Injecting pollutants into the atmosphere to reflect the sun would be extremely dangerous, but the UK is funding field trials
Some years ago in the pages of the Guardian, we sounded the alarm about the increasing attention being paid to solar geoengineering – a barking mad scheme to cancel global heating by putting pollutants in the atmosphere that dim the sun by reflecting some sunlight back to space.
In one widely touted proposition, fleets of aircraft would continually inject sulphur compounds into the upper atmosphere, simulating the effects of a massive array of volcanoes erupting continuously. In essence, we have broken the climate by releasing gigatonnes of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide, and solar geoengineering proposes to “fix” it by breaking a very different part of the climate system.
Raymond T Pierrehumbert FRS is professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford. He is an author of the 2015 US National Academy of Sciences report on climate intervention
Michael E Mann ForMemRS is presidential distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/12/2025 - 04:00
03/12/2025 - 02:00
Campaigners say introduction of feasibility test in England and Wales over bathing status is ‘snub to communities’
Rivers are unlikely to be granted the protections of bathing water status under the government’s changes to the system, campaigners have said.
River activists have reacted with fury as details of the reforms were revealed on Wednesday.
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03/12/2025 - 00:38
If you don’t believe the scientists, will you believe the insurance companies?
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03/11/2025 - 21:44
My homeplace has experienced four natural disasters in eight years. But I’d never seen the like of this bird before, vibrantly green and startlingly beautiful
We were midway through our cyclone preparation when my mother broke her leg. She stepped into her bedroom to retrieve something, tripped and fell, and that was that. My mother is 74 and hardy, so this sudden break took us by surprise. Once I got her home, leg in brace, we’d lost significant time, and my household was down to one functional human: me.
This is the fourth natural disaster I’ve experienced in the last eight years. One-in-100-year floods (2017), unprecedented bushfires (2019), one-in-1,000-year floods (2022) and now Cyclone Alfred. Cyclones are a new threat. I’ve lived in my homeplace, in northern New South Wales, for almost 50 years and we’ve never had a cyclone cross land in our vicinity. We were, as they say, in uncharted waters.
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03/11/2025 - 21:36
Research shows apex predators are increasing in numbers and excreting important nutrients into Top End waterways
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The growing saltwater crocodile population in the Northern Territory has led to the creatures gorging on nine times more prey than they did 50 years ago, with the apex predators contributing important nutrients to Top End waterways, new research suggests.
Saltwater crocodile populations have increased exponentially in recent decades, from less than 3,000 in 1971, when a ban on hunting was introduced, to more than 100,000 animals today.
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03/11/2025 - 19:01
Swings between drought and floods striking from Dallas to Shanghai, while Madrid and Cairo are among cities whose climate has flipped
Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed.
Dozens more cities, including Lucknow, Madrid and Riyadh have suffered a climate “flip” in the last 20 years, switching from dry to wet extremes, or vice versa. The report analysed the 100 most populous cities, plus 12 selected ones, and found that 95% of them showed a distinct trend towards wetter or drier weather.
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Navigating trade-offs on conservation: the use of participatory mapping in maritime spatial planning
03/06/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 06 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00109-6
Navigating trade-offs on conservation: the use of participatory mapping in maritime spatial planning
03/05/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 05 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00110-z
As climate change and biodiversity loss intensify, the deep seabed beckons as a source of metals for batteries. Initiating this new exploitation conflicts with international agreements to decelerate biodiversity loss through wider protections of ecosystem integrity. The poor record of terrestrial mining must not be an excuse to mine the ocean floor. Improved oversight and biodiversity protection as miners increase production on land will produce a better global biodiversity outcome.
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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