“thanks To Oil And Gas Wastewater Injected Deep Into The Ground, Parts Of [Oklahoma] Can Now Also Claim

The figures from the previous post on deforestation (from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization) have a significant impact on carbon emissions and climate change. Because deforestation releases carbon stored in plants and soils, deforestation has become a major source of global carbon dioxide emissions. Countries with greater deforestation have greater emissions as a result.

Forest conversion in Brazil 1990-2010 released 25.8 billion metric tons of CO2. The next four greatest emitters from deforestation were Indonesia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Venezuela. Combating climate change will require reigning in deforestation.

Domestic cats allowed to roam freely outdoors are not native to the ecosystem and can cause substantial damage. Cats hunt birds, rodents, reptiles, amphibians and insects that are important components of ecosystems. The first graph shows that birds and mammals are the primary prey targets of outdoor cats, while the second shows estimates for the numbers of birds and mammals killed annually by cats in the mainland United States.

Elephant populations are in decline throughout Africa largely due to poaching. Poaching is a problem in all regions of Africa, but especially severe in western and central Africa.

This graph shows net forest conversion (deforestation that replaces forest with a new land use) from 1990-2010. Brazil and Indonesia stand out as the hot spots of deforestation.

In contrast, China, the United States and Vietnam experienced afforestation and reforestation.  

Brad Plumer in the Washington Post explains a new study on the dramatic drop in carbon emissions in the U.S. over the past five years. This graph shows a hypothetical level of emissions that were projected based on trends from 1990-2005, compared to the actual level of emissions in 2012. It then breaks down the causes.

Plumer explains:

The recession and financial crisis, obviously, made a big difference. A weaker economy has meant less demand for energy — that was responsible for more than half the drop compared with business as usual.

Meanwhile, Houser and Mohan find the U.S. economy actually hasn’t become vastly less energy-intensive over time (the blue bar). Yes, overall efficiency has gone up — Americans are buying more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, etc. But the country is also no longer shedding manufacturing jobs as quickly as it was during the 1990s. So the amount of energy we use per unit of GDP has generally followed historical trends, improving only gradually.

The real change has come in the type of energy that the United States is using. The country is now relying more heavily cleaner forms of energy than it used to, and that explains about half of the fall in emissions

From the Washington Post:

Map from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showing how much electricity each state gets from wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. Maine was the clear winner in 2011, getting 27 percent of its electricity coming from renewable sources — a lot of it wind power and biomass. But Maine had a lot of renewable energy back in 2001, too. South Dakota and Iowa, at 21 percent and 17 percent, have seen far more impressive growth. Both of those states got almost none of their electricity from renewable sources a decade ago.

On the two year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it's worth putting the size of that spill into context. By the time it was capped on July 15, 2010, the well had released 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, making it the largest accidental oil spill in history.

Offshore wind energy in Europe: Lots

Offshore wind energy in the US: none

Agricultural technology advances over the past 50 years have dramatically reduced the amount of land needed to produce crops. This provides hope that ongoing technological improvements will continue to drive down the amount of land placed under agriculture.

This is largely the product of improvements that increase crop yields. In 2014, 1.26 billion hectares of land were spared from cultivation due to yield improvements in growing cereals.