The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate • Hacker News Board

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#131

Post by antisthenes » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

FeloniousHam wrote: post #123

inigyou wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s it was something to deal with later. Now that it's something to deal with right now, of course they won't cover it. In a few decades they'll cover it again, but only to say how it's too late now. Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media.

> Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media. Who is this "media"? Is this the same "media" that Trump and his dullards claim is so corrupt and contrary to The Truth? Are you influenced by this "media"? I don't read The Guardian or Jacobin, but I'm occasionally exposed to their headlines and they are certainly reporting on climate change. Are they part of the "media"? The…

> Is this the same "media" that Trump and his dullards claim is so corrupt and contrary to The Truth? Are you influenced by this "media"? I don't read The Guardian or Jacobin, but I'm occasionally exposed to their headlines and they are certainly reporting on climate change. Are they part of the "media"?

This would have any meaning behind it if e.g. Jacobin had the same reach and viewership as Fox News. But it doesn't, so your entire argument rests on false assumptions.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#132

Post by roryirvine » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #87

Synaesthesia wrote: post #2

It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu. What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.

Well "climate change" as understood today wasn't really talked about much in the 90s, as I remember it. Some broad, apocalyptic concern about creeping temperatures and knock on effects over many decades. But I do remember quite a bit about "pollution" and like general acute environmental issues. Smog in LA, the hole in the ozone, etc. Those were both more understandable and visible to your average person and more tra…

Did you forget the Earth Summit and its Climate Change Convention? Or the Kyoto Protocol?

Both sat at the top of the news agenda for months! Not to mention years of features, long-form journalism, and documentaries. And then the denialist backlash began to kick off in the late 90s, which (initially) added to the media storm.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#133

Post by qsera » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

lioeters wrote: post #126

qsera wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, it is as if some people can still think on their own...

The best kind of propaganda is when people believe they're "thinking on their own" while repeating some convenient lie to keep the grift going. If you think that doesn't apply to you, then it's working as designed.

At least I am falling to the best kind of propaganda. While the other side, who does not apparently even believe they're "thinking on their own", is falling to a much poorer one...

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#134

Post by angiolillo » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:06 PM UTC

nDRDY wrote: post #36

arrrg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limiting temperature change by every additional 0.1°C is still worthwhile from a human welfare perspective. In that sense it is never to late. We can always do something to limit the damage. It’s just that it gets harder and harder and some damage becomes irreversible at a certain point. Had we done more 25 years ago it would all have been cheaper, easier and led to less damage overall. That doesn’t mean doing someth…

I suppose millions can die in slightly more comfort.

Limiting temperature change by every additional 0.1°C is not really about comfort. Either way rich people will be comfortable and poor people will be uncomfortable or dead. It's about buying everyone more time to adapt.

With respect to human lives it could mean the difference between tens of millions of deaths and billions of deaths. With respect to wildlife it could be the difference between losing 10–20% of the planet's species in the Holocene extinction versus 40% or more as per the IPCC. With respect to migration it could mean the difference between levels that are painful versus globally destabilizing. With respect to geoengineering it could mean that we have significantly more time to refine the technologies before they're inevitably deployed.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#135

Post by K0balt » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #97

nradov wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution will have to come from growth and technical innovations, not personal sacrifice.

I agree, because (and I'm being a bit flippant) I sure as hell am not giving up my gas stove while billionaires fly around in private jets and MAGA guys are coal-rolling in their F-250s... It seems to me that carbon capture technology plus renewables and nuclear + dream energy (fission) will be the future but we're probably not going to go off of fossil fuels much, which will necessitate in part the need to suck this…

CO2 capture and planetary albedo management are going to be the only way. For cO2 capture to be meaningful, we need to increase our planetary energy production by 2 or 3x so we can put that energy into sequestration, and obviously those gains cannot be based on fossil fuels. Albedo management is much faster to roll out, but will have a lot of pushback because it will also create locally undesirable outcomes.

The tipping point is one bad summer. Photosynthesis stops at 40-45c (some plants like cactuses can do night processing based on stored energy, but staple crops don’t do that). If we have just one bad summer, billions will die. Civilization is perpetually just a week or two without food for 30 percent of the population away from complete collapse, and it takes thousands of years of stable conditions to recreate.

If we have a bad summer in the northern hemisphere, we could easily lose the capability to sequester carbon or manage planetary albedo in a meaningful way. Stopping emissions is not a solution at this point, we are already way too deep in self reinforcing methane loops for that to even be the primary factor in warming acceleration.

It’s an inconvenient truth, to be sure.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#136

Post by ashirviskas » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #82

I wondered where this article got the idea that "half the planet" would die "in 26 years or less" with 3°C of warming. It appears to be a misreading of the table in https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p... "Figure 12: Planetary solvency risk impact and likelihood definitions (illustrative)" qualified by "A risk impact matrix is a methodology for ranking potential impacts, not a prediction or ce…

Thank you for putting this here. While I do believe in climate change, I could not finish reading the article as it seemed like the authors opinions are led more by emotions rather than facts. And gourds.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#137

Post by K0balt » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

tim-star wrote: post #27

ericmay wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let’s also not forget, we all want the climate crises fixed, but nobody is willing to personally make any changes to their lifestyle! All parties are incentivized against fixing this problem.

at the end of the day 'personal changes' as a fix for climate change are just another lie big corporations fed us to make it feel like the onus was on a personal level. the amount of co2 that industries pollute and that various regulation would be able to change is multiple orders of magnitude compared to regular personal responsibility.

Frankly, the self reinforcing methane loops we have already triggered make emissions almost irrelevant at this point. If we want a planet compatible with human prosperity, we have no choice but to do planetary scale geoengineering; albedo management and metascale carbon capture are really the only options at this point. We crossed the rubicon a few years ago and even stopping emissions altogether tomorrow won’t stop the avalanche at this point. It would buy us a few decades, at best.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#138

Post by nappy-doo » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #2

It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu. What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.

https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/abc-cbs-and-...

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#139

Post by hnfong » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC

rapnie wrote: post #57

specproc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all about individual action. This scale of problem requires policy intervention and investment at national levels, and inter-governmental coordination internationally. The big, meaningful wins come from things like stopping the use of coal, not signing-off on new oil and gas exploration, tax-incentives and disincentives, grid work, fining polluters. We instinctively frame this as an individual problem, th…

> It's not at all about individual action. This scale of problem requires policy intervention and investment at national levels, and inter-governmental coordination internationally. It is all about individual action. And then the emergence from that to what amounts to the multi-pronged solutions that are needed to address a wicked problem. Like create the "big meaningful wins" you mention. There is no mailbox where y…

Well, COVID made sure almost nobody was flying for a couple months. Carbon emissions were slightly down if I remember right.

You can keep telling people to avoid flying and live a life of low carbon footprint, but if the issue is much more systematic, economical and technological, it will just become a distraction and make people dislike you (and the cause).

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#140

Post by hnfong » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

amulyabaral wrote: post #16

arrrg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s pointless. Political change is needed to achieve any of this. Changing your individual behavior or even the individual behavior of everyone you know – while certainly not wrong! – won’t solve this. This is like trying to abolish slavery in 19th century US by not owning slaves and trying your very best to not buy anything that involves slave labor … laudable, but not a way to abolish slavery.

Isn't political change brought about by collective changes in behaviors of an individual and of those around them?

In the West it feels like individual change is kinda marketed as a substitute for political change.