The Guardian (April 19)
“Ocean waves crashing on the world’s shores emit more PFAS into the air than the world’s industrial polluters, new research has found, raising concerns about environmental contamination and human exposure along coastlines.” Because PFAS “are powerful surfactants that concentrate on the surface of water, which helps explain why they move from the ocean to the air and atmosphere.” It’s likely that “the contaminated spray likely affects groundwater, surface water, vegetation, and agricultural products near coastlines that are far from industrial sources of PFAS.”
Tags: Air, Atmosphere, Coastlines, Environmental contamination, Exposure, Groundwater, Human, Industrial polluters, Ocean, PFAS, Research, Shores, Surfactants, Vegetation
Bloomberg (May 31)
“Power-hungry, fossil-fuel dependent Japan has successfully tested a system that could provide a constant, steady form of renewable energy, regardless of the wind or the sun.” The Kairyu prototype is designed to harness the Kuroshio current. “The advantage of ocean currents is their stability. They flow with little fluctuation in speed and direction, giving them a capacity factor…of 50-70%, compared with around 29% for onshore wind and 15% for solar.”
Tags: Capacity factor, Dependent, Energy, Fossil fuel, Japan, Kairyu, Kuroshio current, Ocean, Power-hungry, Prototype, Renewable, Solar, Steady, Tested, Wind
Washington Post (April 28)
“Not since an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs—along with at least half of all other beings on Earth—has life in the ocean been so at risk. Warming waters are cooking creatures in their own habitats…. If humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase…roughly a third of all marine animals could vanish within 300 years.”
Tags: Asteroid, Dinosaurs, Earth, Emissions, GHG, Habitats, Humanity, Life, Marine animals, Ocean, Risk, Vanish, Warming waters
The Guardian (August 9)
The IPCC’s sixth assessment report “makes for stark reading. It reaffirms that anthropogenic climate change is real, present and lasting: it is now unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land to an unprecedented degree, with effects almost certain to worsen through the coming decades.” With this report, the IPCC “dispels any notion that the effects of the climate crisis are abstract or distant.”
Tags: Anthropogenic, Assessment, Atmosphere, Climate change, Human influence, IPCC, Land, Lasting, Ocean, Present, Reaffirms, Real, Report, Stark, Unequivocal
Scientific American (April 11)
The Atlantic Ocean appears be in “slow motion,” with circulation now the “weakest in 1,600 years.” If further research bears out the conclusion that “hemisphere-spanning currents are slowing, greater flooding and extreme weather could be at hand,” especially on the U.S. east coast, but possibly extending to Europe, which could battle more severe heat waves.
Tags: Atlantic, Circulation, Currents, Europe, Extreme weather, Flooding, Heat waves, Ocean, Slowing, U.S.
The Economist (May 27)
“Earth is poorly named. The ocean covers almost three-quarters of the planet.” While “the ocean sustains humanity. Humanity treats it with contempt.” One sign of this contempt is that “scientists expect almost all corals to be gone by 2050,” a time when “the ocean could contain more plastic than fish by weight.” Our very survival now hinges on successfully answering the question, “How to improve the health of the ocean?”
New York Times (September 17)
A proposal to create a 875,000-square-mile reserve around Antarctica is being whittled down by 40%. It shouldn’t be. “The reserves would protect what is still the most pristine aquatic ecosystem in existence, and they would extend to the ocean some of the international protection that the continent enjoys: the recognition that the south polar region is a world treasure, off limits to the frenzy of resource extraction playing out across the rest of the planet.”
Tags: Antarctica, Ecosystem, Existence, International protection, Ocean, Planet, Pristine, Resource extraction, World treasure
