What began as a wildfire in Pacific Palisades on Tuesday has expanded to five fires still burning fiercely on Thursday
LA fires live updates: California wildfires latest news
A fierce wildfire erupted in the affluent western Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, 7 January, and quickly expanded as a major windstorm whipped up flames.
In the next two days, several other blazes ignited around the wider Los Angeles county, which is home to 9.6 million people. Fires were still burning fiercely on Thursday and a terrified region was braced for more danger and destruction.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
01/09/2025 - 15:35
McNeese State University in Louisiana building a liquefied natural gas center, prompting fears of ‘corporate capture’
One of Louisiana’s top public universities has prompted concerns about “corporate capture” over its expanding relationship with the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, despite environmental warnings about pollution and prolonging fossil fuel use.
As the US’s LNG boom gained momentum in south-west Louisiana, McNeese State University courted the industry to help launch a new LNG Center of Excellence currently under construction, hired a director doubling as an LNG industry lobbyist, and approached federal regulators to co-locate their own research center at the university, according to emails obtained via public records requests by DeSmog and the Guardian.
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01/09/2025 - 14:11
A research team has carried out the most comprehensive assessment to date of how logging and conversion to oil palm plantations affect tropical forest ecosystems. The results demonstrate that logging and conversion have significantly different and cumulative environmental impacts.
01/09/2025 - 13:33
Panels installed on south quire roof expected to meet a third of church’s electricity needs
“And God said, Let there be light” – and on a witheringly cold winter morning there was light, as the Dean of York carried out a rooftop blessing for the minster’s 184 new solar panels.
The sky was blue and the sun shone when the Very Rev Dominic Barrington led the blessing ceremony as the panels were switched on for the first time. “They were absolutely gleaming,” said one witness.
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01/09/2025 - 12:00
The current fires in Los Angeles are reminders of the costs of forgetting
The fires raging in and around Los Angeles are huge, and they’re terrible, and they’re also the latest in a series of catastrophic fires in Los Angeles county and the region, the latest consequence of heat and drought and wind that have long created the region’s volatile fire weather.
The climate crisis has made it hotter and drier and made wildfire worse here and across the west and around the world, but this region’s ecology has always been wedded to fire. Homes built in and around natural landscapes – canyons, chaparral coastal hills, forests, mountainsides – with a history of wildfire that are pretty much guaranteed to burn again sooner or later create the personal tragedies and losses and the pressure for fire crews to try to contain the blazes. But suppressing the blazes lets the fuel load build up, meaning that fire will be worse when it comes.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
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01/09/2025 - 11:00
With 2024 set to go down as the hottest year on record, we know that what is coming is truly horrifying
The past 12 months have seen our world enter new territory. Last year will go down as the first time that the global average temperature exceeded 1.5C above preindustrial times over a calendar year. We could crash permanently through the 1.5C guardrail within the next five years, and shatter the 2C limit as soon as 2034. This will almost certainly result in the tipping points for collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets being crossed, committing us to the drowning of coastal towns and cities.
In years to come, we will look back at this time and ask the same question that future generations will ask: why didn’t we stop this catastrophe?
Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and author of Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide
Roger Hallam is co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
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01/09/2025 - 10:41
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01/09/2025 - 09:00
Bureau of Meteorology says showers and storms a regular feature of Australian summer but warm and dry periods still to come
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Showers are expected to continue for Sydney and Brisbane throughout much of the coming week but summer isn’t over yet, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
In fact, the senior meteorologist Miriam Bradbury said showers and storm activity were a regular feature of the Australian summer, especially for northern Australia, as well as south-east Queensland and eastern New South Wales.
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World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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