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Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! After all, this s

Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! After all, this spells doomsday for the upcoming generations, so shouldn't it be the news that should be shown/covered almost everyday on the front page. The people have the right to know that their children and grandchildren will suffer because of something that is going on right now. I guess, that majority of people, all over the world, are blissfully unaware of this scenario because this doesn't get the kind of attention in the MSM that it should. All they get served is dirty politics and gossip entertainment news. Maybe people will force the policies to change if they get to know that this will happen. It seems that most people today think that Terrorism is the main threat to our society, when in fact, Global Warming seems to be the real deal. Let's say it was found that fifty years from now, an Asteroid would hit Earth. Would the people of Earth react in the same way as they are doing now?

ianai 10y ago
Until people undeniably feel it they will not believe they are the problem. It takes a lot for someone to change their minds in the face of "criticism".
InclinedPlane 10y ago
If the media covered everything they should have to the standard of quality they should have over the last, oh, let's say twenty years, the world would be an incredibly different place.
- balabaster 10y ago
  Unfortunately they're too busy exploiting human nature for their own advantage than to exploit it for the good of humanity.
notsofastmister 10y ago
Russia Today (bear with me for a second) did a documentary [0] on how the climate and geography (!) of the region is changing. They also interview the local population and how they view the change in the ecosystem on which their whole lives are build. [0] https://rtd.rt.com/films/the-permafrost-mystery/#part-1 https://rtd.rt.com/films/the-permafrost-mystery/#part-1
nroets 10y ago
Has anything been published in international peer reviewed journals ? Are there scientists at NASA or ivy league universities who became concerned and verified it through modeling and simulations ? If the answer is no in both cases, why should the public be alarmed ?
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  Are you seriously saying only NASA and Ivy League universities matter?
  - SubiculumCode 10y ago
    --the most outrageous part of his comment, imo.
- tzmudzin 10y ago
  I share your craving for less noise, but: - there's a whole lot of shades of grey between a hoax and a scientifically proven phenomenon. - we don't need to be alarmed -- we can be just interested in something new and unusual. Insufficient research to date does not mean the phenomenon doesn't exist or does not deserve attention. P.S. This reminds me of the famous story about two economists walking down the street. One spots a $100 bill on the pavement and wants to pick it up. The other stops him saying: "that's just an illusion. If this were to happen, somebody would have picked it up already".
- yk 10y ago
  Well I am no expert, but there is google scholar. The first result searching for "siberian methane bubbles" is Walter &al. 2006 [1], furthermore a simple search for :siberian methane bubbles nasa" yields a rather interesting overview article from Nasa's Earth Observatory [2]. So while the presence of an media article not necessarily imply that there is research, in this case the article reports on an active area of study. [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107 /abs/nature05040.html [2] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/MethaneMatters/ https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/MethaneMatters/
- 10y ago
Fiahil 10y ago
It's not all that bad, we will have the opportunity to live in a Mad Max like environment for real ! If we, humans, - as a species - are unable to focus away from dirty politics and gossips, then we don't really deserve to survive. Maybe we need to go through a few centuries of post-apocalyptic landscape to transform ourselves and evolve ?
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  while I agree that idiocy should be generally punished or it will persist, in this case the irreparable damage done to all living here would be too much. plus mad max scenario has what, 99% of the population dead? most probably you & me and all our (potential) descendants too...
- BEEdwards 10y ago
  What about Earth's other life? It just gets to go extinct? Shit deal for everything else living on this planet, maybe it should go "Zoo" on us in self defense.
  - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
    Life on this planet has persisted through far worse. Sure, we may bring many species down with us, but life on this planet will go on. As the late George Carlin once said: "The planet is fine. The people are fucked!"
  - Fiahil 10y ago
    Well, when dinosaurs disappeared, shit got real for everyone else too ! I'm pretty sure other species will found a very welcome relief in the disappearance of humankind.
lambdadmitry 10y ago
I believe this is the case when MSM are not blowing things out of proportion, so by comparison it looks like an understatement. This doesn't "spell doomsday" for the upcoming generations. First, I believe we are already well on path to sustainable energy. Let's be honest, any planet-wide change will take time, especially when affected by economic means. Granted, world-level dictatorship may achieve zero carbon emissions in a few decades, but I strongly doubt that that is what you want. On the other hand, renewables are surging even with our current level of technology. Any sudden technological breakthrough (be it batteries, fusion energy or room-temperature superconductance) will accelerate it even further, but it's not necessary for the transition. Humanity will surely switch to renewables in a century. Second, consequences of rising global temperature are harsh, but in no way there are a "doomsday". Do you really believe that loosing Californian fertile grounds will end the humanity? We will adapt and so will the ecosystem in general. It may be costly and inconvenient, but people already live both in the desert (like Northern Australia) and in tundra (like Alaska). Not the end of the world. Third, it's possible to drop global temperatures in a few months' time if direly needed. Ranging from orbital sunshades to tropospheric aerosols, solutions can be cheap and easy to deploy. All in all, I strongly believe that your asteroid analogy is an over-exaggeration.
- graeme 10y ago
  For yours points: 1. Renewables in a century? We'd have burned through a large chunk of buried by then. With massive degrees of warming 2. I'm not sure you understand likely warming scenarios. The world doesn't just warm a bit, then stay stable at a new normal. We are triggering runaway feedback effects. At a certain point, even if emissions are zero, the earth keeps warming. 3. This may be something we'll have to do. But it wouldn't stop ocean acidification, for one. Sealife is already dying mysteriously. Not to get into any of the massive unknowns of manually controlling the atmosphere. Or the political difficulties of doing so while countries face famines from farmland losses and droughts, leading to migration on a scale vastly exceeding what we have now.
  - lambdadmitry 10y ago
    1. Yep, in a century. I don't see how we can realistically do that faster without some sort of planetary Stalin. You think that would be a better option? 2. "Runaway" is relative and it will stabilize at some point. The particular point is debatable, but it's surely not a Venus-like environment (not until the Earth geology stops). Earth has seen much, much warmer times (palms-on-Antarctica-level warmer) and yet there was a thriving biosphere. Moreover, even the harshest predictions are on the scale of decades thanks to the immense thermal mass of oceans and atmosphere, compared to years if not months that we need to block a large part of incoming sunlight. 3. Ocean acidification is bad and a demise of the great barrier reef will be a pity, but it will not end humanity. Look at the comments around here: people are seriously considering mass-scale human extinction in a decades. Do you really believe that ocean acidification will lead to that, especially in the developed countries? Sure, there will be political difficulties and mass migration. But it's challenges, not a sudden-death-from-above like an asteroid that GP invoked.
finid 10y ago
If you're referring to the MSM in the US, I think it's because it's in Russia. Russia doesn't get much coverage unless it's about Putin. Alaska might have a similar problem, though on a much smaller scale.
jug 10y ago
Global warming is also extremely costly so it's a financial threat too, and also a problem causing political destabilization and increased tensions, radicalization from climate refugees crisises etc. So yes it should be covered for many reasons.
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
>Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! Perhaps it is because of the influence of the largest industry in the world in terms of revenue: the petroleum industry. Money talks, or rather in this case, money hushes. Where do you think the primary source of climate change denial propaganda comes from?
- awinder 10y ago
  It's the job of every other industry that depends on the world existing to call them out on this and spend actual dollars as a protective measure. And the people and their governments, because the collective interest in fixing this can not be decided by a minority value holder. We have done this before with ozone issues and we can do it again but it's past due time to just collectively have the aha moment.
- mastax 10y ago
  ExxonMobil: http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-policy/climate-perspectives/our-position http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-po... Donald Trump: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/265895292191248385 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/26589529219124838... I don't know what to think anymore.
  - 24gttghh 10y ago
    It makes complete sense in the 1984 style of Double Speak.
ironic_ali 10y ago
It would make the trillion dollar carbon tax industry look like a waste of money? MSM doesn't mention the hundreds of thousands of underwater volcanoes either.
buckbova 10y ago
Someone just copy/pasted your comment to reddit. Congrats. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6163gu/7000_underground_gas_bubbles_poised_to_explode_in/dfcth2e/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6163gu/7000_unde...
- ZephyrP 10y ago
  This keeps happening to me! I wrote a fairly obscure remark about SICP on HN and 2 days later I was on reddit with one of the top comments as my exact comment. Some kind of spamming operation? I have no idea.
  - yummybear 10y ago
    The user in question has also copied a comment about chili from HN, so it's not the first time. Maybe some attempt at providing reputation for his account, but as you say, what's the point? Or maybe just some guy harvesting imaginary internet points.
  - ABCLAW 10y ago
    It's an automated system for farming 'legit' looking accounts through comment arbitrage between platforms.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  Hmm... the Reddit user has a 4 year old account, and the HN user has a 23 day old account. Are we sure about who copied who?

ianai 10y ago

Until people undeniably feel it they will not believe they are the problem. It takes a lot for someone to change their minds in the face of "criticism".

InclinedPlane 10y ago

If the media covered everything they should have to the standard of quality they should have over the last, oh, let's say twenty years, the world would be an incredibly different place.

balabaster 10y ago
Unfortunately they're too busy exploiting human nature for their own advantage than to exploit it for the good of humanity.

notsofastmister 10y ago

Russia Today (bear with me for a second) did a documentary [0] on how the climate and geography (!) of the region is changing. They also interview the local population and how they view the change in the ecosystem on which their whole lives are build. [0] https://rtd.rt.com/films/the-permafrost-mystery/#part-1 https://rtd.rt.com/films/the-permafrost-mystery/#part-1

nroets 10y ago

Has anything been published in international peer reviewed journals ? Are there scientists at NASA or ivy league universities who became concerned and verified it through modeling and simulations ? If the answer is no in both cases, why should the public be alarmed ?

vanderZwan 10y ago
Are you seriously saying only NASA and Ivy League universities matter?
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  --the most outrageous part of his comment, imo.
tzmudzin 10y ago
I share your craving for less noise, but: - there's a whole lot of shades of grey between a hoax and a scientifically proven phenomenon. - we don't need to be alarmed -- we can be just interested in something new and unusual. Insufficient research to date does not mean the phenomenon doesn't exist or does not deserve attention. P.S. This reminds me of the famous story about two economists walking down the street. One spots a $100 bill on the pavement and wants to pick it up. The other stops him saying: "that's just an illusion. If this were to happen, somebody would have picked it up already".
yk 10y ago
Well I am no expert, but there is google scholar. The first result searching for "siberian methane bubbles" is Walter &al. 2006 [1], furthermore a simple search for :siberian methane bubbles nasa" yields a rather interesting overview article from Nasa's Earth Observatory [2]. So while the presence of an media article not necessarily imply that there is research, in this case the article reports on an active area of study. [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107 /abs/nature05040.html [2] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/MethaneMatters/ https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/MethaneMatters/
10y ago

Fiahil 10y ago

It's not all that bad, we will have the opportunity to live in a Mad Max like environment for real ! If we, humans, - as a species - are unable to focus away from dirty politics and gossips, then we don't really deserve to survive. Maybe we need to go through a few centuries of post-apocalyptic landscape to transform ourselves and evolve ?

saiya-jin 10y ago
while I agree that idiocy should be generally punished or it will persist, in this case the irreparable damage done to all living here would be too much. plus mad max scenario has what, 99% of the population dead? most probably you & me and all our (potential) descendants too...
BEEdwards 10y ago
What about Earth's other life? It just gets to go extinct? Shit deal for everything else living on this planet, maybe it should go "Zoo" on us in self defense.
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  Life on this planet has persisted through far worse. Sure, we may bring many species down with us, but life on this planet will go on. As the late George Carlin once said: "The planet is fine. The people are fucked!"
- Fiahil 10y ago
  Well, when dinosaurs disappeared, shit got real for everyone else too ! I'm pretty sure other species will found a very welcome relief in the disappearance of humankind.

lambdadmitry 10y ago

I believe this is the case when MSM are not blowing things out of proportion, so by comparison it looks like an understatement. This doesn't "spell doomsday" for the upcoming generations. First, I believe we are already well on path to sustainable energy. Let's be honest, any planet-wide change will take time, especially when affected by economic means. Granted, world-level dictatorship may achieve zero carbon emissions in a few decades, but I strongly doubt that that is what you want. On the other hand, renewables are surging even with our current level of technology. Any sudden technological breakthrough (be it batteries, fusion energy or room-temperature superconductance) will accelerate it even further, but it's not necessary for the transition. Humanity will surely switch to renewables in a century. Second, consequences of rising global temperature are harsh, but in no way there are a "doomsday". Do you really believe that loosing Californian fertile grounds will end the humanity? We will adapt and so will the ecosystem in general. It may be costly and inconvenient, but people already live both in the desert (like Northern Australia) and in tundra (like Alaska). Not the end of the world. Third, it's possible to drop global temperatures in a few months' time if direly needed. Ranging from orbital sunshades to tropospheric aerosols, solutions can be cheap and easy to deploy. All in all, I strongly believe that your asteroid analogy is an over-exaggeration.

graeme 10y ago
For yours points: 1. Renewables in a century? We'd have burned through a large chunk of buried by then. With massive degrees of warming 2. I'm not sure you understand likely warming scenarios. The world doesn't just warm a bit, then stay stable at a new normal. We are triggering runaway feedback effects. At a certain point, even if emissions are zero, the earth keeps warming. 3. This may be something we'll have to do. But it wouldn't stop ocean acidification, for one. Sealife is already dying mysteriously. Not to get into any of the massive unknowns of manually controlling the atmosphere. Or the political difficulties of doing so while countries face famines from farmland losses and droughts, leading to migration on a scale vastly exceeding what we have now.
- lambdadmitry 10y ago
  1. Yep, in a century. I don't see how we can realistically do that faster without some sort of planetary Stalin. You think that would be a better option? 2. "Runaway" is relative and it will stabilize at some point. The particular point is debatable, but it's surely not a Venus-like environment (not until the Earth geology stops). Earth has seen much, much warmer times (palms-on-Antarctica-level warmer) and yet there was a thriving biosphere. Moreover, even the harshest predictions are on the scale of decades thanks to the immense thermal mass of oceans and atmosphere, compared to years if not months that we need to block a large part of incoming sunlight. 3. Ocean acidification is bad and a demise of the great barrier reef will be a pity, but it will not end humanity. Look at the comments around here: people are seriously considering mass-scale human extinction in a decades. Do you really believe that ocean acidification will lead to that, especially in the developed countries? Sure, there will be political difficulties and mass migration. But it's challenges, not a sudden-death-from-above like an asteroid that GP invoked.

finid 10y ago

If you're referring to the MSM in the US, I think it's because it's in Russia. Russia doesn't get much coverage unless it's about Putin. Alaska might have a similar problem, though on a much smaller scale.

jug 10y ago

Global warming is also extremely costly so it's a financial threat too, and also a problem causing political destabilization and increased tensions, radicalization from climate refugees crisises etc. So yes it should be covered for many reasons.

wu-ikkyu 10y ago

>Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! Perhaps it is because of the influence of the largest industry in the world in terms of revenue: the petroleum industry. Money talks, or rather in this case, money hushes. Where do you think the primary source of climate change denial propaganda comes from?

awinder 10y ago
It's the job of every other industry that depends on the world existing to call them out on this and spend actual dollars as a protective measure. And the people and their governments, because the collective interest in fixing this can not be decided by a minority value holder. We have done this before with ozone issues and we can do it again but it's past due time to just collectively have the aha moment.
mastax 10y ago
ExxonMobil: http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-policy/climate-perspectives/our-position http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-po... Donald Trump: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/265895292191248385 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/26589529219124838... I don't know what to think anymore.
- 24gttghh 10y ago
  It makes complete sense in the 1984 style of Double Speak.

ironic_ali 10y ago

It would make the trillion dollar carbon tax industry look like a waste of money? MSM doesn't mention the hundreds of thousands of underwater volcanoes either.

buckbova 10y ago

Someone just copy/pasted your comment to reddit. Congrats. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6163gu/7000_underground_gas_bubbles_poised_to_explode_in/dfcth2e/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6163gu/7000_unde...

ZephyrP 10y ago
This keeps happening to me! I wrote a fairly obscure remark about SICP on HN and 2 days later I was on reddit with one of the top comments as my exact comment. Some kind of spamming operation? I have no idea.
- yummybear 10y ago
  The user in question has also copied a comment about chili from HN, so it's not the first time. Maybe some attempt at providing reputation for his account, but as you say, what's the point? Or maybe just some guy harvesting imaginary internet points.
- ABCLAW 10y ago
  It's an automated system for farming 'legit' looking accounts through comment arbitrage between platforms.
dwaltrip 10y ago
Hmm... the Reddit user has a 4 year old account, and the HN user has a 23 day old account. Are we sure about who copied who?