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[–] 418 points 2 years ago* (8 children)

“Whatever happened with the ozone layer panic, if scientists are so smart?”

We listened to the scientists, and the problem went away.

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  • [–] 135 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Didn't go away, just stopped getting worse at an alarming rate.

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Didn't the hole above Australia close again?

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    [–] 262 points 2 years ago (26 children)

    Similar with Y2K


    it was only a nothingburger because it was taken seriously, and funded well. But the narrative is sometimes, "yeah lol it was a dud."

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  • [–] 82 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    All this hysteria over nuclear weapons is overblown. We've known how to build them for 75 years yet there hasn't been a single one detonated on inhabited American soil. They're harmless

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  • [–] 49 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    The question is, what will happen in 2038 when y2k happens again due to an integer overflow? People are already sounding the alarm but who knows if people will fix all of the systems before it hits.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago* (6 children)

    It's already been addressed in Linux - not sure about other OSes. They doubled the size of time data so now you can keep using it until after the heat death of the universe. If you're around then.

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  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I can't remember the name but I think this is some kind of paradox.

    Like the preventative measures we're so effective that they created a perception that there was no risk in the first place.

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    [–] 219 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

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  • [–] 153 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I literally had this exact exchange with someone last year, when they tried to cast doubt on global warming by comparing it to the ozone. Another person did the same , using acid rain, and I pointed out that the northeast sued the shit out of the Midwest until they cut that shit with the coal fire power plants.

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  • [–] 83 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The Conservative Party led Canadian Government and the Regan-era Republican US Government started working on the US-Canada Air Quality Agreement, which was signed by the George H.W. Bush administration into law in the US (and the Brian Mulroney led Government of Canada).

    That’s right — two Conservative governments identified a problem, listened to their scientists, and enacted a solution to acid rain. And now the problem has virtually disappeared.

    Oh how low Conservatives have fallen on both sides of the border since those days.

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  • [–] 126 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    There were goddamn Nickelodeon phone-a-thons where you pledged to not use cfc products. This shit was serious.

    Edit: I just remembered ,they talked about how bad the sun was for kids in Australia, or something.

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  • [–] 67 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Australia and New Zealand do not fuck about with sun safety. Even with the improvements in the ozone layer, our skin cancer rates are still way higher than the rest of the world

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    New Zealand do not fuck about with sun safety.

    Except we were kicking the can with sun screen regulation until 2022.

    https://comcom.govt.nz/business/your-obligations-as-a-business/product-safety-standards/sunscreen

    https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2022/0004/latest/whole.html

    Until this law, sun screen lotion didn't have to prove that they actually provided the SPF that they claimed.

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    [–] 90 points 2 years ago* (6 children)
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    [–] 82 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Imagine if we did this with climate change. Imagine if we tried to switch to renewable energy en masse 20 years ago.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago* (5 children)

    Problem with that is that in comparison the alternative to CFC was not that more expensive and then a cheaper one was invented shortly after.

    For climate change you basically can double our energy costs and therefore double the cost of almost everything.

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  • [–] 45 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Not to seem callous, but the first world could learn to live off of a little less.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago

    Honestly this is what I keep saying and everyone gets pissed when I do.

    There's enough resources on this planet that every living human could live a decently luxurious life. But because we allow a small handful of us to hoard all those resources we have poverty on a global scale.

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    [–] 67 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    This has since been determined to have tack on benefits in the fight against the climate crisis as well, it's halved the potential growth in global average temperatures by 2100, which cannot be overstated in just how fantastic that is.

    We went from everyone being baked alive and having 20 kinds of skin cancer to boot to merely dealing with catastrophic climate change and society changing people migrations the likes of which haven't been documented since the successive eras of steppe invasions into Europe, China, India, and the Middle East.

    Out of the fire and into the frying pan.

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    [–] 56 points 2 years ago* (9 children)

    #transcription

    Matt Walsh
    @MattWalshBlog

    Remember when they spent years telling us to panic over the hole in the ozone layer and then suddenly just stopped talking about it and nobody ever mentioned the ozone layer

    Derek Thompson
    @DKThomp

    What happened is scientists discovered chlorofluorocarbons were bad for the ozone, countries believed them, the Montreal Protocol was signed, and CFC use fell by 99.7%,l eading to the stabilization of the ozone layer, perhaps the greatest example of global cooperation in history.

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    [–] 53 points 2 years ago

    And didn't they find a bunch of Chinese factories pumping them out again not long ago?

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  • [–] 46 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Imagine that... Believing what scientists say? Who does that?

    Grinds teeth and silently screams inside his head

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    [–] 40 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    Just to be clear, are we sure that the ozone holes are still shrinking?

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    [–] 35 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    TBH “The whole world agreed on something” narrative doesn’t really reflect what happened.

    Actually, The Industry dropped using CFC after a cheaper and luckily safer alternative has been discovered right around that time.

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    [–] 33 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Like he even read the response

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