I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
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@__Styx__ @johnzajac what civilization ending event? with no ozone layer at all we'd have to deal with significantly more skin cancer and cataracts. an issue but not at that scale
@whitequark@mastodon.social @__Styx__@piaille.fr @johnzajac@dice.camp I think it'd destroy a large part of the biosphere
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@johnzajac iirc this episode's argument was that the risk was always overblown. Some countries didn't invest in Y2K mitigation and had no problems.
You're Wrong About: The Y2K Bug
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-y2k-bug/id1380008439?i=1000473519597
@BigHeadMode @johnzajac Some of the popularly imagined risks were extremely silly, but the risk of significant, prolonged disruption to technically advanced state and commercial capabilities was not at all understated.
The worst things you can say about the prep work are that there was some waste and work done using it as an excuse, because of course there was, and that the work done by most technical businesses allowed some freeloaders to skate by without doing much.
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@__Styx__ @johnzajac what civilization ending event? with no ozone layer at all we'd have to deal with significantly more skin cancer and cataracts. an issue but not at that scale
@whitequark @johnzajac it negatively and in a large but difficult to estimate amount, impact the basis of land and marine food chain.
Plant grows bad or not at all
Phytoplankton diminish or diehttps://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/health-and-environmental-effects-ozone-layer-depletion
Would it kill all living things in 10 years ? Probably not
Will 9 billion humans stay alive and well nourished for centuries ? Probably not -
@__Styx__ @johnzajac what civilization ending event? with no ozone layer at all we'd have to deal with significantly more skin cancer and cataracts. an issue but not at that scale
@whitequark @__Styx__ @johnzajac
You might be glossing over the seriousness of skin cancer. -
@whitequark @__Styx__ @johnzajac
You might be glossing over the seriousness of skin cancer.@geos @__Styx__ @johnzajac no, i just see civilizations as pretty resilient (especially if the countermeasures are well understood and easy to manufacture)
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@whitequark @johnzajac it negatively and in a large but difficult to estimate amount, impact the basis of land and marine food chain.
Plant grows bad or not at all
Phytoplankton diminish or diehttps://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/health-and-environmental-effects-ozone-layer-depletion
Would it kill all living things in 10 years ? Probably not
Will 9 billion humans stay alive and well nourished for centuries ? Probably not@__Styx__ @johnzajac i would be much happier if that page provided citations for the impact on even the (better-studied) terrestrial plants, but my own search turned up a range of conclusions from "the plants we studied are unaffected but we don't know if it generalizes" to "this will require certain cultivars", so i assume they can't. i do agree though that the result will be somewhere in between the two extreme cases you listed
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@__Styx__ @johnzajac i would be much happier if that page provided citations for the impact on even the (better-studied) terrestrial plants, but my own search turned up a range of conclusions from "the plants we studied are unaffected but we don't know if it generalizes" to "this will require certain cultivars", so i assume they can't. i do agree though that the result will be somewhere in between the two extreme cases you listed
@whitequark @johnzajac yeah, doesn't have a good study or climatologist on hand to have more recent + documented source in English
But the main problem of rapid global atmospheric disruption is that
1) we cannot test it in a lab or a representative setting of every land type on earth
2) Once it's set in motion, it's often an unstoppable inertia that may be too quick for nature to adaptYour example of cultivar is a good one, but some take decade to grow(even more to cross breed, like trees)
And to me if a subset of the population can survive in underground complex on fungi without large animal life above ground
I personally classify it as post apocalyptic -
@whitequark @johnzajac yeah, doesn't have a good study or climatologist on hand to have more recent + documented source in English
But the main problem of rapid global atmospheric disruption is that
1) we cannot test it in a lab or a representative setting of every land type on earth
2) Once it's set in motion, it's often an unstoppable inertia that may be too quick for nature to adaptYour example of cultivar is a good one, but some take decade to grow(even more to cross breed, like trees)
And to me if a subset of the population can survive in underground complex on fungi without large animal life above ground
I personally classify it as post apocalyptic@__Styx__ @johnzajac while not detracting from your larger point: the research I was looking at was examining _existing_ African cultivars of rice and looking at what can be done to other ones to make them more UVB-resistant. so in this particular case the adaptations were already there
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac For this reason, I think we should downplay the 2038 issues. It might just give the world a chance to escape US fascism.
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@johnzajac 2038 will be much worse.
@mpdg @johnzajac Ignore it. Let the stupid fascists pay for it.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac In 1999, I hired techs to Y2K-proof my computer-dependent lab equipment. Money well spent as it likely prevented a world of hurt for my research program. My colleagues did the same.
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@johnzajac And now vaccine policy in the U.S.
The triple punch of water treatment, modern sanitation, pollution controls vaccines, and antibiotics - all either invented or implemented in the 20th century - led to a period of plague-free living that was, quite frankly, longer than at any other period in *human history*.
The world's half-assed non-addressing of the ongoing COVID pandemic betrays as much a failure of experience as it does a failure of imagination when it comes to "how bad" plagues can be.
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@whitequark @__Styx__ @johnzajac
You might be glossing over the seriousness of skin cancer.I literally came here to say that
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@__Styx__ @johnzajac while not detracting from your larger point: the research I was looking at was examining _existing_ African cultivars of rice and looking at what can be done to other ones to make them more UVB-resistant. so in this particular case the adaptations were already there
The ozone layer absorbs roughly 98% of incoming UVB light from both the sun and cosmological sources. Space is, not to put too fine a point on it, *anti-life*. The Earth's atmosphere (the ozone layer being a key part of this) and dynamo molten iron core (which creates our unique magnetic field) are literally the only reasons life exists *at all*.
One of the reasons "colonizing Mars" is nonsense is that it doesn't have either an ozone layer or a strong magnetic field.
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The ozone layer absorbs roughly 98% of incoming UVB light from both the sun and cosmological sources. Space is, not to put too fine a point on it, *anti-life*. The Earth's atmosphere (the ozone layer being a key part of this) and dynamo molten iron core (which creates our unique magnetic field) are literally the only reasons life exists *at all*.
One of the reasons "colonizing Mars" is nonsense is that it doesn't have either an ozone layer or a strong magnetic field.
@johnzajac @__Styx__ have you or anyone else you know done a study on what happens to terrestrial plants when they're hit with a 100% incoming UVB (as in pre-ozone-layer) level? I have not found an answer to that question and what I found for lower UVB exposure levels was inconclusive
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The ozone layer absorbs roughly 98% of incoming UVB light from both the sun and cosmological sources. Space is, not to put too fine a point on it, *anti-life*. The Earth's atmosphere (the ozone layer being a key part of this) and dynamo molten iron core (which creates our unique magnetic field) are literally the only reasons life exists *at all*.
One of the reasons "colonizing Mars" is nonsense is that it doesn't have either an ozone layer or a strong magnetic field.
When we're talking about UVB, we should note that while it doesn't ionize individual atoms like gamma radiation, it *can* cause serious damage to complex molecules (like basically all of life relies on - for example, DNA).
The fallacy you're working with here is that you believe you can predict the outcome of there being "no ozone layer". But that's not real; flooding the world with UVB radiation would be so catastrophic that we cannot imagine the outcome.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
All quibbles aside, it certainly stoked the conspiracy mania.
Maintenance and repair is continually undervalued in our "efficiency"-obsessed economy.
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@johnzajac @__Styx__ have you or anyone else you know done a study on what happens to terrestrial plants when they're hit with a 100% incoming UVB (as in pre-ozone-layer) level? I have not found an answer to that question and what I found for lower UVB exposure levels was inconclusive
We don't really need to have a study that tells us what happens when life is hit by 100% UVB from the sun, because physics tells us what happens when complex molecules are hit by radiation at that level at that wavelength.
Ultimately, this isn't a biology question or even a climate or ecological question; it's a physics question.
And physics is not ambivalent about the impact of UVB on complex molecules, of which life is entirely composed.
Deep time tells us...
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We don't really need to have a study that tells us what happens when life is hit by 100% UVB from the sun, because physics tells us what happens when complex molecules are hit by radiation at that level at that wavelength.
Ultimately, this isn't a biology question or even a climate or ecological question; it's a physics question.
And physics is not ambivalent about the impact of UVB on complex molecules, of which life is entirely composed.
Deep time tells us...
...that btw 750 and 1500 million years ago the Earth had simple single-cell life, mostly at the bottom of the ocean. Around 750 million years ago, that life began producing huge amounts of oxygen as a byproduct of their metabolism. Over 250 million years, this "great Oxygenation event" led to the creation of the Ozone layer 500 million years ago - and, not coincidentally, what is known as the "Cambrian Explosion": a period of rapid development of multicellular life.
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...that btw 750 and 1500 million years ago the Earth had simple single-cell life, mostly at the bottom of the ocean. Around 750 million years ago, that life began producing huge amounts of oxygen as a byproduct of their metabolism. Over 250 million years, this "great Oxygenation event" led to the creation of the Ozone layer 500 million years ago - and, not coincidentally, what is known as the "Cambrian Explosion": a period of rapid development of multicellular life.
Incidentally, "the bottom of the ocean" is also protected by a barrier that absorbs UVB light.
While I can't guarantee that the development of the ozone layer was key to the evolution of multicellular life, I can say that it's one hell of a coincidence if it didn't.
