As Trump Casts Himself As A Savior For The Coal Industry, The Red States That Voted For Him Are Adding

Acid rain (wet sulfate deposition = sulfuric acid rain) before (89-91) and after (07-09) the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which used a cap & trade program to limit sulfur dioxide emissions. For anyone who has any doubt that environmental regulations can work...

Coal's share of U.S. electricity generation has been steadily declining, a result of market forces, particularly the low price of natural gas and the expense of building new coal plants. Since throughout its life cycle coal is arguably our dirtiest fuel source (from mountaintop removal mining, to mercury and air toxics released during combustion, to carbon emissions, to hazardous coal ash), a move away from reliance on coal benefits public health, the environment and the climate.

Change in mean sea level over the past two decades. The lull in 2011 was the result of La Nina, not a pause in climate change.

Agricultural technology advances over the past 50 years have dramatically reduced the amount of land needed to produce crops. This provides hope that ongoing technological improvements will continue to drive down the amount of land placed under agriculture.

This is largely the product of improvements that increase crop yields. In 2014, 1.26 billion hectares of land were spared from cultivation due to yield improvements in growing cereals.

Predicted land change along the Louisiana coast over the next 50 years if we do nothing more than we have done to date. Red indicates areas likely to be lost, and green indicates areas of new land. This map is based on assumptions about increases in sea level rise, subsidence, and other factors.

The global rise in mean sea level is complicated in the Mississippi River Delta region by subsidence (sinking land). The Gulf of Mexico has one of the highest rates of subsidence in the nation due to sediment compaction and the extraction of groundwater, oil and natural gas. Restoration of the deltaic system can help stabilize shorelines and reduce the associated risks with rising sea levels. Deltas are formed by the constant inflow of sediment from rivers. However, the Mississippi River Delta has been cut off from this natural process through the construction of extensive levee systems for navigation and flood protection. Through planned sediment diversions, the natural deltaic process can be restored and help increase the resiliency of coastal areas.

Ongoing drought conditions have the prompted the U.S. Agriculture Department to declare a federal disaster area in more than 1,000 counties covering 26 states. That's almost one-third of all the counties in the United States, making it the largest disaster declaration ever made by the USDA. The result is skyrocketing corn, wheat and soybean prices.

Glacier area on Mount Kilimanjaro on the Kenya/Tanzania border in East Africa decreased 85% 1912-2007; from 12.06km2 to 1.85km2. While the loss of glaciers in temperate regions (such as those in the U.S.) has been attributed to warming temperatures from climate change, glacier loss on Kilimanjaro is more likely a result of a local climate change in East Africa that occurred in the late 1800s, resulting in a drier climate. However, causes of the dramatic glacier loss remain largely unknown.

Source: Thompson, L. G., Hardy, D. R., Mark, B. G., Brecher, H. H., & Mosley-Thompson, E. (2009). Glacier loss on Kilimanjaro continues unabated. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(47), 19770-19775.

The advance of cane toads in Australia

“[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