps its Paris Agreement promise and cuts emissions by half will be momentous, but not because it immediately averts a heatwave the following summer. Rather, it will be momentous because it will avoid future emissions that could have damaged the planet for generations to come.

Supporters of climate action have to be prepared for the decades-long period where climate policy and green technology gets really good, but climate impacts stay bad. In the meantime, countries can adapt so that the impacts are less harmful, and look forward to a future where net-negative emissions allow humans to start trying to put the climate genie back in the bottle.

Noah Gordon is a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where his research focuses on climate change and energy policy.

Uranus Retrograde Is Here To Change Everything

Elizabeth Gulino -  Refinery29

Another day, another retrograde. From August 24 until January 22, 2023, the Planet of Revolution will be wrapped up in a backwards dance. Although Uranus retrogrades every year around this time and we’ve experienced the planetary backwards motion in Taurus before, it’s still a transit that triggers some major reevaluating. Are you ready for it?



Uranus is an outer planet that affects our long-term goals. Since it stays in a sign for around seven years, we’re often focusing on the same themes for that entire time. For this transit in particular, Uranus’s influence is a bit serious on a collective level. “It brings change on a grand scale,” says Lisa Stardust, astrologer and author of The Love Deck. “When in Taurus, its least favorite sign to be in, it creates change around the foundations that we have built our lives on. Structures fall, the way we invest our money and source our food is radically different than before, and relationships evolve and grow in different ways.”

Mainly, retrogrades affect us on a more personal level, due to the transit’s reflective nature. Uranus is often associated with sudden breakthroughs and shocking revelations or events, but during its retrograde, “We’re choosing to reflect on the change that’s taken place in our lives over the past few months and what changes we need to make moving forward,” says astrologer Stephanie Campos. She urges us to create a cosmic game plan and ask ourselves, “How do we interact with change? Do we welcome it? Are we terrified of it? What changes have we been avoiding? How will applying some of those changes bring us closer to the life we truly desire to live?”

This is the time to dive headlong into our deep feelings, according Iva Naskova, astrologer at the Nebula app. “Uranus retrograde allows us to rethink and reflect on our goals and aspirations and challenges us to take a different approach, and it is more likely for us all to think and act a bit differently or in more creative and unconventional ways,” she says. If something hasn’t been working out for you this year, take note and change your direction. Although scary, change can often be the catalyst we need for a transformation.

Narayana Montúfar, senior astrologer for Astrology.com and author of Moon Signs: Unlock Your Inner Luminary Power, says that as Uranus retrogrades, its erratic energy diminishes a bit, which in turn allows us to really integrate changes that have been taking place into our lives. “If certain events took us by surprise this year, they could begin to make much more sense,” she says. “Uranus is the planet of creative brilliance, but its influence can sometimes be too much to digest when it is direct.” This retrograde can be great news, actually, and Montúfar says it’ll be especially so for those who have experienced significant change and any big life events this year. Although change is inevitable, big switches will happen at a much slower, more digestible pace during this time, which may save all of us a lot of turmoil.

This year in particular has been an incredibly active one for Uranus, mainly due to its connections with Saturn and the Lunar North Node of Destiny. “The foundations of our lives have been collapsing to make room for the creation of new structures that allow for more freedom and creativity — but the process hasn’t been easy,” Montúfar says. “We have been standing in this liminal space between the past and the future, sometimes resisting moving forward.”

And with Uranus retrograding, it will move closer to its square with Saturn, according to psychic astrologer Leslie Hale. “Uranus square Saturn is an intense transit prone to unexpected events that will affect the collective and us personally,” she says. “The peak period is mid-September through mid-October. While the results may play out for some time, this will be the final clash between these planets for years to come.” If a major change occurs under this aspect, Hale assures us that it will ultimately be for the better — even if it doesn’t feel that way at the time.

Like we said before, change can be scary — but it’s also necessary. Use the vibes of this retrograde to your advantage and switch it up. It’s daring to do something different, and may just turn your luck around for the better.

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ASTROLOGY 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for POLITICAL ASTROLOGY 

I CHING

49, Radical Change

The revolution in hexagram 49 has deep roots. In hexagram 47, you experience Oppression, and turn inward to reconnect with the Well. And drinking from the unchanging source creates the imperative for change in the outer world. ‘The way of the Well does not allow not changing radically.’ Change is essential, to make the forms and patterns of life into a better Vessel. As Jack Balkin puts it, ‘You must change your life in order to make it cohere with who you are now.’

‘Radical change: putting away the past.
The Vessel: grasping renewal.’

The Vessel, Hexagram 50, securely encloses a sacred space where the energies of life can blend, interact and create new substance. Such renewal is not possible unless the old patterns of reaction have first been completely eradicated. Before renewal, revolution.

The authors of the I Ching knew this truth through a historical example: the Zhou people’s conquest of the decadent Shang dynasty. This would have been unthinkably Radical Change, to overthrow a dynasty whose power had been guaranteed by Heaven for far longer than living memory. But the revolution showed that Heaven’s mandate could change. The power to rule had left one dynasty and moved to another, like a snake changing its skin. This is the key Change of the I Ching – sudden, total, leaving no familiar ‘handles’ to grasp – the kind we attempt to map out and understand through divination.

In divination, Radical Change means very much what it says: the complete overthrow of old ways of understanding and ordering life. The Judgement says that there is truth and presence on Si day, the day of the snake: it is a time to shed your old identity, to try on new ways of being and of relating to others. The old character for Radical Change shows an animal skin: an identity and power the shaman could put on with the skin.

The new power can come from the new skin, or it might demand one: you cannot pour new wine into old vessels. The trigrams, fire in the lake, show the same idea in elemental form, ‘changing inner awareness that melts away obsolete outer form.’ (Karcher, Total I Ching) The new clarity of vision has to find expression; fire shines through the water, like the naked intelligence in the eyes animating the mask.

Tradition tells that water and fire stand in opposition here, ‘mutually suspended’ – holding one another in check. The same two trigrams in Hexagram 38, Opposition, pull away from one another; here, they are on collision course. A clash of objectives – unlike diverging visions – has to mean radical change.

In practice, the key issue in revolution is one of timing: charting the dynamics of the momentary equilibrium, finding the moment when it can or should be broken. What is ‘your own day’, when there will be truth and confidence?

The Image describes the work of finding the right moment:

‘At the centre of the lake is fire. Radical change.
In the same way, the noble one calculates the heavenly signs and clarifies the seasons.’

Wu Jing Nuan introduced me to the idea that this is about astrology. It’s one thing to rely on one’s intuition to know when to sow and reap, but what if the flowers are late or the birds sing early? The stars are a more constant, objective way to know the time. Long term, repeated patterns and objective analysis create greater security than just trusting your perceptions and intuitions, moment to moment.

Such understanding allowed the authors of the Commentary on the Judgement to fit unthinkable change into a greater scheme of things:

‘Heaven and earth undergo Radical Change and the four seasons are accomplished.
Tang and Wu changed the mandate in accord with Heaven.’

Wu founded the Zhou dynasty; Tang had founded the Shang. The chaos, upheaval and bloodshed were part of the natural order, though on a huge scale: seasons that might take many centuries to turn, but still seasons.

This may be the kind of understanding we look for when we divine – a sense of perspective, of over-arching stories that relativise our own traumas. We contain the changes within narrative and ritual – but can we be sure, even then? The core of Radical Change (its nuclear hexagram) is Hexagram 44, Coupling: the arrival of a new force with the power to overturn the old order. It shows the inner possibility that with Radical Change, you may be unleashing powers of change that you never intended or predicted.

"The most ridiculously detailed" photo of the moon has arrived

Li Cohen - 8h ago

A viral post has revealed an incredible new image of the moon – but it wasn't captured by NASA. "The most ridiculously detailed" image of Earth's lunar neighbor was a two-year project captured by two astrophotographers.


© Andrew McCarthy/Instagram300227995-149261601060767-189191177030395799-n.jpg

The 174-megapixel image, which shows the moon's colors, craters and glowing aura in stunning detail, was first revealed on Reddit on Saturday. Through Reddit and Instagram, Andrew McCarthy, known for his breathtaking astrophotography skills, teamed up with planetary scientist and fellow photographer Connor Matherne, who has been acclaimed for his striking and vibrant photos of galaxies and nebulae.

The two previously worked together to create an incredible glowing and detailed image of the moon.

In an Instagram post, McCarthy called their final product "the most ridiculously detailed moon image we could come up with." The photo, named "The Hunt for Artemis," is also a tribute to NASA's Artemis I mission, an uncrewed flight test that, according to the space agency, "will provide a foundation for human deep exploration and demonstrate our commitment and capability to return humans to the moon and extend beyond."

"In 9 days, a human-rated lunar rocket will launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida," McCarthy wrote on Instagram over the weekend, "demonstrating our capability for manned lunar missions for the first time in 50 years."

In the tribute image, the pair managed to capture significant color data that highlights the reds, grays, blues and browns that help make the moon so unique. Without Matherne's ability to capture this data, McCarthy said on Reddit, the image would have been a "dreary gray."

"The color in this image is real, but presented with increased saturation so it is easily visible to our eyes," he wrote. "The reddish tones demonstrate areas rich in iron and feldspar, while the bluish areas are spots where the regolith is rich in titanium. Oxidization from influence from Earth's atmosphere makes the colors appear like they do."

McCarthy told NPR that the project is "assembled like a mosaic."

"Each tile is made up of thousands of photos," he said.

The duo told NPR that in a single evening, McCarthy shot over 200,000 photos of the moon from Arizona while Matherne shot 500 of his own from Louisiana. They stacked the images and spent nine months perfecting it to get the final result.

Matherne said the image is the highest resolution moon photo he has ever taken. He and McCarthy are selling prints of the image on McCarthy's website.

"I always love getting a chance to collaborate with great friends, and I can't wait to see what we come up with next," he said.

Nasa’s James Webb telescope reveals astonishing new picture of Jupiter

Andrew Griffin - 4h ago - THE INDEPENDENT

NASA Quietly Releases Terrestrial Test Photos of Jupiter Captured by the James Webb Space Telescope

Duration 1:04 View on Watch

Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed astonishing new pictures of Jupiter.

The images show our near neighbourhood in precise detail, and scientists help that it could further reveal what is happening on the chaotic planet.

Its vast storms, swirling winds and blazing auroras are all visible in the image, which was taken from the telescope’s near-infrared camera (NIR).

That camera has three infrared filters that are able to showcase details of the planet. But it means that its images must be mapped into visible light, and the blue on the image is the shorter wavelengths.

The image also includes fuzzy spots, likely galaxies that have snuck into the image (NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt)

It revealed one image that showed Jupiter as it floats in space, surrounded by a background of stars. The widefield view shows not only Jupiter but also its faint rings, as well as two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea.

The image also includes fuzzy spots, likely galaxies that have snuck into the image.

The new images were actually stitched together from a number of images of Jupiter, taken from images in July. Scientists working on the telescope worked with a citizen scientist called Judy Schmidt to process them into one of the newly released images.

The ‘great red spot’ can also be seen, though it is a bright white in the image itself (NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt)

The processing used a variety of filters to help the specific parts of Jupiter’s composition shine. The auroras at the north and south pole shine bright in a redder filter; the hazes around those same areas are lit up by a yellow and green one that picks them out as they swirl; and a blue filter helps show the light that is reflecting off a main cloud.
In the image the “great red spot” can also be seen, though it is a bright white in the image itself. That is because of the large amount of light that is reflecting off it and other clouds.

While much of the excitement about the James Webb Space Telescope was about the way it would allow us to peer deeper into the universe than ever before, it has already been sending back new images of objects that are much closer to home.

Some of the first images to come back from the telescope showed Jupiter and its Moon Europe, for example.

But the telescope has also been busy looking deep into our cosmos. The first image it sent back to Earth was the deepest image ever taken of our universe – showing its oldest and furthest recesses.

Mounds in Louisiana are oldest man-made structures in North America

Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com - 

A pair of grass covered mounds located on a Louisiana college campus have been deemed the oldest-known structures in North America after carbon data revealed construction on Mound B started 11,000 years ago and Mound A around 7,500 years ago - making them about 6,000 years older than the ancient Egyptian pyramids.

Constructed by indigenous people on what is now Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, the mounds stand about 20 feet tall and are believed to have been used for ceremonial purposes because they align with one of the brightest stars in the night sky - a red giant known as Arcturus.

The theory stems from discoveries of ash from burned reed and cane plants, as well as the burned bone fragments, found beneath the grass and dirt.

These mounds are among 800 man-made, hill-like mounds in the state that were built by indigenous people, however, many of the others have been destroyed.

Mound B, the oldest of the pair, is believed to have been built over a few thousands of years - layer by layer.

The mound was eventually abandoned around 8,200 years ago, which was determined by aging roots found in the sediment layer.


The pair of mounds sit on the Louisiana State University of campus and are among 800 man-made structures of its kind in North America

LSU Department of Geology & Geophysics Professor Emeritus Brooks Ellwood, who led this study, said in a statement: 'We don't know why they abandoned the mounds around 8,200 years ago, but we do know their environment changed suddenly and dramatically, which may have affected many aspects of their daily life.'

Then, around 7,500 years ago, the indigenous people began to build a new mound just to the north of the first mound.

Mound A contains mud that is saturated with water, which liquefies when agitated.

As a result, Mound A is unstable and degrading, and the public is urged to stay clear of it.


© Provided by Daily MailMound B started 11,000 years ago and Mound A around 7,500 years ago - making them about 6,000 years older than the ancient Egyptian pyramids

They were likely used in ceremonial events because they align with one of the brightest stars in the night sky - a red giant known as Arcturus. The theory stems from discoveries of ash from burned reed and cane plants, as well as the burned bone fragments, found beneath the grass and dirt

The star the pair align with is believed to be the red giant Arcturus that rose about 8.5 degrees east of north in the night sky, which means it would have aligned along the crests of both LSU Campus Mounds.

Arcturus is also one of the brightest stars that can be seen from Earth.

'The people who constructed the mounds, at about 6,000 years ago, coordinated the structures' orientation to align with Arcturus, seen in the night sky at that time,' Ellwood said.

'The oldest previously dated and well-documented published dates for mounds built by Indigenous People in North America are from the Monte Sano mounds discussed above, with ages from 7,575-4,956 calBP [BC], and also a ca. 5,500 BP date from the Watson Brake mound complex in NE Louisiana (Saunders and others, 1997), a site at which the Indigenous mounds have not been destroyed,' reads the study published in American Journal of Science.

Earlier this month the oldest settlement in North America was discovered in new Mexico.


lEarlier this month the oldest settlement in North America was discovered in new Mexico. Bones of an adult mammoth and her calf have been uncovered at a 37,000-year-old butchering site

Bones of an adult mammoth and her calf have been uncovered at a 37,000-year-old butchering site, which suggest humans settled in North America 17,000 years than previously believed.

A team of scientists, led by The University of Texas at Austin, extracted collagen from the bones, allowing them to carbon date the settled age of 36,250 to 38,900 years old.

The bones were discovered in a three-foot-tall pile, with 95 percent belonging to the adult, and featured slaughter marks and fractures from blunt force impact.

Both of these discoveries, the ages of the mounds and settlement, add to the growing evidence that there were societies before people crossed the Bering Strait land bridge some 20,000 years ago. The bridge, also called Beringia, connected Siberia and during the last Ice Age, and allowed people to come from into North America.

A Voyage to Arcturus from Project Gutenberg

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu › gutbook › lookup

Project Gutenberg Presents. A Voyage to Arcturus. by David Lindsay · Project Gutenberg Release #1329. Select author names above for additional information ...

A Voyage to Arcturus - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › A_Voyage_to_Arcturus

An interstellar voyage is the framework for a narrative of a journey through fantastic landscapes. The story is set at Tormance, an imaginary planet orbiting ...

Author: David Lindsay

Pages: 303 pp (first edition hardcover)

Publication date: 1920

Publisher: Methuen & Co. Ltd.

‎Synopsis · ‎Analysis · ‎Reception · ‎Legacy

Enormous Dinosaur Footprints Discovered in Texas Riverbed Dried by Drought

BY JESS THOMSON ON 8/22/22 

Previously submerged dinosaur footprints have been uncovered in Texas in the wake of drought-driven drying of a river.

The Paluxy River, which flows through Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas, has shrunk due to the intense drought conditions gripping the state and others in the U.S. southwest, revealing previously unseen dinosaur footprints beneath the waterline.

Dinosaur Valley State Park, around 60 miles southwest from Fort Worth, is home to a variety of dinosaur prints, mostly from ancient sauropods and theropods. This is the first time that the riverbed tracks have been seen. A video posted by Dinosaur Valley State Park on social media shows the newly uncovered footprints, appearing as deep grooves in the muddy riverbed measuring several human hands across.

Stock image of a dinosaur footprint.

Sauropods include herbivorous dinosaur species like Diplodocus and Brontosaurus, and had large flat elephant-like feet. Theropods such as Tyrannosaurus rex and velociraptors instead had characteristic clawed, three-toed feet. Both sauropods and theropods are amongst the last dinosaurs who were eventually wiped out by an asteroid strike 66 million years ago.

According to the Dinosaur Valley State Park website, many of the theropod tracks in the park do not show their distinctive three-toed pattern because the tracks were made in runny, deep mud, burying the toe impressions.

The tracks in the park were thought to have been left around 113 million years ago, in the mid-Cretaceous Era, when the Dallas region of Texas was at the shore of a sea. According to the park website, the mud at this shoreline made the ideal consistency to preserve tracks as a result of calcium carbonate deposits from the shells of crustaceans.

"Right now, due to the very low river conditions, more tracks are now visible than under normal conditions," the park said in a comment under the video. "So if you are wanting to find tracks and explore that aspect of the park, it is a great time to visit!"

Dinosaur Valley State Park has been designated a National Natural Landmark by the National Parks Service due to its display of the dinosaur tracks.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, Texas is nearly entirely in some degree of drought condition, with around a quarter of its area being in a state of "exceptional drought.

The drying up of the Paluxy River isn't the only effect of the megadrought currently plaguing the southwest U.S., with Texas and many other states experiencing extremely high temperatures, frequent wildfires and rapid evaporation of water from important reservoirs.

The drought-driven water recession has revealed other strange things previously hidden beneath the surface. Most notably, Lake Mead on the Nevada/Arizona border has seen five sets of human remains uncovered by the shrinking reservoir, one of which was found inside a barrel, riddled with bullet holes.

Discovered in the deep: the worm that eats bones

Helen Scales - THE GUARDIAN- Yesterday .


The deep sea is home to a group of animals that look like tiny plants. They have no mouths, no stomachs and no anuses. They live inside a tube with a feathery red plume sticking out of one end and a clump of roots at the other.


Photograph: Adisha Pramod/Alamy

Deep-sea scientists first identified them in 2002, growing like a shaggy carpet on a whale skeleton they encountered by chance, nearly 3,000 metres deep in Monterey Bay, California. A deep-diving robot brought up samples which revealed these were not plants but worms that eat bones, now officially called Osedax – the bone-devourers in Latin.

Once scientists knew how to look for them, the search for bone-eating worms – also known as zombie worms – began in earnest. Teams dragged dead, beached whales offshore and sank them into the deep. Landing devices deliver parcels of animal bones to the seabed – pigs, cows, turkeys – then retrieve them months or years later to see what has infested them.

“Basically, wherever we put bones, we find [the worms],” says Greg Rouse from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, and one of the team who found and described Osedax.

More than 30 species from around the world have so far been found. There’s the bone-eating snot flower, Osedax mucofloris, first found off Sweden. Osedax fenrisi was discovered near a hydrothermal vent at a depth of more than 2,000 metres in the Arctic, and named in 2020 after the Norse god Loki’s son, Fenris the wolf.

The bone-eating worm ranges in size from the length of a little finger to smaller than an eyelash. Those visible to the naked eye are usually females. Males are mostly tiny and don’t eat bones. They live in “harems” of tens or hundreds inside a female’s mucous tube, and wait for her eggs to emerge so they can immediately fertilise them.

All the energy these diminutive males get comes from their mothers via their egg yolks. Once they have run down that energy store, they die. “We called them kamikaze males,” says Robert Vrijenhoek, retired evolutionary biologist from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, California, who was also part of the original Osedax-finding team.


The bone-eating snot flower, Osedax mucofloris, seen in the water with feathery tendrils coming from its head and a clump of roots at the other end.

 Photograph: The Natural History Museum/Alamy

One species, Osedax priapus, does things differently. Rouse and his colleagues named it after the ancient Greek fertility god, as depicted in erotic frescoes. These males are a similar size to the females and have a long, extensible trunk which they use to reach across the bone.

“I call this roaming the bone,” says Rouse. When they find females, these males deliver sperm stored inside their head.

Related: Discovered in the deep: the mini cities of hairy-chested Hoff crabs

To feed, Osedax etch holes in bones by producing acid in the same way that humans produce stomach acid. Palaeontologists, in a quest to discover when Osedax worms evolved, have found telltale holes punched in the fossilised bones of a 100-million-year-old plesiosaur, one of the giant marine reptiles that once roamed the ocean.

Genetic studies back up the theory that Osedax have been around since at least the Cretaceous period, long before there were whale skeletons around to feast on.

Despite all the new species being found, nobody has yet tracked down any Osedax larvae. It’s not clear how the worms find bones. It is believed they may drift around until they locate a skeleton, perhaps guided by chemicals wafting through the water.

Studies of Osedax DNA indicate that these worms live in huge, interconnected populations, possibly making stepping stones of whale skeletons and other large vertebrates stripped bare by scavengers. “Osedax probably just hop, skip and jump all the way across the ocean,” says Vrijenhoek.