User:Wiki User 68/My Portal
Wiki User 68/My Portal
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Wiki User 68 hails from the Great British Isles specifically England which is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.[1][2][3] Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population,[4] whilst its mainland territory occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain. England shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west and elsewhere is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel and English Channel. The capital is London, the largest urban area in Great Britain, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most, but not all, measures.[5]
England became a unified state in the year 927 and takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled there during the 5th and 6th centuries. It has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world[6] being the place of origin of the English language, the Church of England, and English law, which forms the basis of the common law legal systems of countries around the world. In addition, England was the birth place of the Industrial Revolution and the first country in the world to industrialise.[7] It is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science.[8] England is the world's oldest parliamentary system[9] and consequently constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin in England have been widely adopted by other nations.
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Featherstone Castle, a Grade I listed building, is a large Gothic style country mansion situated on the bank of the River South Tyne approximately three miles southwest of the town of Haltwhistle in Northumberland (grid reference NY674610).
In the 11th century AD the manor house on this site belonged to the Featherstonehaugh family. It has played an important role in the battles between the English and the Scots. Originally a 13th century hall house, a square three storey pele tower was added in 1330 by Thomas de Featherstonehaugh. A survey from the year 1541 reported the property to be a tower in good repair occupied by Thomas Featherstonehaugh.
The earliest recorded history of this area derives from the Roman occupation period; in 122 AD, the Romans erected Hadrian's Wall, the course of which lies several kilometres to the north of Featherstone Castle.
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Deforestation is the logging or burning of trees in forested areas. There are several reasons for doing so: trees or derived charcoal can be sold as a commodity and are used by humans while cleared land is used as pasture, plantations of commodities and human settlement. The removal of trees without sufficient reforestation, has resulted in damage to habitat, biodiversity loss and aridity. Also deforested regions often degrade into wasteland.
Disregard or unawareness of intrinsic value, and lack of ascribed value, lax forest management and environmental law allow deforestation to occur on such a large scale. In many countries, deforestation is an ongoing issue which is causing extinction, changes to climatic conditions, desertification and displacement of indigenous people.
In simple terms, deforestation occurs because forested land is not economically viable. Increasing the amount of farmland, woods are used by native populations of over 200 million people worldwide.
The presumed value of forests as a genetic resources has never been confirmed by any economic studies [10]. As a result owners of forested land lose money by not clearing the forest and this affects the welfare of the whole society [11]. From the perspective of the developing world, the benefits of forest as carbon sinks or biodiversity reserves go primarily to richer developed nations and there is insufficient compensation for these services. As a result some countries simply have too much forest. Developing countries feel that some countries in the developed world, such as the United States of America, cut down their forests centuries ago and benefited greatly from this deforestation and that it is hypocritical to deny developing countries the same opportunities: that the poor shouldn’t have to bear the cost of preservation when the rich created the problem [12].
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Geothermal power (from the Greek roots geo, meaning earth, and thermos, meaning heat) is energy generated from heat stored in the earth, or the collection of absorbed heat derived from underground.
Prince Piero Ginori Conti tested the first geothermal generator on 4 July 1904, at the Larderello dry steam field in Italy.[13] The largest group of geothermal power plants in the world is located at The Geysers, a geothermal field in California, United States.[14] The Philippines and Iceland are the only countries to generate a significant percentage of their electricity from geothermal sources; in both countries 15-20% of power comes from geothermal plants. As of 2008, geothermal power supplies less than 1% of the world's energy.[15] The most common type of geothermal power plants (binary plants) are closed cycle operations and release essentially no Greenhouse gas emissions; geothermal power is available 24 hours a day with average availabilities above 90% (compared to about 75% for coal plants). [16]
In the news
- 20 November 2024 – 2024 United Kingdom farmers' protests
- Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner dismisses concerns brought on by protests in London from United Kingdom farmers against new agricultural inheritance taxation policies as "scaremongering". (Sky News)
- 19 November 2024 – 2024 United Kingdom farmers' protests
- Thousands of British farmers protest at the Houses of Parliament in London, United Kingdom, against a new inheritance tax on land ownership that includes farms. (Al Jazeera) (BBC News)
- 6 November 2024 – Protests against Donald Trump
- Just Stop Oil protesters spray orange paint on the outside of the American Embassy in London, United Kingdom, following Donald Trump's re-election in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. (The Independent)
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Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African-American president in U.S. history. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004. (Full article...)
Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree, and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.
Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. Obama's unexpected landslide victory in the March 2004 U.S. Senate primary made him a rising star in the national Democratic Party, with his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 further raising his visibility. He was elected by a landslide margin to the U.S. Senate in November 2004.
After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination, becoming the first major African American candidate for President. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican candidate John McCain and was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009.
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Bouvet Island is located at 54°26′S 3°24′E. It is 49 km² in area, 93% of which is covered by glaciers which block the south and east coasts.[1]
Bouvet Island is the most remote island in the world. The nearest land is Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, over 1,600 km (1,000 miles) away to the south, which is itself uninhabited.
It has no ports or harbours, only offshore anchorages, and is therefore difficult to approach. Wave action has created a very steep coast. The easiest way to access the island is with a helicopter from a ship. The glaciers form a thick ice layer falling in high cliffs into the sea or onto the black beaches of volcanic sand. The 29.6 km (18.4 miles) of coastline are often surrounded by an ice pack. The highest point on the island is called Olavtoppen, whose peak is 780 m (2,559 ft) above sea level. A lava shelf on the island's west coast, which appeared between 1955 and 1958, provides a nesting site for birds.
Because of the harsh climate and ice-bound terrain, vegetation is limited to lichens and mosses. Seals, seabirds and penguins are the only fauna.
Despite being uninhabited, Bouvet Island has the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .bv, though it is not used.[2] A handful of amateur radio expeditions have gone to this remote location (call signs used here begin with 3Y). There is no telephone country code or area code, and no telephone connection (except by satellite, but there is nothing installed). There is no postal code and no postal distribution. Ships approaching the Bouvet Island fall within the UTC Z time zone. There is a Norwegian law [3] saying that the time zone of Norway is UTC+1, except for a part of year (daylight saving time). This suggests that the legal time zone for the Bouvet Island also should be UTC+1. However, since this law does not apply for the Norwegian Antarctic territories (Bouvet Island, Peter I Island, Queen Maud Land), UTC Z is the proper time zone for Bouvet Island.
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If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One! [zaps one of his minions accidentally, minion screams] Sorry.
- Evil Genius
- Time Bandits
Did you know?
- ...that optimistic estimations of peak oil production forecast the global decline will begin by 2020 or later, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used?[17]
- ...that if the Greenland ice-sheet melted through global warming, it would raise the global sea level by 7 meters, or 22 feet?
Topics
Related portals
WikiProjects
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| WikiProject Africa | WikiProject Cape Verde | WikiProject Council |
Things to do
- Keep finishing off the various Portals that need creating/completing and start writing content on the relevant interested issues.
- Be bold. Wikipedia is for the people, by the people and needs YOU as a contributor to spread global knowledge.
Wikimedia
- ^ The Countries of the UK statistics.gov.uk, accessed 10 October, 2008
- ^ "Countries within a country". 10 Downing Street. Retrieved 2007-09-10.
The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- ^ "ISO 3166-2 Newsletter Date: 2007-11-28 No I-9. "Changes in the list of subdivision names and code elements" (Page 11)" (PDF). International Organisation for Standardisation codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part 2: Country subdivision codes. Retrieved 2008-05-31.
ENG England country
- ^ National Statistics Online - Population Estimates. Retrieved 6 June 2007.
- ^ The official definition of LUZ (Larger Urban Zone) is used by the European Statistical Agency (Eurostat) when describing conurbations and areas of high population. This definition ranks London highest, above Paris (see Larger Urban Zones (LUZ) in the European Union); and a ranking of population within municipal boundaries also puts London on top (see Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits). However, research by the University of Avignon in France ranks Paris first and London second when including the whole urban area and hinterland, that is the outlying cities as well (see Largest urban areas of the European Union).
- ^ England - Culture. Britain USA. Retrieved 12 September 2006.
- ^ "Industrial Revolution". Retrieved 2008-04-27.
- ^ "History of the Royal Society". The Royal Society. Retrieved 2008-09-03.
- ^ "Country profile: United Kingdom". BBC News. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
- ^ Pierce, D.W. The economic value of forest ecosystems" Ecosystem Health 7:4 2001
- ^ Erwin H Bulte; Mark Joenje; Hans G P Jansen 200 "Is there too much or too little natural forest in the Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica"Canadian Journal of Forest Research; 30:3
- ^ Erwin H Bulte; Mark Joenje; Hans G P Jansen 200 "Is there too much or too little natural forest in the Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica"Canadian Journal of Forest Research; 30:3
- ^ THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE GEOTHERMAL-ELECTRIC INDUSTRY WAS CONCLUDED IN FLORENCE ON DECEMBER 10th, 2005 in IGA News #64, April - June 2006. Publication of UGI/Italian Geothermal Union.
- ^ [1] Calpine Corporation page on The Geysers
- ^ 2008 IEA Key World Energy Statistics: "Total Primary Energy Supply"
- ^ http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/faqs.html "Department of Energy, Geothermal Technologies Program FAQ
- ^ "CERA says peak oil theory is faulty". Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). 2006-11-14. Retrieved 2008-07-27.