maniacalmanicmania

Thousands of mystery balls that washed up on Sydney beaches last month were gunk globules made of products such as motor oil, hair, food waste, animal matter and wastewater bacteria – but their source is yet to be traced.

A statement from the NSW Environment Protection Authority on Wednesday confirmed the balls comprised fatty acids, petroleum hydrocarbons and other organic and inorganic materials – and were not tar balls as previously theorised.

Transport is making changes to the public transport network to connect the new Sydney Metro City & Southwest with Sydney’s public transport network.

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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/16468312

Over the past decade, however, scientists have become reacquainted with the historical reach of Australian flat oyster reefs, which decorated about 7,000 kilometers of the country’s coastline from Perth to Sydney and down around Tasmania. Australian flat oysters—not to be confused with the far more common European flat oyster, commonly known as the native oyster—form gigantic reefs comprised of billions of individuals that can be found as deep as 40 meters. “They’re like the trees in a forest or the coral in a tropical sea,” McAfee says. Besides providing habitat and boosting biodiversity, oyster reefs are known to filter water and bolster fish production.

On the back of this learning, scientists have been working to restore these lost ecosystems—an endeavor that got a major boost in 2020 when the nonprofit the Nature Conservancy Australia teamed up with the government of South Australia on an ambitious project to bring flat oyster reefs back to the coastline near Adelaide, one of the country’s biggest cities. That project, as McAfee and his team show in a recent study, has been a resounding success so far, with the restored reef now hosting even more Australian flat oysters than the last remaining natural reef in Tasmania. “It’s quite astonishing,” says McAfee.

Paywalled source.

This thing is another massive blight on Sydney.

In 2019, the Middle East supplied around 17% of Australia’s crude oil imports around 1% in refined products. However, the three largest suppliers to Australia of refined products, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, sourced 20, 35 and 44%, respectively, of their crude oil from Saudi Arabia and Iran.

...

Australia is supposed to, by international agreement, have 90 days of petroleum reserves. Even using dodgy calculations by the Australian Government (the IEA does not accept them as proper), which includes in its reserves the fuel at sea on its way to Australia, our current reserves are 51 days.

Our real current reserve figures are at 31 days for petrol, 24 days for diesel (which keeps the country supplied with food and medicines) and 21 days for aviation fuel.

Sydney is among the few cities anywhere in the world to allow mining within its water catchment areas. Scientists have argued for years that the longwalls were causing cracks to reach the surface, diverting water away from some of the 1,000 upland swamps in the Woronora plateau and reducing inflows into nearby dams.

Truss told the rightwing event that the left was “winning the argument” by rebranding “socialism” as “the environment”, “human rights” or “equality” – “but what they mean is they mean divisive identity politics”.

https://lemmy.zip/post/23962195

FYI I'm on an instance that is slow to federate stuff from lemmy.world accounts, I may not see your reply for some time.

Seems to be working for me now. Perhaps others can let us know if it happens again and remember to grab a crash report just in case.