Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Biden administration hopes funding will spur enduring cuts to planet-heating emissions no matter who is in White House Amid rising global temperatures and a looming election against an opponent who has indicated he will gut his climate policies, Joe Biden’s administration is shoveling billions of dollars into efforts it hopes will spur enduring cuts to planet-heating emissions, no matter the occupant of the White House. In recent weeks, large tracts of funding has been announced by the administration to help overcome some of the thorniest and esoteric challenges the world faces in driving down carbon pollution, seeding the promise of everything from the advent of zero-emissions concrete to low-pollution food production, including mac and cheese and ice-cream, to driving the uptake of solar panels and electric stoves in low-income households. Continue reading...

Marine researcher ‘devastated’ by widespread event that is affecting coral species usually resistant to bleaching Concern that the Great Barrier Reef may be suffering the most severe mass coral bleaching event on record has escalated after a conservation group released footage showing damage up to 18 metres below the surface. Dr Selina Ward, a marine biologist and former academic director of the University of Queensland’s Heron Island Research Station, said it was the worst bleaching she had seen in 30 years working on the reef, and that some coral was starting to die. Continue reading...

Worst-ever fire season in 2023 saw 15m hectare burned, eight firefighters killed and 230,000 people evacuated Canada risks another “catastrophic” wildfire season, the federal government has warned, forecasting higher-than-normal spring and summer temperatures across much of the country, boosted by El Niño weather conditions. Last year, Canada endured its worst-ever fire season, with more than 6,600 blazes burning 15m hectares (37m acres), an area roughly seven times the annual average. Eight firefighters died and 230,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Continue reading...

The state’s uniquely lax regulation permits chicken waste to collect outdoors – but there’s no easy way to complain about it Jefferson Currie II is at war with flies. Spotted flypaper dangles from the ceiling of his home in North Carolina’s Scotland county. He shows off a two-quart jar trap, marketed as an outdoor pest control solution for farms, full of flies he’s caught indoors. On Zoom meetings for his job as the Lumber Riverkeeper with the non-profit Winyah Rivers Alliance, he mutes himself and goes offscreen to avoid distracting others with the heavy thunk of his pump-action, salt-shooting plastic fly gun. Continue reading...