About 23AndMe

23AndMe, founded in 2006 provides a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service in which customers provide a saliva sample that is analyzed to generate reports relating to the customer’s ancestry, genetic predispositions, inherited health conditions and other health related topics. Who doesn’t want to know something about their ancestry going back possibly thousands of years? Who doesn’t want to know about genetic timebombs in their DNA? I took the test, and my wife took the test, our daughter took the test, other family members took the test, and it was fun and very interesting, and a good conversation starter. For example, I found out that I am practically a Neanderthal, well maybe not exactly.

What we did not think about is that 23AndMe represented a significant privacy risk. This is data that can be misused in various ways. You can be discriminated against based on this data, you can be denied employment, insurance companies can use it to deny you health insurance, you can be subject to surreptitious testing without your consent. Not to mention familial complications, such as infidelity, and people finding out who their real parents are, and relatives were. In the wrong hands this data is dangerous.

In October 2023 hackers stole 7 million people’s data. Stolen information included people’s names, addresses and genetic data and was sold online. This made the economic difficulties the company was in even worse. Yesterday the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and their founder and CEO resigned. Now people are rightfully worried about their data.

Ancestry from 23AndMe

However, the information we got from our genetic tests was interesting and fun. I found out that my ancestry was 99.8% Northwestern European, 85.3% Scandinavian/Sweden/Norway, 14.4% Finnish, 0.1% other Northwestern European, and 0.2% Siberian. Not surprising since my family have lived in northern Sweden and northern Finland since at least 1628 according to the ancestry records. Other people in my family were a lot more mixed than that. I can add that I also thought it was fun to on occasion find second cousins or third cousins whose existence I was unaware of.

I also found out that I had strong Neanderthal ancestry. The report says I have more Neanderthal variants than 99% of customers. On the 23AndMe website there was a forum, or club for people with strong Neanderthal ancestry, so I joined. However, some people were taking it a bit too seriously and after I while I did feel comfortable in the Neanderthal club, so I left.

Fun Facts from 23AndMe

I was happy to find that I did not seem to have any hereditary predisposition for any illnesses among the ones they listed. Well, I have the typical predisposition for type II diabetes. I was happy to see that I am not predisposed to get Alzheimer’s, which I was worried about, since I have a couple of relatives with that condition.

The most fun and perhaps least important aspect of the genetic testing was the non-health related predispositions. For example, regarding “ice cream flavor preference” my genes says that I am “more likely to prefer vanilla over chocolate ice cream”. My wife got the opposite, and this is correct. I love vanilla, she loves chocolate. I am less likely than average to be afraid of heights and less likely to be motion sick.

Our eye colors, finger and toe lengths, propensity for dandruff, cheek dimples, hair texture and thickness, earwax type, freckles, bunions, the DNA analysis got it all right. By the way I am good at smelling asparagus, just like my DNA test says. The one thing that my DNA test got wrong was that the most likely time for me to wake up in the morning is 6:53AM. The DNA test got my wife’s wake up time correct, but I am not waking up at 6:53AM.

Deleting your data from 23AndMe

OK this is a lot of fun and maybe useful, but the big question is do we want this information in the wrong hands. I’ve mentioned a few ways in which this data can be misused but there may be many more ways this data can be misused that I have not thought about, that no one has yet thought about. Therefore, I deleted all our data from 23AndMe today. If you are a member of 23AndMe I suggest you do the same. Below I am giving you the instructions for how to delete your data from 23AndMe.

• Log into your 23andMe account. You may need to reset your password.
• Go to your profile and locate the little menu up on the far top right. Select Settings.
• Scroll to the “23andMe Data” section at the bottom of the page and click View (button). If you want to download your data, select what you want to download. I downloaded the “reports summary”, which is a pdf file. I also downloaded ancestry composition raw data, which is a large CSV file compressed into a zip file. Finally, I downloaded family tree data, which is in json format.
• Scroll to the “Delete Data” section and click Permanently Delete Data. This is a Red button at the bottom.
• Confirm your request: You’ll receive an email from 23andM. Click the link/button in the email to confirm.

Important Note : I am back from my ski vacation, and I once again respond to comments posting and visiting other people’s blogs.

To see the Super Facts click here

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.

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.

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.

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.

Black Hole Animation

Below is an animation created by NASA that depicts what an observer falling into a black hole would see. The video is about 4 minutes long.

TON 618  Animation

Below is an animation of TON 618, a quasar and the largest black hole known in the universe. This video is about 5 minutes.

To see my The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes Super Fact Click Here

To see the Super Facts click here

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

To see the other Super Facts click here

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.

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.

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.

To see the other Super Facts click here

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.

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.

To see the Super Facts click here

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To see the other Super Facts click here

There Are Three Types of Mammals

Placentals, Monotremes, and Marsupials

All mammals are warm-blooded, have fur, and produce milk. However, there are three main types of mammals, placentals, monotremes, and marsupials, distinguished by how they give birth. Placentals give birth to well-developed young, and they nourish their young in the uterus through the placenta. Examples include gorillas, humans, whales, rodents, tigers, and bats. Monotremes lay soft-shelled eggs. Examples include the platypus and the echidna.

Then we have Marsupials, which give birth to small and underdeveloped young. Most female marsupials have pouches. Examples include kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, possum, opossum, Tasmanian devils, and koalas. Below is a kid friendly overview of the three types of mammals.

Marsupials on Three Continents

Close to 70% of the 334 extant marsupial species are concentrated on the Australian continent, including mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and nearby islands. The remaining 30% are distributed across the Americas, primarily in South America. The Virginia opossum is the only marsupial native to the United States, but it is quite common. For example, we have lots of them in our neighborhood in Dallas. It should also be noted that there are a lot of marsupial fossils in Antarctica, which means that marsupials once lived there.

DNA evidence supports a South American origin for marsupials, with Australian marsupials arising from a single Gondwanan migration of marsupials from South America, across Antarctica, to Australia. These continents were connected and part of the supercontinent Gondwana back then. The ancestors of the marsupials, the metatherians split from placentals around 100 million to 120 million years ago during dinosaur times.

Bamboozled by an Opossum

We’ve found opossums in our house, behind our laundry machine. We’ve seen them along the street, on lawns in the neighborhood and we’ve seen them climb trees. They are pretty common in our neighborhood. It should be noted that they are not possums even though they are sometimes called that. Possums is an Australian relative to the Opossum.

One day when my wife and I were out walking the dogs we saw an opossum lying on the alleyway behind our house. He looked dead. However, when I checked, he was warm and appeared to be alive even though he was unconscious. We put him in a box containing a soft blanket and took him to the veterinary. We were willing to pay for any treatment or surgeries needed. At the veterinarian he woke up and they later placed him in a nature sanctuary. We did not need to pay anything.

Later on, we learned that when an opossum is threatened or harmed, they will “play possum“. They mimic the appearance and smell of a dead animal. This response is involuntary, like fainting, and not a conscious act. That might have been what was going on. So, I might have been bamboozled by an opossum. Bamboozlement seems to be the story of my life. Luckily, he was a male and the veterinary said it looked like he had been hit by a car, so us taking him to the veterinary probably did not do much harm. However, the “playing possum” thing is something to keep in mind with these animals.

Australia and our Photos of Marsupials

When our kids were young, we traveled to Australia where we encountered a lot of marsupials in the wild, in nature preserves and at zoos We encountered a lot of kangaroos but also wombats, koalas, and Tasmanian Devils. I can add that checking out kangaroos and other marsupials was not the only thing we did in Australia. We also spent a week in Great Barrier Reef where we did snorkel and scuba diving.

The first picture below was from our visit to the Blue Mountains. We stopped to have lunch, and I decided to go and take a leak. As I approached a bush, I heard some noise and when I looked behind the bush, I saw that there was a kangaroo behind it. What you see in the picture below is what I saw. The kangaroo was just two yards away. He seemed to be as startled as I was, and we stared at each other for a few seconds. I had my camera hanging around my neck, so I decided to take a photo. Then he hopped away. I am so glad I did not pee on his lunch.

Note : Koalas are often called Koala bears, but they are not bears.

One interesting fact about Wombats is that they produce cubic shaped poop. This makes the poop stackable, and the wombats use it to mark their territory and attract mates.

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Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics by Dana Nuccitelli

Climatology versus Pseudoscience by Dana Nuccitelli is a book about human-caused Climate Change, or global warming, and how we know that is happening and how we know that we are the cause of it. If you want to see more about why we know this click here.

The book pays a lot of attention to so called climate skeptics; more accurately called climate contrarians. They are not true skeptics but agenda driven contrarians. Even though their science is bad, and 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. Large segments of the population in the United States, and to some extents elsewhere, have been bamboozled by the pseudo-science.

The good news is that people are waking up to the reality that they have been bamboozled. We know that global warming, or if you call it climate change, is not only real, but we also know that the current rapid warming is caused by us, primarily via our carbon emissions. I was bamboozled by the pseudo scientists myself, but then I took a serious look at the science, and I realized that that I had been bamboozled. This book will walk you through the faulty arguments of the climate contrarians, and it does so in a logical and convincing manner. It features hundreds of references. I bought the hardback version of this book.

• Hardcover –  Publisher – Praeger; Illustrated edition (March 3, 2015), ISBN-10 : 1440832013, ISBN-13 : 978-1440832017, 232 pages, item weight : 1.3 pounds, dimensions : ‎ 6.14 x 0.56 x 9.21 inches, it costs $11.96 – $53.00 on US Amazon. A new copy is $53.00. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
• Kindle –  Publisher – Praeger; Illustrated edition (March 3, 2015), ASIN : B0C71FFTQT, 230 pages, it costs $50.35on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.

Amazon’s Description of Climatology versus Pseudoscience

This book explains the science of climate change in plain language and shows that the 2 to 4 percent of climate scientists who are skeptical that humans are the main cause of global warming are a fringe minority—and have a well-established history of being wrong.

Although some politicians, pundits, and members of the public do not believe it, global warming predictions by mainstream climate scientists have been remarkably accurate while those made by climate deniers have not. And if mainstream global warming predictions continue to prove correct, the window of opportunity to prevent a climate catastrophe is quickly closing. This book is the first to illustrate the accuracy—and inaccuracy—of global warming predictions made by mainstream climate scientists and by climate contrarians from the 1970s to the present day. Written in simple, non-technical language that provides an accessible explanation of key climate science concepts, the book will appeal to general audiences without previous knowledge about climate science.

This is my five-star review for Climatology versus Pseudoscience

A Journey into Climate Science and a Debunking of Climate Contrarianism

The author starts out by giving us an overview of climate science starting with the discovery of the greenhouse effect by Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in 1820’s. He explains that the planet would be much colder than it is if it wasn’t for the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect acts like a blanket. He also explains why we know that the global warming that we have seen in recent decades is a greenhouse effect chiefly caused by our burning of fossil fuels, and not natural causes.

The warming is leaving behind various fingerprints, such as the upper atmosphere cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming (like a blanket would), which wouldn’t happen if it was the sun or an orbital cycle causing the warming. The conclusion is that we know that global warming is real, and we know that we are the ones causing it.

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 author also discusses climate models, and he notes the astounding accuracy of the early climate models. He takes us on a journey through the development of modern climate science into the 1950’s, and the rapid growth of climate science in the 1960’s and 1970’s and then into the 1980’s, 1990’s and the 2000’s. He describes the increasingly advanced and increasingly accurate climate models. In addition, he discusses sulfate aerosols and global warmings forgotten evil twin ocean acidification.

This is all very interesting to any science nerd and it makes you understand why we know that we are causing the global warming we are seeing. It also makes it obvious why there is a consensus on the topic. Several studies have shown that at least 97% of climate scientists believe that global warming is real and that we are the cause of it.

However, despite the scientific rigor of peer reviewed mainstream climate science, despite the impressive success of climate models, and despite the scientific consensus, the public is very confused about the topic. Enter a small group of so-called global warming skeptics, or more accurately, global warming contrarians. They are not true skeptics but agenda driven contrarians. Even though their science is bad (pseudoscience) and the fact that their predictions have failed repeatedly many times over, they have an outsized presence in the media and often a large enthusiastic following.

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 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. As a journalist you should not feel that you must give equal time to evidence based science and nonsense.

The author also discusses various myths and false claims spread by climate science contrarians. He mentions that unfortunately most Republican congressmen stand with the contrarian pseudoscientists rather than with the science. Well, with the exception for a few brave souls. On average the American public believe that 55% of scientists agree that we are the cause behind the global warming while the consensus is more than 97% and growing stronger. The author refers to this as the consensus gap.

It is easy to be confused. I have a degree in physics and a PhD in electrical engineering / robotics and yet I was bamboozled by the climate science contrarians. I read books by the contrarians including some of the ones the author discusses, and I believed them. I also followed pretty much only rightwing media at the time and as a result I became misinformed. It was not until I took a deep dive into the subject and read what the actual science said that I realized that I had been bamboozled. Some of the science articles that initiated my change of heart were written by the author. That was back in 2012 and 2013.

This book is a great start if you want to take a serious look at climate science. The book is well organized, and the author is an expert on the subject, as well as a great communicator. Even though many of the things he discussed in the book were not new to me, I very much enjoyed reading the book and I learned some new things. If you don’t know much about climate science but are interested in science, then this book is a must read.

About the Author of Climatology versus Pseudoscience

Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist and climate blogger for The Guardian and SkepticalScience.com. He’s been researching and writing about climate science since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in astrophysics, and a master’s degree from UC Davis in physics.

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In general recycling is beneficial, because you conserve natural resources, reduce climate change, save energy and reduce waste and pollution. Battery recycling is particularly important since it reduces toxic waste and reduces the risk of a future shortage of certain minerals. Recycling is often viewed as a very important activity that everyone should participate in, and neighbors often shame those who fail to comply.

The shocking news is that even though recycling in general is good for the environment it may not be as beneficial as it is assumed. It turns out to be complicated. As you will see later, most people think that recycling is the most impactful action you can take as an individual to reduce carbon emissions, when in fact it is of very marginal importance. This is what made me consider this a super fact.

Recycling and Greenhouse Gases

According to EPA recycling saves 193 million metric tons of carbon emissions, which sounds a lot until you consider that the US emit 6,343 million metric tons per year according to EPA making it 3%. According to this website consumers can save 732 kilograms of CO2 assuming they do the recycling correctly. This should be compared to the average carbon footprint for an American (US), which is 16 metric tons, making the savings for good recyclers 4.6%.

According to our World in Data (Not the End of the World page 114), based on this research, giving up an average SUV for a sedan would save 3.6 metric ton, or 22.5%. Switching to a plant-based diet would save 2.2 metric ton per person, or 13.8%. Actions saving more greenhouse gases than recycling that we as consumers can take, are for example: give up SUV, go car free, have a plant-based diet, avoid transatlantic flights, buy green energy, switch to electric car, switch from electric car to no car, avoid medium flights, laundry in cold water, and hand dry clothing.

Surveys across 21,000 adults in 30 countries showed that the two actions that people believed saved the most greenhouse gases were recycling (59%) and upgrading lightbulbs (36%). Upgrading lightbulbs have an even smaller effect than recycling. It is of course still a good action to take.

However, what this data demonstrates is that we are bad at guessing which actions are impactful. We need to get better informed and not make assumptions. It should be noted that the efficiency of the recycling efforts varies from country to country. Among the 32 developed countries for which there is data the United States ranks 25.

Recycling and Plastic Waste

Greenhouse gas emissions is certainly not the only issue to consider. What about plastic waste? As it turns out plastic is very difficult to recycle (depending on the kind of plastic) and according to the EPA less than 9% of plastic is recycled. According to Our World in Data and the book “Not the End of the World” by Hannah Ritchie the US and Europe have well managed landfills and good waste management systems that make our plastic problem less of an issue. That’s good news.

But what about the awful problem with plastic in the ocean? Plastic ending up in the ocean is indeed a bad problem. However, 81% of all plastic in the ocean come from Asia, and the rest mostly comes from Latin America. Only 1% come from the United States and 1% from Europe and Oceania. According to Scientific American 93% of plastic in ocean come from just 10 rivers. Eight of them are in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong. Two are in Africa – the Nile and the Niger.

None of them are in North America or Europe. Therefore, if we in the developed world greatly improve our recycling of plastic, it would not make much of a difference with respect to the problem of plastic in the ocean. What we need to do is assist China, India and southeast Asia with improving their waste management systems.

Another issue to keep in mind is that uneducated consumers can do a lot of damage to the recycling process. For example, throwing a greasy pizza box into the recycling bin can ruin the entire batch. You are not just recycling incorrectly you are ruining the recycling efforts of your neighbors too. There are many ways to ruin the recycling process, by throwing items in the recycling that don’t belong there. Recycling requires consumers to pay attention to the instructions. It should also be noted that some companies have been found to ignore the recycling process and throw all recycled items in with the trash. There are also neighborhoods that don’t have recycling.

Conclusion

In summary, recycling may not be as great as it is often made out to be. You should still do it if you care about the environment. Just be aware that there are actions that you can take and that your government can take that are much more impactful.

One of the conclusions you can draw from this discussion is that if you are driving a big SUV or eating red meat every day you should probably abstain from shaming your neighbor for not recycling.

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There are things you can do as an individual to reduce your carbon footprint, use public transportation instead of driving, fly less, eat less read meat, don’t waste food, reduce your energy usage. There are straightforward actions you can take to reduce your use of water and avoid adding harmful pollution to the environment. However, as with eating locally grown food, eating organic food is often viewed as an environmentally friendly choice even though it often is not.

Organic farming is a method of growing food without using synthetic chemicals or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Organic farming practices are intended to protect soil fertility, promote ecological balance, and reduce environmental impact. That’s all good. On the other hand, it should be noted that modern farming techniques, for example, using synthetic pesticides, have greatly increased cereal yield per acre and GMOs can reduce the use of toxic pesticides. It is complicated.

I consider this a super fact because it is often incorrectly assumed that eating organic food is the best choice for the environment.

Global Land Use

Before looking at the details of conventional farming versus organic farming lets look at global land use. In the figure below from Our World in Data you can see that agriculture already uses nearly half of all habitable land in the world. We cannot easily enlarge this percentage and therefore crop yield per acre is a very important factor to consider, and this is a great weakness for organic farming.

Also notice that 80% of agricultural land is used for livestock, meat, dairy and textile, but it only provides 17% global calorie supply. This second observation indicates that the type of food you eat may matter a lot more than whether it is produced via organic or conventional farming.

As you can see in the graph below, again from Our World in Data, the land used for producing 100 grams of protein varies enormously between different food groups. 100 grams of protein from lamb and mutton require on average 52.8 times as much land as 100 grams of protein from groundnuts. This graph does not make a distinction between organic farming and conventional farming, but it highlights the huge difference between different food sources. I’ll get to the difference between organic farming and conventional farming with respect to land use later in the post.

Agriculture and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The next two graphs focus on the greenhouse gas emissions including those from agriculture. Electricity and Transport dominate both globally and in the United States, but globally agriculture comes in at 6 billion of the 40 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions for 2021, which is 15%. For the United States agriculture comes in at 10.6% of greenhouse gas emissions for 2021. In other words, agriculture was not the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions but still an important factor.

Finally, the contribution for different types of food. Notice that beef (beef herd) at 49.89kg is 188 times larger than the 0.26kg for nuts. 188 people eating nuts contribute as much to carbon emissions as one person eating beef.

Carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq)

Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas, but not the only one. To capture all greenhouse gas emissions, researchers express them in “carbon dioxide equivalents” (CO2eq). This takes all greenhouse gases into account, not just CO2. To express all greenhouse gases in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq), each one is weighed by its global warming potential (GWP) value. GWP measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO2. CO2 is given a GWP value of one.

If a gas had a GWP of 10 then one kilogram of that gas would generate ten times the warming effect as one kilogram of CO2. Carbon dioxide equivalents are calculated for each gas by multiplying the mass of emissions of a specific gas by its GWP factor. This warming can be stated over different timescales. To calculate CO2eq over 100 years, we’d multiply each gas by its GWP over a 100-year timescale (GWP100). Total greenhouse gas emissions – measured in CO2eq – are then calculated by summing each gas’ CO2eq value.

Environmental Impact of Organic Versus Conventional Agriculture

At this point it should be clear that eating different types of food, nuts and vegetables versus red meat makes huge difference regarding the environment. How about organic versus conventional farming? Well, it is complicated. You have to take into account land use, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, pesticide application, energy use and more.

Clark and Tilman (2017) published a meta-analysis of results of published organic-conventional comparisons across 742 agricultural systems over 90 unique foods. The food groups consisted of cereals, pulses and oil crops, fruits, vegetables, dairy and eggs, and meats. As you can see in the resulting graph below organic agriculture is worse for the environment for most food groups with regards to land use, eutrophication potential, and acidification potential. The result is mixed with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and energy use.

It appears that it is best to choose organic pulses and fruits and choose non-organic for all other food products (cereals, vegetables, dairy and eggs, and meat). However, if your primary concern is whether the potato accompanying your steak is conventionally or organically produced, then your focus is arguably misplaced. Whether you go organic or non-organic the steak is much worse for the environment.

Conclusion

In this post I present empirical evidence from reliable sources comparing organic to conventional agriculture in terms of environmental impact. 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. In short it is complicated.

What really matters though is the type of food you eat, not whether it is organic or not. Another thing to note is that if you eat 300 steaks per year you will have a 100 times larger environmental impact compared to someone who eats 3 steaks per year. Quantity matters. This post was about environmental impacts. There are other considerations such as health, what you like, whom you want to support, etc.

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