Ecoclimax

Update for Global Sea Ice Area spiral for January 31, 2017. Reddit user: kevpluck

Related posts: - Drought severity and duration in the United Sates (2010 - 2016)  - U.S. map after global warming - Shift in plant USDA hardiness zones in the United States

LAND MANAGEMENT Plant trees and plants to absorb more CO2. Reduce tropical deforestation. BIOCHAR Convert waste vegetation -leaves, straw etc. - into charcoal and bury. B.E.C.S. Burn biomass for fuel. Capture the resulting CO2 & bury it. CARBON CAPTURE Separate out industrial CO2 and bury underground in old oil wells. PAINT IT WHITE Paint roofs, roads & pavements white to reflect lots of sunlight. CARBON SCRUBBERS Use giant towers and artificial trees to scrub pure CO2 from the air. EMISSION REDUCTION The world limits CO2 emissions to below crisis thresholds starting NOW! ENHANCED LAND WEATHERING Add minerals to soil to speed up natural CO2 absorption by rocks. CLOUD WHITENING Air-spray particles of sea salt to make clouds whiter & reflect more sunlight. OCEAN FERTILISATION Add iron filings to surface water and boost growth of CO2-absorbing algae. ENHANCED OCEAN WEATHERING Stir megatonnes of limestone into oceans so more CO2 absorbed by less acidic water. SPACE REFLECTO...

The German Aerospace Center has released an interactive globe which visualizes human settlements around the world.

Our tiny house is designed and built for a subtropical climate. The tall space celebrates light and always maintains a close connection with the outdoors. Recycled Australian hardwood throughout balances warmth with simplicity and clean lines. The doors and windows were old floor joists in a past life. The modular deck can be assembled in under two hours almost doubling the floor area. The bathroom has a 2.1 m ceiling and the kitchen runs half the length of the house ...because there are some things you just can't skimp on. Multi-function is the key - why leave a space unused for half the day? Our bed is only there when you need it, at the press of a button. 2.6 m high lounge by day... 3.5 m high bedroom by night... and no stairs. A 900 mm structural grid sets an aesthetic framework for both house and deck. It's built on a trailer and ready to go off-grid.

The world population is actually 7.4 billion people if we crammed people into the same density as we did inside the Boeing factory and we will require a volume of 2.4 36 billion cubic meters or 2.4 36 cubic kilometers. The building would be a cube with sides of 1.346 kilometers in length and height. Agoraphobia is defined as the fear of open spaces public transit, shopping malls or simply being outside of your home. But is the fear really realistic, and is it actually possible to live an entire life completely indoors? And weirdly, if the entire human species suffer from this phobia that could we all theoretically live inside of one gigantic building and not ever have to leave our homes or at least never have to leave the comfort of the building? The answer is yes but let's first take a look at some real-world concepts before venturing into the detailed insanity of all living, eating, sleeping and breathing in the same building. Related post:  - What if everyone live...

British designer Micaella Pedros has found a way to give discarded plastic bottles purpose and she demonstrates it in her project called "Joining Bottles" .

Related post: - Drought severity and duration in the United Sates (2010 - 2016)

Amber and Andrew decided to renovate a 1987 Volvo B6FA 6-Litre Turbo Diesel bus into a motorhome that they could live in and use to travel around New Zealand. Annie and Zack from Arkansas turned old school bus into a modern RV Related posts: - Modern school bus conversion -  Loft on Wheels

Like a giant ice cream cake left outside on a hot summer day, the Arctic is melting. In the land of frozen Earth, new wetlands are appearing, as are lake-sized puddles and kilometers-long rivulets of meltwater. Scientists have long known about thermokarst—areas where permafrost has thawed and given way to land surface collapse and eroded gullies. But until now, they did not know just how much of the Arctic landscape was susceptible to thermokarst. According to new research, it makes up roughly 20 percent of the northern permafrost region. Thermokarst landscapes store as much as half of the region’s soil organic carbon (SOC)—a potentially significant source of future greenhouse gasses. The maps above, which show the northernmost latitudes of North America and Eurasia, were created using data from the study. The map below offers a closer look at Siberia. The different colors reflect the types of landscapes—wetlands, lakes, hillslopes, etc.—where thermokarst is likely to be foun...

Drought severity & duration in the U.S, 2010 Drought severity & duration in the U.S, 2011 Drought severity & duration in the U.S, 2012 Drought severity & duration in the U.S, 2013 Drought severity & duration in the U.S, 2014 Drought severity & duration in the U.S, 2015 Drought severity & duration in the U.S, 2016 Source: www.ecoclimax.com

Related post: -  Drought severity and duration in the United Sates (2010 - 2016)

Happy Planet Index (Cartogram). Benjamin Hennig Countries by rank order 1. Costa Rica (Score: 44.7) 2. Mexico (40.7) 3. Colombia (40.7) 4. Vanuatu (40.6) 5. Vietnam (40.3) 6. Panama (39.5) 7. Nicaragua (38.7) 8. Bangladesh (38.4) 9. Thailand (37.3) 10. Ecuador (77.0) ... 35. United Kingdom (31.9) ... 44. France (30.4) ... 49. Germany (29.8) ... 85. Canada (23.9) ... 105. Australia (21.2) ... 108. Unites States (20.7) ... 138. Togo (13.2) 139. Luxembourg (13.2) 140. Chad (12.8) Via happyplanetindex.org Related post: -  Happy Planet Index

There are over 4,400 wind turbine technician to the United States with jobs expected to double in the next 10 years.

Here In Northern California, Bay Area. This is zone 9b. This is a backyard food forest that I started putting together five years ago and I've been documenting each and every year. If you've been following along you've seen the full development of whats occurring here today. And we're still actually at a very young stage in this food forest but there's so much to share, so much awesomeness happening! Related post: - Thriving 23-Year-Old Permaculture Food Forest

Nonhuman primates, our closest biological relatives, play important roles in the livelihoods, cultures, and religions of many societies and offer unique insights into human evolution, biology, behavior, and the threat of emerging diseases. They are an essential component of tropical biodiversity, contributing to forest regeneration and ecosystem health. Current information shows the existence of 504 species in 79 genera distributed in the Neotropics, mainland Africa, Madagascar, and Asia. Alarmingly, ~60% of primate species are now threatened with extinction and ~75% have declining populations. This situation is the result of escalating anthropogenic pressures on primates and their habitats—mainly global and local market demands, leading to extensive habitat loss through the expansion of industrial agriculture, large-scale cattle ranching, logging, oil and gas drilling, mining, dam building, and the construction of new road networks in primate range regions. Other important drivers are...

Via sustainability.uiowa.edu Related post: - U.S. map after global warming 

Reddit user: not_athletic

Earth just experienced the warmest year on record, again. 2016 was the third year in a row with record-high surface temperature, part of a decades-long warming trend. NASA scientists track global temperature changes to better understand Earth`s changing climate.   2016: 0.99°C / 1.8°F above 1951-1980 average. (NASA) 2016: 0.94°C / 1.69°F above 1901-2000 average. (NOAA)

The real world being described by simple equation  x n +1 = λ x n (1-x n ) The amount of complex population forecasting you can do with a simple equation and Feigenbaum's Constant is absolutely supernatural. Nobody expected this behavior to happen from a really simple equation.

Over the past 40 years, we have changed from a world in which underweight prevalence was more than double that of obesity, to one in which more people are obese than underweight.

Via http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=76697   Relates post: - Forest distribution in Europe

Profile showing the depths of the Great Lakes.

A family of five from Washington state that moved into a 40-foot-long school bus they lovingly call "Big Bertha". Related post: -  Loft on Wheels

Over 3.1 billion people depend on fish for over 20% of their protein. More than 150 million rely on fish for a living. 98% of these come from developing countries. Since 1955, oceans have absorbed over 90% of the excess heattrapped by greenhouse gases.

Tree species richness (a) and relative rarity (b) estimated from the merged dataset at a resolution of 0.5×0.5 degrees. Relative rarity was computed following Leroy et al. Via nature.com Related post: - Biodiversity of the Contiguous United States 

The installed capacity of wind power in the European Union in 2017 equaled 169.3 gigawatts. The wind power in Europe produced 336 terawatt-hours of electricity, enough to provide 11.6 percent of the European Union's electricity consumption.   Denmark is the first wind power country in the world. Wind power in this country contributed some 39% of Danish domestic electricity. In Germany, about 22 thousand wind turbines are located.  

Transformation of a ordinary Citroen family car into a tiny camper for two.

Identifying hotspots of species threat has been a successful approach for setting conservation priorities. One important challenge in conservation is that, in many hotspots, export industries continue to drive overexploitation. Conservation measures must consider not just the point of impact, but also the consumer demand that ultimately drives resource use. To understand which species threat hotspots are driven by which consumers, we have developed a new approach to link a set of biodiversity footprint accounts to the hotspots of threatened species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The result is a map connecting consumption to spatially explicit hotspots driven by production on a global scale. Locating biodiversity threat hotspots driven by consumption of goods and services can help to connect conservationists, consumers, companies and governments in order to better target conservation actions. Global species threat hotspots linked to consumption in United States Darker ...

Hurricane force winds ripped across Colorado, doing serious damage.  

Percent Change in deaths per 100,000, by county.

A Fish Tower Building a Fish Tower Floating Fish Tower

Via zeit.de Related post: - Light pollution map of Europe

Glaciers are a central component of the visitor experience in Alaska. Most of Alaska’s glacier- covered area lies within national park boundaries. Of Alaska’s 15 national parks, preserves and monuments, nine contain or adjoin glaciers: Aniakchak, Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Katmai, Kenai Fjords, Klondike Gold Rush, Lake Clark, and Wrangell-St. Elias. Glaciers in Alaska’s national parks persist because of our climate―relatively wet and cold. Glaciers are changing just as the climate has changed over time, and will continue to change. Explore these immense features by browsing the tabs at the top of the page to view the changes in glacier extent for each park followed by respective target glaciers. View a selection of videos showing how we documented changes in glaciers. Listen to local residents and park employees discuss the changes they have witnessed in glaciers near them.

One of the winters I lived in it was the 2014/2015. It was one of the coldest winters we had since like 100 years or so. It was really cold. And it only cost me $100 bucks to heat up the whole place all winter. My temperatures were between 17 and 25 degrees Celsius all the time. Really it was my solar heating that was giving me a lot of free energy and I only had to heat up at night with a small electric heater. So it was pretty much like $20 bucks per month of heating.

This house has clean water coming in and clean water going out. All waste is nourishing the plants wich eventually becomes food for us. A house that is healthy to live in and good for the environment. The house is built of cob. A mixture of sand, clay and straws. Images via Ingrid Hjertefølger