Tag Archive: Statistic of the Year

The World Meteorological Organization reported that despite an early cooling La Niña for half the year, 2012 will be one of the top ten hottest years since records started to be kept more than 160 years ago. Nearly half the population in the world has never experienced a month that was colder than normal globally. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, September 2012 was the 16th month since 2000 that the Earth has tied or broken a monthly warm temperature record.

Runner up: A study conducted by the American Food and Drug Administration found that 90% of more than 100 different prescription and non-prescription drugs were still safe and effective to use even 15 years after their printed date of expiration.

Source:  An ordinary Google on the World Bank and Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) databases as they relate to the Gross Domestic Product (Purchase Power Parity) of Greece …and my Registered Retirement Portfolio statement from last year.      

 Runners up:

“There are more $80,000 Porsche Cayenne SUVs registered in Greece than there are people declaring income of $70,000 or more.”

— Maclean’s magazine

Google’s data centers continuously draw 260 million watts- roughly a quarter the output of a nuclear power plant – to keep services like Gmail, search, Google Ads, and YouTube up and running around the clock and around the globe.

— Popular Science magazine

In 2009, when millionaires were lining up at the welfare office (oops) Capitol Hill begging other millionaires for bailout packages (at the expense of their struggling taxpayers), the number of millionaires in the United States actually grew by 16%.  But wait, there’s more! The total worth of the members of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans rose to an estimated $1.37 trillion in 2010, up 8% from 2009.

Runners up:

In 2010 people watched more than 700 billion “YouTube” videos. Over 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

In 2009, health spending hit an all-time high of 11.9% of Canada’s gross domestic product. That’s $183.1 billion, $9.5 billion more than in 2008, or $5,452 per person.   Two-thirds of Canadians over 65 have five or more prescriptions.

Lake Winnipeg, the world’s tenth-biggest lake, isolated, ringed by pristine Boreal forest, tucked far away from industry and major population centres, has become the sickest big lake in Canada.  A putrid green mat or “algal bloom”, twice the size of P.E.I. and clearly visible from space, is jaw-dropping evidence of an ecosystem in deep trouble – and the culprit is … [insert maniacal organ solo here] …come on take a guess … it’s the pigs, stupid (they were everywhere in 2009).  Manitoba’s so-called “hog boom,” has seen the number of hogs in the Red River Valley watershed swill to 8.2 million.  Those not so little piggies are dumping an annual shitload that would equal the excrement from at least 30 million humans. The Red River Valley, contributes 66 per cent of Lake Winnipeg’s phosphorus load.  Meanwhile, Alberta, the western limit of the lake’s catchment area, has another eight million head of hogs and cattle.  It gets worse – Lake Winnipeg is considered “just the tip of the iceberg.”  This condition called “Eutrophication” is the No. 1 water quality issue on the planet (some of you may remember when a toxic bloom in the Yellow Sea at Qingdao nearly halted the sailing events at the previous year’s Beijing Summer Olympics).

Source: Canada’s Sickest Lake, MacLeans magazine August 20, 2009