Despite being our closest neighbor in the heavens, the planet Venus still harbors a multitude of mysteries, due primarily to its thick cloud cover, obscuring the planet’s surface from study. Space probes sent to its surface are also only able to glean a scant amount of information: because of the intense heat and pressure at Venus’s surface, most probes fail after less then an hour. Adding to the mystique of the Morning Star is a newly-found wave propagating across the planet’s atmosphere, and the idea that Venus’s dark streaks may hold microbial life.
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As has become a tradition on Inauguration Day, the official website for the White House, www.whitehouse.gov, was updated at noon to reflect the policies of the incoming administration, lead by President Donald J. Trump. While the headings under the "Issues" menu were updated to include the promises made by Trump during his campaign, there were a number of important issues that conspicuously went missing, notably the headings for Climate Change, Health Care and Civil Rights.
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In recent months, a number of U.S. states have been enacting new legislation to govern the use of renewable energy within their territories — for both better and for worse. Illinois, Michigan and Ohio have passed new laws that range from protecting current green energy law, to progressive new ones.

These moves by IL, MI and OH are contrary to the intended ecological policies of the new administration under President Donald Trump, policies that themselves run contrary to good ecological — and ultimately economical — sense.
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2016 was the hottest year on record for planet Earth, in the 137 years that global temperature records have been kept. This news was released by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirming their results. This event also marks the third year in a row, starting in 2014, that global surface temperature records have been broken, with each successive year topping its predecessor.

“2016 is remarkably the third record year in a row in this series,” exclaims GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “We don’t expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.”
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