earth

Jus hanging out pretending to be a thorn drinking sap, what's betta than that

Source: https://mastodon.art/@jencmars/112740462229559270

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchenopa

TL;DR honeybees are a domesticated species that are often not native to an area and can outcompete local pollinators for food sources; the article instead recommends planting a pollinator garden of local plants to provide food support to local wild pollinator species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamois

8k image on wikipedia

I had to downscale the image. Hexbear couldn't handle this big a goat

Made me feel slightly tilted.

i hope joe does more of this, this is a great team-up

Doe. A deer. A female deer.

White tail deer, maybe five years old. It’s called a White tail because when lifted up, the underside of the tail is completely white.

Went stomping around the bushes looking for a campsite near a lake and I found her and two companions munching grass near a road. The other two were skittish and bolted before I could get my phone pointed but this one let me get within 6-8 foot before walking into the brush slowly.

Also called Texas Virgin’s Bower apparently. Found while out wandering the south Texas scrub brush doing some hot weather camping.

Buzżźžẓ̌zz

Saw this big white vespid cruising the berry bushes. Frightening, but also so very cool.

Rare video shows elusive deep-sea squid cradling her gigantic, translucent eggs

The federal penalty for damaging or destroying interstate pipelines is already a felony charge mandating up to twenty years in prison. But the industry’s proposed additions, described in executives’ congressional testimony and policy briefs posted online, would widen the definition of and punishment for “attacks” on pipelines using vague language that could implicate a far broader set of activities used to protest fossil fuel infrastructure. Such language has already begun to make its way into the legislative effort to reauthorize the pipeline safety administration as Congress decides the agency’s funding and legislative mandates for the next few years.

According to a policy brief on “2023 Pipeline Safety Reauthorization Legislative Priorities” published last year by the American Petroleum Institute — a major trade group representing oil and gas companies — new pipeline safety legislation should “fill gaps in current law” with “additional measures covering disruption of service and attacks on construction sites.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s draft reauthorization bill, approved in March, would add “impairing the operation of” interstate pipelines, “damaging or destroying such a facility under construction,” and even “attempting or conspiring” to do so as felony activities punishable by up to twenty years in prison.

One incident of how things go usually (there are more in the text)

By the time the water protectors got to the swamp, Savage said, they “had done everything — they went to public meetings, they had petitions, they wrote letters, they tried to meet with the governor — they did everything they tell you in school, to participate and use your civil obligation in your community.” Despite their best efforts in one of the most oil- and gas-friendly states in the country, said Savage, “nobody was listening.”

As Savage’s reporting revealed, the off-duty Louisiana law enforcement who began violently arresting protesters after the new law was enforced were working side jobs for the pipeline company.

“I would’ve similarly documented whatever the sheriff’s deputies and Energy Transfer had planned that day — had I not been handcuffed in the back of a deputy’s squad car,” Savage wrote about her arrest.

While Energy Transfer paid local officials to arrest protesters, it was quietly breaking the law itself. Energy Transfer was later found guilty of trespassing on private property by working on land it didn’t have permission to build on, but it was allowed to continue construction with only a $450 fine. The sixteen water protectors who were arrested and charged with felonies under the state’s new law had permission from some landowners to protest — and were even asked to help them defend their land.

In 2021, a local district attorney dropped the water protectors’ charges, along with Savage’s.

Link to the article

SpaceX's growing Starlink megaconstellation could be hindering the Earth's atmosphere from healing itself.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Southern California estimated the harmful effects from satellites injecting harmful pollutants such as aluminum oxides into the upper atmosphere as they burn up during reentry.

These dying satellites may even be contributing to "significant ozone depletion," according to the researchers. The ozone layer is the Earth's "sunscreen" that shields us from too much UV radiation from the Sun.

While researchers have largely focused on the pollutants being released by rockets as they launch, we've only begun to understand the implications of having thousands of retired and malfunctioning satellites burn up in the atmosphere.

And that's only becoming more relevant, as SpaceX has already launched almost 6,000 Starlink satellites to date, and is planning to add tens of thousands more — orbital ambitions that are now inspiring competing satellite constellations.

"Only in recent years have people started to think this might become a problem," said coauthor and University of Southern California astronautics researcher Joseph Wang in a statement. "We were one of the first teams to look at what the implication of these facts might be."

#Poking Holes

Since it's practically impossible to get accurate readings from the kind of pollutants satellites release as they scream back through the atmosphere, scientists can only estimate their effects on the surrounding environment.

By studying how common metals used in the construction of satellites interact with each other, the team estimated that the presence of aluminum increased in the atmosphere by almost 30 percent in 2022 alone.

They found that a 550-pound satellite generates roughly 66 pounds of aluminum oxide nanoparticles during reentry, which would take up to 30 years to drift down into the stratosphere.

In total, if constellations from the likes of SpaceX continue to grow as planned, the levels of aluminum oxides in the atmosphere could increase by a staggering 646 percent over natural levels every year.

And that doesn't bode well, considering we've only begun to study the phenomenon.

"The environmental impacts from the reentry of satellites are currently poorly understood," the researchers note in their paper. "As reentry rates increase, it is crucial to further explore the concerns highlighted in this study."