oceans
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EPA scientist warns Atlantic seaboard will be swallowed by rising seas
For most of the 20th century, Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, was known for its boardwalk, amusement park, and wide, sandy beaches, popular with daytrippers from Washington, D.C. “The bathing beach has a frontage of three miles,” boasted a tourist brochure from about 1900, “and is equal, if not superior, to any beach on the Atlantic Coast.” […]
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Burning oil rig sinks into Gulf of Mexico
This is bad: The oil rig that has been burning in the Gulf of Mexico since an explosion on Tuesday has sunk, CNN reports. The human cost: 17 workers injured (3 critically) and 11 missing. The Coast Guard is searching for them. The ecological cost: Crude oil is leaking from at a rate of about […]
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This week in comically evil corporate behavior
Updated It’s only Wednesday and we’ve already got way more than a week’s worth of comically evil behavior from the fossil-fuel sector. Item the first: A Chinese coal freighter tried to take a shortcut through Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and rammed into the world-reknowned ecological treasure. The stranded ship remains in danger of […]
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One more blow to the ailing Great Barrier Reef
The Shen Neng 1 in a plume of heavy oil in Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.Australian Maritime Safety AuthorityUgh. Everything about this is bad: A Chinese freighter crashed into Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Saturday, running aground and spilling heavy fuel oil into the water. The ship is stuck, and while the flow of oil has […]
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Pasta con sarde: the gateway drug for sardine obsession
Sardines at a market in Portugal. We’re wasting this magnificent resource on low-quality, mercury-laden farmed salmon? Not in Tom’s Kitchen! In Tom’s Kitchen, Grist’s food editor discusses some of the quick-and-easy things he gets up to in, well, his kitchen. Forgive him for the lame iPhone photography. —— A while ago, my colleague Jon Hiskes […]
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Ask Umbra dives deep with ocean advocate Sylvia Earle
Water, water everywhere, but is it on the brink? Not if oceanographer Sylvia Earle has anything to do with it. Dearests, meet Ms. Earle, an aquanaut, author, and one of today’s greatest advocates of the ocean—also, I suspect, a direct descendant of Poseidon. (I’ve asked for funding from Grist for a DNA test to be […]
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Scientists: BPA has widely contaminated the oceans
BPA leached from plastic: not just a problem for landlubbers.It’s looking more and more like the chemical industry’s idea to make the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A ubiquitous in the environment was a terrible, and terribly dangerous, idea. Having successfully tainted the food supply with its presence, BPA has now has put the world’s oceans at […]
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Why we shouldn’t bury bluefin tuna just yet
The mighty bluefin: Are rumors of its death at least slightly exaggerated? “Nations free to fish bluefin tuna to extinction,” thundered Tom Laskawy’s headline on Grist. On the Politics of the Plate blog, Barry Estabrook’s title was more concise: “Bye-bye bluefin.” They were reacting to the decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered […]
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The bluefin tuna gets a bigtime backer: the U.S. government
The Atlantic bluefin may be down, but it’s not out. After delaying a decision, the Obama administration came out today in support of a proposal to declare the bluefin an endangered species and to ban international trade in the threatened fish (via The Washington Post): The U.S. government announced Wednesday that it supports prohibiting international […]
