Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Builders already have the tools needed to build cooler homes for an increasingly hotter world The US sweltered under record-breaking heat this year, with new research suggesting that air conditioning is no longer enough to keep homes cool. Spiraling energy demands and costs of indoor cooling now have planners looking to alternative ways to keep buildings cool – some fresh out of the lab, others centuries old. “The amount of buildings we expect to go up in the next couple decades is just staggering,” says Alexi Miller, director of building innovation at the non-profit New Buildings Institute (NBI). “If we build them the way we built them yesterday, we’re going to use a phenomenal amount of energy. There are lots of ways we could be doing this better. It’s not all fancy, emerging technology – there’s some basic stuff we don’t do nearly enough.” Continue reading...

Domesticated creatures feature heavily in contemporary contributions to Guardian column compared to diaries of 1920s In the early 1920s, the British countryside was a place where blackbirds sang, rabbits scurried and the summer skies were animated by swallows and house martins. A century on, blackbirds still sing and ancient oaks stand proud but the landscape is dominated by sheep, cows and dogs – according to Guardian country diarists. A study of the most-featured species in the Country Diary column from 2021-24 and a century earlier reveals a surprising dominance of domesticated creatures in the mind’s eye of the contemporary contributors. Continue reading...

JD Vance had to cancel two events in Georgia on Thursday after the category 4 storm surged across the region JD Vance has been forced to cancel two campaign events in Georgia due to the threat posed by Hurricane Helene, in the latest instance of Donald Trump’s presidential bid being affected by extreme weather worsened by a climate crisis that both Trump and Vance have routinely mocked. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, scrapped plans to make a speech in Macon, Georgia, and then hold a rally in Flowery Branch, Georgia, on Thursday due to the hurricane, which has surged across the Gulf of Mexico and hit Florida’s west coast as a category 4 storm. Continue reading...

Findings come amid growing concerns about overuse of medicines in farm animals and rise of superbugs None of the UK’s large supermarket chains are ensuring their suppliers use antibiotics in the most responsible way, an assessment by campaigners has found, despite heightened concerns about their overuse in farm animals. Supermarkets play an important role in the fight against superbugs, because most of the world’s antibiotics are used on livestock and retailers can enforce strict standards on the farm suppliers they use. Resistant bacteria known as superbugs are rapidly developing, posing an increasing risk to human health. Continue reading...