Ove and I just published an op-ed in the News and Observer here titled “In the oceans, the heat is really on”.  The graphic that really says it all:
The oceans are choking on greenhouse gases. Our emissions are changing ocean temperature, pH and circulation with wide-ranging effects on biological productivity and ecosystem health. These are among the conclusions of five review articles published in a special feature on the oceans in a recent issue of Science magazine.
The world is saturated by coverage of the oil spill in the Gulf of …

See a great profile of Josh Cinner by Helen Fields in Science mag here.   And see our past coverage of Josh’s work here and here.
In the late 1980s, things were not going well for the coral reefs at Jamaica’s Montego Bay Marine Park. Overfishing had taken out a lot of the fish that eat algae, and algae were taking over the reef. “It was a classic case of ecosystem decline,” human geographer Joshua Cinner says. He arrived in Jamaica in 1996 as a Peace Corps volunteer after graduating from the University of …

Now this is something you’d think all those self-proclaimed skeptics would be skeptical about.  But you’d be wrong, e.g., see here, here and here.  Note that despite being debunked days ago, all these sites are still carrying the story with no correction.  Including Mark Morano’s Climate Depot:
It took scientist Michael Tobis, a scientist at the University of Texas, just a few emails and questions to debunk the entire crazy story.

See full coverage here on the excellent Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media.
A Cruel Climate Hoax Perpetrated On Texas Fourth Grader …

The new indispensable climate change blogger John Cook of Skeptical Science (sorry Joe, but John is blowing your doors off) just released a nice new pamphlet that simply explains some of the science behind climate change.  See his new related post here and a low-rez PDF (1.7Mb) of his awesome talk last month at the University of Queensland.
On the question of human caused global warming, there’s not just a consensus of scientists – there’s a consensus of evidence. Our understanding of climate doesn’t come from a single line of evidence. We use multiple sets of …

Read and hear the full story here.

Report finds some good news for Great Barrier Reef
Sarah Clarke reported this story on Saturday, June 12, 2010 08:15:00
ELIZABETH JACKSON: After facing what appeared to be a gloomy outlook, there’s finally some good news for the Great Barrier Reef.
After a hot summer, and a series of heatwaves last year, scientists say late monsoonal conditions protected much of the coral from a major bleaching event.
But a new study shows mortality in the world’s tropical oceans is increasing, and as bleaching becomes more common, corals simply aren’t …

UPDATE: see more coverage of this on climate progress plus two bonus videos:  the iconic “you’re gonna need a bigger boat” scene from Jaws and “Jaws in 60 seconds”.
The New York Times is reporting (here) that new estimates virtually double the rate that oil is thought to be flowing into the gulf.
A government panel on Thursday essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount equivalent to theExxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of …

Pelicans are my favorite birds and among my favorite animals.  Seeing them covered in oil really sucks.
I think these images are every bit as disturbing as those Chris Jorden took at Midway island last year of dead albatross chicks choked by plastic they were fed by their mothers (here).
Brown Pelicans were once greatly reduced in numbers and threatened by DDT spraying, which reduced the thickness of their egg shells.  The national DDT ban facilitated a largely successful recovery.
Before I went to grad school, I worked for the Conservancy in Naples Florida and …

This really is must see TV:

Hat tip to Dr Elvira Poloczanska of CSIRO of Marine Climate Change Report Card for Australia fame (among other things).
From the BBC (here)
By Richard Black, ,Environment correspondent, BBC News, Bonn
Rich countries accused of carbon ‘cheating’
Russia, Australia, Canada and some EU countries are among the accused.
The rules relate to land-use change, which can either release or absorb carbon, depending mainly on whether forests are planted or chopped down.
Rich countries, apart from the US, could account for about 5% of their annual emissions through this loophole.
The US is not involved in these …

First go here for the PBS/NPR live stream. (it just keeps flowing out)
And then see this movie:

As if the timing couldn’t be any worse, the Belize government has issued permits for oil exploration on the Belizean portion of the Meso-American reef in Central America.
See more on this here, here and here this press release just issued by WWF:
Potential Belize Offshore Oil Exploration threatens Coral Reef Health
BELIZE.- World Wildlife Fund (WWF) expressed great concern with news indicating that the Government of Belize has granted concessions to explore for oil and natural gas both offshore and on-shore.
Apparently, 18 concessions have been granted by the Belize Geology and Petroleum Department …

The Republican party of the United States of American, in just a few hours, will put forth a single witness to rebut the testimony of widely respected scientists on the science supporting anthropogenic climate change.  This is beyond bizare.  I only heard of him less than a year ago and now he is one of the biggest names in the media’s phony climate change “debate”.  He has said so many nutty things and has been refuted so thoroughly by so many people, it is really hard to know where to …

Ed Markey (D-CT), chairman of the US House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will be holding a hearing today (Thursday AM in the US) on the evidence supporting climate change.

The Foundation of Climate Science
IPCC Report Chairs, Member of Exculpatory Panel on Email Scandal Re-establish Climate Science’s Broad Knowledge, Urgency to Act
Even after months of personal attacks against climate scientists stemming from a manufactured scandal over stolen emails, the underlying science behind the need to stem the tide of heat-trapping emissions remains solid. To explain what we know …

Note an extended version of this article was originally published on the Huffington Post here.  Also read about the study here on Futurity and here on the BBC.
Betting on biodiversity loss is a pretty sure thing.  The earth’s plant and animal species are disappearing at a sobering rate due to pressures including habitat loss, climate change, pollution and over-harvesting.  Despite a few success stories and steps in the right direction, we are falling far short of stemming these losses.
Biodiversity is the entire range of biological variety in the world, …

From Futurity:
Almost half of the ocean’s carbon fixation is done by eukaryotic phytoplankton, despite the fact that their presence is significantly less than the more abundant blue-green algae known as cyanobacteria.
Cyanobacteria, that grow in vast numbers in the sunlit surface waters of the oceans (the photic zone),  use sunlight to “fix” carbon by converting carbon dioxide into sugars and other organic compounds through photosynthesis.
Cyanobacteria belong to the ‘picophytoplankton’, the tiniest phytoplankton. Until now they have been thought to dominate carbon fixation in the open ocean, with species belonging to the …

Oil from the BP oil spill has reached the coast of Louisiana and the first oiled bird was found. The most recent update from NOAA on the spill outlines the threat and projects the main slick will reach coastal wetlands in the region this weekend:
Today the Deepwater Horizon incident declared a Spill of National Significance (SONS).  A SONS is defined as, “a spill that, due to its severity, size, location, actual or potential impact on the public health and welfare or the environment, or the necessary response effort, is so complex …