Recently published research shows that Americans are drinking more soft drinks than ever before, as much as 13 billion gallons each year, making them the “largest source of added sugar and excess calories in the American diet”.
The figures are staggering.
“According to the National Soft Drink Association (NSDA), consumption of soft
drinks is now over 600 12-ounce servings (12 oz.) per person per year. Since the
late 1970`s the soft drink consumption in the United States has doubled for
females and tripled for males. The highest consumption is in the males between
the ages of 12 – 29; they average 1/2 gallon a day or 160 gallons a year.”
Do the math on that.
A can of soft drink contains roughly 10-12 teaspoons of sugar - yep 10 or 12 per can!
Half a gallon represents around five cans per day, giving us around 50 or 60 teaspoons of sugar.
A teaspoon of sugar is around 50 calories. So we’re talking about an intake of around 2500 to 3000 calories per day, just from soft drinks.
That’s the equivalent of the total recommended daily intake for a male to maintain a healthy weight, and that’s without eating anything!
When you also take into account that people are also eating a lot of pre-packaged junk food, in extremely large servings and people are increasingly sedentary, it really is no surprise at all that we’re facing an obesity epidemic.
Of course there are always the rose-tinted spectacle wearers who will say, “It’s all good. No harm, no foul.” etc. The problem is that obesity comes with a very large cost that affects all of us regardless of whether we personally are obese or not.
Recent studies in both the Unites States and Canada reveal the staggeringly high costs of obesity: $140 billion in the U.S. and over $1.8 billion in Canada. Just imagine the benefit to everyone if the healthcare systems received this level of funding increase…
The Earth doesn’t follow a truly circular path around the Sun; the real orbit is slightly elongated in to an oval that is slightly off-center. This means that Earth has an aphelion (furthest point) and a perihelion (closest point).
We just passed the perihelion (January 2/3 for this year) so we’re pretty much about as close as we get.
So why is it so bloody cold!?!?
“In 2020, the vast majority of adults in America will be overweight or obese and
more than half will suffer from diabetes or pre-diabetic conditions, according to
new projections.” Source: Science Daily.
“The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-
guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will
become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of
combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”, according to the most
thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.” Source: The Guardian.
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again
Today would have been Carl Sagan’s 77th birthday. My first introduction to him was, like so many people’s, through watching Cosmos in my teens. I was already completely obsessed with anything space, science, or science fiction related when the show aired, and its combination of stunning visuals, atmospheric music, and exploration not only of what makes us human, but also how we relate to the Universe around us, had me hooked immediately. Sagan’s passion and enthusiasm was truly infectious and couldn’t help but overflow the confines of the small screen. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, I have to highly recommend it.
Carl Sagan was a scientist, an explorer, skeptic, humanitarian, and visionary; he is sorely missed. One of the strongest memories I have is his “Pale Blue Dot” speech, which is as poetic as it is humbling. I present it here in tribute to this great man:
“”We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”
“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
R.I.P. Carl Sagan. 1934-1996
An article published by the NPR reveals the astonishing detail that part of the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq includes $20 billion spent on air-conditioning. This figure was estimated by Brigadier General Steven Anderson, a now -retired chief logistician for the Pentagon.
So let’s see:
- NASA annual budget – $5 bn (2011)
- Estimated cost to finish and Launch James Webb – $3 bn
- Estimated cost to build a space elevator – $6-20 bn
Even this doesn’t scratch the surface of the sheer waste involved here. The article goes on to detail how the fuel to power all this air-conditioning is transported through extremely risky convoys, putting countless lives at on the line.
Of course, you could argue that the soldiers are putting their lives at risk to protect democracy and deserve to be comfortable, though that argument might not stand up to scrutiny. But there’s more to it even than that.
These soldier’s are living in temporary shelters – tents. Now everyone knows that tents aren’t great insulators – anyone who has spent a couple of cold days in one can tell you that. Well, all of these tents could be cheaply insulated using polyurethane foam spray, which cuts energy use by over 90%.
So the U.S. could save lives, cut energy costs, finance all of NASA, a space telescope and go a long way to building a space elevator – just by insulating tents.
Universe Today has published an update on the planets that have been found orbiting star HR 8799. Using the Keck telescope and some amazing and incredibly detailed processing Astronomers have been able to gain an even greater insight into the make up of the HR 8799 system.
All the planets discovered so far are huge: the smallest being approximately five times the size of Jupiter. None of them are even close to being habitable. The amazing thing to me is this image.
Isn’t that amazing? That’s right – you’re looking at a direct image of planets around another star. An astronomical observation of a different planetary system.
I somehow missed the original reports on this. So I am glad to catch up on it. That image alone is just incredible. I have to wonder just how long it will be before we can detect planets that are truly Earth-like – direct imaging of those can’t be far off.
All of which makes the proposal to cancel the James Webb Space Telescope programme so incredibly short sighted.
In 2010, researchers at the University of Buffalo, led by physicist Dean Stojkovic, came up with a crazy-sounding idea that the early universe was one-dimensional – essentially a line – and then subsequently expanded into two and then three dimensions as we know it now.
This hypothesis could be used to tie together general relativity and quantum physics which up to now have proven impossible to rationalise into a single working theory.
The idea of lower (and higher) dimensional space is also a central part of string theory, so there is a possibility that this idea supports that also. Of course the problem with these ideas is that they tend to be very difficult to prove through observation or experiment, which is why it has been impossible for a number of different arguments to be decided one way or another.
Recently though, Stojkovic and others have formulated a test that could prove or disprove their ideas. Through the use of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) it should be possible to detect whether or not gravitational waves are detected coming from the early universe. Gravitational waves could not exist in lower dimensional space and so should be absent as LISA looks back in time.
The pin to burst this bubble is that the LISA project has just been closed down after withdrawal of funding due to cuts in NASA’s budget. The project was a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), who hope to continue with a cut-down version.
Research from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science shows that the hole in the ozone layer is linked to climate change all the way to the equator. The results link the hole to changes in air circulation systems and rainfall patterns.
This is a startling discovery and one entirely missing from studies of climate change modelling and investigations. If the study is backed up, it could have huge impacts on the sources of climate change and call in to question the role that greenhouse gas emissions really play.
Naturally, we can rely on the climate-change deniers to use this to attack the whole notion of anthropomorphic climate change. But whether it’s ozone depletion or carbon emissions, it’s still anthropomorphic.
It also doesn’t alter the need for us to change our habits. Environmental issues are connected with efficiency and responsible use of limited resources, not just ‘tree-hugging’ for the sake of it.
If you are a follower of space flight then you undoubtedly know about the increasing problem of space junk: the mass debris formed from fifty years of manned and unmanned space flight, satellite launches and everything else we’ve thrown up there without a proper recovery plan.
A new proposal suggests that we might deploy a tungsten dust cloud that would adhere to the junk, increasing its mass and causing it to fall back to Earth – burning up on re-entry.
The article linked to suggests a problem with this – that the tungsten could coalesce into balls adding more debris to the pile. But I see a more fundamental problem.
How do you stop the tungsten from sticking to the wrong thing?
If we launch tonnes of tungsten dust into orbit, isn’t it just going to stick to everything up there including sensitive functional satellites?
Putting more junk into the skies doesn’t strike me as a rational way of reducing junk in the skies.
Climate scientists need help
Climate scientists are under attack by unscrupulous pressure groups and various climate change denialists. These groups and individuals use court orders and “Freedom of Information” requests to effectively harass scientists. This witch hunt makes for a hostile environment for the scientists, while also creating doubt in the public perception of climate change, despite the fact that the victims have been cleared of all wrongdoing many times and climate change is accepted as fact by an overwhelming majority of scientists.
Is it any surprise that these denialist groups and individuals are funded heavily by the oil and coal industries and others who have a lot to lose if any real* emissions limits are ever enacted. This gives these groups a virtual bottomless pit of money to continue their actions against scientists and spread their FUD.
Now there’s something that you can do to help. The Climate Science Defense Fund has been set up to raise money for scientists under attack, the money raised goes towards legal fees to fight off these attacks.
* By real I mean not involving carbon ‘trading’ schemes that are nothing but ways to channel money towards fat banks and finance companies in the pretense of doing something about climate change.