Envirographs - EnviroGraphs

When thinking of ways to make renewable energy cost-competitive with fossil fuels, an important consideration are the market distortions caused by substantial government subsidies to fossil fuels versus subsidies to renewable energy. De-carbonizing the global energy sector will require removing subsidies for fossil fuels.

Numbers from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-13/sustainability-indicator-130-billion-pints-of-beer.html

The Sulztalferner glacier from 1990 and 2017.  Red arrow is where the glacier ended in 1990, yellow arrow where it ended in 2017, purple dots are the snowline, and the green arrow an area of exposed bedrock amidst the glacier.

 Sulztalferner is a glacier in the Alps of Austria... between 1969 and 2003, 14 of the 88 glaciers in this range disappeared. The area of these glaciers was to 54.1 km2 in 1969, but only 36.9 km2 in 2003. 

In 1990 the Sulztalferner glacier was 3050 m long; in 2017 the glacier is 2100 m long.

Source: AGU 

As wold population increase following grey wolf reintroduction to Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, ranchers have become the wolves’ greatest antagonist, blaming them for killing their livestock. But coyotes are the primary source of livestock loss, and wolves can help drive coyotes out of areas.

A somewhat pessimistic view of climate diplomacy by Eduardo Porter in the New York Times: In the 30 years since the first international meeting on climate change in 1988 in Toronto, temperatures continue to rise and greenhouse gas emissions are greater than ever. 

Original article

The most recent Living Planet Report (May 2012), compiled by the Zoological Society of London, examined more species (2,600) and more populations of those species (9,014) than ever before. Overall, these populations show a decline of about 30% since 1970. Tropical species (light green) show a decline of more than 60%, while in temperate regions (dark green) there has been an average recovery of about 30%. The worst affected species are those in tropical lakes and rivers, whose numbers have fallen by 70% since 1970.

Effectively combating rhino poaching means dealing with both supply and demand on a global level.

http://wri.live.kiln.it

This is cool.

The conservation status of turtles and tortoises, nearly 60% of which are threatened. Many critically endangered turtles are in Asia, such as the Yunnan Box Turtle, Yangtze Giant Softshell Turtle and Philippine Pond Turtle. The leatherback and hawksbill sea turtles are also critically endangered.

October 2017 was the warmest October on record for all 6 New England states.

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The big story in Houser and Mohan's study is where these cleaner forms of energy are coming from that are responsible for half of the drop in emissions. It's generally assumed that the drop is a result of cleaner and cheap natural gas pushing out dirty coal. However, Houser and Mohan show that we shouldn't be counting out reneables.

Plumer:

Natural gas is indeed pushing out dirtier coal, and that makes a sizable difference (burning natural gas for electricity emits about half the carbon-dioxide that burning coal does). But wind farms are also sprouting up across the country, thanks to government subsidies. What’s more, industrial sites are burning more biomass for heat and electricity, while biofuels like ethanol are nudging out oil. All of that has done a lot to cut emissions.