Hey Bluesky hivemind! What are the best data sources for the overall death tolls of wars?
So not just dead soldiers, but also civilians, and deaths from disease and starvation due to the fighting.
Are Necrometrics and Wikipedia as flawed as they seem — or do they actually hold up to some scrutiny?
'Four minutes of air conditioning'
The new, excellent essay by my colleague @hannahritchie.bsky.social on energy poverty.
ourworldindata.org/four-minutes...
This is from today's 'Data Insight' written by Pablo Rosado and me, and you can find all our team's insights here: ourworldindata.org/data-insights
This chart documents one of humanity’s greatest achievements, in my view.
We just lived through the fastest population growth in human history.
It would have been impressive if food supplies had merely kept pace — but on every continent, they grew even faster than the population.
Thank you very much. Again for the grant, but also for this great thread now! And thank you, Michael — I didn't know this backstory, and really appreciate that you pointed out that you see value in what we do.
It has become received wisdom in Brussels and Washington that there is a new “euro-sclerosis”: that the EU economy is lagging the US
This view is wrong
A little primer on the measurement of productivity – and why reports of the economic death of Europe are greatly exaggerated🧵
For Our World in Data, I've this article on how we can become the first generation that achieves a world in which forests expand — great to see how this looks in practice in a place where this has already been achieved.
ourworldindata.org/global-fores...
This is what the peninsula looked like in 1900.
"The problems are immense, but the solutions are immense too."
I loved this short documentary about botanist Hugh Wilson, who spent thirty years protecting and growing a forest in New Zealand.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZS...
Over the last months, we’ve entirely rebuilt search on Our World in Data — we just launched it:
ourworldindata.org/introducing-...
Let me know what you think. Does it work for you?
A big shift in technology.
The purple bars show the sales of cars powered by combustion engines in China.
In green, you see the rise of electric cars in recent years.
This is from the new article by my colleagues @antea04.bsky.social , @hannahritchie.bsky.social, and Edouard Mathieu.
ourworldindata.org/does-the-new...
What we die from vs. what we hear in the news.
Terrorism and homicides account for less than 1% of deaths, but for more than half of all media stories about death in the US — whether in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or Fox News.
💡New feature: hovering over links to charts shows a preview!
Look out for the little chart icon next to a link to know when you can see a preview.
Our colleague Ike Saunders had this idea just a couple days ago and he already built it and made it live on our site — thanks, Ike!
Imagine all cars were electric, and then one Volkswagen engineer comes up with another idea …
#EMobility
It is September 18.
Today, @hannahritchie.bsky.social's book is out!
www.penguin.co.uk/books/462676...
"A refreshingly pragmatic and undoomy book."
The Guardian just published a great review of @hannahritchie.bsky.social's new book 'Clearing the Air'.
The book will be out in 2 days.
If you are unsure whether you want to read it, the review gives a good overview: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...
Our @ourworldindata.org we visualise weekly updates of wildfire data from the Global Wildfire Information System.
Spain was having a pretty low/average year until the past few weeks when it went roaring past previous years.
You can track this data here:
ourworldindata.org/wildfires
My colleague @hannahritchie.bsky.social wrote a new book!
For an author, pre-orders make a huge difference — as they convince bookstores to stock it.
If you are interested in Hannah's writing, you can order it here: penguin.co.uk/books/462676...
At Our World in Data, we spend much of our time counting deaths.
But it’s just as important to know the number of lives saved — even though it is harder to estimate and involves much larger uncertainty.
My Data Insight today includes this chart of some estimates.
Duolingo came out fully embracing AI in April, and it’s hard not to read their latest revenue growth numbers alongside this new report on the state of formal language learning in the UK
Most electricity in the Netherlands now comes from renewables.
This is today's @ourworldindata.org Data Insight from my colleague @simonvanteutem.bsky.social.
All our Data Insights are here: ourworldindata.org/data-insights
Every third car in Norway is now an electric car.
At least since the mid-20th century, England has left mass hunger behind. How was this possible? How did English farmers prove Malthus wrong?
My 'Data Insight' on @ourworldindata.org today is about rising yields and falling hunger.
→ ourworldindata.org/data-insights
No, it's not the case that only China is responsible for the large decline in extreme poverty over the past decades.
We wrote about it recently: ourworldindata.org/data-insights/was-the-global-decline-of-extreme-poverty-only-due-to-china
No, it's not the case that only China is responsible for the large decline in extreme poverty over the past decades.
We wrote about it recently: ourworldindata.org/data-insights/was-the-global-decline-of-extreme-poverty-only-due-to-china
My latest Data Insight is about extreme poverty in South East Africa.
In Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, extreme poverty is not declining.
In 2014, half of Greece's electricity was generated by coal.
A decade later, that share has fallen to just 6%.
Two billion people don’t have safe drinking water.
I really like the article of my colleague @hannahritchie.bsky.social, in which she shows what this concretely means for these people, by relying on the portraits of families in Gapminder's Dollar Street project.
ourworldindata.org/what-no-safe...
