Policymakers and insurers act as if Britain’s coastlines are fixed, but the waters are advancing faster than before
The increasing speed of sea level rise hardly seems to register with policymakers in Britain – even though with the UK weather getting more violent, destructive storm surges are increasingly likely. The future looks bleak for properties on fast-eroding cliffs and large areas of rich agricultural land on the east coast, already at or even below sea level.
The evidence that things are rapidly getting worse is clear. Sea levels have risen 24cm (9in) (7ft 3in) since 1880 but the rise has accelerated from an average of 1.4mm a year in the 20th century to 3.6mm annually by 2015. Previous conservative estimates of sea level rise of 60cm by the end of this century now look very optimistic and on current emission levels will be 2.2 metres by 2100 and 3.9 metres 50 years after that.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
01/03/2025 - 00:00
Volunteers’ data should be included in official monitoring reports to tackle pollution crisis, says Earthwatch
Citizen science testing of river water quality will expand this year in an attempt to make the data part of official monitoring of waterways, the head of an independent environmental research group has said.
The use of ordinary people across the country to test river water quality for pollutants including phosphates, nitrates and other chemicals has captured the imagination of thousands of volunteers. In 2024 more than 7,000 people took part in river testing “blitzes” run over two weekends by the NGO Earthwatch Europe. The research, using standardised testing equipment provided by the NGO and Imperial College London, gathered data from almost 4,000 freshwater sites across the UK.
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01/02/2025 - 17:19
Experts say sighting of orca in Puget Sound with second deceased calf is ‘devastating’ for ailing population
An apparently grieving killer whale who swam more than 1,000 miles pushing the body of her dead newborn has lost another calf and is again carrying the body, a development researchers say is a “devastating” loss for the ailing population.
The Washington state-based Center for Whale Research said the orca, known as Tahlequah, or J35, was spotted in the Puget Sound area with her deceased calf.
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01/02/2025 - 13:32
Engineers assess damage as heavy rains cause first major breach of Bridgewater canal since 1970s
Engineers are assessing the scale of damage to a canal built more than 250 years ago after flood waters caused a dramatic collapse of part of its elevated embankment in Cheshire.
The Bridgewater canal, which was previously used to transport coal but is now a leisure waterway, caved in near Dunham Massey, in the first major breach of the waterway for 54 years.
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01/02/2025 - 12:02
Emergency services turn focus to recovery efforts after major incident declared on New Year’s Day stood down
“Some people say the way your year starts is how the year is going to be, so I’m expecting some adventures. I’ll be like Indiana Jones,” said Alina Abroutkouki.
The 40-year-old interior designer spent the first night of the new year sleeping in Didsbury mosque, hours after being evacuated from her nearby home by boat.
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01/02/2025 - 11:52
Pragmatism will win over purism, unless the government favours early closure for car manufacturers
The main timetable is set: no new petrol and diesel cars will be allowed to be sold in the UK after 2030, and sales of all new hybrids will be forbidden from 2035. But that phasing still leaves open the critical matter – for the automotive industry, and for a couple of manufacturers in particular – of which new hybrids will be allowed to be sold until the last day of 2034.
Just the variety that comes with a socket – plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)? Or should old-style hybrids, such as the Toyota Prius, which have smaller batteries charged by a main internal combustion engine, also be permitted?
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01/02/2025 - 09:43
UK has more than halved amount of electricity generated from fossil fuels but gas still had largest share at 28%
The UK’s electricity was the cleanest it has ever been in 2024, with wind and solar generation hitting all-time highs, according to a report.
The analysis by Carbon Brief found that in the past decade the UK had more than halved electricity generated from coal and gas and doubled its output from renewables.
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01/02/2025 - 09:05
Indian government accused of PR stunt after moving 337 tonnes of toxic waste that had been held in containers
Forty years after one of world’s deadliest industrial disasters struck the Indian city of Bhopal, a cleanup operation has finally begun to remove hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste from the site.
However, local campaigners have accused the Indian government of greenwashing, arguing that the 337 tonnes of waste removed this week represents less than 1% of the more than 1m tonnes of hazardous materials left after the disaster and that the cleanup has done nothing to tackle chemical contamination of the area.
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01/02/2025 - 07:00
State’s beloved but under-pressure sea cows were barely recorded in the area before seas warmed in the late 1700s
Manatees, long considered among Florida’s most beloved and enchanting inhabitants, are not native at all, and only came to the Sunshine state for warm temperatures and clear blue waters like any other visitor, researchers have found.
The surprise revelation by scientists at the University of South Florida (USF) and George Washington University (GWU) upends decades of thinking about the origins of the threatened species, once plentiful around the Florida peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.
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01/02/2025 - 07:00
Across Toronto, a team sets out at dawn to rescue migrating birds that have collided with buildings, and keep a record of the thousands each year that don’t make it
Every morning at dawn, a dozen volunteers scour the streets of Toronto picking up small birds. Some days they will find hundreds of them, most already dead or dying. A few they are able to save. Live birds are put in brown paper bags and driven to wildlife recovery centres, while dead birds are put in a large freezer. If no one picks them up, their carcasses are swept up by street cleaners.
“One of my first days was really horrific,” says Sohail Desai, a volunteer with the charity Fatal Light Awareness Program (Flap) Canada, which has about 135 people patrolling the streets across Toronto. Desai was walking close to his house in the North York area in Toronto when a flock of golden-crowned kinglets flew into a 15-storey glass building.
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