7 ms·

The Wall Street Journal is reporting climate change now. The debate is over. Can anyone tell me why debate at any level is still happening, and why drastic me

• 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Almost nobody debates that human accelerated climate change is real, the debate is mostly around what to do about it. Plan of action and implementation details.
  • test098 3y ago
    you can see examples of climate denial right here on HN. here's some from the past month (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=climate&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...): "Climate change is overhyped in my view" "While local climate change is always with us, the reality of global change is lacking, and the projections have been pushed out year for year over the last forty years now." "Does it really seem reasonable that our little human technology, an infinitesimal fraction of the energy at work in the Solar System is making a huge difference?" "I immediately know the article is trash the moment they start blaming global warming for how hot or cold it is today rather than broader weather patterns. The upper and lower bounds for temperature at a given time of year are far more dependent on geography. It's trivially easy to see that all this "record breaking" is just recency bias, not global warming." "Climate has been changing since earth got a climate." "I think it's unwise to constantly associate normal temperature fluctuations with any threat to civilization"
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• postalrat 3y ago
  Because there isn't a single debate settled by your comment.
• joenathanone 3y ago
  >Can anyone tell me why debate at any level is still happening Because there are people who are in denial, it's too much for them to acknowledge mentally/emotionally. There are also people with a vested interest in the status quo, and believe they can overcome/mitigate the consequences of climate change with all of the resources they are currently gathering. Just a couple of reasons, I'm sure there are more...
• jonny_eh 3y ago
  > why drastic measures are not being taken Tragedy of the commons. Even when you know the problem, and solution, you can't get ALL parties to implement it.
• treeman79 3y ago
  [flagged]
• candiddevmike 3y ago
  No one, especially the rich, wants to compromise their current standard of living or economic situation for what would be required to turn this around. So we keep on pretending this isn't happening, hoping someone can figure out a way to reverse all of this someday while maintaining the current standard of living.
  • tcfhgj 3y ago
    No one isn't true....
  • throwawayformom 3y ago
    > ...hoping someone can figure out a way to reverse all of this someday while maintaining the current standard of living. This is exactly the case of my mother and many of her peers (in their 70s, boomers). Whenever the topic comes up she'll say something to the extent of "well someone really smart will figure out a solution and fix it. I hope." It's not that any of them deny it's happening, they just think humans are smart and will figure out how to reverse the consequences of the way they lived their entire lives. I love my mom, but it's delusional to think this is a problem someone will have a single "aha" moment over.
    • hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
      Well, but do you blame her? What a person in their seventies can do to prevent the catastrophe? Probably at most they can become vegetarian and it would still have relatively low impact on global warming anyway. The tough decisions are to be taken by a few very specific people, and the rest can either support them or not. The way I see it, we haven't reached the point where such decisions would be met with unanimous support yet.
      • stouset 3y ago
        Yes, of course I (partially) blame my parents, who are also in their seventies. The science has been clear for decades. But when their generation was younger and presented with the opportunity to do something about it, they punted. It was too difficult. It will let China “win”. It’s not even happening anyway, and if it is, it’s the sun and volcanoes but not anthropogenic. Now that we’re all living in the future brought about by their political and economic choices, they’re supposed to get a pass because they’re too old to make an impact? Their generation is still the main voting bloc that prevents real change.
• deleted 3y ago
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• shrubble 3y ago
  What drastic measures would you take, that would have an effect by next summer?
• nvm0n1 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • xg15 3y ago
    Great, that's sloppy, probably sensationalist reporting. What does that have to do with science? Also what's your evidence that this is fraud and not just a mistake? Also, oddly enough, wikipedia doesn't know anything about a 1935 heat record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_in_Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_i...
    • wredue 3y ago
      Yeah. The whole “scientists do the fraud” bullshit is just annoying. Do scientists sometimes post fraudulent results and/or claims? Sure. And they also get busted by other scientists. Is this a frequently occurring thing in the grand scheme? Absolutely not. Is probably the single most studied phenomena (climate change) to ever be under scientific scrutiny since humans became humans actually just widespread fraud and conspiracy? Not a chance.
  • CJefferson 3y ago
    Perhaps, that tiny story, never discussed anywhere else as far as I can find, and not reported locally, involved a typo of some kind? Are you suggesting a massive world wide conspiracy based on that tiny single article?
    • sethrin 3y ago
      It's just your average climate liar https://tribune.com.pk/story/2370179/climate-change-deniers-use-past-heat-records-to-sow-doubt-online https://tribune.com.pk/story/2370179/climate-change-deniers-...
    • nvm0n1 3y ago
      [flagged]
  • candiddevmike 3y ago
• yongjik 3y ago
  Paraphrasing other comments I've seen: those "debaters" have leapt straight from "There isn't a climate problem" to "It's too late to do anything," bypassing the pesky "We should do something about it" stage. Expect to see those debates as long as civilization continues. :/
  • robocat 3y ago
    Classic “Yes Minister” 4 stage strategy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nb2xFvmKWRY https://youtube.com/watch?v=nb2xFvmKWRY
• Thoeu388 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • bugglebeetle 3y ago
    [flagged]
• dekhn 3y ago
  WSJ has generally started trending towards centrism/establishment (closer to NYTimes, basically)
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • frakkingcylons 3y ago
    With the exception of their editorial section, which still leans quite conservative.
  • triceratops 3y ago
    The answer to OP's question is in comments (and commenters) like this one.
• bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Because the logic of Capital accumulation empowers the current rulers of the world, while the destructive reality of its consequences does not. This, however, cannot be plainly acknowledged because it would incite people to revolt against those who impose this logic on everyone else. So, the only alternatives are to lie, dissemble, compartmentalize etc. It’s a bit like asking why did they invent all those fairy tales about the divine right of kings and why did people ever believe them? The answer is because there was no other alternative on offer until the whole order became so violently unstable as to be usurped. Most people are not anything resembling brave until their baseline survival is on the line, and the the first world is ordered in such a way to foist the worst of its consequences onto the global south.
• redm 3y ago
  To have dramatic change, you have to either have a technological breakthrough or get the entire planet to agree to make a consistent change. It's a tough sell for many geo-political reasons. Right or wrong, it's hard for developed economies to destroy their economies while China (and others) are rapidly making the problem worse. [1] Progress is being made through: "The Climate Action Tracker says that between 2015 and 2022 China's greenhouse gas emissions increased nearly 12%, while U.S. emissions declined some 5%. China's methane emissions rose about 3% from 2015 to 2021, the latest year with good data, while the U.S. cut them by 5%." [1] [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerry-china-climate-economy-xi-jinping-beijing-e50b9ef4 https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerry-china-climate-econom...
  • huijzer 3y ago
    The optimist in me believes that investments in fossil alternatives can actually be great investments. Just like what you see with car batteries (China) and EVs (US + China), the electrification of everything has some fundamental benefits and could thus provide great wealth for the innovators long-term.
• pokstad 3y ago
  Because money. Climate policy requires you to spend more of it and get less in return. Explain that to businesses and poor people.
• seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Most of the current denial around climate change now is whether humans are causing it and have the power to reverse it. On one side, there is hope that we can change our habits and lifestyles to reverse or at least slow down the effects, the other side thinks that any change by us won't help so why change at all?
• masto 3y ago
  Don't worry, the WSJ is still perfectly happy to run things like https://archive.is/VYsHY https://archive.is/VYsHY, penned by someone who also claims smoking doesn't cause cancer.
• PaulKeeble 3y ago
  One of the great lies told was that we as individuals can each individually contribute and solve this, we can't. The vast majority of CO2 production is outside of our control, we have no option about it other than to just stop doing anything at all including eating. The direct things we can control like electric vehicles and gas cooking and heating also require the alternatives to be reasonably competitive if there is still a choice. The only way to solve this has always been governments enforcing the change via the law. If CO2 emissions reflected the true cost to humanity they would be a lot less competitive. Even then this requires legislation to move us on, such as banning new petrol and diesel cars sales by 2030. Neoliberal governments have passed on doing their jobs to solve this crisis by creating a fair environment where CO2 emissions can be replaced and the consequence is a disaster.
  • asdff 3y ago
    What strange times we live in. We have plenty of technology to counter these things and understanding of these process, but whether anything happens or not depends on the fact that it offers someone an arbitrage opportunity, otherwise the technology in question might as well not exist because it won't ever be implemented.
• wvdlaan 3y ago
  During the past years I found two answers to this question that seem plausible to me. First, there are many myths about climate change that are believe by many [1]. Second, George Marshall investigated why 'we' don't take measures and wrote a book about it [2]. He found the problem is hard wired in our brains and caused by "our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe". [1] https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php [2] George Marshall - Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change
• bigfryo 3y ago
  American governments can't do anything right, why on Earth would I trust them to do something about the climate?