Power blackouts for Scotland by 2015

ELECTRICITY blackouts, not seen since the miners' strike, could be imposed on Scottish households within nine years unless new power stations are built soon, experts have warned.

"[Surplus capacity] is predicted by the National Grid to disappear within ten years, ie there will be electricity rationing by 2015 unless significant new generating capacity is installed" - RSE REPORT.

Full link is here

In 10 years House Prices jump up 270% while wages are up 70%

House prices in Ireland increased by 270% over the past ten years, according to the results of a survey published today.

The Permanent TSB/ESRI House Price Index said that the average annual increase in prices was almost 15% for each year since 1996.

Prices in Co Wicklow increased the most at 310% while the smallest increase was recorded in Co Roscommon where prices grew by 190%.

The average house price in 1996 was €75,000. In 2005, the average house price was €280,000.

According to the report, while ten years ago the difference between comparable houses in Dublin and the rest of the country was an average figure of €10,000, the gap now stands at an average figure of €130,000.

Special 10th Anniversary Edition of the permanent tsb/ ESRI House Price Index

Oil production could peak as early as 2020

Earlier this month the boss of French-owned Total, one of the world's major oil outfits, said global demand was so strong that production could peak as early as 2020.

See Telegrpah.co.uk for more

Scarpar - futuristic board

The Scarpar is a futuristic board that “apparently gives you the best of snowboarding, surfing, skating and motocross”. It’s slated for a 2007 release. See the video below...

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary

Mmm?? Is it Fact or Hype?

About 50 million coastal residents are vulnerable

Researchers have assumed that tsunamis would make ocean impacts more deadly than those on land.

Waves radiating from the impact of a 300-metre-wide asteroid would carry 300 times more energy than the 2004 Asian tsunami. "There still are a lot of uncertainties," Chesley cautions. The solar system's population of 100 m to 400 m asteroids is poorly known".

In 2004, a newly discovered 320m asteroid, 99942 Apophis (previously called 2004 MN4), achieved the highest impact probability of any potentially dangerous object. The probability of collision on 13 April 2029 was estimated to be as high as 1 in 17 by Steve Chesley of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory though the worst published figure was 1 in 37 calculated in December 2004. Later observations showed that the asteroid will miss the earth by 25,600 km (within the orbits of communications satellites) in 2029, but its orbit will be altered unpredictably in a way which does not rule out a collision on 13 or 14 April 2035 or later in the century. These possible future dates have a cumulative probability of 1 in 6000 for an impact in the 21^stcentury.

If you would like to see previous impacts craters using Google Earth click here. Or how about seeing future impact events as detected by NASA

From July Iran will require oil payments in euros

TEHRAN, May 15 (UPI) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Friday that in July Iran will abandon dollar payments for its oil and natural gas exports in favor of euros.

Click here for a previous post about this topic last January.