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7 Oct, 4 tweets, 3 min read
Almost unbelievably fast progress here in Britain. Coal is disappearing rapidly.

This visualization shows the daily share of Britain's electricity that is generated by coal.

In 2012 still 40% was generated by burning coal. Now we go months without any.

theguardian.com/environment/ng…
Here is the recent change in the context of the last century.

Smil and others say that energy transitions are slow, but this doesn’t look slow to me.

Britain was absolutely dominated by coal for generations. And now Britain got almost rid of it.

electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/repo…
40% of electricity was generated by coal back in 2012.

In 2013 the country implemented the ‘carbon price floor’ (a top up carbon tax to the ETS).

According to this study (chapter 4) this is what led to the unprecedented reduction in coal generation.
ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/susta…
Electricity generation is only a part of the energy sector and gas power plants still produce a lot of electricity.

But the change in the electricity sector is surprisingly fast and the direction that the UK is taking is good.
ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-em…

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More from @MaxCRoser

Max Roser Profile picture
9 Oct
1/n] I think it's a very good decision to give this year's Peace Nobel to the World Food Programme.

Hunger is one of the world's biggest problems and the WFP – one of the UN insitutions that works outstandingly well – is making the world a better place.

nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2…
2] The world has made a lot of progress against hunger. This is the decline of famine deaths over time.

The WFP helped to avert possible famines in southern Africa (1991–92 & 2000–01), Afghanistan (2001), and western Africa (2012).

[Our work on famines: ourworldindata.org/famines] Image
3] But hunger remains a massive problem – 11% of the world population are undernourished.

And after decades of progress the share of people that are undernourished has not fallen in recent years.

[@_HannahRitchie's work on hunger on @OurWorldInData: ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-und…] Image
Read 5 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
5 Oct
In the UK the number of cases rose rapidly.
But the public – and authorities – are only learning this now because these cases were only published now as a backlog.

The reason was apparently that the database is managed in Excel and the number of columns had reached the maximum.
Here is the article dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8…

Glad that they are apparently now working on a solution. Not one, but several Excel spreadsheets…
It is now also the main headline at the BBC: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-544125…
At the end of last week confirmed cases were "actually nearer 11,000" – about 4,000 more than reported.

This is very, very bad and also means that the outbreak is much more rapid than thought.
Read 5 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
22 Sep
Economists are not known for agreeing much with one another.

Regarding the challenge of how to achieve the required reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a majority of the most widely respected economists agrees however: carbon taxes.

igmchicago.org/?s=carbon+tax ImageImage
This here is a survey of 365 economists who have published papers related to climate change “in a highly ranked, peer-reviewed economics or environmental economics journal” and the result is the same.

[link policyintegrity.org/files/publicat…] Image
This survey also finds that compared with the general public (pie chart at the bottom) a much larger share of economists believes that climate change is a serious problem and that it is time to act now.

(Very much contrary to the caricature of economists in some media outlets.) Image
Read 5 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
16 Sep
One of the weirdest things about this pandemic are the crazy claims that some people make about Sweden.

This guy is getting back to me with a claim that very obviously contradicts the very tweet that he is replying to.🤦‍♂️ Image
I expect that Sweden will do well in the longer run –– it is one of the richest countries with one of the best health systems on the planet.

But to say that Sweden has done well in the first months of this pandemic is absurd (8.3% econ decline and one of the worst death rates). Image
If you are looking for a country to praise (and learn from) my suggestions are Korea, Germany, or Vietnam.

[Here is the research on they managed to do so well:
]
Read 4 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
11 Aug
Years ago Lant Pritchett suggested an additional higher poverty line:
Back then the extreme poverty line was $1.25, he suggested to add $12.50 per day.

Now I want to update it:
I’m suggesting int.-$30 per day.
(arguments in the next tweet.)

What do you think about $30 per day?
This was how Pritchett arrived at his additional poverty line.

He followed the same logic that the UN/World Bank applies to arrive at the International Poverty Line (for extreme poverty) Image
I’ll share the calculations in the next tweet, but this is my overall thinking to get to $30 per day.

$30 per day is a very low poverty for one of the richer countries in the EU (Germany) and in line with the poverty line in a country a bit below the EU average (Spain). Image
Read 6 tweets
Max Roser Profile picture
21 Jul
new paper by Leigh Shaw‐Taylor in the Economic History Review:
An introduction to the history of infectious diseases, epidemics and the early phases of the long‐run decline in mortality

free-access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11… Image
From this paper. A survival curve for Londoners and people in the countryside for the 1730s.

Less than half of those born in London lived to see their fifth birthday, and 80 per cent failed to make it to 45. Image
This chart shows that mortality was so bad in London that deaths consistently exceeded births.

London was only able to sustain its population because of continuous immigration of healthier young adults from the British countryside. Image
Read 6 tweets

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