Miscellaneous Facts
Sometimes I like to gather all the miscellaneous facts that have been floating around the internet and on the news and talk about them. There are plenty of them around.
One thing I thought was quite interesting was the fact Scotland is going to build the world’s biggest wind farm. It is going to be built in the ocean and anchored into the seabed. The cables will be buried. The project is known as Hywind. The pilot program will have six turbines with a total generating capacity of 135 GWh of electricity each year. It has been predicted that by 2020 25% of all electricity in the world will come from a renewable source.
Global warming is affecting a lot of areas on the planet, but not all in the same way. Take Antarctica for example, we know it has been losing ice, but we recently found out it is gaining more than it is losing. This means everything the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which has been telling us which is just the opposite, is either incorrect or putting out false information, that is if we believe the NASA report. Some scientists are now saying Global Warming is ending. I think this might be a little premature, but I guess we will have to wait to see if they are correct.
A report has come out stating if we account for inflation, Americans today are earning on average less than they did 40 years ago. The report was issued by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Scientists are going to genetically manipulate IVF embryos as they investigate repeated miscarriages. It is going to start in Britain for the first time. A license application was filed by scientists who want to investigate why women are having so many miscarriages. The U.S. government imposed a moratorium on federally-funded research of this type in America. The scientists promised they would destroy the altered embryos so they don’t get transplanted into any women.
I hope those who like tuna and mackerel can develop a taste for different fish. I say this because a new study from the WWF says we are getting close to losing those two fish species, because we are fishing them to extinction. The fish are not only important to us as food, but they are important to the ecosystem. We have managed to reduce the population by 74% so far and it is still getting smaller. The reduction has been occurring since 1970. The chief advisor on marine policy at the WWF UK said, “This is catastrophic. We are destroying vital food sources and the ecology of our oceans.” Sometime you just have to sit back and wonder about our stupidity.
We all know how devastating Alzheimer’s disease can be. Scientists have been working on the problem for years, but have not found a cure, that is maybe until now. A new drug was developed by U.S. researchers that can actually treat the disease and not just mask it. The drug causes new blood vessel formation and an increase in neuronal cell counts. So far only rats have been treated and scientists are hoping this can be translated to help humans. The rats showed a marked improvement after only 15 days.
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute conducted a test and found that if just 10% of the population have an unshakeable idea, the majority of the population will eventually adopt it. Yeah I know this doesn’t seem quite right does it? If we take religious beliefs for example about 15% of the world’s population are Hindu. Does this mean the majority of the world population will become Hindu? Another reason I can’t believe this is, if two groups over 10% each have opposing views they both can’t become adopted by the majority.
Texas has passed a law establishing a gold-backed bank and has repatriated one billion dollars in gold bullion. This flies in the face of the Federal Reserve Bank and rightfully so. One of the things the law enacting the state-run gold depository is said to do is prevent the federal government from confiscating the gold in a national emergency, but I don’t see how this could be stopped, but it looks good on paper. All residents of Texas will be allowed to store their gold in this bank. The gold was previously stored in the vault of the HSBC bank in New York City and it is said it will be transferred to the Texas bank soon. Will HSBC stall as the Federal Reserve is doing or will they actually transfer the gold?
Another article, this time about the North Pole, illustrates how much of that ice we have lost and it is very scary. It seems to be about 1/3. National Geographic released an atlas of the world and the changes in the arctic are very noticeable and this is just in the last 15 years. Just the opposite of Antarctica.
It is turning out we humans are responsible for huge deposits of carbon under some deserts. It is believed we started doing this when we began to farm. A huge carbon sink was found under a Chinese desert and now scientists are going to check other deserts to see if the same conditions exist. This is said to happen when humans grow plants and they suck carbon from the air and some goes down into the soil or sand. In arid land a lot of water is used to combat rising salinity caused by evaporating water. The extra water dissolves the CO2 and deposits it into the aquifer below and if it is a closed system which most are, the carbon stays there.
