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The effect of climate change on children

noaa hurricane 600kAmerican Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) – an organisation of paediatricians committed to the best physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.

The AAP posits that climate change poses threats to human health, safety and security. But they consider children to be at particularly high risk. The effects on child health include:

  • Physical and psychological consequences of weather disasters (e.g. hurricanes, flooding, wildfires)
  • Increased heat stress
  • Decreased air quality
  • Altered disease patterns
  • Food, water, and nutrient insecurity
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Project Samphire – New finds from a recent Scottish marine archaeology survey

Project Samphire Map

This archaeology investigation, funded by The Crown estate, has yielded rich results. Highlights are shown in the map above.

The key to some of the major finds is:

  1. Northern most area of the project
  2.  Southern tip of the search area
  3. Kirkcaldy, Firth of Forth
  4. Loch Linnhe – grave slabs showing medival boats
  5. Yemassee, an American cargo ship that got into difficulty in Skye’s Loch Bharcasaig
  6. World war 2 flying boats in the Firth of Lorn

Check out more about this story in The Guardian.

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What it’s all about

Isle Of WightWelcome to the relaunched website – it’s been a little while due to a variety of circumstances – for those interested in the background you can read about it here.

We wanted our revamped website content and design to celebrate the seventeenth anniversary of our annual Lowtide event – an inter-tidal festival held on the Saturday in May with lowest tide.

So much has happened since we began, but certain themes are still with us – particularly the idea of ‘integrated catchment management’ – a fancy way of saying pollutants we put in our rivers basins will end up in the sea. We can also apply those principles to energy consumption and production within a watershed as well as waste. Integrated catchment management still presents an exciting way of understanding our world from a new perspective.

We continue to be alarmed at the data about climate change and the implications for sea-level rise (affecting especially low lying islands) and European flooding (what a winter it’s been for some of us!) Further, things are not looking good biodiversity, aquatic or otherwise.

The question is what are we going to do about it? We could, and will! discuss and raise awareness about water issues until the proverbial cows come home and then send them out again to pollute any waterways we have left. Here’s a good article by George Monbiot about our fairy-tale farming stories as told by the National Farmers’ Union and others.

Will you join us in both debate and action? We will have the campaigns, events, tools and desire to achieve this. But we need help and support of course.