What Tourists Can Do to Protect Coral Reefs

Creatures' movements may carry carbon dioxide to ocean depths

(NEWSER) - Jellyfish may be secretly affecting the climate of the oceans: Their movements appear to help change the balance of carbon in the atmosphere, NPR reports. Many jellyfish hide from predators deep underwater during the day and head to the surface at night for a snack, says an oceanographer. When they return, a study in Nature says, they may be carrying carbon dioxide dissolved in surface water down with them. More»

(NEWSER) - The Mediterranean Sea is in crisis because of global warming, according to Greenpeace. The group says its latest research documents the catastrophic effect climate change is having on the environmentally crucial body of water, which it dubs a “sea of hell.” Rising temperatures have sent foreign species like poison puffer fish into the water and coated the seabed with slime even as commercially important fish populations are drying up. More»

Company's project to fertilize oceans with nutrients 'risky,' environmentalists say

(NEWSER) - An environmental coalition today came out against a project that hopes to slow the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by stimulating ocean plankton to consume the global warming-linked greenhouse gas. The groups decried the plan by an Australian company to pump nutrients into the sea between the Philippines and Borneo as "experimental ocean dumping" by "carbon-trading profiteers." More»

Global warming to surge in 2009, new study says

(NEWSER) - A new 10-year model of climate change forecasts several years of record temperatures between 2009 to 2014, the BBC reports. Most global warming predictions see significant climate changes over a century; the new model, developed by British meteorologists using present-day observations, offers shorter-term predictions of event such as El Nino that industries and governments can respond to. More»

Investors back plankton in bid to send CO2 to a watery grave

(NEWSER) - Plankton may hold the key to solving global warming—or so say Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are investing heavily in the idea. Scientists will dump several tons of plankton-producing iron into the ocean to see if the microscopic organisms will, as they expect, suck CO2 from the atmosphere and carry it to the ocean floor. More»