In the face of sea level rise, can we reimagine California’s vanishing coastline? – the Los Angeles Times
Excerpted from “California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline” (available Sept. 26, 2023) by Rosanna Xia. Reprinted in the Los Angeles Times with permission from Heyday Books, © 2023.
Alarming’ scale of marine sand dredging laid bare by new data platform – the Guardian
One million lorries of sand a day are being extracted from the world’s oceans, posing a “significant” threat to marine life and coastal communities facing rising sea levels and storms, according to the first-ever global data platform to monitor the industry….
6 billion tonnes of sand taken annually from oceans, causing irreparable damage to benthic life – Down to Earth
Some six billion tonnes of sand is being extracted annually from the floor of the world’s oceans, causing irreparable damage to benthic life, according to a new global data platform on sand and other sediment extraction in the marine environment.
The new data platform, Marine Sand Watch, has been developed by GRID-Geneva, a Centre for Analytics within the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). It is available at: https://unepgrid.ch/en/marinesandwatch…
Sand mining is a huge problem, a new global map shows – the Verge
People are dredging an alarming amount of sand from the seafloor, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned today. An average of 6 billion tons of sand are taken from marine environments every year, according to a new global data platform from UNEP….
Hurricane Idalia’s Explosive Power Comes from Abnormally Hot Oceans – the New Yorker
Of all the astonishing facts about our blithe remaking of the world’s climate system, the most astonishing might be this: if oceans didn’t cover seventy per cent of our planet, we would have increased the average temperature to about a hundred and twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit. That’s because those oceans have absorbed something like ninety-three per cent of the extra heat trapped by the greenhouse effect and our burning of fossil fuels…
DeSantis’s Florida Approves Climate-Denial Videos in Schools – Scientific American
Florida’s Department of Education has approved classroom use of videos that spout climate disinformation and distort climate science
Climate activists are like Nazis.
Wind and solar power pollute the Earth and make life miserable.
Recent global and local heat records reflect natural temperature cycles.
These are some of the themes of children’s videos produced by an influential conservative advocacy group…
Is this ‘age of the delta’ coming to an end? – Knowable Magazine
The land near the mouth of the Mississippi River is barely land at all. Muddy water forks into a labyrinth of pathways through a seemingly endless expanse of electric-green marsh grass, below skies thick with birds. Shrimp and crabs wriggle in the water below, and oak and cypress sprout from wet soils on higher grounds. Stretching for more than a hundred miles along the coast of Louisiana, this is one of the world’s largest, and most famous, river deltas…
Opposition grows to Indonesia’s resumption of sea sand exports – Mongabay
Marine and fisheries activists in Indonesia are ramping up their calls for the revocation of a new government regulation allowing the export of sea sand, saying the policy will benefit foreign interests more than local fishers and marine ecosystems…
Before the flood: how much longer will the Thames Barrier protect London? – the Guardian
The last time the Thames broke its banks and flooded central London was on 7 January 1928, when a storm sent record water levels up the tidal river, from Greenwich and Woolwich in the east as far as Hammersmith in the west. Built on flood plains, the capital was defended only by embankments. The flood waters burst over them into Whitehall and Westminster, and rushed through crowded slums. Fourteen died and thousands were left homeless…