Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Weakened food security could tip into unrest after a cyber-attack, extreme weather or conflict, analysis finds One shock could spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK, according to dozens of the country’s top food experts, because chronic issues have left the food system a “tinderbox”. The group first identified a series of issues that are making access to food vulnerable in the UK, including the climate crisis, low incomes, poor farming policy and fragile just-in-time supply chains. These have left the UK dangerously exposed, the researchers said. Continue reading...

Millions of gallons of raw sewage have been pouring into the water through a ruptured pipe since last month Donald Trump approved a federal emergency declaration Saturday related to a sewer main break north of Washington DC that threatens to put a stink on the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations in the US capital this summer. “The president’s action authorizes Fema to coordinate all disaster relief efforts to alleviate the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population and to provide appropriate assistance to save lives, to protect property, public health and safety, and to lessen the threat of catastrophe,” a release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency said. Continue reading...

Omar Yaghi’s invention uses ambient thermal energy and can generate up to 1,000 litres of clean water every day A Nobel laureate’s environmentally friendly invention that provides clean water if central supplies are knocked out by a hurricane or drought could be a life saver for vulnerable islands, its founder says. The invention, by the chemist Prof Omar Yaghi, uses a type of science called reticular chemistry to create molecularly engineered materials, which can extract moisture from the air and harvest water even in arid and desert conditions. Continue reading...

Subspecies driven to extinction by hungry whalers returns after ‘back breeding’ programme using partial descendants Giant tortoises, the life-giving engineers of remote small island ecosystems, are plodding over the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years. The Floreana giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger niger), a subspecies of the giant tortoise once found across the Galápagos, was driven to extinction in the 1840s by whalers who removed thousands from the volcanic island to provide a living larder during their hunting voyages. Continue reading...