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[–] 2 points 47 minutes ago
[–] 7 points 1 hour ago (1 child)

I thought someone shot Matt Walsh in the neck? Oh wait it was the other guy identical to him in every aspect that matters

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  • [–] 1 point 49 minutes ago

    We need to bring back bullying, but just for people like Matt Walsh

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  • [–] 5 points 3 hours ago (1 child)

    Ever seen all the news about renewable power growing exponentially? No? It's because good news is boring and noone has agenda to propagate it.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 hours ago

    Even dr evil knows the ozone layer and he's a moron.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 hours ago (1 child)

    The Ozone Layer keeps it warm in the summer, cool in the winter, and it keeps out the sheep.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 hours ago (3 children)
  • [–] 6 points 2 hours ago

    A guy who outright calls himself a "theocratic fascist", makes documentaries so blatantly manipulative that they look like something out of a parody, is quoted as saying he violates his children's consent all the time, and is weirdly obsessed with what age women are most fertile. He also works for Charlie Kirk's company because of course he does.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

    Man different times. Imagine if this happened now.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

    Do it will climate change - now.

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  • [–] 21 points 11 hours ago (1 child)

    That's the problem when you live in an information bubble. I clearly remember reports about the ozon layer starting regenerating.

    Why do idiots and ignorants still have that much influence? That's the real mystery!

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  • [–] 3 points 10 hours ago (1 child)

    The internet works as amplifier and they also are more likely to vote in EVERY election.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 hours ago*

    They have it easier though.

    It's easy to spout off nonsense over and over on repeat. It takes time to sit there and explain how that nonsense is wrong, and by the time you've handled that the person you corrected has already moved on and started spouting more nonsense.

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  • [–] 28 points 12 hours ago

    Yeah?

    But what about Y2K? All those programmers and companies stressed over it and nothing happened! /s

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  • [–] 13 points 11 hours ago

    Funny story too. They had a bounty system, you got paid for bringing in the cfc's to get rid of them. So manufacturers started quiet;y making it just to trade it in.

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  • [–] 12 points 12 hours ago

    Matt Walsh is a walking trashcan lid flapping in the wind.

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  • [–] 46 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (4 children)

    Matt Walsh is an unserious goon at best, an actual moron at worst.

    But the reason that this sort of anti-science propaganda might actually work on well- intended people is because we don't advertise our major successes anymore. Or rather, we never really did advertise them enough, but as those successes became less visible compared to, say, a polio vaccine, just as it took scientists to inform us of the problem, they need to inform us of wins too.

    When I was a kid in the 90s, we had a lot of alarm bells going off about the Ozone Layer, about acid rains, and climate change (termed "global warming" then). None of these were particularly visible problems to most people. Each of these became massively politicized, but the fix for the first 2 was a relatively narrow remedy: find and implement replacements for hydroflourocarbons through environmental regulations, and cut mainly two compounds, sulfer dioxide and nitrogen oxides, from fossil fuel power plant emissions through cap and trade regulation policies and smokestack scrubbers. And it worked quite well, to the point that the ozone layer is repairing, as are ecosystems previously ravaged by acid rains.

    But scientists and the media never advertised that success nearly enough. Honestly we should have been politicizing that success, even, as much as we did the problems. Now it just seems to most like the problem quietly got forgotten like it never really mattered, rather than that it was a massive problem and we fucking fixed it through science, regulation and international cooperation. And that apparent disappearance of the problem without any noticeable change for the average Joe, and the resulting skepticism that it was ever a problem at all, has infected the one ongoing problem, the biggest and most complex of the problems, climate change.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 hours ago (1 child)

    But scientists and the media never advertised that success nearly enough.

    The job is a scientist is not to educate and inform the general lay public - that's the job of the media. People like Bill Nye the Science Guy and Carl Sagan and Neil Degrass Tyson.

    For-profit media, for some reason (maybe it's the profit part?), seems to prefer to focus on the click bait that sells advertisements.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 child)

    Not placing blame or responsibility. Just explaining a problem that needs a solution. Maybe a major scientific publication should have an annual retrospective that gives major updates and ongoing work and issues that still need attention. Maybe a university program for scientific marketing. Idk. I don't have a real solution, just identifying a problem.

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  • [–] 1 point 44 minutes ago

    But why would you expect "scientists" to do so? Don't we want them mainly... doing science?

    Someone should though yes. Given the ongoing rise of fascism all around the globe, I don't think it's a priority right now, but yes it would be good.

    And since it's good, my strong guess is that someone already did it. The reason then that we did not hear about it is bc "we" (collectively) did not care to hear about it. We'd rather click on more exciting stuff like which celebrity got yet another ass implant, or something.

    Even now, neither of us have run a Google or DuckDuckGo search to try to find it - it's more fun to talk than to listen 🤪. As monkeys, we run on hormones rather than logic, and it's easier to feel superior to everyone else than to actually put in effort to better ourselves.

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    [–] 26 points 14 hours ago* (1 child)

    I had to learn about this stuff to get my refrigerant certification. If you want to claim that CFCs aren’t that big of a deal then you are a fucking dumbass.

    1 atom of chlorine can destroy 100,000 atoms of ozone. For every 1 part of chlorine that enters the atmosphere 100,000 times that amount of ozone is destroyed. Not only that, it also absorbs and traps infrared and other types of radiation heat and stops it from escaping the atmosphere. That is just one of the elements in CFCs and they all do severe levels of damage, they aren’t very stable so they break down easy and ever atom of its compound gets to interact to it’s full effect. Shit’s really bad.

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  • [–] 14 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

    i think i'm qualified as a chemist

    as far as ozone goes, CFCs are bad, HCFCs are less bad but still bad, bromine is even worse, iodine would be worse than bromine but also it's expensive and the only compound that would be slightly useful would be CF3I which decomposes very quickly. so we can actually maybe see it used in the future, because it's basically fine

    as far as GHG potential goes, the thing that is important are C-F bonds, these bonds do the IR absorption, and how fast that thing decomposes. if you introduce weak bonds decomposition is faster, a lot. C-F bonds are very strong, C-Cl a bit less but we don't want to do that. C-H are okayish, any double bond is also weak. so this is why CFCs and PFCs are very bad, because they last very long. HFCs are a maybe, not good enough so some are getting phased out now, with less fluorine these get flammable too. and HFOs degrade fast, so they're basically fine but also are expensive

    the more C-F bonds and the less C-H bonds we have the less flammable thing gets, but also more stable, and by the time things get flammable it just makes more sense to switch to hydrocarbons. there are some very niche mixes that would comply with GHG requirements and are nonflammable but very few people actually need it and maybe they'll get waivers anyway

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago (2 children)

    Don't health clubs put bromine in pools to clean them? It can't be good for people then either, yeah?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 hours ago

    that's different

    fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine are the "halogen" elements and theyre all very reactive

    bromine is a better disinfectant for hot water and chlorine is better for cold water because of how well they dissolve in water at various temperatures; fluorine is too reactive (would react with the water) and iodine is rarer and less soluble

    the way they disinfect is by being unstable and reactive and reacting with microbes and hurting them; because microbes are so tiny they dont have much protective skin so they are easily killed by reactive chemicals

    in a big multicellular organism they only attack the very surface cells, and the cells are not destroyed so do not open up deeper layers when attacked

    putting such things in pools isnt much of an environmental hazard because reactive things will quickly react with various chemicals and form stable compounds, and the levels are low

    on the other hand, halocarbon chemicals such as CFCs specifically catalyze ozone decomposition, and are stable, so they tend to end up in the upper atmosphere without decomposing

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  • [–] 196 points 21 hours ago (4 children)

    Also also corporations fought the science for about a decade until safer alternatives were developed.

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    [–] 117 points 21 hours ago (5 children)

    Also the hole is still there, but it's slowly healing now instead of getting worse.

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    [–] 36 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

    This phenomenon is a flaw in broad (group) human reasoning, and it needs a name so that we can stop the generational backslide that comes from new people coming along and undoing all progress.

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  • [–] 35 points 17 hours ago (2 children)
  • [–] 22 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

    Hollywood has really geared us for the trope of “You can’t stop Phase 1”. Act 1, the hero tells the world about an impending supervillain. No one believes him. Act 2, the supervillain arrives and takes over the world, their rampage unstopped and made totally evident to all. Act 3, the hero comes up with an alternate plan that can be engineered in a day to defeat the villain after their arrival.

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    [–] 54 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

    Yeah.

    This is like when people bitch and complain about a pothole and suddenly when the pothole is fixed? Silence.

    /S

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