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Environment Animals Climate Global Warming Life on Earth Plants

We are Destroying the Earth’s Wilderness [Humans wiped out 60% of wildlife]

We, humans, are destroying the Earth’s wilderness at an alarming pace. Scientists say we have destroyed 10% of Earth’s wildlife habitat in just 25 years. Since 1993, 3.3 million km2 of global wilderness areas, particularly in the Amazon basin (almost 30%) and central Africa (14%) were lost. This is almost twice the size of Alaska!

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Global Warming Climate Planet Earth

We are heading for a New Cretaceous, not for a new normal

A lazy buzz phrase – ‘Is this the new normal?’ – has been doing the rounds as extreme climate events have been piling up over the past year. To which the riposte should be: it’s worse than that – we’re on the road to even more frequent, more extreme events than we saw this year.

We have known since the 1980s what’s in store for us. Action taken then to reduce emissions by 20 per cent by 2005 might have restricted the global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius. But nothing was done, and the welter of climate data mounting since then only confirms and refines the original predictions. So where are we now?

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Climate Planet Earth

NASA Balloon Mission Captures Rare Noctilucent Clouds (Video)

An amazing video: a recent NASA long-duration balloon mission observed a thin group of seasonal electric blue clouds which are known as noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs). Forming 50 miles (80 km) above polar regions in summer they are Earth’s uppermost clouds and only visible around twilight. PMCs are composed of ice crystals that glow bright blue or white when reflecting sunlight.

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Environment Climate Global Warming

Awkward Interview with Planet Earth (video)

A beautiful short sketch titled “Interview with Planet Earth” by the Irish sketch comedy group “Foil Arms and Hog”, addressing global warming and environmental issues in the group’s unique and funny style.

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Climate Animals Environment Life on Earth

We have an ethical obligation to relieve individual animal suffering

Last winter, unforgettable video footage online showed a starving polar bear, struggling in its Arctic hunting grounds. Because of global warming, the ice was thin and the food supply was scarce. The video generated a wellspring of sympathy for the plight of this poor creature, and invigorated calls for stronger efforts to combat climate change – and rightly so.

Such advocacy on behalf of wildlife usually focuses on species and the effects of human-caused climate change on their survival and wellbeing as the ecosystems on which they depend undergo drastic changes. Thus, we should act to save the polar bear – that is, the polar bear species – by doing what we can to preserve its natural ecosystem. I am fully behind this kind of advocacy. Anybody who cares about the future of our planet and its occupants should be.

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Global Warming Climate

History of Global Warming in just 34 Seconds

Climate Central channel has put the 116 years history of global warming into a just 34-second video. The result is terrifying.

Categories
Geography Climate Earth from Space Global Warming

18 Largest Islands on Earth

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. It is believed that there are over 100,000 islands in the world. It’s difficult to put a figure to the exact number as there are different kinds of them in various water bodies including oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. There is even an island within a lake that is situated on an island located in a lake on an island. Only 322 of them are larger than 1000 km2 (386 sq mi). Here are the top 18 largest islands on Earth. Why 18? Because this is the number of islands that have a land area of greater than 100,000 square kilometers (38,610 square miles).

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Climate

Coldest place on Earth: New satellite data reveals lowest temperature recorded in Antarctica

According to a new study published this week in the AGU (American Geophysical Union) journal Geophysical Research Letters, several spots on the East Antarctic Plateau reach temperatures of nearly -100 °C (-148 °F) during the Antarctic winter. Researchers re-examined the data from several Earth-observing satellites and found that Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth is even colder than previously thought.

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Prehistoric Animals Climate Global Warming Life on Earth

Dinosaur Killer Asteroid Triggered a Global Warming [And It Lasted 100,000 Years!]

Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid or comet at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter impacted a few miles from the present-day town of Chicxulub in Mexico (hence it is dubbed as the “Chicxulub impactor”, the “dinosaur-killer”), at around 64,000 kilometers per hour (40,000 mph). The impact has created a crater (Chicxulub crater) more than 180 km (110 miles) in diameter. But, what’s more, the energy of the impact (which is equivalent of about ten billion Hiroshima atom bombs) vaporized the rock which was rich in sulfur compounds, filling the air with a thick cloud of dust, similar to that created by a catastrophic volcanic eruption.

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Global Warming Animals Climate Insects Life on Earth Plants

Most species hold their geographic range if we limit global warming to 1.5°C [new study]

If we limit global warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C above the pre-industrial levels by the year 2100, the impacts of climate change would be much less dramatic, a new study says. According to the researchers, for vertebrates and plants, the number of species losing more than half their geographic range by 2100 will be halved when warming is limited to 1.5°C, compared with projected losses at 2°C. It would be even better for insects, the most diverse group of animals on Earth: the number is reduced by two-thirds.