Hey all, we need to go meta for a sec and talk about why this article doesn't belong here, and how culturally this is a step in the wrong direction for HN.

First off, this is blogspam, the original Popular Science article is a bit better. There's a reason blogspam is discouraged by the guidelines.

More importantly, this is a particularly pernicious blogspam because the selected photos (atlas, burning boat, water glass) mostly illustrate problems that have comparables right now. It excludes the smog and coal burning illustrated in Popular Science that do a better job at illustrating both pollution and the EPA's achievements.

These problems make this article a poor fit for Hacker News. I think we should be all sad to see such an intellectually empty article ranked this highly.