Artist Dave Delisle has combined two of my favorite subjects to geek-out on: Transit and old school video games. Yes, someone has finally drawn public transit systems as Super Mario and Mario Kart maps. Would you ever miss a train if you could get a star? Can we do something like this for Spokane? I'm particularly fond of “Mariobart” in San Francisco. Full story HERE.
The Climate Hot Map, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, is a google map displaying climate trouble spots worldwide.
Creators say, “The greatest concentration of global warming indicators on the map is in North America and Europe because that is where most scientific investigation has been done to date. As scientists focus increasingly on fingerprints of global warming in other regions—from Russia to Antarctica and Oceania to South America—the evidence they find will be added to the map.”
When you use the map, you can turn the global warming effects on and off to see which places are affected with the boxes above.
We're so accustomed to fast travel and instant digital communications that we often forget how long it took to get across the USA. This series of maps shows the evolution of the speed of travel over the years.
Pushing east on I-90 from the city, as Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Post Falls, and Coeur d'Alene form one contiguous metropolitan area, it would appear smart growth is a regional challenge. Too often, development requires residents to drive long distances between jobs and homes and we are simply not maximizing our investments.
The below graph, courtesy of the Sightline Institute, demonstrates smart growth by northwest city, with Vancouver, B.C. leading the way.
Check out this new map from a volunteer at the Center For Justice. I especially enjoy that it includes borders for the Urban Growth Area. Click here for a larger version. This map is featured on the Spokane River page for the Center For Justice, which features excellent information about the geography, dams, tributaries and more.
This is a great feature from the National Resources Defense Council. It's an interactive map showing all the record weather events from the last year. According to the NRDC, “in 2011, there were at least 2,941 monthly weather records broken by extreme events that struck communities in the US.”
The map shows record snowfalls, record rainfalls, record high and low temperatures, and the affected range from disastrous events like floods, droughts and wildfire. While the image is a summary of the year — click here to watch a time-lapse video of 2011's record-busting weather, and to look at detailed summaries of extreme events in your state.
From the NRDC: 2011 has been a year of unparalleled extremes: 14 disastrous weather events in the US so far this year have resulted in over a billion dollars in property damage – an all-time record breaking number – and their estimated $53 billion price tag doesn’t include health costs. As shown recently, in a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal Health Affairs1, when health-related costs of extreme events are calculated, the total tally increases substantially and will likely continue to climb due to climate change. 7 of the 2011 extreme events – a record-high number – are the type expected to worsen due to climate change.
After the United States Of Awesome and the United States Of Shame maps, now we have the latest iteration: The United State of the Environment.
Where do we lead? Washington has the most organic apples. Our close neighbor Idaho has the smallest per capita carbon footprint. So how does Washington not excel? The most invasive snails. And Idaho received the lowest per capita public transit funding.