Good News Highlight

Today’s post is a highlight of Good News from my super fact blog, which I call Superfactful. I am listing eight posts, seven of which are what I call super facts. A super fact is a fact that is important, not trivia, and that is known to be true and yet are either disputed by large segments of the public or highly surprising or misunderstood by many. The super facts included with this post are what you can call Good News. Surprising news, perhaps shocking news, but still good news.

Peace Is Boring News

The first and my most recent post is not a super fact but my musings on the fact that good news tends to be boring news and therefore forgotten.

To visit the Peace is Boring News page click here

Black and white photo showing a young girl crossing the street as an armed soldier is hunkered down behind her. There is big wall with text written on it saying, “Dangerous Wall keep Clear.”
West Belfast, Northern Ireland,UK; February, 1994; Girl running with plate of chips past wall where two IRA Volunteers were killed by British soldiers Shutterstock Asset id: 1951602385, Editorial credit: RORY NUGENT.com

Emissions of ozone-depleting gases have fallen by 99 Percent

Super fact 41 : Largely thanks to the Montreal Protocol in 1987 the emissions of ozone-depleting gases have fallen by more than 99%, 99.7% to be exact, according to Our World in Data. This has resulted in halting the expansion of the ozone holes and the reduction in emissions of  ozone-depleting gases is saving millions of lives every year.

To visit the page for Emissions of ozone-depleting gases have fallen by 99 Percent click here.

Gases visualized in the diagram are CFCs, Halons, HCFCs, Carbon Tetrachloride, Methyl Bromide, Methyl Chloroform. The diagram shows a peak around the end of 1980’s.
The phase out of six ozone depleting gases. Data source UN Environment Program (2023).

Natural Disasters Kill Less People Now Than 100 Years Ago

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.

The explanation for this is that we have become much better at warning people, preventing deaths and rescue people.

To visit the page for Natural Disasters, Kill Less People Now Than 100 Years Ago click here

The graph shows 300 to 400 thousand annual deaths at the beginning of the 20th century, then 971 thousand annual deaths in the 1930’s, then it continuously gets lower until the annual deaths in the 2010 to 2016 period is 72 thousand deaths per year.
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.

EV Cars Indeed Emit Less Carbon Pollution

Super fact 29: EV Cars emit less pollution than Internal Combustion Engine, even considering manufacturing, disposal and EV Cars being charged by dirty grids.

To visit the page for EV Cars Indeed Emit Less Carbon Pollution click here

The histogram graph shows that if you consider construction of facilities, manufacturing of vehicle and battery, production of fuel, vehicle operation as well as disposal the total average greenhouse gas emissions from EV cars is 52% less.
Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions comparison of average gasoline car and 300-mile range EV.

Smallpox Killed 300 million People in the Last Century Before Eradication

Superfact 24: Smallpox killed 300 million people in the 20th century. However, there have been no naturally occurring cases of smallpox since 1977, and the world was declared free of smallpox on May 8, 1980, by the 33rd World Health Assembly.

To visit the page for Smallpox Killed 300 million People in the Last Century Before Eradication click here

The picture is a world map showing countries in different colors. The colors indicated when smallpox was eradicated in that country. Dark blue indicates that it was before 1900 and that is Sweden and Norway. Light beige indicates it was eradicated in the 1940’s, which is true for the United States. Dark brown indicates that it was eradicated in the 1970’s and that represents, for example, India, Brazil and many African countries.
This world map shows when smallpox was eradicated from different countries. The source is Our World in Data , originally Fenner et al. at CDC.

We are living in relatively peaceful times

Superfact 9 : Despite all the wars going on, the world was filled with a lot more war and violence in the past. Despite the grim news reports we are living in relatively peaceful times.

To visit the page for We are living in relatively peaceful times click here

The graph is in histogram format with the biggest bins 1946 to 1952, then a couple of more upticks with smaller bins in more recent times.
Death rate from wars since 1946. The uptick in 2022 is largely due to the Ethiopian Tigray war with 162,000–600,000 killed and the invasion of Ukraine,  which US and BBC estimates at more than 200,000 deaths (but estimates from most other sources are less).

US Violent Crime Nearly Cut in Half Since 1990

Superfact 8 : Despite all the news reports about rampant crime, the US violent crime rate has fallen to half of what it was in the early 1990’s.

To visit the page for US Violent Crime Nearly Cut in Half Since 1990 click here

The first graph shows that violent crime per 100,000 people (FBI) has gone from 747.1 in 1990 to 380.7 in 2022. The next three graphs show the same trends.
The four graphs show that both violent crime and property crime have declined since 1990. Visit the post to see the Pew Research article it is taken from.

Poverty and child mortality has been sharply reduced worldwide

Superfact 7 :  Extreme poverty as well as child mortality has been sharply reduced the world over. The countries that are the worst-off today are still better off than the countries that were doing the best at the beginning of the 19th century. Over the last 50 years extreme poverty and child mortality has continued to decline sharply.

To visit the page for Poverty and child mortality has been sharply reduced worldwide click here

The graph shows share living in extreme poverty in brown and share not living in extreme poverty in purple. The graph begins in 1820 at ends in 2018.
This graph from Our World In Data shows a steep decline in extreme poverty over time. Click on the picture to visit the original article.

If you have not subscribed to my super fact blog you are certainly welcome to.

Updates to my new Superfactful Blog

Some of you who follow this, my Leonberger blog, know that I have launched a second blog. The goal of my second blog is to create a list of facts or insights that are important and not trivia, known to be true, and yet highly surprising, shocking, amazing, or widely disputed amongst the public but not disputed among the scientists or experts in the relevant fields. I refer to these facts as super-facts, because they are kind of special. However, on this new blog I will also post other fact related posts that I find interesting including non-fiction book reviews.

Image showing a disintegrating brain
Smash your old beliefs with new surprising facts, super facts. Expand your mind. Click on the image to visit the superfactful blog. Shutterstock ID: 1685660680 by MattL_Images

With this post I wanted to highlight some updates I’ve made to my other blog<<Link-1>>. First of all, I am including a short summary in bold at the beginning of all my super-fact posts. That way people who may just want to know what the fact is can read just this summary without having to read all the explanations, background and the evidence for it. Unfortunately, the full posts can get long and complicated sometimes. Below I am giving a couple of examples starting with my latest post “The Strange Worlds of Exo Planets”.

Superfact 13:

Our sun is a star, and it has 8 planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune (as well as comets, asteroids, dwarf planets, etc.). The stars you see when you look up in the sky also have planets. We have identified 5,765 exoplanets (as of July 24th, 2024) but there are billions more in our galaxy. Some exoplanets are similar to Earth, and some are very different from any of the planets in our solar system.

An astronaut is standing on the surface of an alien planet. He is surrounded by giant mushrooms and in the sky, there is a large moon or a planet.
Exoplanet with life Stock Illustration ID: 1524001694 by Dotted Yeti. Click on the image to visit my exoplanet post.

Another example is my second from last post “The United States is a Republic and a Democracy

Superfact 12:

The United States is both a Republic and a Democracy

My third example is “The Speed of Light In Vacuum Is a Universal Constant

Superfact 4 :

The speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers regardless of their speed and the direction in which they are going. It is always c = 299,792,458 meters per second. If you try to catch up to a light beam and travel close to the speed of light the speed of the light beam will still be c = 299,792,458 meters per second compared to you. This is possible because time and space don’t behave like we expect.

Another change that I made is that I improved my list of upcoming super-facts. I made the list the first 50 super-facts list instead of 40 and I changed the list a little bit. This is the new list.

Below is a list of the first 50 super-fact posts

  • (1) We Know That the Earth is Billions of Years Oldclick to visit
  • (2) Some Things Cannot be Knownclick to visit
  • (3) Economic Externalities Are Spoilers of Free Marketsclick to visit
  • (4) The Speed of Light In Vacuum Is a Universal Constantclick to visit
  • (5) Two events may be simultaneous for some but not for othersclick to visit
  • (6) Radon Represents our Largest Exposure to Ionizing Radiationclick to visit
  • (7) Poverty and child mortality has been sharply reduced worldwideclick to visit
  • (8) US violent crime nearly cut in half since 1990click to visit
  • (9) We are living in relatively peaceful timesclick to visit
  • (10) We are Star Dustclick to visit
  • (11) United States Europe and the Pacific Ocean Are Bigger Than You Might Think click to visit
  • (12) The United States is a Republic and a Democracyclick to visit
  • (13) The Strange Worlds of Exo Planetsclick to visit
  • (14) The vastness of space and the beginning of infinity – click to visit
  • (15) The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes – click to visit
  • (16) Wind power is providing more than a quarter of Texas Power – click to visit
  • (17) Wind power is not a major cause of bird death – click to visit
  • (18) We know that global warming is real and is caused by us – click to visit
  • (19) The hockey stick curve is accurate – click to visit
  • (20) EV Cars Indeed Emit Less Carbon Pollution – click to visit
  • (21) Eating local is not necessarily ecological – click to visit
  • (22) Many Popular Actions for the Environment Are Useless – click to visit
  • (23) 10 Times more people died from natural disasters a hundred years ago – click to visit
  • (24) By 2018 the emissions of ozone-depleting gases had fallen by 99.7% – click to visit
  • (25) The United States and Europe are minor contributors to the plastic waste problem – click to visit
  • (26) Developed nations has successfully reduced carbon emissions since 1990’s – click to visit
  • (27) The US is the largest cumulative emitter of carbon – click to visit
  • (28) There are many environmental success stories – click to visit
  • (29) Human behavior initiating a sixth extinction – click to visit
  • (30) Sulphur dioxide pollution has fallen by 95% in the US since the 1970’s – click to visit
  • (31) Entropy Always Increasing Does Not Contradict Evolution – click to visit
  • (32) Early homo sapiens lived at the same time as many other human species – click to visit
  • (33) Evidence for evolution is strong and evidence against it is weak – click to visit
  • (34) We know something about the evolution of whales – click to visit
  • (35) Evolution is a fact – click to visit
  • (36) Modern farming techniques have greatly increased cereal yield per acre – click to visit
  • (37) Animal Biomass has increased Wild Animal Biomass has decreased – click to visit
  • (38) Industrial Farming has condemned billions of animals to brutal and often short lives – click to visit
  • (39) You Choose Before You Know You Do – click to visit
  • (40) GPS uses relativity for accuracy – click to visit
  • (41) An account impersonating you on Facebook does not mean you have been hacked – click to visit
  • (42) Animals display compassion – click to visit
  • (43) We know that homeopathy does not work – click to visit
  • (44) Astrology is not science and lack predictive power – click to visit
  • (45) Vaccines do not cause autism – click to visit
  • (46) Smallpox killed 300 million people in the 20th Century But No One Now – click to visit
  • (47) The Average Lifespan More Than Doubled Since 1800 – click to visit
  • (48) The Butterfly effect – click to visit
  • (49) The Surprising Monty Hall Problem – click to visit
  • (50) The Surprising Double slit experiment – click to visit

I have to admit I don’t have a lot of followers yet on my new blog so feel free to follow. I will divide my time and posts equally between the two blogs, which means that my Leonberger blog will have about half as many posts as usual. I will place book reviews for Leonberger books, poetry, and fiction on my Leonberger blog and anything (fiction and non-fiction) that touches interesting facts on my superfactful blog. I am open to any suggestions for further improvements.

New Blog Launch

Today I finally got around to launching my new blog. I call it super facts and the website name is https://superfactful.com.

I added five posts, which are pretty much exactly the five super-fact related posts I posted here on my Leonberger blog previously. So, you may recognize them. In the continuation it will be stuff you haven’t seen before. However, now I need to find out if my blog works. Do I get notifications about comments and likes? Can you subscribe? Can you navigate it? All opinions and bug reports are welcome. I invite you all to check it out and if you subscribe, I would be very happy. I can add that it is easy to toggle between the two blogs, just look at the right-hand sidebar.

Image showing a disintegrating brain
Smash your old beliefs with new surprising facts, super facts. Expand your mind and teach me some unexpected truths. Shutterstock ID: 1685660680 by MattL_Images