Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Industry says government’s failure to address cooling demands means AI growth plans are ‘fatally flawed’ The UK will not have enough water for future datacentres, the water industry has said in stark criticism of the government’s AI growth plans. Datacentres rely on large amounts of water to manage the heat generated by densely packed servers. Cooling towers, chillers and humidification systems make direct use of this water, with large volumes also consumed indirectly through high electrical power needs. Continue reading...

National disaster agency confirms ‘severe financial and human losses’ in remote province of Nuristan At least 20 people have been killed and more than 80 injured in flooding that hit Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, the country’s disaster management agency said on Monday. In Parun, the provincial capital, a further 105 people including the mayor were missing, said Feraidon Samim, a spokesperson for the Nuristan governor. Continue reading...

Resorts in New South Wales and Victoria face a warm and dry start to the season with only sporadic falls of natural snow in many alpine areas Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Alpine ski resorts in New South Wales and Victoria saw climate records shattered at the weekend with maximum temperatures up to 12C above average. Ski areas of Mount Hotham and Falls Creek set July records for their hottest daytime and night-time temperatures and Thredbo also set a new hottest July day, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Continue reading...

Air polluters try to ensure toxic emissions happen far from monitors – but the people who live nearby still feel it Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St Rose, in south-eastern Louisiana. Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3am and fled to an all-night Ihop. In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard for a local environmental justice group. But soon after, Louisiana passed an industry-backed law that sharply restricted how that kind of data could be used. Ten of Louisiana’s heaviest air-polluting facilities, based on self-reported data shared with the EPA, operate without a single public air monitor within five miles. This list includes Dow Chemical’s plastics factory in Plaquemine, which is about eight miles from the nearest air monitoring station. The station measures only ozone even though the plant releases an array of toxic pollutants including ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen. No public monitors measure ammonia – despite the fact that CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant emits more than 7m lb of the hazardous chemical each year, according to EPA data. The three chemicals that researchers have concluded “together account for the large majority of total cancer risk” in the area – ethylene oxide, chloroprene and formaldehyde – aren’t monitored by the state at all. Continue reading...