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Articles about Climate Change seem to get very few comments on Hacker News. I think nearly every other article on the home page right now has more comments incl

• wtvanhest 7y ago
  Its a highly politicized topic. The two major political parties in the United States are arguing over the validity of the claims. Even if you wanted to have a technical discussion, the average HN reader will not be able to put aside their political party's beliefs in order to actually evaluate claims made by individual scientists.
• on_and_off 7y ago
  Another question : what can I do to make things change ?
  • maelito 7y ago
    One way is to reduce your climate impact to 2 tons / year and spread the word.
    • on_and_off 7y ago
      well I already don't own a car (last mile vehicle is enough for my use), and follow a mediterranean diet, avoid waste, etc But e.g. as much as I try to avoid single use plastic, my limited useage is not going to do much vs just banning / heavily taxing them. So my question was more : what can I do to actually make the lines move.
      • tempguy9999 7y ago
        I answered this before but can't find my post (is there an easy way to search your own comments?) Basically I said put pressure on your politician. As an individual you can't do much, a politician is the person to make things happen - it's their job! - so pressure them. I'm currently doing this to my own (in the UK). They seem to be struggling rather pitifully to understand the difference in priorities between Brexit, and a Catastrophe of Human Making aka climate change. Well, FWIW I'll keep pressuring them.
  • tempguy9999 7y ago
    You could do this https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=what%20can%20I%20do%20about%20climate%20change https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=what%20can%20I%20do%20about%20... Or nothing at all. Whichever suits.
  • MauranKilom 7y ago
    One long distance flight (roundtrip) per year has about the same CO2 equivalent as going from vegan to "normal" meat consumption (namely about a quarter of the average citizen's CO2 footprint). Draw your own conclusions, inform others.
• excalibur 7y ago
  The topic is very politically divisive, because half the country refuses to acknowledge it. It's unfortunate that such controversies occur here. We're supposed to be an "idea lab".
  • makerofspoons 7y ago
    That's a very American problem though. In the rest of the world climate change isn't nearly as controversial and HN has a global userbase.
    • jawilson2 7y ago
      Clearly America is doing little about it. Is the rest of the world doing any better? I'm asking this seriously. What notable changes have any other countries or populations made to combat climate change? It feels like (and I would LOVE to be wrong about this) other massive polluters know it is a problem, but STILL don't really change anything.
• blondie9x 7y ago
  I think the issue is that people feel hopeless. A lot of people probably wonder what’s the point of anything or programming in general if the planet itself is currently under siege. I think it’s hard to know what to do as a software engineer which is what most of hacker news readers are. The most we can really do right now is live as sustainable as possible and lead sustainable lives. What is kind of sad is many of us are chasing higher comp all the time and workin at companies whose missions we really don't align with, when sustainable lifestyles probably require much less than we think we need.
  • seiferteric 7y ago
    Yes I think this is it really. The message we are hearing recently is that in order to prevent the worst of climate change we must effectively shut down what most people think of as "modern society". This is a hard pill to swallow, even if you believe it. I actual see resistance across the political spectrum. Also tons of cognitive dissonance, like one article talking about how we are entering a utopic age where nobody needs to work anymore, u.b.i. and machines will provide everything we need, followed by another article saying we are 10-20 years away from going extinct essentially. Or articles saying we need to build denser cities in order to live more efficiently while ignoring the massive demand for steel, concrete, glass etc that would require etc... Nobody has any answers I don't think, just wishful/naive thinking.
• maelito 7y ago
  What's the proportion of HN readers (and writers) that live in the US ? I assume it's a lot, probably more than 50%, correct me if I'm wrong. The US's impact on the climate is huge, an order of magnitude higher than any European country and more than twice per capita. Maybe that makes it a Taboo subject even more than elsewhere ?
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• whycombagator 7y ago
  That's not been my observation. A quick check of hn.algolia shows that Climate Change posts do get a decent number of upvotes/comments[0]. Sure, it's not as many upvotes/comments as compared to when you search "Apple" or "Microsoft" - but I feel like climate change + other important issues (like privacy) are pretty well upvoted/commented on. Could there/should there be even _more_ traction? Probably. But IMO it's unfair to say: > Articles about Climate Change seem to get very few comments on Hacker News [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=true&query=climate&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
• the-dude 7y ago
  Let's please remember you have asked for it. I have lived through : - The end of the cold war, we were all going to die a horrible death, all at once. - Acid rain, all forests would die and consequently we would die too or have a terrible planet - The hole in the ozone layer, we would all get skin cancer ( I can't remember if we would die ) - Tchernobyl with elevated radiation stretching into Europe. Could not eat apricot-jam and damn I love apricot-jam Furthermore, I have studied Computer Science, which was basically 50% math. I have worked with people developing physical models, advanced computing and simulations are freaking hard. In my time, the hockey-stick would be an indication there is something wrong with the model ( instability ). "Nature does not behave this way" The earth is getting greener and yields are up, partly because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. It is completely unclear if "climate change" is either good or bad. The sea level has been rising for thousands and thousand of years : about 6-8k years ago, I would be able to walk to the UK ( from NL ).
  • mantap 7y ago
    The hole in the ozone layer was stopped because countries got together and signed a treaty to ban CFCs. It is the most successful example of international collaboration on an environmental issue ever.
    • the-dude 7y ago
      I am glad you agree on that point. And it wasn't a 'crisis'.
      • mantap 7y ago
        It was a crisis that was resolved through international action. I'm not really sure what your point is. That we don't have to worry about global warming because countries are going to work together to stop it? I wish I had your optimism.
  • heisenzombie 7y ago
    Just pick one of your points that seems misunderstood: > In my time, the hockey-stick would be an indication there is something wrong with the model ( instability ). "Nature does not behave this way" But the popularly known "hockey stick" graph isn't a model prediction, it's a reconstruction of past and current temperatures. "Nature is currently behaving this way"... And as you point out, that's an indication that there's something wrong -- instability.
• dunnevens 7y ago
  Here's my American-centric hot take. People here feel powerless. This isn't a problem which can be dealt with on the personal level. The politicians are largely useless. One party completely denies there's a problem and actively derails any governmental attempt to address it. The other party is often timid, scared of its own shadow, and only proposes weak remedies. Furthermore, most of us here agree that it's happening and don't argue much about the root causes. All of that adds up to lack of discussion. Can't do much about it. Have had little luck influencing those that can. There's little for amateurs to discuss regarding the underlying science. It's sometimes cathartic to publicly pronounce one's feelings of fear & loathing in threads like this, but that also doesn't lead to good conversation. And so we end up talking about silly things like flying taxis because that lets us avoid the soul-crushing doom for another hour.
  • cjaro 7y ago
    I agree - I don't eat meat and I'm not having children, but it feels very futile when you take into consideration the levels of corporate pollution, pollution from China, wasteful practices, corruption and apathy from our government leaders, attacks on personal liberties... it all gets so dismally depressing very quickly. It's great to frequent subreddits like r/antinatalism and r/collapse, just for the pure support, but if you stay too long it gets way too real because the science is there and it's not a good outcome, and we're barreling towards it strapped to the backs of a political system that does not care about it.
    • tchaffee 7y ago
      > pollution from China Really from Western consumers if you look at who the vast majority of those factory products go to. The US used to be just as bad a polluter until it became easy for US companies to move to a country with fewer regulations.
  • anongraddebt 7y ago
    I mean, at this point I'm of the mind that either some breakthrough in ML/A.I. will cushion the blow in the future or terrible times are inevitably ahead. My interpretation of the research is that the time to have reversed our trajectory was a number of decades ago. I don't bother debating or talking about the climate anymore. It's likely a defeatist attitude, but... I can't find a way to shake it.
• fumar 7y ago
  This went from first page to second page in about 10 minutes.
• Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
  I'm a poor, uneducated, bloke in a high col city. I work crazy hours in a dangerous and traumatizing job for 20k annually. I vote blue, pay my taxes and support local businesses. I do everything I can to have a minimal carbon footprint and am pretty sure I'm doing much better than the average American. I'm burnt out on climate change, just like every other political topic. Our elected officials are either completely corrupted by corporate lobbyists or sidelined into impotent virtue signaling rubber chickens. No rational decision I make can have any measurable effect on global co2 levels unless I were to invent a profitable carbon capturing process. I want to do more but every 'fight climate change' event I've been to is an effectless feel good circle jerk. I hope 'we' come up with ways to arrest the progression and reverse most of the damage 'we' have caused to our home. I don't know what value this comment has except that I hope you can rest assured knowing that there are many people ready to pick up the proverbial shovel and get to work.
• jgwil2 7y ago
  I don't want to sound like I'm trivializing the scope of the problem, but there are articles about it almost every single day. There's only so much we can discuss as few of these seem to present genuinely novel information. At this point we know the science; the main barriers to action are political, and politics are generally considered beyond the scope of this forum. Again, I don't mean to trivialize it as I think that the subject should be getting much more attention, but let's face it, people come here for interesting discussion first and foremost.
• WhompingWindows 7y ago
  You're asking why technologists prefer to comment on technology, rather than environmental science. Look at posts on Tesla, nuclear energy, battery prices, nuclear fusion, all of these fancy subjects: they're much more interesting to HN. And, of course, I wager most HN commenters would agree there is a crisis -- do they need further evidence of that fact? They want to focus on the solutions, not the latest statistics of how bad the issue is.
• Proven 7y ago
  Fake news. They've been warning of a climate emergency since the 90s. Completely useless! All they want is to milk the government for more money.
• yongjik 7y ago
  Oh there are a lot of interest: otherwise these topics wouldn't appear on the front page. It's just that there aren't a lot to comment. What's the point of admitting we are screwed for the hundredth time? Even "climate debate" has lost its appeal for me. The theater is on fire and we don't even know if there's an exit. I don't have the energy to argue with those saying the smell of smoke is entirely in our imagination. If we want to get serious, it's time to metaphorically leave behind who's not on board, but then there's not much to debate any more.
• golf3 7y ago
  It's tangential to this site, like two straight years of wage gap articles.
• s_henry_paulson 7y ago
  This isn't reddit. Everyone doesn't need to chime in on a subject. If you're not a subject matter expert, I personally would prefer you not comment at all. It's much more pleasant to read discussion from people that know what they're talking about rather than people offering their opinions because they think that other people want to read them. This is primarily a technology site, so it's not surprising when you have popular articles in other subjects with few comments. People can find something interesting without having the need to say something.
  • farah7 7y ago
    >If you're not a subject matter expert, I personally would prefer you not comment at all. This is silly. Subject matter experts in adjacent or even irrelevant fields often have a lot to add to discussions. HN would be really boring if only only 'subject matter experts' chimed in discussions.
• SllX 7y ago
  Because there aren’t any solutions we can centrally plan and just make happen between 7-8B people, 200 nation-States, and far more than 200 government jurisdictions without a massive massive massive body count. The cost of doing nothing is that there will still be a high body count. Look at the solutions proposed: more forest land. Yes, we need more forest land, we need to save what forests we can, but growing new forests to a venerable age takes time, and I’m not convinced we can do so in a sustainable manner at scale given our preponderance to farm mono cultures which will be susceptible to disease before any of their benefits can even be realized. There’s the existing forests, but it turns out the nations that own those forests, because national borders and all that, would really like to develop that land. Brazil has outright rejected foreign intervention in their latest elections by political, economic, and diplomatic means. So do you want to be the one to suggest we invade Brazil and hold them in economic subjugation at literal gunpoint? And then there’s the eugenics program that they don’t want to call eugenics, but ultimately it is a eugenics program. Getting people to have fewer babies is a good way to reduce the population, but the problem is poorer countries are going to continue to have more children because it turns out, having that extra household labor is really helpful. Then you get problems like Shinzo Abe all but begging his nation’s people to get freaky and have more babies, or the massive sex imbalance between the PRC and India where there are far more males than females, and there will soon be tens of millions of young adult men with absolutely no chance of having a wife or having their own families. The truth is, we don’t know what to do. Even if we think we do, we don’t know how to go about it. Even if we make a plan and execute it, we will still be left with a boatload of other problems. 11,000 scientists can sign a letter that we need to do something, but they’re scientists. They’re not politicians. They’re not engineers. They’re not soldiers. They’re not farmers. They’re not living with the reality of what they are proposing, nor are they making an effective case because they don’t have a good forum with which to do so. Here’s what you and I can do though: we can go about our lives until we die, possibly by an environmental catastrophe but more likely old age, and hopefully not trash up the planet too much ourselves before we do. If you want to forego modern conveniences and still be a member of some society, feel free to buy some land and start up an intentional community, take a leaf out of the Amish playbook.
• deleted 7y ago
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• LoSboccacc 7y ago
  it's hard to have a discussion when every diverging opinion gets drowned in down votes and circle jerks are only interesting as long as the central argument is fascinating but climate change is in it's own definition "settled science"