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Comment by 2T1Qka0rEiPr | Hacker News Reader

I know the intended purpose of this sentence is that it shocks, but I'm not sure I'm in a position to evaluate "5 Hiroshima bombs" any more clearly than if it were presented as a metric (joules in this case) I seldom use. Would it be wrong to call it click-baity? "2019 - Yet Another Year of Record-Setting Ocean Warming" would be equally alarming to me, but I'd also understand what it means.

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In this era it is important that messages with political intent not be presented as one argument, but be presented in every way possible. In regards to climate change specifically; we need the articles with reasonable headlines, we need the articles with headlines dripping in hyperbole, we need the headlines saying it’s catastrophic, we need the headlines saying it’s sensible and the right calm choice to make these changes now. Everyone’s participation is needed to deal with this threat, and so every possible approach and argument can be deployed in the effort without diminishing any other.

> Everyone’s participation is needed to deal with this threat, and so every possible approach and argument can be deployed in the effort without diminishing any other.

Well, unless some of the people notice the messages intended for the other people.

"It's important to tell everyone exactly the lies that will make them do what I want" is a really uncompelling pitch.

Can you clarify why you mention the word "Lie" ?

I wonder how many people regularly consume news outside of their filter bubble.

It’s not what I want, but what we all need. The nice aspect of climate change is that it obliterates our tired notions of self-interest

It also exposes the self-interest of those who oppose reasonable action to a) discover whats going on and b) do something about it.

Somehow it seems unlikely that what we all need is a total collapse of journalistic integrity. The smart answer to hyperbole and alarmism is distrust, if you advocate a dishonest approach then people are right to doubt your cause.

The planet has naturally fluctuated in temperatures throughout its entire existence the rocks show us this. there's been several Extinction events due to temperature fluctuations even if humans are increasing the temperature it was going to happen without us anyways.

yes, but we have accelerated the pace to a degree that risks being too rapid for us to adjust to without devastating suffering.

Neither the hiroshima bombs nor the joules would be match telling for me. Calories might give me a small idea for non salted water at best. I'm not used to this scale and magnitude.

Every HN submission from a real news source (newspaper, CNN, whatever) will always have at least one commenter complaining about the link title being click-baity, as if they've never before seen or heard of what is known as a "headline."

It's getting tiresome.

To be fair, the HN guidelines [1] allow/require that clickbaity titles be de-baited, regardless of the source.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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