Europe’s heat wave moves north | Hacker News Reader

Europe’s heat wave moves north

nsidc.org

60 pointsjesperlang23 comments

Only yesterday I had a "discussion" with someone online who was trying to explain to me that climate change is fake concept made to charge more money for everything through environmental regulations. I kept sending him more and more data proving that no, we really really are screwed, but eventually I just got called an eco-cuck(whatever that even means) who believes made up research. And no, this was not the first time I had a similar conversation with people.

I don't know, I just don't have a strength to do this anymore. Humanity is clearly in danger and yet there is a very vocal minority that keeps pretending none of this is happening and actively attacks anyone who says otherwise. I just feel like giving up on even trying anymore.

Don't engage them, that just gives them a platform

I'd argue that if you don't engage them then that just bolsters them. If you go on Facebook and look at any post about this there will be hundreds if not thousands of comments spewing nonsense about climate change being fake. They all do that because they see other people doing it and absolutely no one challenging them. They feel like everyone is on their side because....that's what it looks like.

> I just feel like giving up on even trying anymore.

Please don’t. Consider that your audience is not a vocal minority (you can pretty much ignore them), but silent majority. Majority of Americans actually believe in man-made climate change (google gallup polls), they just don’t have it at the top of their priority list.

This has been a problem for people already thousands of years ago. Stoicism is one way to deal with it. https://zenpencils.com/comic/aurelius/

well, what are you gonna do about the global warming?

convince people to stop using their IPhones, stop using your PC, stop driving cars, stop using electricity. Bam, problem solved. Or try to overthrow corporations with big carbon monoxide signatures. Yeah, I didn't think so.

It is an immensely complex problem that has no easy solution, and people talking about it is not gonna do much, or is it??

If you believe in Capitalism:

Step 1: Assign a cost for CO2 emissions.

Step 2: Let the market deal with the costs.

Step 3: Asses if the cost was at the right amount. Adjust if necessary and repeat.

If you don't believe in Capitalism:

Step 1: Change the governmental system to a system of your liking.

Step 2: Find a way in this new system to control what companies do. e.g. state planned economics, regulations, etc.

Best control is no control. Taoist anarchy is my political system of choice.

Humanity is clearly in danger and yet there is a very vocal minority that keeps pretending none of this is happening

You'll get cranks and opponents on everything. The real problem is the overwhelming majority of people who think "OK, sure, bad stuff is happening, but what impact do my simple efforts make to improve it? Meh."

Platitudes about how the world will be destroyed will not sway those people to act en masse - there needs to be some other element to it, but what? (I personally lean towards the eventual technological solutions, since technology has dug us out of many a hole before.)

I am sorry, but believing in a magic technological breakthrough at this stage is just another form of denial, and another version of "but what impact do I make. Meh, I'll just sit and wait for the technological solution".

The problem is that all the deniers are pushing us further down the road where the magical technological breakthrough is really the only option we have left.

No, denial is asserting that something is not happening or does not exist. I posit that the majority of the world is broadly inactive over climate change but acknowledges and observes its effects.

I do broadly think that only a technological or government-driven solution is viable, however, because unless everyone does something significant, the needle won't move, and everyone won't do something significant without being forced or radically assisted.

I do agree with you. The question is how do we get there. The government won't act by itself. It won't act unless we the people demand it. What gives me hope is that we might not need to wait for the majority vote. Apparently it only takes 3.5% of the population to get serious about something to effect change - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

So, let's get out of our technology bubble, away from keyboard, and let's go do something.

I'll probably get downvoted to the ground but somebody needs to say it. The problem is not with climate change deniers. Most people agree that climate change is happening. That's hard to deny when it's all around you. The million dollar question is whether and to what degree is human-made. And that's where science messed up big time. It is scientific bodies that have chipped away their credibility with their malpractices. Reproducibility crisis and flu-scares just to mention a few that come to mind. So - given that the authoritative voices in the matter seem all too often not to practice science but rather a variant of "research" with a lot of strings attached - then it is no wonder that people choose to not trust them at all. Enter hard-core climate change deniers, anti-vaccination and what have you.

> The million dollar question is whether and to what degree is human-made.

This is just another form of denial.

I believe that most of what believe about our climate has been pushed by "researchers" operating based on the attached strings, going back to the mid to late 80's, and I also believe that things are much worse than anyone thinks.

The earth and climate was operating in a very delicate balance, and humans disrupted the balance starting with the industrial revolution. Humans kept disrupting the balance until the changes we've wrought pushed the earth and climate past another tipping point, a tipping point where the earth and climate started operating independently of human greenhouse gas output. Which is where we stand today. Human output isn't helping, but we've gone past a point where eliminating our output will bring the system back into balance. The earth itself is now driving the climate changes, not humans.

The earth and climate have 3 very large and powerful positive feedback loops running, warming oceans, thawing permafrost and melting glaciers, and the resource driving all three feedback loops are greenhouse gases. The oceans, permafrost and glaciers harbor massive amounts of greenhouse gases, and typically positive feedback loops don't stop until they run out of resources, and I believe it's true for the 3 I've outlined.

Hubris got us here, "oh, how can humans disrupt the earth and climate, it's so massive, everything will be fine." Back in the day I got labeled as a tree hugging crazy hippy, basically by everyone.

Hubris still driving us, "if we reduce our output just a little bit we can completely change the direction of the earth and climate, this massive system" Today I'm labeled as climate change denier, because I don't think we can fix things, and I'm still labeled as crazy.

Million dollar question to whom? Randoms in the street and darker corners of the net perhaps, but as far as the science is concerned, it's settled. The most quickly accessible page I know:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo...

More data, and reference to IPCC, who consistently err on the conservative side, over the years:

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...

https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

So where is the controversy?

I'm being very specific in what has gone wrong and it has nothing to do with the climate. Hitting me with a ton of links that have nothing to do with my main argument is irrelevant. Downvoting also does nothing more than proving my point further. Science is little more than another papacy to the eyes of many and public discourse is slightly better than a Mad-Max pit. Under these conditions I regret that I even bothered. Good luck resolving this.

> I'm being very specific in what has gone wrong and it has nothing to do with the climate

I don't see any argument or proof there apart of "scientists lie"

...scientific bodies that have chipped away their credibility...

I don't understand why it is so hard to get my message across. Perhaps it's my English (not a native speaker) or maybe the crowd in here finds it very hard to look the sorry state of science atm mostly because they feel invested in it one way or another.

> ..scientific bodies that have chipped away their credibility...

How? Examples

https://i.imgur.com/KOCTrVV.jpg

> The million dollar question is whether and to what degree is human-made

What part are you struggling with, that CO2 causes warming or that the CO2 is produced by humans? Because the evidence for both is about as solid as something gets in science.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com