Norway’s largest landslide in recent history buries homes and leaves nine people unaccounted for

An aerial view of a landslide area in Ask, Gjerdrum municipality, Norway, taken on 1 January 2020. Rescuers found one body on Friday, two days after a landslide in southern Norway swept away at least nine buildings, police said, with nine people still missing. Photo: Jaran Wasrud / NTB / The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate / REUTERS

January 1, 2021

Norway’s largest landslide in recent history buries homes and leaves nine people unaccounted for

By Gwladys Fouche 1 January 2021 OSLO (Reuters) – Rescuers found one body on Friday, two days after a landslide in southern Norway swept away at least nine buildings, police said, with nine people still missing. Another 10 people were injured after Wednesday’s landslide in the residential area in the Gjerdrum municipality, about 30 km […]

Return rates for Cedar River Sockeye salmon, 2014-2020. In 2020, the number of returning salmon declined to a record low. Data: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Graphic: Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times

January 1, 2021

Lake Washington sockeye salmon hit record low – “In a generation, we have gone from times of plenty to these fish being on the brink of extinction”

By Lynda V. Mapes 1 January 2021 (The Seattle Times) – They are as Seattle as the Space Needle. But Lake Washington sockeye, once the largest run of sockeye in the Lower 48, are failing. The smallest run on record returned to the Cedar River in 2020, a bottoming out after years of declines. There […]

Screenshot of the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) on 30 December 2020. Graphic: JHU

December 30, 2020

Doomiest graphs of 2020

30 December 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – 2020 was the year that everybody got cozy with graphs showing exponential growth. A number of high-quality data sources showing the progression of the pandemic were published online, so anybody could rummage through the grim numbers and estimate their local risk. A few standout sites made it into Desdemona’s […]

Deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger listens during a briefing of the coronavirus task force at the White House on 31 January 2020. Photo: Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post

December 30, 2020

We should embrace the Cassandras when the next disaster comes

By Megan McArdle 29 December 2020 (The Washington Post) – Any popular novel set around 1929 will generally have a character who pulls their money out of the market after overhearing an elevator operator bragging about his stock market winnings. Like all the best fantasies, this contains just enough truth to be plausible: Some sharp […]

Satellite view of wildfires on the U.S. West Coast between 12 September 2020 and 16 September 2020. Video: Michael Benson / CIRA / NOAA

December 30, 2020

Watching Earth burn – “The war has started. We’re losing.”

By Michael Benson 28 December 2020 (The New York Times) – I have a pastime, one that used to give me considerable pleasure, but lately it has morphed into a source of anxiety, even horror: earth-watching. Let me explain. The earth from space is an incomparably lovely sight. I mean the whole planet, pole to […]

A worker stands outside a construction site of the Xinzhuang coal mine that is part of Huaneng Group’s integrated coal power project, on 30 September 2020. Photo: Thomas Peter / Reuters

December 26, 2020

China rations electricity for millions – “The whole city was dark”

By Vivian Wang 21 December 2020 (The New York Times) – In the city of Yiwu in eastern China, the authorities turned off streetlights for several days and ordered factories to open only part-time. In coastal Wenzhou, the government ordered some companies not to heat their offices unless temperatures are close to freezing. In southern […]

U.S. COVID-19 mortality per 100,000 population, 11 April 2020 - 25 December 2020. Data: Johns Hopkins University. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

December 25, 2020

U.S. Covid mortality rate exceeds 100 per 100k population – “The current exponential increase in COVID-19 is reaching a calamitous scale”

25 December 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – The per-capita death rate from Covid-19 in the United States exceeded 100 for the first time today, according to mortality data from John Hopkins University. The milestone comes on the heels of this week’s announcement from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) stating that […]

Distribution of major tax cuts for the rich across OECD nations, 1965-2015. This figure visualizes the resulting binary variable that picks out years in which taxes on the rich were reduced substantially. In total, we identify 30 country-year observations where taxes on the rich were significantly reduced. Governments enacted major tax reforms in all countries in our sample and across the whole observation period. Many countries implemented major tax cuts for the rich in the late 1980s. Furthermore, the identification of tax cuts is also in line with previous studies that have focused on income tax progressivity (Rubolino and Waldenström, 2020) or on overall tax progressivity single specific countries (Saez and Zucman, 2019). For instance, echoing these authors’ findings, we find two major reforms that reduced taxes on the rich in the US: 1982 (First Reagan Tax Cut) and 1986/1987 (Second Reagan Tax Cut). Graphic: Hope and Limberg, 2020 / LSE

December 25, 2020

Tax breaks for the rich don’t boost the economy – “Our research shows that the economic case for keeping taxes on the rich low is weak”

16 December 2020 (LSE) – Major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality but do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment, according to new research by LSE and King’s College London. Researchers say governments seeking to restore public finances following the COVID-19 crisis should therefore not be […]

Shifting composition of annual debt-service obligations that low-income countries owe to their bilateral creditors from 2020 through 2022. This animation shows the shifting composition of annual debt-service obligations that low-income countries owe to their bilateral creditors-from 2020 through 2022. It reflects projected debt service payments on external debt to official bilateral creditors (TDS, current US$, millions). Debt service to official bilateral creditors will impose a heavy burden for years to come. Graphic: World Bank Group

December 24, 2020

2020 Year in Review: The global economic impact of COVID-19 in 12 charts

By Paul Blake and Divyanshi Wadhwa 14 December 2020 (World Bank Group) – This time last year, concepts such as “lockdowns,” “mask mandates” and “social distancing” were unknown to most of us. Today they are part of our everyday language as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact all aspects of our lives. Through the following […]

Map showing highest-impact disasters in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic (over 250,000 people affected). The map shows only a snapshot of disasters that took place from the beginning of the month when the epidemic was declared (March 2020) for a six-month period. More than 100 disasters occurred during this period and affected over 50 million people. There were also a number of ongoing crises, including measles in DRC and droughts in parts of east and southern Africa. Graphic: IFRC

December 24, 2020

Red Cross faced record number of climate-related disasters in 2020 – “This year has tested the resilience of tens of millions of people to breaking point”

KUALA LUMPUR, 16 December 2020 (IFRC) – In a record-breaking year, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has responded to more climate-related disasters across Asia Pacific than any other time this century so far. The IFRC has already responded to 25 climate-related disasters in the Asia Pacific, including floods, typhoons, […]