International

"When nearly 200 countries agreed last October to dramatically reduce their reliance on climate change-polluting chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in air conditioning and refrigeration, the hunt for alternatives was already underway. Now, a new study in the journal Nature Communications that comprehensively explored pure liquid options found only 27 candidates, and problems with all of them."

"A large research synthesis, published in one of the world’s most influential scientific journals, has detected a decline in the amount of dissolved oxygen in oceans around the world — a long-predicted result of climate change that could have severe consequences for marine organisms if it continues."

"Investors and insurers with more than $2.8 trillion in assets under management on Wednesday called on the Group of 20 economies to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2020 despite U.S. doubts about climate change."

"Pygmy elephants. Monkeys with noses the size of beer cans. And a deer so small you could cradle it like a baby.... We're in the middle of Malaysia's Borneo rain forest. Olival has brought us here because this is the type of place where pandemics are born. HIV came from a rain forest. So did Ebola. Yellow fever. And Zika."

"The Mariana Trench in the northern Pacific is the deepest part of the world's oceans. You might think a place that remote would be untouched by human activity. But the Mariana Trench is polluted."

"Ten thousand years ago, at the dawn of the agricultural revolution, many of our worst infectious diseases didn't exist. Here's what changed."

"All those strange sea monster sightings in days of yore? This may be the best explanation yet."

"When engineers faced resistance from residents in Denmark over plans to build wind turbines on the Nordic country’s flat farmland, they found a better locale: the sea. The offshore wind farm, the world’s first, had just 11 turbines and could power about 3,000 homes. That project now looks like a minnow compared with the whales that sprawl for miles across the seas of Northern Europe."