Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

If you read the comments again you will see that all that was said is "you won't change the outcome this way", which means that political action alone is not enough.

Look at what's happening currently. All that fear and doom may lead to political decisions, but have they changed the carbon level in our atmosphere? You try to regulate something without looking at the overall outcome. If you want to do something, it's much better to do something positive, e.g. passing subsidies for renewable energy tech.

I think it doesn't make sense anymore to discuss this here. HN is not a good place to discuss different opinions which could be interpreted as being political. The people with the downvote power decide what's valid and what's not.

It's sad as otherwise we could have a fruitful discussion here.

But I honestly DO believe that we WILL see a downward trend in he next 12 years. We won't hit zero but i would hope we'd hit pre 2000 levels. And I also believe that even though we're going to suffer, technology like carbon capture and geo engineering will play a role in the future. A recent study suggested painting rooves and footpaths white in hotter countries would have the equivalent cooling effect of taking every car off the road for 50 years. Measures like this will help. Fusion power works. ITER in France will generate 500Mw when operational in 2025, and pave the way for more fusion globally.

I think we can fix global warming, but its to our eternal shame that we're going to be fixing it rather than preventing it

How about stopping with the apocalyptic hyperbole?

> The scientists have told us its our final chance....

And "scientists" have been telling us that for decades now.

> I feel like the young people need to take charge of the world because the older generations have had their chance and not fixed it.

Or the old have lived long enough not to buy into hysteria. Maybe the older people are just wiser, better educated and have more experience? Or we could let the young people, who know nothing about anything, take charge.

> What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

Nothing. No more than we can prevent solar flares, tornadoes or volcanic eruptions. We simply have to deal with it.

Climate change occurs naturally. It has existed before the industrial revolution. It has existed before humans. It will exist after humans. Trying to prevent climate is like trying to prevent the sun from rising in the east.

Is there room for us to mitigate human contribution to climate change? Sure. Would that matter. Probably not. Are there other areas we should be concentrating on? Yes.

Environmental preservation ( forests, rivers, oceans ... ). Species protection. Build better and walkable cities.

Global warming ( rebranded by PR firms as the silly "climate change" ) isn't the first apocalyptic hysteria by "scientists" ( and by "scientists" I mostly mean politicians, corporations, lawyers, etc trying to profit ).

Here are some of the "end of the world" events cassandrized by "scientists"

Climate change. Global warming, Global cooling ( from 1940s to 1970s ). That's right folks, before we were going to boil to death, we were going to freeze to death. Of course there are the supervolcanic eruptions. Asteroid strike. Of course dire warnings of nuclear holocaust. Then there was malthusian prediction of death by population growth. Boy was he wrong about that one. "Scientists" even warned of extinction of humans by race mixing - look up social darwinism. Now we laugh at that.

So take a deep breath. The world is not going to end anytime soon. Climate change happens with or without humans. We'll adapt like we always have.

That's the most likely scenario, nothing will change because the HackerNews netizens change cloud providers and start recycling more.