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Why the record low Arctic sea ice this October is so alarming

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For the past five months, Melinda Webster has lived on an icebreaker ship frozen in an ice floe near the North Pole. For Webster, a sea ice geophysicist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, it was an ideal observatory. She and a team of 14 other scientists set out, as part of the largest polar […]

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Big Oil’s hopes are pinned on plastics. It won’t end well.

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The fossil fuel industry has not been doing well lately. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, growth in global demand had slowed to 1 percent annually. Now, lockdowns and distancing to stop the spread of the coronavirus have decimated the industry. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently released projections of rapid short-term decline in global […]

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Polls show Trump is losing ground where the coronavirus is surging

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The third — and largest — coronavirus wave is hitting the US just in time for the presidential election, with surges in key Midwestern swing states. Numerous polls suggest voters may be taking their pandemic pain and panic with them to the ballot boxes in these places: President Donald Trump isn’t just down in national […]

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Europe’s second wave of Covid-19 doesn’t excuse Trump’s failures

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Europe suffered a big Covid-19 outbreak in the spring, then subsequently suppressed the virus while the United States continued to struggle. But now cases in Europe are surging once again: France is bringing back a lockdown, the UK is escalating restrictions, and even Germany, widely seen as a coronavirus success story, is again imposing closures, […]

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Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine challenge, explained in 600 words

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As President Biden settles into the Oval Office, his immediate challenge is fixing America’s botched vaccine rollout. The current vaccine campaign is not going well. Former President Donald Trump and his administration promised to get 20 million Americans vaccinated and 40 million doses out by the end of 2020. Three weeks into the new year, […]