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Comment by donkeyd | Hacker News Reader

> placing the blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers was absurd

Nobody is doing that, this is blatant misinformation that is being spread by interest groups that profit off Dutch farmers.

Most of the discussion around farmers over here has to do with nitrogen. As the OP mentioned, it is causing acidification of nature areas, which is negatively impacting all sorts of wildlife. It's a mostly local problem, often caused by intensive farming and is mostly unrelated to climate change.

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> Most of the discussion around farmers over here has to do with nitrogen.

Yes, and nitrogen fertilizer yields nitrous oxide which is a greenhouse gas implicated in climate change [1]. This is not just "misinformation", this is part of the reason behind the push to ban nitrogen fertilizer.

[1] https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-ch...

> this is part of the reason behind the push to ban nitrogen fertilizer

Sure, that might be true, but it is definitely blatant misinformation that Dutch farmers are being blamed for climate change. It is not part of the discussion that's currently ongoing in The Netherlands and that is purposefully being misrepresented in (mostly American) right-wing media. This needs to be clear, because the violent protests by framers in The Netherlands are being abused by foreign interest groups who frame them as protests against those farmers being blamed for climate change.

This is a real issue, because this is starting to become an actual discussion point for those who are supporting the farmers. They are, for example, asking why farmers are now targeted and airports are not, while farmers cause 88x more nitrogen emissions than flights in the Netherlands. Also, those emissions are less focused on the problem areas.

Misinformation is incredibly harmful in this discussion and therefore it's incredibly important to keep the facts straight. Otherwise all discussions and arguments will mix and there will never actually be anything done.

I admit find this response confusing.

Given that climate change is the primary reason for restricting nitrogen fertilizer, it's implicit that the farmers are contributing to climate change. Are the people claiming that the farmers are being blamed for climate change saying that the farmers are the only or primary driver for climate change? That would obviously be incorrect, but the former claim is absolutely correct.

Maybe it's not part of the conversation in the Netherlands, but I'm not seeing what's factually wrong about it. Are they actually claiming that climate change is part of the discussion in the Netherlands? If this isn't part of the conversation in the Netherlands, what exactly are they talking about?

> Are the people claiming that the farmers are being blamed for climate change saying that the farmers are the only or primary driver for climate change?

All the comments in this thread are replies to someone who seems to do exactly that by defending farmers "visiting politicians their homes with torches, threatening them and explicitly their kids, blockading highways with burning rubble, blocking highways with asbestos, using their tractors to rip out doors out of government buildings." by saying "I mean placing the blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers was absurd."

Ok, but one HN comment is not a misinformation trend throughout right wing media, per the parent comment.

Here's an example about the misinformation campaign that's happening in the US about the issues in the Netherlands:

https://youtu.be/IUGwT8irPKc

This video is full of blatant misinformation and misrepresentation. Our current discussion is not about climate change, it's about acidification and that's it. No matter how true your comments may be, it has nothing to do with the situation in the Netherlands and it continues the spread of this misinformation. Please stop, it's harmful.

Good to know, but I don't see why it's harmful. Here in Canada they're also contemplating nitrogen fertilizer bans for reasons of climate change, so it's not like this argument isn't being made.

Given that climate change is the primary reason for restricting nitrogen fertilizer

That's simply not true. The primary reason for restricting nitrogen fertilizer in NL is habitat change (i.e. it has profound effects on the habitats of native species), not climate change.

You might be right here.

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