Climate Change & Environment
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UN to seek $160 million in emergency aid for Pakistan floods

The United Nations and Pakistan are set to appeal Tuesday for $160 million in emergency funding for nearly a half million displaced victims of record-breaking floods that have killed more than 1,150 people since mid-June, officials said.

Pakistani authorities backed by the military, rescuers and volunteers have been battling the aftermath of the floods that have affected more than 33 million people, or one in seven Pakistanis.

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Pakistan fatal flooding has hallmarks of warming

The familiar ingredients of a warming world were in place: searing temperatures, hotter air holding more moisture, extreme weather getting wilder, melting glaciers, people living in harm's way, and poverty. They combined in vulnerable Pakistan to create unrelenting rain and deadly flooding.

The flooding has all the hallmarks of a catastrophe juiced by climate change, but it is too early to formally assign blame to global warming, several scientists tell The Associated Press. It occurred in a country that did little to cause the warming, but keeps getting hit, just like the relentless rain.

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Zombie ice from Greenland will raise sea level 10 inches

Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10.6 inches (27 centimeters) -- more than twice as much as previously forecast — according to a study published Monday.

That's because of something that could be called zombie ice. That's doomed ice that, while still attached to thicker areas of ice, is no longer getting replenished by parent glaciers now receiving less snow. Without replenishment, the doomed ice is melting from climate change and will inevitably raise seas, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

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Third of Pakistan 'under water right now'

A third of Pakistan was under water as a result of flooding caused by record monsoon rains, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said Monday, creating a crisis of "unimaginable proportions."

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In risky recycling venture, Gazans burn plastic for fuel

Living in one of the poorest parts of the Middle East and facing some of the region's highest fuel costs, Palestinians in Gaza are burning plastic to make affordable diesel.

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UN high-seas biodiversity treaty struggles to leave port

A two-week negotiating session on a treaty to protect the high seas wraps up Friday, with UN observers holding their breath that the long-stalled deal can cross the finish line.

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'All dead': A devastated farmer in southern China longs for rain

For almost a decade, farmer Qin Bin, 50, has toiled his plot, growing peaches and dragon fruits for sale to visiting tourists at his orchard on the outskirts of the Chinese megacity of Chongqing.

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Germany promotes Baltic Sea's 'enormous' energy potential

Germany's foreign minister said Friday that estimates show the Baltic Sea can produce "more than twice the installed capacity of all German coal-fired power stations" as the country works to meet climate change targets and to wean itself off of Russia-supplied energy.

In a video message ahead of a meeting in Denmark's capital, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Germany wants to hasten the expansion of wind power produced in the Baltic Sea.

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Drought forces earliest harvest ever in French wine country

The landscape in the prestigious vineyards of Bordeaux looks the same as ever, with healthy, ripe grapes hanging heavy off rows of green vines.

But this year something is starkly different in one of France's most celebrated wine regions and other parts of Europe. The harvest that once started in mid-September is now happening earlier than ever — in mid-August — as a result of severe drought and the wine industry's adaptation to the unpredictable effects of climate change.

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Crucial illegal road threatens Amazon rainforest

An illegal dirt road ripping through protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon is now just a few miles shy of connecting two of the worst areas of deforestation in the region, according to satellite images and accounts from people familiar with the area. If the road is completed it will turn a large area of remaining forest into an island, under pressure from human activity on all sides.

Environmentalists have been warning about just this kind of development in the rainforest for decades. Roads are significant because most deforestation occurs alongside them, where access is easier and land value higher.

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