Cute. Fox News is trying to discredit the IPCC before its latest report’s even out. This wind turbine, which looks kind of like a kitchen strainer, has 30 blades, makes less noise than the three-blade models, and is more energy efficient. As climate change sets in, some animals will get smaller, but some will grow. In Maryland, reducing emissions won't mean losing jobs, according to studies commissioned by the state’s Department of the Environment. Will climate change mean wine drinkers will have to trade in California pinot noirs for California barberas? (That's an Italian grape, which does better in heat.) …

Mother Jones has a long investigation into the treatment of elephants at Ringling Brothers. In short, the conditions they live in are beyond horrible. According to records and testimony turned up in court, trainers: beat elephants with hooks and other tools, while maintaining the animals are trained using only verbal cues and tenderly cared for rarely give the elephants the rest stops they're supposed on non-stop cross-country trips, on which they're stuffed into boxcars with piles of their own feces claim that train rides "satisfied [the elephants'] 'nomadic' urge to roam" As a result, the elephants: have herpes, like all …

Manukura, the world's only known white kiwi (not an albino!), had endoscopic surgery Friday to break up a large stone she'd swallowed. Kiwis normally eat small stones to help with digestion, but Manukura's eyes were bigger than her stomach, and the stone got stuck in her gizzard. Doctors operated using a laser that's usually used on humans to break up human kidney stones, making Manukura the only kiwi to have gone through laser surgery, as well as the only white one, and also the most friggin' adorable. Just gotta rack up ALL the trophies, don't you there, bird. Manukura is …

The right to keep dwarf or miniature goats in your backyard is just one of the changes being promised in San Diego's new urban agriculture ordinance.Photo: robotikaSan Diego resident Adam Hiner is hoping to get his chickens back. Adam and his sister were keeping hens too close to their house (breaking the city's law that requires owners to keep them a full 50 feet from any residence) when a neighbor complained, and he had to give the birds to friends and family. Another resident, Kaya de Barbaro, had to move her chickens around the city after a neighbor complained, eventually …

Fishermen trawling a nuclear-plant-fed reservoir in Córdoba, Argentina have caught a three-eyed wolf fish. Like everyone else who's writing about this story, I'm illustrating this post with a picture of Blinky, the nuclear fish from The Simpsons, because the real fish is super ugly.  They don't know for sure yet whether the fish's mutation is related to radiation from the power plant. (You'd sorta think it would be, huh? But we believe in the scientific process here.) After all, animals sometimes have truly weird mutations that have nothing to do with humans at all, let alone humans playing around with …

Every year, the U.S. forgoes 8,500 megawatts of electricity because operating our hydro power facilities at full capacity would turn an unacceptable number of migratory fish into Li'l Lisa Slurry. (That's the equivalent of almost nine nuclear reactors' worth of lost baseload power.) So scientists and utilities are understandably pumped about the Alden Fish-Friendly Turbine, which has been in development since 1995, supported by grants from the Department of Energy. An initial trial of the turbine yielded a nearly 100 percent survival rate for “nearly 40,000 species of fish." (We were not aware there were that many species in North …

Let's leave some room for everybody else. Photo: Robin PittmanMore of our kind means fewer wild things. A stabilized human population means hope for wild things. A shrinking human population means a better world for wild things -- and for men and women and children. It's that straightforward. The human population grew more in the last 40 years than in the previous 3 million. The population bomb has blown up -- but the shrapnel hasn't yet hit us hard. What it has hit hard are wild things. The outcomes of humanity's growth yesterday, today, and tomorrow are scalped wildlands, endangered …

The Javan rhinoceros, an endangered species, no longer exists in Vietnam: poachers killed the last one and took its horn, according to the World Wildlife Fund. That rhinoceros was killed last April and since then there have been no signs (viewings, scat, etc.) of any others remaining in the Cat Tien National Park where they used to live. As many as 60 rhinos remain outside of Vietnam, living in Indoneisa's Ujung Kulon National Park, so the entire species isn’t extinct yet. But it’s super, super endangered. Demand for ground-up rhino horn, used as a curative, drives poaching. That last Vietnamese …

The depressing news from Ohio -- where the owner of a large and mismanaged personal exotic animal park let the animals loose to be shot by police, then killed himself -- has led a number of people, such as me, to wonder, "where do you even get 18 endangered Bengal tigers in this day and age?" Turns out it's easier than you might think. New Scientist has rounded up info on U.S. exotic animal laws, from their comfortable position outside the U.S. where they can freely be appalled. Some choice factoids: There are eight states with no laws against owning …