Climate Change & Environment
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Climate Change is Melting Everest

As a colorful circus of tents pops up at Everest Base Camp this spring, a pair of Ph.D. students will set up camp 1,000 feet downvalley, on the Khumbu Glacier, resuming a research project they started last year. Their goal: to determine just how quickly the world’s highest glacier is melting.

From the Alps to the Andes, ice at high elevations is disappearing rapidly. On Everest, the effects of a warming planet are likely to manifest in two ways that affect climbers. First, the Khumbu Glacier will shrink, and parts of it could possibly become impassable for climbers. Someday, even Base Camp may have to be moved from its current location on the glacier to another spot nearby.

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Island States Come to U.N. Ready to Move on Climate Deal

With their very existence under threat from climate change, the world's island states come to the United Nations on Friday not only to sign the Paris climate deal but to be first in line to make sure it goes into force.

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A Tiny Forest Tribe Built a DIY Drone from YouTube to Fight off Illegal Loggers

The engine started, the propeller began spinning, and with a high whine the drone shot into the air—before quickly crashing to the ground. It took a few more tries before the drone flew straight, but when it did, it soared into the azure skies above southern Guyana’s grasslands, and the small crew on the ground cheered. The homemade drone zipped toward a mountain range in the distance, transmitting live video and photos as it flew.

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U.S. and China Lead Push to bring Paris Climate Deal into Force Early

The U.S. and China are leading a push to bring the Paris climate accord into force much faster than even the most optimistic projections – aided by a typographical glitch in the text of the agreement.

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Last Month was Hottest March in Modern Times, Says U.S.

Last month marked the hottest March in modern history and the 11th consecutive month in which a monthly global temperature record was broken, the longest such streak in the 137 years of record-keeping, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for March 2016 "was the highest for the month of March in the NOAA global temperature dataset record, which dates back to 1880."

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Netherlands Looks to Ban all Non-Electric Cars by 2025

By 2025, the Netherlands may only allow electric vehicles on the road. 

A majority of elected officials in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Parliament, supported a motion proposed by the Labor Party (PvdA) to ban all diesel and petroleum cars from the Dutch market starting in 2025. If enacted, this proposal would allow existing fossil fuel-powered cars to stay on the road until they died, but when it comes to new sales, only electric cars would be permitted. 

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Scientists: First Signs of Coral Bleaching in Sydney Harbor

Coral bleaching has been detected in Sydney Harbor for the first time, Australian scientists said Tuesday, blaming the damaging phenomenon also found in the Great Barrier Reef on warming sea-surface temperatures.

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This Huge Region of Brazil is Even more Deforested — and Less Protected — than the Amazon

The Amazon has it bad, but the Cerrado may have it even worse. After all, at least you’ve actually heard of the Amazon.

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The North Pole is Slowly Moving towards London, and Scientists have Finally Figured out Why

Earth's North Pole has never been as stable as it looks on maps, with the planet wobbling slightly as it spins on its axis, and causing the poles to gradually drift.

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Some Whales Like Global Warming Just Fine

In May 2009, Ari Friedlaender, an ecologist with Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, was cruising along the Western Antarctic Peninsula when he encountered something he’d never seen. In Wilhelmina Bay, the water was so thick with humpback whales that “we couldn’t count them fast enough,” he recalls.  

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