The Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch

The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now.

According to the most recent reports, we’re melting the icebergs. We’ve endangered fifty percent of the ocean’s coral species. And we’ve damaged sixty-three percent of the world’s fisheries. It seems we’re well on our way to destroying the two-thirds of the planet where we don’t even live.

Some recent news stories about the oceans:

1. A summary of what scientists are telling Congress: Global warming has already changed oceans

2. The latest from Greenland: Sea level rise: it’s worse than we thought

3. You know those fish stories? They’re getting smaller: Fish shrink due to climate change

4. The jellyfish are taking over: Jellyfish threaten to ‘dominate’ ocean

5. There’s so much trash floating off the coast of California, it even has a name: Students spearhead study on Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch

6. On the other hand, maybe it’s not all bad news: World fisheries collapse can be averted

7. And maybe we don’t really need to worry as much as the news reports say we do: Media tend to doomsay when addressing environment

We invite you to submit Long News story suggestions here.

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The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.

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