http://www.noaa.gov/record-annual-increase-carbon-dioxide-observed-mauna-loa-2015 Source:   NOAA For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: The annual growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii jumped by 3.05 parts per million during 2015, the largest year-to-year increase in 56 years of research. In another first, 2015 was the fourth consecutive year that CO2 grew more than 2 ppm, said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. “Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years,” Tans said. “It’s explosive compared to natural processes.”...

http://grist.org/climate-energy/surprise-a-third-of-congress-members-are-climate-change-deniers/ Source:   By Katie Herzog, Grist For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...The Center for American Progress Action Fund found that there are 182 climate deniers in the current Congress: 144 in the House and 38 in the Senate. That means more than six in 10 Americans are represented by people who think that climate change is a big ‘ol liberal hoax — including some leaders at the highest levels of government... And those are just the members of Congress who are out-and-out deniers, so it doesn’t include the many more who kinda sorta admit that something might be going on with the climate but still don’t want to do anything about it. ...Not surprisingly, many of these same climate deniers have been handsomely rewarded by the fossil fuel industry....

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/too-soon-gone-gary-braasch-visual-chronicler-of-climate-change/ Source:   By Andrew Revkin, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Gary Braasch was a gifted photographer passionately devoted to chronicling climate change. ...He was there, of course, to continue building the globe-spanning photographic record http://braaschphotography.com/ he had been creating since he latched onto global warming as his prime subject in the late 1990s. (Watch a 2008 presentation by Braasch and the climate scientist Stephen H. Schneider to get a feel for his work and views.) ... Lynne Cherry, an author, illustrator and filmmaker who collaborated many times with Braasch, particularly notably in my favorite book on climate change for younger readers, “ How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate .”  ...Gary aggregated the scientific research, accompanied by his rich photographs, into one of the first photographic books ...

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/characterizing-interglacial-periods-over-the-past-800000-years Source:   Earth & Space Science News (EoS, AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Researchers identified 11 different interglacial periods over the past 800,000 years, but the interglacial period we are experiencing now may last an exceptionally long time. ...glacial cycles, consisting of cold ice ages and milder interludes, typically lasted about 40,000 years—but those weaker cycles gave way to longer-lasting icy eras with cycles lasting roughly 100,000 years. In between the cold ice ages are periods of thawing and warming known as interglacial periods, during which sea levels rise and ice retreats. ...Although most interglacials typically last about 10,000 to 30,000 years, the researchers suggest that the current epoch—the Holocene—may last much longer because of the increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases resulting from human activity. The authors predict th...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/business/does-a-carbon-tax-work-ask-british-columbia.html Source:   By Eduardo Porter, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...a right-leaning party that shares many of the antitax, pro-business beliefs of Republicans in the United States did exactly what its unbelieving candidates so fear. ...In 2008, the British Columbia Liberal Party, which confoundingly leans right, introduced a tax on the carbon emissions of businesses and families, cars and trucks, factories and homes across the province. The party stuck to the tax even as the left-leaning New Democratic Party challenged it in provincial elections the next year under the slogan Axe the Tax. The conservatives won soundly at the polls. Their experience shows that cutting carbon emissions enough to make a difference in preventing global warming remains a difficult challenge. But the most important takeaway for American skeptics is that the policy basically worked as ad...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/california-gas-leak-doubled-methane-emissions-la-basin Source:  By Robert Service, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...On 23 October 2015, officials reported an ongoing leak at SS25, a well in a massive underground natural gas storage facility near Los Angeles, California. Researchers collected air samples from daily flights over the region from 7 November 2015 through 13 February, 2 days after the leak was capped. ...every hour after the blast—the facility released up to 60 metric tons of methane, the primary component of natural gas and the greenhouse gas with the second biggest overall climate impact. The leak was so massive that it essentially doubled the methane emissions for the entire Los Angeles basin, and had the same climate impact in annual greenhouse gas emissions as 572,000 cars. ...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/how-do-you-save-sick-coral-reef-pop-antacid Source:  By Eli Kintisch, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Anyone who has ever dissolved a piece of chalk in vinegar knows that ocean acidification—the result of seawater absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution from the air—has to be bad for calcareous creatures like coral. But just how big a role does ocean acidification play in the sickly state of many reefs? ...Near shores across the planet, the health of reefs is in decline. Global studies have shown that major reef systems are calcifying—building their stony skeletons—more slowly, with one study suggesting growth rates of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia have plummeted 40% in just 3 decades. But lots of factors contribute to this harm: diseases, warming water, pollution, and sediment runoff, along with the 0.1 unit drop in the pH of the global ocean since the preindustrial era. ...scientists led by Rebecca ...