You must log in or # to comment.
That’s the problem with stupid people. When there’s a crisis and people solve it they just go “see there wasn’t a serious crisis”, and next time they go “nothing happened last time, it’s exaggerated”
You are only allowed to fix things if you don’t tell people you are fixing them and most critically don’t tell them what it will cost. The problem occurs when someone aware and nefarious seeks power they can point out all the ‘expensive and worthless’ things that were done by their opponents. We now all live in ‘the problem occurs’ time period.
ignorant*
Same thing with acid rain. Remember acid rain? When was the last time you heard someone fear mongering about acid rain? Doesn’t really happen anymore, because we passed policies reducing the sulfur content in highway and maritime fuels. Less sulfur being emitted into the atmosphere means less sulfuric acid is formed in clouds meaning the rain is less acidic. We did it.
only recently with maritime fuels and these are still used iirc. the big deal was removal of sulfur dioxide from coal powerplant exhaust by scrubbing it with chalk suspension (which also gives a lot of cheap gypsum) removal of sulfur from gasoline and diesel is technically easier but also there’s a technical reason because sulfur poisons catalysts used to turn shitty gasoline into slightly better gasoline
I thought someone shot Matt Walsh in the neck? Oh wait it was the other guy identical to him in every aspect that matters
It was a Goyper that did it though.
Nick Fuentes needs to be thrown head first into a prison cell and left to rot.
Also also corporations fought the science for about a decade until safer alternatives were developed.
Proof that corporations will fuck over the entire planet and its entire population and all the animals and plant life just to make mOnEy during their lifetime. Selfish as FUCK.
These people NEVER give up their power unless it is taken from them or they cease to exist.
It isn’t even about the money, it’s about the power and the game. They’re addicted to the pursuit of power and corporate structures feed that addiction.
Yeah they don’t give a shit about money, they just need to win and everybody else needs to lose.
Money is everything if power is what you’re after.
The care about how money is power and the details of its use as power.
You think power isn’t about the money? 😄 (Edit: actually kind of in reverse, but you get me.)
After a certain amount, money is only power.
Exactly 😔
It’s not always, money is just the best way to wield power in a capitalist society. Look at Christofascists, illegalizing trans people, banning abortion, trying to kickstart the apocalypse, none of that is about money, it’s about exerting control over others. It’s accomplished with money, but money isn’t the end goal.
money is just the best way to wield power in a capitalist society
Sorry if it wasn’t crystal clear but that was exactly the point I was trying to make… But I think you still got it. 👍
Ask Jack Ma
I’m not really in contact with him. What are you implying he would answer?
We need to start calling this corborate leaders, or finding a way to indicate it’s the people in charge of the corporations. We’ve been using the aggregate term “corporations” because of conditioning. I know generally we all mean “board of directors” or “shareholders”. But making it common to use some term to indicate “the people in charge”–or just name them in particular–maybe gives us a real target instead of an amorphous boogeyman of “corporations”? I don’t know specifically how to achieve this though…
Is it a few bad individuals, or the entire concept of a corporation?
If I dumped barrels of pollution into the river myself as an individual, then I’d be arrested. But if I hide behind a corporate veil and pay someone else to do it, then nobody gets arrested, and my fine is below the environmental cost.
Corporations are inherently evil. If they weren’t, then they’d just pay for liability insurance like a doctor does. The whole reason they exist is to legally avoid the personal responsibility you suggest. Peacefully protesting outside their houses isn’t enough.
Good point, yeah it’s hard.
And don’t forget that Tetraethyl Lead was only used as an anti-knock agent because the GM wasn’t able to patent and monetise Benzene.
not because of that, making BTX takes heat and that means burning something else for heat. TEL is cheaper
Also also also the same corporations changed process to make new stuff and change didn’t require them to go out of business. i can elaborate if anyone wants to
That could’ve been biodeisel if they didn’t fight everything but electric cars.
wdym
Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer 1985 Am I a joke to you?
Yes, since it did not work as well. It was proto good. A hipster of a convention that needed a follow up by a real Canadian one, with teeth and brawn and chiseled good looks.
And a bulge between the legs.
Also the hole is still there, but it’s slowly healing now instead of getting worse.
But they told us it was unhealable.
Oh “they” did, did “they”? Well that would be silly since we know how the ozone layer is formed.
All I’m saying I was a child in the 1980s and the fear mongering included telling us that once the ozone layer is diminished, it cannot regenerate. That’s what they told us. But now apparently that’s proven to not be true so here we are.
I mean, thats kind of how science works.
“We can’t fix this.”
“But we will try anyway.”
“Oh hey, we learned something new, turns out we can fix it.”
deleted by creator
Cleo Abrams posted a video about this yesterday. If you’re interested to know more, it’s definitely worth a watch! https://youtu.be/yWgHx0HE8m8
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.
The COVID vaccine was called a miracle and praised but was quickly squashed by the antivaxers. 🤷
I still remember how relieved we were when my family was finally able to get that vaccine after over a year of worrying about COVID
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.
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.
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.
Again, I didn’t say that it was necessarily the responsibility of scientists and it definitely shouldn’t be their responsibility alone. Science communication should definitely be many people’s full time job. But also, yes, I do think scientists should evangelize for themselves too. Do interviews, spread the word. It isn’t an either-or situation. Subject matter experts often talk to the media about the work they do. Why shouldn’t they? And first person knowledge and expertise is always a better source than some journalistic summary.
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.
We HAVE heard about it. The point is that the general public, your friends and family, your neighbors, your working class community, has not. It’s not even a little bit about feeling superior. It’s that this could 100% be common knowledge.
Just because someone said it and it’s on the internet for you to find if you go searching hard enough and dig past the bullshit propaganda like this post, that doesn’t mean that the communication is done. If my mom hasn’t heard about it, you didn’t get the message out wide enough. It is not common enough knowledge until the average person is not susceptible to bullshit posts like Matt Walsh’s because they aren’t void of any knowledge on the subject.
Putting the onus on individuals in the public to seek out and find the answers is exactly how you get where we are now. Where a small subset of people know the answers and frustratingly have to fight back against incredibly effective misinformation campaigns like this. If we can put the problem in everyone’s face making the “Ozone Layer” and “Climate Change” common layman’s terms, then we can do the same with the wins against those problems.
Knowledge is indeed the cure to lack of information.
The new era though is not merely misinformation but active disinformation. You are trying to cure the problems of two decades ago.
In the modern era, people will be - in fact, already are - “alternatively” educated. Dr. Fauci has his facts, while the common man has their “alternative” facts, which they feel supercede the former. Studies show that when literally paid to do so, citizens who watch a mainstream source of news will have different opinions on matters such as whether COVID was fake or not, in comparison to people who only exposed themselves to e.g. Faux News in the USA (and different, other sources worldwide but the study I am thinking of was in the USA).
So I am saying that 20 years ago I agreed with you. But we are fast heading into an era where the challenges are different. Scientists themselves will likely cease to exist… eventually, and be replaced by “alternative scientists”, and you better believe that those politically active actors will most definitely get the word out just as you said should be done, almost like that task were the real purpose of their existence, as opposed to finding facts.
Hopefully I am wrong.
Wouod be good support for the next big scientific push. “There was a serious ozone problem but the world workes together and the problem was solved! Science can work together with governments to do big things. We need to do those big things to curb global warming!”
We need to bring back bullying, but just for people like Matt Walsh
Matt Walsh could very well be a self-hating dyslexic individual who thought his condition was a personal failing and is taking out his hate on everyone.
Yeah?
But what about Y2K? All those programmers and companies stressed over it and nothing happened! /s
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!
The internet works as amplifier and they also are more likely to vote in EVERY election.
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.
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.
Actually this is reported on often here in Australia, where renewables (mainly solar) are making drastic changes to our power grid and energy system.
Yeah.
This is like when people bitch and complain about a pothole and suddenly when the pothole is fixed? Silence.
/S
Unless you own an autoshop specializing in shocks and tires. Then you bitch about it being fixed.
Man different times. Imagine if this happened now.
Countries passing regulation for a common good? Sounds too woke for me!
There’d be lots more 80s hair to battle the woke ideal.
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.
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
Hey Chemist. Tell me about methane. We’re about to get a lot of that.
Not a chemist but if you’re comparing methane to refrigerants it doesn’t even come close. Methane has a GWP of 27. That means it’s 27 times worse than CO2. However, even the “environmentally friendly” HFO refrigerants like R-454a being used now have GWPs in the hundreds. If you look at the last gen of refrigerants like R-404a and R-410a which are still in use in most equipment you’re looking at GWPs in the thousands and sometimes over ten thousand. Hell, just a few weeks ago I was working with R-508b which has a GWP of 13,396 and an atmospheric lifetime of 5,524 years.
The only common refrigerants you’ll find which have a GWP near methane are the hydrocarbon refrigerants like R-290 aka propane. However those can only be used in small appliances due to the flamability concerns. It probably wouldn’t be a great idea to have several hundred pounds of liquid propane coursing through the walls of a grocery store for example (especially with how bad many grocery stores leak). The gold standard though for environmentally friendly refrigeration is R-744 aka carbon dioxide. It has a GWP of 1 making it the most environmentally friendly common refrigerant out there. However right now it is only used in heavy commercial and industrial refrigeration due to the cost of equipment designed to operate at the pressures required to use it. Also CO2 has a nasty habit of going supercritical at temps most places regularly reach during the summer so R-744 systems need to be designed to operate as transcritical systems which also adds a ton of complexity and cost.
propane/butane/isobutane (gwp much lower than 0.1) is weaker ghg than methane because it decomposes faster, and i thought that for large installations the best choice, by far, is ammonia (0 gwp). you don’t have to circulate ammonia around, there’s glycol loop for that. carbon dioxide is really good if you need -80C, at common AC/freezer/whatever temperatures it loses efficiency and has way too high pressure. (wouldn’t high pressure systems also leak, even more than regular ones?)
there’s also Ikon A, ancient (patent-free) refrigerant mix that is R-152a and CF3I aka R-13I1 that also has gwp around 20-30 but also it’s not flammable, in fact it’s a pretty good fire suppressant because of iodine content. it would comply with all restrictions but it’s expensive tho
worst offenders are perfluorinated gases. CF4 is 5300x as bad as CO2 and lasts 50000 years, SF6 is 17500x as bad and lasts 3200 years. some of the oldest refrigerants were also rather bad, R12 is 10800x worse and lasts 100 years. phasing them out was accidentally a good choice for two reasons
Ammonia is great but it’s also kind of religated to being it’s own thing in the refrigeration industry because of its incompatible with copper/brass which makes it incompatible with almost all standard refrigeration tools and equipment. Basically anyplace that runs an ammonia system will have their own techs because nobody else will work on it. It’s pretty common for heavy industrial refrigeration but not much outside of that. It is also deadly in case of large leaks which makes people shy away from it.
CO2 though is already in use for grocery store rack refrigeration systems. Aldi is a big user of them. You also can’t actually go below -40C with on a CO2 system without risking forming dry ice in the pipes. As far as efficiency goes, the big impact is from transcritical operation but even then it really doesn’t make a big enough impact to negate the benefits. Rack refrigeration systems can already be hilariously efficient with high end equipment and CO2 equipment is always high end. CO2 also has a remarkably high coefficient of expansion compared to most refrigerants which gives you some pretty big efficiency gains in that regard which ballances out most of the losses. As far as leaks go I haven’t noticed that they leak any more or less than conventional systems, however when they do leak, CO2 is dirt cheap. The only real downside I’ve seen about these systems are, transcritical complexity, sheer cost, and for some reason they seem to plug oil filters more often.
i’ve noticed biologists keeping CO2 cylinders connected to something near their -80C freezers, that’s why i assumed it works for this kind of temperatures
Might be for keeping an inert atmosphere. Normally nitrogen would be the gas of choice for that but CO2 is cheaper and easier to store in bulk so if they don’t absolutely need nitrogen then I could see CO2 being used instead. Basically you just keep the chamber slightly positively pressurized with CO2 to keep the oxygen out.
As far as temp keeping goes though basically all of the ultra low temp freezers (those not using liquid nitrogen anyways) I’ve seen use R-508b along with a medium temp refrigerant like R-404a or R-448a in a cascade setup to achieve those temps. I’ve never seen CO2 used for ultra low temp refrigeration due to it’s nasty habit of turning solid below about 100PSIG.
I have just read and learned more about refrigeration, gasses/compounds and R values in the last 10 minutes than I ever thought I would in a lifetime.
shit sure is interesting though, as someone who grew up with the whole ozone hole thing.
thank you scientists and fellow lemmings.
TiL… a lot!
i don’t think it’s gonna come from persian gulf for some time
we probably don’t have to worry about clathrates too hard, permafrost is a different thing. i’m not a biologist, but i can tell you that in regular soil in many places there are bacteria that both produce and consume methane (and also hydrogen). i don’t know how well this topic is studied
Don’t health clubs put bromine in pools to clean them? It can’t be good for people then either, yeah?
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
this kind of bromine is fine because it doesn’t reach ozone layer, it’s not much worse than regular chlorine bleach
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.
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.
Also called “We can’t close the beach for some sharks, it’s peak season”
i mean, it does happen often but then barely anyone hears about it and it doesn’t make a good story
mr white, you have a cancer. treatment starts next week - breaking bad canada
e: and the most common scenario where it happens is preventive maintenance, which is something so boring that i forgot about it completely first time around
lol Matt Walsh dismissing the ozone layer is in that link
Same thing happened with vaccines.
