http://www.onearth.org/articles/2014/09/greenland-is-the-new-black Source:   by Susan Cosier, OnEarth, NRDC For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Greenland has never been green, but its massive glaciers aren’t white anymore, either. The icy island is turning black with soot (possibly the combination of increased wildfires in the Arctic, dust, microbes, and fewer winter snowstorms to refresh the whiteness). ...The darker the snow, the more sunlight it absorbs, and the faster it melts. And that brings higher seas. If the entire Greenland ice sheet melted, sea levels worldwide could rise 23 feet.... 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/science/earth/human-related-climate-change-led-to-extreme-heat-scientists-say.html Source:   By Justin Gillis, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: The savage heat waves that struck Australia last year were almost certainly a direct consequence of greenhouse gases released by human activity, researchers said Monday. It is perhaps the most definitive statement climate scientists have made tying a specific weather event to global warming. Five groups of researchers, using distinct methods, analyzed the heat that baked Australia for much of 2013 and continued into 2014, briefly shutting down the Australian Open tennis tournament in January when the temperature climbed to 111 degrees Fahrenheit....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/us/heirs-to-an-oil-fortune-join-the-divestment-drive.html Source:  By John Schwartz, The New York Times. For Investigation: 10.3 Excerpt: John D. Rockefeller built a vast fortune on oil. Now his heirs are abandoning fossil fuels. The family whose legendary wealth flowed from Standard Oil is planning to announce on Monday that its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the divestment movement [ http://gofossilfree.org/ ] that began a couple years ago on college campuses. The announcement, timed to precede Tuesday’s opening of the United Nations climate change summit meeting in New York City, is part of a broader and accelerating initiative. [See also Taking a Call for Climate Change to the Streets .] In recent years, 180 institutions — including philanthropies, religious organizations, pension funds and local governments — as well as hundreds of wealthy individual investors have pledged to...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/testing-future-conditions-for-the-food-chain.html Source:  By Justin Gillis, The New York Times. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...The Illinois researchers are trying to move past just documenting the potential trouble, though. The bigger question is: What can be done to make crops more resilient? That has lately become an urgent topic. For decades, many climate experts were relatively sanguine on the issue, thinking that warming in frigid northern countries would benefit crops, helping to offset likely production losses in the tropics. Moreover, some research suggested potentially huge crop gains from a sort of counterintuitive ace in the hole: the very increase in carbon dioxide that is causing the planet to warm. ...The tests so far have confirmed the beneficial “CO2 fertilization effect,” as it is known. But in field conditions, the boon to the crops was not as great as in earlier greenhouse experiments, and pr...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/science/earth/scientists-report-global-rise-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html Source:  By Justin Gillis, The New York Times. For Investigation: 10.3 Excerpt: Global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped 2.3 percent in 2013 to record levels, scientists reported Sunday, in the latest indication that the world remains far off track in its efforts to control global warming. The emissions growth last year was a bit slower than the average growth rate of 2.5 percent over the past decade, and much of the dip was caused by an economic slowdown in China, which is the world’s single largest source of emissions.... In the United States, emissions rose 2.9 percent, after declining in recent years. The new numbers, reported by a tracking initiative called the Global Carbon Project and published in the journal Nature Geoscience, came on the eve of a United Nations summit meeting meant to harness fresh political ambition in tackling climate change. ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/in-vermont-a-milestone-in-green-energy-efforts/2014/09/14/9fc6e2c6-3c28-11e4-a430-b82a3e67b762_story.html Source:   Associated Press, The Washington Post. For Investigation: 10.3 Excerpt: BURLINGTON, Vt. — Vermont’s largest city has a new success to add to its list of socially conscious achievements: 100 percent of its electricity now comes from renewable sources such as wind, water and biomass. With little fanfare, the Burlington Electric Department crossed the threshold this month with the purchase of the 7.4-megawatt Winooski 1 hydroelectric project on the Winooski River at the city’s edge. When it did, Burlington joined the Washington Electric Co-operative, which has about 11,000 customers across central and northern Vermont, which reached 100 percent earlier this year. “It shows that we’re able to do it, and we’re able to do it cost effectively in a way that makes Vermonters really positioned well for t...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/co2-levels-in-atmosphere-rising-at-dramatically-faster-rate-un-report-warns/2014/09/08/3e2277d2-378d-11e4-bdfb-de4104544a37_story.html. Author:  Joby Warrick Source:  Washington Post Topic:  Greenhouse gas Excerpt: ...Concentrations of nearly all the major greenhouse gases reached historic highs in 2013, reflecting ...a diminishing ability of the world’s oceans and plant life to soak up the excess carbon put into the atmosphere by humans, according to data released early Tuesday by the United Nations’ meteorological advisory body. The latest figures from the World Meteorological Organization’s monitoring network are considered particularly significant because they reflect not only the amount of carbon pumped into the air by humans, but also the complex interaction between man-made gases and the natural world. Historically, about half of the pollution from human sources has been absorbed by the oceans and...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/us/climate-change-will-disrupt-half-of-north-americas-bird-species-study-says.html Author:  Felicity Barringer Source: The New York Times Topic: Climate Change, Birds Excerpt: The Baltimore oriole will probably no longer live in Maryland, the common loon might leave Minnesota, and the trumpeter swan could be entirely gone. Those are some of the grim prospects outlined in a report released on Monday by the National Audubon Society, which found that climate change is likely to so alter the bird population of North America that about half of the approximately 650 species will be driven to smaller spaces or forced to find new places to live, feed and breed over the next 65 years. If they do not — and for several dozen it will be very difficult — they could become extinct. The four Audubon Society scientists who wrote the report projected in it that 21.4 percent of existing bird species studied will lose “more than half of the current c...