UN Warns Australia To Protect The Great Barrier Of Reef
UNESCO has warned Australia not to allow development of new ports along the Great Barrier Reef, as the World Heritage-listed natural wonder is under threat from unprecedented coastal development. UNESCO has given Australia eight months to improve management of the Great Barrier Reef before it is listed as in danger.
Jobs-short Spanish town to build on ‘paradise’ beach
A jobs-starved town in southern Spain has sparked uproar by agreeing on a scheme to build 350 homes and a batch of hotels with 1,400 rooms on unspoiled land along a “paradise” beach, by the Andalusian town of Tarifa. The indignation is also a symptom of the damage done to Spain’s coastline in decades of unrestrained construction.
Lost Villages, Pictures by Neil A White
The Holderness coastline, UK, eroding faster than anywhere else in Europe, is a bleak landscape of shrinking villages and abandoned buildings.
Stay or go? Some towns are eyeing retreat from sea
Pounded by erosion, some communities hugging California’s shoreline are eyeing a retreat from the sea. There’s a growing acknowledgement that the sea is relentless and erosion will worsen with rising seas fueled by global warming. Up and down the California coast, some communities are deciding it’s not worth trying to wall off the encroaching ocean. Until recently, the thought of bowing to nature was almost unheard of.
Rio Closes Its Massive Jardim Gramacho Dump
One of the world’s largest open-air landfills, a vast, seaside mountain of trash where thousands of people have made a living sorting through the debris by hand, will close this weekend after 34 years in tainting service.
A Rising Tide of Willful Ignorance
Since as far back as the Scopes Trial, and probably even Galileo, the debate over science has been at the crux of numerous political and cultural conflicts between progressives and conservatives. Legislative proposal would actually tell scientists which data they can and can’t consider on rising sea levels…
D-Day’s Legacy Sands, Omaha Beach; By Earle F. McBride & M. Dane Picard
Before dawn on June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops began storming the shores of Normandy, France, in what would be the turning point of World War II. Troops poured out of planes and off ships along an 80-kilometer stretch of coastline. Omaha Beach sand retains evidence of the Invasion…
Plastic Bag: A Short History Of The Ubiquitous Sack
With Los Angeles preparing to become the largest city in the nation to ban plastic grocery bags, a short history of the ubiquitous sack.
State of the Sea at the Start of Hurricane Season
The 2012 hurricane season in North and Central America arrives with a muddled outlook. Sea surface temperatures are not particularly warm or cool, and the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA announced, that it is expecting a near-normal season, with nine to fifteen named storms and four to eight hurricanes. Regardless of the predictions, the key to hurricane season is vigilance. “The important issue is hurricane preparedness along the coasts…”