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In Kenya, it has always been hot and dry. Times when the rivers run dry and the cows wither day by day, until their bones are scattered under the acacia trees. But occasionally it will rain enough to have milk and meat from the cows.But now because of climate change, times are changing. North Kenya has become measurably hotter and drier. Four severe droughts have walloped the area in the last two decades. These severe conditions has led to harder lives for the poor whom it is much harder to get through these terrible conditions. More than 650,000 children under age 5 across vast stretches of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are severely malnourished. Climate change has contributed to famine and this problem will continue with climate change.

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A giant 205 million year old dinosaur bone was found and discovered to be a jaw bone of a giant ichthyosaur, one of the largest animals ever. The fossil baffled scientists at first because it just looked like a big rock, but eventually they began to see the bone structure and recognize it was a jaw of massive proportions. They identified the specimen as an incomplete bone (called a surangular) from the lower jaw of a giant ichthyosaur. Using simple scaling of the size of the jaw bone, they estimated the size of the ichthyosaur was roughly estimated to be around 26 meters long which to give a picture is bigger than a humpback whale. This estimate may not be totally correct because they had to compare it to sizes of other large animals jaws, so the creature could in fact be larger!

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Easter Island is critically vulnerable to rising ocean levels. The famous statues are being threatened by waves that are beginning to reach them. Easter island is a place with culture and a vast amount of history, including open tombs and the statues of heads. many of the remains of that civilization may be erased, the United Nations warns, by the rising sea levels rapidly eroding Easter Island’s coasts.Polynesians discovered the island 1,000 years ago, and discovered the people as well as the history. This amazing history packed area is threatened by disappearing because of these rising waves. Archaeologists fear the rising waves could erase clues to one of the greatest mysteries of the island: What caused the collapse of the civilization that built the stone statues? If the sea continues to rise the way it is, this civilizations history could possibly be washed away.

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By studying calcium deposits in dinosaurs fossils, scientist are able to identify food chains of dinosaurs and explain how so many predators could coexist on the same timeline. Among vertebrates, calcium is almost exclusively derived from food. By comparing the isotopic composition of potential prey  with that of the carnivores' teeth, it is thus possible to retrace the diet of those carnivores. The studies revealed the different diets of dinosaurs, some preferring fish while other eating primarily herbivores. Different predators avoided competition by subtly sharing food resources. Some exceptional fossils have already shared food chain info from the past, but calcium isotopes open up a whole new world of figuring out the food chains of dinosaurs and opens up a window into the past.

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Trees are critical for removing CO2 from our environment, but it is unknown how much carbon dioxide a tree takes in for photosynthesis in a lifetime. Scientists are now beginning to figure out how to calculate this through the rings of trees.This technique lays the foundation for calculating climate change and global vegetation models, which will tell what the future holds in store. These tests also show how trees react to climate change and give answers to how trees will react with future climate changes and if they will be able to withstand these changes. This also includes learning about the trees photosynthesis and metabolism over a long period of time. This study shows that we are able to look into the metabolic history of trees with much higher resolution, so that we possibly can detect if trees acclimate under changing climates.

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Thiamethoxam is a pesticide that is used over wheat, barley, corn, rice, sorghum and potato crops. This pesticide also kills bees. When this was sprayed in 2015 and 2016 beekeepers reported that they lost about 44 percent of colonies. This is a huge problem because bee population is already dwindling. Pollinators like bees are crucial to global agriculture, and are responsible for making one out of every three bites of food we take. Thiamethoxam is a type of neonicotinoid, which paralyze and kill bees and other pollinating insects by first attacking their central nervous system. If the EPA allows this pesticide to be sprayed on crops, it would be disastrous for both the bees and humans.

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For a long time, hunting has been quite controversial and can cause problems with different peoples opinions. Although it seems awful to kill for sport, hunting serves a purpose and helps contain the population of an animal, not allowing to to grow too large and have disastrous effects on other species. If a certain population grows too large, it could cause a decreasing in food supply, which could cause problems in competing species with similar diets and food sources, cause starvation and a die off. Keeping one species regulated effectively serves as a protector for an entire food chain. A good example of this is the white tailed deer, which is vastly overpopulated and eats many resources that other animals rely on, and hunting can hep reduce their numbers and prevent dangerous overpopulation.

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Because of the findings that meat is bad for human health and is also bad for the environment, organizations have suggested and proposed a meat tax in order to raise awareness and maybe deter people from purchasing meat. It has been shown that cows are horrible for the environment, from the methane they give off and contribute to global warming, but also their manure can  contaminate water and lead into the ocean, effecting marine life. Science has repeatedly shown that such a tax would have significant positive effects on human health and the environment. Although it sounds harsh, a tax is not the same as a ban, and the tax could lead people to consider their purchase and perhaps choose the healthier alternative. Although a meat tax is possible, it is not very important in American politics because there are other important issues.

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In the past few months, intense wildfires have occurred in California, and was assumed to be the cause of extinction of breeding territories for the spotted owl. I has been discovered that the cause of the loss of breeding territory has been a result of post- fire logging operations. In areas, where no logging took place following large forest fires, the scientists failed to detect any significant effect in the spotted owls' territory occupancy or extinction rate.When they take trees after forest fires, they are destroying the hunting grounds and homes for the spotted owls. It is helpful for the spotted owl to know the extinction of breeding grounds is because of post-fire logging instead of wildfires, because that means humans can control and help the spotted owl population by decreasing post-fire logging.

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Throughout time, humans have devastated tree populations and forests for the needs of ourselves, such as for lumber and shelter. Tropical rain forests are home to millions of different species of animals and have the most diverse population of species on earth. These ecosystems are also important for water and nutrient cycle on the planet scale. In the Amazon rain forest, people have clear cut the forest for hundreds of years in order to provide land for farming and villages for their families. This clear cutting by Amazonian hundreds of years ago has had lasting impacts of the forest and is estimated that these people were once in about  six million square kilometers of the Amazonia, from evidence of a man made soil in the ground. After 500 years since civilization, evidence of their lives is still evident from satellite imagining in the rain forest.

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On January 15th, an Iranian oil tanker crashed in the East China sea with 136,000 tons of oil. The ship sank and caused leakage, as well as resulting in as many as 29 deaths. Greenpeace expressed alarm about the threat to the marine ecosystem in the East China Sea, which is one of the world’s most heavily trafficked waterways, saying the disaster occurred in “an important spawning ground” for fish. One concern is that, since the Sanchi sank, marine life will be endangered by the fuel oil’s spreading instead of burning off. And experts are further concerned that the even dirtier bunker fuel powering the tanker will be released into the sea, exposing delicate marine life to the extremely toxic substance.

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On January 17th, three caribou were blindfolded and airlifted off and island in Lake Superior. The Ontario government had arranged for the caribou to be relocated off the island in an attempt to help save the caribou around Lake Superior. In recent years, the caribou population has been decimated by wolves. The government has also relocated 9 other caribou 80 miles away in order to protect the herd. Michipicoten Island’s caribou population has dropped from the hundreds to fewer than 40 animals since 2013, according to Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.  The wolves were able to come over and hunt the caribou on the island because of ice bridges. Because of global warming, ice bridges that used to form yearly appear less often, causing the caribou to be trapped with the wolves.

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Recently in places such as California, Portugal, Brazil and Indonesia have been the victims of forest fires. These forest fires have contributed to the amount of deforestation that was lost in 2016 and 2017. A cause of all these forest fire can be traced to man made global warming which increases temperature and increases the risk of drought, making these areas a prime target of forest fires. These forest fires have also contributed to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. Tree loss spiked in 2016 due to all of these forest fires. Forest fires are causing areas to lose massive amounts of trees, but they are actively tying to reduce the amount of trees lost and keep our forests alive. Global Forest Watch (GFW) is trying to slow down forest clearing and figure out a way to slow down deforestation as well as find a solution for all the forest fires.

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In 2006 on an Indonesian island a mud volcano erupted, spewing out mud and eventually buried houses and roads in the area. Today, mud, rock and gases still flow out of the crevice in the earth. Scientists have now finally figured out the cause of the mud volcano: it is because of a network of volcanoes near by that funneled hot water and other sediment underneath, and eventually and earthquake broke open the pocket and cause the eruption of mud. Even though Indonesia is a huge volcano area, residents were not prepared for the mud eruption because unlike regular volcanoes, there were no warning signs. Workers were also drilling for natural gas near by the eruption of the mud volcano, but scientists favor the theory that the cause of the release of the mud was due to the earthquake. The flow of mud was ongoing for months, so eventually the Indonesian government built levees to contain the tidal wave of mud.

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It is a well known fact that the ocean is full of plastic, much of which effects species who consume them, mistaking them for jellyfish. Now scientists have discovered that even corals a consuming fragments of plastic, mistakenly as food, but research has also shown that i may be because some of the chemicals in these plastics may actually taste like food to these corals. The consumption of certain plastics opposed to others could be because of these different additives,  causing the corals to only consume a certain type of plastic because of the mistaking it as food. The hope for the future is to be able to create a  plastic animals and corals will not eat in case it gets into the ocean. People like Daniel Rittschof is working to create plastic that is not tasty to marine invertebrates to hopefully reduce the amount of plastic consumed by corals of plastic littered in the ocean.

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Scientists were concerned about one of the most important carbon storing ecosystem not being able to withstand the test of time, but it turns out these bogs  are quite able to adapt to changing conditions. Plants in these environments are able to adapt to changes in temperature, precipitation and other climate-related factors. When these environments begin to change, typically these plants tend to die off, but are often replaced with plants similar to the ones that died off. This is important because these environments have a living ecosystem on the surface, but underneath store tons of  dead carbon rich organic matter. The concern is that due to climate change, wildfire and possibly human interaction could cause the carbon to decompose and go into the atmosphere, which is horrible for greenhouse gases. It is important o protect these areas to ensure there is no decomposition of the carbon beneath these ecosystems. The government will most likely try to protect these areas and ensure there is reduced human interaction with these environments to prevent the release of carbon from these sinks.

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Hurricanes in the past months have left devastation and destruction everywhere they have gone, but not as bad as the impact of Hurricane Maria to the environment in Puerto Rico.  The El Yunque rain forest, which is the last rain forest in the United States, was destroyed by Hurricane Maria. The rain forest was a huge part of tourism in Puerto Rico and is now devastated, with trees left stripped of their leaves and displaced soil all over the forest.  The hardest hit areas of the forest may take a century to recover. This forest was the home to 240 species of trees, 23 of which could be found no where else, along with over 50 species of birds. The birds in the hurricane where hugely effected, usually because their food source in the trees are gone, but this time it was seen that many birds had died because of the huge gusts of wind. It will take time to help the rain forest recover and save species of bats and birds. The government is trying to rebuild different aspects of the rain forest and protect the remaining wildlife in the hopes of the regrowth of the forest over time.

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A main focus currently is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One way people are doing that is by reducing deforestation in places like the rain forest to reduce the emissions of carbon. These forests have high amounts of carbon in them and if cut down will release into the atmosphere. But protecting these forests from deforestation mostly caused my growing agricultural companies such as the production of palm oil, also protects endangered animals. It was discovered that most of the areas protected because of high carbon being retained also was home to endangered animals. Not only will the forest be saved because of these carbon policies, but endangered species like snow leopards and orangutans will also benefit from these policies.  The UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) aim to identify and conserve forest areas that retain a lot of carbon, because if destroyed would be released into the atmosphere.