9 ms·

Ask HN: What can a technologist do about climate change?

28 points by mnbbrown 6y ago

It’s been 5 years since http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ was published. Is it still up to date? Are there other similar resources?

giantg2 6y ago
There are approximately one question like this on HN every week. The search should turn them up pretty easily.
- 19g 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21024358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21024358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20015037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20015037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18332012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18332012
- therm0 6y ago
  yet nobody complains about the endless onslaught of questions like "How does your company leverage cloud blah blah blah" and "How do I become a software developer without a compsci degree?"
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I do get slightly tired of those. They seem less common than the poster's question (at least lately). However, many of those have questions fo have more specific criteria, like the individual's skills, experience, and location. Not quite as general as "what can a programmer do about climate change".
  - st1x7 6y ago
    Or some version of "What are the biggest pain points in your job?" or "Which SAAS would you pay the most money for? Please only give answers that I can build by myself with the stack that I already know in an afternoon"
  - meiraleal 6y ago
    yes, nobody complain, but a lot of people share link to previous discussion, just like OP did.
- jnxx 6y ago
  So what? It is the most important question of your times, whose outcome will likely determine the future of humanity. Far more relevant than the next JavaScript framework. And also, hard questions do have interesting answers - they are intellectual challenges as well, as they need true out-of-the-box thinking.
dragon96 6y ago
The authors of Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning spun off a forum at climatechange.ai with tons of related resources
legerdemain 6y ago
Pretty much nothing. If climate change is, in fact, caused by human activity, we are well past the point of no return. So live your life as you would, enjoy the limited time you have, care for your loved ones, eat and drive whatever pleases you, and take in all the beauty and pleasure the world has to offer! If anything, reasonable people should fight inhumane and illiberal government efforts to control human activity. To the extent that anything can or should be done about climate change, simple and natural capitalist incentive should provide ample solutions.
- therm0 6y ago
  >we are well past the point of no return what is this based on? if it's the most recent study from 11/12, there is a lot of debate about the validity of the model they used to arrive at that conclusion.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  This is the new denial. We have gone from “climate change doesn’t exist” to “there is nothing we can do”. It’s pathetic.
  - meiraleal 6y ago
    We as society will never go back on consumerism, especially the ones wanting to support efforts to prevent climate change, unfortunately. Humans are part of nature and the way we change the climate is also nature so we will always figure out a way to live with the new earth we have.
    - chefkoch 6y ago
      > Humans are part of nature and the way we change the climate is also nature so we will always figure out a way to live with the new earth we have. So we are just relocating 100s of million people and abandon all cities in the coastlines? How does the cost of this compare to the cost of trying to solve climate change?
simonhorlick 6y ago
The climate crisis is the defining issue of our lifetimes. Solutions to this problem are unlikely to come from technology. Start organising, start protesting and demand that governments begin to take this issue seriously.
- xupybd 6y ago
  Technology is the only hope we have. We are increasing in number and probably couldn't feed the world without modern technology. Technology is rapidly reducing the impact that human activity has on the climate. Governments can't fix this by edict, it will need a practical solution.
  - chefkoch 6y ago
    >Technology is rapidly reducing the impact that human activity has on the climate. I think it's only partially true. It really comes down to your definition of tech. But i guess your right that green tech is our only hope to keep the planet inhabitable for 8 billion people.
  - tubularhells 6y ago
    Technology is the problem. You cannot fix it with more technology.
    - xupybd 6y ago
      As an example if still were to heat and cook primarily with wood fires our cities would be choked with even more smoke than they have. A counter example is cars, cars have come with new technology and as such they have increased our emissions. But they have lowered their emissions overtime. Cars will continue to get more efficient and cleaner. This is the trend the more we advance the cleaner our technology gets. However we also seem to use more and energy as we expand our numbers. There are two options, reduce our numbers or increase our efficiencies. I rather like humanity and the freedom to procreate so I put all my eggs in the efficiency basket. The only way I know that increases efficiency is to develop new technology.
d33lio 6y ago
Start a company that makes something common people desire. Invest / donate 60% of your profits to fusion energy research. Profit.
iron0013 6y ago
Work to elect politicians who will mobilize the apparatus of the state to fight climate change. It’s as simple as that.
smt88 6y ago
I'm personally working on some experiments to help combat online disinformation campaigns and algorithmic indoctrination on platforms like YouTube.
- jnxx 6y ago
  Great idea! You could look for desmog.co.uk, and also for the technical aspects of the work of Carole Cadwalladr (see Guadian / Observer) and James Patrick (https://twitter.com/search?q=%40agoodfireburns%20misinformation&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=%40agoodfireburns%20misinformat... ) who researched a lot about on-line disinformation.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
Understand this basic thing: Regardless of what we do (or don't), climate can and will change drastically at some point, most likely due to variables we have no control over. It's just a matter of time. It can happen now, it can happen next week, next month, next year, in the next 10 years, next 100 years, next 1000 years, next million years. They say that they know it will be in 5 years or 10 years or some made up number. But no, it's not possible to say for sure. It could very well be tomorrow. There is absolutely no way to control climate in any meaningful way by doing or not doing something as humans. Even if we did manage to identify the right variables and control it a few times does not mean we'll be able to do it every time. Environmental change will most likely wipe off our species too, just like it has done to countless other species in the past couple of billion years. Having said that, we as humans have managed to survive some big environmental changes, like the last ice age when several other species perished. Not all of us will survive but enough of us will. So, what are some of the climate catastrophes we need to protect ourselves against and are we doing enough to prepare for that? One big problem today is that most humans don't have access to energy to heat or cool their habitats artificially if the planet warms up or cools down significantly. In developed nations, this is taken for granted but poorer countries lack the infrastructure for it. Solar, wind and hydro are unreliable if say some climate catastrophe causes sun to be blocked (say because of volcanic clouds or asteroid impact or something similar) and there is no heat or light from the sun. The only good sources are fossil fuels and nuclear. Do we have infrastructure for it spread out around the world so that no matter what part of the earth the asteroid impacts, as long as it doesn't wipe off everything all at once, we can rise again? What other problems might we face climate-wise? And assuming it happens, are we prepared such that enough of us will survive? No, we're not thinking about any of that shit because the entire fucking world is hung up on "Global Warming" and "Climate Change", the PR material that CleanTech Industry in the U.S. fabricated to get tax breaks on their investments when they thought that the world was running out of oil... and moved the production to China... except China stole the technology and built upon it... while the U.S. found and perfected fracking... and now China is using the same PR infrastructure to promote selling solar fucking panels and wind turbines... while using their pawns in politics to try to stop fracking and natural gas projects in the U.S. because it hurts Chinese energy business. Get a grip. Get a job in the industry. They need technologists in energy industry too. Read a book or two and widen your view of the subject. How about "The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America" by Peter Zeihan? Or just to see another side of it, how about "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" by Alex Epstein? Anything but repeating this PR nonsense over and over again.
runawaybottle 6y ago
Create a relocation Airbnb app for the millions that will be displaced once we hit 2-4 degree Celsius increase in global temperature. Also, charity apps for more frequent hurricanes destroying cities.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
become a vegetarian. develop tech for ag to automate ag and to make it more efficient...both indoors and outdoors. what we lack most is ag robotics and automation as labour saving tech in food farms and fields. solar energy tech to power our automation instead of batteries and fossil fuels. rewild and reforest most of the earth's surface. give people viable methods of contraception and spread the message for it's adoption so they have more control over their lives to aim for quality of life for progeny rather than quantity of progeny. population pressures and consumption levels indicate that we have crossed carrying capacity. more lives will be lost tragically and painfully when the statistical guarantee of depopulation begins with scarcity of resources that will first start to dwindle and then disappear due to increased human activity and then amplified consumption patterns.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  > become a vegetarian Start a vegan fast food company. Don't advertise it as vegan, just make the food tasty and cheap.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    Exactly!! This!! I say this all the time too! The vegan labeling is the death of many a food startup that thinks the branding is going to bring them more consumers. It is exclusionary and drives consumers away.
UK-Al05 6y ago
Other than getting a job in green technologies, simply being a green consumer is an additional benefit(Reduce meat, low carbon transport). Maybe invest in green funds? Make me being green the standard approach. Vote for parties that take climate change seriously. I think that's the most a normal individual can do.
- jnxx 6y ago
  I do not think this is enough. And it is not adequate. And more than all, it is not a dignified way to live while present fellow humans and future generations are and will be suffering from the consequences of our lack of action. It is like we live in a space station which is on fire, only at a larger time scale. We all need to fight, one way or another, for our collective survival.
CharlesMerriam2 6y ago
Bill Gates has a podcast recently talking about this: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Podcast/Is-it-too-late-to-stop-climate-change https://www.gatesnotes.com/Podcast/Is-it-too-late-to-stop-cl... Also, the book "Ministry For The Future" is an SF take pulling together ideas people have on climate change. The actual prose may make you throw the book at the wall. You can, if you wish, push information forward. For example, having free interfaces to solar panels, cheap sun following controls, software to control car charging for cheap times, software to use a car as a 'peak load' battery, data modelling to show Hawaii why tourism is better with only electrics, software to create micro cargo ships with solar power, cleaning up the automated kite power generators that were open sourced, and the like. You have more power than you expect.
jnxx 6y ago
Broadly, I see three possible domains of activity: - For technological development * anything that explores additional renewable Energy sources (like the Pelamis Wave Energy converter). AS it is a tricky and multi-fac3eted problem, there is infinite room for improvement and better technologies. They will probably not be economical quickly but they do have the potential to average-out wind and solar fluctuations cheaper than with battery technology, because ocean waves for example can be harvested later and far away from their origin. here an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_Wave_Energy_Converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_Wave_Energy_Converter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3-SXFtPYe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3-SXFtPYe0 * a lot of things which are related to energy management. For example, there exist already commercial energy weather forecasts which predict the generation by wind and solar energy for about the next 48 hours, and help to make balancing energy cheaper because the quickest sources are the most expensive * anything which makes energy consumption, especially heat and cooling, more adaptable to renewable production. For example, cold houses can be cooled at times of the day where is a lot of wind energy, and can use up that reservoir when there is less cheap electricity available. This principle can also be used in the household, e.g. in washing machines which wait for an excess of solar energy. - the second domain I think is the political realm - climate change is a political problem and it will take a lot of political pressure to do something about it. There can be interesting sub-task for technical people. For example, online carbon footprint calculators can help people to make better decisions and estimate quantitatively what impact their life-style has (and this can, in turn, also inform political processes. A good one, but specific for Germany, is this one: https://uba.co2-rechner.de/en_GB/ https://uba.co2-rechner.de/en_GB/ - The third realm I think of is to fight misinformation on climate change and climate-saving policies. There are organized campaigns which work nearly like information warfare, against the interests of all of humanity. There are some organizations which work to uncover anti-climate lobbying, like desmog.org: https://www.desmog.co.uk/55-tufton-street https://www.desmog.co.uk/55-tufton-street Similar and often interreolated to pro-brexit think tanks and lobbying groups, it is not a far stretch to guess that they will use similar tactics. Now, for Brexit, a few citizen-invastigators have done a lot of work do uncover misinformation campaigns. A few examples: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great... https://bylinetimes.com/author/jamespatrick/ https://bylinetimes.com/author/jamespatrick/ https://bylinetimes.com/sections/fact/page/20/ https://bylinetimes.com/sections/fact/page/20/ https://bylinetimes.com/2019/11/05/the-box-set-byline-times-own-russian-interference-report/ https://bylinetimes.com/2019/11/05/the-box-set-byline-times-... https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/dec/05/police-whistleblower-inquiry-twitter https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/dec/05/police-whistleblo... https://twitter.com/search?q=%40agoodfireburns%20misinformation&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=%40agoodfireburns%20misinformat... I think what is needed is more citizen journalists / investigators which expose how misinformation about climate change is formed and spread. This can be helped by forensical techniques that, for example, detect bots in social networks and how they are coordinated. It is probably a kind of sharks basin which won't be comfortable for most people, but it is very needed that this gets exposed more.

28 points by mnbbrown 6y ago

It’s been 5 years since http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ was published. Is it still up to date? Are there other similar resources?

giantg2 6y ago

There are approximately one question like this on HN every week. The search should turn them up pretty easily.

19g 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21024358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21024358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20015037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20015037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18332012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18332012
therm0 6y ago
yet nobody complains about the endless onslaught of questions like "How does your company leverage cloud blah blah blah" and "How do I become a software developer without a compsci degree?"
- giantg2 6y ago
  I do get slightly tired of those. They seem less common than the poster's question (at least lately). However, many of those have questions fo have more specific criteria, like the individual's skills, experience, and location. Not quite as general as "what can a programmer do about climate change".
- st1x7 6y ago
  Or some version of "What are the biggest pain points in your job?" or "Which SAAS would you pay the most money for? Please only give answers that I can build by myself with the stack that I already know in an afternoon"
- meiraleal 6y ago
  yes, nobody complain, but a lot of people share link to previous discussion, just like OP did.
jnxx 6y ago
So what? It is the most important question of your times, whose outcome will likely determine the future of humanity. Far more relevant than the next JavaScript framework. And also, hard questions do have interesting answers - they are intellectual challenges as well, as they need true out-of-the-box thinking.

dragon96 6y ago

The authors of Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning spun off a forum at climatechange.ai with tons of related resources

legerdemain 6y ago

Pretty much nothing. If climate change is, in fact, caused by human activity, we are well past the point of no return. So live your life as you would, enjoy the limited time you have, care for your loved ones, eat and drive whatever pleases you, and take in all the beauty and pleasure the world has to offer! If anything, reasonable people should fight inhumane and illiberal government efforts to control human activity. To the extent that anything can or should be done about climate change, simple and natural capitalist incentive should provide ample solutions.

therm0 6y ago
>we are well past the point of no return what is this based on? if it's the most recent study from 11/12, there is a lot of debate about the validity of the model they used to arrive at that conclusion.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
This is the new denial. We have gone from “climate change doesn’t exist” to “there is nothing we can do”. It’s pathetic.
- meiraleal 6y ago
  We as society will never go back on consumerism, especially the ones wanting to support efforts to prevent climate change, unfortunately. Humans are part of nature and the way we change the climate is also nature so we will always figure out a way to live with the new earth we have.
  - chefkoch 6y ago
    > Humans are part of nature and the way we change the climate is also nature so we will always figure out a way to live with the new earth we have. So we are just relocating 100s of million people and abandon all cities in the coastlines? How does the cost of this compare to the cost of trying to solve climate change?

simonhorlick 6y ago

The climate crisis is the defining issue of our lifetimes. Solutions to this problem are unlikely to come from technology. Start organising, start protesting and demand that governments begin to take this issue seriously.

xupybd 6y ago
Technology is the only hope we have. We are increasing in number and probably couldn't feed the world without modern technology. Technology is rapidly reducing the impact that human activity has on the climate. Governments can't fix this by edict, it will need a practical solution.
- chefkoch 6y ago
  >Technology is rapidly reducing the impact that human activity has on the climate. I think it's only partially true. It really comes down to your definition of tech. But i guess your right that green tech is our only hope to keep the planet inhabitable for 8 billion people.
- tubularhells 6y ago
  Technology is the problem. You cannot fix it with more technology.
  - xupybd 6y ago
    As an example if still were to heat and cook primarily with wood fires our cities would be choked with even more smoke than they have. A counter example is cars, cars have come with new technology and as such they have increased our emissions. But they have lowered their emissions overtime. Cars will continue to get more efficient and cleaner. This is the trend the more we advance the cleaner our technology gets. However we also seem to use more and energy as we expand our numbers. There are two options, reduce our numbers or increase our efficiencies. I rather like humanity and the freedom to procreate so I put all my eggs in the efficiency basket. The only way I know that increases efficiency is to develop new technology.

d33lio 6y ago

Start a company that makes something common people desire. Invest / donate 60% of your profits to fusion energy research. Profit.

iron0013 6y ago

Work to elect politicians who will mobilize the apparatus of the state to fight climate change. It’s as simple as that.

smt88 6y ago

I'm personally working on some experiments to help combat online disinformation campaigns and algorithmic indoctrination on platforms like YouTube.

jnxx 6y ago
Great idea! You could look for desmog.co.uk, and also for the technical aspects of the work of Carole Cadwalladr (see Guadian / Observer) and James Patrick (https://twitter.com/search?q=%40agoodfireburns%20misinformation&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=%40agoodfireburns%20misinformat... ) who researched a lot about on-line disinformation.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

Understand this basic thing: Regardless of what we do (or don't), climate can and will change drastically at some point, most likely due to variables we have no control over. It's just a matter of time. It can happen now, it can happen next week, next month, next year, in the next 10 years, next 100 years, next 1000 years, next million years. They say that they know it will be in 5 years or 10 years or some made up number. But no, it's not possible to say for sure. It could very well be tomorrow. There is absolutely no way to control climate in any meaningful way by doing or not doing something as humans. Even if we did manage to identify the right variables and control it a few times does not mean we'll be able to do it every time. Environmental change will most likely wipe off our species too, just like it has done to countless other species in the past couple of billion years. Having said that, we as humans have managed to survive some big environmental changes, like the last ice age when several other species perished. Not all of us will survive but enough of us will. So, what are some of the climate catastrophes we need to protect ourselves against and are we doing enough to prepare for that? One big problem today is that most humans don't have access to energy to heat or cool their habitats artificially if the planet warms up or cools down significantly. In developed nations, this is taken for granted but poorer countries lack the infrastructure for it. Solar, wind and hydro are unreliable if say some climate catastrophe causes sun to be blocked (say because of volcanic clouds or asteroid impact or something similar) and there is no heat or light from the sun. The only good sources are fossil fuels and nuclear. Do we have infrastructure for it spread out around the world so that no matter what part of the earth the asteroid impacts, as long as it doesn't wipe off everything all at once, we can rise again? What other problems might we face climate-wise? And assuming it happens, are we prepared such that enough of us will survive? No, we're not thinking about any of that shit because the entire fucking world is hung up on "Global Warming" and "Climate Change", the PR material that CleanTech Industry in the U.S. fabricated to get tax breaks on their investments when they thought that the world was running out of oil... and moved the production to China... except China stole the technology and built upon it... while the U.S. found and perfected fracking... and now China is using the same PR infrastructure to promote selling solar fucking panels and wind turbines... while using their pawns in politics to try to stop fracking and natural gas projects in the U.S. because it hurts Chinese energy business. Get a grip. Get a job in the industry. They need technologists in energy industry too. Read a book or two and widen your view of the subject. How about "The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America" by Peter Zeihan? Or just to see another side of it, how about "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" by Alex Epstein? Anything but repeating this PR nonsense over and over again.

runawaybottle 6y ago

Create a relocation Airbnb app for the millions that will be displaced once we hit 2-4 degree Celsius increase in global temperature. Also, charity apps for more frequent hurricanes destroying cities.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

become a vegetarian. develop tech for ag to automate ag and to make it more efficient...both indoors and outdoors. what we lack most is ag robotics and automation as labour saving tech in food farms and fields. solar energy tech to power our automation instead of batteries and fossil fuels. rewild and reforest most of the earth's surface. give people viable methods of contraception and spread the message for it's adoption so they have more control over their lives to aim for quality of life for progeny rather than quantity of progeny. population pressures and consumption levels indicate that we have crossed carrying capacity. more lives will be lost tragically and painfully when the statistical guarantee of depopulation begins with scarcity of resources that will first start to dwindle and then disappear due to increased human activity and then amplified consumption patterns.

Viliam1234 6y ago
> become a vegetarian Start a vegan fast food company. Don't advertise it as vegan, just make the food tasty and cheap.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Exactly!! This!! I say this all the time too! The vegan labeling is the death of many a food startup that thinks the branding is going to bring them more consumers. It is exclusionary and drives consumers away.

UK-Al05 6y ago

Other than getting a job in green technologies, simply being a green consumer is an additional benefit(Reduce meat, low carbon transport). Maybe invest in green funds? Make me being green the standard approach. Vote for parties that take climate change seriously. I think that's the most a normal individual can do.

jnxx 6y ago
I do not think this is enough. And it is not adequate. And more than all, it is not a dignified way to live while present fellow humans and future generations are and will be suffering from the consequences of our lack of action. It is like we live in a space station which is on fire, only at a larger time scale. We all need to fight, one way or another, for our collective survival.

CharlesMerriam2 6y ago

Bill Gates has a podcast recently talking about this: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Podcast/Is-it-too-late-to-stop-climate-change https://www.gatesnotes.com/Podcast/Is-it-too-late-to-stop-cl... Also, the book "Ministry For The Future" is an SF take pulling together ideas people have on climate change. The actual prose may make you throw the book at the wall. You can, if you wish, push information forward. For example, having free interfaces to solar panels, cheap sun following controls, software to control car charging for cheap times, software to use a car as a 'peak load' battery, data modelling to show Hawaii why tourism is better with only electrics, software to create micro cargo ships with solar power, cleaning up the automated kite power generators that were open sourced, and the like. You have more power than you expect.

jnxx 6y ago

Broadly, I see three possible domains of activity: - For technological development * anything that explores additional renewable Energy sources (like the Pelamis Wave Energy converter). AS it is a tricky and multi-fac3eted problem, there is infinite room for improvement and better technologies. They will probably not be economical quickly but they do have the potential to average-out wind and solar fluctuations cheaper than with battery technology, because ocean waves for example can be harvested later and far away from their origin. here an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_Wave_Energy_Converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_Wave_Energy_Converter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3-SXFtPYe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3-SXFtPYe0 * a lot of things which are related to energy management. For example, there exist already commercial energy weather forecasts which predict the generation by wind and solar energy for about the next 48 hours, and help to make balancing energy cheaper because the quickest sources are the most expensive * anything which makes energy consumption, especially heat and cooling, more adaptable to renewable production. For example, cold houses can be cooled at times of the day where is a lot of wind energy, and can use up that reservoir when there is less cheap electricity available. This principle can also be used in the household, e.g. in washing machines which wait for an excess of solar energy. - the second domain I think is the political realm - climate change is a political problem and it will take a lot of political pressure to do something about it. There can be interesting sub-task for technical people. For example, online carbon footprint calculators can help people to make better decisions and estimate quantitatively what impact their life-style has (and this can, in turn, also inform political processes. A good one, but specific for Germany, is this one: https://uba.co2-rechner.de/en_GB/ https://uba.co2-rechner.de/en_GB/ - The third realm I think of is to fight misinformation on climate change and climate-saving policies. There are organized campaigns which work nearly like information warfare, against the interests of all of humanity. There are some organizations which work to uncover anti-climate lobbying, like desmog.org: https://www.desmog.co.uk/55-tufton-street https://www.desmog.co.uk/55-tufton-street Similar and often interreolated to pro-brexit think tanks and lobbying groups, it is not a far stretch to guess that they will use similar tactics. Now, for Brexit, a few citizen-invastigators have done a lot of work do uncover misinformation campaigns. A few examples: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great... https://bylinetimes.com/author/jamespatrick/ https://bylinetimes.com/author/jamespatrick/ https://bylinetimes.com/sections/fact/page/20/ https://bylinetimes.com/sections/fact/page/20/ https://bylinetimes.com/2019/11/05/the-box-set-byline-times-own-russian-interference-report/ https://bylinetimes.com/2019/11/05/the-box-set-byline-times-... https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/dec/05/police-whistleblower-inquiry-twitter https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/dec/05/police-whistleblo... https://twitter.com/search?q=%40agoodfireburns%20misinformation&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=%40agoodfireburns%20misinformat... I think what is needed is more citizen journalists / investigators which expose how misinformation about climate change is formed and spread. This can be helped by forensical techniques that, for example, detect bots in social networks and how they are coordinated. It is probably a kind of sharks basin which won't be comfortable for most people, but it is very needed that this gets exposed more.