• M137@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    The number of times I’ve had to explain to adults that the sun is a star is way more than it should be. It never stops being so disappointing too that even the most basic shit, not this exclusively, is just something so many people don’t know, think about, have any interest in and don’t ever read more than the sparse title about that thing in the news (those titles and articles often being partly of fully false).

    • PrincessTardigrade@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I’ve explained to many adults, many with college educations, that insects are animals. Understandable for those who don’t realize corals are animals, but they think bugs are plants or something? Smh

      • xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works
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        9 days ago

        I think for many people, when they say animal, they think vertebrate. When asked what insects are, they can’t answer.

  • Zink@programming.dev
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    8 days ago

    Yeah it’s a funny joke, but this kind of shit actually works on people to an alarming degree.

    I think it’s an extension of dunning-kruger, essentially. These dummies love “knowing” something that all those smug educated people that study it for a living somehow do not know. It’s something I see in my more conservative relatives too, the need to put others down to establish your legitimacy.

    Even decades ago I remember hearing in conservative media the revelations that water vapor was a greenhouse gas, or that methane was, or that the sun goes through cycles, or that the earth’s orbit isn’t perfectly circular. Every single time it was discussed with the wonder of that brain exploding in space dude meme. Just flinging that confusion and doubt in all directions, knowing that each piece will probably be the thing that convinces part of the audience.

  • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    Idk anything about stars or solar systems, but when my house gets too hot I just close the curtains and it helps everything cool down. Maybe we can close earth’s curtains and will fix it?

    • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      This does happen and it’s an effective way to decrease the temperature:

      Might be difficult to implement at scale though.

      • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        That’s literally a photo of it happening at the only scale that matters. The solution is that once the moon is there, we just need to stop it from moving away.

        Problem solved forever.

      • wischi@programming.dev
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        9 days ago

        It’s not really hard to implement at all but would just trade pest for cholera. We could just burn a lot of coal again, the dustier and dirtier the better. But that’s pretty bad for air quality but it would seriously cool the planet.

          • wischi@programming.dev
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            8 days ago

            Aerosols aren’t gases in the classial sense and reflect sunlight. This works especially well high up in the atmosphere.

            https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/climate-science/aerosols-small-particles-with-big-climate-effects/

            There are studies that collect data around volcano eruptions and coal power plants getting online and offline. Long story short: Climate is complicated; I’m not a climate scientist and not to be trusted; it would work great at cooling the planet; we definitely shouldn’t do it (yet?) because it masks the temperature problem and could lead to us not reducing CO2 because we “wouldn’t have to”, but it could be a tool if we might be on the edge of a catastrophic runaway effect that causes too much water to evaporate into the atmosphere.

            Update: Btw, you are right about dark particles low in the atmosphere, those typically warm the planet. It’s mainly sulfur dioxide aerosols byproduct that cool the planet (also mentioned in the NASA article)