No, that’s meant to be the fluff piece at the end of the news
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Right now, The Age website is leading with a football result.
I know what you’re thinking – that’s news? That’s a lead story?
Well, it’s more of a lead story than MAN ON A TIGHTROPE CROSSES WATERFALLS MANY HAVE CROSSED BEFORE ALSO ON TIGHTROPES AND CARRYING ITEMS TO MAKE IT MORE CHALLENGING.
Which is what news.com.au and THE FREAKING ABC are leading with:
That’s not exactly what “truly” means.
“Make news.com.au your homepage” – No.
So we’re in the strange position of having to compliment The Age for not beating up a silly non-story from the wire. No wonder these are the End Times for Pure Poison.
I was going to comment in this very topic, I use the SMH iPad app, I assume the Age one is similar.
One feature is latest news – a button in the bottom right.
In the mornings it is all OS (I guess Reuters) news – financial with the odd US sports result, by the afternoon of say 12 items , 10 would be sports related, this is even midweek, not just the weekends.
I get the feeling that this aspect of the content is just filler, to make the app seem timely but is not a core function.
Agreed – rubbish! I note a H/T is due to Angra (? from memory) in Weekend talk thread.
Interesting Niagara Falls mental images:
1) While you are asleep tonight the amount of water that goes over the falls is roughly equal to the amount of crude oil the world burned yesterday! This happens every single day of the year – that’s a hell of a lot of oil, and we’ve reached the point where it ain’t going to go up, it’s going to go down.
2) 99% of the water that goes over the falls comes from thawed ice formed in the last ice-age rather than seasonal rains!
Interesting Niagara Falls mental images:
1) While you are asleep tonight the amount of water that goes over the falls is roughly equal to the amount of crude oil the world burned yesterday! This happens every single day of the year – that’s a hell of a lot of oil, and we’ve reached the point where it ain’t going to go up, it’s going to go down.
2) 99% of the water that goes over the falls comes from thawed ice formed in the last ice-age rather than seasonal rains!
And, completely off topic, they look rather magnificent, even on an overcast, slightly drizzly, Southern Ontario summer’s day (as usual, my camera didn’t do them justice)
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/40186_10150230693850344_2252402_n.jpg
(American falls: smaller than the Canadian ones!)
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/40186_10150230693855344_5736327_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/40189_10150230693910344_2683742_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/40031_10150230694140344_5779575_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/38618_10150230694305344_5745754_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/33533_10150230694375344_3727078_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/39123_10150230694480344_105611_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/38852_10150230694600344_3717633_n.jpg
I plan to go back during the winter one year….
BTW Anyone heard that song Blondin by Chris Wilson/Crown of Thorns. Its pretty cool. better than a news ltd story.
Man On Wire. All Other News On Hold.
Given that this blog is called “Pure Poison” I can’t let SHV get away with his Intellectual Dishonesty in his post about Niagara Falls.
1) A couple of quick searches using Wolfram Alpha shows that the average daily worldwide consumption of oil is 83.47 million barrels of oil. At 159L per barrel, that is 13.27 trillion litres of oil consumed worldwide per day.
The discharge rate of water over Niagara Falls is 5,796 cubic metres per second (or 5.796 million litres per second). In one minute, Niagara Falls will discharge 348 million litres of water, and in one hour it will discharge 20.86 trillion litres of water.
Hence the amount of oil consumed per day is the equivalent of the amount of water that flows over Niagara Falls every 38 minutes.
38 minutes is it a pretty impressive number that still puts the global rate of oil consumption into perspective, even without resorting to the wild exaggeration in SHV’s post – it is not 8 hours!
2) SHV’s suggestion that 99% of the water than water going over Niagara Falls comes from thawed ice formed in the last ice age is the even outrageous!!
All you need to do it to look at a Google maps and it will show you that the water that flows over Niagara Falls comes from the upper great lakes of North America (and goes into the lower great lakes). Switch over to satellite view and you will see no evidence anywhere between the great lakes and Hudson Bay of the ice cap that SHV is suggesting makes up 99% of the water going over Niagara Falls – simply because it all comes from annual rain and annual snow melting each spring.
While I share SHV’s concern for the climate, intellectually dishonest arguments like these two by SHV do no one any favours.
Mathematical analysis of the above:
English or American trillions?
In American units: a Billion = a Thousand Million, a Trillion = a Thousand Billion, or a Million Million.
In English units: a Billion = a Million Million, a Trillion = a Billion Billion
So the difference is quite significant 10^12 (American) vs 10^24 (English). To put it another way, it is the difference between the width (Depth? The one that is not at all related to its diameter anyway) of a dvd, say, and the distance from the sun to somewhere in between the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter. Quite significant.
Moving on, and taking the figures provided by Muddy Waters as granted.
60 seconds in a minute.
x 60 to get to seconds in an hour =3600
x 24 to get to seconds in a day = 86400
Now, 83.47 M barrels/day
x 159 to get litres/day = 13271.73 Million/day
/84000 to get litres/second = 157997 litres/second is the world consumption of oil (rounded off to nearest litre).
Niagara Falls on the other hand has 5.796 Million litres/second falling over it.
So it turns out that Niagara falls beats the world consumption of oil by a factor of 5.796M/157996
= 36.68 (again, rounded off)
Which, still using round figures, is the difference between the width (Depth again?) of a dvd and the length of my big toe, give or take.
Now, Muddy Waters did make an error in his/her calculations. He said 20.86 Trillion, where he actually meant 20.87 Billion (American units) or 20.87 Thousand Million (British units), so his/her rounding off was wrong. But much more importantly he was off by several powers of 10 (Left as an exercise for the reader
) in either America or Britain. But even so, SHV, on the figures given, humanity burns nowhere near the rate of oil per second as Niagara Falls splashes per second. Which is the point that Muddy Waters was trying, correctly, to make. This one goes to Muddy Waters, I am afraid.
I bothered to do this, because the last thing I need is for Alan Jones (et al, but him notably and most recently) to be able to point at some else and make the point that he is not the only one who makes mathematical errors. And thus strengthen his own denialist position. I mean it wouldn’t, but it is possible that should this particular furphy gain currency and be quoted, god forbid by some climate scientist somewhere, that it would become yet another tiresome talking point for that particular brand of flat earth crowd. This is how I see AJ, or someone, spinning this…
AJ: Here’s a good one here; Apparently a climate scientist somewhere can’t tell the difference between the length of an ant, and the distance to Jupiter! And these people are funded by the…
Well I am sure you can fill in the rest if you want to. I will stop there and say “Eww”.