Sustainability Math A Quantitative Literacy and Mathematics Resource for Instructors

The visual here is from the NASA feature How Much Carbon Dioxide Are We Emitting? by Matthew Conlen (7/15/2021) may help us all understand the change in CO2 emissions.

In 1900, almost 2 billion metric tons of CO₂ were released due to fossil fuel usage. By 1960, that number had more than quadrupled to over 9 billion metric tons.

The latest data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center shows that over 35 billion metric tons of CO₂ were released in 2014. *

There is a link to CO2 data at the bottom of the article. If you’d like a graph this one is included on the page:

The answer to the question is correlated with party affiliation as Pew reports in their article Wide partisan divide on whether voting is a fundamental right or a privilege with responsibilities by Vianney Gomez and Carroll Doherty (7/22/2021) as their chart here shows.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overwhelmingly say voting is a fundamental right that should not be restricted in any way – 78% hold this view, while fewer than a quarter (21%) say it is a privilege. Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican leaners say voting is a privilege that can be limited if requirements are not met, compared with about half as many (32%) who say it is a fundamental right.

On another question we have this:

Nearly all Americans (94%) – including 95% of both Republicans and Democrats – say it is important that people who are legally qualified to vote are able to cast a ballot, with 82% saying it is very important.

This makes me wonder if there is a different interpretation to “can be limited.”  There are three other charts and links to the questions used and the methodology. All great for a stats course.

From the eia article June heat wave in the Northwest United States resulted in more demand for electricity by Johnathan DeVilbiss and Mark Morey (7/21/2021):

A heat wave in the Northwest United States in late June led to more regional demand for electricity. During periods of high temperatures, electricity demand increases as people turn up their air conditioners, dehumidifiers, fans, and other cooling equipment. Very high temperature events, like the one in June in the Northwest, tend to push electricity demand to very high levels.

Portland, Oregon: On Monday, June 28, the temperature at Portland International Airport reached an all-time record high of 115°F. At 5:00 p.m., the temperature was 114°F, and electricity demand for the Portland General Electric Balancing Authority for the hour ending at 5:00 p.m. was 4,471 megawatthours (MWh).

This provides as example of a feedback loop. At the planet warms we’ll use more electricity to keep us cool. If that electricity is generated by CO2 emitting sources we continue to warm the planet and then use even more electricity.

The article links to the hourly electric grid monitor where you can download data.

The Bureau of Reclamation posts the end of month elevation for Lake Mead dating back to 1935. I created the graph of minimum yearly end of month elevation starting in 1940 since Hoover Dam was only created in 1935. Here is the R code to create the graph including importing the data directly from the webpage. I’ll leave it as a project to normalize this based on the number of people the reservoir serves.

From NOAA’s Global Climate Report – June 2021:

The June 2021 global surface temperature was the fifth highest for June in the 142-year record at 0.88°C (1.58°F) above the 20th century average. Only Junes of 2015 (fourth warmest), 2016 (second warmest), 2019 (warmest), and 2020 (third warmest) were warmer and had a global temperature departure above +0.90°C (+1.62°F). Nine of the 10 warmest Junes have occurred since 2010.

But June seemed hot you say? Yup:

The global land-only surface temperature for June 2021 was the highest on record at 1.42°C (2.56°F) above average. This value surpassed the previous record set in 2019 by +0.11°C (+0.20°F). The ten warmest June global land-only surface temperatures have occurred since 2010. The unusually warm June global land-only surface temperature was mainly driven by the very warm Northern Hemisphere land, which also had its highest June temperature departure at +1.69°C (+3.04°F). The now second highest June temperature for the Northern Hemisphere occurred in 2012 (+1.51°C / +2.72°F).

Time series data is available at the link near the top of the page.

From the NOAA STAR Center for Satellite Applications and Research page:

Global and Regional Vegetation Health (VH) is a NOAA/NESDIS system estimating vegetation health, moisture condition, thermal condition and their products.

It contains Vegetation Health Indices (VHI) derived from the radiance observed by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) onboard afternoon polar-orbiting satellites: the NOAA-7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 18 and 19 and VIIRS from Soumi-NPP satellite.

And

The VH products can be used as proxy data for monitoring vegetation health, drought, soil saturation, moisture and thermal conditions, fire risk, greenness of vegetation cover, vegetation fraction, leave area index, start/end of the growing season, crop and pasture productivity, teleconnection with ENSO, desertification, mosquito-borne diseases, invasive species, ecological resources, land degradation, etc.

The following indices and products are available:
Vegetation Health (VHI)
Vegetation Condition Index (VCI)
Temperature Condition Index (TCI)
Soil Saturation Index (SSI)
No noise Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (SMN)
No noise Brightness Temperature (SMT)
and more.

There is a page with maps (and links to shapefiles) and an interactive page with time series graphs for different states. The one for NY is copied here. It seems like there are some uses for stats courses tied to correlations with temperature (and you can add climate max/min to the graphs) and more. There is a page to download data (see left sidebar) but you’ll have to be able to handle netcdf files.

Berkeley Earth summarizes the recent heatwave in the Pacific Northwest in the article The Pacific Northwest Heatwave in Context  (7/6/2021). The graph by Dr. Robert Rohde copied here is striking and really says all that needs to be said. This is a graph that everyone should have to study and understand. This was anything but a typical heatwave.

There are other graphs and links to dedicated data pages for Washington State, Oregon, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, and Canada. On these pages there are more graphs and links to the data that created the graphs.

As a follow up to the Tuesday post, the Our World in Data article Why is life expectancy in the U.S. lower than other rich countries by Max Roser provides data on categories that contribute to the lower U.S. life expectancy. The article explores eight  categories: Smoking, Obesity, Homicides (graph copied here), Opioid Overdoses, Suicides, Road Accidents, Poverty and Economic Inequality, Access to Healthcare. A few facts from the article:

In the US the (opioid) death rate has increased more than 10-fold since 1990, while opioid overdoses have remained an extremely rare cause of death in other countries. No other country in the world has seen a surge in opioid overdose deaths as large as the US. Today the US has by far the highest opioid overdose death rate.

Deaths in road accidents are also much more common in the US than in most other rich countries. The chart shows that in many countries road deaths are at least 50% less common.

More than two-thirds of Americans (70%) are overweight and more than one-third (36%) is obese.

The charts for each of these categories have a link for the data.

Our World in Data has the answer and more on their page Why is life expectancy in the U.S. lower than in other rich countries?

In the US health spending per capita is up to four times higher, yet life expectancy is lower than in all of these countries.

The US has achieved very substantial progress in health outcomes over the last 140 years: in 1880 the life expectancy of Americans was 39 years, since then it has doubled. But this extremely positive trend has come to an end. While life expectancy for people around the world continued to increase, life expectancy of Americans has declined since 2014. With the pandemic of 2020 – which already caused more than 225,000 deaths due to COVID-19 and 300,000 excess deaths – it is unfortunately already certain that the decline of life expectancy in the US will continue this year.¹

Normally, Our World in Data includes the data with each graph, but for some reason this one doesn’t have the data. I bet if you emailed them they would make it available.

The EducationalData.org post Student Loan Debt by Race by Melanie Hanson (6/9/21) has three excellent graphs such as the one copied here. It may not be surprising that Asians have the least debt given Asians have the highest income, but Hispanic and Latino debt is almost identical to White and Caucasian debt yet their income is typically closer to the Black and African American community.  From a statistical standpoint the first bullet in the highlights

Black and African American college graduates owe an average of $25,000 more in student loan debt than White college graduates.

is a bit misleading. Given the skewness of the data (the 17% in the top category for Black and African American) one should also report a median difference, which looks to be closer to around $10,000. Interestingly, in all cases the median debt is below the $39,000, which is manageable college debt in most cases. The question that comes to mind is how much lower would this be if median income increased at the same pace as the stock market or top 1%?

The article has sources but no easily downloadable data set.