For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.  Excerpt: 2012 saw 11 weather and climate disaster events each with losses exceeding $1 billion in damages. This makes 2012 the second costliest year since 1980, with a total of more than $110 billion in damages throughout the year. The 2012 total damages rank only behind 2005, which incurred $160 billion in damages due in part to four devastating land-falling hurricanes. The 2012 billion-dollar events included seven severe weather and tornado events, two tropical cyclone events, and the yearlong drought and its associated wildfires. These 11 events killed over 300 people and had devastating economic effects on the areas impacted. Billion-Dollar Weather/Climate Disasters: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/overview.   Table: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events.    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/ncdc-releases-2012-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters-information.  NOAA.

For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7. Excerpt: ...while that bottle of [water] goes for $1.79, the same amount from your tap ... might go for $.00063 for the same 20 oz.... to illustrate the general insanity of bottled water ... in Colorado...marketing equals an unceasing stream of semi-trucks driving between a series of wells and a bottling plant in Denver, about three hours away. One truck pulls up, fills, and drives on, to be immediately replaced by another empty truck, and so on. In the process, they are draining an aquifer that feeds the Arkansas River. [the bottled water company] has purchased the rights to this water from the municipality of Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. Water that [the company] takes from the Arkansas is replaced by [the company's] water supply, and then pumped into the river not far upstream from [the company's] wells. So [the company] takes water from the Arkansas, trucks it, bottles it, and then trucks it again to stores. Meanwhile, it's returning the same amount of water in less marketable form to the river.... http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/why-bottled-water-is-insane. Michael Byrne, Motherboard.

For GSS Climate Change chapter 8. Excerpt:  Ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves are responsible for most of the continent's ice shelf mass loss, a new study by NASA and university researchers has found. ...the rates of basal melt, or the melting of the ice shelves from underneath, ...accounted for 55 percent of all Antarctic ice shelf mass loss from 2003 to 2008, an amount much higher than previously thought. Antarctica holds about 60 percent of the planet's fresh water locked into its massive ice sheet. ...Determining how ice shelves melt will help scientists improve projections of how the Antarctic ice sheet will respond to a warming ocean and contribute to sea level rise.  ...In some places, basal melt exceeds iceberg calving. In other places, the opposite is true. But in total, Antarctic ice shelves lost 2,921 trillion pounds (1,325 trillion kilograms) of ice per year in 2003-2008 through basal melt, while iceberg formation accounted for 2,400 trillion pounds (1,089 trillion kilograms) of mass loss each year. ...For images related to this release, please visit: http://go.nasa.gov/175OAkF .... http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2013/jun/HQ_13-183_Melting_Ice_Shelves.html. NASA Release 13-183.

 For GSS Climate Change chapter 8. Excerpt: Ski areas from 24 states have signed the Climate Declaration, which calls on U.S. federal policymakers and legislators to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change. These 115 ski areas join Climate Declaration founding signatory Aspen Snowmass and 40 other American businesses, including General Motors, Nike and Levi Strauss & Co., as well as Ceres, a coalition of large investors, companies and public interest groups, in declaring that a bold response to the climate challenge is “one of America’s greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century.” Ski areas in the United States employ some 160,000 people and generate roughly $12.2 billion in annual revenue. ...ski areas are developing renewable energy on site through the application of wind, solar, geothermal and micro-hydro technology. Ski areas are applying energy-efficient green building techniques, retrofitting existing facilities to save energy, replacing inefficient compressors in snowmaking operations, using alternative fuels in resort vehicle fleets, implementing anti-idling policies and providing or promoting car pooling or mass transit use by guests and employees....  http://ens-newswire.com/2013/06/06/115-u-s-ski-areas-seek-climate-change-action-from-congress/. Environment News Service.

For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 1. Excerpt:  In the fall of 1991, eight men and women marched into a glass and steel complex that covered three acres in the Arizona desert and was known as Biosphere 2. Their mission: to test whether they could be self-sustaining in this sealed-off environment, with hope that the model would someday be replicated to colonize outer space. ...The original idea was that the inhabitants would grow all their own food, and that the wilderness areas would naturally recycle their air and water. ...Early on, there were problems. One Biospherian accidentally cut off the tip of her finger and left for medical care. When she returned, she carried in two duffle bags of supplies to the supposedly self-sustaining environment (which presumably would not have been feasible on, say, Mars). But the most damaging discovery was that a carbon dioxide scrubber had been secretly installed to protect the occupants from dangerous levels of the gas. By the end, as one of the Biospherians put it, they had been suffocated, starved and gone mad. Clearly, Biosphere 2 was not ready to sustain life on Mars or even a vacant lot in Phoenix. ...Columbia University, then the University of Arizona, eventually took over the mammoth space to conduct earth science research, and nearly 150 papers have been published. In 2006, The New Yorker reported, “much of what is known about coral reefs and ocean acidification was originally discovered, improbably enough in Arizona, in the self-enclosed, supposedly self-sufficient world known as Biosphere 2.”.... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/booming/biosphere-2-good-science-or-bad-sense.html. Michael Winerip, New York Times.