As Paris talks open, meet a geoscientist who has attended every major climate negotiatio

As the world today kicks off the 21st, and perhaps biggest, meeting of nations who have joined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Jonathan Pershing is aiming to keep his perfect attendance record.

Pershing, a Ph.D. geologist turned climate diplomacy wonk, has attended every past conference of the parties (COP) to the framework agreement. Now, he’s attending the Paris meeting, known as COP-21, as a top technical advisor on energy matters to the U.S. delegation.

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Draft Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change

The Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE), a major network of international human rights scholars, has issued around the world in a Draft Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change (The Declaration) ahead of the Paris Climate Summit beginning on 30 November. The Declaration outlines a crucial shift in the way that states should respond to climate change. The Declaration is a response to the unsustainable status quo. Combining new thinking and existing international human rights law, the Declaration presents an alternative formulation of rights that foregrounds human rights while simultaneously protecting the rights of non-human persons and living systems from climate harms. 

The GNHRE is a network of multidisciplinary scholars from around the world, dedicated to tackling human and environmental challenges, including climate change. The group includes numerous world- renowned environmental-human rights scholars and drafted the Declaration as a clarion call to governments to address the human rights implications of climate change.

To view the Declaration, please click here or go to : http://gnhre.org/gnhre-draft-declaration/

Science Week 2.0: Design Your Future

2015 marks 20 years of Science Week; a national, annual event that celebrates the fascinating worlds of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
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Scientists think they just found the most important planet outside our solar system

A small planet, just a bit bigger than Earth, has been spotted in our stellar neighborhood, just 39 light-years away.
Known as GJ 1132b, it is the closest rocky exoplanet to have ever been found, and astronomers say it could provide our most in-depth look yet at an alien world not so different than our own
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India's Mars orbiter sends stunning canyon photo

The Ophir Chasma as photographed by Mangalyaan's colour camera. ISRO

Just in time for India's Independence Day, the country's very first interplanetary mission, the Mars Orbiter Mission, has sent back some beautiful images of the Red Planet's surface.

The Indian Space Research Organisation mission, also known as Mangalyaan, which means "Mars-craft" in Sanskrit, was launched in early November 2013 on a shoestring budget compared to other space missions. All up, it's estimated that it cost about $74 million, compared to NASA's $671 million Maven Mars orbiter mission, which launched at around the same time.

Mangalyaan has been something of a success story for the ISRO. It was the country's first attempt at an interplanetary mission, and an ambitious one at that. Mars serves as the next major milestone in space exploration, and India is the first country to succeed in reaching the planet's orbit in its first attempt. More than half of all attempts to reach Mars fail and India not only got it right on its first attempt, it did so at record cost.

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Our Solar System May Have Had A Fifth 'Giant' Planet

The missing planet bumped into Neptune before disappearing into the abyss of space, according to a new study.

The four gas giant planets in our solar system -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune -- may have a long-lost relative. According to a new study, our system was once home to a fifth gas giant that suddenly vanished some 4 billion years ago after a run-in with Neptune.

Indirect evidence for this lost world is seen in a strange cluster of icy objects -- called the "kernel" -- in the Kuiper Belt. That's the vast region of primordial debris that encircles the sun beyond the orbit of Neptune.

"The Kuiper Belt is a perfect clue to understanding how the solar system evolved since its formation," study author Dr. David Nesvorny, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., told New Scientist.
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Electric Rainbow!

A real-estate agent and storm chaser captured a snapshot of a lifetime on Aug. 9, when he photographed a rare duo — an eerie flash of lightning framed by a glorious rainbow — in Tucson, Arizona.
The electrifying image took social media by storm: As of Aug. 14, Greg McCown's photo had garnered more than 1,000 Facebook likes and more than 3,600 retweets.
There's a reason why it went viral: Those types of sightings are incredibly rare. Although 100 lighting bolts strike the Earth every second, the chances of them flashing near a rainbow are slim, said Randall Cerveny, a professor of meteorology at Arizona State University in Tempe.
"Usually, you don't get those two things to line up at the same time," Cerveny said, adding that a desert area like Tucson is more likely to serve up conditions for such a sighting
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