October 2017 Was The Warmest October On Record For All 6 New England States.

Most (59%) Americans say that stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the economic cost, but there is a sharp partisan divide. Democrats overwhelming (77%) favor stricter environmental laws and regulations, but only 36% of Republicans agree. But this 41-point opinion gap is relatively recent. In 1994, the gap was only 8 points. Yet over the decades views of Republican and Democratic voters have diverged, with the divergence occurring rapidly and dramatically starting around 2008. 

Everglades (and south Florida, including Miami) with 2ft of sea level rise

(continued from previous post)

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.

Biodiversity hotspots around the world

The environmental blog Mongabay.com created a series of graphs from the IUCN Red List, which evaluates the conservation status of plant and animal species and lists those that are under threat. I'll be posting a series of them from different groups.

The first is the conservation status of herps, or reptiles and amphibians.

Global human habitation. 

Source: ATLAS for the END of the WORLD

“[T]he frequency of coal retirements highlights the speed at which the nation’s utilities are changing the energy mix by replacing coal with natural gas and renewables, particularly wind. Few new coal plants are in the works to replace those that are being shut down...As a result of a confluence of factors, the coal industry’s decline has been a long time coming. The story of coal’s decline goes far beyond the false narrative that Trump and his EPA pick Scott Pruitt are advancing that points to EPA regulations as the sole reason for coal plant retirements.” - Devashree Saha and Sifan Liu