Climate Desk: Back in 2006, scientists in Greenland made an alarming observation: Glaciers were crumbling into the ocean twice as fast. And not in little cocktail-sized cubes, either: Glaciologist Jason Box accurately predicted the spot where a hunk four times the size of Manhattan would later shear off into the sea. At the same time, the inland top of the ice sheet was thawing at record levels; last summer, for the first time in 150 years, its entire surface was melting. By summer`s end, this water alone raised...

LiveScience: With many of the world's ecosystems threatened or endangered by human activities like logging and urbanization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published its criteria for a new "Red List" of endangered ecosystems today (May 8) in the journal PLOS ONE. The list, which measures an ecosystem's risk of collapse, will be similar to the group's authoritative Red List of Endangered Species, which created internationally accepted criteria for assessing extinction risk. "The...

Climate Central: The flow of Greenland's glaciers toward the sea may have increased significantly in the past decade, but a new report in Nature finds that rate of increase is unlikely to continue. "The loss of ice has doubled in the past 10 years, but it's not going to double again,' said lead author Faezeh Nick, a glaciologist at the University Centre in Svalbard, in Longyearbyen, Norway, in an interview. That conclusion, based on a new, sophisticated computer model, makes the worst-case scenario of sea level...

Environment News Service: The Department of the Interior is releasing $475.25 million in emergency Hurricane Sandy disaster relief appropriations to 234 projects that will repair and rebuild parks, refuges and other Interior assets damaged by the storm. Sandy struck the U.S. Atlantic coast on October 29, 2012, and affected 24 states, including the entire eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine and west across the Appalachian Mountains to Michigan and Wisconsin, with severe damage in New Jersey and New York. In New York...

VietnamNet: Viet Nam is urgently seeking ways of sustaining its marine economy as climate change warms and raises sea levels - and, together with massive pollution, continues to destroy the nation's 110,000 hectares of coral reefs. Ly Son island. The marine economy now contributes about 48 per cent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and there are plans to raise this to 53-55 per cent by 2020. It includes industries related to trade and investment in seafood products, ship and boat building, water...

Associated Press: The old coastal road in this fishing village at the eastern edge of Grenada sits under a couple of feet of murky saltwater, which regularly surges past a hastily-erected breakwater of truck tires and bundles of driftwood intended to hold back the Atlantic Ocean. For Desmond Augustin and other fishermen living along the shorelines of the southern Caribbean island, there's nothing theoretical about the threat of rising sea levels. "The sea will take this whole place down," Augustin said as he...

Reuters: Fish piracy - seafood caught illegally, not reported to authorities or outside environmental and catch regulations - represents as much as $10 billion to $23 billion in global losses each year, a non-profit conservation group estimated Wednesday. Because pirated fish is sold on black markets, specifics of the economic impact are tough to decipher. But Oceana, a Washington-based organization, looked at the records of fish catches by country as reported to the United Nations, then compared those...

Xinhua: Global warming might be killing off many species of coral as the world's oceans acidify, but the future for biodiversity in coral reefs might not be as bleak as previously forecast, according to a study by New Zealand and Australian scientists. "It has been predicted that many reefs will end up being dominated by algae rather than corals, which will have negative effects on biodiversity and ultimately on the ability of humans to derive protein from reefs," marine biologist Dr James Bell, of New...

Macleans: As far as the government scientist was concerned, it was a bit of fluff: an early morning interview about great white sharks last summer with Canada AM, the kind of innocuous and totally apolitical media commentary the man used to deliver 30 times or more each year as the resident shark expert in the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). So he sent an email off to Ottawa notifying department flaks about the request, and when no response had been received by the next morning, just went...

Associated Press: In less than a year, many of the towering cargo ships loading and unloading goods at California ports won't just tie up at dock — they'll also plug in. In January, the state will become the first government body in the world to require container fleets docking at its major ports to shut off their diesel engines and use electricity for 50 percent of their visits — or face crippling fines. The requirements also include slashing fleet emissions by half, and those requirements rise to 80 percent in...

Grist: When BP`s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, it hemorrhaged roughly 210 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. We know now, thanks to recent court hearings and settlements, that all this happened because oil company managers were cutting corners on safety, and the federal government’s monitoring system for offshore drilling was broken. We also know that it wasn`t the first time oil companies had spilled in the Gulf. What we don’t know - and probably never will - is how much...

Associated Press: Rising sea levels are threatening tens of thousands of people living near the coastline in the Caribbean, especially in southern island of Grenada. The old coastal road in the fishing village of Telescope sits under a couple of feet of murky saltwater, which regularly surges past a hastily-erected breakwater of truck tires and bundles of driftwood intended to hold back the Atlantic Ocean. People here say they have been watching the sea eat away at their shoreline in recent decades, a result...

Guardian: With islands and atolls scattered across the ocean, the small Pacific island states are among those most exposed to the effects of global warming: increasing acidity and rising sea level, more frequent natural disasters and damage to coral reefs. These micro-states, home to about 10 million people, are already paying for the environmental irresponsibility of the great powers. "Pacific islands are the victims of industrial countries unable to control their carbon dioxide emissions. The truth of...

Ecologist: 2013 has seen a major surge in the potential for expansion of UK nuclear power. In February, the Environment Agency (EA) found no objection to the discharge and disposal of radioactive wastes from a proposed nuclear power station with two CPWRs (contained pressurised water reactors) at Hinkley Point on the Somerset coast. It stated that the discharge of gaseous and liquid wastes to the marine environment and atmosphere of the Bristol Channel could proceed. One month later the UK Government granted...

Reuters: The Arctic ecosystem, already under pressure from record ice melts, faces another potential threat in the form of rapid acidification of the ocean, according to an international study published on Monday. Acidification, blamed on the transformation of rising levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air into carbonic acid in the sea, makes it harder for shellfish and crabs to grow their shells, and might also impair fish reproduction, it said. Cold water absorbs carbon dioxide more...

Telegraph: The 95-mile Jurassic Coast between Poole Harbour in Dorset and the Exe estuary in Devon is an extreme example of geological exhibitionism. Among its many wonders are red and white cliffs, fossils galore, England's most elegant sea arch, offshore stacks and the delightfully symmetrical scoop of Lulworth Cove. They exist because this is a coast on the move, under continual attack from tide and tempest. Last week, a small part of it, at the base of a cliff on the edge of St Oswald's Bay, fractured...

Rabble: For a climate organizer, the ongoing British Columbia election campaign has been a rare treat. For the first time in a very long time, climate change and fossil fuels are taking centre stage in an election campaign. The past two federal elections have been marked more by the absence of discussion of climate change than its presence. Even in the most recent U.S. federal election, climate only broke into the campaign thanks to the force of a climate supercharged hurricane crashing into New York...

RedOrbit: As climate scientists continue to sound warnings about how the impending sea level rise will impact coastal cities, a group of Australian researchers has found that shorebirds could be feeling squeezed even more than humans. According to the research team’s report in the Proceedings of The Royal Society B (RSPB), a 23 to 40 percent loss of shorebirds’ main feeding grounds could lead to a 70 percent decline in their population. “Each year, millions of shorebirds stop at coastal wetlands to rest...

Environment News Service: The British oil company BP has agreed to pay $600 million to cover 28 early restoration projects in the Gulf Coast states damaged by the massive 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. In a preliminary agreement reached with the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees, the company will pay for the 28 projects in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. These projects will restore marshes, barrier islands, dunes and near shore marine environments. This funding...

Mongabay: If you were to travel from the United States of America to Japan, you would most likely encounter what could be described as the world's largest waste dump: a 100,000 tonne expanse of debris floating around a large region of the Pacific Ocean. The total area of this phenomenon has been said to equal the size of continental U.S., but the truth about its true size remains unknown. Captain Charles Moore first discovered the 'Pacific garbage patch' in 1997. The area in which rubbish gets caught up...