Breaking Waves: Ocean News

The Guardian view on climate finance: crumbling under a second Trump presidency | Editorial

admin — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 17:25:28 +0000

Voluntary climate commitments were supposed to be a step towards progress. A change in political climate has revealed their weaknesses

Wildfires close Mount Vesuvius trails while fierce blazes continue in France

admin — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 12:56:56 +0000

French officials says heatwave in southern Europe complicates efforts to contain biggest wildfire since 1949

Tourist trails have been closed on Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy as firefighters tackle a huge blaze on the volcano’s slopes, while officials warned of another “challenging day” for those working to contain France’s biggest wildfire since 1949.

Climate change is killing fireflies – threatening a US summer ritual

admin — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 12:00:24 +0000

Scientists say lightning bugs are having a revival this year – but they’re concerned about the insects’ long-term viability

Max Vogel, a 29-year-old public defense attorney, was picnicking with friends in early August at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, when he noticed flashes of light appear in the air around him.

A huge stick insect has been discovered in Australia. Here’s why that’s important | Gwen Pearson

admin — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 09:00:19 +0000

Yes, they can be hard to spot – but this find highlights how little we know about creatures crucial to our ecosystem

Gwen Pearson is adjunct professor at Michigan State University Department of Entomology

Scientists recently announced they had found an enormous new stick insect in Australia. At 41cm in length and weighing 44g, the main question I heard was: “Why didn’t scientists notice something that big before now?”

Scientists just uncovered three ancient worlds frozen beneath Illinois for 300 million years

admin — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 15:23:15 +0000

Over 300 million years ago, Illinois teemed with life in tropical swamps and seas, now preserved at the famous Mazon Creek fossil site. Researchers from the University of Missouri and geologist Gordon Baird have reexamined a vast fossil collection, uncovering three distinct ancient environments—freshwater, transitional marine, and offshore—each with unique animal life. Their findings, enhanced by advanced imaging and data analysis, reveal how sea-level changes, sediment conditions, and microbial activity shaped fossil formation.

‘Erasure of years of work’: outcry as White House moves to open Arctic reserve to oil and gas drilling

admin — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 12:00:07 +0000

US Bureau of Land management is working to rapidly strip protections to largest tract of land in the US

Radioactive water from UK nuclear bomb base leaked into sea, files show

admin — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 11:00:52 +0000

Exclusive: Polluted water was released into loch near Glasgow because Royal Navy failed to maintain 1,500 water pipes, says watchdog

Radioactive water from the base that holds the UK’s nuclear bombs was allowed to leak into the sea after old pipes repeatedly burst, official files have revealed.

The radioactive material was released into Loch Long, a sea loch near Glasgow in western Scotland, because the Royal Navy failed to properly maintain a network of 1,500 water pipes on the base, a regulator found.

OpenAI will not disclose GPT-5’s energy use. It could be higher than past models

admin — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 10:00:05 +0000

Experts working to benchmark resource use of AI models say new version’s enhanced capabilities come at a steep cost

Human connection to nature has declined 60% in 200 years, study finds

admin — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 08:00:01 +0000

Prof Miles Richardson says people risk ‘extinction of experience’ in the natural world without new policies

People’s connection to nature has declined by more than 60% since 1800, almost exactly mirroring the disappearance of nature words such as river, moss and blossom from books, according to a study.

Brazil’s president signs environmental ‘devastation bill’ but vetoes key articles

admin — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 19:54:38 +0000

Campaigners had urged Lula to veto the bill entirely, but many have welcomed his alterations

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has signed into law a controversial bill that scientists and environmentalists had dubbed the “devastation bill”, but vetoed key articles that would have in effect dismantled the country’s environmental licensing system.