The mayor of Moore provided an estimate of the total cost stemming from Monday's tornado: $2 billion — a sum that's about a quarter the size of Oklahoma's state budget. It would make the Moore tornado the third-most costly in American history.
Tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma, are neither new nor uncommon. Monday's massive twister may be the worst the city has seen, but it's also the 22nd since 1890. We put the data for all of them on a map.
It is true that there is not unanimity in the scientific community over the role of humans in climate change. But with nearly every scientific paper for 20 years agreeing that warming is linked to human behavior, we're as close to unanimity as we'll get.
The 41-floor New Yorker Hotel on Eighth Avenue in New York City has 912 rooms. That's only one room short of what it would take to house the 913 New Yorkers still living in hotels in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
On Sunday, the low temperature was 22 degrees in Aberdeen, South Dakota — that's ten degrees below freezing. The next day, according to the National Weather Service, the high hit 92.
In case you weren't sure what climate change looks like, here's a preview: It looks like tens of millions people displaced from their homes due to climate- and weather-related events each year.
It has happened. For the first time, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels passed a daily average of 400 parts per million. There is now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any point since 2.9 million years before humans existed.
About twice a year, Yale University's Project on Climate Change Communication releases a survey assessing how Americans feel about the environmental threat. On Thursday, it released the latest version. We've extracted the four most important graphs.
A preliminary tally indicates that almost a third of all of the managed bee colonies in the United States — 31.1 percent — didn't survive the winter. That makes it the fourth-worst winter since 2006.
California's Public Utilities Commission is recommending that PG&E be fined $2.25 billion for the 2010 natural gas pipeline rupture and explosion that killed ten people in San Bruno, California. If it holds, it will be one of the largest in history.
The latest data from the Department of Energy indicates that the same loan guarantee program which was roundly criticized after the failure of Solyndra has now created more than 20,000 jobs in clean energy, with several companies already paying back their obligations.
For twenty-seven years, the world's average temperature has been hotter than the average during the second half of the 20th century. Last year, it was the ninth-warmest in recorded history — but still cold for the past ten.
A look at government data on alternate-fuel vehicles offers an interesting perspective on the popularity of the vehicles across the country. It does not, however, indicate that ExxonMobil and Shell need to stay awake at night in worry.
When you buy gasoline, as you know, you're paying for more than the gasoline itself. Twice a year, the government tracks how much people in each state are paying in tax — and the highest taxes may not be where you'd think.
During the second half of last year — the hottest recorded year in U.S. history — ocean temperatures off the East Coast also hit their highest temperatures in the 150 years measurements have been kept. It's not a comforting record.
For the first time, measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide taken at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii exceeded 400 parts-per-million on an hourly basis. It's a symbolic benchmark, but an important one, suggesting that efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions have not yet shown any significant effect.
California's Central Valley retains its title as home to the worst air in America, according to the American Lung Association's "State of the Air" assessment for 2013 — but, like other cities and counties, has still shown improvement in air quality.
China's wildly fluctuating (and increasing) urban air pollution is prompting some residents of Beijing to seek homes elsewhere. A look at recent air pollution data, though, suggests that most of the country's cities suffer similar problems.
Gay marriage is suddenly popular. But what our map GIF shows is that this wave of support for gay rights follows two large anti-gay rights wave, first under President Bill Clinton and then under President George W. Bush.
Looking at the recent spread of liberalized marijuana laws across the United States, it's hard not to think we're entering some kind of Weed Spring. The latest state to act is Maryland, where on Monday the state senate approved a bill legalizing medical marijuana by 42 to 4, sending it to Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is expected to sign it into law.
Any reader of George Eliot is familiar with Britain's class system, by which Britons sort themselves, either ironically or seriously, into rigidly-defined castes, based on things like education, type of employment, and wealth. In order to sort out the confusion inherent to such a system, the BBC wrote an interactive calculator to determine which class you belong to.
The Human Rights Campaign's social media blitz was so effective that Facebook engineers decided to map the portions of the United States, county by county, where users were most likely to change their avatar.
When The Washington Post's Brad Plumer posted "This is actually the scariest chart about Europe" on Thursday morning, there was a spontaneous reaction of mockery on Twitter that could, in the style of many social movements, mark the beginning of a full-scale rebellion against the maniacal competition to create The One Chart That Will Rule Them All.
Unmanned attacks in countries like Pakistan have become an increasingly controversial and no less common reality — Pakistani officials reported another one by U.S. missile fire just this weekend. So what do all of the strikes look like broken down by the available data? They look like this.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' debut album Please Please Me. Just think of those young Beatles when they were just beginning: pre-Yoko, pre-psychedelics, pre-facial hair. But it wasn't just that their sartorial choices were simpler, their instrumentations were as well.
While you're filling out your expertly analyzed bracket, you might want to take a look at how March Madness fandom is spread across the country with this map from Facebook.
There was no new pope on Day One of the conclave at the Vatican, although there should be one soon. So what will his name be? Here's a look at the frontrunners, based on popularity over time.
This interactive map demonstrates how women's voting rights and roles in the political process of countries around the world have changed over time. Which is to say, slowly, but still: progress.
You might reconsider complaining about your commute.
Using a Public Policy Polling poll on food issues and Pew data on gay marriage opinions, Dave Gilson of Mother Jones found that the people who won't try sushi are, age-wise at least, the same people who don't approve of gay marriage.
The Economist has a chart examining the frequency of gushing onstage clichés in Oscar history, and the words of Daniel Day-Lewis and Jennifer Lawrence weren't as bad as usual.
Longer lines! Fewer flights! Doomsday delays! So let's not further fan the fire: This chart shows which sectors would be hit hardest by cuts to federal grants to states — amounting to $427.6 billion over the next ten years.
A new IMDb-meets-Kevin Bacon graphic for Oscar night reveals the links between various actors, producers, and directors up for awards this year.
Here's where the brands belonging to the two biggest beer companies on the planet, Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller, really come from. (What with the pending litigation and all, this is more like beer Risk than beer Monopoly.)
The Guardian offers some context to the cosmic event with map of meteorites throughout history — at least the recorded ones — and it shows that America gets a lot more of these sightings than Russia.
It's interesting to think about where the next pope will come from and what that says about the Church's worldwide following. This map from the Washington Post helps.
The Wall Street Journal's new NYIndex is a little jarring — Michael Bloomberg and Mario Cuomo get thrown down past Chris Christie on a separate entry for politics, law, and government. But it is New York Fashion Week, after all.
One way to look at the effects of gun violence in America is how many people have been killed. Another way to look at the impact: How many years have been taken from the lives of gun victims?
If you plan on watching the Super Bowl but haven't bothered to watch any football this year, here's a handy graphic.
The artist's document of the 1980s recession is expected to go for as much as $30,000 at Christie's auction house.
The Super Bowl is fast approaching and fan allegiances, many long lost to the regular season and others evolving as the playoffs press on, have come down to this: the 49ers or the Ravens. But how'd we get there? And which parts of America have jumped on which bandwagon?
Monday is the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and The Economist has charted the number of times the novel's protagonists have appeared in books and journals in Britain over the years.
John Kerry breezed through his chummy confirmation hearing Thursday, but what countries will he blaze through in his role as Secretary of State?
With 80 billionaires in Davos this week, why not explore the numbers on some of the richest people in the world?
On the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade here's a chart that looks at laws restricting access to abortion that were passed by each of 30 state legislatures in the last two years.
You've watched it, you've read it, you've analyzed it. Now, compare the words Obama used in his speech today to other inaugural addresses.
President Obama is working to address gun violence on the federal level, but The Guardian has made a comprehensive graphic detailing legislation in the laboratories of democracy.
Twitter is now analyzing just how much the Oscars dominate the social conversation — and just how much Zero Dark Thirty pissed people off — with their official new Twitter Oscars Index.
A map of the monthly calendar of Academy Award winners and nominees has surprising results: December is the most popular month for nominated releases, but winners tend to come from October and November.
Here's a breakdown of the official (non-Congressional) professions of the 113th Congress, farmers and ranchers included.
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