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Tomas Pueyo

@tomaspueyo

Apr 23

Why do Jamaicans speak English, when most of its neighboring countries don’t?
Why was the pirate capital there?
Why is it underwater now?
Why did pirates drink rum?
Why are most Jamaicans black?

This map of shipping lanes today gives you a hint:

Jamaica is in the middle of all these shipping lanes, but isn't a major shipping hub today

This is not new: Back in Spanish colonial times, Jamaica was not in the main trade routes either

Spain's main goods were silver from Mexico and Peru and luxury goods from China
Spaniards gathered them in Panama, Portobello, Cartagena, and Veracruz
Ships arrived from Spain to Puerto Rico and left via Habana (Cuba)
Jamaica was not a main port
Why?

Read 28 tweets

Tomas Pueyo

@tomaspueyo

Apr 3

This machine makes fuel from thin air
It's carbon neutral
And it does this at record-low costs
Energy and the environment will look completely different in 10 years
Here's why: 🧵

The problem with fossil fuels today is not that we burn them, it's where they come from: They had been locked in the ground for millions of years and now they're back in the atmosphere. The pbm is the "fossil", not the "fuels"

If we make fuels out of thin air, we can burn them

How can we do it?

Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4)
You just need some energy to force some carbon (C) to bing to hydrogen (H)

Carbon can come from air (CO2)
Hydrogen can come from water (H2O)
The energy can come from the sun (solar panels)

That's what @TerraformIndies does

Read 11 tweets

Tomas Pueyo

@tomaspueyo

Apr 1

This video of the Rock of Gibraltar gives an intuition for why some areas of the world have deserts next to rainforests

What's happening here?
How can you use that to predict where there will be deserts or rainforests?🧵

Look at the map below: In some places, deserts and lush forests are side by side. Why?

The mountain chains between them

The effect is called the Rain Shadow:
• Air comes wet from the sea
• As it hits mountains, it goes up
• Higher altitudes are cooler, so the air cools
• That condenses water (like the droplets on you Coke glass)
• Rain falls
• Air is dry past the mountains

Read 21 tweets

Tomas Pueyo

@tomaspueyo

Mar 8

Egyptian pyramids are not where they're supposed to be. Why?
Why is Cairo, the biggest African city, where it is today?
Alexandria?
Why do over 100M Egyptians live so densely clustered?
These questions all have the same answer. Look:

1st map: population density
2nd map: satellite
The "flower" is the inhabited part of Egypt, which is basically the Nile

It makes sense: outside of the Nile, Egypt is like the rest of the Sahara desert, an inhospitable hell for humans

Read 24 tweets

Tomas Pueyo

@tomaspueyo

Mar 4

Global warming is accelerating
There's only one thing we can do today to delay it before we burn, enough to solve the pbm: SO2 injection

Some ppl are squeamish about it but they shouldn't be. SO2 is so obviously the right solution that we should do it now. Here's why:

There is no way we can stop carbon emissions on time

The Earth is reaching 1.5ºC of warming, but carbon emissions are higher than ever, carried by emerging economies that won't stay poor just for the environment

Solar, wind, nuclear, batteries, electric vehicles... All of these will curb CO2 emissions soon, but not soon enough. They will take decades

And extracting CO2 from the atmosphere is very expensive: ~$100 per ton

Read 23 tweets

Tomas Pueyo

@tomaspueyo

Feb 23

This is the ghost of Poland's past
Poles call this type of map "widać zabory": "You can see the partitions"
What partitions?
Why is Poland like that today?
What does it tell us about the country?
About Russia? Germany?
Let's explore:

You might have seen this map already: It overlaps Poland's election results with the old German empire borders

So is that region different because of German influence and investment? That's only a tiny part of the story. This can be quite misleading!

Consider these other maps: They highlight not one internal border, but three—between the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian parts

Why does Poland have areas from three regions?

Read 26 tweets

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