A team of scientists from the University of Würzburg published an updated estimates of weight of biomass on earth by category. Wild land mammals have a total biomass of 22 million tons. Marine mammals account for 40 million tons. These numbers are far overshadowed by 390 million tons of human biomass and 630 million tons of livestock and other hangers-on such as urban rats.

Reading the list of numbers in the article makes me wish for a visualisation, that would make the relations and categories much clearer.

But at the very end, the article reveals another insight. But this time, it’s about the thinking of one of the involved scientists, which could be read as representative of Western thinking about nature in general: “We can only conserve what we understand, and we can only truly understand what we can quantify.”

Light pollution is an often overlooked environmental problem. In his “The Darkness Manifesto”, the Swedish ecologist Johan Eklöf describes the various problems the lid-up night sky has for animals and plants. But also the effects of screens and other light sources for humans.

It might not look like much but it's probably the most defining number of our time, one that will shape this century and many beyond it. It is the amount, in parts-per-million, of carbon dioxide in our planet's atmosphere. This project by Julian Oliver and Gardan Savičić displays this number on your smartphone.

The warming stripes by Ed Hawkins achieved what only few images and even less data visualisations did: they became an icon. Due to their simplicity they managed the gap between science and pop culture. They communicate their message without any explicit legend and reached a point where the pure display conveys a political message. And when the Reading FC football club wore the warming stripes on their jersey, they might have triggered the first climate change conversation during live commentary of a football match.

Some Brazilian scientists fear that the Amazon may become a grassy savanna — with profound effects on the climate worldwide.

The story behind an ambitious new global agreement to protect biodiversity.

Marius Michusch photographs three police officers protecting Bagger 288 from protesters in the Lützerath open pit mine.

Der russische Angriffskrieg in der Ukraine hat bloßgelegt, was Klimaforscher_innen schon lange kritisierten: die Abhängigkeit von fossilen Energien (und von totalitären Regimen). Die ewigen Verschleppungstaktiken beim sozial-ökologischen Umbau der Gesellschaften hin zu einer nachhaltigeren Form des globalen Miteinanders können wir uns nicht mehr leisten. Wie lassen sich die miteinander verschränkten Krisen aus Krieg, Klimakrise und der Gefahr autoritärer, faschistischer Bewegungen analysieren und beantworten?