From the Pew article, Though not especially productive in passing bills, the 116th Congress set new marks for social media use, by Aaron Smith and Sono Shah (1/25/2021): Voting members of the 116th Congress collectively produced more than 2.2 million tweets and Facebook posts in 2019 and 2020. That means …
Read More »How should we measure COVID-19 deaths?
As we try to quantify the deaths by COVID-19 we need to measure it correctly. For example, deaths should be normalized to population size. Beyond that, we should really look at excessive mortality, that is mortality above what we might see without COVID-19. Some causes of deaths have decreased over …
Read More »What is the connection between wildfires and climate change?
The NASA article The Climate Connections of a Record Fire Year in the U.S. West by Alan Buis (2/22/2021) provides a wildfire and climate summary. A few quotes: Another factor driving changes in U.S. Western wildfires is a greater availability of fuel. Drier air stresses vegetation, making forests more susceptible …
Read More »How do we model ocean plastic flow?
The Ocean Cleanup article Forecasting Ocean Plastic Around The GLOBE: A Deep Dive Into Modeling The Garbage Patches by Axel Peytavin (2/12/2021) provides an excellent overview of modeling the movement of plastic to the main garbage patches in the oceans. We are now ready to delve into the core of …
Read More »How hot was Jan 2021?
For NOAA’s Global Climate Report – January 2021: The January 2021 global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.80°C (1.44°F) above the 20th century average and ranked as the seventh warmest January in the 142-year global records. January 2021 also marked the 45th consecutive January and the 433rd consecutive month …
Read More »What are U.S. predicted energy CO2 emissions?
The eia article EIA’s AEO2021 shows U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions rising after the mid-2030s by Perry Lindstrom and Kevin Nakolan (2/11/2021) provides the graph copied here. EIA projects that U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions will increase in the latter years of the projection as a result of increasing economic growth that …
Read More »What percent of Americans say they will get the vaccine?
The USC Center for Economic and Social Research has a page Understanding America Study with results of survey questions related to COVID-19. For example, here is a time series of the percent of individuals very or somewhat likely to get a vaccine by race (not exactly encouraging). There are numerous …
Read More »What contributes to sea level rise?
The Climage.gov article Climate Change: Global Sea Level by Rebecca Lindsey (1/25/2021) provides a nice overview of rising sea levels. It is easy to forget that thermal expansion of water is a significant contributor to sea level rise. Global mean sea level has risen about 8–9 inches (21–24 centimeters) since …
Read More »Which 6 states together use more than half the jet fuel?
The eia article Six states accounted for more than half of U.S. jet fuel consumption in 2019 by Mickey Francis (1/27/2021) provides the graph here. Now, this isn’t surprising as CA, TX, FL, and NY are the four most populous states in that order. IL comes in 6 and GA …
Read More »Is this chart misleading?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics posts the chart (partially) copied here and last updated Sept 2020. An initial look at the graph and we see that the top 5 each have a median pay higher than the median pay in the U.S. (about $35k), but this is based on …
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