Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Officials are making clean-energy moves in California, New York and beyond, and Republican states will be integral too As the Trump administration rolls back decades-old environmental protections and pulls Biden-era incentives for renewable energy, state-level advocates and officials are preparing to fill the void in climate action. Some state leaders are preparing to legally challenge the president’s environmental rollbacks, while others are testifying against them in Congress. Meanwhile, advocates are pushing for states to meet their ambitious climate goals using methods and technologies that don’t require federal support. Continue reading...

While the US president seems hellbent on securing Greenland, local experts advise that achieving control of its potentially lucrative shipping route will be no mean feat If shipping boss Niels Clemensen were to offer any advice to Donald Trump or anyone else trying to get a foothold in Greenland, it would be this: “Come up here and see what you are actually dealing with.” Sitting on the top floor of his beamed office in Nuuk harbour, where snow is being flung around by strong winds in the mid-morning darkness outside and shards of ice pass by in the fast-flowing water, the chief executive of Greenland’s only shipping company, Royal Arctic Line, says: “What you normally see as easy [setting up operations] in the US or Europe is not the same up here.” As well as the cold, ice and extremely rough seas, the world’s biggest island does not have a big road network or trains, meaning everything has to be transported either by sea or air. “I’m not saying that it’s not possible. But it’s going to cost a lot of money.” Continue reading...

Refugee Council says ‘many refugees themselves could also be prosecuted’ under proposals Richard Madeley goes next. Q: The Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary says you are wrong, and the third runway won’t be built until you are 70. You are 45 now. Why is he wrong? We’re signing off decisions on wind farms, on solar farms, a commitment to a new stadium at Old Trafford. We are upgrading the Transpennine route to make journey times easier between York and Manchester via Leeds and Huddersfield. Those things are happening right now. Continue reading...

Populations have been falling for decades, even in tracts of forest undamaged by humans. Experts have spent two decades trying to understand what is going on Something was happening to the birds at Tiputini. The biodiversity research centre, buried deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, has always been special. It is astonishingly remote: a tiny scattering of research cabins in 1.7m hectares (4.2m acres) of virgin forest. For scientists, it comes about as close as you can to observing rainforest wildlife in a world untouched by human industry. Almost every year since his arrival in 2000, ecologist John G Blake had been there to count the birds. Rising before the sun, he would record the density and variety of the dawn chorus. Slowly walking the perimeter of the plots, he noted every species he saw. And for one day every year, he and other researchers would cast huge “mist” nets that caught flying birds in their weave, where they would be counted, untangled and freed. Continue reading...