The world's oceans are rising + AI may threaten lawyers' jobs | Top 5

Welcome to Sunday. The top stories of the week on our site are displayed below.

Last week, one of my nieces moved about 2,000 miles to begin a graduate degree in library science. In honor of that new beginning, this week’s editor’s pick is a 2016 article by Donald Barclay. The University of California, Merced, librarian explained why libraries are still popular in the age of the internet.

Sign on the dotted line. AndreyPopov/iStock via Getty Images

Robots are coming for the lawyers – which may be bad for tomorrow’s attorneys but great for anyone in need of cheap legal assistance

Lawyers were thought to be mostly immune from the coming AI revolution, but two legal experts explain why jobs that rely on human ingenuity can still be affected.

What might seem like small changes, like a degree of warming, can have big consequences. AP Photo/John McConnico

IPCC climate report: Profound changes are underway in Earth’s oceans and ice – a lead author explains what the warnings mean

Robert Kopp, Rutgers University

Some of the climate changes will be irreversible for millennia. But some can be slowed and even stopped if countries quickly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, including from burning fossil fuels.

Melting Mongolian ice reveals fragile artifacts that provide clues about how past people lived William Taylor, University of Colorado Boulder From the high Yukon to the mountains of Central Asia, melting ice exposes fragile ancient artifacts that tell the story of the past – and provide hints about how to respond to a changing climate. The maximum human life span will likely increase this century, but not by more than a decade Michael Pearce, University of Washington; Adrian Raftery, University of Washington Jeanne Calment of France died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days. That record will be broken this century, statistical models suggest. Is drinking good for you in any way? If not, why is alcohol legal for adults? Margie Skeer, Tufts University Consuming alcohol makes accidents more likely and it can harm your heart, your liver and even change your brain. But making the sale of beer, wine and hard liquor illegal flopped.