Graph of the Day – Page 61 – Desdemona Despair

Satellite view of construction at the Shentou coal-fired power station in Shanxi, China. In July 2017, China’s National Energy Administration ordered the plant’s owners to stop construction of two 1,000 megawatt units at the plant; in September 2017 the order was changed to “postpone.” Construction on the two units officially resumed on 28 March 2019. Photo: Google

December 23, 2019

In tougher times, China falls back on coal – “There’s a deep contradiction in this”

By Stephanie Yang 23 December 2019 BEIJING (The Wall Street Journal) – China’s efforts to wean itself off coal are losing steam, as the world’s biggest carbon emitter is putting economic growth and energy security above its ambitions to be a leader in combating climate change. Coal consumption is back near peak levels after rebounding […]

Obesity rates in the United States by state, 2000-2019 and projected to 2030. Data: Ward, et al., 2019. NEJM Graphic: Elijah Wolfson / TIME

December 22, 2019

Close to half of U.S. population projected to have obesity by 2030 – “The prevalence of adult obesity and severe obesity will continue to increase nationwide, with large disparities across states and demographic subgroups”

BOSTON, 18 December 2019 (Harvard Chan School) – About half of the adult U.S. population will have obesity and about a quarter will have severe obesity by 2030, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also predicts that in 29 states, more than half of the […]

Life expectancy for United States and 50 States, grouped by census region, 1959-2016. Graphic: Woolf and Schoomaker, 2019 / JAMA

December 22, 2019

U.S. life expectancy continues to decline – Working-age Americans dying at higher rates, especially in economically hard-hit states – “This is a distinctly American phenomenon”

By Mary Kate Brogan 26 November 2019 (Virginia Commonwealth University) – Mortality rates among working-age Americans continue to climb, causing a decrease in U.S. life expectancy that is severely impacting certain regions of the United States, according to a Virginia Commonwealth University study set to publish Tuesday in JAMA. The report, “Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in […]

The geographic breakdown of each percentile of the global distribution of income evolved, 1990-2016. In 1990, 33 percent of the population of the world’s top 0.001 percent income group were residents of the United States and Canada. In 2016, 5 percent of the population of the world’s top 0.001 percent income group were residents of the Russian Federation. Data: Alvaredo, et al., 2018, based on data from the World Inequality Database http://WID.world. Graphic: UNDP

December 18, 2019

2019 Human Development Report says unchecked inequality growth may trigger a “new great divergence” in society not seen since the Industrial Revolution – “This is the new face of inequality”

BOGOTÁ, 9 December 2019 – The demonstrations sweeping across the world today signal that, despite unprecedented progress against poverty, hunger, and disease, many societies are not working as they should. The connecting thread, argues a new report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is inequality. “Different triggers are bringing people onto the streets — […]

Hansen, et al. (1988) projections compared with observations on a temperature vs. time basis (top) and temperature vs. external forcing (bottom). Graphic: Hausfather, et al., 2019 / Geophysical Research Letters

December 15, 2019

Early climate modelers got global warming right, new report finds – “The warming we have experienced is pretty much exactly what climate models predicted it would be as much as 30 years ago”

By Robert Sanders 4 December 2019 (Berkeley News) – Climate skeptics have long raised doubts about the accuracy of computer models that predict global warming, but it turns out that most of the early climate models were spot-on, according to a look-back by climate scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology […]

Micrographs showing microplastic particles embedded within a marine organism: (a) fluorescent PET MFs (23 × 100 μm) at 515–560 nm excitation; (b) fluorescent PP MF (28 × 100 μm) at 450–490 nm excitation; (c) fluorescent Nylon MFs (10 × 40 μm; yellow arrows) in the intestinal tract of a 50 h.p.f. brine shrimp (Artemia sp.), with 515–560 nm fluorescent excitation. Images taken at x25–200 magnification (Zeiss Observer Z1; AxioVision LE). Photo: Cole, 2016 / Scientific Reports

December 14, 2019

Microplastics are a million times more abundant in the ocean than previously thought

By MacKenzie Elmer 3 December 2019 (UCSD News Center) – Nothing seems safe from plastic contamination. It is pulled from the nostrils of sea turtles, found in Antarctic waters and buried in the fossil record. But a new study by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego suggests there could […]

Greenland ice thickness loss, 1993-2019. Graphic: IMBIE / CPOM / Leeds University

December 14, 2019

Greenland losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s – Sea level rise from Greenland melt tracking highest climate projections

10 December 2019 (Utrecht University) – Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the IPCC’s high-end climate warming scenario, which would see 40 million more people exposed to coastal flooding by 2100. The findings, published in Nature today, show that Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice […]

Sunset at Hillary’s Boat Harbour, Perth, 12 December 2019. Perth experienced several more days of near 40C temperatures in December 2019. Photo: Andrew O’Connor / ABC News

December 14, 2019

Australia could see hottest day on record as Perth heatwave conditions travel east – “We’re expecting some incredibly warm conditions as we head into next week”

By Irena Ceranic 12 December 2019 (ABC News) – Australia could experience its hottest day on record next week as a hot air mass building in Western Australia makes its way east. Perth is enduring an unprecedented heatwave for December, with the city expected to hover close to 40 degrees Celsius for four consecutive days […]

Global pattern in the cumulative development of coastal hypoxia in the periods before 1969, 1970-1989, and 1990-2015. Each red dot represents a documented case related to human activities. Green dots are sites that have improved. Since the 1960s, the global number of hypoxic systems has about doubled every ten years up to 2000. Data: Based on Diaz and Rosenberg (2008), Diaz, et al. (2010), and Conley et al. (2011). Graphic: Laffoley and Baxter, 2019 / IUCN

December 10, 2019

Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn

By Fiona Harvey 7 December 2019 MADRID (The Guardian) – Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with “dead zones” proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned. Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were […]

Carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas, petroleum, coal, and land use changes, 1998-2017, in gigatons of CO2 per year. Graphic: GCP

December 9, 2019

Global carbon emissions growth slows, but still hits record high in 2019 – “Emissions cuts in wealthier nations must outpace increases in poorer countries where access to energy is still needed”

By Rob Jordan 3 December 2019 (Stanford News Service) – The runaway train that is climate change is about to blow past another milestone: global fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions will reach yet another record high. Driven by rising natural gas and oil consumption, levels of CO2 are expected to hit 37 billion metric tons this […]