The goal of this blog is to create a list of super facts. Important facts that are true with very high certainty and yet surprising, misunderstood, or disputed by many. This blog aims to be challenging, educational, and fun, without it being clickbait. I determine veracity using evidence, data from reputable sources and longstanding scientific consensus. Prepare to be challenged (I am). Intentionally seek the truth not confirmation of your belief.
Kevin’s artistic picture above reminds me of a Quasar, a supermassive black hole emitting enormous amounts of energy.
What is a Quasar ?
A Quasar is a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that is emitting enormous amounts of energy. The quasar is the supermassive black hole plus its accretion disk, the gas it is feeding on and the radiation it emits. The quasar is actively feeding on gas and stars and emitting enormous amounts of radiation in the process. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way, and millions of times greater than the largest and most luminous stars in the known universe.
Supermassive black hole at the center of a quasar. Singularity in space devouring matter and light. From Shutterstock Asset id: 2484018599 by Nazarii Neshcherenskyi.
TON 618
TON 618 is a hyper luminous Quasar known to house one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, with an estimated mass of around 40 to 60 billion solar masses. Its luminosity is estimated to be 140 trillion times that of the Sun. The diameter of TON 618 is 780 billion kilometers or 82.6 light-years. Keep in mind that the distance to the moon is 1.3 light seconds and 82.6 light years is more than two billion times larger than that. Our sun is gigantic with a diameter 109 times larger than the diameter of earth. 1.3 million earths could fit inside the volume of our sun. However, in comparison to TON 618, our sun is a lot less than tiny. The diameter of TON 618 is 561 million times larger than that of the sun’s diameter and 177 octillion (an octillion is 27 zeros) suns could fit inside the volume of TON 618. In other words, we are comparing a dust particle to planet earth size wise. I am pretty sure you are not going to be able to imagine this.
Quasar in deep space. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. Asset id: 1758938918. by NASA images.
When TON 618 was discovered in 1957, quasars and supermassive black holes were not yet recognized and understood by astronomers. The word quasar inspired shock and awe in every nerd on the planet. The concept of quasars, or quasi-stellar radio sources, wasn’t fully recognized until 1963. When I was a kid in the 1970’s there was a lot of speculation as to what these gigantic ultra bright but far away objects could be. TON 618 is located 18.2 billion light years away. Considering that the reachable limit of the Universe is 16.5 billion light years even if you travel at the speed of light, you could never travel to TON 618 (barring the warp drive in Star Trek).
The Event Horizon
When we are talking about the diameter of a black hole we are not talking about a sphere with a solid surface. The black hole is a sphere, or an oval, wherein gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not light, not anything. It’s truly black. As you approach the event horizon you become invisible, space deforms, and from the perspective of an outside observer, time appears to stop for someone reaching the event horizon of a black hole. Time will continue for someone falling in, well in some sense. You’ll be transported beyond our universe and time as we know it. We can guess but we can’t really know.
When this spaceship reaches the event horizon the time will stop from our perspective, and they will never enter the black hole. From their perspective they will enter right through the event horizon, and they will be transported infinitely far into a future beyond time. Stock AI-generated image ID: 2448481683 AI-generated image Contributor Shutterstock AI Generator.
Black Holes
Black holes are invisible. They are truly black. However, we can see them if they are consuming matter. The matter close to black holes will heat up and glow. The closer to the event horizon the redder it is. It is called an accretion disk as in the depiction above. There are an estimated 100 million black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At the center of the Milky Way is a super massive black hole called Sagittarius A-star. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun. There are supermassive black holes located at the center of most large galaxies. The supermassive black holes are considered to play a crucial role in the formation of galaxies.
3D illustration of giant Black hole in deep space. High quality digital space art in 5K – realistic visualization. Stock Illustration ID: 2476711459 by Vadim Sadovski.
Note : Today March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday, the man who gave us the General Theory of Relativity, which mathematically describes black holes. It is also Pi Day (first 10 digits 3.1415926535), and there’s a rare moon eclipse tonight called a blood moon or a worm moon. Also, Dallas is under a fire warning. Be careful.
Important Note : I am going on a ski vacation tomorrow and I will take a one-week break from blogging as well as a break from reading other people’s blogs.
Super fact 35: Natural disasters kill a lot less people now compared to 100 years ago. That is despite a larger population and despite the fact that climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of many types of natural disasters.
This is a super fact because surveys, such as this questionnaire from Gap Minder, show that the vast majority of the public (90%) believe that deaths from natural disasters have increased or stayed the same. Gap Minder is a Swedish highly respected non-profit founded by Hans Rosling that promotes increased use and understanding of statistics. Our World in Data (OWID), a renowned scientific online publication focusing on large global problems largely took its inspiration for Gap Minder and Hans Rosling.
The reason for the fewer deaths from natural disasters is not that there are fewer natural disasters, on the contrary, it is because we are now much better at predicting, handling and recovering from natural disasters. Our warnings systems, rescue systems and healthcare have improved significantly.
The graphics in this article from BBC show that the frequency of natural disasters has increased, and that the cost of natural disasters has increased, and yet the number of deaths has decreased.
The graph below comes from the Gap Minder article. It shows the annual deaths from natural disasters in ten-year intervals starting with 1930. In the 1930’s there were 971 thousand deaths per year from natural disasters and during the period 2010 to 2016 there were 72 thousand deaths per year from natural disasters, an improvement by more than 13 times.
However, it should be noted that there was a huge flood in China 1931 causing an estimated 3 million deaths, and it skews the numbers for the 1930’s interval.
Originally, I set the headline for this super fact to be “10 Times more people died from natural disasters a hundred years ago” but I changed it to “Natural Disasters Kill Less People Now Than 100 Years Ago” because I realized that the 1930’s peak is an outlier because of the 1931 flood. I don’t want my headlines to be click bait.
This graph from the Gap Minder article shows the annual deaths from natural disasters in ten-year intervals starting with 1930. The trend is down.
This does not mean that we should not worry about the increase in frequency and intensity of natural disasters from climate change. First of all, there are no warning systems and healthcare available for Koalas and Elephants, secondly cost matters, and thirdly there is no guarantee that we can keep improving our ability of predicting, handling and recovering from natural disasters enough to match the accelerating risks for natural disasters.
What People Believe Regarding Disaster Deaths
The Gap Minder article above report on a question survey conducted by Gap Minder. They asked large groups of people in 14 countries the following multiple-choice question “How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years?” The choices were:
A. More than doubled
B. Remained more or less the same
C. Decreased to less than half
Most people answered A, a lot
of people answered B, but only 10% got the correct answer C, decreased to less than half. In other words, if chimpanzees had answered this question by randomly picking an answer, they would have done better than people. This is why I consider this a super fact. Below is a graphics taken from the Gap Minder article that shows how people in different countries responded.
The histogram graphics above show the answers to the question “How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years?” The correct answer “decreased to less than half” (in green) was rarely picked. The graphics is taken from the Gap Minder article mentioned.
EF3 Tornado in Dallas
In October 2019 an EF3 tornado ripped through our neighborhood. It left a 2-3 miles long trail of destruction. Roofs were lifted off houses, cars and buses were flown around, hundreds of houses were destroyed, bricks were flying around in the wind, trees were uprooted, and tree branches were flying around, and pieces of concrete crashed into buildings and hit steel fences so forcefully that it bent even quarter inch thick steel fences.
Unlike many of our neighbor’s houses, our house stood, but our chimney was smashed by a piece of concrete coming off a neighbor’s house, we had to replace our roof, our garage door, the wiring in the attic, our fence and my grill flew around in the yard. The amazing thing was that no one in the neighborhood died.
Why did no one die? Was it maybe because no one was outside walking the dog, or driving around, because everyone had received the alarm on their mobile phone about the approaching tornado and was therefore sheltering inside in a safe place? Imagine the same thing happening in the 1930’s.
Below are a few photos from that day and here are two links with more photos, link-1 , link-2. On the five-year anniversary of this event NBC news interviewed me about this event. To see the interview click here . My interview is at one minute and ten seconds.
NBC used this photo. A neighbor’s house the morning of October 21st, 2019. Again, click on the image, or here, to see the interview. My interview is at one minute and ten seconds.Another neighbor’s house. This house was about 100 yards from our house. It took a direct hit from the tornado.Another house in our neighborhood.
My wife Claudia asked me to go check on her parents. I drove about 50-100 yards when a neighbor’s roof lying across the road stopped me. I turned around but this time I was stopped by a large pile of trees lying across the street. So, I started walking, but this time I was stopped by a group of firemen telling me that it was too dangerous to be outside. They told me to go back home, and I did. The next day we were able to visit her parents and below is what we saw.
Inside my wife Claudia’s parents’ house. This was the morning after. In the photo we are walking into their house to check on them (that’s my wife).
Super fact 34: Climate Scientists agree that Global Warming or if you call it Climate Change is happening, and that it is caused by us primarily because of our burning of fossil fuels. There is a long-standing scientific consensus on these two facts because the evidence is conclusive. Typically, studies show an agreement of at least 97% or 98% among climate scientists.
This is a super fact because surveys show that this is not what the public believes and yet it is true. The public incorrectly believes that there is a large disagreement among scientists on this topic. A note, to understand why the evidence is conclusive as to why global warming is happening and is caused by us click here.
Note : I will use the term “global warming” in this review. Whether you call the phenomenon climate change, climate disruption, or global heating, is not important.
The Scientific Consensus
This extensive survey from 2013 of 12,000 climate papers (papers published over two decades) by Dana Nuccitelli and Cook, etc., concluded that 97.1% of climate scientists endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
They also did a science author self-rating which concluded that 97.2% of climate scientists endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. Another conclusion from the survey was that the consensus had increased from around 90%, perhaps less, in the early 1990’s.
A later review of six independent, peer-reviewed studies examining the scientific consensus about global warming have concluded that between 90% and 100% of climate scientists are convinced human-caused global warming is happening. A more recent study (2021) found that as many as 98% of climate scientists are convinced global warming is happening and is human-caused. Numerous other surveys have concluded the same thing.
People’s Beliefs About Global Warming
This 2024 survey from Yale University show that most Americans (61%) understand that global warming is mostly human caused. By contrast, 28% think it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment. Most Americans (58%) <<Link-6>> understand that most scientists think global warming is happening. This percentage has trended generally upward since this survey began in 2008. By contrast, about one in five (22%) think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether global warming is happening.
The green graph corresponds to “most scientists think global warming is happening (%).” The black graph corresponds to “there is a lot of disagreement among scientists (%)”. The yellow graph corresponds to “Most scientists think global warming is NOT happening (%)”. Graph taken from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
However, only one in five Americans (20%) understand that nearly all climate scientists (more than 90%) think that human-caused global warming is happening. The aforementioned Dana Nuccitelli refers to this in his book Climatology versus Pseudoscience as the consensus gap. Again, this large discrepancy between public perception and reality makes the consensus gap a super fact. Research has shown that this discrepancy has a large impact on people’s other beliefs regarding global warming.
The question was, To the best of your knowledge what percentage of climate scientists think that human-caused global warming is happening? Graph taken from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Why is there a Consensus Gap?
In his book Climatology versus Pseudoscience Dana Nuccitelli explains that a relatively small group of so-called climate skeptics, or more accurately called climate contrarians have received a lot of attention from media. Even though their science is bad, and they’ve published their error ridden papers in obscure or discredited journals, and the fact that their predictions have failed repeatedly many times over, they have had an enormous influence on public discourse. Conservative politicians, and many talk show hosts are blindly devoted to their falsehoods, whilst real scientists are being attacked.
It is not just rightwing media who are using them for their purposes, but mainstream media are giving the contrarians undue attention as well. Sensationalism is one issue. A science contrarian claiming that all the climate scientists are wrong, and that he is the only one who finally got it right is a lot more interesting of a story than a repeat of the consensus. Another issue is false balance. Journalist should not feel that they must give equal time to evidence-based science and nonsense, but that is often the case. To read my review of this book click here.
The Oregon Petition
I am mentioning the Oregon petition because I fell for it myself. The Oregon petition was an official looking petition circulated by climate contrarians, claiming that there is no evidence that human-caused global warming will cause catastrophic heating of earth’s atmosphere and disruption of earth’s climate, and that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere would even be beneficial for plants and animals. It got an impressive number of signatures, 32,000 after some years.
However, it turned out that the signatories rarely had climate expertise, and were not scientists, and the survey listed many falsified names such as the names of the Spice Girls and several fictional characters. Less than 200 of the signatories were climate researchers.
It was a con, but it was touted in a lot of media as the truth. I saw it over and over and I believed it. I was later surprised to learn that it was a con and that a scientific consensus existed on global warming / climate change. Learning that I had been bamboozled on this matter was one of the red flags that prompted me to start doing some fact checking on the issue global warming.
The goal of this blog is to create a list of what I call super facts. Important facts that are known to be true and yet they are surprising, shocking or disputed among non-experts. In a sense it is myth busting. However, it is not the only type of posts I do. This is a review for a popular book on Astrophysics called “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” by Neil De Grasse Tyson. It is a New York Times best seller and the #1 best seller in Astronomy & Astrophysics on Amazon. It has almost 37,000 ratings/reviews on Amazon and more 194,000 reviews/ratings on Goodreads.
Below is a list of the four formats in which it comes on Amazon.
Hardcover – Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition (May 2, 2017), ASIN : 0393609391, ISBN-10 : 9780393609394, ISBN-13 : 978-0393609394, 224 pages, item weight : 2.31 pounds, dimensions : 7.3 x 4.8 x 0.9 inches, it costs $6.21 – $13.26 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Kindle – Publisher – W. W. Norton & Company (May 2, 2017), ASIN : B01MAWT2MO, 222 pages, it costs $9.00 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Audiobook – Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc (May 2, 2017), ASIN : B06XB2PX7G, it costs $10.20 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Audio CD – Publisher : Blackstone Publishing; Unabridged edition (May 2, 2017), ISBN-10 : 1538408015, ISBN-13 : 978-1538408018, it costs $24.95 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Front cover of the book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the hardcover version of the book.
Amazon’s Description of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and more than a million copies sold.
The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist.
What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.
While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.
This is my four-star review for Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
The reason I gave the book four stars instead of five is because I felt that if you have an interest in the topic, you will have heard it all before. However, in retrospect that might not be a good reason to deduct a star. After all, the book seems to be targeting people who do not know much about the subject and thus will not have heard it all before.
Quick and Entertaining Overview of Astrophysics
I’ve read a number of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s books and I love them. This book is a compressed version of what he has been explaining in other books. If you’ve already read a number of Neil De Grasse books, or perhaps other popular science Astrophysics books such as those by Stephen Hawking, you will not find much new in this book. However, I think it is a brief but good summary of Astrophysics written for a layman. It is 208 pages, each page having about half as much text per page as a typical popular science book. It is an easy and fairly quick read.
He briefly explains the Big Bang, physical laws, spectra, nebulae, the speed of light, very briefly relativity and quantum physics, the cosmic background radiation, galaxies, gravitational lensing, dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, the composition of the solar system and exoplanets. He covers a lot of ground quickly and he makes it easy to understand without simplifying so much that it becomes misleading. This book is exactly what the title says. However, as I mentioned, if you’ve read a lot on the topic already, especially if it is Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s books, you’ve seen it before. I still think it was very enjoyable though and I still learned something new. He is a very entertaining author.
Front cover of the book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the hardcover version of the book.
Super fact 33: Actions such as eating locally, buying organic produce, using paper straws, and recycling can be good for the environment but can also be worse for the environment and these actions often have a much smaller positive impact than alternative rarely considered actions. What are popular actions for the environment is often different from what is effective.
I consider this a super fact because the beliefs regarding what is good for the environment and what is bad for the environment and what has a significant impact and what has not, are often based on popular trends and culture rather than knowledge. We need to educate ourselves. Following trends is not the answer to good stewardship of the planet.
This content was generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system. Asset id: 2531547331
Is Locally Grown Food Really Better for the Environment?
As I explained in this post eating locally is not necessarily ecological. Agricultural products that are grown off season or in non-native environments are often grown in greenhouses, which require a lot of energy and generate significantly more emissions than shipping the produce across oceans would. This is especially true for crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, mangoes and bananas, that require warmer climates to be grown in open fields.
From pexels.com by Julia Nagy.
In some cases, the crop requires significant water resources or chemical inputs to thrive and may not be suitable for warmer climates, for example, apples. Some crops, like avocados or almonds require a lot of water but despite that they are grown in dry places like California (80% of California’s freshwater is used for agriculture). From an environmental perspective it would be better to grow these crops in a suitable environment and then transport them.
Is Eating Organic Really Good for the Environment?
As explained in this post eating organic is not necessarily ecological. Despite strong public perception of organic agriculture producing better environmental outcomes, conventional agriculture often performs better on environmental measures including land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and pollution of water bodies. There are, however, some contexts where organic agriculture may be better for the environment.
The graph below gives an overview of the environmental impact of various types of crops grown organically and conventionally. As you can see organic crop often require double as much land compared to conventionally grown crops. It is complicated.
Shown is the relative environmental impact of organic and conventional agriculture across various ecological and resource indicators based on a meta-analysis of 164 published life-cycle analyses (LCAs) across 742 agricultural systems. Roughly, lower in the graph means organic is better and higher up in the graph means conventional farming is better. Data source: Clark & Tilman (2017) – Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice. In Environmental Research Letters. The data visualization is available at OurWorldinData.org<<Link-10>>. There you can find research and more visualizations on this topic. Licensed under CC BY-SA by the authors Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser.
What really matters though is the type of food you eat, not whether it is organic or not. For example, beef (from beef herd) causes emissions 188 times larger than nuts do for the same amount of protein provided. Another thing to note is that if you eat 300 steaks per year you will have a 100 times larger environmental impact from your meat eating compared to someone who eats 3 steaks per year. You don’t have to become a vegetarian to have a smaller environmental impact but quantity matters.
Is Recycling Important?
The common perception that recycling is one of the best things you can do for the environment is not correct. Its impact is often not very large and if not done properly it can be counterproductive. If you throw a greasy pizza box in the recycling, you can ruin the entire batch.
Surveys across 21,000 adults in 30 countries showed that the two actions among twelve that people believed saved the most greenhouse gases were recycling (59%) and upgrading lightbulbs (36%). As it turns out, those two saved the least greenhouse gases among the twelve options. The option saving the most greenhouse gases among the 12 was giving up an SUV, which saved 18 times as much greenhouse gases as recycling. 17% of respondents picked that one.
According to Our World in Data (and the book Not the End of the World page 114<<Link-6>>), which is based on this research, giving up an average SUV for a sedan would save 3.6 metric ton, or 22.5% of the carbon emissions for the average American. Switching to a plant-based diet would save 2.2 metric ton per person, or 13.8%. Recycling comes in at a savings of 0.2 metric tons according to the same data. EPAs estimates are slightly higher but still low in comparison.
Plastic straws versus paper straws
Producing a plastic straw requires 39 kilojoules of energy and produces 1.5 grams of carbon dioxide emissions. However, producing a paper straw requires 96 kilojoules of energy and produces 4.1 grams of carbon dioxide emissions. So, plastic straws are better for the environment from that perspective. However, this could be compared to a typical passenger vehicle, which emits about 4.6 metric tons of CO2 per year according to EPA. That corresponds to more than 3 million plastic straws and more than one million paper straws.
According to the same article the average passenger vehicle emits about 400 grams of CO2 per mile. So, driving just one mile corresponds to hundreds of plastic straws and paper straws.
One advantage of paper straws is that they are easier to recycle, at least under ideal circumstances. Unfortunately, they often get soggy, and recycling plants don’t want that so they often throw them out. Another advantage is that paper straws decompose and don’t end up in our ocean.
However, not only are straws very small items, most of the plastic pollution in the ocean does not come from north America(1%) or Europe (1%). Paper straws versus plastic straws seem like a complex riddle but it may not be an important one. Whether you drive more or drive less is probably a lot more important.
Plastic bags versus paper bags
As with plastic straws versus paper straws plastic bags versus paper bags is a complicated question. From an environmental perspective they both have advantages and disadvantages. Plastic bags are less carbon intensive to produce, are easier to reuse several times, and the production of plastic bags require on average four times less energy than the production of paper bags.
On the other hand, paper bags are decomposable and easier to recycle. However, the chemicals and fertilizers used in producing paper bags create additional harm to the environment. It is a complicated question.
Plastic Ocean pollution. Whale Shark filter feeds in polluted ocean, ingesting plastic. Asset id: 1120768061 by Rich Carey
Having a Significant and Positive Impact on the Environment
Some of the allegedly sustainable practices and actions mentioned above are counter productive and others have a very small effect, for example, carbon emissions savings that are a few grams. According to the “Our World Data” and the book “Not the End of the World” page 114, a compilation of data research, some actions that you can take that will significantly reduce carbon emissions are (savings in metric tons per year, for flight it is per trip):
Giving up an SUV 3.6 tons
Go car free (average car) 2.4 tons
Switch to plant-based diet 2.2 tons
Avoid transatlantic flights 1.6 tons
Buy green energy 1.5 tons
Switch to electric car (from average sedan) 1.2 tons
Switch from electric car to none 1.2 tons
Avoid medium flight 0.6 tons (1,700 miles each way going and returning)
Laundry in cold water 0.25 tons
Hand-dry clothing 0.2 tons
Recycle 0.2 tons
Upgrade light bulbs 0.1 tons
As you can see in the graphs below, the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the World and in the United States is electricity and heat. Unfortunately, the composition of the electric grid is something we as consumers have very little control over. We can save energy, get solar panels for our roof, or buy our electricity from green energy companies, but we cannot easily change the composition of the grid. Energy companies and politicians must do that.
However, we can make our voices heard by calling and writing to our representatives. This might be the single most impactful action that you as an individual can take. Your congressman, senator, or state legislator will probably not read your letter. They have hundreds of thousands or millions of constituents and get lots of letters every day. What is likely to happen is that a staff member will skim the letter and note the concern in a database.
Just make sure that your letter is politely written so it does not go in the wastebasket. Also make sure that you are a constituent. Writing to Ted Cruz when you live in Florida is not going to have an impact. They are interested in finding out what the concerns of their constituents are and according to staff members and other information I have come across, this really has an impact.
Data source : Climate Watch (2024). Note : Land use emissions can be negative. OurWorldinData.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions| CC BYData source : Climate Watch (2024). Note : Land use emissions can be negative. OurWorldinData.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions| CC BY
Conclusion
The survey mentioned above showed that among the twelve environmental actions an individual could take, the one with the second to smallest positive impact was the one that the majority thought had the biggest positive impact, despite it having a relatively tiny impact. The actions that could really make a huge difference were hardly considered.
We, the public, are very bad at determining what is good or bad for the environment and what has a significant and positive impact or not, even though the data is out there and we easily can look it up. Maybe the biggest positive impact one could have on the environment is to look up the facts and get better educated.
Super Facts 