Climate Change & Environment
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The Nuclear Option Could Be Best Bet to Combat Climate Change

Missouri’s lone nuclear power plant produces 11.7 percent of the state’s electricity from one reactor cranking out 1.2 gigawatts, making it the third-largest electricity producer in the state. Its 553-foot-tall, cloud-spewing cooling tower is the second-tallest structure in Missouri behind the St. Louis Arch, two hours’ drive east.

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Scientists Debate Experimenting with Climate Hacking to Prevent Catastrophe

On his late-night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel recently invited climate scientists to explain that they’re not just messing with us about global warming.

In fact, climate scientists are so worried that we’re going to fail to prevent catastrophic consequences that some are studying how we can hack the climate, also known as “geoengineering.” This approach is essentially viewed as a last-ditch, “break glass in case of emergency” desperation option in the event of such a failure. Some climate scientists view this as a potentially reasonable way to deal with climate change, but others disagree. It’s a controversial topic.

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Renewable Energy Smashes Global Records in 2015, Report Shows

An upsurge in new wind, solar and hydro plants and capacity saw renewable energy smash global records last year, according to a report on new supply.

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Investigating Climate Change the Hard Way at Earth's Icy "Third Pole"

Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at The Ohio State University (O.S.U.) in Columbus, does not believe in the impossible. More than three decades ago he led an expedition that retrieved ice cores from the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru at 5,670 meters above sea level, which most glaciologists at the time considered too high for humans to conduct this kind of work. The exquisitely preserved layers of dust and air bubbles in the cores provided an unprecedented climate history of the tropics, and Thompson’s work has come to focus on the increasingly important climate change lessons to be learned from Earth’s so-called “third pole”—the ancient and massive buildup of glacial ice straddling the subtropics in Tibet.

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NGO Says EU Ignoring Diesel Pollution despite VW Scandal

European governments are turning a blind eye to over-polluting cars, an NGO report said on Monday, nine months after a scandal exposed emission test cheating by Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker.

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Report Warns of Climate Change Disasters That Rival Hollywood’s

Stonehenge eroding under the forces of extreme weather. Venice slowly collapsing into its canals. The Statue of Liberty. gradually flooding.

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Red Meat May be Taxed in Denmark to Fight Climate Change

Climate change has become an ethical issue in the eyes of the Danish Council for Ethics, which suggested last week that the government consider a tax on beef, and eventually all foods depending on climate impact.

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Homeowners Kept in Dark about Climate Change Risk to Houses, Says Report

The risk that houses in some areas of Australia are likely to become uninsurable, dilapidated and uninhabitable due to climate change is kept hidden from those building and buying property along Australia’s coasts and in bushfire zones, a Climate Institute report says.

The report says there is untapped and unshared data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks on the level of risk, but that most homebuyers and developers are not told about the data and do not have access to it.

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Cuttlefish, Squid and Relatives Thrive in Warming Oceans

Warming oceans are bad news for a number of marine species, but cephalopods — the many-armed mollusk group that includes octopus, squid and cuttlefish — are doing just fine. In fact, over the past 60 years their numbers have been on the rise, according to a new study.

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Construction of World's Largest Dam in DR Congo Could Begin within Months

The largest dam in the world is set to begin construction within months and could be generating electricity in under five years. But 35,000 people may have to be relocated and it could be built without any environmental or social impact surveys, say critics.

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