Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#31

Post by red75prime » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

> Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically

And to sequester hundreds of billion tonnes of co2, once humanity reaches carbon neutrality.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#32

Post by letmetweakit » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

I’m far from being an expert but geoengineering gives me the shivers. Dumping boatloads of chemicals into the atmosphere, a lot can go wrong.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#33

Post by azan_ » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #28

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

You should do some reading on why there are few actual climate scientists pushing this idea, and instead it’s mostly people with totally unrelated backgrounds like marketing or economics.

Why is that? Could you say something more?

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#34

Post by mempko » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

doktor2un wrote: post #2

I’d love to see the raw data.

Why would the raw data be useful to you? Do you have the skills and training to process and interpret it?

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#35

Post by philipkglass » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

chasil wrote: post #27

GlacierFox wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? I thought you couldn't delete your comments on here?

You are allowed to delete your comments for a short time, as long as no comments are posted in response. I'm not sure what happens with down votes on a deleted comment.

Downvotes on a comment have already affected your total karma score. Deleting the comment doesn't undo the karma loss. However, you have a chance to avoid further karma loss if you decide to delete the comment shortly after it starts getting negative reactions. (I have done this when I realized that my comment was getting downvoted for snark.)

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#36

Post by nxm » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

You mean China and India which are building coal power plants at record pace as we speak.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#37

Post by estearum » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

mempko wrote: post #30

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

For those not understanding why aerosols dimming the sky is not a solution is it won't stop ocean acidification and obviously just slows down the warming, not stopping it. The thing we need to do is remove CO2 but unfortunately that will take more energy than putting it up there is in the first place.

Critically, it actually builds tension and the risk of a “climate snapback”. Where if humans can’t perpetually dim an ever-increasing amount, then the entire global system snaps back and destroys actually all or nearly all life on earth.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#38

Post by comrade1234 » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #26

GlacierFox wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? I thought you couldn't delete your comments on here?

I think this is one of the "worst" features of HN. Ephemerality and forgetting are important for society and we need more of it. I'd really like to see someone from the EU push for GDPR Right to Forget, or CCPA.

You can nuke your account by doing something completely egregious like challenging someone here to a duel (it's happened! - account and all post history deleted - we don't see the -deleted-- placeholder as much as we used to)

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#39

Post by malfist » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

red75prime wrote: post #31

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

> Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically And to sequester hundreds of billion tonnes of co2, once humanity reaches carbon neutrality.

There was some promising research showing that you could recapture co2 and catalyze it into methane pretty efficiently. I wonder whatever happened to that.

It'd be nice if we could continue burning "fossil" fuels by recapturing and reusing. With enough solar power, the efficiencies don't matter a lot. And with reuse we wouldn't have to change any of our chemical processes or equipment that we've already built in the modern plastic era.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#40

Post by red75prime » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

mempko wrote: post #30

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

For those not understanding why aerosols dimming the sky is not a solution is it won't stop ocean acidification and obviously just slows down the warming, not stopping it. The thing we need to do is remove CO2 but unfortunately that will take more energy than putting it up there is in the first place.

Lower temperatures allow to take advantage of CO2-fertilization unimpeded by heat stress to speed up natural carbon sequestration somewhat. In addition to having less of climate change and its consequences that is.