Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Speaker 1: control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here
Speaker 1: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Breathe in the air.
Speaker 4: Do you have a mantra? Do you guys have a
Speaker 4: mantra when you meditate? I have a breath work.
Speaker 3: I have a few.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also I uh, we were talking about this
Speaker 1: just briefly off air tonight's episode. We're diving into some
Speaker 1: stuff that maybe we didn't all appreciate in grade school,
Speaker 1: because it's like, why do I have to learn all
Speaker 1: these abstract facts?
Speaker 4: Oh dude, That's where it's been coming back to me from.
Speaker 4: Like I'm flashing back to like middle school and maybe
Speaker 4: later elementary school, learning about photosynthesis and like the water cycle.
Speaker 4: I'm literally picturing these diagrams from textbooks.
Speaker 3: They're flashing through my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my mantra is fosspho glycerie.
Speaker 3: That's a good one.
Speaker 1: That's that is a really good mind light number of syllables.
Speaker 3: Nine is goose and we so.
Speaker 1: A while back, folks, we on I think a strange
Speaker 1: news segment. We talked a little bit about a fascinating
Speaker 1: study that led us collectively to a new appreciation of
Speaker 1: one of Earth's most underrated life forms, plants. You know,
Speaker 1: towering trees, humble shrubs, weeds, everything in between. And weed,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a very unfair linguistic trick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, except for like, you know, the one that you smoke,
Speaker 4: that one for some reason.
Speaker 1: Which is yeah, totally sure. But yeah, what makes us
Speaker 1: shrub humble?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 4: I love that because it does it feels that way.
Speaker 4: But what makes the shrubs so humble? If you combine
Speaker 4: a bunch of shrubs, it could be quite ostentatious.
Speaker 1: M especially if you trim it into a topious shape shape. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the thing is again, you know, for all of
Speaker 1: human civilization, people have been anthropomorphizing everything in the world
Speaker 1: around them, and of course plants are no different. We
Speaker 1: as we owe, all of civilization is not hyperbole. All
Speaker 1: of civilization two plants, and for most of history. That
Speaker 1: was awesome. I was not a problem. Plants were dope
Speaker 1: ten ten No notes for now. So what may change
Speaker 1: and when would it change? What does that mean? Here
Speaker 1: are the facts?
Speaker 2: Give it up to plants. Who you like steak? You
Speaker 2: like plant in.
Speaker 3: The Wait a minute?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Where those like exist coexisting? Or is it like if
Speaker 4: you like steak, you'll like plants can't have like seak.
Speaker 4: You can't have steak without photo.
Speaker 1: You can't have your favorite things and your least favorite things,
Speaker 1: you can't have them without plants. And because of their
Speaker 1: superpowered photosynthesis that we can eat it.
Speaker 2: Too, like the literal superpower.
Speaker 3: It is a superpower. Wild.
Speaker 1: I understand the science, and it still doesn't really make sense,
Speaker 1: Like how evolution just fruit force hacked to that one.
Speaker 2: Well, we're gonna get into it, but like literally, so
Speaker 2: sunlight is the powerhouse, right, The sun is the powerhouse
Speaker 2: for all life that we know, and somehow these cells
Speaker 2: specialized in a way to take that sunlight and all
Speaker 2: the water that's going on on this planet and make stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, not to mention the whole Goldilocks zone of it.
Speaker 4: All of the sun is also the perfect distance away
Speaker 4: to give us that you know, rejuvenating energy without like
Speaker 4: frying our eyeballs out of our skulls or setting the
Speaker 4: forests on fire.
Speaker 2: For now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm just saying the perfection of this fluke whatever,
Speaker 4: whatever you may believe, The science of it as bonkers,
Speaker 4: and the fact that it works and just kind of
Speaker 4: always has been, it's mind blowing. And then we figured
Speaker 4: out how to farm, you know, and just kind of
Speaker 4: extend that whole natural process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, it's pretty fascinating. I'm always taken with
Speaker 1: the the the order of operations cognitively, the Goldilocks zone argument,
Speaker 1: because if life evolved very differently, if we're on, say,
Speaker 1: another planet in the Solar System, would that planet's life
Speaker 1: forms not also make the same Goldilocks argument. We evolved
Speaker 1: to fit the shoe. The shoe did not evolve around us.
Speaker 4: Right, You're totally right. The plants developed those abilities because
Speaker 4: of conditions over time. Right, Like I say, it was
Speaker 4: always there, but in our minds it was just like
Speaker 4: this is for you, for shade, you know, for sustenance,
Speaker 4: for medicine. I mean, it's we can it's a whole
Speaker 4: other axe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a reference I had to cut to Sean
Speaker 1: Connery's Medicine Man, which it shouldn't have anything to do with.
Speaker 1: It was just a reason to talk about that film.
Speaker 3: He brought it back. Tell us about medicine.
Speaker 1: That counts now you could you could it was.
Speaker 3: A grumpy hit a ponytail.
Speaker 4: I remember he has a white ponytail, and he was
Speaker 4: sort of a Jane Goodall type figure, like a bit.
Speaker 3: Of a white savior story.
Speaker 4: If I'm not mistaken a bit for a little problematic,
Speaker 4: it probably didn't age well.
Speaker 3: But I do remember seeing in the theaters.
Speaker 1: Same and then as now in the in the theatrical
Speaker 1: run of Medicine Man, as well as the ancient past
Speaker 1: in the current day. As you said, Matt, the world
Speaker 1: has always, for the most part run on solar power.
Speaker 1: It Uh something that I think we all look back
Speaker 1: on fondley was during the days when uh, the giant
Speaker 1: non fiction company Discovery owned our little podcast, they would
Speaker 1: occasionally send us these very high production value, prestigious documentary
Speaker 1: collections Planet Earth and of course Life. And one thing
Speaker 1: that got to me about though, is that still stays
Speaker 1: with me, is that observation that almost every single earthly ecosystem,
Speaker 1: regardless of how different they may appear to be. They
Speaker 1: all depend on the Sun for energy, with a few exceptions.
Speaker 1: I think one would be deep sea thermal vents, those
Speaker 1: little mini ecosystems they get their energy from those hydrothermic
Speaker 1: off bleeds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anything in the Abystle system where the light no
Speaker 2: longer reaches, you can count on other energy sources being utilized.
Speaker 1: You could also say that they still they still get
Speaker 1: solar powered, just through more steps because of animals that
Speaker 1: are closer to the surface of the ocean when they
Speaker 1: die or per day a pun one.
Speaker 4: Thing about all the crazy adaptations that that results in.
Speaker 4: You know that these these particularly deep sea dwelling creatures
Speaker 4: that have like headlamps and stuff, and you know, again
Speaker 4: part of the whole system and the whole Goldilocks zone
Speaker 4: of it all, like that particular zone created that particular
Speaker 4: type of life.
Speaker 1: But the Sun still kind of, like you said, was involved.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it, like, Okay, this is one
Speaker 1: of the dumb facts that always that still captures me
Speaker 1: about those documentaries. Cave systems, even the majority of cave
Speaker 1: systems get their power through the Sun, but in what
Speaker 1: humans might call a somewhat ignoble way they get it
Speaker 1: from excrement from like Guato. When bats fly to.
Speaker 3: The surface, they fly back in.
Speaker 1: And I can't remember was it David Attenborough who narrated those.
Speaker 4: Oh, he did the Planet Earth ones, but then there
Speaker 4: was like a recut version where I think the Sigourney
Speaker 4: Weaver did it. There's also, obviously, I'm sure that Morgan
Speaker 4: Freeman has done some over the years, but yeah, Davy
Speaker 4: Attenborough is the main, main guy talking about I always
Speaker 4: think about ace Ventura when nature calls. That's what I
Speaker 4: think of when I think of Guana.
Speaker 1: I just remember our pal. I think it was Dave,
Speaker 1: and Dave apologies and forget us wrong, but I remember
Speaker 1: when our pal was like, walts about caves. Surely they
Speaker 1: don't use the sun. And I'm sitting there, I'm like,
Speaker 1: eat a sandwich so fast, observe. That's like he's into it.
Speaker 1: And so we're all. Even though we may not all
Speaker 1: universally love the sun, we can admit that it keeps
Speaker 1: Earth going. In addition to feeding everything in plants, it
Speaker 1: creates wind, ocean currents, oceanic currents, clouds to transport water
Speaker 1: and inspire poets and so on. For about five billion years,
Speaker 1: this guy has been amazing the sun and potentially catastrophic
Speaker 1: power source. And people don't spend too much time I'm
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about the grand scheme of things in
Speaker 1: a scientific bent. For much of human history just sort
Speaker 1: of always knew. Everybody always knew that the sun is
Speaker 1: the creator of livestock, agriculture, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And National Geographic had a great, a great quote about
Speaker 1: this about how the sun's placement even affected architecture forever.
Speaker 2: Basically, well, yeah, is that we're talking about where we
Speaker 2: put windows and entrances. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal.
Speaker 4: Yes, And the quote goes, early civilizations around the world
Speaker 4: positioned buildings to face south to gather heat and light.
Speaker 4: They used windows and skylights for the same reason as
Speaker 4: well as to allow.
Speaker 3: For air circulation.
Speaker 4: Genius, and like what, we haven't really improved on that technology,
Speaker 4: at least in terms of like dwellings, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: obviously there's climate control and stuff, but skylights, windows, if
Speaker 4: you don't have those, all your plants are going to die.
Speaker 4: All of your house plants are going to to die.
Speaker 4: And you can get like grow lights and stuff, but
Speaker 4: it's so key to have that sunlight entering your house
Speaker 4: directly if you're gonna keep plants alive.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it also changed like what types of materials
Speaker 2: were used to build those houses and structures, right, because
Speaker 2: some materials absorb that heat from the sun a little
Speaker 2: better than others.
Speaker 1: Yeah, stone and concrete for instance, And also the construction
Speaker 1: of greenhouses leveraging solar power to grow plants out of
Speaker 1: season or an otherwise inhospitable climates. Aka, you know that
Speaker 1: with the global shipping conspiracy is the reason that you
Speaker 1: can eat so many things in far flung areas of
Speaker 1: the world. At every step along the way, plants have
Speaker 1: been right there, you know what I mean, they've been
Speaker 1: the is Andy Richter, the guy who works with Conan O'Brien.
Speaker 3: He did, yeah, the show eventually.
Speaker 1: But plants are the Andy Richter to the son's Conan O'Brien.
Speaker 2: And yeah, because you know if they make oxygen too,
Speaker 2: they do.
Speaker 3: They do.
Speaker 4: The sun does not care really about If the Sun
Speaker 4: is God, then plants are like.
Speaker 3: Jesus, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: That's good too, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: this is all we could all listen to this and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: this basic stuff, solar architecture, I get it. I don't
Speaker 1: have to be a biologist, a botanist, or an astronomer
Speaker 1: to get my mind around the basics.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: You guys are talking about photosynthesis, fundamental part of life.
Speaker 1: It's up there with how everybody knows. I still don't
Speaker 1: know how this became a meme. But all of us
Speaker 1: know one thing about mitochondria. It's the powerhouse of the cell.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know that one thing you do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one thing that's like I was probably tucked away
Speaker 4: somewhere back there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, well, we all learned about photosynthesis if you
Speaker 2: went through basic schooling and took any kind of life
Speaker 2: science class, right, I mean, it's one of the first
Speaker 2: things you learned, photosynthesis.
Speaker 4: I remember the drawing of a leaf with little animated
Speaker 4: rays of light going in with arrows on it on
Speaker 4: one side and then coming out as little blips of
Speaker 4: like molecule models or whatever.
Speaker 3: You remember, you guys pictures.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 2: Well, and they'll break it down for you. In preparation
Speaker 2: for this episode, a lot of us looked back at
Speaker 2: just the just relearning right, all the things that we
Speaker 2: learned as kids, and one of the greatest things you
Speaker 2: can do right now is Head on over to YouTube
Speaker 2: and just watch some of the some of the con
Speaker 2: Academy videos from like twenty ten that actually break that
Speaker 2: stuff down. The way you're describing Noel with diagrams with
Speaker 2: a professor sitting there and showing you here's all the stuff.
Speaker 2: It's it's not like, what was that movie Chlorophyl? More
Speaker 2: like bora Phyl? Was that was that? In my head?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I do remember it's.
Speaker 2: A Oh god, that is a movie. Somebody right in
Speaker 2: what movie is say? Anyway, it's so amazing to really
Speaker 2: look at it and see the biological structures that exist
Speaker 2: within plants that actually do these processes, because it is
Speaker 2: just a beautiful machine at work in every leaf that
Speaker 2: uses photosynthesis.
Speaker 1: Billy Madison, that's it, Billy bad Oh boy. I wasn't
Speaker 1: expected to Adam to show up. Welcome, Welcome, mister Sandler.
Speaker 1: You're You're absolutely right, man. That's such a that's such
Speaker 1: a beautiful description. It's going to set us up for
Speaker 1: a beautiful episode in a later evening about whether plants
Speaker 1: are cultivating humans and the nature of that relationship is
Speaker 1: So this is all true. Nothing is controversial about this.
Speaker 1: This is all biochemistry and botany that we have learned
Speaker 1: some piece of in most of the world. But there's
Speaker 1: a new wrinkle occurring, but a wrinkle that has some scientists,
Speaker 1: not all, but some incredibly concerned. Riddle is this, folks,
Speaker 1: What if it's some point in the near future plants
Speaker 1: just sort of stop working. We're not talking about a
Speaker 1: world of you know, sentient plants going on strike or
Speaker 1: taking collective action. We're talking instead about a world where
Speaker 1: photosynthesis is no longer possible. And why that should terrify everyone.
Speaker 1: So let's take a break for a word from our
Speaker 1: sponsors and we'll be back so long as we have
Speaker 1: enough oxygen to continue. Here's where it gets crazy bonkers, right,
Speaker 1: plants without photosynthesis. That's like a McDonald's that doesn't make fries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wouldn't be wouldn't be great. And just so
Speaker 2: everybody understands, we're talking about photosynthesis. Okay, Well, there are
Speaker 2: two things here, right, photosynthesis as a process. Is it
Speaker 2: possible There's a scenario in which the entire planet Earth,
Speaker 2: all across the board, from the leaves to the algae
Speaker 2: to the bacteria, all the things that use energy from
Speaker 2: the Sun to create oxygen and you know, the atp
Speaker 2: and the things that the all those organisms need to grow.
Speaker 2: Is it possible that that process could stop because of
Speaker 2: some exterior factor.
Speaker 1: Or not not even all of it stopping, but enough
Speaker 1: of it stopping a high enough percentage that it would
Speaker 1: render life as we know it non feasible.
Speaker 2: Heard, Okay, that that would be Yeah, that would be
Speaker 2: catastrophic for sure. And it's probably not something that could
Speaker 2: ever occur in the flick of a switch, right, It
Speaker 2: wouldn't just stop. But maybe there's a scenario where the
Speaker 2: lights across the Earth start to slowly go out, you know,
Speaker 2: starting in one region, and then they just continue to
Speaker 2: go out, like some giant power outage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like the internet outage I just experienced covered from
Speaker 4: I'm backing down, guys, thank.
Speaker 3: You for glad.
Speaker 4: We're glad to Isn't it funny though, like the microcosm
Speaker 4: that you're talking about, Matt, It's like these artificial lights
Speaker 4: are in a way, like an extension of this whole ecosystem,
Speaker 4: this whole continuum that we're talking about, Like they wouldn't
Speaker 4: exist either, and now there's this like whole other layer
Speaker 4: of inorganic kind of but yet somehow weirdly organic in
Speaker 4: origin stuff that kind of mimics the sun.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because each individual bacterium or algae or you know,
Speaker 2: let's just say leaf, each one is a power plant, right,
Speaker 2: And you do have to imagine that if somehow these
Speaker 2: power plants just cease to function, or like the mechanisms
Speaker 2: inside the power plants just broke.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be one hundred percent for the
Speaker 1: results the consequences to be catastrophic. And part of the
Speaker 1: reason it's easy to ignore these sort of things is
Speaker 1: the vast discrepancy between what is considered a short amount
Speaker 1: of time in a human life and a short amount
Speaker 1: of time for life on Earth. Right, So a short
Speaker 1: amount of time for life on Earth is still thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands and thousands, if not millions of years this thing.
Speaker 1: If plants one hundred percent, like you said, Matt In
Speaker 1: almost as though the were switch being turned. If plants
Speaker 1: all of a sudden stop photosynthesis, the world as we
Speaker 1: know it would end incredibly quickly. It would not be
Speaker 1: part of some purposeful conspiracy, but rather an accidental global
Speaker 1: conspiracy on the part of every single human being. And
Speaker 1: that's because there are a lot of plants to your
Speaker 1: point all about the goldilock situation. There are currently an
Speaker 1: estimated somewhere around three hundred and seventy five thousand species
Speaker 1: of plants, but they're more being discovered each and every year.
Speaker 1: And though I hesitate to use the phrase, they're not
Speaker 1: all created equally. Some evolved to exist only in extremely
Speaker 1: specific circumstances. I'm thinking of the largest flowering plant, the
Speaker 1: corpse flower.
Speaker 3: Brotty meat supposed to be a delight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But even like cacti, you know, like I think
Speaker 4: I sounded a little wistful earlier when I was talking
Speaker 4: about you gotta have windows.
Speaker 3: Or you'll kill your plants.
Speaker 4: I killed my plants constantly because my house doesn't have
Speaker 4: very much direct sunlight exposure because of the direction it's facing.
Speaker 3: But I can keep a cactus alive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And look other plants to the point about the cactus.
Speaker 1: Other plants are pretty hardy, and they have a large,
Speaker 1: let's say, margin of error. They have a large tolerance
Speaker 1: for environmental change. And most plants are autotropic, which is
Speaker 1: just a fancy word for saying producing one's own food.
Speaker 1: And they do this using basic inorganic substances around them, water,
Speaker 1: atmospheric carbon, dioxide and then you know, a bevy of
Speaker 1: mineral nutrients from the soil. This is the real superpower.
Speaker 1: This is what we were gaga about a few minutes ago.
Speaker 1: All the like most of the other living things, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of other living things on Earth are heterotrophic,
Speaker 1: meaning we consume organic carbon and we cannot process these
Speaker 1: raw materials that plants love. We can't do that ourselves.
Speaker 1: So plants are taking one for the team in a
Speaker 1: very real way. They are the basis of worldwide food webs.
Speaker 1: They turn inorganic carbon into sugars, and then everybody else
Speaker 1: shows up after the cooking is done.
Speaker 4: I mean, surely that's where the term plant comes from
Speaker 4: in manufacturing and empower generation. I mean, you know, it
Speaker 4: just they plants did it better, and then we had
Speaker 4: to figure out a way to kind of copy their
Speaker 4: whole system, you know, to to work for our benefit
Speaker 4: for like making stuff.
Speaker 2: Whose idea was it to evolve complex systems that don't
Speaker 2: have thylochoids? Really, like, why why would we not all
Speaker 2: have that evolutionary trait? Because it's true, we could.
Speaker 4: Pretty advantageous, you know, self sustaining for the most part.
Speaker 2: You know, seriously, we could stand in some water, look
Speaker 2: up at the sun and be like, hey, we're good.
Speaker 4: Have you heard the hippies that are really into like
Speaker 4: sunning their buttholes like that?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all tell us about it.
Speaker 1: It's a whole Like luckily I'm not Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: know I heard, not a practitioner, but but.
Speaker 4: It is literally just holding your butt to the sun
Speaker 4: because you need to get that juice that sun, you know,
Speaker 4: energy or whatever.
Speaker 1: When podcasts don't work out. That's our new startup, solar
Speaker 1: Chakra dot com.
Speaker 2: Right, that is Uh, that's a choice I would I
Speaker 2: would have thought you would put your root like in
Speaker 2: a water source, right, uh, and then absorb some.
Speaker 1: Level to where we are planted. It is a good question.
Speaker 1: I mean, in that scenario, if we want to walk
Speaker 1: through it. So, if what we call animals also evolve
Speaker 1: to have that power, inevitably, the theory of evolution would
Speaker 1: argue that something would evolve to predate on that, not
Speaker 1: to come up before, but to eat it, to use
Speaker 1: that as a resource. So it's weird too because not
Speaker 1: all plants use photosynthesis.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: The ones that don't largely evolve parasitic abilities, so they
Speaker 1: they grow on other plants and steal that. Yeah, steal
Speaker 1: the carbon and water and nutrients from from the upstanding
Speaker 1: plants with an honest plant job, or they feed on
Speaker 1: decomposing organic material. So even so while those themselves technically
Speaker 1: don't practice photosynthesis, they still one hundred percent depend on
Speaker 1: that process happening somewhere. Again, it's photosynthesis with extra steps.
Speaker 1: Speak of extra steps want to do? We want to
Speaker 1: talk about how to synthesis became a thing.
Speaker 4: I still can only picture the vague illustration from my
Speaker 4: textbook in my mind's eye, and I know the basics
Speaker 4: of it. It's like light in food out basically, I mean,
Speaker 4: that's like what it amounts to.
Speaker 3: But then it also creates a byproduct.
Speaker 4: That we need very conveniently and are able to benefit from.
Speaker 3: In terms of oxygen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, light and water are the primary things, because you
Speaker 2: got to get that hydrogen and oxygen in there to
Speaker 2: break down. But which is the craziest thing in the
Speaker 2: world that inside plants there is a machine, there's machinery
Speaker 2: within plants that can oxidize stuff, which is it usually
Speaker 2: takes a tremendous amount of energy to do that. As
Speaker 2: humans have tried to figure out how to oxidize things effectively,
Speaker 2: and what actually breaks that hydrogen from the oxygen. You
Speaker 2: need a lot of energy, and the plant's just like
Speaker 2: no problem right.
Speaker 1: Right, which is why they're too is to travel a
Speaker 1: lot of times. But okay, let's go to our old colleague,
Speaker 1: Jessline shields over at our alma matter how stuff works.
Speaker 1: She has a great explanation of this. She says, quote,
Speaker 1: this is the story how photosynthesis, says, how we got
Speaker 1: here before we get to how it boils down. Around
Speaker 1: a billion years ago, after the Earth was formed, life
Speaker 1: showed up, says Jessolin, probably first as some anaerobic bacteria.
Speaker 1: That's the stuff that doesn't need oxygen, slurping up sulfur
Speaker 1: and hydrogen that came out of hydro thermal vents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then she goes, and now we've got giraffes. But
Speaker 1: there were ten thousand gigatons of steps on the road
Speaker 1: between the first bacteria and giraffes. The bacteria had to
Speaker 1: figure out how to find new hydrothermal vents. This led
Speaker 1: to them developing a thermal sensing pigment called bacterio chlorophyll,
Speaker 1: and then some bacteria still use that to detect infrared
Speaker 1: signal generated by heat. To your point about tiny machines, Matt,
Speaker 1: that's likewise astonishing. These bacteria, these heat thirsty boys, were
Speaker 1: the ancestors of things that could later make chlorophyll. Chlorophyll
Speaker 1: is also a pigment. It captures shorter, more energetic light
Speaker 1: wave links from the sun and that's where the power
Speaker 1: comes in. So props the Jessulain. What a well written explanation, dude.
Speaker 4: The idea of capturing photons, you know, and like, even
Speaker 4: as it pertains to like photography for example, or like
Speaker 4: you know, capturing light and harnessing it in some way
Speaker 4: is so mind boggling to me, you know, and even
Speaker 4: with our modern technology, Like it's it's just pretty insane.
Speaker 4: But like the fact that these organic materials figure it
Speaker 4: out just is it by accident? Was again just like
Speaker 4: a set and setting kind of thing, like because of
Speaker 4: again like the position and just the fact that it
Speaker 4: was just constantly exposed and natures needed to find a
Speaker 4: way to harness that.
Speaker 3: Like how do you even put it into words.
Speaker 2: Well, we don't know. We know that it's it's organisms
Speaker 2: that somehow decided to team up and go inside each
Speaker 2: other and becomes the mechanics that function the mitochondria. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, it really is mind boggling to think that
Speaker 2: at some point life just decided to do that or
Speaker 2: just started to do it and it worked, so it
Speaker 2: kept doing.
Speaker 3: It, and it's a byproduct of that.
Speaker 4: The oxygen is like an afterthought, and that's what allows
Speaker 4: humanity to exist.
Speaker 1: We're also only seeing the winners.
Speaker 4: I think that's a very it's just crazy the layers
Speaker 4: of it. Where again, like the fact that oxygen is
Speaker 4: just sort of oh, that's not even the whole point,
Speaker 4: Like all this other awesome stuff is happening for the plants,
Speaker 4: and then this oxygen just you know, also happens to
Speaker 4: be a thing that allows humans to breathe, and they need.
Speaker 2: The electrons, the hydrogens. The oxygen is just like, get
Speaker 2: out of here, oxygen.
Speaker 1: What is the asked this way to get rid of
Speaker 1: this unnecessary ingredient. That's what they're doing, just like a
Speaker 1: factory of flushing out chemical byproducts into your local water system.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of what it is. The analogy
Speaker 1: holds if those.
Speaker 4: Byproducts were gold and like magic dust, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 1: Well, we would say again, we would it's all perspective.
Speaker 1: If there was a life form that thrived off of
Speaker 1: the effluvium ejected from factories, that might say that's gold too,
Speaker 1: you know, oxygen didn't They didn't care, right, These things
Speaker 1: didn't really care about oxygen. It became important later. But
Speaker 1: these these bacteria, after countless of them die and mutate
Speaker 1: and effectively and then die again, you know. And this one, somehow,
Speaker 1: at some indeterminable point, a mutation is successful. Bacteria becomes
Speaker 1: the translator of capturing those photons using sunlight. But they
Speaker 1: still haven't figured it out. They needed what we would say,
Speaker 1: I guess we'd call them batteries. They had to be
Speaker 1: able to accumulate those protons and hold them on a
Speaker 1: discrete side of their membrane instead of the other one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then start passing them down through the process. Right,
Speaker 2: that actually generates all the all the things, all the
Speaker 2: different byproducts that become the energy. And then but then
Speaker 2: the craziest thing about this whole photosynthesis thing is this
Speaker 2: not just one way like holding them holding the charge
Speaker 2: and sending it through one way. It then goes back
Speaker 2: through the other way in the membrane to create other
Speaker 2: stuff that the plant then uses to grow itself. So
Speaker 2: you're just like, sorry, my mind is so nuts.
Speaker 3: It's insane. I'm with you.
Speaker 1: It's the it's also uh we have to give you know,
Speaker 1: honorable mentions to all the other uh, all all the
Speaker 1: other things that came into play, the sano bacteria, the chloroplasts,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, and all of this leads to
Speaker 1: something pretty dope.
Speaker 3: Plants. You know them.
Speaker 1: You should love them, even if you're not a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: These things take in carbon dioxide and water, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: from air and soil, and then they have kind of
Speaker 1: some feature versus from nutrients, minerals, micronutrients and stuff in
Speaker 1: the dirt. The water is, as you said, matt oxidized
Speaker 1: and oxidze just means it loses electrons. This COE is
Speaker 1: the carbon dioxide exceesing CO two is reduced so it
Speaker 1: gains electrons. This transforms the water and oxygen. Carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: turns in the glucose. The plant is like, I'm amazing
Speaker 1: at this, and then it releases that oxygen back into
Speaker 1: the air. Who cares about that? And it stores energy
Speaker 1: within those glucose molecules.
Speaker 4: Not to mention they're delicious whether or not you're a vegetarian,
Speaker 4: and they provide us nourishment. I forgot about the whole
Speaker 4: fact that we can eat the things too.
Speaker 1: Are you that part out too?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Cheese loiase, And I mean they are attractive. They make
Speaker 4: us want to eat them, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: And they taste good, and the ones that don't kill
Speaker 4: you or you're some kind of glutton for like a
Speaker 4: really spicy pepper like Matt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just if you want to go down this
Speaker 2: rabbit hole, you really should cannot recommend the video series
Speaker 2: that the con Academy has for free you can watch
Speaker 2: right now that goes all into the what they call
Speaker 2: the light reactions, the dark or light independent reactions, all
Speaker 2: the way to the Calvin cycle. The Calvin cycle is
Speaker 2: something we're not even going to fully go into today,
Speaker 2: but like good, uh, just reblow your mind to remind
Speaker 2: remember how Alvin cycle. Yeah, it's it's all that. It's
Speaker 2: all that extra stuff of like what the diagrams.
Speaker 4: Within the diagrams with little circle like arrows around it,
Speaker 4: you know, like it's.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shut out Stomata stroma all the hits.
Speaker 4: I remember, okay, okay, now you're jogging some some more
Speaker 4: like that again.
Speaker 2: The vocabulary is great and all that, but the how
Speaker 2: it works together just I don't know. It gives you
Speaker 2: an appreciation. It's like an overview effect that you can
Speaker 2: get by studying a plant.
Speaker 1: It's weird, well said big fans of cotn Academy as well.
Speaker 1: Ken show them out enough. And this reminds me of
Speaker 1: I listened back to I can't remember the title, excellent
Speaker 1: episode we did back in the day about plants and
Speaker 1: consciousness because plants do something very similar to speaking with
Speaker 1: each other. And also, oh man, there's so many great
Speaker 1: TED talks too, which you mentioned along with CONN Academy. This, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is fascinating. I think that's an excellent point, Matt.
Speaker 1: The idea of the overview effect. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be an astronaut to encounter it. The world continues. All
Speaker 1: after all of this brute force, evolutionary hacking, the countless
Speaker 1: back to the drawing board moments, we are here in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. We have to remember plants are like
Speaker 1: any other living thing that humans know of. They have
Speaker 1: evolved to live in a set of specific ranges and
Speaker 1: thresholds and circumstances. Just like humans can and will die
Speaker 1: when wet bulb temperature gets past a certain threshold, plants
Speaker 1: need a specific temperature to really vibe. By vibe, we
Speaker 1: mean conduct photosynthesis to use their superpower. It turns out
Speaker 1: that past a certain threshold, a temperature can become a
Speaker 1: kryptonite to the plant's superpower, and they will suddenly be
Speaker 1: up a very bad river with no way back down.
Speaker 2: It is crazy. We've known that those thresholds exist with
Speaker 2: ambient temperatures and plants since the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Since eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're going to take a quick break and
Speaker 2: then we'll come back and get into why we're even
Speaker 2: doing this episode. Why are we worried about photosynthesis? There's
Speaker 2: a real threat.
Speaker 3: And we have returned.
Speaker 1: Also, just because we're going into some of the more
Speaker 1: disturbing territory here, I want you guys to know we're
Speaker 1: recording this remotely. The reason I put my handle on
Speaker 1: here as photosimp assist is just because I thought it
Speaker 1: was a cool pun and there's not really a way
Speaker 1: to put it in naturally.
Speaker 4: So is that like, is that reference to being like
Speaker 4: this you simp for a photosynthesis.
Speaker 1: I'm still not sure. You know, you find the pun
Speaker 1: first and then you figure more quick.
Speaker 3: Wait, that's not how we do science.
Speaker 1: That's how plants figured out the oxygen thing.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 1: So all right, here's what happened. There was a paper
Speaker 1: published in the journal Nature in August the twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: led by a guy named Christopher Doughty. He is the
Speaker 1: associate professor in echo informatics at Northern Arizona University, and
Speaker 1: they put in some crazy work.
Speaker 3: If you were worried.
Speaker 1: About the mass extinction of bees, allow us to introduce
Speaker 1: you to a nice side dish, make that existential dread
Speaker 1: a combo meal.
Speaker 2: Flowers don't work, and neither do you leaves.
Speaker 1: Professor Dowdy says, let's do this, He says, let's get
Speaker 1: a specific type of instrument, something called ecostress, a thermal sensor.
Speaker 1: Let's launch that on the International Space Station ISS, and
Speaker 1: we're going to keep it up there for about for
Speaker 1: a while. We're going to use two years worth of
Speaker 1: data from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty to get a
Speaker 1: big picture of the overall situation. And they didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: They also looked on the ground.
Speaker 2: They put, well, let's talk before we talk about on
Speaker 2: the ground, let's talk about just exactly what they're looking
Speaker 2: at with from that big picture. Sure, because when they
Speaker 2: get photos and information back and temperature readings from all
Speaker 2: the way up at the ISS they're looking at one
Speaker 2: pixel equals seventy meters like square meters, So that's a
Speaker 2: huge swath like an area, right that they're studying from
Speaker 2: that overview standpoint. But but you can't get very granular
Speaker 2: with that. So they needed a way to get closer
Speaker 2: to the action.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about Ecostress, I
Speaker 1: cut a lot of this, but it's really interesting. Go
Speaker 1: to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory over at the California Institute
Speaker 1: of Technology Caltech. Just search that in ecostress and you
Speaker 1: can learn in detail some of the stuff Matt is
Speaker 1: talking about. You're absolutely right, and so they needed just
Speaker 1: as you described, Matt, they needed a closer look. So
Speaker 1: what we were saying is they did not stop there.
Speaker 1: They went on the ground. They placed sensors across canopies
Speaker 1: around the globe Australia, Brazil, Panama, Puerto Rico, and they
Speaker 1: were not working off just some sort of inarticulate hunch. Scientists,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned previously, knew there was something important about
Speaker 1: temperature and plants as far back as eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and what they found this again way back then, was
Speaker 1: that the leaves of some plants could survive temperatures of
Speaker 1: up to one hundred and twenty two degrees fahrenheit for
Speaker 1: the rest of the world, that's fifty degrees celsius, and
Speaker 1: once they got passed at or past that point, the
Speaker 1: leaves would die important distinction, not the whole plant, the leaves,
Speaker 1: the things that are like it's almost like saying your
Speaker 1: mouth or your lungs or your digestive system die, right,
Speaker 1: but your body is still technically alive, and so knowing
Speaker 1: that this is how amazing the study is. This professor
Speaker 1: and his team also pulled a study from twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one which found that one hundred and forty seven different
Speaker 1: tree species in tropical biomes. They found that these trees
Speaker 1: their photosynthesis petered out at an average temperature of forty
Speaker 1: six point seven degrees celsius. That would be a little
Speaker 1: north of one hundred and sixteen degrees fahrenheit, so good
Speaker 1: to knowe for most of human history this was not
Speaker 1: a huge issue. The places that typically reached those temperatures
Speaker 1: had typically reached those temperatures for a very, very long time,
Speaker 1: and plants that existed in those areas had adapted to
Speaker 1: live there. But that might be changing. And here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: I want to be careful with this and not be
Speaker 1: too too alarmists, but Dowdy's team found that roughly one
Speaker 1: in every ten thousand leaves in their big measurement experienced
Speaker 1: temperature changes right now that are too high for photosynthesis.
Speaker 1: Those leaves were out of commission, they were dying. It's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty somber stuff. Science News also points out that
Speaker 1: this is to the earlier to our earlier statement, this
Speaker 1: is not happening around the world yet. This is happening
Speaker 1: in discrete hot spots. Ooh, accidental, pun terrible, But it's
Speaker 1: happening in discrete areas, similar to the way that monsoons
Speaker 1: or hurricanes only occur in specific parts of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're only studying the canopies of tropical rainforest.
Speaker 2: That's really really important. And they're only finding that one
Speaker 2: in ten thousand of these leaves are getting affected or
Speaker 2: trees are being affected. So it's you know, at this
Speaker 2: point from this study, it's sombering, but it's not and
Speaker 2: it's not alarm bells going off, right, because it is
Speaker 2: just at the very tippy top. When we're talking about canopy,
Speaker 2: you're talking about the upper levels of plants, because they
Speaker 2: are all kinds of different plants of different sizes in
Speaker 2: a tropical rainforest, and tropical rainforests tend to run hot
Speaker 2: a lot hotter than other places and other large forests.
Speaker 2: So like we've got to keep all that stuff in
Speaker 2: mind when we're thinking about this, because it doesn't sound
Speaker 2: scary one in ten thousand leaves, but if we're at
Speaker 2: a threshold and ambient temperatures all rising across the board,
Speaker 2: then it could potentially be a much bigger problem pretty soon.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Science News does it this way, they say.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: The analysis was revealed a mosaic of temperatures in forest
Speaker 1: canopies during periods when forests were hot and the soil
Speaker 1: was dry, temperatures across the canopy reached an average peak
Speaker 1: of thirty four degrees celsius. Some tracks exceeded forty degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: And going back to going all the way back to
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds, fifty degrees celsius is our very
Speaker 1: worrisome point. Aboutzero point zero one percent of the time,
Speaker 1: just in the upper canopy these leaves would hit above
Speaker 1: the danger threshold. The highway to the danger zone is
Speaker 1: forty six point seven degrees celsius. The ride out danger
Speaker 1: zone proper fifty degrees celsius. And that means that on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, Earth is beginning to hit that limit,
Speaker 1: past which photosynthesis simply will not occur.
Speaker 4: But it's not like this would happen overnight with like
Speaker 4: every I mean, it's it's a gradual process. And it's
Speaker 4: like like you described earlier, Matt, the idea of like
Speaker 4: a power grid like visually going down kind of cascading,
Speaker 4: but maybe on a much longer timeline or what kind
Speaker 4: of timeline are we talking.
Speaker 2: Well, well, yeah, we'll talk to the timeline. But the
Speaker 2: big thing to note is this is the canopy of
Speaker 2: a tropical rainforest region. So if ambient temperatures at in
Speaker 2: that specific band around the Earth hit those exceed those
Speaker 2: levels on a regular basis, you're talking about killing the
Speaker 2: or potentially the leaves on that upper level dying. Now,
Speaker 2: if those ambient temperatures reach all the way down to
Speaker 2: the ground level right in the dense forest, then you're
Speaker 2: talking about potentially killing off leaves basically vertically as you're
Speaker 2: moving down towards the ground.
Speaker 1: And there's a snowball effect because those leaves in every
Speaker 1: level of the canopy above right, those leaves also provide
Speaker 1: cover and cool for the levels beneath them, so that
Speaker 1: there is the possibility for an exacerbation of this. And
Speaker 1: to your questionable regarding how this wall breaks down, I
Speaker 1: found a really fun thread on what I want to say,
Speaker 1: one of my most enjoyable subreddits. They did the math.
Speaker 1: It's the unnecessarily well I would say, it's very thorough
Speaker 1: math about all sorts of strange questions. And one of
Speaker 1: the estimates there I said, Okay, let's assume photosynthesis even
Speaker 1: though it won't happen. Let's assume it all goes dead
Speaker 1: at once. We just have a finite amount of oxygen.
Speaker 1: From that point on, how long would it take humans
Speaker 1: alone to suffocate themselves in the escape room of Earth?
Speaker 1: The answer seven hundred and four thousand years.
Speaker 3: Oh the we're fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, because algae like ocean algae is the primary
Speaker 2: oxygen source, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean around seventy percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're yeah, yeah, we Would's good to know.
Speaker 4: Not doesn't give us a pass, but it is good
Speaker 4: to know that like this isn't an immediate apocalyptic events
Speaker 4: like you know, breathing up all the air like in
Speaker 4: a ninny sub or something.
Speaker 3: You know, I do know.
Speaker 1: The only I've got to give a shout out where
Speaker 1: it's due credit whords do The only reason I know
Speaker 1: the algae stuff is because of the film water World.
Speaker 1: Watching that, I thought, well, all the plants are gone
Speaker 1: except for this one islands, how could they breathe? And
Speaker 1: that's when a friend helpfully pointed out, well, but an
Speaker 1: algae create most of the oxygen.
Speaker 4: That's also where I learned about desalination, or at least
Speaker 4: in terms of pea. And remember that scene, so I
Speaker 4: think it's the what everyone remembers where he's on the
Speaker 4: raft and he peas the kind of a thing and
Speaker 4: then he drinks it.
Speaker 3: I guess that is still suit. Basically, it's a portable
Speaker 3: still suit.
Speaker 1: But that boat was so cool. What is the name
Speaker 1: for those? Is it a catamaran?
Speaker 4: I think it is the trail I just remember data carve.
Speaker 4: We did a joke about it, like asses, they say,
Speaker 4: you can't pee into a mister coffee and expect taste's choice.
Speaker 1: Classic, Classic, It's such a good stand up career in
Speaker 1: the cards. But so okay, there are things that make
Speaker 1: this number. There are problems with this number, and you
Speaker 1: can walk through the math. You can see it. The
Speaker 1: people on Reddit posting this data, great job. It doesn't
Speaker 1: factor in a lot of other things. It doesn't factor in,
Speaker 1: for example, all of the other non human animals that
Speaker 1: are big fans of breathing oxygen on a dare I
Speaker 1: say regular basis. It doesn't factor in comorbid stuff, increases
Speaker 1: in population, you know, the fact that mass starvation will
Speaker 1: occur before the oxygen quote unquote runs out. Climate chaos,
Speaker 1: which again I think is a far more accurate term
Speaker 1: than the sort of milk toast climate.
Speaker 3: Change we've been using.
Speaker 1: So it seems like, again without being experts, that while
Speaker 1: seven hundred and four thousand years is a long long time,
Speaker 1: things hit the fan way way before that point. But
Speaker 1: the good news, like you said, no, this is not
Speaker 1: going to immediately lead to disaster. Point zero one percent
Speaker 1: is not a big percentage.
Speaker 4: Selfishly, I was like, my immediate calculation was not within
Speaker 4: my lifetime or the lifetime of my kid or loved ones.
Speaker 3: So I'm good. But that's really a selfish way to think.
Speaker 2: Well, that may not be trutal, really okay, go on, Well,
Speaker 2: and it all depends on how runaway, you know, the
Speaker 2: greenhouse effect becomes, right, and if it does get really bad,
Speaker 2: if rising ambient temperatures expand out of that tropical zone
Speaker 2: and keep moving towards the polls and it gets worse
Speaker 2: and worse and worse, then what is the year, Ben
Speaker 2: We both talked about it off air, like twenty.
Speaker 1: Twenty one hundred would be the the time that greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas emissions push the world to that amount of warming.
Speaker 1: That amount of warming right now. Experts estimate these plants
Speaker 1: can survive about four degrees celsius of warming above the
Speaker 1: current levels before trees lose all their leaves, the plant
Speaker 1: version of going bald and then die. It wouldn't hit
Speaker 1: the entire Earth at once. Plant die offs follow the
Speaker 1: pattern of gotta stop saying. Hotspots follow the pattern of
Speaker 1: the warming here, right, So, for instance, in the poles
Speaker 1: of the planet, this warming, this you know, like the
Speaker 1: transformation of the tundra and the thawing of permafrost. That's
Speaker 1: going to be a very different situation than what will
Speaker 1: occur in the equator and in the tropical areas of Earth.
Speaker 4: Guys, is it still even remotely controversial, like climate change,
Speaker 4: climate chaos? Are there still people that find that.
Speaker 3: To be Maybe and we're nuts. The jury still out.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are people who who feel that way, but
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say that the science so
Speaker 1: far is unanimous. Now that the corporations who were paying
Speaker 1: for opposing voices, now that they are exposed, it's increasingly
Speaker 1: less controversial. I don't think it's controversial at all.
Speaker 4: I think it feels maybe more like a political talking point,
Speaker 4: you know, like on one side of an argument to
Speaker 4: like I don't know if even the people that say
Speaker 4: it believe it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I think it was Vladimir Putin just recently. I think
Speaker 1: it was yesterday. We're recording November ninth. This was on
Speaker 1: November eighth. He started asking these very strange questions about
Speaker 1: ice in Antarctica, and it was like, how much ice
Speaker 1: can you store in Antarctica? Repeatedly?
Speaker 3: And is that like a riddle. It's yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 3: is it a code? Very interesting.
Speaker 1: Western analysts are speculating that that is an an attempt
Speaker 1: to cast further aspersion upon the idea of climate chaos.
Speaker 1: But yeah, to your boy political, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't help that there are all kinds of
Speaker 2: strange sounding schemes like carbon offset programs where you can
Speaker 2: just somehow pay your way out of the pollution your
Speaker 2: corporation just it's paying indulgences to the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: It's like the economist. The economist and neoliberals love that one.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but it does it does not help the
Speaker 2: skepticism I think that exists out there for you know,
Speaker 2: for this science behind the subject, because it does feel
Speaker 2: like it's being taken advantage of by people who want
Speaker 2: to make money and want to be able to spend
Speaker 2: more tax dollars on things that are not probably helpful. Yeah, anyway, I.
Speaker 1: Mean there's also the fact that when you hear these numbers,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a bit of a roller coaster,
Speaker 1: plants are dying because it's getting too hot. True, that
Speaker 1: does seem to be the precedent, That does seem to
Speaker 1: be the pattern that will continue unless variables change. But
Speaker 1: there's still a bevy of other factors at play. There
Speaker 1: would already be there already is a growing impact on
Speaker 1: historical agricultural resources, the so called bread baskets of civilization,
Speaker 1: the interior of the US, parts of Europe, Asia, India,
Speaker 1: parts of Africa, and you know, the biodiversity of South America.
Speaker 1: In Southeast Asia also under intense threat. And they would
Speaker 1: be dealing with this growing plant die off in conjunction
Speaker 1: with unpredictable weather, droughts, flooding at the wrong time, and
Speaker 1: of course the ever present growing threat of political instability.
Speaker 1: The truth is, we don't know everything about the fallout here.
Speaker 1: We also don't know everything about the adaptive abilities of
Speaker 1: every tree species. Humanity still doesn't know how many plant
Speaker 1: species exist. There are many unknowns here, and we also
Speaker 1: don't know We don't know how the deaths of individual
Speaker 1: leaves impact the mortality of a given species of tree.
Speaker 1: And so that's why there are some people saying, hold on,
Speaker 1: we might be overestimating vulnerability. One guy, ecologist, Christopher Still
Speaker 1: so he's not just some guy, he is an ecologist.
Speaker 1: He said, maybe we're you know, we're making this assumption
Speaker 1: that when leaves hit this critical temperature they die. That's
Speaker 1: a cold comfort, though, I would argue it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a fig leaf in the face of what may
Speaker 1: well become an existential threat.
Speaker 2: I mean and saying we're just barely covering it up
Speaker 2: just enough to where it can still walk around and
Speaker 2: we wouldn't be embarrassed by what's under the figure belief.
Speaker 1: Just enough to tell later generations. Well, you know, we
Speaker 1: put a good hustle in. It was a big swing.
Speaker 1: And my question though, is is this a possible tipping point?
Speaker 1: Like what happens not one hundred percent of plants stop photosynthesis,
Speaker 1: that seems very very far away in alarmist, but what
Speaker 1: happens when a certain percentage of them stop? What do
Speaker 1: you guys, how do you think? Guys think this shakes out?
Speaker 2: It's gonna get real weird because you know, there are
Speaker 2: massive ice sheets on Antarctica that are now beyond the
Speaker 2: point of being able to maintain right, So there's some
Speaker 2: series melting occurring there. There's gonna be a lot more
Speaker 2: water if within the whole system that we run in here,
Speaker 2: both both in the oceans and in the skies, so
Speaker 2: plants are gonna have no shortage of the the hydrate
Speaker 2: they need to continue photosynthesis. They're gonna have no shortage
Speaker 2: of sun because it's just hanging out there, blast in
Speaker 2: the earth. We uh if we can love.
Speaker 3: That image, Matt. So I just hanging out blast in
Speaker 3: the air.
Speaker 2: Well. It blasts everything.
Speaker 3: Oh, it blasts everything.
Speaker 4: But but isn't Remember we were talking at the beginning
Speaker 4: about how and what a coincidence did.
Speaker 3: Is this exact right distance?
Speaker 4: As the ozone layer continues to be depleted and stuff,
Speaker 4: I mean, is that going to become I know that
Speaker 4: the warming is one part of it, but just like
Speaker 4: the heat like I mean, I wonder.
Speaker 2: Not long ago the ozone holes, some of the major
Speaker 2: ones were beginning to fill in, which was actually good news.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's due to the success of the Montreal Protocol,
Speaker 1: the ozon mitigation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Thang, okay, maybe I'm not aware of that.
Speaker 1: That's going to take about four decades go it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The big thing now is just heat trapping. That still occurs.
Speaker 2: Heat trapping within the system.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 4: The plants they're resilient buggers. Yeah, for sure, that's the thing.
Speaker 2: We see it on a human life span because that's
Speaker 2: all we know, and we measure time in life and
Speaker 2: death of humanity, right of.
Speaker 1: Generations, timeline discrepancy. We're talking about it earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, sorry, I don't mean to retread things. It's
Speaker 2: just I think it is a matter of perspective.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it really makes you think, you know, how
Speaker 4: that we were just a blip. I mean, no, just
Speaker 4: the idea of the evolution and the connection, and the
Speaker 4: fact that plants are really not about individuals.
Speaker 3: They're about like the whole system, you know.
Speaker 4: And even if they were to go away, you have
Speaker 4: to imagine that byproduct that we've relied on, that would
Speaker 4: be the issue for us. They'll probably evolve into something
Speaker 4: else over time, on another planet, on another star whatever.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: Oh, I forgot to tell you guys, I read this.
Speaker 1: I got really into research with fungus in space. I
Speaker 1: didn't know this, but fungus is a huge problem for astronauts.
Speaker 1: Were you guys aware of this.
Speaker 3: Because they're always tripping balls when they're in their space suits, and.
Speaker 2: Well, it's literally their balls. It's oh no.
Speaker 1: It grows. Yeah, it coats uh, mechanisms, coats windows, everything.
Speaker 1: It's it's actually a really good argument for pan spermia,
Speaker 1: which still needs a better name as a theory.
Speaker 2: But sperm another thing that astronauts are plagued by.
Speaker 3: Yes, wait a minute, what globules? Just like in space,
Speaker 3: no one can hear you, you know what? Never mind,
Speaker 3: no one can.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry this this disaster though, and and I got
Speaker 1: I do hope this was worth an episode.
Speaker 3: I yeah, make them mount album mole Hill.
Speaker 1: If so, I apologize, But we gotta remember this disaster
Speaker 1: occurs concurrently. It's in depth with other things that are
Speaker 1: on the way. Widespread drought, climate migration on massive levels,
Speaker 1: rising oceans, the long term effects of microplastics. The list
Speaker 1: goes on and on and on, and fortunately so does
Speaker 1: the science.
Speaker 4: Well, and while this is an existential threat episode, I
Speaker 4: found it very educational and enlightening as well, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. It was really fun hearkening back to
Speaker 4: some of those earliest memories of like learning about what
Speaker 4: science is and how magical these systems are, you know,
Speaker 4: and how utterly mind boggling their existence is, you know.
Speaker 4: And again, I hope we don't see any of this
Speaker 4: these ramifications in our life. Do you guys think there's
Speaker 4: there's mitigation there's mitigation for this, like is it too late?
Speaker 3: Have we swung too far? It's not enough?
Speaker 1: People care well, it's it's it's difficult, I think sometimes
Speaker 1: to articulate in an impactful way consequences that do not
Speaker 1: seem immediately apparent, right, going to that idea of perspective
Speaker 1: and timescale. Maybe we mentioned this, I think on a
Speaker 1: previous recording, But maybe one of the best ways to
Speaker 1: think about it is, Okay, the car accident, like climate costs,
Speaker 1: is like a car accident, and in this comparison, the
Speaker 1: accident is already happening. The car has left the road,
Speaker 1: we can see the tree ahead. The question is what
Speaker 1: do we do in those figurative few seconds before the
Speaker 1: car hits the.
Speaker 4: Tree, jump out of the car space, we find a
Speaker 4: new car, or we walk never set foot in a
Speaker 4: car again.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's a matter of you know, in that
Speaker 1: it's not the best comparison, but maybe it's a matter
Speaker 1: of seatbelts, airbags, swerving to what degree that can occur,
Speaker 1: But it takes a lot of collective global action in
Speaker 1: a way that is relatively unprecedented.
Speaker 4: It was to hear that those zone holes are doing better,
Speaker 4: like that's that was news to me.
Speaker 3: I'm not joking.
Speaker 4: I was like, wait, cool, Okay, that's that's some positive
Speaker 4: silver lining.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been. It's so weird because we have experienced
Speaker 2: over our lifetimes a lot of alarmism over this stuff, right,
Speaker 2: probably rightly. So it's balancing the fear we need to
Speaker 2: have in order to take action, right with the knowledge
Speaker 2: that that fear should it has to be tempered because
Speaker 2: if we're just freaking out about it because it feels
Speaker 2: so dire, we're not going to get anything done. But
Speaker 2: if you don't have enough fear, you're not getting get
Speaker 2: anything done either. So I don't know, and I.
Speaker 4: Think we always strive to be as not alarmist as
Speaker 4: humanly possible, to just lay out the facts, approach it
Speaker 4: with a little bit of lightheartedness, because what else can
Speaker 4: you do. And hopefully we're not trying to freak anybody
Speaker 4: out or make anyone feel as spared, you know, but
Speaker 4: this is something to be aware of, but also don't
Speaker 4: let it keep you up at I guess if you
Speaker 4: can help it or do I don't, Well, we have to.
Speaker 1: Maybe the best way to put a button on this
Speaker 1: is to say, look, you can put political ideology, corporate perspectives,
Speaker 1: cultural differences, all that jazz, all that space fungus to
Speaker 1: one side, because none of it alters the simple fact.
Speaker 1: The clock is ticking and the question is what does
Speaker 1: humanity do in response? And hey, folks, thanks as always
Speaker 1: for tuning in. If you can fix this, if you
Speaker 1: can share it with us, the immediate solution, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear it. We will forward it everywhere. All
Speaker 1: you have to do, or you know, if you have,
Speaker 1: we want to hear your take on this. From your
Speaker 1: neck to the global woods. Ideas for future episodes, limericks,
Speaker 1: cool puns. Surely we can do better than photosynthesis, So
Speaker 1: let us know what's on your mind. We try to
Speaker 1: be easy to find in a variety of ways.
Speaker 4: Oh you're not even the simp. You're the assistant of
Speaker 4: the simp. It's a very frot concept.
Speaker 3: Then I love it.
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