Uncategorized

According to the Climate Central post, Fall Warming Trends Across the U.S. (9/5/18), the average fall temperature for the U.S. has risen nearly 3°F since 1970 (see their graph copied here).  Why does this matter: Insects linger longer into the fall when the first freeze of the season comes later in the …

NASA’s Vital Signs of the planet post, Scientists ID three causes of Earth’s spin axis drift (9/19/18) explains changes in the spin axis. Earth is not a perfect sphere. When it rotates on its spin axis — an imaginary line that passes through the North and South Poles — it drifts …

Wage growth has varied depending on numerous factors such as gender, race, income level, and education. The EPI article,  America’s slow-motion wage crisis-Four decades of slow and unequal growth by John Schmitt, Elise Gould, and Josh Bivens (9/13/18) summarizes the findings with 30 graphs or tables (data included). For example, the cumulative percent change in …

The answer to the question depends on how it is measured.  The post  in statista, The Countries Spending the Most on Education by Martin Armstrong (9/12/2018) reports spending as a share of gross domestic product for primary, second and post-secondary non-tertiary education as well as tertiary education.  By this measure …

The Think Progress article, Global warming ‘double whammy’ may be steering Florence into the Carolinas, says researcher by Joe Romm (9/12/2018) makes the connection. The path of Florence has been extremely unusual. As Philip Klotzbach, an Atlantic hurricane expert, tweeted on Friday, “33 named storms (since 1851) have been within 100 miles of …

The Our World in Data article Plastic Pollution by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (Sept 2018) is a detailed summary of plastics with 20 charts.  For example, one of the charts is a time series of plastic production (downloaded and posted here) showing that, in 2015, the world produced 381 million …

The New York Times interactive article How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born? By Nadja Popovich, Blacki Migliozzi, Rumsey Taylor, Josh Williams and Derek Watkins, allows the reader to input a birth year and hometown and provides a graph with historical 90+ degree days and predictions for the …

The extensive article by Pew Research, How Teens and Parents Navigate Screen Time and Device Distractions by Jingjing Jiang (8/22/18), presents detailed data on cell phone use.  For example, And 51% of teens say they often or sometimes find their parent or caregiver to be distracted by their own cellphone when they …

The Guardian article Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record by Jonathan Watts (8/21/18) includes an animated graph of Arctic sea ice volume by year. We produce a similar graph using monthly average ice volume from PIOMAS (source cited for the data in the article).  The graph clearly displays …

EPI has the answer in the post Separate is still unequal: How patterns of occupational segregation impact pay for black women by Madison Matthews and Valerie Wilson (8/6/2018). On average, in 2017, black women workers were paid only 66 cents on the dollar relative to non-Hispanic white men, even after controlling for education, years of experience, …