https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/australia/elon-musk-south-australia-battery.html Source:   By Adam Baidawi, The New York Times Excerpt: ADELAIDE, Australia — The state of South Australia announced on Friday that it had powered up the world’s biggest battery ahead of schedule: a feat already being heralded as one of this century’s first great engineering marvels and a potential solution to the country’s energy woes. The battery is the size of an American football field ...capable of powering 30,000 homes, and its rapid deployment reflects the union of a blackout-prone state and a flashy entrepreneur, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors, who pledged to complete its construction in 100 days or do it for free. ...Debate over the battery’s potential has become intense. Federal lawmakers who favor fossil fuels argue that its impact is being exaggerated, while supporters gush that the state’s embrace of Mr. Musk could change the future of energy in Australia — and the world. .

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/26/world/americas/peru-climate-change.html Source:   By Nicholas Casey, The New York Times Excerpt: Accelerating glacial melt in the Andes caused by climate change has set off a gold rush downstream, letting the desert bloom. But as the ice vanishes, the vast farms below may do the same....

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/how-earths-orbit-affected-ice-sheets-millions-of-years-ago Source:   By Emily Underwood, Eos/AGU Excerpt: When Earth’s atmosphere warms, the vast sheets of ice over Antarctica and Greenland melt. This melting, in addition to the thermal expansion of water, leads to rising sea levels. Although it’s clear that seas are rising at an increasing rate, scientists can’t yet precisely predict how fast or how much they will rise in the future. Now, scientists are using climate and fossil data from one of the warmest periods in Earth’s history to help improve our understanding of ice sheet and sea level behavior in a warmer-than-modern world. When scientists look for hints of how Earth’s warming climate will affect ice sheets, they often refer to the late Pliocene era, between 3.264 and 3.025 million years ago. During this period, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ranged between 300 and 450 parts per million (ppm)—as a reference point,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/climate/un-bonn-climate-talks.html Source:    Brad Plumer,  Lisa Friedman,  The New York Times 2017-11-18. At Bonn Climate Talks, Stakes Get Higher in Gamble on Planet’s Future. By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: Perhaps the most revealing moment at this year’s United Nations climate talks came on Wednesday, when Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany addressed the nearly 200 nations gathered here. ...Ms. Merkel acknowledged that Germany was likely to miss the goals it had set itself for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 because of its continued reliance on coal power....  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/climate/un-bonn-climate-talks.html  --- 2017-11-18. What Happened (and Didn’t) at the Bonn Climate Talks. By Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer. The New York Times. Excerpt: ...After wrangling through the night, the 23rd conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change wrapped up early Saturday with modest accomp

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/business/tesla-electric-truck.html Source:    By Neal E. Boudette, The New York Time Excerpt: HAWTHORNE, Calif. — ...Elon Musk, Tesla on Thursday unveiled a prototype for a battery-powered, nearly self-driving semi truck that the company said would prove more efficient and less costly to operate than the diesel trucks that now haul goods across the country. And of course, it will emit no exhaust. In a surprise, Mr. Musk also showed he was not letting up on the car side of the business, unveiling a new Tesla Roadster that he said would be able to reach 60 miles per hour in 1.9 seconds and travel 620 miles before needing to recharge. ...It has a top speed of at least 250 miles per hour, said Mr. Musk, ... “The point of doing this is to give a hard-core smackdown to gasoline cars,” ...“You’ll be able to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back.” ...He said the truck ...would have a single-charge range of 500 miles, ...go from zero to 60 miles

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/us/keystone-pipeline-leaks-south-dakota.html Source:   By Mitch Smith and Julie Bosman, The New York Times Excerpt: About 5,000 barrels of oil, or about 210,000 gallons, gushed out of the Keystone Pipeline on Thursday in South Dakota, blackening a grassy field in the remote northeast part of the state and sending cleanup crews and emergency workers scrambling to the site. ...The spill, near Amherst, S.D., comes just days before regulators in neighboring Nebraska decide whether to grant the final permit needed to begin construction on a different pipeline proposal, the Keystone XL, which would be operated by the same company. An announcement in Nebraska is expected on Monday. ...Opponents of Keystone XL, which is proposed to run about 1,100 miles and would become part of the Keystone system, quickly cited Thursday’s spill as evidence of the risks posed by such pipelines, and urged Nebraska regulators to take note. “We’ve always said it’s not a ques

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/11/climate/houston-flooding-climate.html Source:   By Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times Excerpt: HOUSTON — The mayhem that Hurricane Harvey unleashed on Houston didn’t only come from the sky. On the ground, it came sweeping in from the Katy Prairie some 30 miles west of downtown. ...Climate change holds a mirror up to every place its impact is felt. Global warming may not specifically have caused Harvey, any more than a single major league home run can be attributed to steroids. That said, scientists have little doubt that climate change is making storms worse and more frequent. The floods that ravaged Houston on Memorial Day in 2015 and in April of 2016 — now called the Tax Day flood — left behind billions of dollars in damage. Coming right after those events, Harvey has led even some pro-development enthusiasts to rethink the city and its surroundings. ...“Three 500-year floods in three years means either we’re free and clear for th

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/us/virgin-islands-hurricanes.html Source:   By Richard Pérez-Peña, The New York Times Excerpt: Hurricanes Irma and Maria both hit the United States Virgin Islands in September as rare Category 5 storms, but the devastation there has been largely overshadowed by the damage and death this year’s hurricane season left behind in Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean nations. The United States Virgin Islands were as hard-hit as any place in the country; in a territory with just 103,000 residents, more than 33,000 individuals and families have applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and government agencies reported on Thursday that 73 percent of customers still had no power. The storms so denuded the islands’ lush vegetation that where they once showed up in satellite photos as a green jewels in the sea, they were brown after the hurricanes passed.... 

https://science2017.globalchange.gov/ Source:  By U.S. Global Change Research Program, Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.) Excerpt: This report is an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States. It represents the first of two volumes of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. [from Executive Summary:]... Global annually averaged surface air temperature has increased by about 1.8°F (1.0°C) over the last 115 years (1901–2016). This period is now the warmest in the history of modern civilization. The last few years have also seen record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes, and the last three years have been the warmest years on record for the globe. These trends are expected to continue over climate timescales. This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human acti

https://eos.org/articles/ipcc-chair-discusses-limiting-global-warming-to-1-5c Source:   By Randy Showstack, Eos/AGU Excerpt: Several forthcoming reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change examine what needs to be done to take control of our climate future. ...With a United Nations climate change conference scheduled for Bonn, Germany, from 6 to 17 November, two high-level reports released this week warn about the increasing risk of climate change. In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is working on a separate report, to be issued in 2018, about the effects of global warming at 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. A 30 October report from the World Meteorological Organization warned that in 2016, globally averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide surged in 1 year from 400 to 403.3 parts per million, the highest level in 800,000 years. Also, a 31 October report from the United Nations (UN) sounds an alarm about the need for accelerated short-ter

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/climate/what-is-climate-change.html Source:   By Justin Gillis, The New York Times 2017-11. . . For GSS Climate Change chapter 10. Excerpt: We know. Global warming is daunting. So here’s a place to start: 17 often-asked questions with some straightforward answers....