On May 7, 2014, after 53 days of struggling nearly 500 miles across the fractured ice of the Arctic Ocean while lugging two 317-pound sleds and fending off hungry polar bears, Arctic explorers Eric Larsen and Ryan Waters finally reached the North Pole.

It was very likely the last expedition of its kind across the ice.

Exhausted, Larsen and Waters called for their pickup flight, and forty-two hours later, they were headed home.

"As we flew off I looked out the window at all that ice and at this stunning environment that I've come to know so well over the past 10 years and that I have a profound respect for — it is such a unique place, the Arctic Ocean, a place like no other," Larsen explained at a recent talk promoting "On Thin Ice: An Epic Final Quest into the Melting Arctic," the new book he and Hudson Lindenberger wrote about the expedition, an unaided and unsupported journey.

"To be able to complete this expedition, which may realistically be the last of its kind in history ... it left me with this profound sadness."

Larsen had made the journey twice before, in 2006 and in 2010, a year he skied to the North Pole, the South Pole, and climbed Mount Everest.

But he tells Business Insider that by this latest trip, things had changed. There's no land at the North Pole, it's just a massive layer of ice on top of an ocean. And now, that ice is thinner than it ever has been, something that NASA data clearly shows. With less ice-pack in general, it moves around more. Massive sheets of ice crash into each other, breaking apart and forming massive obstacles.

"It definitely hit this real exponential change from 2010 to 2014," Larsen tells BI, especially when compared to historical records of journeys to the Pole in the early 20th century. Then, he says explorers were able to ski for a couple of hours at a time across flat plains of ice, covering mile after mile. The going was so rough on this expedition that he and Waters covered less than seven miles in the first five days.

In recent years thin ice and these obstacles have made crossing the Arctic Ocean in anything but a boat nearly impossible. In 2013, no expedition was able to make it onto the ice. On April 29, 2015, the year after Larsen and Waters reached the Pole, explorers Marc Cornelissen and Phillip De Roo died after falling through. They'd been gathering data for a science initiative known as the "Last Ice Survey."

NASA had reported earlier that year that the winter ice cover in the Arctic was the lowest ever recorded.

With 2016 being well on the way to setting another record for the warmest year ever, it's unlikely that conditions will allow anyone to trek their way across the Arctic again.

"It's a bit of a gimmick to be able to say it," that theirs was the last expedition, Larsen says. But at the same time, that doesn't make it untrue.

"I don't want to be in a position where I've got the last passenger pigeon," he says. "To think about something that's so big and so huge and that's identified exploration for centuries, one of the last great unexplored places ... what would you say if Mount Everest got bulldozed and was no longer there?"

"It's a sad thing."

SEE ALSO: 17 things that people driven to do risky things have in common

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NOW WATCH: The world’s largest pyramid is not in Egypt

The world's largest living thing is even bigger than a blue whale (the largest animal living now).

Meet Armillaria ostoyae, or, as it's nicknamed, the Humongous Fungus.

It's an organism that covers 2,385 acres (almost 4 square miles) of the Malheur National Forest in Oregon. 

But it's a lot more harmful than the nickname might suggest: The Amarillia grows by feeding off of tree roots, leaching off of them and actually killing them, causing them to decay. So, in a forest, it has a good shot of  growing to a massive size (at the cost of a few thousand acres of trees). 

The fungus has a huge network of roots, called mycellia, that permeate below the ground of the forest. What shows up above ground are the mushrooms that get produced about once a year, according to the USDA. They usually pop up around the base of infected or newly-killed trees. 

Here's a map showing just how big the Humongous Fungus, highlighted in red, is compared to other, less humongous Armillaria (in yellow). 

SEE ALSO: 15 of the largest living things on the planet

DON'T MISS: These are the world's deadliest animals

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NOW WATCH: NASA tested a rocket engine — and did something unusual in the process

On November 8, Americans will have the chance to go to the polls and elect the next president of the United States.

Both major parties, Republican and Democrat, will make their cases to voters in the coming weeks.

The candidates' positions on environmental issues are very different.

While Hillary Clinton lists "Protecting animals and wildlife" and "Climate change" as two major topics on her campaign website, Trump doesn't include anything about the environment.

We've rounded up statements Clinton's made publicly to outline where she stands on environmental issues.

Climate change

On her campaign site, Clinton calls climate change an "urgent threat" to "our economy, our national security, and our children's health and futures."

Continuing President Barack Obama's legacy, she wants to uphold the Paris Agreement that sets targets to reverse the worst effects of global warming, which nearly 200 countries agreed to last December.

"When it comes to climate change, the science is crystal clear," Clinton said on ScienceDebate. "That’s why as President, I will work both domestically and internationally to ensure that we build on recent progress and continue to slash greenhouse gas pollution over the coming years as the science clearly tells us we must."

Clinton has proposed investing in clean energy and more efficient vehicles, cutting energy waste by implementing more robust efficiency and pollution standards, and cutting subsidies on oil and gas as ways of dealing with climate change.

At the first presidential debate September 26, Clinton brought up her and Trump's differences on climate change. Here's how the exchange unfolded:

CLINTON: Some country is going to be the clean- energy superpower of the 21st century. Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real.

TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that.

CLINTON: I think science is real.

TRUMP: I do not say that.

As manynewsorganizationspointedout after the debate, Trump tweeted in 2012 that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive."

You can read all of Clinton's tweets that have mentioned "climate change" or "global warming"here.

Water

Over the past several years, the western states have suffered from one of the worst droughts in US history. California is in its fifth straight year of severe drought, which has put considerable stress on crops and water use. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given infrastructure across the country "D" grades for dams, drinking water, and wastewater.

Clinton wants to establish a Western Water Partnership to coordinate water use among agencies and states in the Western US, and a Water Innovation Lab to use and reuse the resource more efficiently.

In addition, Clinton has called for increased investments in water infrastructure to, "repairing, replacing and expanding" existing infrastructures that are often more than 100 years old.

"Chronic underinvestment in our nation's drinking and wastewater systems has sickened and endangered Americans from Flint, Michigan, to Ohio and West Virginia," Clinton said on ScienceDebate. "Outdated and inadequate wastewater systems discharge more than 900 billion gallons of untreated sewage a year, posing health risks to humans and wildlife life, disrupting ecosystems, and disproportionately impacting communities of color."

Conservation

Clinton wants to "keep public lands public,"combat wildlife trafficking around the world, encourage the humane treatment of pets and livestock, and "modernize" how we protect natural resources, including national parks. She has also called for efforts to reverse or slow the decline of at-risk wildlife species.

"Conserving biodiversity is essential to maintaining our quality of life," Clinton said on ScienceDebate. "We need to collaborate across all sectors and at all levels to conserve our natural resources and maintain the viability of our ecosystems."

SEE ALSO: TRUMP: Claims of global warming still 'need to be investigated'

DON'T MISS: An economist figured out how much Hillary Clinton's plan to save the world from runaway climate change would actually cost

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Animated map shows what the US would look like if all the Earth's ice melted

On November 8, Americans will have the chance to go to the polls and elect the next president of the United States.

Both major parties, Republican and Democrat, will make their cases to voters in the coming weeks.

The candidates' positions on environmental issues are very different.

While Hillary Clinton lists "Protecting animals and wildlife" and "Climate change" as two major topics on her campaign website, Trump doesn't include anything about the environment.

We've rounded up the Republican candidate's public statements to find out where he stands on environmental issues.

Climate change

At the first presidential debate September 26, Clinton brought up her and Trump's differences on climate change. Here's how the exchange unfolded:

CLINTON: Some country is going to be the clean- energy superpower of the 21st century. Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real.

TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that.

CLINTON: I think science is real.

TRUMP: I do not say that.

As manynewsorganizationspointedout after the debate, Trump tweeted in 2012 that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive."

He has tweeted dozens of times about how he does not accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is real. You can read all of his tweets that have mentioned "climate change" or "global warming"here.

Trump wants to dismantle the Paris Agreement that sets targets to reverse the worst effects of global warming, which nearly 200 countries agreed to last December.

In response to a question about his views on climate change on ScienceDebate, Trump implied that the US shouldn't waste "financial resources" on climate change and should instead use them to ensure the world has clean water, eliminate diseases like malaria, increase food production, or develop alternative energy sources.

"There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of 'climate change,'" he said. "We must decide on how best to proceed so that we can make lives better, safer and more prosperous."

Water

Over the past several years, the western states have suffered from one of the worst droughts in US history. California is in its fifth straight year of severe drought, which has put considerable stress on crops and water use. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given infrastructure across the country "D" grades for dams, drinking water, and wastewater.

Trump says clean water may be the "most important issue we face as a nation for the next generation," and it will be a "top priority" for his administration.

"We must make the investment in our fresh water infrastructure to ensure access to affordable fresh water solutions for everyone," he said on ScienceDebate. "We must explore all options to include making desalinization more affordable and working to build the distribution infrastructure to bring this scarce resource to where it is needed for our citizens and those who produce the food of the world."

Desalination is the costly process of removing salt from ocean water to make it potable. While many scientists view it as a last-resort option for drought-stricken areas, researchers have made small advancements in recent years that has made the process incrementally more efficient. A $1 billion desalination plant that opened in December 2015 provides 50 million gallons of water a day to Carlsbad, California.

Conservation

Trump has said he wants to keep public lands in the control of the federal government, a position that his Republican opponents criticized him for during the primary. He hasn't announced positions on other conservation issues.

"In a Trump administration, there will be shared governance of our public lands and we will empower state and local governments to protect our wildlife and fisheries," he said on ScienceDebate. "Laws that tilt the scales toward special interests must be modified to balance the needs of society with the preservation of our valuable living resources."

SEE ALSO: TRUMP: Claims of global warming still 'need to be investigated'

DON'T MISS: An economist figured out how much Hillary Clinton's plan to save the world from runaway climate change would actually cost

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Animated map shows what the US would look like if all the Earth's ice melted

Wind turbines’ potential to create energy has been widely demonstrated. If fact, the American Wind Energy Association suggests that 583,000 onshore turbines could power the entire United States.

But turbines are rarely colorful or aesthetically pleasing — and they’re certainly not something many people would want in their front yard. A new kind of fake tree comprised of leaf-shaped mini turbines could change that.

The WindTree, created by a french company called NewWind, has 54 spinning green ‘Aeroleafs,’ each of which are just over 3 feet tall. The leaves are curved so that even slight breezes can send them spinning around their vertical axes.

Unlike most wind turbines, which start operating when wind speeds hit 9-11 miles per hour, the Aeroleafs can start generating electricity with wind speeds as low as 4.5 mph. NewWind founder and CEO Jerome Michaud-Lariviere calls these breezes ‘micro-turbulence.’

Each leaf has a maximum power generation capacity of 100 watts, giving the tree a total capacity of 5,400 watts. On average, however, a NewWind representative tells Business Insider that the devices produce between 1,000 and 2,000 kilowatt hours of energy per year.

Considering that the average residential utility customer in the US consumed 10,932 kWh of energy in 2014, that means a WindTree could provide approximately up to 18% of an American household’s annual electricity.

The WindTree — which is roughly 30 feet tall — is designed to generate electricity for an individual user or function, rather than feed power into a larger grid. Instead, it connects directly to a particular house or system, much like a solar panel. And since it can be placed in close proximity to whatever it power, less of the energy generated gets lost as the electricity travels through the grid.

The WindTree's design means it’s unlikely that a forest of them would ever be built. But a single tree could be used to power a charging station (for personal devices, bikes, or cars), keep municipal lights on in a public plaza, or be installed on a campus.

NewWind has already installed seven WindTrees throughout Germany, Switzerland, and France. Those initial prototypes were sold to cities and professional organizations. A smaller model for individual users is expected to be available by 2018.

As of now, each tree costs $55,350, so it would take a long time for the energy savings to make up for that up-front investment. The company is trying to figure out ways to make the trees more efficient and bring the total cost down.

If the product does eventually become cost-efficient, the trees would give a whole new meaning to the notion of green energy.

SEE ALSO: The largest wind farm in US history just got the green light

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NOW WATCH: America’s first offshore wind farm has some of the largest turbines in the world with blades 3X the size of a football field

Seagrass has been around since dinosaurs roamed the earth, it is responsible for keeping the world's coastlines clean and healthy, and supports many different species of animal, including humans. And yet, it is often overlooked, regarded as merely an innocuous feature of the ocean.

But the fact is that this plant is vital — and it is for that reason that the World Seagrass Association has issued a consensus statement, signed by 115 scientists from 25 countries, stating that these important ecosystems can no longer be ignored on the conservation agenda. Seagrass is part of a marginalized ecosystem that must be increasingly managed, protected and monitored — and needs urgent attention now.

Seagrass meadows are of fundamental importance to human life. They exist on the coastal fringes of almost every continent on earth, where seagrass and its associated biodiversity supports fisheries' productivity. These flowering plants are the powerhouses of the sea, creating life in otherwise unproductive muddy environments. The meadows they form stabilize sediments, filter vast quantities of nutrients and provide one of the planet's most efficient oceanic stores of carbon.

But the habitat seagrasses create is suffering due to the impact of humans: poor water quality, coastal development, boating and destructive fishing are all resulting in seagrass loss and degradation. This leads in turn to the loss of most of the fish and invertebrate populations that the meadows support. The green turtle, dugong and species of seahorse, for example, all rely on seagrass for food and shelter, and loss endangers their viability. The plants are important fish nurseries and key fishing grounds. Losing them puts the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people at risk too, and exposes them to increasing levels of poverty.

Rapid loss

There is clear, extensive evidence of the rapid loss of seagrass. Growing historic, recent and current records show degradation and fragmentation of the plant around the world. In Biscayne Bay, Florida, for example, 2.6km² of seagrass disappeared between 1938 and 2009. Up to 38% of the seagrass in a lagoon in the south of France may have been lost since the 1920s. The nearshore waters of Singapore has lost some 45% over the past 50 years. Similar examples have been reported in Canada, the British Isles and the Caribbean too.

Even the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has suffered periods of widespread decline and loss of seagrass over the past decade, particularly along its central and southern developed coasts; a consequence of multiple years of above average rainfall, poor water quality, and climate-related impacts followed by extreme weather events. The most recent published monitoring surveys show that the majority of inshore seagrass meadows across the reef — which cover some 3,063 km² — remain in a vulnerable state, with weak resistance, low abundance and a low capacity to recover.

Human impact

As the human population grows and the world economy expands, there will be increasing pressure on our coastal zone. And it must be ensured that this doesn't negatively influence seagrass meadows. It is already recognized that poor water quality, specifically elevated nutrients, is the biggest threat to seagrasses; these problems are particularly acute in many developing nations with rapidly growing economies, such as Indonesia, where municipal infrastructure is often limited and environmental legislation is largely weak.

Coastal development is a competition for finite space: boating, tourism, aquaculture, ports, energy projects and housing are all placing pressures on seagrass survival. These threats exist with a backdrop of the impacts of environmental change and sea level rise too. Humans must reduce their local-scale impact on seagrass so that it can remain resilient to longer term environmental stressors.

There can be a bright future for this oceanic plant, however. Across the world, communities, NGOs and governments are beginning to embrace the monitoring of meadows. As knowledge of the plants' ecology improves, conservationists are learning more about how to successfully restore seagrass meadows: Tampa Bay in Florida and Virginia's bays, for example, have seen genuine large scale recovery. We also now have greater appreciation for the value of seagrass in the global carbon cycle, and governments are more willing to include its conservation in ways to mitigate carbon emissions. Though commendable, these are just the first steps on a course of targeted strategic action.

As the WSA statement calls, seagrass meadows must be put at the forefront of marine conservation today. We need to increase its resilience by improving coastal water quality, prevent damage from destructive fishing practices and boating, include seagrasses in Marine Protected Areas and ensure that fisheries aren't over exploited. Seagrasses also need to be managed effectively during coastal developments, and steps taken to ensure recovery and restoration in areas where losses have occurred.

The scientific community must be more united, not only in its work, but in engaging more actively with the general public, coastal managers and conservation agencies too. Seagrass ecosystems must fully pervade policy around the globe too, as well as the consciousness of our global coastal communities. For the sake of future generations we need to work together to ensure the survival of the world's seagrass meadows now.

SEE ALSO: A respected scientist is resorting to desperate measures to try to force the government to fight climate change

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NOW WATCH: The Great Barrier Reef is turning white and it's a horrible sign for the environment

Hurricane Matthew was a devastating storm.

More than 1,000 people died in Haiti, with much of the country still in need of aid. At least thirty-four people died because of the storm in the US, 19 of them in North Carolina, where floodwaters are still rising days after the storm.

But the human toll isn't the end of the devastation North Carolinians will have to deal with.

The Washington Post reports that farmers will need to clean up "at least tens of thousands" of drowned livestock carcasses after floodwaters from Hurricane Matthew washed over factory farms.

In addition to swamping homes and roads in Cumberland and Roberson counties in the state, helicopter surveys show floodwaters reached several facilities where animals are kept, the Post reports. Reuters reports 50,000 fewer hogs were slaughtered nationally on Monday, mostly due to plant closures in North Carolina.

The majority of dead livestock are likely chickens and pigs.

The sheer volume of carcasses can pose a serious public health hazard, the Post reports, and Governor Pat McCrory has promised a rapid cleanup.

As local NBC News affiliated WECT 6 reports, dead animals aren't the only danger as water spills across factory farms.

The flood waters could breach some, if not many, of the hundreds of hog lagoons and poultry waste piles scattered across our region....

“This is just a big massive pit of hog feces and urine,” [Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp] Burdette explained of your typical hog lagoon.  “The animals that are confined to those [neighboring] barns can literally drown inside the barns which we saw in Hurricane Floyd…. Eventually the barns can be damaged enough that the animals literally float out. And there were plenty of stories during hurricane Floyd of full grown dead hogs floating down rivers.”

Back in 1999, Hurricane Floyd flooded large portions of North Carolina, killing 3 million chickens and turkeys and more than 30,000 hogs.

The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has set up a hotline for farmers who need help after the storm.

SEE ALSO: Hurricane Matthew makes landfall as it slams the South Carolina coast

DON'T MISS: The 36 best ways to burn the most calories in an hour

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NOW WATCH: Pilots flew straight into Hurricane Matthew and caught this incredible first-hand footage

Buried in the side of a mountain in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the Global Seed Vault stores virtually every kind of seed.

Cary Fowler, the man considered the "father" of the seed vault and a former executive director of the international nonprofit organization Crop Trust, compares it to a safety deposit box: the point of the vault is not for apocalyptic scenarios, but serves more as a sort of back-up drive.

Fowler, whose book "Seeds On Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault" is out now, explained that the vault is used to store duplicates of existing seed banks that have been collecting seeds for 100 years. That way, if a regional seed vault loses something, the Svalbard collection can replace the sample, as they did when part of a seed collection was damaged in the Syrian War.

Take a look inside the vault that already holds 860,000 samples, with more getting added all the time.

SEE ALSO: What it's like inside the doomsday vault that stores every known crop on the planet

DON'T MISS: The largest living thing on Earth is mostly hidden from view

The vault is located in Svalbard, an archipelago that's part of Norway. It's a cold area filled with polar bears and snow scooters, along with brightly colored houses.

The archipelago is located in the Arctic Ocean, midway between the North Pole and Norway, where the warmest temperature this year was 58 degrees Fahrenheit. The winters remain below 0 and -1 degrees Fahrenheit.

Source: Norwegian Meteorological Institute

The entrance to the vault sticks out of a mountain, illuminated with a light installation by Dyveke Sanne. Fowler told Business Insider that at first, he had no intention to write a book about the vault. In the end, he decided he needed to document how the seed vault came to be, including photos from the construction, striking photos of the Svalbard landscape, and initial design sketches.

You’ve probably seen a S’well water bottle out in the wild, with its unmistakable, sleek, stainless-steel physique and boldly colored exterior, or perhaps faux marble or wood facade.

If you haven’t, you’re bound to see one soon. The company is growing rapidly and is now sold everywhere from mom-and-pop shops to nationwide retailers like Nordstrom and Target to Starbucks stores around the world.

Last year, S’well — the brainchild of CEO Sarah Kauss (No. 49 on the BI 100: The Creators) — pulled in $50 million in sales, a mark that the company hopes to double this year.

But S'well might never have happened at all save for some timely encouragement and wisdom Kauss received from her mother.

Six years ago, Kauss was enjoying a much-needed vacation in Arizona with her mother. At the time, the then 35-year-old Harvard Business School graduate was working “a million hours” in a demanding but successful career in commercial real estate development. Her mother, who was celebrating five years free of cancer, began reflecting on life.

“We had this deep conversation about ‘What would you do if you could do anything?’ — she almost felt like she had an extra life,” Kauss said. 

Her mom decided to become a painter. Kauss, a University of Colorado at Boulder alum with an environmentalist spirit, told her mother about an idea to create a reusable water bottle that didn’t look like bulky camping gear. Her mother pushed her to take plunge.

“I just thought the world needed a more fashionable water bottle,” said Kauss, who envisioned something both beautiful and useful that could sell in the store at the Museum of Modern Art (today, the bottles are in fact sold there).

“I just thought the world needed a more fashionable water bottle.” 

But beyond design, Kauss thought her idea could make a significant impact on the environment, an issue she cared deeply about. With the right blend of fashion and function, she thought, S'well could create a water bottle that's so enjoyable to use that people will stop drinking from plastic bottles — 50 billion of which clog landfills in the US each year.  

So Kauss returned home to New York and invested $30,000 in savings to start S’well right out of her NYC apartment. 

She spent the next six months working to get a prototype of the bottle, find a factory, and launch a website.

“I didn’t know how big the market was [for water bottles], I thought I was building a product for me and maybe a small group of people like me,” Kauss said. 

The Oprah effect

The combination of style and functionality— made of non-leaching and non-toxic stainless steel, the bottle keeps liquids cold for 24 hours and hot for 12 hours —  struck a nerve with customers. A few months after launching S’well, early bulk orders came in from Facebook and Harvard, and Kauss landed in Crate and Barrel for the holiday season. 

“Those first orders were great because it gave me a confidence that people were going to buy [the product],” she said. 

Then Kauss got a call from a senior editor of O, The Oprah Magazine after sending her a sample bottle. The editor took the bottle on vacation and loved it. She wanted to feature it in the magazine, but had one request: Send every color you have. But the bottles only came in blue, so Kauss scrambled to create a new palate of colors and send them off to the manufacturer.

“It was sort of the moment that I said ‘OK this isn’t a project, we’re a company,’” Kauss recalled.

About four months later, Kauss’ array of colored bottles made it into the magazine’s Must Have Things for Summer 2011 list. “What was surprising is how long those magazines live for — we have a ‘How did you hear about us?’ on the website and months and months later people would be saying they saw it in Oprah," Kauss said.

Partnering with Starbucks

On the heels of the Oprah feature, which caused sales to surge in the 600 small retail stores the bottles were sold in at the time, Kauss scored a trial period with Starbucks in 2012 to sell bottles in 140 stores in Atlanta and Austin. The bottles sold out, cementing the partnership with Starbucks, which would become S'well's most lucrative and lasting partner.

The following year, S’well created a hyperlocal collection with Starbucks for its stores in New York City, Seattle, and Hawaii. The bottles were a hit, but it wasn’t until Kauss had the chance opportunity to meet Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (No. 2 on the BI 100: The Creators) that sales really ramped up.

Kauss spotted Schultz standing alone at the grand opening of a Starbucks coffee bar in Seattle, so she grabbed a S’well bottle and introduced herself. Schultz reveled in the story of S’well and wondered why the bottles weren’t in more stores, Kauss said. He invited her to meet with him and his senior leadership team the next day to discuss expansion.

The impact of that meeting was profound: S'well found itself integrated at Starbucks stores around the world — 10,000 locations in North America, as well as Brazil and throughout Asia.

“Starbucks is a beast. They’re amazing. They’re huge and they’re everywhere,” Kauss said.

More than just sheer scope, Starbucks also shared a commitment to higher ideals, including stringent fair trade and sustainability standards. In fact, it took S’well’s factory nearly two years to meet Starbucks’ standards.

“They do so much work to make sure everything is good for the environment and good for the workers and it makes me feel better when I go there as a customer because I know how much work they do," Kauss said. 

Rapid expansion

Buyers are smitten with S’well. In 2015, after rolling out in thousands of Starbucks stores, S’well reached $50 million in sales, a gigantic leap from $10 million the previous year.

The company is continuing its rapid expansion in 2016. This summer, S’well will launch at Starbucks in another 37 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and South Africa. S’well also debuted an exclusive line at Target stores this spring called S’ip by S’well, a smaller bottle size at a lower price point ($25), which will roll out nationwide by the holiday season.

Kauss says this year S'well sales could as much as double to $100 million.

“It’s exciting. It’s sort of unbelievable. You’re standing at the ocean and you just don’t know how big it is,” Kauss said.

Part of the reason the company grew so much last year is its focus on being “on trend,” a commitment that’s grounded in Kauss’ vision to become “the bottle of fashion week.” The company now has more than 200 designs and colors — which range in price from $25 for a 9-ounce bottle to $45 for a 25-ounce bottle — and appears at the buzziest events including SXSW, New York fashion week, and TED conferences. S'well also has brand partnerships with celebrities, Kauss said, a marketing tactic that undoubtedly boosts brand recognition, especially on social media. 

But ultimately, S’well’s success comes down to customer loyalty. On average, customers have 5.5 bottles at home, according to Kauss.

“Our customers have this great appetite, but I thought eventually we’d run out of customers because everybody will have one that’s in the market. ... but what’s surprising is that we keep coming out with new lines — spring, summer, fall, holiday — just like a fashion brand,” Kauss said.

Many customers also appreciate S’well’s social mission. A portion of profits from every bottle sold go to the US fund for UNICEF — $200,000 since 2015 — to help provide clean water to children, and for every wood-surfaced bottle sold a tree is planted through American Forests. But while the charitable aspect is an integral part of the business, Kauss doesn’t think it’s a make or break for buyers.

“We don’t even talk about it that much with our customers, but it’s just the right thing to do,” Kauss said. “It’s part of our DNA, it’s part of our mission statement and part of everything that we do. I think customers are really smart and it has to come from an authentic place.”

SEE ALSO: Why the maker of Fat Tire bucked the trend and became 100% owned by its workers

SEE ALSO: 40 quotes from business visionaries who are changing the world

Join the conversation about this story »

Whether it's in ice cream or cheese, goat's milk has become a popular cooking ingredient and a healthy alternative to cow's milk.

But there's a problem. Each year, thousands of male goats are killed by farmers who cannot afford to keep them.

"Goatober," a month-long campaign in the UK, is the response to the problem from former chef turned meat supplier James Whestlor. The campaign aims to promote goat meat as an alternative to lamb or beef to the general public.

Whetlor told Business Insider that although the goat's milk industry in the UK is expanding, "far too many goats are being euthanised."

The problem with the industry, according to Whetlor, is that the "nannies," or female goats, need to be kept pregnant in order to produce milk.

"When 50% of those animals born are male, you're going to end up with a lot of waste," he said.

Billy goats — young males — are considered a "by-product," and most are euthanised shortly after birth. A very small number are kept on for breeding purposes.

In response, Whetlor founded his company Cabrito in 2012, which supplies retailers like Ocado and Michelin-starred chefs with "kid" goat meat in an effort to reduce waste in the industry.

"On a very fundamental point, I just couldn't understand how an animal can be totally worthless," Whetlor said.

As part of Goatober, Whetlor has partnered with several restaurants, including the Michelin-starred St John in London, to purchase unwanted male goats and serve them on their menus.

"When people usually think about goat, they think about a grown animal," he said. "They think they're smelly and unhygienic and the meat has a very strong taste, but that's not what we're working with here."

Whetlor said that unlike meat from mature goats, kid meat — which comes from an animal that is six or seven months old — is "much lighter, fresher and better for you." He said that because of its subtle flavour, it's easy to incorporate kid meat into most recipes that would usually call for lamb.

"There are some wonderful barbeque recipes for goat chops, and you can make delicious rack of goat too," he said.

Goat meat is still more expensive than lamb, as young goats are given an artificial milk formula so that the females' milk can be sold, but Whetlor is confident that Goatober will change people's perceptions of it.

"We're not asking people to buy it every day," he said, "but we think — if you're someone who drinks goat's milk or likes goat's cheese — this is something you might want to include in your diet."

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The blackcurrant, a small, tart berry, that when married with sugar can be made into jams, sauces, syrups, fruit drinks, and purple candy, is popular across Europe. But most Americans struggle to describe its flavor.

"A large majority [of Americans] have never eaten one — probably less than 0.1%," Marvin Pritts, a professor of horticulture at Cornell University, told Business Insider.

This was not always the case.

In the late 1800s, US farmers grew around 7,400 acres of blackcurrants, gooseberries, and white currants, together known as Ribes species, with New York state leading production, according to a report in the journal HortTechnology.

Then, disaster struck.

Pathologists discovered that blackcurrants spread a fungus, introduced from Europe in the 19th century, that killed white pine trees, the backbone of the nation's timber industry. The federal government took aggressive action: it outlawed the commercial growth of blackcurrants in the early 1900s and financed a program to eradicate Ribes plants.

Crews outfitted with backpacks of chemical spray fanned out across the country. As field after field of Ribes were destroyed, the American consumer's memory of the deep purple fruit was also erased.

America's war against blackcurrants

By the 1800s, America was cutting down white pine forests for timber at such a rapid rate that the nation's nurseries could not keep up. So farmers began turning abroad for cheap tree planting stock. The result was the importation of seeds infected with a parasitic fungus called blister rust. Blister rust first alarmed US officials in 1909 when it was found on a New York plantation of white pine trees grown from seedlings brought over from Germany, according to the book "History of white pine blister rust control: a personal account" by Warren V. Benedict, the former director of the United States Division of Forest Pest Control.

The problem with blackcurrants is that blister fungus — characterized by "yellowish, elongated swellings"— does not hop directly from pine to pine. For the disease to complete its life cycle, it must infect a Ribes species before returning to the needles of white pines and spreading into the bark. Authorities believed the only way to save America's pine trees was to get rid of these intermediary hosts, which had far less economic importance.

"So discovery of a few small pine trees infected with blister rust was to trigger a gigantic fight that has been waged coast to coast for 70 years," Benedict writes.

Blackcurrant cultivation in the US was restricted in 1911, followed one year later by a ban on the importation of white pine seedlings from Europe.

Blackcurrants take a different path in Europe

Blister rust fungus was a well-known nuisance in Europe before it was brought to America. But in contrast to the US, Europe had few commercial pine tree plantations. Blackcurrants, on the other hand, had been an important crop for a long time. "In Europe the white pine was sacrificed to retain the Ribes," writes Benedict.

Today, Europe produces 99.1% of the world's currants (which lumps blackcurrants, red and white currants, and sometimes gooseberries into one group), according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations. Two-thirds of blackcurrants produced in Europe are used for juice, according to a 2007 report from the European Commission.

In England, a blackcurrant cordial mixed with water gained popularity as a vitamin C supplement given to children to prevent scurvy during World War II, after Germany's U-boat campaign prevented citrus fruits like oranges and lemons from entering the UK. Brits will know the name — it's called Ribena.

In 2010, 90% of all blackcurrants grown in Britain were destined for Ribena's bottling factory in Gloucestershire, according to The Guardian. Ribena and energy drink Lucozade did roughly £500 million in combined sales for GlaxoSmithKline in 2012, according to the Financial Times. Both products were sold to a Japanese company in 2013 for over £1.3 billion.

Blackcurrants find a champion in the US

In 2003, Greg Quinn, a children's book author with a background in horticulture, successfully lobbied to have the blackcurrant ban overturned in New York state. By this time, the regulation of blackcurrants had been entrusted to each state. It is now believed that the plants can thrive under proper management, according to Pritts, especially after the development of disease-resistant blackcurrant varieties.

Blackcurrant production is not tracked by the US Department of Agriculture so it is hard to know how many are grown and where, though Pritts suggests there is a "thriving group" of blackcurrant farms in the Hudson Valley of New York and Connecticut, as well as Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Canada.

And, of course, there is Quinn, who grows about 16,000 pounds of blackcurrants on his farm in the Hudson Valley region of New York. He sells 15 different blackcurrant-based products under the brand CurrantC. The company's flagship product is blackcurrant nectar, which costs $9.99 for two 16-ounce bottles on his website.

It is easy for Quinn to gush about the potential of blackcurrants and how he uses them to cook up glazes for game and pork. But outside of his own kitchen, Quinn said he is still "pushing the rock up the hill to introduce to people blackcurrants."

"This may be the last product that everybody knows about except the US,” Quinn said.

It also explains why purple Skittles (and other purple hard candies) are synonymous with grape flavor in the US, but taste like blackcurrant in other countries, including the UK and Australia, as pointed out by Atlas Obscura. 

There are some challenges to growing blackcurrants — they tend to be susceptible to leaf diseases, for example — but the biggest hurdle is marketing and selling them.

"Consumers just don't know what to do with them," said Pitts, "particularly since their taste is off-putting to most Americans."

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A mammoth-sized chunk of jade stone has been unearthed in Burma, the southeast Asian country also known as Myanmar.

The discovery was made in a remote mine in Kachin State in the north of the country. It measures 5.8 meters (19 feet) long and weighs a whopping 175 tonnes (192 US tons), the BBC reports. It’s believed to be worth an eye-watering $170 million.

“I assume that it is a present for the fate of our citizens, the government, and our party as it was discovered in the time of our government. It's a very good sign for us,” said local politician U Tint Soe, according to the Independent.

The stone is reportedly heading for China, where it will be carved into jewelry and sculptures.

The term jade can refer to two different types of metamorphic rock: jadeite and nephrite. This find is believed to be a jadeite rock. The two types are similar in appearance and used for ornamental purposes, although they have a different physical and chemical composition, with jadeite being the most valuable of the two. It’s extremely difficult to tell the difference just by visual inspection.

Around 70% of the world’s high-quality jadeite is thought to come from Myanmar and makes up around half of their gross domestic product. Unfortunately, the multi-billion dollar trade is shrouded in government corruption, crime, and environmental destruction.

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Wednesday night’s final presidential debate brought Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s total debate count to 14. And he managed to complete all of them — well over 20 hours of televised time — without facing a single question about climate change.

Progressive media research center Media Matters for America kept a scorecard throughout the primary debates to tally the number of questions related to climate change that were asked in each one.

The site calculated that, of the 958 questions asked during the 12 Republican presidential debates, just nine (less than 1%) were about climate change. And none of those questions were directed toward Trump. (Ted Cruz also didn’t field a single climate-change question, though Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and John Kasich all did.)

Though Hillary did face a few questions on the topic during the Democratic primary debates, neither presidential candidate faced any questions about climate change during the three general election debates.

The question that inspired the most discussion of the climate came during the town hall-style debate in St. Louis, when Ken Bone, an undecided voter and soon-to-be internet sensation, asked the candidates about their energy-policy platforms.

Bone did not mention climate change, but rather inquired how the candidates plan to meet the country’s energy needs while remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss. Hillary Clinton used the opportunity to bring up Donald Trump’s claims that climate change is a hoax orchestrated by the Chinese, but the evening’s moderators were not responsible for that discussion.

As the final debate approached, environmentalists and lawmakers called on moderator Chris Wallace to ask a question about climate change, which President Barack Obama has called is the biggest threat to our future.

An environmental coalition including the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters gathered 100,000 signatures on a petition that asked for climate change to be included as a topic. Democratic Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island penned an open letter to Wallace and the co-chairs of the Commission on Presidential Debates, pushing for a discussion of cl. And California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is running for a Senate seat, created a petition to urge Wallace to add a climate question as well.

Media outlets including Bloomberg and the Boston Globe also published op-eds suggesting the issue needed to be addressed.

But former debate moderators have claimed climate-change questions don’t make for good TV, and most of the moderators this cycle evidently followed their advice.

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Wednesday night's presidential debate marked the third and final chance for debate moderators to ask Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton questions about climate change. They didn't.

As my colleague Dana Varinsky notes, if you include the primary debates, that makes for more than 20 hours of TV time and 14 debates where the Republican nominee avoided answering climate policy questions.

But Trump and Clinton actually have faced off once about climate policy in a debate.

It wasn't televised, or conducted with the candidates sitting in the same room. Instead, it was a write-in debate conducted in September by the site ScienceDebate.org. Trump and Clinton, along with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, submitted written answers to 20 questions on science policy.

One of the questions read like this: "The Earth’s climate is changing and political discussion has become divided over both the science and the best response. What are your views on climate change, and how would your administration act on those views?"

Clinton offered a specific, detailed response:

When it comes to climate change, the science is crystal clear. Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time and its impacts are already being felt at home and around the world. That’s why as President, I will work both domestically and internationally to ensure that we build on recent progress and continue to slash greenhouse gas pollution over the coming years as the science clearly tells us we must.

I will set three goals that we will achieve within ten years of taking office and which will make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st century:

• Generate half of our electricity from clean sources, with half a billion solar panels installed by the end of my first term.
• Cut energy waste in American homes, schools, hospitals and offices by a third and make American manufacturing the cleanest and most efficient in the world.
• Reduce American oil consumption by a third through cleaner fuels and more efficient cars, boilers, ships, and trucks.
• To get there, my administration will implement and build on the range of pollution and efficiency standards and clean energy tax incentives that have made the United States a global leader in the battle against climate change. These standards are also essential for protecting the health of our children, saving American households and businesses billions of dollars in energy costs, and creating thousands of good paying jobs. 

These standards set the floor, not the ceiling. As President, I will launch a $60 billion Clean Energy Challenge to partner with those states, cities, and rural communities across the country that are ready to take the lead on clean energy and energy efficiency, giving them the flexibility, tools and resources they need to succeed. 

There's a lot to this answer — substance that can be criticized or supported. It references the climate policies she's described publicly in the past, which fall neatly in line with the Obama administration's. Economists have examined her plans, and offered their opinions.

Trump's comment in the debate wasn't quite as extreme as some of the statement's he's made in the past:

(To clarify: Climate change isn't a hoax, and the fact that it snows sometimes doesn't disprove the reality that our world is regularly shatters temperature records and has more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than at any time in the history of our species.)

But Trump's response to ScienceDebate.org also didn't offer much in the way of specific policies. Here it is:

There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of “climate change.” Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water. Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria. Perhaps we should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep pace with an ever-growing world population. Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels. We must decide on how best to proceed so that we can make lives better, safer and more prosperous.

There isn't a lot to draw from this clipped paragraph. Some feelings come across — the scare quotes around "climate change" casting doubt on the legitimacy of a globally-studied, evidence-backed phenomenon. There's also the implication that food production and malaria policy can only be advanced if climate policy isn't— which is weird, because those issues are in fact deeply bound up in our changing climate.

In an article just after the September online debate, I tried to offer the most generous reading possible of Trump's limited response, and point him to science and policy papers that address some of the questions he raises. But the larger point here is that Trump has not, when given the opportunity, offered a policy proposal to actually deal with the dangers of our changing climate. More broadly, his campaign has continued to reflect the disappointing reality that many leaders in one of our country's major political parties reject basic science.

Facts and science matter. Hopefully in the future politicians will treat climate change less like a subject for political grandstanding and more like an opportunity to offer substantive policy solutions.

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Africa’s air pollution is causing more premature deaths than unsafe water or childhood malnutrition, and could develop into a health and climate crisis reminiscent of those seen in China and India, a study by a global policy forum has found.

The first major attempt to calculate both the human and financial cost of the continent’s pollution suggests dirty air could be killing 712,000 people a year prematurely, compared with approximately 542,000 from unsafe water, 275,000 from malnutrition and 391,000 from unsafe sanitation.

While most major environmental hazards have been improving with development gains and industrialisation, outdoor (or “ambient particulate”) air pollution from traffic, power generation and industries is increasing rapidly, especially in fast-developing countries such as Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria.

“Annual deaths from ambient [outdoor] particulate matter pollution across the African continent increased by 36% from 1990 to 2013. Over the same period, deaths from household air pollution also continued to increase, but only by 18%”, said a researcher at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development development centre. The OECD is funded by the world’s richest 35 countries.

For Africa as a whole, the estimated economic cost of premature air pollution deaths in 2013 was roughly $215bn (£175bn) a year for outdoor air pollution, and $232bn for household, or indoor, air pollution.

The study’s author, Rana Roy, is concerned by the pace at which outdoor air pollution is growing in Africa, bucking the downward trend in most countries. Used cars and trucks imported from rich countries are adding to urban pollution caused by household cooking on open fires.

“This mega-trend is set to continue to unfold throughout this century. It suggests that current means of transportation and energy generation in African cities are not sustainable,” said Roy. “Alternative models to those imported from industrialised economies, such as dependence on the individual automobile, are necessary.

“It is striking that air pollution costs in Africa are rising in spite of slow industrialisation, and even de-industrialisation in many countries. Should this latter trend successfully be reversed, the air pollution challenge would worsen faster, unless radically new approaches and technologies were put to use.

“The ‘new’ problem of outdoor air pollution is too large to be ignored or deferred to tomorrow’s agenda. At the same time, Africa cannot afford to ignore the ‘old’ problem of household pollution or to consider it largely solved: it is only a few high-income countries – Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritius, Morocco, Seychelles and Tunisia – that can afford to view the problem of air pollution as being a problem of outdoor particulate pollution alone.”

The study stresses that there is not nearly enough knowledge of the sources of air pollution and its impact in much of Africa. It quotes UK scientist Mathew Evans, professor of atmospheric chemistry at York University, who is leading a large-scale investigation of air pollution in west Africa.

“London and Lagos have entirely different air quality problems. In cities such as London, it’s mainly due to the burning of hydrocarbons for transport. African pollution isn’t like that. There is the burning of rubbish, cooking indoors with inefficient fuel stoves, millions of steel diesel electricity generators, cars which have had the catalytic converters removed and petrochemical plants, all pushing pollutants into the air over the cities. Compounds such as sulphur dioxide, benzene and carbon monoxide, that haven’t been issues in western cities for decades, may be a significant problem in African cities. We simply don’t know.”

Whereas China has reached a level of development that has allowed it to concentrate on solving air pollution, most African countries must grapple with several major environmental burdens at the same time, said the report.

“[They] are not in the position of a China, which can today focus on air pollution undistracted by problems such as unsafe water or unsafe sanitation or childhood underweight,” said Roy.

Henri-Bernard Solignac-Lecomte, head of the Europe, Middle east and Africa unit at the OECD development centre, said the paper made a double case for action. “Air pollution in Africa increasingly hurts people and hinders economic development. Reducing it requires urgent action by governments to change the unsustainable course of urbanisation. Indeed, Africa urbanises at a very fast pace: today’s 472 million urban dwellers will be around a billion in 2050. Today’s investment choices will have decade-long impacts on urban infrastructure and the quality of life of urbanites.

“Bold action to improve access to electricity, using clean technologies such as solar power, can contribute to reducing the exposure of the poorer families to indoor smog from coal or dung-fired cooking stoves.

“As for outdoor pollution, African economies would be well advised to learn from the experience of industrialised countries, for example by developing mass public transportation systems – like Rabat or Addis-Ababa are doing with their tramways.”

Roy warned that the human and economic costs of air pollution might “explode” without bold policy changes in Africa’s urbanisation policies.

He concluded with a call for urgent international action: “If Africa’s local air pollution is contributing to climate change today, at a time when its population stands at 1.2 billion, or 16% of the world’s population, it is safe to suppose that … it is likely to contribute considerably more when its population increases to around 2.5 billion, or 25% of the world’s population in 2050, and thence to around 4.4 billion, or 40% of the world’s population in 2100.”

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Maanasa Mendu thinks she's cracked the code on how to make wind and solar energy affordable. 

On Tuesday, Mendu, a 13-year-old from Ohio, won the grand prize in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge for her work in creating a cost-effective "solar leaves" design to create energy. In addition to winning the title of “America’s Top Young Scientist," she gets $25,000 for her achievement.

The leaves, designed to help developing areas in need of cheaper power sources, cost roughly $5 to make.

Over the past three months, Mendu and nine other finalists worked on their projects alongside a mentor provided by 3M. 

Mendu was inspired to come up with a cheaper way to produce energy after visiting India, where she saw many people who lacked access to affordable clean water and electricity. Originally, her intent was to harness only wind energy.

Here's what the product looked like when Mendu entered the competition:

But along the way, Mendu, with the help of her 3M mentor Margauz Mitera, shifted to a different kind of energy collection. Drawing inspiration from how plants function, she decided to focus on creating her "solar leaves" that harnessed vibrational energy.

Here's how it works: her "leaves" can pick up energy from precipitation, wind, and even the sun using a solar cell and piezoelectric material (the part of the leaf that picks up on the vibrations). These are then transformed into usable energy. 

Here's what the finished product looked like:

Now that the competition is over, Mendu said she wants to develop the prototype further and conduct more tests so that one day she can make it available commercially. 

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Coastal cities could see a rise in sea levels by as much as 4 ft by the end of the century. To help put a visual to the number, artist Nickolay Lamm created this series of simulations of US city landmarks as affected by sea levels rising 5, 12 and 25 feet. Using Climate Central's sea level rise maps, Lamm imagines recognizable locales such as Venice Beach CA, Miami Beach FL, and Boston Harbor with catastrophic flooding.

 Produced by Rob Ludacer

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It's unseasonably cold in New York right now — 43 degrees Fahrenheit in Manhattan, with a high of 51 expected later in the day. That's about 8 degrees below average for October 26.

And sleet, snow, and possibly freezing rain are on the way.

That's according to a National Weather Service (NEWS) report released Wednesday morning. The frozen precipitation, headed down from Canada, should affect the Lower Hudson Valley and northeastern New Jersey. New York City can expect some cold rain but should miss any snowfall.

The snow shouldn't be too bad anywhere or accumulate heavily. The NWS says it will be "brief" and "light." But it's still bizarre late-October weather.

As ever, we remind readers that local weather and climate are not the same thing and that cold weather does not disprove climate change.

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The story of an ancient population that mysteriously disappeared centuries ago might be melting away with the ice in Greenland.

In a recent feature for the New Yorker, science writer Elizabeth Kolbert documented what is happening there. She describes the history that's being lost as the ice melts, which includes the remains of ancient Norse settlements that had been preserved for centuries. Now that temperatures are warming, the ice that had once preserved the artifacts is exposing everything from animal bones to wool to the air. 

"We're losing everything," Thomas McGovern, a professor of archaeology at Hunter College told the New Yorker. "Basically, we have the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria in the ground, and it's on fire."

There's still a lot we don't know about the Norse settlers that landed in Greenland around 1000 A.D., only to disappear around 1400. And our questions may go forever unanswered as the ice melts and materials that were once preserved within that ice start to decompose. 

What we do know, at least, is that the Norse group was led by Erik The Red, who founded the first European settlement in Greenland after being exiled from nearby Iceland. The Norse that came with him set up two settlements in Greenland, and at their peak there were about 5,000 people living there.

But, shortly after reaching that peak, the colonies vanished. No one has been able to definitively conclude what happened to them. Still, there have been a few theories:

• Temperatures on the icy land mass got cooler thanks to a Little Ice Age that lasted from 1300 till around 1850 — this one has been largely been disproved. 
• It could have been some other natural disaster that wiped out the settlements. 
• Their downfall could be because they stayed reliant on cattle and other livestock they had brought with them, instead of adapting to the food that was available in Greenland (seals, fish, etc.). This seems unlikely, as one 2012 study noted, diets began to shift toward more marine resources over time. 
• It may have had to do with social and economic reasons, such as devalued walrus tusks, or tense relations with the Inuit people also living in Greenland, and relative isolation. 
• Or, it could be that they just got tired with their diets of seals and decided to keep moving. 

This idea that they got "bored," proposed back in 2012, seems to be one of the most concrete ideas. 

"Nothing suggests that the Norse disappeared as a result of a natural disaster. If anything they might have become bored with eating seals out on the edge of the world," Niels Lynnerup, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen said in a release.

Lynnerup's reasoning? Skeletons showed that people were headed out, especially younger women who would be necessary in the community to keep the population thriving.

In the end, the reason for the disappearing colonies could be any combination of these factors. The problem is, researchers might not have much longer to keep investigating what's left. What was once preserved in pristine ice is now becoming mush as it gets exposed to the air.

McGovern told the New Yorker that when was in Greenland in the 1980s, he could check out bones, hair, and wool preserved in ice. When he got an update from a graduate student who visited in 2005, he learned that those locations were now falling apart.

What's left of the mysterious Norse colonies isn't the only thing melting away with Greenland. For more, read the full New Yorker piece.

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Last year was a huge turning point for clean power, with renewable energy surpassing coal to become the largest source of power capacity in the world for the first time, according to a new report.

And not only have renewables now overtaken coal, but the rate of their adoptionkeeps getting faster. In another first, growth in renewables outstripped all other forms of new power generation in 2015, with clean energy accounting for more than half of the world's new electricity capacity added last year.

The new figures, released in a market report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) this week, mean that energy forecasts from only a year ago now need to be revised – with renewables growth between 2015 and 2021 predicted to be 13 percent greater than estimated last year.
That revised estimate should see renewables be responsible for 28 percent of electricity generation by 2021 – last year, it accounted for 23 percent, so each year, renewables take over about 1 percent of the electricity market.

That 2021 prediction might only be a little over a quarter of the world's total electricity in five years' time, but it amounts to a massive 7,600 terawatt hours – equivalent to the total combined electricity generation of the US and the European Union (EU) today.

And in that five-year timespan, renewables are expected to absorb 60 percent of all power capacity growth, which basically means the IEA doesn't see the record-setting gains shown in the past year slowing down any time soon.

"We are witnessing a transformation of global power markets led by renewables and, as is the case with other fields, the centre of gravity for renewable growth is moving to emerging markets," said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.

In those emerging markets, the rate of renewables adoption is almost unimaginably fast. In China, two new wind turbines were installed every hour in 2015, meaning the nation had built almost 20,000 new turbines by the end of the year.

That flurry of investment saw China soak up about half of all new wind power additions, and approximately 40 percent of global renewable capacity increases in total.
Wind power led the growth in renewables, adding 66 gigawatt (GW) of capacity in 2015, followed by solar, which represented 49 GW.

And just in case you think that means solar's been slacking off, bear this in mind: that additional 49 GW of capacity amounts to about 500,000 new solar panels being installed around the world every day last year.

So obviously there's a lot to celebrate in these new figures, which the IEA puts down to stronger renewables policies – chiefly in the US, China, India, and Mexico – plus falling prices thanks to stronger competition in the marketplace, and better technology.

But the researchers also say we need to make sure the momentum keeps up.

Many countries around the world still aren't getting behind renewables strongly enough, and even in nations that have thrown their support behind clean power – such as China – their increase in renewables capacity still doesn't meet their ever-higher electricity demands.

Whereas in the US, EU, and Japan, additional renewables capacity is expected to outpace electricity demand over the next five years.

The report also shows that the renewables landscape has changed, with industrialised countries – that once led the charge on clean power – losing ground to emerging nations like China and India. By 2021, these two nations alone are predicted to account for almost half of global renewable capacity additions.

"If you think of running a marathon, Europe started with a big advance, more than half of the marathon they are leading by far," Birol told Adam Vaughan at The Guardian. "They are now getting a bit tired, and some others are overtaking Europe slowly but surely."

Even with the massive gains we're making, though, the researchers warn that uptake still isn't happening fast enough for the world to meet the ambitious commitments made at the 2015 UN Paris climate deal, designed to keep rises in global temperature under 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

In other words, we've come a long way on renewables, but there's still a long way to go.

"I am pleased to see that last year was one of records for renewables and that our projections for growth over the next five years are more optimistic," Birol said in a statement.

"However, even these higher expectations remain modest compared with the huge untapped potential of renewables.

The Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report 2016 is available online.

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