Breaking Waves: Ocean News

A kingfisher with a long, dagger-shaped beak. Soft white feathers on its belly, iridescent blue opal spots on its wings I walked out of my kitchen on an overcast morning last week, feeling depressed, trying to think my way around the US election result somehow towards acceptance – or a totally different reality. I walked to the garden, carrying a load of laundry. And perched on the top edge of a chair was a fat, fluffy laughing kookaburra. It looked at me, I looked at it. A large kingfisher with a long, dagger-shaped beak. The corners of its beak turn upwards so that it looks as though it is smiling slightly. Soft white feathers on its belly, iridescent blue opal spots on its brown wings. Continue reading...

Scientists say goal to keep world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is not going to happen despite talks at Cop29 in Baku The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, with 2024 almost certain to be the first individual year above this threshold, climate scientists have gloomily concluded – even as world leaders gather for climate talks on how to remain within this boundary. Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than pre-industrial times, underlining it as the warmest year on record, beating a mark set just last year. The past 10 consecutive years have already been the hottest 10 years ever recorded. Continue reading...

Cop29 president calls for faster action as progress to agree a climate finance deal slows Climate crisis to blame for dozens of ‘impossible’ heatwaves How usual is it to have G20 happening at the same time as Cop? According to Jen Iris Allan, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University who also writes the Regular Earth Negotiations Bulletin, commenting on Bluesky, it’s not normal at all. Cop29 happening at the same time as the G20 is a rare opportunity. It gets the leaders of the big economies together in a small setting. They could strike a side deal that would really help here. The new climate finance target is the big issue that will define COP29. Government ministers are arriving to thrash out everything from the amount of money raised to who contributes towards it. We’ve seen a few versions of the text as parties make sure their views are represented while trying to produce something their governments can work with. The number of “options” is lower than it was on Wednesday. But the number of brackets - meaning undecided bits - is higher. It’s still long: 25 pages. Negotiators started with a 9-page text, which they rejected as “unbalanced” - then lots of stuff got added back in. It will need to be shorter. The EU chief negotiator told journalists last week that a 2-page text could capture “everything we need”. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed Alan Jones charged with 24 indecent assault and sexual touching offences against eight victims Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Three million Australians are at risk of homelessness, a 63% increase since 2016, a new report from Homelessness NSW and Impact Economics has revealed. By looking at household data including income, support and rental stress, the report found in 2022 there were 3.04m Australians now at risk of homelessness, an increase on the 1.87m reported in 2016. 1 in every five days the frontline services could not assist a family with children because they were so stretched. Individuals without children were turned away 1 in every 2 days. Unaccompanied young people and children without accommodation were turned away on 1 in 9 days. I think more broadly, the government under Anthony Albanese has got an excellent record of managing relationships around the world, making genuine progress, whether it’s with China, whether it’s with American friends or others. I think when it comes to Peter Dutton, I think he has a kind of a reckless arrogance which doesn’t lend itself to foreign policy and maintaining and managing some of these complex relationships. I think he would be a risk to our economy, and that’s because that reckless arrogance, which has been a defining feature of his time as a politician over a long period of time now … [it] doesn’t lend itself to managing these relationships, which are so important to us. Continue reading...