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Fast forward to 2050: this geo-graphic from Statista looks at the anticipated number of retirees per 100 working people, in selected countries, in 2020 vs. 2050. Numbers in 2050 range from 40.4 retirees per 100 working people in the U.S. to 80.7 (!) retirees per 100 working people in Japan. The length of the bar highlights the change in value from 2020 to 2050. www.statista.com/chart/30831/evolution-of-the-number-of-retirees-per-100-working-people
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Most people are familiar with the concept of life expectancy. Less familiar are the many variants on life expectancy, including "healthy life expectancy" (HALE), which is defined by the World Health Organization as the "average number of years that a person can expect to live in 'full health' by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury." This map shows the countries with the largest gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy -- or, thought of another way, with the most years of unhealthy old age -- as of 2019. The U.S. tops the list, with a gap of 12.4 years, followed by Australia, at 12.1 years. Completing the top 10 are New Zealand, the UK, Norway, Spain and Italy (tied), Iran, and Canada, Kuwait, and Switzerland (tied).  AMOC (pronounced "ay-mock")-- the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation -- is a network of Atlantic Ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream, that plays a pivotal role in keeping Western Europe warm relative to its latitude and distributing heat around the planet. Multiple studies have found AMOC is weakening and is now perhaps the weakest it has been in 1,000 years. The massive melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which is dumping an estimated 250 billion metric tons of ice and cold, fresh meltwater into the northern Atlantic each year, is eyed as a possible culprit. Last week a study by Danish researchers of 150 years of weather data concluded that AMOC could collapse -- as it did 12,800 years ago -- by the end of the century, perhaps even within a few years. This article from Scientific American explains the science, the unknowns, and AMOC's significance: www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-a-mega-ocean-current-about-to-shut-down/.
Facing ongoing drought conditions, Spain is one of several countries looking to resurrect water-delivery systems hundreds or thousands of years old. This article is about Spain's acequias system, an extensive network of canals originally built by the Moors to deliver water from the mountains to communities across southern Spain. www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/world/europe/spain-drought-acequias.html
This map shows the peak range of woolly mammoths using both a Fuller or Dymaxion map projection and a conventional (Mercator-like) map projection. Buckminster Fuller created the Dymaxion projection in the 1940s to better preserve the sizes and shapes of landmasses. brilliantmaps.com/woolly-mammoths
This BBC article shares maps about areas of control in Ukraine as well as the complex dam system affected by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and reservoir: www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682 (Note: maps about current fighting in Ukraine are regularly updated at the Institute for the Study of War.)
This map looks at the 2nd largest nationality living in each European country. Deciphering it may be an opportunity for some flag research, though :-). brilliantmaps.com/2nd-largest-nationality/
Images of the earth at night can reveal a great deal about population, economics, land use, and the availability of electricity. In this article, The New York Times has assembled a series of satellite images to illustrate how all of these factors have changed on the ground in Ukraine since Nov. 2021. www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/world/europe/ukraine-satellite-darkness.html
Landmines often persist long after a conflict ends. This map, based on data from an NGO that monitors landmines and operations to clear them, shows where landmines still exist, more than 25 years after a UN treaty that bans their use: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/26209.jpeg
The AidData lab at the College of William & Mary has found 22 countries that have relied on often-opaque emergency lending from China since 2000, either via liquidity swaps with China's central bank or lines of credit from state-owned Chinese banks. This emergency lending is often at higher interest rates than emergency loans from the IMF, for example, and may not be recorded as external debt, concealing a country's actual debt load. www.statista.com/chart/29603/chinese-emergency-bailouts
The statistics in this article from The New York Times Magazine are rather stunning, as is its conclusion about the cause of Britain's precipitous decline: "In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. ... By the end of next year, the average British family will be less well off than the average Slovenian one, according to a recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at The Financial Times; by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one." www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/opinion/uk-economic-decline-nhs.html
This map from Geographical (UK) is a reminder that the Eurasian plate, from Italy through Iran, is intensely seismically active: geographical.co.uk/science-environment/danger-zones-mapping-earthquakes-in-europe
As this map shows, thus far, the winter has proved warmer than usual in most of Europe, which has allowed natural gas and other energy prices to fall back to more normal levels. But a colder-than-usual winter in parts of Asia is creating natural gas shortages and heating problems in China, in particular. (Map from www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/business/china-natural-gas-shortages.html.)
This geo-graphic from Statista looks at "land grabs" in the developing world, defined as "the buying, leasing or concession land use for commercial purposes by companies from abroad, affecting land that had previously been used communally, by small-scale shareholders or was natural environment." (Until 2019, the country experiencing the most land grabs was Peru, but Peru is not on this list because it has been reclassified as an upper-middle income country.) cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/19044.jpeg
What is a "dunkelflaute" and why does it matter? Without access to Russian gas, European consumers are at the mercy of Mother Nature: specifically, a particularly cold winter this year will spell trouble for energy supplies for the next 12 months and possibly beyond. A dunkelflaute is a German word that refers to cloudy, cold, windless weather -- the kind that increases heating demands while shutting down solar and wind production. The UK, for example, experienced a multi-day dunkelflaute earlier this month, with snow falling in London and wind energy dropping from 20% of the UK's electricity mix to 4%. qz.com/can-europe-survive-the-dreaded-dunkelflaute-1849886529
Working on behalf of a free press and the public's right to know is often a dangerous job. War zones figure into this map showing where the most journalists were killed in 2022, but Mexico continues to be the most dangerous place to be a journalist: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/1181.jpeg
Which countries have the largest share of their populations living abroad? It turns out island nations -- nearly one out of three Polynesians is living outside of their home country, for example -- and, not surprisingly, countries with stagnant economies and/or conflict are high on the list. This geo-graphic from Statista looks at the top 8 countries (min. population size 750,000) and a sampling of others: www.statista.com/chart/4237/the-countries-with-the-most-people-living-overseas
Negotiations over a "cap" on the price paid for Russian oil has been in the news recently. This geo-graphic from Al Jazeera highlights Russia's role in global oil markets: bucket.mlcdn.com/a/2764/2764870/images/e37fb5d7fa9398245e8017714bc383775d23a256.png
This topological map from Visual Capitalist shows the number and percentage of each country's population deemed to be at high risk from once-in-a-century flooding, like the floods that inundated more than one-third of Pakistan earlier this fall, killing more than 1,700 people, destroying buildings and crops, and creating lasting crises in food security, education, and waterborne disease. www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-highest-flood-risk/
Cyprus has long been an offshore home for Russian assets. Now, Cyprus is becoming a home for Russians themselves. Because of its membership in the EU and its liberal visa and immigration policies, Cyprus is seeing a major influx of Russian tech workers, in particular. According to some who left Russia, entire IT industries, like game design, have left Russia since February, despite the Russian government's attempts to keep IT workers in the country with discounted mortgages and military deferrals. Russians are not the only ones arriving in Cyprus, though; at least 16,000 Ukrainians have also arrived in Cyprus since February, contributing to domestic political tensions in Cyprus, which is supporting EU sanctions on Russia despite its long reliance on Russian money and Russian tourism. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/cyprus-russian-expat-tech-workers/
Natural gas prices are 8x higher than normal in Europe, and most countries are desperate to obtain and store enough natural gas to get them through the winter, but although liquified natural gas (LNG) deliveries are arriving, the capacity to regasify the LNG is maxed out. This map from Reuters shows more than 35 LNG ships waiting in the Atlantic and Mediterranean to offload their cargo at Spanish LNG terminals: graphics.reuters.com/EUROPE-ENERGY/LNG/dwvkroxdgpm/Congestion%20at%20Spain%20LNG%20Terminals.jpg (Map from www.reuters.com/business/energy/dozens-lng-laden-ships-queue-off-europes-coasts-unable-unload-2022-10-17/.)
Partitioned from the rest of the island when Ireland (the country) was granted independence in 1921, Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, is the historically Protestant-majority northeastern section of Ireland (the island). However, a recent census shows that Catholics now outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time. www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/world/europe/northern-ireland-census-catholics-protestants.html
Western Europe is one of the world's most rapidly aging regions. This geo-graphic looks at the anticipated increase in dementia rates by 2050 in a sampling of Western European countries: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28310.jpeg
The fight for eastern Ukraine is not just about land or population or territorial integrity. It is also about Ukraine's mineral wealth, a disproportionate share of which lies east of the Dnieper River, as these maps show. (Maps from www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/10/ukraine-russia-energy-mineral-wealth/.)
This geo-graphic compares per capita spending on pharmaceuticals in the U.S. to that in a sampling of peer-group (OECD) countries: www.statista.com/chart/3967/which-countries-pay-the-most-for-medicinal-drugs
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