Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Canadian company in negotiations with Trump to mine seabed

admin — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 16:10:49 +0000

Environmentalists call bid to skirt UN treaty ‘reckless’ amid fears that mining will cause irreversible loss of biodiversity

A Canadian deep-sea mining firm has revealed it has been negotiating with the Trump administration to bypass a UN treaty and potentially gain authorisation from the US to mine in international waters.

Global patterns in seed plant distribution over millions of years

admin — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 15:25:39 +0000

Why do some plants thrive in specific regions but not in others? A study explores the factors shaping plant distributions and how these patterns have changed over millions of years. Analyzing nearly 270,000 seed plant species worldwide, the research highlights the roles of environmental conditions and dispersal barriers in influencing global plant diversity.

Coalition’s gas plan unlikely to lower prices and could push up greenhouse gas emissions, experts say

admin — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 14:00:27 +0000

Body representing the gas industry says Peter Dutton’s plan is a ‘damaging market intervention that will drive away investment’

The controversial California city backed by tech elite has a new plan: boats

admin — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 11:00:20 +0000

California Forever is back with a proposal that has some on board: using the land it owns to create a shipbuilding hub

In 2023, a group called California Forever, funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, introduced a splashy proposal to build a new city on tens of thousands acres of farmland it had acquired north-east of San Francisco.

I was an independent observer in the Greenpeace trial. What I saw was shocking | Steven Donziger

admin — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:00:21 +0000

Greenpeace lost – not because it did something wrong but because it was denied a fair trial

The stunning $667m verdict against Greenpeace last week is a direct attack on the climate movement, Indigenous peoples and the first amendment.

Week in wildlife: relief for traumatised lions, a shy deer and a stork doing yoga

admin — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 08:00:16 +0000

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

The weekend weather forecast is in – and it’s wet and wild for much of Australia, including Sydney and Brisbane

admin — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 05:53:53 +0000

Heavy rainfall expected to stretch from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to the Victorian border, with the potential for isolated falls of up to 100mm

Fossil fuel companies get direct email line to Trump for exemption requests

admin — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 20:19:33 +0000

EPA sets up email address where ‘regulated community’ can request exemption to evade air pollution rules

Donald Trump’s administration has offered fossil fuel companies an extraordinary opportunity to evade air pollution rules by simply emailing the US president to ask him to exempt them.

Losing forest carbon stocks could put climate goals out of reach

admin — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 18:17:38 +0000

In the past, intact forests absorbed 7.8 billion tons of CO2 annually -- about a fifth of all human emissions -- but their carbon storage is increasingly at risk from climate change and human activities such as deforestation. A new study shows that failing to account for the potentially decreasing ability of forests to absorb CO2 could make reaching the Paris agreement targets significantly harder, if not impossible, and much more costly.

‘The nation is watching’: sewage dumps in Windermere must end, says activist

admin — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:00:23 +0000

Ministers urged to do more after United Utilities discharged raw sewage into Unesco site for 6,327 hours last year

Celebrated by William Wordsworth, Windermere has long epitomised the natural timeless beauty of the Lake District, with millions of tourists drawn to the shores that inspired the poet. But today England’s biggest lake is, some campaigners say, a shadow of its 19th century self: its waters blighted by algae and its wildlife threatened by pollution, in a symbol of all that is wrong with the privatised water industry.