Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Rising temperatures causing largest glacier in Dolomites to lose 7-10cm of depth a day, according to scientists The Marmolada glacier, the largest and most symbolic of the Dolomites, could melt completely by 2040 owing to rising average temperatures, experts have said. Italian scientists who are monitoring glaciers and the impact of climate emergency, and who took part in a campaign launched by environmentalist group Legambiente, the international commission for the protection of the Alps (Cipra), with the scientific partnership of the Italian Glacier Committee, said on Monday the Marmolada was losing between 7 and 10cm of depth a day. Continue reading...

The Project hopes competition will raise big money for underfunded organisations working to protect beloved species Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Tense competition is brewing between the greater glider and the koala in Australia’s marsupial of the year vote but there are hopes a silky-tailed species that “mates themselves to death” could win over voters and maybe even save it from heading towards extinction. Network Ten’s The Project launched the competition in collaboration with organisations and charities that work with or help preserve the habitat of marsupials, many of them endangered, in a bid to raise funds for them. Continue reading...

Under the Tories, non-violent climate protesters were jailed for up to five years – and there is little sign that Labour will change tack Linda Lakhdhir is the legal director of Climate Rights International In December 2023 when Stephen Gingell was sentenced to six months in prison for slow marching for half an hour on the Holloway Road in north London, the sentence was considered shocking. Unfortunately, it is far from the exception. In fact, my organisation, Climate Rights International, has spent the past eight months looking into restrictions on climate protests among western democracies and has found that the UK – mostly under the Conservatives – has introduced some of the harshest anti-protest legislation in recent years. You may remember Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, who were sentenced to multi-year prison sentences in April 2023 for climbing the cables of the Queen Elizabeth II bridge to object to new oil, gas and coal projects. The three-year sentence imposed on Trowland was, at the time, the longest ever for a climate protest in the UK. But, it has since been surpassed. In July, in a case that made international headlines, five fossil-fuel protesters were sentenced to four- and five-year sentences after participating in a Zoom call about staging climate protests on the M25. Linda Lakhdhir is the legal director of Climate Rights International Continue reading...

The source of new renewable energy is also a battleground over China’s cheap exports of panels that has split US firms The Biden administration touts solar energy as one of its big success stories, a booming new industry that is curbing the effects of the climate crisis and creating high-paying jobs across the country. But the more complicated truth is that the United States is mired in a long-running trade war with China, which is flooding the market with artificially cheap solar panels that carry an uncomfortably large carbon footprint and threaten to obliterate the domestic industry. The price of solar panels has plummeted 50% over the past year, largely, industry insiders say, because of deliberate Chinese overproduction of key components and a game of international cat-and-mouse over trade rules often likened to a game of “Whac-A-Mole”. As different sets of rules get established, Chinese companies have proved adept at moving their manufacturing plants to other countries, in south-east Asia, and shifting strategies to work around US tariffs and other deterrent measures. This article was amended on 10 September 2014. An earlier version incorrectly stated that this year’s RE+ conference took place in Las Vegas, Nevada. Continue reading...