Holy Moly, Batman! Just How Big Are Those LNG Tankers? -- March 21, 2018

Look at this.

This one LNG tanker supplies 25% of Great Britain's daily requirement for LNG. Twenty-five percent.

Also:

• first shipment to Great Britain from US Cove Point 
• only second time in modern history US shipped LNG to Great Britain
• the last time this happened was when the Vikings shut down the North Sea

From Reuters earlier this month:

The United States is expected to become the world’s third- biggest LNG exporter by capacity in 2018, furthering President Donald Trump’s goal of American energy dominance by exporting U.S. oil and gas to help create jobs at home and provide more security to the nation’s allies around the world. 

Dominion Energy Inc said on Friday (o/a March 2, 2018) the first vessel carrying liquefied natural gas from its newly constructed Cove Point LNG export terminal in Maryland left the facility, another sign of growing U.S. prowess as an oil and gas producer.

The LNG tanker Gemmata left fully loaded, according to energy data provider Genscape, which said it observed the loading of the vessel through its cameras set up to watch the facility.

Speaking of which, where is the Shaden? Apparently it's near South Africa.

• Position Received: 2018-03-16 15:11 UTC
• Vessel's Time Zone: UTC +3
• Area: SAFR - South Africa
• Latitude / Longitude: -25.19717° / 51.86633°
• Status: Underway Using Engine
• Speed/Course: 10.5kn / 95°

 

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Madagascar

From Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution (Convergence), Jonathan B Losos, c. 2017

And then there's Madagascar, sometimes called the eighth continent for the distinctiveness of its biota. We've already discussed the island's frogs and birds, but there's much more: a dwarf hippo; an adaptive radiation of lemurs, including a 75-pounder that apparently hung upside down like a sloth and another that looked like a supersized koala; ten-foot-tall, half-ton elephants birds (the heaviest birds ever to have lived); half the world's species of chameleon, which propel their sticky tongues twice their body length to snare unsuspecting insect prey; fossil frogs the size of an extra-large pizza; crocodiles that were vegetarians (so much for all that talk about healthy diets); a beetle with a giraffine neck.

And the plants of Madagascar are no less unusual, including desert forests composed of tall, slender, spine-encrusted stalks and the stout baobab tree, which looks like it's been stuck into the ground upside down with roots coming out on top.

And combining the animal and plant world, there's the orchid with a foot-long tube at the bottom of its flower and a corresponding mouth with a proboscis equally elongated, several times the length of its body, just right for inserting into the tube and reaching the nectar at its base.

Where would primate evolution have led if monkeys and apes had not evolved? Look no further than the diversity of lemurs, found nowhere else but on Madagascar.

By the way, a couple of questions.

How many mammalian species are there in the world today?

Answer: more than five thousand (meaning less than six thousand).

Which mammal accounts for 1,240 of those species, at last count? 

Answer: bats. Yup, bats, At least according to Jonathan Losos.