Climate Science
All Stories
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Some like it hot (or cold): How weather affects carbon emissions
We need more nuanced ways of figuring out which countries are doing well on carbon. A new paper offers emissions rankings that take local climate into account.
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Finally, a good use for drones: Catching poachers
Conservationists are taking a page from the U.S. government in the fight against poaching — they’re sending in the drones. Already in use in Indonesia and soon to be in the air in Nepal, the drones can monitor protected areas where endangered species are hanging out. If they see a poacher, they leap into action. […]
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Flock of 5,000 ducks stops traffic in city of 6 million people
Taizhou lies 190 miles south of Shanghai and has 6 million people, putting its size at “somewhere in between Los Angeles and New York City” on a U.S. scale and “just some town” on a Chinese one. One day recently, though, the streets were filled not with cars, scooters, or pedestrians, but with ducks. Thousands […]
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Today in weather events that are clearly not related to climate change
What could be causing all of these wildfires, floods, and heat waves? We may never know. It's not global warming, though. We know that.
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50-million-year-old turtles having sex
Scientists in Germany have found fossils of turtles mating that are nearly 50 million years old. That makes them the oldest fossils of vertebrates going at it that we’ve found so far. I think this sort of thing needs more exposure in schools. Hey, kids: go into paleontology, and your big discovery could be ancient […]
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Look at this picture of the Arctic now, because it’s probably your last chance
This image (click to embiggen, click here to embiggen A LOT) was stitched together from photos taken by NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite. It shows the Arctic in all its glory — or anyway, all its remaining glory. The ice cover there has been decreasing fast enough that within 20 years, a photo of the Arctic […]
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Updates from the Rio Earth Summit, day one
We'll keep this updated as announcements are made over the course of the day.
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Scientists create Facebook for great tits
We know that more people than like to admit it troll Facebook to check out ladies, but scientists have actually created a social network that they use for nothing but looking at tits. Our more astute and wildlife-oriented readers will have guessed that the tits scientists are ogling are wild great tits — a type […]
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North Carolina elephant might be getting contact lenses
C’sar, a 38-year-old bull elephant living in North Carolina, could become the first pachyderm to wear contact lenses. Because nothing looks nerdier than an elephant in glasses. “An elephant has never been fitted with corrective lenses,” the Associated Press reports. (One elephant once had a contact put in his eye, but it was just to […]
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The Earth is going bald, ice-wise
And there's no magic foam that can bring it back.