Breaking Waves: Ocean News

King Arthur is said to have transformed into a chough when he died, its red feet and beak representing his bloody end Decades after disappearing from the jagged cliffs around Tintagel Castle on the coast of north Cornwall, a bird with legendary connections to the area has returned. The custodian of Tintagel, English Heritage, and local ornithologists have declared that choughs – charismatic corvids with red beaks and feet – are back. Continue reading...

Greenpeace finds cocktail of pesticides including seven banned in EU may have been used on seven categories of vegetables and soft fruit It is a beautiful early summer Sunday afternoon and you have stopped for a pub lunch. A waiter sets down a roast served with carrots, peas, parsnips, potatoes and onion gravy, and then for pudding, strawberries and cream. It feels like the perfect rustic meal to accompany a day in the country. However, a report by Greenpeace, published on Thursday, has found that the ingredients of the traditional Sunday roast have potentially been treated with a cocktail of more than 100 pesticides. Data from the Fera pesticide usage survey for 2024, showed 102 – including seven banned in the EU – were used on seven vegetable and soft fruit categories. Continue reading...

Premier Roger Cook has the prime minister’s implicit support but he’s making it harder for federal Labor to meet its much-vaunted climate targets Want to get this in your inbox when it publishes? Sign up for the Clear Air Australia newsletter here Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Western Australia has blazing sun, stunning Indian Ocean beaches, wide open roads and, for the first time in a while, a potentially successful AFL team. It also has an occasional separatist urge. That tendency may partly explain why its government thinks it shouldn’t be expected to act on the climate crisis in the same way as the population on the east coast. Anthony Albanese and members of his cabinet have given implicit support to its climate position. The prime minister has fallen in behind the WA Labor government as the premier, Roger Cook, has backed fossil fuel expansions and argued that an increase in the state’s emissions would be good for the climate because its gas exports reduce coal burning in Asia. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

Facility would require more power than entire state uses and suck up vast amount of water in drought-stricken area A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies. The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years. Continue reading...