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A recently completed aerial survey of northern Botswana by Elephants Without Borders (EWB), through the support of Botswana's Dept. of Wildlife & National Parks, indicates that wildebeest, giraffes, kudu, lechwe, ostriches, roan and tsessebe antelope and warthog species are significantly challenged. Populations of these species appear to have dropped significantly over the past 15 years, specifically in Ngamiland, which encompasses the Okavango delta.

Greenland's ice sheet melted the most it has in over a half century last year, US government scientists said Tuesday in one of a series of "unmistakable" signs of climate change.

alf the elephants from West and Central African savannahs have vanished in the past 40 years, scientists report in PLoS One.

EADS is looking to release an entirely electricity powered plane by the year 2035. The plane, which has been dubbed the VoltAir, was shown off at the Paris Air Show, which took place last week. The Paris Air Show is one of the largest aviation shows in the world.

panel of marine scientists who met earlier this year in Oxford, England, have concluded that the world's oceans are facing an unprecedented loss of species. As the London Independent reports today, "The seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted, the report says, because of the cumulative impact of a number of severe individual stresses, ranging from climate warming and sea-water acidification, to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing." They concluded that the negative impacts are greater than predicted, and that mass extinctions could occur within one human generation.

In his talk on Deep Optimism, Ridley presented a coherent, integrated, and astoundingly thorough case for progress in all degrees. For one easy-to-visual metric, Ridley showed how it takes less time each year to work for a constant benefit, say on hour of artificial light at night. It 1800 it took six hours of typical labor to purchase an hour's worth of candles, so few working people did. In 1880 it took fifteen minutes of work to purchase an hour's worth of kerosene for a lamp. In 1950 it took eight seconds of work to pay for an hour's electricity for a light bulb. In 1997, it took only half a second -- a blink -- of work to light a compact fluorescent bulb for an hour.

Number of living humans who have walked on another world