Six Spongy Sea Creatures Suggest Warming Might Be Worse Than Thought – the New York Times

Research on a long-lived but rarely seen species in the Caribbean is helping scientists piece together a revised history of climate change…
Here’s How the Next Two Atmospheric Rivers Will Affect California – the New York Times

A “Pineapple Express” hitting California through Thursday will set the stage for another week of unsettled weather across the state…
As Development Alters Greek Islands’ Nature and Culture, Locals Push Back – the New York Times

As a proliferation of pools threatens some water supplies and housing costs skyrocket, people of the Cycladic islands say the Aegean islands’ character is being lost to real-estate homogenization…“It’s very easy to talk about sustainable development, but all they actually do is approve new investments,” said Ioannis Spilanis, a former general secretary for island policy at Greece’s shipping ministry and now head of the Aegean Sustainable Tourism Observatory…
The Prescience of Octavia Butler

The effects of climate change are reshaping America. Those with sufficient resources retreat inside protected communities. Those with even greater resources finance an exploratory Mars mission, presumably in an attempt to one day escape Earth’s destabilization. In the political realm, a populist presidential candidate denounces claims made by scientists, promising the electorate that he’s going to “return us to the glory, wealth, and order of the twentieth century.” This is life in 2024…Or at least it’s life in 2024 as imagined by the writer Octavia Butler 31 years ago…
The Visions of Octavia Butler | Interactive – the New York Times

(Octavia) Butler was not a climate scientist, a political pundit, or a Silicon Valley technologist…Somehow she knew this time would come. The smoke-choked air from fire gone wild, the cresting rivers and rising seas, the sweltering heat and receding lakes, the melting away of civil society and political stability, the light-year leaps in artificial intelligence—(she) foresaw them all…
Finding a Way Back to ‘Perfect Beach’ – the New York Times

On the northern coast of Puerto Rico — about an hour’s drive west of San Juan, off a wisp of a road threaded through dense green foliage — there exists a long, empty beach that has haunted my dreams for years. On Google Maps, it appears as Punta Caracoles Beach, but I have always thought of it as Perfect Beach…
A California Beach Town Is Desperate to Save Its Vanishing Sand – the New York Times

Sea-level rise and man-made projects have left Oceanside with precious little beach space. That’s a problem if coastal life is part of your city’s identity…
‘No Space for Us’: Greeks Fight Beach Takeover by Pricey Sun Chairs – the New York Times

It is peak tourist season in Greece, and on the pristine Monastiri beach on the northern tip of Paros island, a phalanx of lounge chairs with red umbrellas covers the sand. At 70 euros for a pair of front-row seats near the crystalline waters, less than half were taken on a recent day, as Greeks and tourists alike who did not want to pay instead sheltered from the sun under nearby trees….
There Might Be Less Plastic in the Sea Than We Thought. But Read On – the New York Times

There’s less plastic pollution flowing into the ocean from land than scientists previously thought, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The researchers estimated that about 500,000 metric tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year, with about half from land. The other half comes from the fishing industry in the form of nets, ropes, buoys and other equipment…