Indonesia Cracks Down on the Scourge of Imported Plastic Waste – Yale Environment 360
When China banned plastic waste imports in 2018, exporters in wealthy countries targeted other developing nations. Faced with an unending stream of unrecyclable waste, Indonesia has tightened its regulations and has begun to make progress in stemming the plastics flow…
Climate crisis costing $16m an hour in extreme weather damage, study estimates – the Guardian
The damage caused by the climate crisis through extreme weather has cost $16m (£13m) an hour for the past 20 years, according to a new estimate.
Storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts have taken many lives and destroyed swathes of property in recent decades, with global heating making the events more frequent and intense. The study is the first to calculate a global figure for the increased costs directly attributable to human-caused global heating…
What does an octopus eat? For a creature with a brain in each arm, whatever’s within reach – the Conversation
The octopus is one of the coolest animals in the sea. For starters, they are invertebrates. That means they don’t have backbones like humans, lions, turtles and birds.
That may sound unusual, but actually, nearly all animals on Earth are invertebrates – about 97%…What octopuses eat depends on what species they are and where they live ..
Erosion Stripping Seven Mile Beach – cayman compass
The Compass recently observed the length of the beach using a drone camera to get the most up-to-date images of the impacts of the storm and ongoing erosion. It showed that some areas along the southern stretch have suffered a total loss of beach, and in at least one section, a near-5-feet-high ledge of sand has been created by the bombardment of the waves…
Littoral Drift – Lens Culture
Inky blues, frothy whites and occasional flecks of gold make up the color spectrum in Meghann Riepenhoff’s breathtaking camera-less cyanotypes..Littoral Drift—a geological term used to describe the transportation of sand and gravel by wind-driven waves—is Riepenhoff’s “collaboration” with the landscape and the ocean, in which she opens herself to chance and embraces the textures of nature into her working process…..
Groundwater a significant source of pollution on Great Barrier Reef, study shows – the Guardian
Scientists say they have discovered large flows of pollution are reaching the Great Barrier Reef after soaking into underground water, a finding that could have implications for policymakers focused on cutting pollution from river catchments. The new research claims almost a third of dissolved inorganic nitrogen and two-thirds of dissolved inorganic phosphorus in the reef’s waters are coming from underground sources – an amount previously undocumented…
Long Story Shorts: Why Should You Care about Deep-Sea Mining? – Hakai Institute
Deep-sea mining is a controversial proposed solution to the rising global demand for metals—but did you know it has the potential to destroy vital deep-water ecosystems and cause unknown ripple effects through the entire marine ecosystem?
Sponging Up Plastic Pollution – Hakai Magazine
For millennia, humans have used dried natural sponges to clean up, to paint, and as vessels to consume fluids like water or honey; we’ve even used them as contraceptive devices. Whether synthetic or natural, sponges are great at ensnaring tiny particles in their many pores. And as scientists around the world are beginning to show, sponges’ cavity-filled forms mean they could provide a solution to one of our era’s biggest scourges: microplastic pollution….
September shattered global heat record — and by a record margin – the Washington Post
Temperatures around the world last month were at levels closer to normal for July according to separate data analyses by European and Japanese climate scientists.
September’s average temperature was nearly 1 degree Celsius (1.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above 1991-2020 levels — or about 1.7 to 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.1 to 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal from before industrialization and the widespread use of fossil fuels…