By Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis 31 May 2016 (Washington Post) – As summer temperatures finally settle in, many in the United States take it for granted that they can dial down the thermostat: Americans use 5 percent of all of their electricity cooling homes and buildings. In many other countries, however — including countries […]
By Anne Amnesia 10 May 2016 (More Crows Than Eagles) – […] See any overlap? I do. AIDS generated a response. Groups like GMHC and ACT-UP screamed against the dying of the light, almost before it was clear how much darkness was descending, but the gay men’s community in the 1970’s and 80’s was an […]
By Chris Mooney 21 March 2016 (Washington Post) – If you dig deep enough into the Earth’s climate change archives, you hear about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. And then you get scared. This is a time period, about 56 million years ago, when something mysterious happened — there are many ideas as to […]
23 March 2016 (Desdemona Despair) – Back in 2011, Desdemona was asked by a local church to give a presentation on the condition of the world’s oceans (State of the Oceans 2011 video; pdf slide deck; PowerPoint). As part of the talk, Des wanted estimates for human disturbances to the great cycles of elements on […]
By Katie Herzog 21 August 2015 (Grist) – Get ready, folks! The most magical time of year is almost upon us. That’s right: Burning Man. Lest you mistake me for a tech billionaire with a penchant for fuzzy boots, hula hoops, group showers, and dudes named Dusty Unicorn — au contraire. The reason I love […]
3 July 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Will world agriculture be able to support a human population of 12 billion people in the year 2100? The answer largely turns on how much land is available for growing crops. Unfortunately, the world’s arable land area is declining at an enormous rate. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification […]
13 June 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Data show that growth of human carbon emissions in the modern era is pretty close to exponential (cf. “Graph of the Day: Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels, 1751-2013”). But what about carbon emissions per person? The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) maintains a database of fossil-fuel CO2 […]
By Robert Kopp, Jonathan Buzan, and Matthew Huber 6 June 2015 (The New York Times) – The most deadly weather-related disasters aren’t necessarily caused by floods, droughts or hurricanes. They can be caused by heat waves, like the sweltering blanket that’s taken over 2,500 lives in India in recent weeks. Temperatures broke 118 degrees in parts […]
20 November 2011 (Desdemona Despair) – Here’s Desdemona giving a presentation on the accelerating destruction of the oceans by various human activities. It’s basically Graph of the Day with narration. Download the slide deck: http://www.leftopia.com/presentations/State_Of_The_Oceans_2011.pdf http://www.leftopia.com/presentations/State_Of_The_Oceans_2011.pptx State of the Oceans 2011 Technorati Tags: ocean acidification,global warming,climate change,phenology,overfishing,ocean overexploitation,fish decline,mass extinction,extinction,coral,habitat loss,ecosystem disruption,dead zone,ocean anoxia,phosphorus,nitrogen,carbon,carbon dioxide,overpopulation,doom