BlogLines Plumber

My RSS aggregator, BlogLines is down for the night, so I’m limited to what news sources I can remember subscribing to:

Brilliance CT machine

World clock in Ulm, Germany Tempus Fugit

In the last second, cesium-133 atoms around the world oscillated through 9,192,631,770 radiation cycles in atomic clocks measuring International Atomic Time (TAI)*. While you read the previous sentence, 400,000 billion neutrinos from the sun passed through you*. By the time you finish reading this paragraph, you will have inhaled nitrogen atoms that were also inhaled by dinosaurs 65 to 230 million years ago*.

In the last minute the world consumed 56,060 barrels of oil*, 42,000 plastic bottles, 350,000 aluminum cans*, and 1 million plastic bags*. 26 hectares of forests were cut and cleared, the equivalent of 37 football fields*. 582 cattle, buffalo, and calves; 2,283 pigs; 1,512 sheep and goats; and 81,811 chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese were slaughtered as livestock*. 3.5 million bar codes were scanned¹.

110 people died in that same time span*, 31 of them died of cardiovascular disease*, 13 died of cancer*, eight died of smoking-related illness*, six died of diabetes*, five died of AIDS* while 11 people contracted HIV*, three died of lung cancer*, two died and 95 others were injured in car accidents*, and one died from small arms fire*. One woman died from complications in pregnancy or childbirth*. Five newborns died*. 12 children died of hunger*, and two children died of polluted water and inadequate sanitation*. 11 people and one child went blind*.

The United States’ National Debt grew by $1.3 million dollars*. The world debt grew by $9.9 million dollars*. The world spent $2 million on its militaries*.

In the last twelve minutes a plant or animal species went extinct, vanishing from the Earth forever*.

245 people were born in the last 60 seconds*. 49 of them were born in India, 34 in China, and 8 in the United States. 389 women became pregnant*. 540 Viagra tablets were dispensed*. Each child born right now will see an average of 3.5 million minutes in their lifetime.

The world produced $124 million in goods and services, as well as 33 million kilowatt-hours of electricity*. The United States contributed $4,851 to the immediate alleviation of humanitarian emergencies worldwide*. $250 thousand dollars in student aid was distributed*.

184 thousand e-mails where sent, 76 thousand of which were spam*. 138 thousand people queried Google.com in 90 languages*. 120 new blogs appeared on the Internet*. Two books were published*.

At this moment there are 366,000 people flying in airplanes all around the globe*.

Over the last 60 seconds, the 6.5 billion human hearts currently beating on planet Earth pumped a combined total of 32.5 billion liters of blood*. These same human bodies produced 903.5 quadrillion new red blood cells* and burned 10.8 billion calories of energy*.

Just now, lightning struck the Earth 100 times*.

Every minute it took you to read this article, the Earth traveled 1117 miles of its yearly orbit around the Sun, the Sun traveled 9,320 miles of its orbit around the Milky Way, the Milky Way traveled 22,369 miles relative to the average velocity of the Universe, and the Universe expanded 11 million miles in all directions* *.

As George Harrison of the Beatles wrote, “…and life flows on within you without you.*”

Cross Posted at GO.

Detail of Chris Jordan’s Jet Trails Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.

This research is old news, and complicates the whole Global Warming debate even further. Air pollution might be behind observations that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface has gone down drastically over five decades of observations:

“There was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed me.” Intrigued, [Dr. Gerry Stanhill] searched records from all around the world, and found the same story almost everywhere he looked.

Sunlight was falling by 10% over the USA, nearly 30% in parts of the former Soviet Union, and even by 16% in parts of the British Isles.

Although the effect varied greatly from place to place, overall the decline amounted to one to two per cent globally every decade between the 1950s and the 1990s. (source)

I really don’t appreciate the overly-dramatic score and alarmist tone of the BBC Documentary Global Dimming, and Real Climate has some valid criticisms of the science (such as birds drinking from evaporation pans), but it does explain the science behind global dimming phenomena fairly well:

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=39520879762623193&hl=en]

One of the most shocking bits of data covered in this documentary comes at 31:51 minutes into the program, and deals with a one-degree Celsius temperature spike that occurred in America in the three days after 9/ll, when there were no jets in the sky, and therefore no jet contrails to reflect sunlight back to space. This leads to the possibility that as we improve our air quality, we also increase the effects of global warming.

Just another variable in the immensely-complex system that is the Earth’s climate to be considered with methane release in melting Siberia, cosmic rays, cloud coverage, and myriad other complications.