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Comment by GreeniFi | Hacker News Reader

On a non-subjective basis, there are many bad things going on in the world, with implications for both ourselves and our families.

A genuine question: is it access to news or content of the news that messes with our sense of wellbeing? Does “the media” upset me, or knowledge, for example that climate models appear to be more conservative than reality, upset me?

In not reading the news, are we simply happy in the way ostriches are happy when they place their heads in the sand?

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For me personally, it's the volume. If you concentrate on your local area, particularly if you live somewhere smaller than a city, there are crimes and tragedies, but even if some of them are horrible they're relatively few and far between, and can be processed mentally. If you take the entire world of 7+ billion people you could spend your entire waking hours reading about brutality, tragedy and horror from around the world and not run out. Many of us - particuiarly new addicts - have psychologies that are tuned to stories which provoke emotion, so we're drawn to those them. Until relatively recently, you wouldn't be able to get many of those stories outside of occsaional TV programmes and "World's Grisliest Murders" books. But now there's a firehose of horror that you can tap into and it's both fascinating and debilitating. I've found the only way is to do what Charles Simic's dad did, and not read it. I hope that there's some kind of a resurgence in online local journalism that's not driven by advertising, because that feels like the only thing I should read on a day-to-day basis, unless there's something of national importance going on (which, unfortunately, in these days does actually seem to be every day).

I live thousands of miles away from New York city. A few months ago I was reading about someone getting into an argument in central park. Why am I being show that? It was to provoke an emotional response out of me. They are using our emotions to manipulate us.

Or maybe the advent of easy to use and accessible recording devices is shining a light on the prejudice and abuse that people with certain characteristics have been suffering from for decades.

Those with political power in the US could conveniently turn a blind eye to the problem with plausible deniability with a he said she said excuse, but now they have to face the problem.

I think that’s an important development in the progress of my country.

You should be having an emotional response to the huge undercurrent of racism and classism pervading society.

Why? They were being quite racist towards each other. Should I get involved somehow? Other than 'be angry' what are my choices? I literally can not change what those two do to each other. I sure did not feel sympathy towards either of the two people. I see neither party doing much to help at all. I see one party who has promised to fix that exact issue and made it much worse with poor economic choices and making people think they are getting a good deal. The people of those cities have consistently voted for that. So it is what they wanted. Now they seem shocked that they have made it worse. They literally voted for it.

are you talking about the time when a white woman tried to weaponize the police on a black man?

> climate models appear to be more conservative than reality

I've read this sentence multiple times and still not sure what it means. Would you please expound?

“Conservative” here is being used to mean “marked by moderation or caution”, rather than the set of political positions called conservatism.

The poster is saying that global climate change is probably even worse than people think. Often, the reporting around climate change focuses on the best case, the average case, or what could be achieved with an immediate strong response. But the actual paths we are on seems to track some of the worse, more pessimistic cases.

I wouldn't blame the reporting... the scientists are also very conservative, because they're afraid of being labeled doom-sayers by deniers.

If they are worried about being labeled doom-sayers by deniers then they aren't very good scientists.

Or they’re worried about losing their source of income with which they feed and house themselves and their families. Because the leaders of the US have explicitly threatened them.

It's not clear to me how anyone can make a judgement about whether models are more conservative than reality. We have no ability to independently measure climate change within our tiny data point of existence. Even a decade of observing it being hotter than it was in your younger years is not any sort of indicator of climate change.

Unless you're reading the entirety of academic research yourself and able to critically judge the validity of that research (by being a climate scientist yourself) it seems like you're always depending on someone else's biased interpretation.

To clarify: not disputing climate change. Only the ability for someone to make judgement calls on whether the reporting is accurate.

There are a range of projections among climate models, and as we learn more it seems that on average the consensus models have been too optimistic.

I.e., things are even worse than we thought.

Of course, and I apologize that it was not more clearly stated. (1) climate models project changes in climate, (2) a body of evidence is emerging that climate volatility is greater in reality than predicted by those models, eg we are on track to hit 1.5 degrees of warming in 5 years time instead of 50, (3) therefore the models were too cautious or conservative in their projection of the rate of change.

Thank you. After reading a few explanations, I think the phrase was fine. I was just parsing it in a political context, as opposed to the original meaning of the word "conservative".

Where can you find up-to-date temperature readings (as up-to-date as possible)? Are there public datasets available?

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