Global warming has accelerated significantly • Hacker News Board

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#861

Post by bakies » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 1:56 AM UTC

epolanski wrote: post #213

World is plagued by consumerism and gaslighted into over focusing on relatively smaller energy savings instead of overall habits. I have friends shoving sausages and burgers into them while ordering countless things on Amazon every day, yet they think they help by buying a hybrid car, couldn't even be bothered by using public transport even though it's faster and cheaper where they live, because "too many people, dir…

All my friends drive pick up trucks to the office and drink all their water from 12 oz single use plastic bottles. The hybrids were too complicated or something.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#862

Post by bakies » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:03 AM UTC

dcchambers wrote: post #841

n8cpdx wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were voters who could do part of it. Long term, having a US President that doesn’t cancel wind projects, tear up EV subsidies, and promote coal would probably be a difference maker for US emissions. And if the voters were just a bit smarter and not bought into the “China bad” narrative, we might even get proper, nice, affordable EVs in the US.

Here's the thing: NOTHING we do in the US matters when various Southeast Asian countries are rapidly industrializing. And in the rapid growth phase sustainability and clean energy is not a priority. Then there's a billion and a half people in Africa, also rapidly growing, that may be next.

Optimistically I'm hoping they're just bridging the gap to produce a ton of solar energy. Can't be upset until they eclipse the USA emissions.

Although I'm surprised China doesn't just build nuke plants.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#863

Post by code4life » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:05 AM UTC

bakies wrote: post #835

code4life wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not dismissing anything. I’m just saying, when a measurement was taken in my region in 1925 it was warmer then than it was 100 years later in 2025.

That's not even the same order of magnitude I mentioned

Thats because I’m going by actual measurements. Not predictions based on evidence.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#864

Post by budududuroiu » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:07 AM UTC

fasterik wrote: post #843

Kiboneu wrote: post #813

Let’s not pretend anymore. The uncomfortable truth is that that people in affluent countries don’t want to change their lifestyle. Affluent countries are less affected by global warming than countries responsible for a fraction of global emissions. All the emissions from manufacturing follow suit.

It's not primarily a lifestyle issue, and the problem is no longer primarily developed countries. Per-capita carbon emissions in developed countries have decreased 30% in the past 20 years, and energy demand has remained relatively constant, in fact decreasing slightly in some places due to increases in efficiency. Meanwhile, developing countries like China and India are projected to account for 35-40% of total globa…

> Meanwhile, developing countries like China and India are projected to account for 35-40% of total global emissions in the next decade, far outweighing the impact of individual lifestyle choices in the West.

Sure, but that's still mostly driven by Western demand for... Stuff. I'd like to see that share of global emissions if the West was still industrialised and didnt rely on China to be its factory

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#865

Post by virgildotcodes » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:10 AM UTC

blell wrote: post #659

jihadjihad wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are practicing the reverse scientific method. They hold a conclusion in their hand, like, man-made climate change is a hoax , and seek to find any threads of "evidence" that support their foregone conclusion.

You can apply that too to the “man-made climate change is real” argument.

Can you apply that too to the "earth is round" argument?

The heliocentric model of our solar system "argument"?

I guess general relativity is only a "theory" in the end, geodude420 on twitter has an awesome thread debunking that Einstein schlub's whole career!

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#866

Post by virgildotcodes » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:25 AM UTC

scottLobster wrote: post #708

yfw wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a mistrust of government and the establishment. Not saying fringe is better but the behavior of govts, corruption and influence by rich donors doesn't help

Also scientists generally suck at messaging and persuasion. They think if they just dial up the stakes and consequences a little more, it'll be compelling! Maybe if we make one more documentary with bad CGI disaster movie scenes, that'll do it! Same with the stupid "Doomsday clock" that is somehow always "the closest we've ever been to nuclear war!" whenever it gets trotted out. You'd think people who know what stoch…

Every approach you've suggested above, and others besides, has been tried by scientists, NGOs and government agencies for the last few decades, and largely failed.

The IPCC has consistently DOWNPLAYED the negative consequences of climate change, and reality keeps outpacing their worst case predictions year after year.

Every attempt to message the reality and consequences of climate change, and the possible avenues for blunting it, has been tried. From the sugarcoating "everything will be rosy and great and abundant, look at all the benefits of green industry" to the milquetoast watered-down try-to-please-everyone messaging of the major political parties, to the desperate attempts to communicate the brutal reality of what we're facing (and still failing to match the reality that is consistently worse).

None of it works.

1) People are selfish, myopic, and stupid. They think about their short term personal needs and wants above all else. Large scale coordination on this issue is virtually impossible, see the Prisoner's Dilemma. Human psychology is simply not fit for this task.

The satisficing nature of evolution means we are the dumbest possible animal that could otherwise achieve the technological civilization that we have, and this is another example where it really shows.

2) The wealthiest and most powerful people and corporations on Earth have spent decades pushing propaganda attempting to sow doubt about climate change, because genuine action on it is directly against their interests.

Those poor multi-trillion dollar industries underpinning all modern society and power structures are the altruistic, honest bastions of truth, it's those evil corrupt post docs on minimum wage that are the truly corrupt and greedy ones, twisting the truth for their own financial gain and machiavellian ends!

And they've been far more effective than the cigarette companies of the early 20th century could have ever dreamed.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#867

Post by triceratops » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC

cbeach wrote: post #824

Kiboneu wrote: post #813

Let’s not pretend anymore. The uncomfortable truth is that that people in affluent countries don’t want to change their lifestyle. Affluent countries are less affected by global warming than countries responsible for a fraction of global emissions. All the emissions from manufacturing follow suit.

[flagged]

> India and China’s contribution to CO2 emissions dwarfs the rest of the world

Such brazen, bald-faced lies. How do you sleep at night?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-...

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#868

Post by timr » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

eykanal wrote: post #3

For those (like me) who don't know the authors, apparently they are well-published authors in the field of climate science whose work is very highly cited: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=gra... Not a perfect measure of whether this is a reputable article but at least readers should know this isn't from some randos in a basement somewhere.

Setting aside the names of the authors, this is a very bad paper. They take temperature data sets, "adjust" [1] them by attempting to remove the biggest recent factors (volcanism, solar and el nino cycles) affecting temperatures, then do a piece-wise regression analysis to look at trends in 10-year chunks. This is just bad methodology, akin to what a junior graduate student with a failing thesis might do to find signal in a dataset that isn't being cooperative to their hypothesis.

Climate data is inherently noisy, and there are multiple interconnected cyclic signals, ranging from the "adjusted" factors to cycles that span decades, which we don't understand at all. "Adjusting" for a few of these, then doing a regression over the subset of the data is classic cherry-picking in search of a pre-determined conclusion. The overall dubious nature of the conclusion is called out in the final paragraph of the text:

> Although the world may not continue warming at such a fast pace, it could likewise continue accelerating to even faster rates.

They're literally just extrapolating from an unknown point value that they synthesized from data massage, and telling you that's a coin toss as to whether the extrapolation will be valid.

I am not a climate scientist so you can ignore me if you like, but I am "a scientist" who believes the earth is warming, and that we are the primary cause. Nonetheless, if I saw this kind of thing in a paper in my own field, it would be immediately tossed in the trash.

[1] You can't actually adjust for these things, which the authors admit in the text. They just dance around it so that lay-readers won't understand:

> Our method of removing El Niño, volcanism, and solar variations is approximate but not perfect, so it is possible that e.g. the effect of El Niño on the 2023 and 2024 temperature is not completely eliminated.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#869

Post by triceratops » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #701

bko wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt. Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented…

The IEA says China’s CO₂ emissions rose by 565 Mt in 2023 to 12.6 Gt, which it states was a 4.7% increase from 2022. So any emission reduction done by developed countries is offset by China.

And then China's emissions declined in 2025. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#870

Post by triceratops » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:42 AM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #690

patmorgan23 wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for reference China has about 17% of the world's population, and India has about 18%. China has also been deploying lots of renewable and nuclear energy, and their carbon emissions actually falling. Solar and wind have gotten so cheap we should be able to forgo more fossil fuel deployment in developing nations.

China CO2 emission increased a lot over the last 20 years and it is growing every years. Not decreasing but increasing. The IEA estimate says China’s CO₂ emissions reached 12.6 Gt in 2023, up 4.7% from 2022. On the other hand U.S. CO₂ emissions decreased slightly between 2022 and 2023. About 2–3% (from 4.79 to 4.68 Gt) [1] https://www.iea.org/countries/china/emissions

And then in 2025 it was exactly the other way around. China's emissions decreased, the US's increased.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292