Breaking Waves: Ocean News

My homeplace has experienced four natural disasters in eight years. But I’d never seen the like of this bird before, vibrantly green and startlingly beautiful We were midway through our cyclone preparation when my mother broke her leg. She stepped into her bedroom to retrieve something, tripped and fell, and that was that. My mother is 74 and hardy, so this sudden break took us by surprise. Once I got her home, leg in brace, we’d lost significant time, and my household was down to one functional human: me. This is the fourth natural disaster I’ve experienced in the last eight years. One-in-100-year floods (2017), unprecedented bushfires (2019), one-in-1,000-year floods (2022) and now Cyclone Alfred. Cyclones are a new threat. I’ve lived in my homeplace, in northern New South Wales, for almost 50 years and we’ve never had a cyclone cross land in our vicinity. We were, as they say, in uncharted waters. Continue reading...

Swings between drought and floods striking from Dallas to Shanghai, while Madrid and Cairo are among cities whose climate has flipped Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed. Dozens more cities, including Lucknow, Madrid and Riyadh have suffered a climate “flip” in the last 20 years, switching from dry to wet extremes, or vice versa. The report analysed the 100 most populous cities, plus 12 selected ones, and found that 95% of them showed a distinct trend towards wetter or drier weather. Continue reading...

In addition to layoffs and hiring freezes, a ‘God squad’ can effectively veto ESA protections for endangered species Donald Trump’s administration, backed by House Republicans and Elon Musk’s Doge agency, are carrying out an attack on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and federal wildlife agencies that, if successful, will almost certainly drive numerous species into extinction, environmental advocates warn. The three-pronged attack is designed to freeze endangered wildlife protections to more quickly push through oil, gas and development projects, opponents say. Continue reading...

Millions of children could lose free school meals as food costs rise, warns School Nutrition Association president The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has slashed two programs that provided more than $1bn for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farms and ranchers. About $660m of those funds were contained in the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, which provided funds to schools and child care facilities but is now being eliminated. Continue reading...