lördag 9 april 2011

Anledningen till att Muhammed tog sig till berget

The Daily Score skriver om trainspotters, och gör på temat en beräkning:

A 4 minute crossing delay may not sound like much, but it could add up. Here's the math. Assuming that a rail car carries 110 tons of coal and that a train is 125 cars long, shipping 24 million tons of coal would mean running about 1,750 trains per year. That's an average of 5 loaded trains a day, plus 5 returning empty trains. Together, those 10 trains would result in around 40 minutes of street obstruction per day (not counting the additional time for crossing signals to sound and seal off a road from the traffic). That's roughly 240 hours per year or, in aggregate, 10 full days of street blockage per year.

Sådana mängder är onekligen hisnande, så eftersom vi troligtvis närmar oss peak peaklarm så kan det vara intressant att få perspektiv på människans påverkan och naturens resurser - från The Unbroken Window, angående hur lång tid det (försiktigt räknat) skulle ta att forsla bort den synliga delen av Mount Whitney ifall man körde ett fullt lass med världens största dumper var femte minut:

Putting the above figures together, costlessly loading the world’s most powerful and largest dumptrucks at a rate of one truck per 5 minutes would take us 2,095 years to completely extract the viewable part of Mt. Whitney.

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