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Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

True, but I don't think this invalidates OP's point. Nuclear disasters are scary in a different way.

They're scary in the same way that plane crashes are scary. Make the news and get into dramatic TV shows and cause people to be irrationally afraid of a virtually non-existent threat.

I don't know.. poisoning the very air we breathe sounds pretty scary to me, and we're doing it in an immense scale right now

Climate change due to CO2 emissions is not a form of poisoning. Air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year.

Fossil-fuels powerplants produce surprisingly low air pollution due to all required by law filters, technologies etc.

…in the US / EU.

Increasing the CO2 concentration in the air we breathe, even by the relatively small amount caused by burning fossil fuels, has been shown to lower human cognitive function. Does that count as poisoning?

(Source: it's discussed in the book The Uninhabitable Earth, although I don't have a copy to hand so can't find the exact citations.)

> Increasing the CO2 concentration in the air we breathe, even by the relatively small amount caused by burning fossil fuels, has been shown to lower human cognitive function. Does that count as poisoning?

Very minor cognitive impairment levels can happen in worst-case scenario in 2100 and assuming current increase of CO2 concentration over time, it shouldn't happen before 2300.

Don’t believe everything you read. Astronauts and submariners function in cognitively demanding jobs at an order of magnitude higher CO2 concentration than the Earth’s atmosphere for months on end.

Nuclear power is scary in a superficial way, while pretty much all other fuels are scary in a deeper and more impactful way

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