Earth
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Earth
Climate action could save polar bears
Cutting fossil fuel emissions soon would retain enough sea ice habitat for threatened species, scientists say.
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Earth
Gassy volcanoes tied to mass extinction
Chemicals from a massive Siberian eruption 250 million years ago may have polluted the atmosphere and killed off most life on the planet.
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Humans
Apartments share tobacco smoke
Children in nonsmoking families have higher levels of secondhand exposure if they live in multifamily dwellings.
By Janet Raloff -
Earth
Clouds warm things up
Satellite data from the last decade put hard numbers on a key and little-understood climate player.
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Tech
Dirty money 2: Expect traces of BPA
BPA showed up on 21 of the 22 greenbacks surveyed in a new study. And the clean dollar? It appeared quite new, suggesting that dollars only become contaminated as they circulate.
By Janet Raloff -
Earth
Icequake swarms portend some avalanches
By keeping an ear to the ice, scientists can predict impending glacial crack-ups two weeks in advance.
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Tech
Heavier crudes, heavier footprints
BLOG: Refining heavy oils and tar sands could greatly exaggerate the greenhouse gases associated with fossil-fuel use, a new study finds.
By Janet Raloff -
Humans
Food security wanes as world warms
Global warming may have begun outpacing the ability of farmers to adapt, new studies report.
By Janet Raloff -
Physics
Dissolving a puzzle
A mathematical analysis shows what it takes to remove rock fast enough to create a cavern.
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Humans
World could heat up 4 degrees C in 50 years
Immediate and substantial action to reduce emissions would be needed to meet climate negotiators' goal of holding warming to a 2 degree Celsius increase, a new package of scientific papers concludes.
By Janet Raloff -
Life
Mammal size maxed out after dinos’ demise
Opening new ecological niches led to a worldwide boom in size, up to a point.
By Susan Milius -
Earth
Shuttle images reveal Egypt’s lost great lake
Radar studies of desert drainage patterns point to ancient oases in the Sahara.