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Cornfields -- which occupy a big fraction of U.S. farmland -- differ from normal ecosystems in that they are nearly sterile ecologically. Breeding and spraying aim to prevent anything from living but corn.

"We'll start in a cornfield — we'll call it an Iowa cornfield in late summer — on a beautiful day. The corn is high. The air is shimmering. There's just one thing missing — and it's a big thing...

...a very big thing, but I won't tell you what, not yet.

"DOHA, Qatar -- 'Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records,' said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Michel Jarraud."

"MIAMI -- Hurricane season 2012, which officially ends Saturday, will go down in hstory as the year of Superstorm Sandy, which carved a path of death and devastation from the Caribbean to the Jersey Shore."

"Scientifically speaking, it also was notable for something it was not: intense. For the third consecutive season, the tropics churned out what not long ago would rank as an abnormally large number of storms - yet curiously only one of 19 managed to reach Category 3 strength.

"Time is running out for Kiribati as the effects of climate change cause more people to lose their homes while the world procrastinates on the issue."

Shell Oil and federal regulators have been tight-lipped about a failed test of the energy giant's Arctic oil-spill equipment, currently under construction in Washington state. But a freedom-of-information request by KUOW reveals what went wrong beneath the surface of Puget Sound.

"YADKINVILLE -- Google, of all companies, last year got into the business of hog poop."