My grandfather would tell stories of how the planet used to be covered in plants and you could breathe the air outside. Back when the sky was blue.
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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A time traveler's survival guide. The vertical green bars are the only times in Earth's history with enough oxygen to breathe (hypoxia) and low enough to avoid oxygen toxicity (hyperoxia):
"No parenting class would have ever prepared me for having my kid ask me why we don't need artificial oxygen storage."
No, but a grade school science class would have...
I mean... I know perfectly well that plants produce oxygen, but it never would've occurred to me that that was waht a child asking about oxygen tanks wanted to know.
Yeah this is mindboggling. It wouldn't have ever crossed her mind to tell her kid that they don't need oxygen canisters on this planet? I mean, what the dad said is good, as it opened the door to some more learning... but wow.
Never underestimate just how clueless the general population is about how the world works. More than you'd expect would prove to not really grasp even the most basic mechanisms of their environment.
People turn to religion for a reason.
To the majority of people, understanding the world beyond "inexplicable god magic" is difficult to learn good-for-nothing trivia unless it's needed for a good grade and maybe a job if you're cut out for it. Only the parts specific to surviving in the wild get a different treatment.
Even the non-religious seem to make a habit of thinking like this. The kind of "not a Christian" alcoholic that is completely disinterested in the actual philosophies that allowed for a world where open disbelief is safe, and vocally in favor of "rights" of some sort for currently relevant minorities, with maybe a rare acknowledgement of some surface-level misunderstanding of humanitarian ethics.
Pump the brakes.
She isn't saying that she doesn't know about photosynthesis. She is saying she didn't understand what the child was actually asking about.
There is a world of difference between knowing the answer and understanding the question, especially if the question was asked by someone who doesn't even really know what they're trying to ask either.
Yes. She didn't understand what the child was actually asking about.
Because to her, oxygen tanks are for other people who use them. To her, any information about it and the contexts of it is not relevant, it is not important for her, and it's not very interesting to her. To her it is a weird question, despite her stated interest in not wanting to make it seem weird. Normal people do not need oxygen tanks and don't need to concern themselves with them.
I want to really emphasize that all information like this is genuinely seen as trivia, and only gets to feel like it's really worth having someone knowing the very moment it becomes tangibly useful, and when the usefulness of the information expires, it becomes trivia again.
Respect for a researcher wavers in almost the exact same way, although a great achievement would be respected possibly for a lifetime if the public understands and appreciates it. Still, anything they learn after that is going to be treated like trivia again.
You want me to pump the brakes? Why would I? Our entire civilization is incapable of pumping the brakes on self inflicted and wholly deserved extinction by way of choking our world in the emissions of our desperate works to create decorative steel flowerpots and heavily marketed plastic garbage, because we cannot stomach the thought of feeding a man that does not create his share of junk.
My first thought, when I heard that question, would be "do we have a backup in case the naturally produced oxygen for some reason goes away?" like some families have an emergency supply of food or water, not that the child did not know that Earth's atmosphere naturally contains oxygen thanks to plants.
You completely missed the point.
This was about the elegance of the answer, not the answer itself.
Get some perri-air
First off, weird to point out that they're "age appropriate"
If your kid reads above the age level and understands it that's generally a good thing
Number two I don't get why this is such a weird concept on how to explain things to a child. Seems pretty normal and "age appropriate"
There's some old sci fi that I read as a kid that I wouldn't give to mine at the same age. Too much sexism, racism, incorrect astronomy
With sexism and racism I feel at least that's a good place to have a conversation with your kid and show them why exactly it is wrong though uk?
Sounds to me like Dad needs a little credit here.
Isn't the ocean that produces most oxygen?
yes, fytoplankton, but those are plants too. THey'll be extinct in +/-500 years because of the ocean acidification, which is a result of the sea absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere.
What can I do to prevent this?
Fight for a socialist future or join organisations/actions which do direct action against large pollutors, I'm thinking for example about Ende Gelände in Germany.
I'm very disappointed there was no praise for dad at the end of all that.
As far as I can tell, the whole thing was praising the dad.
So, where do I find this dad, as opposed to, "Dunno, ask yer mom, and fetch me a ~~bud light~~ coors."?