{"id":149243,"date":"2015-12-10T08:56:17","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T06:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=149243"},"modified":"2015-12-10T08:58:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T06:58:26","slug":"zuma-versus-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/science\/149243-zuma-versus-science.html","title":{"rendered":"Zuma versus Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Jacob Zuma claimed that Africa is the biggest continent on earth, and that it is larger than all the other continents put together.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=M2XYp4lg5MQ\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Speaking to the business community<\/strong><\/a> about Africa, Zuma said \u201cthis continent is the biggest continent in the world\u201d. \u201cAll continents put together will fit into Africa.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Africa is] not separated even by a river. The rivers that are there flow with the continent \u2013 they don\u2019t cut it into half, or quarter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Zuma was ostensibly speaking about the geographical area of continents, which makes his statement false and misinformed.<\/p>\n<p>But even if Zuma was speaking about another metric, like population, his statement still would have been wrong.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0xffPK13Yao\" width=\"630\" height=\"473\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">The facts, as established by scientific knowledge<\/h3>\n<p>Universe Today states that the question \u201c<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/73865\/what-is-the-largest-continent\/\" target=\"_blank\">which is the largest continent?<\/a><\/strong>\u201d may refer to area or population. However, the answer is the same in both cases.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Continent\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Asia is the largest continent<\/strong><\/a> by area, at 43.8 million square kilometers. Asia also has the largest population, with over 4 billion people.<\/p>\n<p>Africa is a distant second, with an area of 30.3 million square kilometers, and a population of just over 1 billion people.<\/p>\n<p>The image below, courtesy of WikiPedia, shows the relative continent sizes based on area and population.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-149245\" src=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Continent-size.jpg\" alt=\"Continent size\" width=\"630\" height=\"259\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Continent-size.jpg 1103w, https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Continent-size-768x316.jpg 768w, https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Continent-size-640x263.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on Zuma<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/149223-rand-plummets-after-zuma-removes-finance-minister.html\">Rand plummets after Zuma removes finance minister<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/government\/147737-anc-cabinet-report-card-zuma-and-his-ministers-fail.html\">ANC cabinet report card \u2013 Zuma and his ministers fail<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/government\/146941-how-much-president-zuma-is-really-costing-you.html\">How much President Zuma is really costing you<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Jacob Zuma has claimed that Africa is the biggest continent on earth, and that it is larger than all the other continents put together &#8211; science disagrees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":102919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[35,2910,34101],"class_list":["post-149243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-headline","tag-jacob-zuma","tag-president-jacob-zuma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149251,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149243\/revisions\/149251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}