Land Use Change On Cape Cod. This Image Shows A Dramatic Increase In Development On The Cape From The

Every year a dead zone forms in the Gulf of Mexico. This year’s dead zone is the largest on record. 

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

“Nitrogen and phosphorus pollution enters the Mississippi [River] throughout its watershed, which includes runoff from the Midwest cropland and factory livestock and chicken farms, and pollutants from sewer systems and septic tanks in other locations...The lighter freshwater containing the nutrients creates a layered effect when it reaches the Gulf and the nutrients trigger blooms of phytoplankton - microscopic marine algae - in the spring and summer. The fresher, warmer water in the upper layer is separated from the saltier, colder water in the lower layer, resulting in a barrier to the normal diffusion of oxygen from the surface to the bottom... When the algae dies and sinks to the bottom, it decomposes, using up oxygen in the deeper heavy saltwater and creating dead zone conditions. Those conditions don't change until wind or weather, especially tropical storms or hurricanes, mix the freshwater at the surface into the saltier water.”

A monitoring cruise measured a dead zone of 8,776 square miles, “4 1/2 times the size of the of the goal of about 1,950 square miles set by the federal-state Mississippi River Nutrient/Hypoxia Task Force.” The result are marine life, such as crabs and crustaceans, that die due to oxygen deprivation.

While coal companies claim prohibition of or restrictions on mountaintop removal mining (MTR) will hurt rural Appalachian economies, this figure suggests MTR is failing to lift rural communities out of poverty. Considering MTR destroys the land, degrading property values and tourism, and imposes health costs on nearby residents, it is more likely MTR is hurting rural Appalachian economies far more than any attempts to stop it.

“[Electric vehicle] sales have been soaring worldwide. By 2025, more than 37 million fully electric vehicles are expected to be on the road globally, according to Navigant Research, and those EVs will be ‘cost competitive’ without subsidies.” - ThinkProgress

A study of "fossil beaches", those areas where geology and fossils show they were once pre-historic coasts, is aiming to give us a better picture of the threat of sea level rise. Researchers acknowledge that, even during natural climatic shifts, carbon dioxide is the primary driver of global warming and cooling. During the Pliocene, carbon dioxide was at 400ppm and sea level was much higher. We are currently at 393ppm and rising. We are likely to cross over 400ppm in the next several years. Thus, looking at sea level rise during the Pliocene can give us a picture of what sea levels may look like as a result of current global warming. This map shows where the coastline was in the U.S. during the Pliocene.

Direct and indirect employment, as of 2013-2014, in the global renewable energy industry.

From mic.com:

This map traces the ideal deployment of solar energy plants in the Sahara Desert to generate electrical power for the world's population. It might not look like a lot, but there are some major caveats here. For one, this map seems to assume 100% efficiency. In reality, current solar panel technology is only able to capture around 20% of solar energy, even in the desert. So the 254-by-254 kilometer area in the Sahara Desert that could theoretically absorb enough rays to power the entire world would have to be five times larger. Second, large amounts of electric power are lost over large transmission distances, meaning that a single power plant could never really power the entire planet.

Still, this map is a good illustration of how little space would be needed to power the entire planet. According to May, some 3.49 million square kilometers are available for solar thermal power facilities in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt alone. Worldwide, the potential high-energy solar sites far outstrip any plausible need.

A recent study looked at the demographics of an elephant population in Samburu, Kenya, and the impact of poaching. This graph shows the annual PIKE, or Proportion of Illegally Killed Elephants. PIKE is calculated as the number of illegally killed (poached) elephant carcasses divided by the total number of elephant carcasses discovered that year. The graph shows a recent dramatic increase in poaching.

The authors state:

Illegal human killing caused over half the recorded mortality in the Samburu elephants over the age of 9 (and indirectly caused the deaths of all victim’s dependent calves under 2 years). The high illegal killing in the latter part of the study had serious ramifications for the structure and organization of the population... the illegal killing appeared to select adult individuals in Samburu and particularly males resulting in increasing skew in the sex ratio over the course of the fourteen year study. Social disruption also resulted, with numerous well known and stable family groups being completely lost (i.e. no surviving breeding females) causing increased numbers of unaffiliated juveniles (orphans)

According to the New York Times, the recent spike in poaching, the greatest in decades, is driven by rising demand for ivory in Asia.

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

Red areas in this map represent large projected increases in the frequency of floods following 10 centimeters (four inches) of additional sea-level rise.

According to a study, stark increases in instances of flooding are projected for Pacific islands, parts of Southeast Asia, and coastlines along India, Africa, and South America in the years and decades ahead — before spreading to engulf nearly the entire tropical region.

Unlike vulnerable cities and towns along the East Coast of the U.S., where frequent storms and big waves lead to large variations in day-to-day water levels, tropical coastlines tend to be surrounded by waters with depths that vary less. That means many tropical coastlines were not built to withstand the kinds of routine flooding that will be caused by rising seas.

- Upton, J. (2017, May18). Rising seas are lapping at the shores of the world’s poorest countries. Grist.