Toll expected to rise after heavy rains caused flooding in Katesh in country’s north
At least 47 people have been killed and 85 others injured in landslides caused by flooding in northern Tanzania, a local official has said, with warnings the toll would rise.
Heavy rain on Saturday hit the town of Katesh, 300km (186 miles) north of the capital, Dodoma, district commissioner Janeth Mayanja said on Sunday. “Up to this evening, the death toll reached 47 and 85 injured,” Queen Sendiga, regional commissioner in the Manyara area of northern Tanzania, told local media. Both warned that the death toll was likely to increase.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/03/2023 - 09:00
Dave Lees, principal of the newly rebuilt Mullumbimby public school, vividly recalls the emotion of his first visit to assess the flood damage
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“My first memories were just the silt and the mud,” says Dave Lees, summoning his impressions from the day he returned to the Mullumbimby public school campus, the day after it was swallowed by flood waters.
“It was just a brown, smelly, clay-laden, dirty space. It looked like another planet,” the school principal says.
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12/03/2023 - 09:00
Thousands of activists attending climate conference in UAE, which has a poor record for demonstrations
Cop28 organisers and the UN body that oversees the annual climate conference have failed to clarify whether activists in Dubai are safe to demonstrate outside the conference area, putting civil society at risk in a country where protest is normally prohibited.
At least 80,000 people are registered to attend the conference, including thousands of activists and members of civil society, who normally hold protests around the conference area.
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12/03/2023 - 05:55
Tolkien’s hostility to rampant industrialisation should chime with nations represented in Dubai
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Back in the 1960s, no self-respecting hippy would be seen dead without a well-thumbed copy of the Lord of the Rings. Along with a copy of Sgt Pepper and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it came to epitomise the counterculture.
Times change. Tolkien’s most prominent fan at present is Giorgia Meloni, the most rightwing prime minister Italy has had since the second world war. That has set alarm bells clanging.
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12/03/2023 - 01:02
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Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has been facing criticism at home for the brevity of his visit to the climate conference, having visited for less than a day. He has also been accused of hypocrisy for pushing for a phase-out of fossil fuels only weeks after approving new oil and gas licences in the North Sea.
Al Gore, the former US vice-president, said: “I am not impressed with prime minister Sunak’s climate policies. I think they’re terrible. They’re very disappointing.”
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11/30/2023 - 21:00
In another first, this month’s episode of The Ocean Decade Show comes to you from on board the R/V Falkor as it’s undertaking an ultra fine-scale seafloor mapping expedition in the hydrothermal vent fields of the Eastern Galapágos Spreading Center. One of the members of this groundbreaking (or should we say, ground-mapping!) team is Dr. Cherisse Du Preez, a deep-sea explorer and marine biologist who works for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Dr. Du Preez has been part of several endorsed UN Ocean Decade Actions and during this episode, we’ll dig into her penchant for exploration, the importance of working alongside Canadian First Nations tribal nations for her work, and the broader role Canada has been playing to ensure a successful Ocean Decade.
11/29/2023 - 21:00
In the month's episode of the American Blue Economy Podcast, our host Rear Admiral, Tim Gallaudet, PhD, US Navy (ret) catches a wave while discussing the contributions to the American Blue Economy. He is joined by big wave and professional surfing legend Ian “Kanga” Cairns, instructor in the Environmental Sciences Graduate Program at Oregon State University, Dr. Neeraja Havaligi, and owner and lead forecaster for the nearshore wave & weather forecasting company CFOX.surf, Charlie Fox. This diverse group will explore surfing contests, the travel industry's support to surf destination tourism, surfers as conservationists, and how the science of wave and weather prediction supports professional and amateur surfers all across America. Be sure to drop in to this show if you want to experience an epic ride!
11/28/2023 - 21:00
Joining host Helen Brohl is Tom Hultquist, the Science and Operations Officer for the National Weather Service in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On November 10, 1975 during a severe storm, the Great Lakes bulk cargo vessel SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank with the loss of all 29 crew members in eastern Lake Superior about 17 miles from the entrance to Whitefish Bay, Michigan. The vessel sank quickly without sending a distress signal and, as we all know, the tragedy inspired Gordon Lightfoot to write his famous song. Was it the "perfect storm" or a typical "Gale of November?" What did Tom and his colleagues learn when they used modern technology to analyze the more limited meteorological data from 1975?
11/27/2023 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 27 November 2023; doi:10.1038/s44183-023-00029-3
Towards a global strategy for the conservation of deep-sea active hydrothermal vents
11/27/2023 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 27 November 2023; doi:10.1038/s44183-023-00024-8
Recent calls for an International Panel for Ocean Sustainability (IPOS) to provide consensus-based science advice for global ocean sustainability appeal to the successes of global science–policy platforms, specifically the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and the World Ocean Assessment (WOA)1. A new IPOS may facilitate global ocean sustainability, but only if it proactively addresses the challenges facing existing international science–policy platforms—namely representation, accountability, and politicization.
