Life in Canada

75,000
Square kilometres of Arctic sea ice that melted every day in August 2012. That’s like losing ice the size of New Brunswick every 24 hours.

10
Number of years in which Arctic sea ice could vanish. “Very soon we may experience the iconic moment when, one day in summer, we look at satellite images and see no sea ice coverage in the Arctic, just open water.”

2050
The year leading water scientists say humans may be forced to shift to a vegetarian diet due to population growth and limited water supplies.

2
Percentage of Canadians who doubt climate change is happening.

16
Percentage of Americans who deny climate change is happening.

32
Percentage of Canadians who believe climate change is happening because of human activity. Only nine percent believe climate change is occurring due to natural climate variation. (Source 1, 2)

#4
Canada has the fourth highest greenhouse gas emissions, per capita, in the world.

22
Tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per capita in Canada in 2008. America emitted 22.8 tonnes per capita that year.

51
Percentage of Canadians who believe electricity production in Canada will still rely on fossil fuels by 2050. That belief is highest in Alberta (66%) and lowest in Quebec (37%).

#3
Due to the tarsands, Canada’s proven oil reserves are now the third largest in the world, behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

10
Number of years Canada’s proven crude oil and natural gas reserves are expected to be entirely depleted.

14.3
Percentage by which Canada might fall short of its promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Canada committed to a 17 per cent reduction by 2020 but will likely only cut emissions by 2.7 per cent.

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Eating organic food will not make you healthier, according to researchers at Stanford University, although it could cut your exposure to pesticides.

They looked at more than 200 studies of the content and associated health gains of organic and non-organic foods.

Overall, there was no discernable difference between the nutritional content, although the organic food was 30% less likely to contain pesticides.

Critics say the work is inconclusive and call for more studies.

The research, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, looked at 17 studies comparing people who ate organic with those who did not and 223 studies that compared the levels of nutrients, bacteria, fungus or pesticides in various foods - including fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, milk and eggs.
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“Start Quote

There isn't much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you're an adult and making a decision based solely on your health”

Dr Cyrstal Smith-Spangler Lead researcher

None of the human studies ran for longer than two years, making conclusions about long-term outcomes impossible. And all of the available evidence was relatively weak and highly variable - which the authors say is unsurprising because of all the different variables, like weather and soil type, involved.

Fruit and vegetables contained similar amounts of vitamins, and milk the same amount of protein and fat - although a few studies suggested organic milk contained more omega-3.

Organic foods did contain more nitrogen, but the researchers say this is probably due to differences in fertiliser use and ripeness at harvest and is unlikely to provide any health benefit.

Their findings support those of the UK's Food Standards Agency, which commissioned a review a few years ago into organic food claims.
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Organic

Organic food is produced to standards designed to keep the production more "natural", using environmentally and animal-friendly farming methods
Fewer, if any, chemicals are used and most pesticides are banned or very carefully controlled
Various bodies in the UK, including the Soil Association, certify food and producers as organic
Food certified as organic is not allowed to contain genetically modified ingredients

Prof Alan Dangour, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who carried out that work, said: "Consumers select organic foods for a variety of reasons, however this latest review identifies that at present there are no convincing differences between organic and conventional foods in nutrient content or health benefits.

"Hopefully this evidence will be useful to consumers."

Dr Crystal Smith-Spangler, the lead author of the latest review, said there were many reasons why people chose to eat organic, including animal welfare or environmental concerns.

"Some believe that organic food is always healthier and more nutritious. We were a little surprised that we didn't find that.

"There isn't much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you're an adult and making a decision based solely on your health."

But the Soil Association said the study was flawed.

"Studies that treat crop trials as if they were clinical trials of medicines, like this one, exaggerate the variation between studies, and drown out the real differences.

"A UK review paper, using the correct statistical analysis, has found that most of the differences in nutrient levels between organic and non-organic fruit and vegetables seen in this US study are actually highly significant."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "Evidence has not yet emerged that there are nutritional benefits from eating organically produced foods compared to conventionally produced foods. We will continue to review research on this subject."

According to a known computer security researcher, Microsoft's SmartScreen feature implemented in Windows 8 reports information to Microsoft about every application installed, in an insecure manner

Known computer security researcher Nadim Kobeissi has posted up some interesting information on the behavior of Windows 8 whenever you install an application. According to some quick researching he did, the Windows SmartScreen feature reports every application a user installs to Microsoft, and does so in a way that could be intercepted by malicious hackers.

The Windows SmartScreen feature is enabled by default and is designed to tell end users whether the application they have downloaded from the internet is safe to install on their machine. It does this by gathering some info upon opening the installer, sending it to Microsoft and then waiting for a response to see if said installer has a valid certificate. As Kobeissi mentions, this means information about every single application downloaded and installed is sent to Microsoft.

He dug further to discover the information sent could potentially be intercepted by a malicious hacker, as Microsoft uses an "outdated and insecure" method of HTTPS encrypted communications. If a hacker did manage to steal all the information on a user's application installation habits, they could make a profile of the user and use that to find other exploitable weaknesses.

The issue with SmartScreen is currently only prevalent in Windows 8 as it's the first time Microsoft has integrated SmartScreen at an OS level (Windows 7 only features SmartScreen in applications like Internet Explorer). You can disable SmartScreen so you are no longer reporting your installation habits to Microsoft, but this is apparently not easy to do and results in periodic nags to re-enable it.

Chances are Microsoft will not do anything about their implementation of SmartScreen, so as it stands now it could be a privacy and security risk.

So stick to windows 7 or earlier..OK