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By David Fogarty and David Stanway SINGAPORE/BEIJING (Reuters) - China's carbon emissions could be nearly 20 percent higher than previously thought, a new analysis of official Chinese data showed on Sunday, suggesting the pace of global climate change could be even faster than currently predicted. China has already overtaken the United States as the world's top greenhouse gas polluter, producing about a quarter of mankind's carbon pollution that scientists say is heating up the planet and triggering more extreme weather. But pinning down an accurate total for China's carbon emissions has long been a challenge because of doubts about the quality of its official energy use data.

Roughly 10,000 years ago, the great sheets of ice that had covered much of the planet receded, triggering a wave of extinctions, ecological changes and, ultimately, the rise of human civilization . All those changes came about as roughly 30 percent of the planet's surface went from ice-covered to ice-free

By David Alire Garcia LA VENTOSA, Mexico (Reuters) - On an arid plain where sudden gusts of wind can rip roofs off buildings and knock over tractor trailers, Mexico is building a new engine for its energy future. Surrounded by towering turbines in every direction, the town of La Ventosa - which means "the windy place" in Spanish - is at the heart of a wind power boom in the country. Mexico, the world's 14th biggest economy, still punches well below its weight in terms of wind energy, ranking 24th on the planet in installed capacity last year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).

By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazine Governments from more than 90 countries have agreed to establish an independent panel of scientists to assess the very latest research on the state of the planet's fragile ecosystems. [More]

The list of human impacts on the planet is a long one. We move more earth and stone than all the world's rivers

Giant squid in ice; courtesy of Fir0002/Wikimedia Commons Giant and colossal squid can grow to be some 12 meters long . But that alone doesn’t explain why they have the biggest eyeballs on the planet. At 280 millimeters in diameter, colossal squid eyes are much bigger than those of the swordfish, which at 90 millimeters, measure in as the next biggest peepers.

Who's been munching my galaxy? Right now, all across the planet, millions of people are engaged in a struggle with enormous implications for the very nature of life itself. Making sophisticated tactical decisions and wrestling with chilling and complex moral puzzles, they are quite literally deciding the fate of our existence.

Earth's building blocks were more eclectic than once thought, according to a new study suggesting our planet formed from collisions of many different types of meteorites.

By David Fogarty SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The World Bank announced on Friday a global alliance to better manage and protect the world's oceans, which are under threat from over-fishing, pollution and climate change. Oceans are the lifeblood of the planet and the global economy, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told a conference on ocean conservation in Singapore. [More]

Earth is the planet of the plants--and it all can be traced back to one green cell. The world's lush profusion of photosynthesizers--from towering redwoods to ubiquitous diatoms--owe their existence to a tiny alga eons ago that swallowed a cyanobacteria and turned it into an internal solar power plant. [More]

Is there anything more everyday and familiar (given that we all possess one) and yet still so mysterious and puzzling as our own human brain?

If you think summer is too hot or winter unbearably cold, take solace that in the distant past seasons on our planet might have been much harsher.

Seems like everyone's a photographer these days. Digital technology has put high-caliber photo equipment is in the hands of countless amateur enthusiasts. But astrophotography remains a bit more specialized.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists studying the rotation of the Earth have long known that our planet doesn't have a perfect spin. Most believe this is due to the different types of materials that make up the core, mantle and crust, which all have different rates of spin causing inherent friction

Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation.