Between Nils’s time and Celsius’s sketch of the rock, in 1743, the water level had dropped nearly eight feet. Nils’s island was gradually becoming part of the mainland; today, it is a peninsula. In 2012, the scholar Martin Ekman located the rock that made Nils rich; by then, it was no longer in the sea at all. It stood in a young forest, surrounded... See more

Cheap, accessible desalination can reduce water scarcity for both upstream and downstream nations without them having to depend on diplomacy or worse.

Tilting occupies a windswept, subarctic landscape of rock- and kelp-smothered shore. The weather is often wild, but on the morning I arrived, the water of Tilting Harbour was so still it crisply reflected the red ochre buildings perched on stilts and the wobbly fishing stages and flakes (platforms used for drying and salting fish) that were tightly... See more