URL Source:   By David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle For Investigation:   10.3 2017-05-26. . . For GSS Energy Use chapter 10. Excerpt: Ten years ago, California started giving homeowners and businesses rebates to go solar, hoping to kick-start an industry. It worked. Now, some state officials want to do the same thing with batteries. Legislation from state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would create a 10-year incentive program for energy storage, handing out rebates to people who want to install batteries in their businesses or basements. The rebates would shrink over time, as the cost of a still-expensive technology declines. That approach mimics the California Solar Initiative, the state rebate program that began in 2007. Many credit the initiative, which issued declining rebates until its $2.17 billion budget was spent, with helping make solar power mainstream in California — and creating businesses and jobs along the way....   http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/arti

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/business/your-coffee-is-from-where-california.html Source:   By Stephanie Strom, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: GOLETA, Calif. — There is a new crop growing in Southern California’s famous avocado groves — coffee. ...At the same time, climate change threatens to damage the coffee crop in the tropical highlands that produce nearly all the world’s beans, potentially opening up a lucrative opportunity in the $20 billion export market for beans. Last year, some small Brazilian coffee farmers lost 90 percent of their crop to drought and heat, and similar conditions in Sumatra in western Indonesia made it uneconomical for many farmers there to harvest what little crop they had....

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/business/energy-environment/coal-power-renewable-energy.html Source:   By Diane Cardwell and Clifford Krauss, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Coal is on the defensive in the nation’s power industry. Even in coal country. The pressure to shift more of the country’s electric supply to renewable sources is not just a rallying cry for environmentalists. Some of the power industry’s biggest customers, like General Motors and Microsoft, have made a commitment to clean energy. And to help them meet it — and keep them from taking their business elsewhere — utilities are changing their ways. West Virginia, where coal is king, is no exception. Appalachian Power, the leading utility there, is quickly shifting toward natural gas and renewable sources like wind and solar, even as President Trump calls for a coal renaissance. Appalachian Power still burns plenty of coal, but in recent years it has closed three coal-fired plants and conver

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/climate/global-warming-sleep-loss.html Source:   By Justin Gillis, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...In a paper published online Friday by the journal Science Advances, Nick Obradovich and colleagues predicted more restless nights, especially in the summer, as global temperatures rise. They found that the poor, who are less likely to have air-conditioning or be able to run it, as well as the elderly, who have more difficulty regulating their body temperature, would be hit hard. ... Researchers have long known that being too hot or too cold at night can disturb anyone’s sleep, but nobody had thought to ask how that might affect people in a world grown hotter because of climate change....

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/climate-lab Source:    By Vox and the Climate Lab of the University of California For Investigation:   10.3 Video #6 in a series: Facts and data alone won’t inspire people to take action in the fight against global warming. So what will? .... 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/24/climate/mapping-50-years-of-ice-loss-in-glacier-national-park.html Source:   By Nadja Popovich, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Glacier National Park is losing its glaciers. The flowing sheets of ice scattered throughout the Montana park shrank by more than a third between 1966 and 2015, according to new data from the United States Geological Survey and Portland State University. Using aerial and satellite imagery, researchers traced the footprints of 39 named glaciers in the park and surrounding national forest. They found that 10 had lost more than half their area over 50 years.... [see maps of glacier ice extent]

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/State-breaks-another-renewable-energy-record-11156443.php Source:   By Dominic Fracassa, San Francisco Chronicle For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Early Saturday afternoon, renewable sources produced a record 67.2 percent of the electricity on the portion of the state’s power grid controlled by the California Independent System Operator. That figure does not include large hydropower facilities, which added another 13.5 percent. Based in Folsom, the ISO runs 80 percent of the state’s grid. More than half of the renewable energy flowing across the grid at that moment on Saturday came from large solar facilities and wind farms. The ISO’s numbers do not even account for electricity from rooftop solar arrays. ...“The fact that the grid can handle 67 percent renewable power from multiple sources — it’s a great moment, and it shows the potential we have,” said Sachu Constantine, the director of policy at the Center for Sustainable Energy, a nonp

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/climate-lab Source:   By Vox and the Climate Lab of the University of California For Investigation:   10.3 Video #5 in a series: New nuclear energy technology has come a long way - but can we get over our fears?....

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/climate-lab Source:    By Vox and the Climate Lab of the University of California For Investigation:   10.3 Video #4 in a series: Eat your peas! It’s the easiest way to fight climate change. ....

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/climate/alaska-carbon-dioxide-co2-tundra.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As global warming continues, a big unknown is what will happen to the carbon balance between the atmosphere and the land, especially in the far north. ...A new study suggests that Alaska, with its huge stretches of tundra and forest, may be shifting from a net sink, or storehouse, of carbon to a net source. The study focused on one possible cause: warmer temperatures that keep the Arctic tundra from freezing until later in the fall, allowing plant respiration and microbial decomposition — processes that release carbon dioxide — to continue longer. Roisin Commane, a researcher at Harvard, and others studied atmospheric carbon dioxide in the state, using measurements from aircraft and a 40-year record from sensors operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Barrow, in the North Slope Borough. They f

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/03/science/earth/arctic-shipping.html Source:   By Jugal K. Patel and Henry Fountain, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As global warming melts sea ice across the Arctic, shipping routes once thought impossible — including directly over the North Pole — may open up by midcentury. But high costs may keep the new routes from being used right away. The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean has declined sharply each decade since the 1980s, according to measurements taken each September when the ice is at its minimum. Older, thicker ice is disappearing as well. Scientists say global warming is largely responsible for the changes. Parts of the Arctic are warming twice as fast as elsewhere....

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/climate-lab Source:   By Vox and the Climate Lab of the University of California For Investigation:   10.3 Video #3 in a series: Smartphones shouldn’t be so disposable. Could fixing the way we make our phones help solve climate change?

http://www.thesolutionsproject.org/ Source:   Website For Investigation:   10.3 The Solutions Project is dedicated to achieving 100% renewable energy worldwide. A world powered by the wind, water, and sun is not only possible – it’s already happening....   See also: Introduction to The Solutions Project (graphic)  Power Demand by Generator (graphic)  Scientific American article by Mark Jacobson  National Geographic: A Blueprint for a Carbon-Free World   Companies committed to 100% renewable power - http://re100.org/

http://www.drawdown.org/solutions Source:   website For Investigation:   10.3 "Drawdown" book and website presents an extensive array of impactful “no regrets” solutions—actions that make sense to take regardless of their climate impact since they have intrinsic benefits to communities and economies, improving lives, creating jobs, restoring the environment, enhancing security, generating resilience, and advancing human health. In the book, each solution is measured and modeled to determine its carbon impact through the year 2050, the total and net cost to society, and the total lifetime savings (or cost)....