The increasing number and frequency of heat waves experienced around the globe over the past year are adding to the growing body of evidence that global warming is a real danger to human civilization. In 2016 alone, major heat waves, many of them deadly record-breakers, were experienced in Africa, India, the Middle East, and the United States. New South Wales in Australia is currently suffering through more record-breaking temperatures, seeing spikes of 47ºC (117ºF), 12ºC above normal for this time of year.
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A new equation has been published that has the potential to settle the debate of how big an impact human activity has had on the environment, in comparison to natural forces. This equation, created by the authors that proposed that we’re living in a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene, is meant to offer a mathematical formalization of our everyday discourse regarding global warming — putting hard numbers to what can oftentimes devolve into a nebulous argument — and the result of the equation is alarming.
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In a break from the established Republican party stance on climate change, a number of GOP icons, including former Secretaries of State James Baker III and George Shultz, and former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson Jr., are quietly advocating that sitting Republican lawmakers take the issue of global warming seriously, through the implementation of a carbon-tax. This approach stands in stark contrast to the party’s traditional view on the subject, having not only repeatedly tried to ignore the issue, but have also actively tried to block greenhouse gas reduction efforts.
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An experiment that was conducted aboard — or rather outside of — the International Space Station, proves that biological organisms can survive the harsh environment of space for extended periods of time. The experiment was designed investigate how human expeditions to Mars could one day sustain themselves, and how the biology of extremophiles — organisms that thrive in conditions that would be deadly to other creatures here on Earth — would fare in the harshness of space. The success of the experiment not only provided surprisingly positive results, it also offers new evidence that life on Earth may have originated from elsewhere in the cosmos.
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