Thursday, January 20, 2011

Frightening statistics

- Every time your heart beats, two new people are born. That's two new mouths to
be fed. [1970's]
- The world population increases at the rate of about 5.5 million people per
month, the size of a large city.  [1970's]
- It takes 45,000 gallons (205,000 litres) of water to make ONE car.
- To grow enough wheat to make ONE loaf of bread takes 2.5 tons of water.
- It takes one TON of water to enable a chicken to lay an egg.
- It takes 240,000 gallons (over 1 million litres) of water to make one ton of
newsprint.
- It takes 50 tons of water to make ONE pound (0.5 kg) of meat.
- 1 in 6 people suffers from malnutrition and hunger.
- By 2025, two thirds of the world's population will be living in areas of acute water stress. [2007 UN report]

- Hazardous chemicals are now found in the bodies of ALL newborn babies, and an
estimated one in four people worldwide are exposed to unhealthy concentrations
of air pollutants.
- There are already more than 6 billion of us, and with present trends the UN
estimates we shall probably number about 8.9 billion by 2050.
- We have more than doubled our numbers in half a century.
- 30,000 under-fives die daily from hunger or easily preventable diseases.
- In 2003 the World Conservation Union's Red List said more than 12,000 species
(out of 40,000 assessed) faced some extinction risk, including one bird in
eight, 13% of the world's flowering plants and a quarter of all mammals.
- We are not removing individual species from the Amazon: we are destroying the
entire forest. US researchers estimate that by 2020 less than 5% of it will
remain in pristine condition.
- Within 10 years, about a fifth of central Africa's forests will have gone.
- Research suggests it will only need a 6 degree rise in average world
temperatures to bring about irreversible climate change.
- You are 10 times more likely to die from alcohol than from an earthquake.
- You are 3 times more likely to be killed whilst driving to buy a lottery
ticket, than to win the lottery.
- 99.9% of all our problems involve other people.
- It takes a ton of coca leaves to produce 9 kg of coca paste.
- 97% of all US$100 bills have traces of cocaine on them.

This table lists activities calculated to have a one-in-a-million chance of
causing death, with causes:
- Smoking 1.4 cigarettes in a lifetime (lung cancer)
- Radiation dose of 10 mrem (cancer)
- Eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter (liver cancer)
- Eating 100 charcoal broiled steaks (cancer)
- Driving 40 miles (65 km) in a car (accident)
- Flying 2,500 miles (4000 km) in a jet (accident)
- Canoeing for 6 minutes (accident)
- Spending 2 days in New York City (air pollution)

- One medium-sized nuclear power station producing about 1000 megawatts of power
per year produces the same amount of radioactive waste as a single nuclear blast
of 23 megatons (blast equivalent to the conventional detonation of 23 million
tons of TNT, but with no radiation).

In the US a new person is born approximately every 8 seconds.
In the US one person dies approximately every 12 seconds.

Every hour a baby born in China is infected with syphilis.


Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
[Sir Winston Churchill]

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