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A team of researchers in the United States and Australia led by Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer at the University of Georgia, analyzed plastic waste levels in the world's oceans. They found that China and Indonesia are the top sources of plastic bottles, bags and other rubbish clogging up global sea lanes. Together, both nations account for more than a third of plastic detritus in global waters, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Abstract: Over the past decades, detailed surveys of the Pacific Ocean atoll islands show no sign of drowning because of accelerated sea-level rise. Data reveal that no atoll lost land area, 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, and only 11.4% of islands contracted. The Pacific Atolls are not being inundated because the sea level is rising much less than was thought. The average relative rate of rise and acceleration of the 29 long-term-trend (LTT) tide gauges of Japan, Oceania and West Coast of North America, are both negative, −0.02139 mm yr−1 and −0.00007 mm yr−2 respectively....

hen NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in 2015, researchers hoped that its data would help them unravel some of the dwarf planet's mysteries. Instead, the discoveries made during the close-up look at Pluto and its moon Charon revealed more questions that needed answering. One of the big revelations from the flyby was the discovery of an ocean beneath the icy shell encapsulating Pluto. The ice shell was thin in a spot near the equator that's about the size of Texas, known as Sputnik Planitia, which helped researchers notice Pluto's odd topography and suggest the ocean's existence. But this...

What if the global warmists are entirely wrong? What if it’s all been an optical illusion? Like this “people under water” illusion created by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich. Visitors can either stroll into the “swimming pool” - an empty room - and gaze up at the rippling water effect, or look down from above. What if instead of the oceans rising because the ice caps are melting at an alarming rate they are actually shrinking?  And what if it’s all due to those troublesome tectonic plates that created those same oceans billions of years ago - along with all the...

For more than 30 years, pieces of Garfield telephones kept washing ashore on the beaches of northwestern France, and no one quite knew why. Where was the lasagna-loving cartoon cat coming from? The mystery would puzzle the locals for years. His plastic body parts, first appearing in a crevice of the Brittany coast in the mid-1980s, kept returning no matter how many times beach cleaners recovered them. Sometimes they would find only his lazy bulging eyes, or just his smug face, or his entire fat-cat body, always splayed out in the sand in a very Garfield fashion. From the stray...

Monitoring changes in marine phytoplankton is important as they form the foundation of the marine food web and are crucial in the carbon cycle. However, satellite sensors do not measure Chl-a directly. Instead, Chl-a is estimated from remote sensing reflectance (RRS): the ratio of upwelling radiance to the downwelling irradiance at the ocean’s surface. Using a model, we show that RRS in the blue-green spectrum is likely to have a stronger and earlier climate-change-driven signal than Chl-a. This is because RRS has lower natural variability and integrates not only changes to in-water Chl-a, but also alterations in other optically important...

Originally published by E&E News Scientists behind a major study on ocean warming this month are acknowledging errors in their calculations and say conclusions are not as certain as first reported. The research, published in the journal Nature, said oceans are warming much faster than previously estimated and are taking up more energy than projected by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [Climatewire, Nov. 1]. After a blog post flagged some discrepancies in the study, the authors, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and Princeton University in New Jersey, said they would submit a correction...

A rare deep-sea creature dubbed the 'headless chicken monster' has been filmed for the first time by Australian researchers. The elusive Enypniastes eximia sea cucumber, which is usually only found in the Gulf of Mexico, was spotted in the Southern Ocean in the East Antarctic using camera technology developed by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD). 'Some of the footage we are getting back from the cameras is breathtaking, including species we have never seen in this part of the world,' AAD Program leader Dr Dirk Welsford said.

As Guy wrote, fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe raked in more than $500,000 from leftist sympathizers this week after setting up a legal fund and blasting President Trump. As a reminder, McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and the DOJ Inspector General recommended he be terminated for a lack of candor. But it turns out, McCabe's pay day wasn't a result of a grassroots effort to defend him against false attacks. The GoFundMe page was set up by a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm connected to President Barack Obama. From Law...

July 28, 2018Earth, Environment Scientists Predict Mass Extinction Could Be Triggered By 2100 by Ben Renner BOSTON — Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) predict that by 2100, the earth’s oceans will contain so much carbon that a sixth mass extinction will begin. “This is not saying that disaster occurs the next day,” explains Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, about his recent study in a media release. “It’s saying that, if left unchecked, the carbon cycle would move into a realm which would be no longer stable,...

Over two centuries ago, Pierre-Simon Laplace, a French physicist and mathematician, noticed that the Moon's equatorial bulge is about 20 times larger than expected. Now, researchers are trying to find out why. Although the Moon looks quite spherical from the ground, it is flatter at its poles and wider at its equator, a trait known as an equatorial bulge. This characteristic is common; it's usually caused by an object's rotation around its axis. However, it's been noted that the Moon's bulge is about 20 times larger than it should be given its rotational rate of once per month... researchers at...

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! It's that level of panic climate change alarmists like professionally monotone former Vice President Al Gore want everyone to rise to. But when people like Gore are called out on their rhetorical hot garbage, it they just tend to double down on their stance. Gore was speaking at a town hall event, moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, to talk about climate change. Go figure. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that CNN would host Gore for a town hall days after his new documentary, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” saw a...

When we look back on this period of history, we’ll say climate change was one of the greatest hoaxes. Politician-turned-environmental activist, Al Gore has become wealthy beyond his wildest dreams (and intelligence) thanks to pushing the “big lie.” A new study from NASA confirms sea levels are falling — not rising. iceagenow.info reports: NASA satellite sea level observations for the past 24 years show that – on average – sea levels have been rising 3.4 millimeters per year. That’s 0.134 inches, about the thickness of a dime and a nickel stacked together, per year. As I said, that’s the average....

The world's oceans close to being starved of oxygen - and even that could lead to mass sea life extinction which could last a million years. University of Exeter scientists fear the modern ocean is 'on the edge of anoxia' - when the oceans are depleted of oxygen. [snip] Lead researcher PhD student Sarah Baker said it was now 'critical' for modern humans to limit carbon emissions to prevent this.

Trudeau is the new owner of the Arctic Snow Globe; a dupe under the continuing influence of Obama It was the wisdom and majesty of God Almighty that gave us the treasures of Earth’s oceans. And in their incomparable greed and self-vested power, it was the unelected bureaucrats at the United Nations who seized them when no one but the politicians of the day were looking. It is an irrefutable truth that the UN stole God’s gift to mankind before sanctimoniously calling it the Law of the Sea Treaty.

An artist's impression of the planet Proxima b, orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, released by the European Southern Observatory on August 24, 2016 A rocky planet discovered in the "habitable" zone of the star nearest our Sun may be covered with oceans, researchers at France's CNRS research institute said Thursday. A team including CNRS astrophysicists have calculated the size and surface properties of the planet dubbed Proxima b, and concluded it may be an "ocean planet" similar to Earth. Scientists announced Proxima b's discovery in August, and said it may be the first exoplanet—planet outside our Solar System—to...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2016 September 11 All the Water on Planet Earth Illustration Credit & Copyright: Jack Cook, Adam Nieman, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Howard Perlman, USGS Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The featured illustration shows what would happen if all of the...

KT Boundary and Iridium Ever dreamt of hiking over the landscape and finding a mineral vein rich with ores, perhaps even silver or gold glittering in the sunshine, like in the Hand of Faith vein in Australia? How about joining the gold rush fever—without trekking up the Chilkoot Pass as thousands of prospectors did well over 100 years ago? The chances of finding a “mother lode” are slim, even when trying hard. They are similar to winning the jackpot in a big lottery. But don’t give up just yet; there is a new “horizon” for your exploration activity—the new frontiers...

Marine researchers have discovered a strange alien-like creature while exploring the underwater world found in the deepest ocean trench on Earth. A team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spotted the hydromedusa jellyfish during an expedition to the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. The sea creature was captured on film after it swam close to the surface of the ocean near the agency's research ship, the "Okeanos Explorer." Based on the team's observations, this new jellyfish species shares similar features with those of Crossota genus, which are known to spend the majority of their existence gliding...

The oceans are rising faster than at any point in the last 28 centuries, and human emissions of greenhouse gases are primarily responsible, scientists reported Monday. They added that the flooding that is starting to make life miserable in many coastal towns - like Miami Beach; Norfolk, Va.; and Charleston, S.C. - was largely a consequence of those emissions, and that it is likely to grow worse in coming years. The ocean could rise as much as three or four feet by 2100, as ocean water expands and the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica begin to collapse. Experts...