Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Carbon Impacts Tracer can be used to estimate climate impact from emissions across eight different factors, including lost food production The biggest coal project before authorities in New South Wales, the HVO mine, will emit the equivalent of about 809m tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide if it wins approval. That number, for most people, will carry little meaning, as might the calculation that adding that amount of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere will cause an extra 0.00036C of global heating. But what if the public was instead told that that amount of carbon dioxide would expose almost half a million people to unprecedented heat, or kill nearly 15 million coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef every time it bleaches? All those statistics come from a new tool that translates the emissions from burning fossil fuels into estimated real-world climate effects taken from peer-reviewed climate studies. “Small numbers in global warming can mean catastrophic impacts,” says prof Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the Australian National University who is part of a team launching the Carbon Impacts Tracer. Continue reading...

People living next to a chemicals plant near Blackpool were tested for ‘forever chemicals’. Last week they received the alarming results Last February, I got a call from a woman called Sam Hammond. We had been speaking on and off for a while over her growing concern that her garden could be affected by pollution from a nearby chemical plant. That morning, Sam had been hand-delivered a letter from her council informing her that her pet ducks’ eggs, reared in her garden, were contaminated with Pfas chemicals. Continue reading...

Fossil fuel firms have spent years trying to regulate climate research by donating to US universities, study authors argue Recent attacks on US universities by the Trump administration have built on decades of efforts by libertarian donor networks, fossil fuel companies and conservative thinktanks to reshape university governance and increase outside influence, according to a new study. The authors of the new perspective study argue that the erosion of university autonomy has left colleges more vulnerable to corporate interests, especially within climate and energy research. Continue reading...

Atrazine, banned in 60 countries, polluting rivers at levels that can harm wildlife and may threaten human health The hormone-disrupting herbicide atrazine is contaminating nearly 25%, or about 860,000 miles, of all continental US rivers at levels that can harm wildlife and may threaten human health, a new review of federal records has found. The waterways cover over 20% of surface drinking water intakes across the country, and over 675,000 private and commercial wells. Continue reading...