Holding back tears, the COP26 president says he is “deeply sorry” | Hacker News Reader

Holding back tears, the COP26 president says he is “deeply sorry”

twitter.com

15 pointsmartingoodson21 comments

I find it fascinating how these conferences can't even hide their cynical uselessness[1] anymore. In the meantime at that exact conference we have countries frontally opposing nuclear power[2] – arguably one of our best shot at somehow moderating CO2 emissions while remaining practical[3] – for purely ideological reasons, and now we have to turn at China to hope for some reason. I agree, there are reasons to cry.

[1] https://www.nationalobserver.com/sites/nationalobserver.com/...

[2] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/fiv...

[3] https://archive.md/OXFKS, https://archive.md/SLoqm

Who is Alok Sharma? He is a Conservative MP and Minister in the current UK government and the COP26 president.

This page lists his voting record in Parliament:

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24902/alok_sharma/reading_...

If you just want to focus on environment issues, here's his voting record:

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24902/alok_sharma/reading_...

The language in the COP26 deal to "phase down" coal - rather than "phase out" - has come under criticism.

Support for Sharma comes from a unlikely quarter: opposition Labour MP Ed Miliband (who used to be a Shadow Environment Secretary) who says Sharma "has done an amazing job" after a deal was struck at the Glasgow summit.

As always, make up your own mind up on Sharma and the COP26 outcome.

I'm sorry, but what if anything is newsworthy or noteworthy here?

Submission is a tweet with a 16 second video saying "I'm sorry" without providing any relevant context as to what or why or what might have been preferred.

The tweet links to an upstream article with not the same video but a livestream ... presently showing flags waving in the wind, and six bullet points, of which the most salient appears to be:

"Countries express 'profound disappointment' as India and China secure last-minute watering down of coal commitment "

That links to ... the same article.

Oh ... that article seems to be a liveblog of the talks and/or session. It's still disorganised as all hell.

If anyone is compiling a textbook on how not to report news, please include this as a prime example.

Upstream: https://news.sky.com/story/cop26-sky-news-live-blog-latest-u...

Nitter alternative to Twitter: https://nitter.kavin.rocks/SkyNews/status/145960994817072333...

I don't see anything submission-worthy here. If there's a substantive source on the India/China/Coal story, please submit that.

It is ‘noteworthy’ that the President of the COP26 considers it to have been such a profound failure that he is literally crying on stage.

It would be noteworthy if Sky News had managed to provide that context in its report. They did not.

I'm not saying the fact isn't worth noting or is inappropriate on HN.

I'm saying this item is an act of gratuitous journalistic incompetence. Find a better source and submit it, please.

The UK still relies massively on gas for energy. The US still rely a lot on coal, as does Germany. Another example, iirc South Korea produces 70% of its electricity from coal.

I think Sharma should be deeply sorry for that. On the other hand, and based on the use of fossil fuels in rich countries, it does not sound realistic to me to expect that huge developing countries could stop using coal within 25 years...

It is all plain talks. Sadly, but I think is the best roundup of it all - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jamescartertoronto_climatecha...

This is a Tweet linking to a video. Surely there is a better source for why he is unhappy?

Politics is already a little off topic for HN, but politics by Twitter is just inappropriate. For all that Trump was entertaining, nothing of political substantance should be done by Tweet. They are too vague and there isn't enough space for those boring fusty details like evidence, argument and extrapolation of consequences.

Who on Earth told you that climate change mitigation was “off topic for HN”?

I posted it because it conveys how deeply f*cked the planet (and the human species) is much better than pages of analysis.

If this was anything substantive about climate change mitigation then that would be quite interesting. It isn't, it is a tweet linking to a video which is probably about some politician crying.

And you've already made a more substantial effort to explain the situation than the Tweet did.

1. That's not what roenxi said.

2. Whilst you may find that message conveyed, a number of others reading / viewing this, generally receptive to that message, and myself specifically, do not. The issue is worth a competent telling. Sky News haven't provided one.

Clearly a number of others do feel that. I wonder whether those people would also criticise the Tank Man image [1] as not ‘substantive’.

Reportage does not need to contain analysis to be effective and valid.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man

And here's how that photograph ran on that day:

https://s1.nyt.com/timesmachine/pages/1/1989/06/06/872589_36...

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/06/world/army-rift-reported-...

(I remember the event if not the image.)

Interesting thing about newspapers is that they contextualise. The protests in China had been on the front page of the Times for several days preceding this.

Though I'll say again: you're fighting for a bad submission. Wny not find an improved one. I'm more than happy to support good content.

This ‘bad submission’, despite many upvotes and significant engagement, is flagged and removed.

In favour of these submissions on the front page:

‘THOSE BULLET EFFECTS IN TERMINATOR 2 WEREN’T CGI’

‘Your Red Snapper Filet Might Have Been Caught by Drug Runners’

An absurd outcome.

Trust me, the hive mind is fickle. Its responses are hard to judge. It tneds not to take well to direct confrontation.

Don't get attached to any one post.

There a COP26 / carbon-reduction post on the front page as I write:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29217810

I've suggested several times that you find a better story to submit. My first response to this submission was to see if it might be possible to salvage a week submission by substituting the original source (see HN Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). I do this fairly regularly, emailing HN's moderators. My suggestions are usually (though not always) accepted.

But the upstream source is also weak and confused. The Tweet isn't itself an original source, which would make it a more viable contribution (see e.g., the Flexport CEO tweetstorm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28957379).

There's some resistance on HN to stories that go against a technotopian narrative. (There's also some support.) A well-formed, well-pitched story, with a constructive early discussion, stands a much better chance.

Sometimes the best way to point out the weaknesses in a question or comment is to not challenge the author directly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22132283

For a story with weak context and/or a poor headline, providing context with sympathy to the confused can be useful:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4134488

Where you disagree with a statement of fact, a citation to an authoritative source refuting or weakening the claim can be effective:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29214622

I submit fairly frequently to HN. It costs little. Upside potential is high. What succeeds ... varies tremendously, and trust me I often wish that what's ignored did better and feel that what succeeds is overly trivial. Rather than fight that, I try to see how I can succeed more with what I feel are significant and under-served topics.

And if someone else submits what I think is a good post, I'll try to benefit that, working within HN's accepted mechanisms: by scanning the new queue, upvoting quality, commenting in a constructive manner, and suggesting fixes (usually: improved title, source links) to HN mods. Occasionally I'll drop suggestions to submitters.

Again: I suspect I'm quite sympathetic to your viewpoint. The submission was low-quality, not your fault. Find a better one. Please!

Don't get vested in losing battles.

Why not fund anti-climate-change projects from welfare funds?

Presumably because those funds are being used for welfare. Let's imagine my country does just that. Let's take half of the federal Canadian Social Transfer to the provinces and spend it on something climate-y. Great.

Politically, I do not believe that the hundreds of thousands of disabled and elderly people who would find themselves starving on the streets, would be popular. Chances are it would backfire. Why cut the incomes of the poorest in the wealthy world, rather than the wealthiest in the wealthy world? $1000 means far less to me than it does to someone with an income of 1/20th of what I have.

That means climate change is not that much of an emergency. Not a top priority in terms of expenditure.

Or it means my fellow voters have their priorities wrong, (like usual). Military spending and preventative healthcare is also near the bottom here. (Or take any other example that you might consider important.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com