Breaking Waves: Ocean News

03/21/2024 - 06:00
Public Citizen, a non-profit group, proposed the idea last year to prosecute companies for millions of deaths due to climate crisis Each year, extreme temperatures take 5 million lives, while 400,000 people die from climate-related hunger and disease and scores perish in floods and wildfires. Now, researchers are promoting a new legal theory that says fossil fuel companies – which, data show, are the leading contributors to planet-heating pollution – could be tried for homicide for climate-related deaths. Continue reading...
03/21/2024 - 06:00
Here’s what happened when two climate reporters tried to ditch natural gas • This story is co-published with Grist My wife and I live in a green, two-story colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac in Burlington, Vermont. Each spring, the front of our home is lined with lilacs, crocuses, and peonies. The backyard is thick with towering black locust trees. We occasionally spot a fox from our office windows, or toddlers from the neighborhood daycare trundling through the woods. It’s an alarmingly idyllic home, with one exception: it runs on natural gas. The boiler, which heats our house and our water, burns it. So do the stove and the dryer and even the fireplace in the living room. Continue reading...
03/21/2024 - 05:00
New industries such as cryptocurrency and cannabis are boosting industry forecasts, straining efforts to cut emissions What’s happening with US energy? Demand for power is soaring, creating a new energy crisis for the United States – one that could make the climate crisis even worse. Continue reading...
03/21/2024 - 05:00
Suit claims bibs, produced by Bumkins, leaves babies exposed to high levels of ‘forever chemicals’ and do not have warning labels DC and Marvel comic-themed baby and toddler bibs are contaminated with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, leaving kids exposed to carcinogens that can easily be ingested, a new California lawsuit alleges. Among others, the suit names the bibs’ US producer and Amazon as defendants. Under Proposition 65, products sold in California that contain PFOA, a highly toxic PFAS compound that was phased out of production in the US, must at a minimum contain a warning. Continue reading...
03/21/2024 - 04:00
Some of our favorite foods and drinks rely on these oft-misunderstood mammals, which are facing multiple threats If you’ve ever enjoyed coffee, tomatoes, corn, bananas, mangoes, walnuts, chocolate, tequila or mezcal, you may just owe bats a thank-you. While bats are often the subject of fear and scorn – they’re fixtures in Halloween decor and haunted-house imagery, and are frequently portrayed as harbingers of doom – their presence is often a sign of a thriving ecosystem. Some of our favorite food and drinks would be much less plentiful, or even nonexistent, without them. Continue reading...
03/21/2024 - 04:00
The mass deaths were puzzling scientists around the world – there were no signs of viruses or parasites. Then we looked closely at their skin It was while we were sitting and talking in a hotel bar at the first global congress of herpetology that the world’s amphibian experts realised there was a problem: frogs, toads, salamanders and newts were disappearing in their thousands around the world and nobody understood why. Not a single talk at the 1989 congress at the University of Kent had discussed the strange disappearance of the world’s amphibians. But scientist after scientist had the same story: from Central America to Australia, they were vanishing. Continue reading...
03/21/2024 - 03:00
Stars of Avatar: The Way of Water photographed in baroque style by Christy Lee Rogers Photographs of the actors Kate Winslet, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver seemingly floating underwater in elaborate blue dresses, with eyes shut and arms outstretched, are to be sold to raise money for ocean conservation. The images are the work of one of the world’s most celebrated underwater photographers, Christy Lee Rogers, who teamed up with the stars of the 2022 film Avatar: The Way of Water and its director, James Cameron, a longtime proponent of ocean conservation, who commissioned the photoshoot. Continue reading...
03/20/2024 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 21 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00055-9 Advancing tuna catch allocation negotiations: an analysis of sovereign rights and fisheries access arrangements
03/20/2024 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 21 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00053-x Good fisheries management is good carbon management
03/17/2024 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 18 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00052-y As marine conservation challenges intensify with accelerating anthropogenic change, informing public deliberation about difficult trade-offs requires commitment to epistemological pluralism. Robust integration of social sciences can improve the realism of policy debates by explicating a range of potential social-ecological outcomes. Funders have long incentivized interdisciplinarity, yet progress is insufficient and embedded in a political economy of knowledge production. Failure to substantively address inequities can stymie collaboration. Institutional expectations for promotion and tenure rarely recognize the extent to which deep engagement transforms epistemological norms and scholarly outputs. Several organizations and programs offer relevant experience and resources. Senior scholars can use their privilege to broaden the public accountability of science.