Breaking Waves: Ocean News

‘Coastal uplift’ exposes coral and kills marine life, as residents say shorelines extended by up to 200 metres A powerful earthquake that killed at least 61 people in the Philippines this week raised the seabed by as much as 2 metres (6.6ft), exposing coral and harming marine life, the country’s environment department has said. At least 40 people are still missing after the 7.8-magnitude quake off southern Mindanao island on Monday, according to updated tolls from the disaster agency. Continue reading...

Activists argue business model is ‘plantation tourism’ designed to benefit elite and disadvantage most Jamaicans Campaigners go to court to fight privatisation of Jamaican coast Devon Taylor remembers when the Mammee Bay shoreline in St Ann, Jamaica, was filled with children frolicking in the ocean after school, fishers haggling with locals over the price of their daily catch and craft vendors carving souvenirs under almond trees. “I grew up on Mammee Bay,” Taylor says. He recalls fetching seawater in bottles for his grandmother when she was no longer able to go to the beach, learning to swim in the shallows, and watching generations of fishers cast their nets. “That beach raised us. It fed us.” Continue reading...

The system of ocean current that moves heat in the Atlantic Ocean plays a key role in regulating climate. Today’s monitoring of it may be discontinued Imagine we detect a large asteroid heading straight for Earth. We are able to intervene and prevent disaster, but instead we cut the funding needed to track it. A few million dollars, it was argued, was too expensive to have a chance to save society. While this scenario isn’t real, the metaphor is alarmingly accurate. In Europe, we spend €1bn to monitor space for asteroids, even if the actual risk of a civilisation-ending asteroid strike is close to zero. Continue reading...

It is unlikely that many voters are flocking to Pauline Hanson for her scientific insights – but that is where they are lining up, regardless Want to get this in your inbox when it publishes? Sign up for the Clear Air Australia newsletter here Politics is disconnecting from long-held assumptions at historic speed and no one knows where the great unhinging will take us. On the climate crisis, denial is back in vogue – depending on what the algorithm feeds you. One Nation’s surge in the polls suggests, for now at least, it is vying to be the most popular political party in the country. It does not accept the overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming and that extreme weather is getting worse. Instead, it argues the climate change department should be abolished because – in the strawiest of strawman arguments – it hasn’t changed the climate. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...