US climate envoy says Trump won’t derail progress as GOP argues for increasing oil and gas production at UN talks
Throughout the UN climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, in recent days, US officials have maintained a studiously sunny disposition, saying that the Republican president-elect, Donald Trump, will not derail climate progress.
The US climate envoy, John Podesta, said the fight “for a cleaner, safer” planet will not stop under a re-elected Trump even if some progress is reversed. The energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said: “The absence of leadership in the White House does not mean that this energy transition is stopped.” And Joe Biden’s climate and energy assistant, Jacob Levine, told reporters that the president’s climate policies had sparked an unstoppable clean energy “revolution”.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/18/2024 - 10:00
11/18/2024 - 09:33
Exclusive: Company relies on obsolete tech and there are troubling security gaps, Guardian investigation suggests
Thames Water supply ‘on knife-edge’
Floods, explosions, asbestos: Thames faces problems on all fronts
“The software we use is older than me, and some of the hardware is older than my dad,” says Siddharth*. He is one of a team fighting a daily battle to sustain ancient IT infrastructure at Thames Water.
Sometimes the defences are breached. Thames, the UK’s largest water and waste treatment company, is on a “knife-edge” according to sources, with its resilience in doubt because it depends on an array of creaking – often Victorian – infrastructure.
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11/18/2024 - 09:00
A kingfisher with a long, dagger-shaped beak. Soft white feathers on its belly, iridescent blue opal spots on its wings
I walked out of my kitchen on an overcast morning last week, feeling depressed, trying to think my way around the US election result somehow towards acceptance – or a totally different reality.
I walked to the garden, carrying a load of laundry. And perched on the top edge of a chair was a fat, fluffy laughing kookaburra. It looked at me, I looked at it. A large kingfisher with a long, dagger-shaped beak. The corners of its beak turn upwards so that it looks as though it is smiling slightly. Soft white feathers on its belly, iridescent blue opal spots on its brown wings.
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11/18/2024 - 08:00
Residents claim contamination from Angus Fire factory has left them trapped and unable to sell their homes
Residents in the UK town with the country’s highest identified concentration of “forever chemicals” have instructed lawyers to investigate the possibility of a first-of-its-kind legal claim against the firefighting foam manufacturer located in the centre of Bentham.
In May this year, an investigation by the Ends Report and the Guardian revealed that the rural North Yorkshire town is the most PFAS-polluted place known to exist in the UK. The town is home to the firefighting foam manufacturer Angus Fire.
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11/18/2024 - 06:00
Scientists say goal to keep world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is not going to happen despite talks at Cop29 in Baku
The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, with 2024 almost certain to be the first individual year above this threshold, climate scientists have gloomily concluded – even as world leaders gather for climate talks on how to remain within this boundary.
Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than pre-industrial times, underlining it as the warmest year on record, beating a mark set just last year. The past 10 consecutive years have already been the hottest 10 years ever recorded.
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11/18/2024 - 02:00
Loved by tourists, elephants are, however, often loathed by farmers. Elephant conservation has been a been a success in Tsavo in Kenya, with their number increasing by about 6,000 in the mid-1990s to almost 15,000 in 2021. The human population has also grown, encroaching on grazing and migration routes for the herds, with resulting clashes becoming the No 1 cause of elephant deaths. But a long-running project by the charity Save the Elephants offered an unlikely solution: deterring some of nature’s biggest animals with some of its smallest: African honeybees
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11/18/2024 - 01:30
Cop29 president calls for faster action as progress to agree a climate finance deal slows
Climate crisis to blame for dozens of ‘impossible’ heatwaves
How usual is it to have G20 happening at the same time as Cop? According to Jen Iris Allan, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University who also writes the Regular Earth Negotiations Bulletin, commenting on Bluesky, it’s not normal at all.
Cop29 happening at the same time as the G20 is a rare opportunity. It gets the leaders of the big economies together in a small setting. They could strike a side deal that would really help here.
The new climate finance target is the big issue that will define COP29. Government ministers are arriving to thrash out everything from the amount of money raised to who contributes towards it.
We’ve seen a few versions of the text as parties make sure their views are represented while trying to produce something their governments can work with. The number of “options” is lower than it was on Wednesday. But the number of brackets - meaning undecided bits - is higher.
It’s still long: 25 pages. Negotiators started with a 9-page text, which they rejected as “unbalanced” - then lots of stuff got added back in. It will need to be shorter. The EU chief negotiator told journalists last week that a 2-page text could capture “everything we need”.
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11/17/2024 - 15:03
This blog is now closed
Alan Jones charged with 24 indecent assault and sexual touching offences against eight victims
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Three million Australians are at risk of homelessness, a 63% increase since 2016, a new report from Homelessness NSW and Impact Economics has revealed.
By looking at household data including income, support and rental stress, the report found in 2022 there were 3.04m Australians now at risk of homelessness, an increase on the 1.87m reported in 2016.
1 in every five days the frontline services could not assist a family with children because they were so stretched.
Individuals without children were turned away 1 in every 2 days.
Unaccompanied young people and children without accommodation were turned away on 1 in 9 days.
I think more broadly, the government under Anthony Albanese has got an excellent record of managing relationships around the world, making genuine progress, whether it’s with China, whether it’s with American friends or others.
I think when it comes to Peter Dutton, I think he has a kind of a reckless arrogance which doesn’t lend itself to foreign policy and maintaining and managing some of these complex relationships.
I think he would be a risk to our economy, and that’s because that reckless arrogance, which has been a defining feature of his time as a politician over a long period of time now … [it] doesn’t lend itself to managing these relationships, which are so important to us.
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11/13/2024 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 13 November 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00093-3
The Dubai Ocean Declaration is the latest international call to expand ocean observation worldwide. We argue that there needs to be a committed effort to establish governance systems to guide data collection designed around equity, to ensure ocean data collection contributes to sustainable development. Ocean science has historically been led by the Global North, neglecting the priorities and leadership of the Global South, and limiting the relevance of ocean science for global sustainability.
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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