oceans
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Brother, can you spare a country?
“We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.” — Mohamed Nasheed, newly elected president of the Maldives, on a plan to use tourism revenue to buy a new homeland, since climate change-driven sea-level rise is expected to swallow the current […]
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Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al
The good news: We can avoid multimeter sea-level rise, the loss of the inland glaciers that provide water to a billion people, rapid expansion of the subtropical deserts, and mass extinctions — each of which is all-but inevitable on our current path of unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions. The not-so-good news: We will probably need an […]
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A new record for the hurricane season of 2008
As Jeff Master, our favorite meteorologist and hurricane blogger, wrote on Saturday: This year is now the only hurricane season on record in the Atlantic that has featured major hurricanes in five separate months. The only year to feature major hurricanes in four separate months was 2005, and many years have had major hurricanes in […]
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One more environmental Cabinet position that counts particularly for oceans
In its feature “Stocking the Cabinet,” Grist speculated on Barack Obama’s potential nominees for the “top environmental jobs” in his administration. For the oceans, however, the most pertinent post isn’t the head of the EPA, or the secretary of agriculture, energy, or interior, all of which were included in Grist’s guessing game. Guess what is? […]
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There are simple ways to reduce cargo ship CO2 emissions right now
The International Maritime Organization’s recent decision to adopt tighter emission rules for the global shipping fleet is a step in the right direction for an industry whose emissions have been practically unregulated. Ship emissions are blamed for 60,000 deaths worldwide each year — a serious public health threat. The new rules, however, only address sulfur […]
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Environmental NGOs present sustainable-sushi guides and delicious raw fish at a New York event
A lot of people I know seek out meat, eggs, and dairy from pasture-raised animals and vegetables grown without chemicals, but they do not question where their seafood comes from unless they’re worried about mercury. The concept of sustainable seafood is a revolutionary idea that I hope catches on the way dolphin-safe tuna fish has. […]
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NOAA’s arctic report card shows stronger effects of warming in Greenland and permafrost
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its annual Arctic report card with grim findings: Temperature increases, a near-record loss of summer sea ice, and a melting of surface ice in Greenland are among some of the evidence of continued warming in the Arctic, according to an annual review of conditions in the Arctic […]
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Most ubiquitous fish in American diet 50 percent below last year’s levels
Here’s a guest post from Jennifer Jacquet of the Sea Around Us project at the University of British Columbia, and blogger-in-chief of the Shifting Baselines Blog. —– Ask a scientist to give a good example of a well-managed fishery, and they often will cite the Alaska pollock fishery. But John Hocevar of Greenpeace-USA prefers to […]
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New study shows the error of ICCAT’s ways
A new study in this week’s Science finds that the two distinct Atlantic bluefin tuna populations — those spawned in the Gulf of Mexico and those spawned in the Mediterranean Sea — meet during their juvenile years in the Atlantic before returning to their respective natal homes to reproduce. In addition to being fascinating (the […]
