Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage that stimulates humans to to traces of caffeine. Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages in the world. Wild coffee's energizing effect was likely discovered in the northeast region of Ethiopia. Coffee was probably first cultivated in Arabia in the 15th century. In east africa coffee was often used in ceremonial rituals and competed with the Christian religion so it was banned by the Ethiopian church and around the same time it was banned in Turkey because it was associated with criminal and rebel activities.




It has long been disputed what the health effects are of coffee. In a recent study researchers found that filtered coffee consumed in moderate amounts will cause increased attention, increased memory performance, decreased risk of heart disease, increased physical performance, faster muscle recovery, and decreased risk of liver disease. In elderly people coffee can cause heart burn. Coffee has been shown to help with withdrawal symptoms and headaches. 



Here is a list of the top twenty producers of coffee in the world.
           2010 Top twenty green coffee producers
RankCountryTonnes[33]Bags x1000[34]
1 Brazil2,874,31048,095
2 Vietnam1,105,70019,467
3 Indonesia[note 1]801,0009,129
4 Colombia514,1288,523
5 India289,6005,033
6 Ethiopia[note 1]270,0007,500
7 Peru264,6053,986
8 Guatemala[note 2]257,0003,950
9 Mexico[note 1]253,8004,850
10 Honduras229,3684,326
11 Uganda[note 1]162,0003,290
12 Ivory Coast[note 1]100,000982
13 Costa Rica97,3051,588
14 El Salvador97,2731,859
15 Nicaragua78,7121,804
16 Venezuela[note 2]72,2001,205
17 Papua New Guinea[note 2]67,200870
18 Cambodia66,584608
19 Kenya42,000658
20 Tanzania[note 1]40,020800
Total  World[note 3]8,359,376134,241














 


Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Wildfires

Wild fires, big huge destructive wildfires.

A wildfire is a uncontrolled fire that consists of combustable weeds and bushes often caused by extremely dry and hot weather. Wildfires can be found on every continent except on Antarctica. Wildfires are most common on the continent of Australia especially near Victoria AU in the summer.



The four most common forms of wildfire ignition are spontaneous combustion (due to a heat source), volcanic eruptions, lightning and sparks from rockfalls. In the USA alone there are between 60,000 and 80,000 wildfires each year but most are less then 1/4 of an acre.
There are several different types of wildfires: ground fires, crawling or surface fires, ladder fires and crown, canopy or arial fires. Ground fires are wildfires fed by subterranean organic matter. Crawling fires are fed by leaf and timber debris such as leaves and sticks. Ladder fires are fed by stuff such as small trees, vines and fallen trees. Crown fires burn at the canopy level of forests and tend to destroy lots of trees.



That will be all today on wildfires

Monday, August 13, 2012

Feedlots

Today's post is about where our meat comes from (all none organic and some organic), aka feedlots. There are two main types of feedlots industrial and industrial organic.  Feedlot  or feedyard is a type of confined animal feeding operation also known as CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation). They may contain thousands of animals in an array of pens.

The size of a big feedlot in the USA:

The feedlot enables the cattle to gain weight faster through grain feeding and protein supplements, in order that the cattle may reach mature slaughter weight much faster than normal. This system displaces cattle from a species-appropriate environment into a confined area where feeding takes place through "mechanized trough-like" system.
Feedlots are used in many countries to produce cows, pigs, ducks, horses, chicken, sheep, turkey and just about any other farmed animal. Waste produced in these feedlots is so toxic that the only thing that is keeping it from being considered toxic waste is lobbing. There are several different reasons why it's toxic waste. First they're fed a diet of 95% grain which causes their gut flora to gain a ph similar to our own which means they need to consume antibiotics in order to still be safe to eat which all leads to poop that is very acidic, full of antibiotics and some pesticides which creates a piece of poop that is good at devastating ecosystems.





Wednesday, August 8, 2012

History of the periodic table

Now Now please do not grow at the title it is actually pretty fascinating. The first elements ever discovered were tin, silver, lead, copper and gold. Archeologists have confirmed that gold, silver, lead, copper and tin have been used for many thousands of years. Iron was discovered shortly after that. These are all the earliest unrecorded discoveries of elements.

Now the list of recorded discoveries of elements. The first recorded discovery of an element was in 1669 and the element that was discovered was phosphorus by H. Brand. The second element discovered was cobalt discovered in 1732 by G. Brant. The third element ever discovered was platinum by A. de Ulloa in 1735. The fourth element ever discovered was nickel which was discovered by F. Cronstedt in 1751. The fifth element ever discovered was magnesium which was discovered by J. Black in 1755. now that wasn't to bad was it now?


Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Corn

Have you ever been told that supermarkets offer more variety, well, it's just a whole lot of corn. Chicken nuggets are made of chicken (that ate corn) and breaded in corn flower. In the USA alone there is enough corn grown each year to feed the world but instead it is all being turned into ethonal and cattle feed and chicken feed when those animals aren't even supposed to eat corn.

Corn is also being used for stuff like High Fructose Corn Syrup which you can find in just about any condiment and every soda and in stuff that you wouldn't expect like the other day my mom got my brother a wenches lemonade and the first ingreatient was carbonated water and the second was HFCS and the third was lemon juice and don't forget the artificial flavors and food coloring along with more corn syrup.



Scientist recently figured out a way to gauge what type of plant dominated your diet and the amaricans have more corn in their diet than any other country in the world. In the USA only ten percent of all the corn grown is eaten as normal corn while eighty percent is used for cattle fish and poultry production, the remaining ten percent is turned into ethanol.




The breakdown of usage of the 12.1 billion bushel 2008. U.S. maize crop was as follows, according to the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report by the USDA.
- 5,250 million bu. - livestock feed
- 3,650 million bu. - ethanol production
- 1,850 million bu. - exports
- 943 million bu. - production of starch, corn oil, sweeteners
- 327 million bu. - human consumption - grits, corn flour, corn meal, beverage alcohol

"If we are what we eat, Americans are corn and soy" Says a article in CNN's health website.

sources:
http://www.campsilos.org/mod3/students/index.shtml
www.wikipedia.com

Monday, August 6, 2012

Salmon

As you may have assumed this post is about salmon.
There are nine different spieces of salmon in the world spanning three different continents.
Salmon can be found in Asia, North America, and Europe (but there are some non native runs in Patigonia). Salmon face many dangerous through out their lives. When salmon are young their biggest predators are kingfishers, Blue heron, american eals, otters, ducks and osprey. When they finally make it out to the ocean the list only gets bigger. In the ocean their predators become humans, seals, sharks, cod and any bird big enough to hold a salmon. And finally, the list only gets longer when they return to the river. When they return add bears and wolfs and any other carnivore present.
But the biggest threats to salmon remain over fishing, habitat loss and pollution.






Thursday, July 26, 2012

Top 10 deadliest natural disasters in history

A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard that affects the environment, and leads to financial, environmental and human losses.

1. 1931 China floods - 1,000,000-2,500,000



2. 1887 Yellow river floods - 900,000-2,000,000



3. 1556 Shaanxi earthquake - 830,000



4. 1970 Bhola cyclone - 500,000




5. 1839 India cyclone - 300,000



6. 2004 Indian ocean tsunami - 230,000-310,000



7. 526 Antioch earthquake - 250,000-300,000



8. 1976 Tangshan earthquake - 242,419-665,000






9. 1920 Haiyuan earthquake - 234,117



10. 1139 Aleppo earthquake - 230,000



Something you should know before I continue is that these numbers are based on death toll not magnitude and they have all occurred in the last 2000 years. Something you may notice is that 5 of the disasters are earthquakes and my theory is that most big cities are located either in valleys that are made because of a fault line. Also lots of people live on the coast of a continent were there are a lot of fault lines.