http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/science/fish-climate-change-northeast.html Source:   By Erica Goode, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: POINT JUDITH, R.I. — There was a time when whiting were plentiful in the waters of Rhode Island Sound, and Christopher Brown pulled the fish into his long stern trawler by the bucketful. “We used to come right here and catch two, three, four thousand pounds a day, sometimes 10,” he said,.... But like many other fish on the Atlantic Coast, whiting have moved north, seeking cooler waters as ocean temperatures have risen, and they are now filling the nets of fishermen farther up the coast. Studies have found that two-thirds of marine species in the Northeast United States have shifted or extended their range as a result of ocean warming, migrating northward or outward into deeper and cooler water. Lobster, once a staple in southern New England, have decamped to Maine. Black sea bass, scup, yellowtail flounder, mackerel, herring a

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2016/12/30/with-enough-evidence-even-skepticism-will-thaw/ Source:   By Washington Post For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Video & article about studies of Petermann Ice Shelf in Greenland.  ...Andreas Muenchow had his doubts about whether warming temperatures were causing one of the world’s great platforms of ice to melt and fall apart. He even stood before Congress in 2010 and balked on whether climate change might have caused a mammoth chunk of ice, four times the size of Manhattan, to break off from this floating, 300-square-mile shelf. The University of Delaware oceanographer said he wasn’t sure. He needed more evidence. ...But then the Petermann Ice Shelf lost another two Manhattans of ice in 2012, and Muenchow decided to see for himself, launching a project to study the ice shelf intensively....

https://eos.org/project-updates/using-landsat-to-take-the-long-view-on-greenlands-glaciers Source:   By M. Scheinert, Ralf Rosenau, and Benjamin Ebermann, EoS Earth & Space News, AGU For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: A new web-based data portal gives scientists access to more than 40 years of satellite imagery, providing seasonal to long-term insights into outflows from Greenland's ice sheet. ...Many of Greenland’s outlet glaciers are retreating substantially; they are flowing more rapidly and their surfaces are lowering....

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/notorious-ocean-current-is-far-stronger-than-previously-thought Source:   Emily Underwood, EoS Earth & Space news, AGU For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Notorious among sailors for its strength and the rough seas it creates, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is the largest wind-driven current on Earth and the only ocean current to travel all the way around the planet. Now, researchers have found that the current transports 30% more water than previously thought. The revised estimate is an important update for scientists studying how the world’s oceans will respond to a warming climate. The ACC transports massive amounts of water between the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans in an eastward loop. ...For the new study, Donohue et al. installed gauges along the bottom of Drake Passage, spanning an 800-kilometer passage between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. ...The classic estimate used for the ACC’s transport i

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-skepticism-fueled-by-gut-reaction-to-local-weather/ Source:   By Scott Waldman, ClimateWire, reprinted by Scientific American For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: If it’s hot outside, you’re more likely to believe in climate change. The public perception of climate change is shaped by the weather that people experience, according to a study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. People who live in areas where high temperature records are broken are more likely to believe in global warming than those who do not. In areas that experienced record lows, people were less inclined to believe in the mainstream climate science that shows human activity is warming the Earth. People see climate change through a local lens, said Robert Kaufmann, the study’s lead author and director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University.  ...“When personal experience and exper

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/18/science/polar-bears-global-warming.html Source:  By Erica Goode, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Scientists have counted up to 80 [polar bears] at a time in or near Kaktovik; many look healthy and plump, especially in the early fall, when their presence overlaps with the Inupiat village’s whaling season. But the bears that come here are climate refugees, on land because the sea ice they rely on for hunting seals is receding. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and the ice cover is retreating at a pace that even the climate scientists who predicted the decline find startling. Much of 2016 was warmer than normal, and the freeze-up came late. In November, the extent of Arctic sea ice was lower than ever recorded for that month.  ...The continuing loss of sea ice does not bode well for polar bears, whose existence depends on an ice cover that is rapidly thinning and melting as the clima

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/world/asia/beijing-air-pollution.html Source:  By Jane Perez, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 [Note from FOSS Climate-Blog-Meister: I include this article as an example of how our fossil fuel based energy system contributes not only to climate change, but severe health problems owing to air pollution.] Excerpt: BEIJING — A thick layer of deep gray smog swept into Beijing on Friday afternoon, bringing what the authorities said would be five days of the worst air pollution in a year. The city issued its first red alert for air pollution of 2016, the most severe notice in a four-tier system, requiring schools to close and half of all privately owned cars to stay off the roads. ...The geography of Beijing makes it especially vulnerable to bad air. The city is bordered to the south and east by the coal-consuming industries that emit pollutants, and to the north and west by mountains that trap the emissions. Greenpeace urged the Chinese g

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-entering-the-photovoltaic-energy-era/ Source:   By John Fialka, ClimateWire, reprinted by Scientific American For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Nations from all regions reported to the International Energy Agency for the first time that their markets for solar-generated electricity were growing. According to a “snapshot” of this spurt of activity released by the Paris-based agency, nations in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia reported the world market for “PV,” as it’s commonly called, is setting a variety of records. It grew by 25 percent in 2015 as the price for solar panels, the basic unit needed to make electricity, continues a stunning eight-year drop. ...Since 2008, the price of solar panels has dropped almost 80 percent, and the main reason for that, according to the IEA, is China. ... Some large U.S. panel manufacturers have been pushed into bankruptcy, and others appear to be heading

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/science/california-new-computer-energy-rules.html Source:  By Tatiana Schlossberg, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Computers, long a symbol of the digital age, are now moving into a more earth-friendly future: California’s state energy agency voted unanimously Wednesday to approve new regulations for energy efficiency in desktop computers and monitors. ...Computers use more energy than many other consumer electronics — the electricity used to power all of the computers in the country is the equivalent of the output of 30 large power plants emitting 65 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent every year, according to estimates from the Natural Resources Defense Council ....

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6701 Source:   NASA For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...The 3-D visualization reveals in startling detail the complex patterns in which carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, decreases and moves around the globe over the time period from September 2014 to September 2015....

https://www.google.com/green/projects/announcement-100/ Source:   Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure, Google For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations — including both our data centers and offices. This is a huge milestone. We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy [mostly wind]. That’s bigger than many large utilities and more than twice as much as the 1.21 gigawatts it took to send Marty McFly back in time....

URL Source:   By Robert Sanders, UB Berkeley News, Media relations For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Following Earth’s last ice age, which peaked 20,000 years ago, the Antarctic warmed between two and three times the average temperature increase worldwide, according to a new study by a team of American geophysicists. The disparity – Antarctica warmed about 11 degrees Celsius, nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit, between about 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, while the average temperature worldwide rose only about 4 degrees Celsius, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit – highlights the fact that the poles, both the Arctic in the north and the Antarctic in the south, amplify the effects of a changing climate, whether it gets warmer or cooler. The calculations are in line with estimates from most climate models, proving that these models do a good job of estimating past climatic conditions and, very likely, future conditions in an era of climate change and global warming. ...These models currently predict

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/29/science/alaska-global-warming.html Source:   Text by ERICA GOOD, Photographs and video by JOSH HANER, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Laid out on a narrow spit of sand between the Tagoomenik River and the Bering Sea, [Shaktoolik] the village of 250 or so people is facing an imminent threat from increased flooding and erosion, signs of a changing climate. With its proximity to the Arctic, Alaska is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the United States and the state is heading for the warmest year on record. The government has identified at least 31 Alaskan towns and cities at imminent risk of destruction, with Shaktoolik ranking among the top four. Some villages, climate change experts predict, will be uninhabitable by 2050, their residents joining a flow of climate refugees around the globe, in Bolivia, China, Niger and other countries....

  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-38127320 Source:   By Hywel Griffith, BBC News, Sydney For Investigation:   10.3 For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7. Excerpt: Higher water temperatures in 2016 caused the worst destruction of corals ever recorded on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, a study has found. Some 67% of corals died in the reef's worst-hit northern section, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies report said. The situation was better in the central section, where 6% perished, while the southern reef is in good health. ...This year's mass bleaching was the worst-ever recorded on the Great Barrier Reef, following two previous events in 1998 and 2002. Professor Hughes is certain that the increased water temperature is the result of carbon emissions, and warns that climate change could bring annual bleaching within 20 years. "Most of the losses in 2016 have occurred in the northern, most pristine part of the Great Barrier Reef," he s

URL Source:   By Ian Urbina, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: MIAMI — Real estate agents looking to sell coastal properties usually focus on one thing: how close the home is to the water’s edge. But buyers are increasingly asking instead how far back it is from the waterline. How many feet above sea level? Is it fortified against storm surges? ...Rising sea levels are changing the way people think about waterfront real estate. Though demand remains strong and developers continue to build near the water in many coastal cities, homeowners across the nation are slowly growing wary of buying property in areas most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A warming planet has already forced a number of industries — coal, oil, agriculture and utilities among them — to account for potential future costs of a changed climate. The real estate industry, particularly along the vulnerable coastlines, is slowly awakening to the need to factor in the risks of catastrop

https://eos.org/articles/largest-ever-u-s-shale-oil-deposit-identified-in-texas Source:   By Aaron Sidder, Earth & Space News (EoS), AGU For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As global oil prices remain mired in their worst downturn in decades, news from western Texas suggests that petroleum fortunes continue to smile on the region. In its first assessment in nearly a decade of the Permian Basin, a large sedimentary basin underlying parts of Texas and New Mexico, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has determined that a vast deposit of shale there, known as the Wolfcamp shale, contains much more oil than previously estimated. ...the region contains what is estimated to be the largest amount of continuous oil—meaning oil accessible only by means of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking—ever assessed in the United States. The agency estimated the Wolfcamp shale contains 20 billion barrels (3.2 billion cubic meters) of oil that can be recovered using today’s technology. That’s nearly 3 ti

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/18/they-may-save-us-yet-scientists-found-a-way-to-turn-our-carbon-emissions-into-rock/ Source:   By Chris Mooney, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Earlier this year, a project in Iceland reported an apparent breakthrough in the safe underground storage of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide — an option likely to be necessary if we’re to solve our global warming problem. The Carbfix project, run by a leading Icelandic producer of geothermal power, Reykjavik Energy, announced that it had successfully injected 250 tons of carbon dioxide, dissolved in water, into an underground repository of volcanic rocks called basalts — and that the carbon carbon dioxide ...had apparently become one with the basalt, undergoing a fast chemical reaction and forming a type of rock called a carbonate in two years’ time. ...And now, a group of American researchers has taken the science even farther.... Peter

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/average-us-family-destroys-football-fields-worth-arctic-sea-ice-every-30-years Source:   By By Warren Cornwall, Science For Investigation:   Excerpt: The jet fuel you burned on that flight from New York City to London? Say goodbye to 1 square meter of Arctic sea ice. Since at least the 1960s, the shrinkage of the ice cap over the Arctic Ocean has advanced in lockstep with the amount of greenhouse gases humans have sent into the atmosphere, according to a study published this week in Science. Every additional metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) puffed into the atmosphere appears to cost the Arctic another 3 square meters of summer sea ice—a simple and direct observational link that has been sitting in data beneath scientists' noses. "It's really basic," says co-author Dirk Notz, a sea ice expert at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. "In retrospect, it sounds like something someone should have d

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/business/energy-environment/batteries-that-make-use-of-solar-power-even-in-the-dark.html Source:   By Stanley Reed, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: HARTWELL, ENGLAND — A new cash crop has sprung up on Nicholas Beatty’s enchanting farm near here. Rows of gray solar panels range over about 25 acres, turning sunlight into electricity, as dog-size muntjac deer hop by. The panels themselves, trouble-free money earners that feed into the electric grid, are no longer unusual on farms in Britain or other countries. What’s new in Mr. Beatty’s field is a hulking 40-foot-long shipping container. Stacked inside, in what look like drawers, are about 200 lithium-ion cells that make up a battery large enough to store a substantial portion of the electricity the solar farm puts out. ...Power prices in Britain and elsewhere rise and fall, sometimes strikingly, during the day and over the year, depending on the supply and demand. By storing po

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/24/world/asia/living-in-chinas-expanding-deserts.html Source:   By Josh Haner, Edward Wong, Derek Watkins, and Jeremy White, The New York Times For Investigation:  10.3 Excerpt: People on the edges of the country’s vast seas of sand are being displaced by climate change. In the Tengger Desert, China — This desert, called the Tengger, lies on the southern edge of the massive Gobi Desert, not far from major cities like Beijing. The Tengger is growing. For years, China’s deserts spread at an annual rate of more than 1,300 square miles. Many villages have been lost. Climate change and human activities have accelerated desertification. China says government efforts to relocate residents, plant trees and limit herding have slowed or reversed desert growth in some areas. But the usefulness of those policies is debated by scientists, and deserts are expanding in critical regions. Nearly 20 percent of China is desert, and drought across the northe

https://eos.org/articles/map-reveals-hot-spots-for-arctic-greenhouse-gas-emissions Source:   By JoAnna Wendel, Earth & Space news, EoS, AGU For Investigation:  10.3 Excerpt: Across the Arctic tundra in summer, vast lakes and wetlands curve across the landscape, painting lazy swirls of blue against brilliant greens of moss, shrubs, and lichens. Within this landscape of hummocks and hollows looms a threat scientists have yet to fully quantify: Huge amounts of carbon, locked into frozen soil for hundreds to thousands of years, are now escaping from the thawing soil and becoming greenhouse gases. ...Soil is full of organic matter in various stages of decay. As this organic matter decays, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane get released into the atmosphere. However, perpetually frozen soils, called permafrost, prevent organic matter from decaying, which traps carbon. Scientists estimate that permafrost locks up 1400 gigatons of carbon—more than twice the amount current

http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/10/10/climate-refuges-identified-for-endangered-snow-leopards/ Source:   By Brett Israel, UC Berkeley News For Investigation:   10.3 2016-10-10. Climate refuges identified for endangered snow leopards. . For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 8 and Climate Change chapter 8. Excerpt: A new study of snow leopards’ habitat has found that just one-third of their current range will be a refuge from climate change by 2070, as habitat loss and fragmentation in the Himalaya and Hengduan mountains threaten not just snow leopards, but other species in the region. Snow leopards live in remote, high-elevation area on and surrounding the Tibetan Plateau, known as “the roof of the world.” The region is warming more than twice as fast as the Northern Hemisphere on average, threatening endangered species that call it home. Among these species, snow leopards are critically important to the Tibetan Plateau ecosystem because they are apex predators, which keep the ecosyste

http://www.nature.com/news/world-leaders-discuss-ban-of-climate-busting-refrigerants-1.20768 Source:   By Robynne Boyd, Nature For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: After being directed for almost 30 years at substances that destroy ozone, the Montreal Protocol will for the first time target a group of greenhouse gases. Beginning today in Kigali, Rwanda, member states of the United Nations are finalizing the terms of what could be the largest commitment to reducing global warming since the Paris Agreement on climate last December. Delegates are likely to take till the meeting’s final day on 14 October to hammer out the knotty details of an amendment to the protocol. Ideally, the amendment will set the terms for a rapid phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the most common of which is the refrigerant HFC-134a, which has 1,430 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide (CO2) over 100 years. The amendment would stop the manufacture of HFCs and then reduce their use over time....

http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/10/07/climate-change-could-be-a-greater-threat-to-tropical-frogs-than-deforestation/ Source:   By Brett Israel, UC Berkeley News For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Changes in climate and land use are expected to reduce the livable area for tropical frogs because these species will increasingly encounter temperatures hot enough to harm their behavior, reproduction and physiology. Climate change, however, may be the most destructive force, according to a recent study involving a researcher from UC Berkeley. The researchers found that declines in frogs’ thermally suitable habitat area from climate change alone could be up to 4.5 times greater than declines attributable to land-cover change only, such as converting a forest to agriculture. Unlike humans, frogs rely on external sources to regulate their body temperature, so habitats in which frogs are unable to keep their body temperature below their maximum temperature limit are unlikely to support frog p

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/automobiles/autoshow/range-is-all-the-rage-in-paris-as-electric-cars-steal-the-show.html Source:  By Jerry Garrett, The New York Times For Investigation:  10.3 Excerpt: PARIS — For perhaps the first time at a major international auto salon, the stars of the Paris Motor Show are electric cars. ...this show may end up being best remembered as a tipping point for an electric car revolution poised to challenge the automobile industry’s internal-combustion status quo — although some of the excitement is still speculative, of course. ...Almost every other manufacturer in attendance is offering at least one new model with full electric operation or a hybrid combination of gas and electric. Exhibit A came from the Opel division of General Motors, which unveiled the production-ready Ampera-e — the European version of its all-electric Chevrolet Bolt, which is supposed to go on sale late this year in North America. The five-passenger subcompact Ampera-e prom

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/dramatic-move-trudeau-says-canada-will-put-price-carbon Source:   By Wayne Kondro, Science Insider (AAAS) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Having campaigned on a promise to reduce Canada’s carbon footprint, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today took a step toward that goal by announcing that his government will impose a pan-Canadian price on carbon, even if that means he must trample on reluctant provincial governments. But some critics say Trudeau’s move doesn’t go far enough, and three top provincial environment ministers protested the decision by walking out of a high-level meeting today. With federal, provincial, and territorial environment ministers meeting in Montreal, Canada, to hammer out a national carbon reduction plan, Trudeau dropped a bombshell on their negotiations. He announced to the House of Commons that Ottawa will impose a $7.62 per metric ton minimum tax on carbon commencing in 2018, which will rise by $7.62 each year unti

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/study-earths-roughly-warmest-in-about-100000-years/2016/09/26/2672bb28-8412-11e6-b57d-dd49277af02f_story.html Source:   By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: WASHINGTON — A new study paints a picture of an Earth that is warmer than it has been in about 120,000 years, and is locked into eventually hitting its hottest mark in more than 2 million years. As part of her doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, Carolyn Snyder, now a climate policy official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, created a continuous 2 million year temperature record, much longer than a previous 22,000 year record. Snyder’s temperature reconstruction, published Monday in the journal Nature , doesn’t estimate temperature for a single year, but averages 5,000-year time periods going back a couple million years. Snyder based her reconstruction on 61 different sea surface temperature proxies from across the globe, such as rat

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/science/shrinking-artic-ice.html Source:   Associated Press For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: The sea ice reached its summer low point on Saturday, extending 1.6 million square miles — just behind the mark set in 2012, 1.31 million square miles....

http://www.newsminer.com/news/alaska_news/above-the-arctic-circle-climate-change-closes-in-on-barrow/article_1e241b12-7911-11e6-bfe4-233b326bfe57.html Source:   By Adam Popescu, Washington Post For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: BARROW, Alaska — Here in the northernmost municipality of the United States, 320 miles above the Arctic Circle, people are facing the idea that they may soon be among the world's first climate-change refugees. Warming air, melting permafrost and rising sea levels are threatening their coastline, and researchers predict that by midcentury, the homes, schools and land around Barrow and its eight surrounding villages will be underwater. This despite decades of erecting barriers, dredging soil and building berms to hold back the water. "The coastline is backing up at rates of [30 to 65 feet] per year," says Robert Anderson, a University of Boulder geomorphologist who has studied Alaska's landscape evolution since 1985 and who first noticed in

http://xkcd.com/1732/ Source:   By XKCD Comics For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: When people say "climate has changed before," here are the kinds of changes they're talking about...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/science/carlisle-england-climate-change-flooding.html Source:   By Tatiana Schlossberg, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: CARLISLE, England — After this ancient fortress city was hit by a crippling flood in 2005, its residents could take some comfort in the fact that it was the kind of deluge that was supposed to happen about once every 200 years. But it happened again four years later. And again last winter, when Storm Desmond brought record-breaking downpours that turned roads into rivers, fields into lakes, living rooms into ponds. ...In many places, the threat of climate change can still feel distant, even theoretical. But not here, a city of about 74,000 in the far northwest corner of England, where one of its rivers swelled to about 30 times its normal volume last year. About 2,000 houses and 500 businesses were damaged or destroyed in the flooding, and by July, thousands of people still were not able to return to their h

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Gov-Brown-orders-big-greenhouse-gas-cuts-9211316.php Source:   By  David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed the nation’s toughest climate law, requiring California to slash its greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 while leaving open the question of exactly how to do it. No other state has enacted such deep emission cuts into law. The legislation goes well beyond the reductions required by California’s landmark 2006 global warming law, AB32, which called for returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The state’s emissions have fallen 9.5 percent since peaking in 2004, and analysts now consider the 2020 goal well within reach. “Here we are, 10 years later, emissions have gone down and the economy has gone up,” said state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills (Los Angeles County), who wrote AB32 as well as the new law, SB32. “It’s a success story.” Brown al

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Climate-change-test-doesn-t-make-for-greener-9204104.php Source:   Associated Press For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: LOS ANGELES — In the course of a 17-year experiment on more than 1 million plants, scientists put future global warming to a real world test — growing California flowers and grasslands with extra heat, carbon dioxide and nitrogen to mimic a not-so-distant, hotter future. The results, simulating a post-2050 world, aren’t pretty. And they contradict those who insist that because plants like carbon dioxide — the main heat-trapping gas spewed by the burning of fossil fuels — climate change isn’t so bad, and will result in a greener Earth. At least in the California ecosystem, the plants that received extra carbon dioxide, as well as those that got extra warmth, didn’t grow more or get greener. They also didn’t remove the pollution and store more of it in the soil, said study author Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institut

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/world/asia/obama-xi-jinping-china-climate-accord.html Source:   By Mark Landler and Jane Perlez, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: HANGZHOU, China — President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China formally committed the world’s two largest economies to the Paris climate agreement here on Saturday, cementing their partnership on climate change and offering a rare display of harmony in a relationship that has become increasingly discordant. ...Jeffrey A. Bader, who helped formulate Mr. Obama’s Asia strategy as his chief China adviser in the first term...expressed concern that the South China Sea would be a chronic source of friction. The situation hasn’t stabilized,” Mr. Bader said. “Achieving that is beyond the capacity of the U.S. alone.” China has extended its military reach there by building artificial islands with airfields, facilities that American commanders have said they regard as military bases. ...Chinese military of

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-by-global-warming-has-already-begun.html Source:   By Justin Gillis, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Scientists’ warnings that the rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline are no longer theoretical. NORFOLK, Va. — Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through. Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland. And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets. ...In Miami Beach, the city engineer, Bruce A. Mowry, has come up with a p

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/science/americas-first-offshore-wind-farm-may-power-up-a-new-industry.html Source:   By Justin Gillis, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: A just-completed project off the coast of Rhode Island, though relatively tiny, is at the forefront of a sea-based transition to renewable energy. ...By global standards, the Block Island Wind Farm is a tiny project, just five turbines capable of powering about 17,000 homes. Yet many people are hoping its completion, with the final blade bolted into place at the end of last week, will mark the start of a new American industry, one that could eventually make a huge contribution to reducing the nation’s climate-changing pollution. ...The technology has been proved in Europe, where offshore wind farms as large as 300 turbines are being developed, with each turbine costing up to $30 million to build, install and connect to the power grid. But the first major proposal in the United State

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/us/shishmaref-alaska-elocate-vote-climate-change.html Source:   By Christopher Mele and Daniel Victor, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Residents of a small Alaskan village voted this week to relocate their entire community from a barrier island that has been steadily disappearing because of erosion and flooding attributed to climate change. ...Shishmaref is not alone in facing a move because of the effects of climate change. In January, the federal government allocated $48 million to relocate Isle de Jean Charles, La., an island that is sinking into the sea. The effort earned the residents the title of the United States’ first “climate refugees.” As many as 200 million people could be displaced by 2050 because of climate change, according to a study for the British government. In Alaska, 31 villages face “imminent threat of destruction” from erosion and flooding, according to the Arctic Institute, a nonprofit group in Washing

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/asia/china-coal-health-smog-pollution.html Source:   By Edward Wong, The New York Times For Investigation:   Excerpt: BEIJING — Burning coal has the worst health impact of any source of air pollution in China and caused 366,000 premature deaths in 2013, Chinese and American researchers said on Thursday. Coal is responsible for about 40 percent of the deadly fine particulate matter known as PM 2.5 in China’s atmosphere, according to a study the researchers released in Beijing. ...The study attributed 155,000 deaths in 2013 related to ambient PM 2.5 to industrial coal burning, and 86,500 deaths to coal burning at power plants. Fuel combustion of both coal and biomass in households was another major cause of disease that year, resulting in 177,000 deaths, the study concluded. The researchers also found that transportation was a major cause of mortality related to PM 2.5, with 137,000 deaths attributed to it in 2013. In recent years, Chinese sc

http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Melting-glaciers-pose-threat-beyond-water-9146303.php Source:   By Associated Press For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: PASTORURI GLACIER, Peru — The tropical glaciers of South America are dying from soot and rising temperatures, threatening water supplies to communities that have depended on them for centuries. But experts say that the slow process measured in inches of glacial retreat per year also can lead to a sudden, dramatic tragedy. The melting of glaciers like Peru’s Pastoruri has put cities such as Huaraz, located downslope from the glacier about 35 miles away, at risk from what scientists call a “glof” — glacial lake outburst flood. A glof occurs when the weak walls of a mountain valley collapse under the weight of meltwater from a glacier. Recent examples include the rapid draining in 2013 of a lake at Chile’s Ventisquero glacier in the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park, six years after another, nearby lake essentially disappeared there

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/does-water-vapor-from-volcanic-eruptions-cause-climate-warming Source:   By Alexandra Branscombe, Earth & Space News EoS (AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...A longstanding question involves whether gases emitted by volcanoes help trap energy on a global scale. Specifically, water vapor—which traps more radiation in the atmosphere than any other gas, alone accounting for half of the greenhouse gas effect—is of great interest to scientists studying volcanoes and global climate change. In theory, the force of eruptions could inject water vapor into the stratosphere, where the water vapor could reside for months and cause significant warming.  ...Sioris et al. took measurements from the 2015 eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile to see how much vapor a moderate-sized volcanic eruption would spew into the stratosphere. The researchers used the Aura satellite to take samples of the water vapor in the volcanic plume following the eruptio

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/science/nasa-global-temperatures-2016.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...NASA scientists announced on Tuesday that global temperatures so far this year were much higher than in the first half of 2015. Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, said that while the first six months of 2015 made it the hottest half-year ever recorded, “2016 really has blown that out of the water.” He said calculations showed there was a 99 percent probability that the full year would be hotter than 2015. Dr. Schmidt said the world was now “dancing” with the temperature targets set last year in the Paris climate treaty for nations to limit climate change. He attributed part of the rise in temperatures this year to El Niño, in which warming waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean pump a lot of heat into the atmosphere....

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/07/world/americas/bolivia-climate-change-lake-poopo.html Source:   Text by Nicholas Casey, Photographs and video by Josh Haner, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: After surviving decades of water diversion and cyclical El Niño droughts in the Andes, Lake Poopó basically disappeared in December. The ripple effects go beyond the loss of livelihood for the Quispes and hundreds of other fishing families, beyond the migration of people forced to leave homes that are no longer viable. ...The vanishing of Lake Poopó threatens the very identity of the Uru-Murato people, the oldest indigenous group in the area. They adapted over generations to the conquests of the Inca and the Spanish, but seem unable to adjust to the abrupt upheaval climate change has caused. Only 636 Uru-Murato are estimated to remain in Llapallapani and two nearby villages. Since the fish died off in 2014, scores have left to work in lead mines or salt flats

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/science/fighting-ocean-acidification-through-kelp.html Source:   The Associated Press For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Joth Davis, a senior scientist at the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, recently unspooled 150 feet of line holding thousands of tiny spores of kelp into Hood Canal in Washington State. ...The bull kelp seedlings will eventually form thick, slimy ribbons of brown seaweed — and in the process take up carbon dioxide and other nutrients. The researchers hope kelp may provide offer a local strategy for easing the effects of ocean acidification. ...

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/In-vitro-fertilization-may-save-coral-reefs-8326086.php Source:   By David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Marine biologists at the California Academy of Sciences have joined a new international effort to rescue endangered coral reefs from the consequences of widespread human destruction and a warming climate. Teams of research divers from the academy will set off this summer on expeditions to the Caribbean and Mexico, where they will seed two of the region’s major reefs with millions of coral larvae born from the organisms’ sperm and egg cells. ...corals are actually colonies of tiny animals that build their limestone homes from the sea, and derive their colors from the algae that live inside them. Their lives are increasingly threatened by global plagues like expanding human development, ocean pollution, and the twin signals of global climate change: rising temperatures and increasing ocean acidification.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/us/as-wind-power-lifts-wyomings-fortunes-coal-miners-are-left-in-the-dust.html Source:   By Coral Davenport, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...In Wyoming, the country’s biggest coal-producing state, the energy landscape is transforming along with the nation’s, but in a state of 584,000 people, that change is happening at hyperspeed. ...The new positions and financial opportunities offered by wind and other new-energy industries are not replacing all the jobs going up in coal smoke. ...The thousands of coal workers who will probably lose their jobs do not necessarily have the technical skills to operate wind farms. In any case, new wind jobs will number in the hundreds, not the thousands. ...Today, about 66 percent of the electricity in the United States is produced by coal and natural gas, and just 7 percent is produced by renewable sources such as wind and solar. But market forces and government regulations are rapidly chan

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/world/australia/climate-change-bramble-cay-rodent.html Source:   By Michelle Innis, The New York Times For Investigation:   Excerpt: SYDNEY, Australia — Australian researchers say rising sea levels have wiped out a rodent that lived on a tiny outcrop in the Great Barrier Reef, in what they say is the first documented extinction of a mammal species due to human-caused climate change. ...The long-tailed, whiskered creature, called the Bramble Cay melomys, was considered the only mammal endemic to the Great Barrier Reef. “The key factor responsible for the death of the Bramble Cay melomys is almost certainly high tides and surging seawater, which has traveled inland across the island,” Luke Leung, a scientist from the University of Queensland who was an author of a report on the species’ apparent disappearance, said by telephone. “The seawater has destroyed the animal’s habitat and food source. This is the first documented extinction of a mammal bec

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/underground-injections-turn-carbon-dioxide-stone Source:   By Eli Kintisch, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Researchers working in Iceland say they have discovered a new way to trap the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) deep underground: by changing it into rock. Results published this week in Science show that injecting CO2 into volcanic rocks triggers a reaction that rapidly forms new carbonate minerals—potentially locking up the gas forever. The technique has to clear some high hurdles to become commercially viable. ...unlike sandstone, the basalt contains metals that react with CO2, forming carbonate minerals such as calcite—a process known as carbonation. But they thought the process might take many years. To find out, they launched the CarbFix experiment 25 kilometers east of Reykjavik, intending to dose Iceland’s abundant underground basalt with CO2 that bubbles from cooling magma underground and is collected at a nearby g

http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/06/09/climate-change-could-trigger-tropical-evacuations-researchers-advise/ Source:   By  Kathleen Maclay, UC Berkeley News For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Global warming by just 2 degrees Celsius is likely to force some tropical plant, animal and human populations to relocate hundreds of miles from their current homes this century, according to research published today in the journal Scientific Reports [http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep25697]. Solomon Hsiang, Chancellor’s Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Adam Sobel, a professor of applied physics and math at Columbia University, foresee dramatic population declines in Mexico, Central America, Africa, India and other tropical locales if ecosystems or humans move due to climate change. In their analysis, the pair used a model to demonstrate how climate dynamics in the tropics can dramatically magnify the consequences of climate change as it is experien

https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts/health/factsheets/ Source:   Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) For Investigation:   10.3 Fact Sheets on Climate Change and the Health of Children, Indigenous Populations, Occupational Groups, Older Adults, People with Disabilities, People with Existing Medical Conditions, Pregnant Women. Also Climate Change, Health, and Environmental Justice....

http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/sea-level-rise/ Source:   By John King, San Francisco Chronicle For Investigation:  10.3 Excerpt: An abundance of scientific studies says the bay’s average tide could climb several feet or more by 2100, with most change coming in the decades after 2050. It’s an inexorable shift that threatens low-lying neighborhoods as well as the fish, birds and wildlife that need tidal flats to survive. If sea levels were to rise 36 inches, the midrange increase through 2100 projected in the most recent study by the National Research Council, water would wash into San Francisco’s Ferry Building twice daily at high tide. With just 16 inches of sea-level rise, the tollbooths of the Bay Bridge could be flooded during storms. $35 billion worth of public property in San Francisco is at risk if sea-level rise by 2100 reaches 66 inches, the upper level forecast by the National Research Council. Already, lanes on the ramps connecting Highway 101 to the Shoreline High

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/earth-s-climate-may-not-warm-quickly-expected-suggest-new-cloud-studies Source:   By Tim Wogan, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt:  three new studies show how naturally emitted gases from trees can also form the seed particles for clouds. The results not only point to a cloudier past, but they also indicate a potentially cooler future: If Earth’s climate is less sensitive to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, as the study suggests, future temperatures may not rise as quickly as predicted....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/science/solar-power-floating-on-water.html Source:   By Erica Goode, The New York Times. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: An expanse of blue solar panels stretches across part of the Yamakura Dam reservoir in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture. In two years, if construction goes as planned, 50,904 panels will float atop the reservoir, generating an estimated 16,170 megawatt hours annually, enough electricity to power almost 5,000 homes, according to Kyocera, the company building the solar plant. ...Unlike most land-based solar plants, floating arrays can also be hidden from public view, a factor in the nonprofit Sonoma Clean Power Company’s decision to pursue the technology. “Sonoma County boasts some of the most beautiful rolling hills, and people don’t want to see them covered by solar panels,” said Rebecca Simonson, a senior power analyst for the renewable energy developer, .... The floating arrays have other assets. They help keep water from evaporati

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/us-moves-cut-greenhouse-emissions-farms-new-study-finds-big-global-challenge Source:   By Virginia Gewin, Patrick Monahan, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: From cow burps to decaying food waste, agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers estimate farms are responsible for about 13% of total global emissions, making it the world’s second-largest source, after energy production. And now that nations have committed to trying to hold global warming to no more than 2°C above preindustrial levels, researchers and policymakers are looking for practical ways to cut agriculture’s contribution to climate change. Two recent developments could inform that search. Last week, officials in the United States—one of the world’s largest sources of agricultural products—released a progress report on U.S. efforts to promote “climate smart” agriculture. And this week, an international research team published a study that high

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/us/resettling-the-first-american-climate-refugees.html Source:   By Coral Davenport and Campbell Robertson, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. ...In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems. One of those grants, $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles, is something new: the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the impacts of climate change. The divisions the effort has exposed and the logistical and moral dilemmas it has presented point up in microcosm the massive problems the world could face in the coming decades as it confronts a new category of displaced people who have become known as climate refugees. “We’re going to lose all our heritage, all our culture,” lamented Chief Albert Naquin of th

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/science/carbon-dioxide-recycling.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times For Investigation:  10.3 Excerpt: BERKELEY, Calif. — Think, for a moment, of carbon dioxide as garbage, a waste product from burning fossil fuels. Like other garbage, almost all of that CO2 is thrown away — into the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change. A small amount is captured and stored underground to keep it out of the air. But increasingly, scientists are asking, rather than throwing away or storing CO2, how about recycling some of it? ...the ultimate goal of researchers in this field is to turn the waste product of fuel-burning into new fuel. In theory, if this could be done on a large scale using renewable energy or even sunlight, there would be no net gain of emissions — the same carbon dioxide molecules would be emitted, captured, made into new fuels and emitted again, over and over. ...Carbon dioxide is used to make some basic products li

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/science/2016-global-warming-record-temperatures-climate-change.html Source:   By Tatiana Schlossberg, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...It has been the hottest year to date, with January, February and March each passing the mark set in 2015, according to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. March was also the 11th consecutive month to see a new record for temperatures since agencies started tracking them in the 1800s....   See also: NOAA monthly update, March 2016 - http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201603

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/world/asia/climate-related-death-of-coral-around-world-alarms-scientists.html Source:   By Michelle Innis, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: SYDNEY, Australia — Kim Cobb, a marine scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, expected the coral to be damaged when she plunged into the deep blue waters off Kiritimati Island, .... Still, she was stunned.... “The entire reef is covered with a red-brown fuzz,... It is algae that has grown over dead coral. It was devastating.” The damage off Kiritimati is part of a mass bleaching of coral reefs around the world, only the third on record and possibly the worst ever. Scientists believe that heat stress from multiple weather events including the latest, severe El Niño, compounded by climate change, has threatened more than a third of Earth’s coral reefs. Many may not recover. Coral reefs are the crucial incubators of the ocean’s ecosystem, .... An estimated 30 million small-scale fi

http://ourchildrenstrust.org/event/740/breaking-victory-landmark-climate-case Source:   Our Children's Trust For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Today, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin of the federal District Court in Eugene, OR, decided in favor of 21 young Plaintiffs, and Dr. James Hansen on behalf of future generations, in their landmark constitutional climate change case brought against the federal government and the fossil fuel industry. The Court’s ruling is a major victory for the 21 youth Plaintiffs, ages 8-19, from across the U.S. in what Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein call the “most important lawsuit on the planet right now.” These plaintiffs sued the federal government for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, and their right to essential public trust resources, by permitting, encouraging, and otherwise enabling continued exploitation, production, and combustion of fossil fuels....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/science/climate-models-may-overstate-clouds-cooling-power-research-says.html Source:   By John Schwartz, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: The computer models that predict climate change may be overestimating the cooling power of clouds, new research suggests. ...The new paper suggests the effects of a flaw in the model could be serious: Based on its analysis of one model of climate change, the cloud error could mean an additional 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming than expected....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/upshot/promising-signs-that-economies-can-rise-as-carbon-emissions-decline.html Source:   Coral Davenport, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 2016-04-05. . By . For GSS Climate Change chapter 10. 20th century, the global economy was fueled by burning coal to run factories and power plants, and burning oil to move planes, trains and automobiles. The more coal and oil countries burned — and the more planet-warming carbon dioxide they emitted — the higher the economic growth. And so it seemed logical that any policy to reduce emissions would also push countries into economic decline. Now there are signs that G.D.P. growth and carbon emissions need not rise in tandem, and that the era of decoupling could be starting. Last year, for the first time in the 40 years since both metrics have been recorded, global G.D.P. grew but global carbon emissions leveled off. Economists got excited, but they also acknowledged that it could have been an anoma

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/science/nasa-is-facing-a-climate-change-countdown.html Source:   John Schwartz, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Kennedy Space Center and other NASA facilities near coastlines are facing the prospect of continually rising waters. ...Like so much of Florida, the Space Coast — a 72-mile stretch along the Atlantic — is feeling the threat of climate change. Some of the erosion is caused by the churning energy of ocean currents along the coastline. Hurricane Sandy, whose power was almost certainly strengthened by climate change, took a big bite in 2012, flattening an already damaged dune line that provided protection from the Atlantic’s battering. ...According to a study published last week, warming pressure on the Antarctic ice sheet could help push sea levels higher by as much as five or six feet by the end of this century....

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/04/fact-sheet-what-climate-change-means-your-health-and-family Source:   The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...the Obama Administration released a new final report called The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment, .... Air pollution and airborne allergens will likely increase, .... Extreme heat can be expected to cause an increase in the number of premature deaths, from thousands to tens of thousands, each summer, .... Warmer winter and spring temperatures are projected to lead to earlier annual onset of Lyme disease cases in the eastern United States .... Rising temperature and increases in flooding, runoff events, and drought will likely lead to increases in the occurrence and transport of pathogens in agricultural environments, which will increase the risk of food contamination and human exposure to pathogens and toxins. ... Climate

https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/does-nuclear-power-have-future-america Source:   By Brian Palmer, OnEarth NRDC For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: the first new reactor of the 21st century, Watts Bar Unit 2 had finally received its operating license ( https://www.tva.gov/Newsroom/Watts-Bar-2-Project ). ...growing concerns about climate change began beckoning a few wary environmentalists into the carbon-free nuclear camp, with such notables as Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand and renowned climatologist James Hansen endorsing a nuclear expansion. ...Nuclear’s heyday came in the 1970s. Utilities broke ground on dozens of reactors around the country, including two units at Tennessee’s Watts Bar facility in 1973. ...In the early 1970s, a utility could build a reactor for only $170 million. ...By the early 1980s, the average price for building a reactor had risen to $1.7 billion—a tenfold increase in a decade. ...financial analysts ... recognized that the industry could be viable

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/science/heat-wave-predictions-weather.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Deadly summer heat waves in the eastern United States may be predictable nearly two months before they occur, giving emergency planners and farmers more time to prepare, scientists reported on Monday. The key to such an advance forecast, scientists said, is the occurrence of a distinctive pattern of water temperatures across a wide stretch of the North Pacific Ocean. While the existence of the pattern does not guarantee that a heat wave will occur, it significantly increases the odds of one happening as much as 50 days later. ...From 1999 to 2010, about 620 people died each year, on average, from heat-related illness in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ...In a study published on Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers first identified extremely hot summer days

https://eos.org/articles/current-carbon-emissions-unprecedented-in-66-million-years Source:   By JoAnna Wendel, EoS Earth and Space Science News (AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As scientists attempt to understand how anthropogenic climate change will affect the Earth’s future, they often study a period in the Earth’s deep past, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a period of natural climate change significantly heated the Earth. In a Nature Geoscience paper published Monday, scientists established that this warming, which began 56 million years ago, was the result of a 4000-year period in which carbon was released into the atmosphere at a rate of 1.1 petagrams (or 1.1 trillion kilograms) per year. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) “is the biggest, most massive carbon release event since dinosaurs disappeared,” said Richard Zeebe, a biogeochemist and paleoceanographer at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Honolulu and lead author on the paper. ..

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/u-s-methane-emissions-on-the-rise Source:   By Shannon Kelleher, EoS Earth and Space Science News (AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt:  Data suggest that the United States may be responsible for half of global methane increase in the past decade. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, second only to carbon dioxide in its ability to absorb thermal radiation. It is naturally produced by wetlands, and humans emit methane in large quantities through the use of oil and gas for energy, livestock farming, coal mining, and landfills. ...Global atmospheric levels rose 1%–2% in the 1970s and 1980s, leveled out in the 1990s, and then continued to rise in the 2000s. ...U.S. EPA inventory data showed that emissions from oil and gas and from livestock each accounted for about a third of the methane produced by the United States, while landfill waste accounted for 21%–22% and coal was responsible for 10%–13% of methane emissions. The researche

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852/attribution-of-extreme-weather-events-in-the-context-of-climate-change Source:   Authors:  Committee on Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change Attribution; Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate; Division on Earth and Life Studies; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As climate has warmed over recent years, a new pattern of more frequent and more intense weather events has unfolded across the globe. Climate models simulate such changes in extreme events, and some of the reasons for the changes are well understood. Warming increases the likelihood of extremely hot days and nights, favors increased atmospheric moisture that may result in more frequent heavy rainfall and snowfall, and leads to evaporation that can exacerbate droughts....   See also U. S. News article " National scientific panel said science has progressed enough they we can see global warming's fingerprints on ce