Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Exclusive: Economic harm of CO2 pollution from Rosebank and Jackdaw forecast to far outweigh any boost to UK The climate damage caused by developing the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields under consideration by the UK government would destroy their economic benefits many times over, according to an analysis. It estimates the economic damage caused by the carbon pollution from the oil and gas produced would be between £119bn and £336bn in the coming decades, compared with the £28.7bn in value to the UK estimated by Adura, the fossil fuel company promoting the new fields. Continue reading...

True figure likely to be much higher as it only covers about half of continent and does not include August totals At least 35,000 more people died during Europe’s four record-breaking, back-to-back heatwaves this summer than would normally be expected, according to incomplete figures from barely half the continent. Excess mortality in three of the EU’s larger countries – Germany, France and Spain – alone has already exceeded 25,000, according to the provisional national figures, and experts say the toll will rise significantly once August totals are consolidated. Continue reading...

Man, 68, was left searching for help in 116F weather after his car became stuck in mud along remote park road A French tourist recently died in Death Valley national park after a car mishap left him stranded in 116F (47C) weather. The visitor, identified as 68-year-old Pierre Michel Formosa, was traveling with another French man along the park’s remote West Side Road when their vehicle became stuck in mud near Queen of Sheba Mine Road. Continue reading...

On a panel show last week, everyone in the audience wanted to talk about the climate emergency, but the lines rolled out by a Tory MP simply dissolved on contact with reality As it is August, and everyone with stronger opinions is currently on holiday, last week I went on Any Questions?, the BBC Radio 4 panel show. I had prepared beforehand with a friend whose life’s work it is to make sure people don’t say anything stupid on the radio (or TV), and we’d talked about everything – the strait of Hormuz and energy prices; bus fare caps and the relative price of eggs; racism in the press and in public life; the AI bubble and the next financial crash; how many bathrooms Harry and Meghan currently have in the US, and whether a property even exists in the UK with that amount of toileting hardware. Predictably, perhaps, the audience’s questions did not spread themselves neatly across the full suite of current affairs, though Harry and Meghan’s return did come up – it was more a matter of which question about the climate crisis best represented the fact that everyone wanted to talk about the climate crisis. The news had just dropped that El Niño would deliver us an unprecedentedly wet autumn, but that was unlikely to soothe the parched earth of the record-breakingly hot, dry summer. Crops are failing, the land is on fire and nobody has not noticed. Continue reading...