
World Statistics in Real Time - vas_popovski
http://www.worldometers.info/
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berrow
But it's "Simulated Real-Time". Kind of like "Real, simulated indian jewelry".

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unwind
I think it's interesting, definition-wise. "Statistics" seems to imply that
it's high-level information; but real-time implies the opposite to me. You
don't have a "fuel level statistics" meter in your car, you have a fuel gauge
that you expect to reflect the current fuel level.

From the FAQ on the site, they use various intra- and extrapolations based on
what their sources tell you, based on your computer's current clock. They
suggest setting your time to December 31st, 23:59 to see the total for the
yearly values, for instance.

I don't think it's "real-time". It's displaying statistical information
"smeared" out over the entire year, and updating the current value as time
passes several times a second.

But if I were to buy a cigarette, or become overweight, you wouldn't see the
number change directly to reflect that.

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csbrooks
>But if I were to buy a cigarette, or become overweight, you wouldn't see the
number change directly to reflect that.

Didn't you figure that out immediately when you saw the numbers rapidly
changing, though?

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skolor
Its an interesting, but ultimately pointless site. I would assume they take
various statistics like "1 child is born every 6 seconds" or what have you,
and then start counting from there, with some sort of timer running to update
all the counts.

It seems like someone decided they wanted to learn... some sort of javascript.
They decided to obfuscate large portions of it, but it looks to my rather un-
educated guessing to be jQuery. I do have a question though, it has several
"today" counts. When does the day start? Is it based off of your computer's
time, or off their server's?

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timb
unobfuscated source: <http://pastebin.com/m3e39a034>

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3pt14159
Here is a question that has to do with the environmental statistic of tons of
CO2:

If we have "only" produced 20 billion tons of C02 and the total C02 in the
atmosphere is 3.5 trillion wouldn't the half life of C02 (38 years) completely
swallow our production of CO2, since it would be a 95 billion to 20 billion
ratio? Or are there much larger sources of CO2 that I'm unaware of (for
example the ocean, or volcanoes).

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gort
I'm not 100% sure this is the answer to your question, but it's worth beating
in mind in any case:

Burning fossil fuel adds carbon to the ecosystem. At any one time some of that
carbon exists as CO2, but much of it exists in other forms, e.g. in biomass.
This is a cycle, but with a constant addition of carbon that had previously
been locked away deep underground, essentially uninvolved. Even if certain
specific molecules of CO2 only last however long, the overall carbon content,
and thus the overall CO2 level, are going up.

(Which is utterly uncontroversial, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve> )

P.S. You mean only 20 billion per year.

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Tichy
I would assume that it is fake - it is just an estimate, "real time" therefore
has nothing to do with it.

