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24 Mar, 5 tweets, 2 min read
This is amazing.

England has more forest now than it did at the time of the Black Death.

The U.K. as a whole probably has more than during the Norman Conquest.

forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-reso….
("Probably" because the data gets very patchy outside of England as you go earlier. But it's hard to believe that 1086 Scotland had more forest than 2020 Scotland, given where it was in 1350)
Other crazy facts: Japan and South Korea are more densely forested than Brazil and Russia.

data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.L…
The forest area of the U.S. has increased by an area bigger than West Virginia since 1990:

data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.L…
None of this is meant to inspire complacency, or elide the fact that a lot of this forest is plantation that's often a monoculture. But I think people generally aren't aware of this.

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More from @davidfickling

David Fickling Profile picture
26 Mar
Do you want a thread exploring the links between:

*that ship stuck in Suez
*the Trojan War
*the founding of Singapore
*and Chinese foreign policy, from the Belt and Road and South China Sea to Taiwan?

Of course you do!

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
The Ever Given getting stuck while traversing the Suez Canal is playing out as a sort of slapstick routine.

But it underlines a serious point that's in many ways the axis on which modern geopolitical tensions turn.

If you can control ocean straits, you can control the world.
That's been the case since ancient times.

We don't know that much about what caused the Trojan War or whether it even happened, but there's lots of evidence that historical Troy was a trading centre of huge importance to ancient Greek states: Image
Read 39 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
4 Mar
Forget everything you're reading about what's happening in Washington DC, or Brussels, or London, or Glasgow.

The most important event in years to determine the fate of the global climate is happening in Beijing tomorrow:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
That's when China's 14th Five Year Plan gets presented to the "two sessions" of its pseudo-parliament.

It's a hugely important document that will determine the direction of China's economy, from the largest to the smallest scales, until 2026.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
After Xi Jinping's pledge in September to hit peak emissions this decade and net zero by 2060, some of the most important detail will be what's announced on the climate front.

China last year accounted for more emissions than the U.S., European Union, and India *put together*. Image
Read 34 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
11 Feb
India's farmer protests aren't just about a piece of worthwhile but badly-handled agricultural legislation.

They're potentially the birth pangs of a more urbanized, prosperous India that will transform the world in the 21st century (thread):
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
It's an honour to be working with @andymukherjee70 on this subject, and first of all you should read his heartfelt, blistering piece from last year on how India risks squandering its promise:
In this latest piece we wanted to explore one reason for hope.

India is on the brink of a potential take-off moment, with the share of the population working in agriculture about to drop below 40% — levels at which other Asian countries started to boom:
Read 19 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
15 Jan
"All energy transitions have one thing in common: They are prolonged affairs that take decades to accomplish" 🤔 ImageImage
The quote is @VaclavSmil
@VaclavSmil Notable that if Germany had just maintained nuclear at 2005 levels, all that brown coal could have been shut down by now (though black coal will probably be first to go)
Read 4 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
15 Jan
I know I should be, but I'm still a bit stunned by this barefaced hackery by @toadmeister:

@toadmeister First he says the infection fatality rate of Covid-19 is 0.025%, which would imply about 12,000 deaths in the U.K. before reaching herd mortality at 70% of the population.

(in fact there have been about 85,000 deaths so far).
@toadmeister Then he cites a number that's different by an order of magnitude (0.27%) from this meta-analysis of seroprevalence studies: who.int/bulletin/onlin…

At 0.27%, mortality goes from about 12,000 deaths to about 130,000 deaths.
Read 12 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
14 Jan
This is very interesting. Look forward to reading the whole thing.

IMO, a lot of people are far too credulous about self-reported public opinion data taken in authoritarian countries.
This fascinating study by @junyanjiang found evidence that people whose stated opinions about government grew more positive after a 2006 purge of a Shanghai official in fact had *more negative* views if you looked at less sensitive, hot-button questions:

junyanjiang.com/uploads/5/8/1/…
@JunyanJiang "50% believe their form of govt is best" would still be very popular by any normal standards. But it wouldn't be the overwhelming 80%+ support that a lot of standard surveys indicate, and which IMO we should treat with a lot more scepticism.
Read 4 tweets

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