Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Slow-moving giant about to make landfall and will linger over the island before slamming into Cuba Hurricane Melissa – latest updates Hurricane Melissa is close to hitting Jamaica as a catastrophic category 5 storm, the strongest to lash the island since record-keeping began in 1851. The slow-moving giant will make landfall on Tuesday afternoon local time and linger over the island, moving diagonally through it until heading on to slam into Cuba, with impacts also expected in Haiti and the Bahamas. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Firms say added costs would mean they are unable to install enough turbines to meet green energy goals Offshore windfarm companies may be exempted from new UK nature rules in an attempt to keep down the cost of renewable energy, the Guardian has learned. The energy firms have said they would be unable to build the vast number of turbines required to meet the government’s green electricity goals if they have to meet new rules for nationally significant infrastructure projects (Nsips). Continue reading...

Claimants seek compensation from RWE and Heidelberg Materials after extreme flooding destroyed harvests A group of Pakistani farmers whose livelihoods were devastated by floods three years ago has fired the starting shot in legal action against two of Germany’s most polluting companies. Lawyers acting for 43 men and women from the Sindh region sent the energy firm RWE and the cement producer Heidelberg formal letters before action on Tuesday warning of their intention to sue later this year. Continue reading...

As rising tides eat away at the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon archipelago off Canada, plans to move the historic village to higher ground have divided residents Franck Detcheverry, Miquelon’s 41-year-old mayor, trudges up a grassy hill. “The view isn’t too bad, huh?” he jokes. The ocean sparkles 40 metres below the empty mound. The sound of a man playing the bagpipes, as if serenading the sea, floats up from the shoreline. This hill will be the location of his new home and those of all his fellow villagers. In the distance, about half a mile away, you can see the outline of the 400 or so buildings in the village of Miquelon. It sits only 2 metres above sea level on the archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Situated off the Canadian coast to the south of Newfoundland, it is an “overseas collectivity” of France, and the country’s last foothold in North America. Continue reading...