Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Record solar expansion and steady wind growth driving world’s shift away from fossil fuels in 2025, report finds The world’s wind and solar farms have generated more electricity than coal plants for the first time this year, marking a turning point for the global power system, according to research. A report by the climate thinktank Ember found that in the first six months of 2025, renewable energy outpaced the world’s growing appetite for electricity, leading to a small decline in coal and gas use. Continue reading...

Analysis of 25 years of evidence shows most schemes are poor quality and fail to lower emissions The failure of carbon offsets to cut planet-heating pollution is “not due to a few bad apples”, a review paper has found, but down to deep-seated systemic problems that incremental change will not solve. Research over two decades has found “intractable” problems that have made carbon credits in most big programmes poor quality, according to the study. While the industry and diplomats have made efforts to improve the system, it found much-awaited rules agreed at a UN climate summit last year “did not substantially address the quality problem”. Continue reading...

‘The trajectory is only up, in terms of insured costs,’ professor of climate risk warns Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The costs of extreme weather events such as floods, bushfires and storms have nearly tripled in Australia since the 1990s, insurers have warned, with poorer communities disproportionately burdened. The climate crisis, ageing infrastructure and growing populations in increasingly affected regions have left the country more vulnerable, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Insurance Council of Australia. Continue reading...

The insects’ brilliant hues evolved in lush ecosystems to help them survive. Now they are becoming more muted to adapt to degraded landscapes – and they are not the only things dulling down Photographs by Roberto García-Roa The world is becoming less colourful. For butterflies, bold and bright wings once meant survival, helping them attract mates and hide from prey. But a new research project suggests that as humans replace rich tropical forests with monochrome, the colour of other creatures is leaching away. “The colours on a butterfly’s wings are not trivial – they have been designed over millions of years,” says researcher and photographer Roberto García-Roa, who is part of a project in Brazil documenting how habitat loss is bleaching the natural world of colour. Amiga arnaca found in a eucalyptus plantation, where scientists observed butterflies were less colourful than in native forests Continue reading...