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.

Climate Change Led to Collapse of Ancient Indus Civilization, Study Finds

A new study combining the latest archaeological evidence with state-of-the-art geoscience technologies provides evidence that climate change was a key ingredient in the collapse of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization almost 4000 years ago. Once extending more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, the Indus civilization was the largest of the first great urban cultures that also included Egypt and Mesopotamia.

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…