oceans

Ocean Wave via Shutterstock

Soon President Obama will release his final National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan. With the “new normal” of increasingly costly natural disasters, there is growing recognition of the importance of how we value, manage, and protect our coastal and ocean resources so they can in turn help protect our coastal communities and increase the resilience of local economies.[read more]

Surfers spend half their time on the water sitting upright on their boards, scanning the horizon for the next suitable wave. The reason of course is that a wave’s size and power is going to tell you a lot about how good a ride you’re likely to have.Well, the same is true of wave energy capture technology. Put simply, some waves are...[read more]

The Obama administration released the final recommendations of an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force Monday, and the president immediately turned around and signed it into an executive order.  Laura Cantral of the Meridian Institute and CAP’s Andrew Light have the story in this cross-post. The recommendations call for the...[read more]

Bill McKibben nails it in, Oil Slick You Can’t See Threatens the Entire Ocean: If you think that slick of oil spreading across the Gulf of Mexico is a nasty sight … well, it is. And so we’ll probably do something about it. Within hours of the crude reaching the coast, an aide to President Barack Obama said new offshore drilling would...[read more]

In TCASE (thinking critically about sustainable energy) #5, I analysed a currently deployed technology for harnessing wave energy – the Pelamis device. If you haven’t read TCASE 5 then please do so now, since it explains some of the basic physical properties of wave energy, the extend of the global resource, etc. In writing the...[read more]

Media coverage of climate change often gives the impression the world’s scientific community all met and firmly established that the warming beyond +2 degrees C is dangerous to the future of society. The planet does not have one clear "dangerous" temperature threshold. Two things needs to be explained clearly. First, the definition of...[read more]

The empirical data has spoken. Cancel the global cooling party. Global warming is still happening. The planet is heating up, thanks to human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases.  But as a new NOAA-led study, “An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950” (subs. req’d, release here) concluded: [S]ince 1950,...[read more]

In the face of seemingly accelerating climate change, some have proposed tackling the problem with geoengineering: intentionally altering the planet’s physical or biological systems to counteract global warming. One such strategy — fertilizing the oceans with iron to stimulate phytoplankton blooms, absorb carbon dioxide from the...[read more]

Global warming is a major threat to life in the oceans — and humans who depend on that life (see Ocean dead zones to expand, “remain for thousands of years”).  As one recent study found: Global warming may create “dead zones” in the ocean that would be devoid of fish and seafood and endure for up to two millennia…. Its authors say...[read more]

International impetus on climate change not replicated domestically International Success… On the international stage, Indonesia can claim with some justification that it is leading the way in advancing the climate change agenda. In the last month alone, Indonesia has been active in: Putting the role of oceans on the climate change...[read more]

For Earth Day, one of my favorite artists, Wyland* ** ***, is taking on a 2.8 acre mural of earth on the top of the Long Beach Sports Arena: By sunset tonight, Wyland hopes to complete his 2.8-acre mural of the Earth on the arena's rooftop. On Tuesday, he finished a renovation of his 1992 whale and marine life mural, "Planet Ocean,"...[read more]

The long-feared saturation of one the world’s primary carbon sinks has apparently started. The BBC reports, “The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world’s oceans has reduced.”After 10 years and more than 90,000 ship-based measurements of CO2 absorption, University of East Anglia researchers reached this stunning...[read more]