9 ms·

Tried to stir HN crowd but failed miserably (IPCC announcement)

30 points by couchnaut 12y ago

Robadob 12y ago
Such an issue is hard to affect on a personal scale, perhaps this is part of the reason for the indifference? If there isn't anything I can personally do to resolve it and it's a slow barely visible change, I'll sit quietly and hope for some of the worlds governments to fund a viable solution.
- couchnaut 12y ago
  That's a good explanation indeed. But then again that applies to almost anything of a political nature.
- slvv 12y ago
  I totally agree. Of course climate change and its newly announced irreversability is alarming. It's really hard, though, to figure out what immediate, effective action one can take.
ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
You have to include a provocative title that excites the newer HN members. Rename the article "How race/gender/class sees irreversible climate change" and re-submit it.
- thenmar 12y ago
  I think this is a joke but I don't get it... could you explain please?
  - forgottenpass 12y ago
    Hacker News is not news nor for hackers, it's a place that (among other things) likes to bikeshed social issues popular in bay area tech circles.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - dang 12y ago
      This comment seems guilty of most of what it's complaining about. The HN community is pretty evenly divided. People who strongly favor one ideology routinely imagine that HN favors the opposite one. They can't be right, though, because their various complaints are contradictory. I think it's because the ideological mind feels surrounded by enemies. When it sees something that it agrees with getting downvoted, or something it disagrees with getting upvoted, it feels aggrieved and jumps to a conclusion of general bias. It's true that comment quality has declined, but not because there's a dominant ideology. It's because larger groups are stupider.
    - couchnaut 12y ago
      Interesting. The argument in the first paragraph: HN is getting extremely left-wing liberal The examples in the second paragraph that are supporting the argument: cops protecting corrupt cops, the Vatican protecting pedophiles, etc The interesting part is the (unconscious?) connection of left wings with corrupt cops and Catholic paedophiles. Wow, even right-wing propaganda in HN is on a whole different level. PS: Don't worry - it's a site built around entrepreneurship - aka free market ideology. It cannot get extremely left-wing no matter what.
      - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
        Nice try. But it was just an example of how groups protect themselves. Cops and Catholics are good people who protected a more corrupt version of themselves within their group. I compared Liberals with Cops and Catholics. Interesting seeing how you're trying to twist the meaning of my words. Second, I'm not right-wing nor is "critisizing extremeist liberalism" right-wing propaganda. The real propaganda is you assuming "the other side is attacking" when someone constructively criticizes a group you belong to. Third, "It cannot get extremely left-wing no matter what." you obviously know nothing about Reddit and Digg and what happened there. You are the perfect example of what I was talking about. Groups that protect the extremist sub groups within them. Denial, is almost always the first defensive method used to prevent discussion over what might be wrong with a group.
rossng 12y ago
Part of your problem is probably that it's not really news. Pretty much everyone knows that climate change is happening and that we should be doing something about it (not that that translates to much action). The IPCC keep publishing reports like this mainly in an effort win over 'skeptics'.
- couchnaut 12y ago
  That's exactly the point (which I obviously failed to get through). The news (at least to me) is that we're past the tipping points - it is irreversible now. Plus it is not (probably) just about droughts, weird weather and rising sea levels but rather about Earth becoming like Venus.
  - glenra 12y ago
    >The news (at least to me) is that we're past the tipping points - it is irreversible now. To say "it's irreversible now" is to imply there was ever a point that it wasn't, a point at which there was something we could have done to change trends at this scale. The links you gave don't really suggest this to be the case. BTW, David Suzuki is a fearmonger with a long history of making ridiculous unscientific doomsday claims. For instance, he claimed that a second Fukushima disaster would force evacuation of the west coast of America: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01/20/david-suzuki-regrets-claim-that-another-fukushima-disaster-would-require-mass-evacuations-in-north-america/ http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01/20/david-suzuki-regrets... So if you really want to claim the earth is likely to be "uninhabitable in only some decades" you probably want to use somebody else as a source.
    - couchnaut 12y ago
      Of course there was a point that this was not irreversible. That's what the notion of "tipping point" implies. The links were selected somewhat in a haste but nevertheless you can come up with your own sources easily. Most of the "alarmists" have been warning and calling to action for decades now. For various reasons I had not read any of them for the past years which is why the irreversibility was news to me.
aaronem 12y ago
Those who are willing to take IPCC at its word need no convincing. Those who are not so willing also need no convincing. By now there's no third category of meaningful size, and everyone on both sides is sick and tired of arguing over it.
hitchhiker999 12y ago
Depending on who you ask: - Most major governments are ineffective, if not corrupt. - We put almost no resources into educating our children. - It's pretty clear we've broken the planet (or are breaking it fast) - The masses are confused, and feel helpless. - The world economy appears to have been subjugated by central banks. - Our food is progressively getting more toxic. - Corporations (in general) have scraped together too much power. - It's 2014 - this is not the world we had dreamed of, it's lame, inefficient and generally run by emotionally immature, tiresome, short sighted people. - Many people have given up at some level. OP your point is valid, but I think (in some way) some of us are just thinking 'f-- it, let it roll, we deserve it' Disclaimer: I have not given up, I think things will get better - perhaps naive
- couchnaut 12y ago
  Cannot disagree with any of the answers. Yet, it seems like this is one of the problems that has to be dealt with, no matter how hard or meaningless that may seem. Then again if I accept the inevitability of it all then not much of everyday normalcy is making any sense.
glenra 12y ago
The IPCC's job is basically to find or invent ways to claim the sky is falling and continually declare "it's worse than we thought" regardless of what the data says. They've been doing this for long enough that by now most sensible people have tuned out. In context, the most recent IPCC reports confirm earlier impressions that the likely costs of climate change are relatively small compared to the benefits of economic growth over the same period whereas the cost of doing much about climate change now is much larger than the cost of doing nothing. So even if we chose to get "stirred", what would you have us do about it? Lomborg gives a few relevant numbers here: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-says-that-the-un-climate-panel-s-latest-report-tells-a-story-that-politicians-would-prefer-to-ignore http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-sa...
- couchnaut 12y ago
  Most researchers say that actually IPCC is rather conservative in its views not the other way around. First time I hear about Lomborg. Will read later.
  - glenra 12y ago
    > Most researchers say that actually IPCC is rather conservative in its views not the other way around. Sure, if you're listening to people like David Suzuki you'd have that impression. But on the other side there are people like Chris Landsea - here was his resignation letter from the IPCC: http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy... The IPCC's charter is to tell us about risks related to climate change. Not the benefits. If there weren't any risks or we were fully informed about them, the IPCC would have no institutional reason to continue to exist. So naturally it focuses on the latest big scary "we just noticed THIS risk!" stories and puts much less emphasis on "it turns out we were wrong about THAT risk!" stories. For all we know, each new report could be exactly the same as the last one in terms of the net overall danger documented and it would still look like things were "getting worse", because areas where things are "getting better" generally aren't mentioned or are soft-pedaled. For instance, the IPCC once tried to claim a high certainty that there'd be more hurricanes in the future due to climate change (see Landsea's letter linked above), but now they either don't make such claims or assign them a much lower certainty level. The IPCC once claimed Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035 ( http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-himalayan-glaciers-mistake http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-hima... ); that turned out to be a mistaken claim based on grey literature. If there were some sort of a rundown in each report listing all the ways things "are worse" AND all the ways things "are better" since the last one it'd be easy to keep score. But there isn't, and the summaries and press releases emphasize any mentioned "this is worse" stories because bad news travels fast. Suzuki complains that the IPCC report doesn't focus on the loss of arctic sea ice, but if they DID mention sea ice, they might have to mention that overall sea ice levels worldwide are currently above the long-term (30 year) average because we've gained more sea ice cover in the antarctic than we've lost in the arctic. And so on. (Given a big, complicated planet you can always find SOME areas or trends that seem to be "getting worse" but that doesn't mean throwing them - and only them - into the mix would make the report more accurate.)

30 points by couchnaut 12y ago

Such an issue is hard to affect on a personal scale, perhaps this is part of the reason for the indifference? If there isn't anything I can personally do to resolve it and it's a slow barely visible change, I'll sit quietly and hope for some of the worlds governments to fund a viable solution.

couchnaut 12y ago
That's a good explanation indeed. But then again that applies to almost anything of a political nature.
slvv 12y ago
I totally agree. Of course climate change and its newly announced irreversability is alarming. It's really hard, though, to figure out what immediate, effective action one can take.

ChrisNorstrom 12y ago

You have to include a provocative title that excites the newer HN members. Rename the article "How race/gender/class sees irreversible climate change" and re-submit it.

thenmar 12y ago
I think this is a joke but I don't get it... could you explain please?
- forgottenpass 12y ago
  Hacker News is not news nor for hackers, it's a place that (among other things) likes to bikeshed social issues popular in bay area tech circles.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - dang 12y ago
    This comment seems guilty of most of what it's complaining about. The HN community is pretty evenly divided. People who strongly favor one ideology routinely imagine that HN favors the opposite one. They can't be right, though, because their various complaints are contradictory. I think it's because the ideological mind feels surrounded by enemies. When it sees something that it agrees with getting downvoted, or something it disagrees with getting upvoted, it feels aggrieved and jumps to a conclusion of general bias. It's true that comment quality has declined, but not because there's a dominant ideology. It's because larger groups are stupider.
  - couchnaut 12y ago
    Interesting. The argument in the first paragraph: HN is getting extremely left-wing liberal The examples in the second paragraph that are supporting the argument: cops protecting corrupt cops, the Vatican protecting pedophiles, etc The interesting part is the (unconscious?) connection of left wings with corrupt cops and Catholic paedophiles. Wow, even right-wing propaganda in HN is on a whole different level. PS: Don't worry - it's a site built around entrepreneurship - aka free market ideology. It cannot get extremely left-wing no matter what.
    - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
      Nice try. But it was just an example of how groups protect themselves. Cops and Catholics are good people who protected a more corrupt version of themselves within their group. I compared Liberals with Cops and Catholics. Interesting seeing how you're trying to twist the meaning of my words. Second, I'm not right-wing nor is "critisizing extremeist liberalism" right-wing propaganda. The real propaganda is you assuming "the other side is attacking" when someone constructively criticizes a group you belong to. Third, "It cannot get extremely left-wing no matter what." you obviously know nothing about Reddit and Digg and what happened there. You are the perfect example of what I was talking about. Groups that protect the extremist sub groups within them. Denial, is almost always the first defensive method used to prevent discussion over what might be wrong with a group.

rossng 12y ago

Part of your problem is probably that it's not really news. Pretty much everyone knows that climate change is happening and that we should be doing something about it (not that that translates to much action). The IPCC keep publishing reports like this mainly in an effort win over 'skeptics'.

couchnaut 12y ago
That's exactly the point (which I obviously failed to get through). The news (at least to me) is that we're past the tipping points - it is irreversible now. Plus it is not (probably) just about droughts, weird weather and rising sea levels but rather about Earth becoming like Venus.
- glenra 12y ago
  >The news (at least to me) is that we're past the tipping points - it is irreversible now. To say "it's irreversible now" is to imply there was ever a point that it wasn't, a point at which there was something we could have done to change trends at this scale. The links you gave don't really suggest this to be the case. BTW, David Suzuki is a fearmonger with a long history of making ridiculous unscientific doomsday claims. For instance, he claimed that a second Fukushima disaster would force evacuation of the west coast of America: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01/20/david-suzuki-regrets-claim-that-another-fukushima-disaster-would-require-mass-evacuations-in-north-america/ http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01/20/david-suzuki-regrets... So if you really want to claim the earth is likely to be "uninhabitable in only some decades" you probably want to use somebody else as a source.
  - couchnaut 12y ago
    Of course there was a point that this was not irreversible. That's what the notion of "tipping point" implies. The links were selected somewhat in a haste but nevertheless you can come up with your own sources easily. Most of the "alarmists" have been warning and calling to action for decades now. For various reasons I had not read any of them for the past years which is why the irreversibility was news to me.

aaronem 12y ago

Those who are willing to take IPCC at its word need no convincing. Those who are not so willing also need no convincing. By now there's no third category of meaningful size, and everyone on both sides is sick and tired of arguing over it.

hitchhiker999 12y ago

Depending on who you ask: - Most major governments are ineffective, if not corrupt. - We put almost no resources into educating our children. - It's pretty clear we've broken the planet (or are breaking it fast) - The masses are confused, and feel helpless. - The world economy appears to have been subjugated by central banks. - Our food is progressively getting more toxic. - Corporations (in general) have scraped together too much power. - It's 2014 - this is not the world we had dreamed of, it's lame, inefficient and generally run by emotionally immature, tiresome, short sighted people. - Many people have given up at some level. OP your point is valid, but I think (in some way) some of us are just thinking 'f-- it, let it roll, we deserve it' Disclaimer: I have not given up, I think things will get better - perhaps naive

couchnaut 12y ago
Cannot disagree with any of the answers. Yet, it seems like this is one of the problems that has to be dealt with, no matter how hard or meaningless that may seem. Then again if I accept the inevitability of it all then not much of everyday normalcy is making any sense.

glenra 12y ago

The IPCC's job is basically to find or invent ways to claim the sky is falling and continually declare "it's worse than we thought" regardless of what the data says. They've been doing this for long enough that by now most sensible people have tuned out. In context, the most recent IPCC reports confirm earlier impressions that the likely costs of climate change are relatively small compared to the benefits of economic growth over the same period whereas the cost of doing much about climate change now is much larger than the cost of doing nothing. So even if we chose to get "stirred", what would you have us do about it? Lomborg gives a few relevant numbers here: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-says-that-the-un-climate-panel-s-latest-report-tells-a-story-that-politicians-would-prefer-to-ignore http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-sa...

couchnaut 12y ago
Most researchers say that actually IPCC is rather conservative in its views not the other way around. First time I hear about Lomborg. Will read later.
- glenra 12y ago
  > Most researchers say that actually IPCC is rather conservative in its views not the other way around. Sure, if you're listening to people like David Suzuki you'd have that impression. But on the other side there are people like Chris Landsea - here was his resignation letter from the IPCC: http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy... The IPCC's charter is to tell us about risks related to climate change. Not the benefits. If there weren't any risks or we were fully informed about them, the IPCC would have no institutional reason to continue to exist. So naturally it focuses on the latest big scary "we just noticed THIS risk!" stories and puts much less emphasis on "it turns out we were wrong about THAT risk!" stories. For all we know, each new report could be exactly the same as the last one in terms of the net overall danger documented and it would still look like things were "getting worse", because areas where things are "getting better" generally aren't mentioned or are soft-pedaled. For instance, the IPCC once tried to claim a high certainty that there'd be more hurricanes in the future due to climate change (see Landsea's letter linked above), but now they either don't make such claims or assign them a much lower certainty level. The IPCC once claimed Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035 ( http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-himalayan-glaciers-mistake http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-hima... ); that turned out to be a mistaken claim based on grey literature. If there were some sort of a rundown in each report listing all the ways things "are worse" AND all the ways things "are better" since the last one it'd be easy to keep score. But there isn't, and the summaries and press releases emphasize any mentioned "this is worse" stories because bad news travels fast. Suzuki complains that the IPCC report doesn't focus on the loss of arctic sea ice, but if they DID mention sea ice, they might have to mention that overall sea ice levels worldwide are currently above the long-term (30 year) average because we've gained more sea ice cover in the antarctic than we've lost in the arctic. And so on. (Given a big, complicated planet you can always find SOME areas or trends that seem to be "getting worse" but that doesn't mean throwing them - and only them - into the mix would make the report more accurate.)