Welcome ! As a young French Marketing professional with a Master's in International Management I have been selecting since January 2007 the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change, cleantech and the world energy sector. Sounds great ? Don't hesitate to subscribe now !
If climate change, rising sea levels and the threats to global peace and food production weren’t enough to you, here is another reason to fight carbon dioxide : ocean acidification. To Mongabay :
” Emissions of carbon over the last two centuries have raised the acidity of the oceans to the highest levels in 21,000 years and likely beyond, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change. “
This could have serious implications for marine biodiversity, notably corrals and mollusks. So, what are we waiting for to act ?
If my Wednesday post on the 19,000 endangered species didn’t put you down, the findings of the International Programme on the State of the Oceans (ISPO) will. As the New York Times green blog notes :
” The state of the oceans is declining far more rapidly than most pessimists had expected, an international team of experts has concluded, increasing the risk that many marine species could be extinct within a generation.”
” (…) we have underestimated the overall risks and that the whole of marine degradation is greater than the sum of its parts, and that degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted “
The New York Times Green blog published a great article about a recent report from IHS Emerging Energy Research on tidal wave. Even if it has been starting very slowly, the energy source could bring up to 10 GW by 2030 globally.
“The global ocean energy sector is at a turning point,” the company’s report says. More than 45 wave and tidal prototypes are expected to be ocean-tested in 2010 and 2011. Only nine were tested in 2009.”
Here is another renewable energy source that could power all our wildest dreams. But as I stated before: we should better rely on several of them as none of them is perfect. Continue »
After no less than ten years of exploration all around the world ( with no less than 2,700 scientists, 80+ nations, 540 expeditions) the Census Of Marine Life is finally out. And the findings are more than interesting.
The wealth of the planet Ocean is astonishing as it is estimated there are over a million species. A quarter of it have been formally described. All this includes an estimated total of 21,800 fish species (5,000 haven’t been discovered yet).
If you want to discover the associated published books, maps and wonderful images and videos, the website is yours to visit ! Continue »
I have been committed since January 2007 to bring you each month a selection of the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change and the world energy sector.
However, I don’t blog as much as I would like to and generally write around 25 posts per month. But many more news are worth reading. This is why I use Twitter to share more news that are worth your time.
I believe it offers a good complement to this website. So if you are on Twitter and like this selection, don’t hesitate to start following me. Continue »
How ironic ! As the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was almost over another begun in China as two crude oil pipelines blew up on July 16th in Dalian’s Xingang port, beginning the worst oil spill in the country.
Oil is already polluting massively our air and water as we burn it everyday in our cars, trucks and homes. This is a big problem but we will have to do with it until we find competitive alternatives.
However it would be nice to know that it isn’t polluting in another way. I hope that such events will trigger some reactions on a global scale.
I don’t know if this the most interesting or the craziest idea I came across this year : WHIM Architecture outlined a plan to create Recycled Island which would collect plastic in our oceans and use it to build an Hawaii-sized island.
On top of cleaning our oceans from all this mess this project could serve as a home for future climate refugees and as an example of sustainable habitat and lifestyle.
Of course this idea has very little – or none at all – chance to become a reality as it will be horrendously expansive and would require huge amounts of energy but I still like it. More on TreeHugger and Inhabitat.
I previously wrote that both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans are massively polluted by plastic. The same plastic, so convenient and so ubiquituous that it is becoming a curse of our time. Now to Discovery News :
Much of the global ocean remains uncharted in terms of pollution, (…). And now even the most remote, pristine waters on the planet — the coastal seas of Antarctica — are being invaded by plastic debris.
(…) Even in the exceedingly remote Davis and Durmont D’Urville seas they found errant fishing buoys and a plastic cup. Plastic packaging was found floating in the Amundsen Sea (see map).
According to a scary new report from the United Nations Environment Program : “virtually all commercial fisheries will have collapsed by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to bring far more intelligent management to fisheries”.
This isn’t new as we have seen many times over the past three years that our oceans are polluted in many different ways. The huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest sign of the disdain we have for such an important part of our planet.
The article from the UNEP shows that on the other hand a sustainable management and investments could generate up to $1.7 trillion ( 1,450 billion euros ) over the next 40 years.
I previously wrote here that plastic may be a curse of our time because of the millions of tonnes of these materials polluting the Pacific Ocean. Now comes its equivalent in the North Atlantic Ocean. To the National Geographic :
“The newly described garbage patch sits hundreds of miles off the North American coast. Although its east-west span is unknown, the patch covers a region between 22 and 38 degrees north latitude.”
This most worrying phenomenon have been handled recently by other news sources, including the BBC and Yahoo News. For more, please also check out 5gyres.org and their blog.
