Coastal Erosion or What Do You Do When Your Village Is Falling Into the Sea
Waking up and looking out the window at the beautiful shoreline is great, until the water gets a little too close for comfort…
Bryony Nierop-Reading is a UK woman who has spent years up close and personal with the effects of coastal erosion — that’s when land is lost or displaced by natural forces like waves, tides, and storms. In 2009, she bought a home on the coast. She thought it was a safe distance from the shore, but it took only 4 years until the water became unlivably close to the house.
In her new home across the road, she sees the same challenges. In fact, in just two weeks, as much as 32 feet of land were lost to the sea. That’s the length of a school bus, or the height of a 3-story building!
It’s no wonder she’s so determined to fight for awareness and action around coastal erosion, especially as task forces meant to deal with the issue are being shut down, leaving counties to handle the problem themselves.
But Bryony the Brave is determined to stay put for as long as possible. She believes living so close to the issue helps her stay informed, motivated, and ready to speak up.
Take the Challenge
More News Stories
“Shoot for the Moon — if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” won’t cut it for NASA, who says “Nah, Moon or bust.”
NASA’s got big plans, and their names are Moonbase 1, 2, and 3. They were too busy working on the science to put more into the names, okay? Moonbase 1 will be the first privately-funded lander to reach the lunar south pole, Moonbase 2 will deliver a record amount of equipment that would support astronauts at a lunar base, and Moonbase 3 will focus on gathering research and data.
But these are just glimpses of NASA’s lunar ambitions, namely to put a base on the Moon. It starts with sending dozens of rovers and lunar landers to scope out the perfect spot, followed by building small cabins for short missions, and then building larger structures sustained by nuclear power for the long term. That’s not until 2033, but NASA wants to send astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2028.
The Major Oak has finally fallen. Figuratively. The famous tree still technically stands, but has been pronounced dead after a long life of as many as 1,200 years. The massive oak tree was well-known for being central to Robin Hood folklore, but it also stood out with its formidable trunk circumference of 11 meters, or 33 feet. That’s big enough for a large African elephant to hula hoop with.
The huge tree still stands tall, looking majestic with its craggly branches and massive reach, but it’s been in decline for years. This year is the first that it hasn’t put any leaves out, so experts deemed it deceased.
While it was certainly old, its demise was likely quickened by climate change, heat waves, and damage to the surrounding soil from people coming to admire the tree. Admirers may have meant well, but decades of foot traffic compacted the soil around the tree's roots, making it harder for the tree to absorb the water, nutrients, and minerals it needed.
It may not produce lush, green leaves anymore, but fans can still pay homage to The Major Oak. It will remain in its spot to decompose (which could take more than 100 years), and the legacy of the tree lives on in the form of saplings that have been grown from acorns and cuttings.
Sometimes a discovery doesn't happen in the field — it happens decades later, in a drawer.
In the 1980s, an Antarctic expedition recovered a fossil and recorded it simply as "vertebra of a large reptile" in a field notebook. That single line was all anyone knew about it for the next 40 years.
It wasn't until paleontologist Dr. Mark Evans revisited old research and notes that the fossil was properly identified — as the first dinosaur bone ever found in Antarctica. Its distinctive shape points to a Titanosaur, the largest dinosaur to ever walk the Earth.
The bone had been sitting in a collection the entire time. What changed wasn't the fossil — it was someone finally looking at it with the right knowledge asking the right questions.
End-to-end encryption prevents anyone from viewing online communications except the sender and the receiver. Or, it prevents anyone online from viewing it. Can’t do much about someone looking over your shoulder on the subway.
In 2019, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to roll it out across his suite of apps — you know, those Facebook and Instagram things you may have heard of? But that promise was met with mixed results. On one hand, many were happy that their private conversations could be kept, well, private. On the other hand, there was pushback from police and government groups that could use messages to catch criminals.
Implementing end-to-end encryption was a years-long process for Zuckerberg, until his platforms abandoned the concept just this year. The company tweaked their terms and conditions to suggest that not enough people were opting into the encryption, but critics have questioned that explanation, pointing out that private messaging is an important part of how platforms keep users engaged and can support their advertising business.
“Shoot for the Moon — if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” won’t cut it for NASA, who says “Nah, Moon or bust.”
NASA’s got big plans, and their names are Moonbase 1, 2, and 3. They were too busy working on the science to put more into the names, okay? Moonbase 1 will be the first privately-funded lander to reach the lunar south pole, Moonbase 2 will deliver a record amount of equipment that would support astronauts at a lunar base, and Moonbase 3 will focus on gathering research and data.
But these are just glimpses of NASA’s lunar ambitions, namely to put a base on the Moon. It starts with sending dozens of rovers and lunar landers to scope out the perfect spot, followed by building small cabins for short missions, and then building larger structures sustained by nuclear power for the long term. That’s not until 2033, but NASA wants to send astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2028.
The Major Oak has finally fallen. Figuratively. The famous tree still technically stands, but has been pronounced dead after a long life of as many as 1,200 years. The massive oak tree was well-known for being central to Robin Hood folklore, but it also stood out with its formidable trunk circumference of 11 meters, or 33 feet. That’s big enough for a large African elephant to hula hoop with.
The huge tree still stands tall, looking majestic with its craggly branches and massive reach, but it’s been in decline for years. This year is the first that it hasn’t put any leaves out, so experts deemed it deceased.
While it was certainly old, its demise was likely quickened by climate change, heat waves, and damage to the surrounding soil from people coming to admire the tree. Admirers may have meant well, but decades of foot traffic compacted the soil around the tree's roots, making it harder for the tree to absorb the water, nutrients, and minerals it needed.
It may not produce lush, green leaves anymore, but fans can still pay homage to The Major Oak. It will remain in its spot to decompose (which could take more than 100 years), and the legacy of the tree lives on in the form of saplings that have been grown from acorns and cuttings.
Sometimes a discovery doesn't happen in the field — it happens decades later, in a drawer.
In the 1980s, an Antarctic expedition recovered a fossil and recorded it simply as "vertebra of a large reptile" in a field notebook. That single line was all anyone knew about it for the next 40 years.
It wasn't until paleontologist Dr. Mark Evans revisited old research and notes that the fossil was properly identified — as the first dinosaur bone ever found in Antarctica. Its distinctive shape points to a Titanosaur, the largest dinosaur to ever walk the Earth.
The bone had been sitting in a collection the entire time. What changed wasn't the fossil — it was someone finally looking at it with the right knowledge asking the right questions.
End-to-end encryption prevents anyone from viewing online communications except the sender and the receiver. Or, it prevents anyone online from viewing it. Can’t do much about someone looking over your shoulder on the subway.
In 2019, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to roll it out across his suite of apps — you know, those Facebook and Instagram things you may have heard of? But that promise was met with mixed results. On one hand, many were happy that their private conversations could be kept, well, private. On the other hand, there was pushback from police and government groups that could use messages to catch criminals.
Implementing end-to-end encryption was a years-long process for Zuckerberg, until his platforms abandoned the concept just this year. The company tweaked their terms and conditions to suggest that not enough people were opting into the encryption, but critics have questioned that explanation, pointing out that private messaging is an important part of how platforms keep users engaged and can support their advertising business.