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