Number inflation was rampant in 2017, as the figures that dominated news stories just got bigger and bigger. Data stored, stuff bought, years lived, the great scoreboard of human existence clicked over with digits never seen before as the world population edged ever closer to 8bn.
Many of the numbers make uncomfortable reading. Here are some of the more outrageous.
30,140,000,000,000
The estimated power usage of the bitcoin network (30.14 Tw/h), meaning that the energy required to power the mining of the cryptocurrency is greater than that used by Ireland.
At a continual power drain of 3.4GW, it means the network consumes five times more electricity than is produced by the largest wind farm in Europe, the London Array in the outer Thames Estuary, at 630MW.
1 million
The number of plastic bottles sold around the world every minute, according to the Guardian investigation published in June.
In the entire year, an estimated half a trillion bottles were sold across the world. If, instead of filling them with mostly superfluous beverages, they were placed end to end, they would extend more than halfway to the sun.
16,425,000,000,000
That’s almost 16 and a half trillion and it’s approximately the number of Facebook messages sent this year. That’s based on Facebook’s own calculations that about 31.25m messages are sent every minute. People have lots of time on their hands.
121
The age of world’s oldest man, interviewed by the Guardian in October. “Don Celino” is not recognised as such by the Guinness Book of Records because he lost his birth certificate in a house fire at the tender age of 99.
100m
The number of miles, on average, that it takes a human driver to kill someone in the US. It was also the number of miles Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot feature had racked up by May this year. That month, Joshua Brown became the first Tesla driver to die in a vehicle driving itself.
275m
The number of people living in urban areas that will eventually be flooded because of global warming. It may take decades but we’ll need decades, because moving that many people won’t happen overnight.
1bn
When a pair of neutron stars were observed colliding this year, it created a flash brighter than a billion suns. It also created a lot of other astronomical phenomena, but the billion sun thing is the easiest one to understand.
3.4%
The proportion of Britain’s most powerful and influential people that come from black and minority ethnic groups. The figure is at odds with the population at large, which is made up of about 13% of people from those communities.
65.6m
The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes, a new record. If refugees and displaced persons (those uprooted but still in their home countries) were themselves a nation, they would be the 21st biggest on earth, larger in number than the population of UK, France or Italy.
0
The number of women honoured in this year’s Nobel awards. At least the menfolk admitted the odds are stacked against women. One winner, Jacques Dubochet, told reporters: “Science has been made by males, for males.”
