Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Democrats criticize Chris Wright’s comments during US Senate confirmation hearing for energy secretary nominee Donald Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, Chris Wright, is facing criticism for disputing the ties between climate change and more frequent or severe wildfires, the Washington Post reports, a stance that is contrary to scientific consensus. During Wright’s US Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Democrats, including the California senator Alex Padilla, challenged Wright over past comments, pointing to a LinkedIn post calling wildfire concerns “hype” and dismissing their connection to climate policies. Continue reading...

Will water soon be a marketable commodity or a priceless public good? There’s a scene in the film Mad Max: Fury Road where the evil ruler Immortan Joe, gazing down from a cliff upon his parched, emaciated subjects, pushes two levers and water gushes from three gigantic sluices. The wretched masses surge forward to catch the deluge in their pots and bowls. And as imperiously as he opened the gates, Joe shuts them. “Do not become addicted to water,” he roars. “It will take hold of you.” But, of course, he already has taken hold of them by withholding, essentially, life. We don’t have to await the dystopian future for the water wars to begin. The struggle over water, between private interests and the public good, the powerful and the weak, is raging now. From Love Canal to Flint, Michigan; Bolivia to Ukraine to Tunisia; budget-cutting, privatization, corporate malfeasance and climate crises are conspiring to create political violence, mass migration, property damage and death. Continue reading...

Climate activists say they were subjected to degrading treatment during questioning in Brescia on Monday Italy’s interior minister has been urged to open an investigation into police in the northern city of Brescia amid allegations that seven female climate activists were made to take off their underwear and perform squats during questioning. The activists were among 22 people brought to Brescia’s main police station on Monday morning after officers interrupted a protest held outside the Italian aerospace and defence firm Leonardo’s factory. Continue reading...

Global heating means atmosphere can drive both extreme droughts and floods with rapid switches Climate “whiplash” between extremely wet and dry conditions, which spurred catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, is increasing exponentially around the world because of global heating, analysis has found. Climate whiplash is a rapid swing between very wet or dry conditions and can cause far more harm to people than individual extreme events alone. In recent years, whiplash events have been linked to disastrous floods in east Africa, Pakistan and Australia and to worsening heatwaves in Europe and China. Continue reading...