Climate Change & Environment
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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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Nigeria Launches Clean-Up in Devastated Oil Spill Region

Nigeria's vice-president on Thursday launched a $1 billion oil pollution clean-up program in the Niger delta, after President Muhammadu Buhari pulled out of visiting the restive region.

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Why the New Sea Level Alarm Can't Be Ignored

There are days when even a born optimist starts to waver in his conviction. The release of a new study projecting that sea level could rise between five and six feet by 2100—when many children born today will still be alive and have been forced to move inland—made Thursday one of those days.

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Statue of Liberty and Venice among Sites at Risk from Climate Change, Says U.N.

Climate change now poses the single biggest threat to the world’s most famous heritage sites – including the Galápagos islands, the Statue of Liberty, Easter Island and Venice – according to a UN sponsored report.

The researchers looked at 31 natural and cultural world heritage sites in 29 countries that are vulnerable to increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, rising seas, more intense weather, worsening droughts and longer wildfire seasons. They believe this number is the tip of the iceberg.

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