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Comment by DrThunder | Hacker News Reader

He forgot the 4th event - Social Contagion Resulting in Climate Sensationalism.

Can we please have a realistic discussion on climate change? I'm so sick of these "scientists" acting like we're in "Day After Tomorrow" and every normal weather event is suddenly a precursor to the Armageddon that'll take us all out in the next decade or less. You scientifically cannot look at individual weather events and determine they're climate change, that's pseudoscience.

People like this author only manage to turn rational individuals into deniers due to their over the top claims that never come true.

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> Can we please have a realistic discussion on climate change?

No we can't, because of the people who actually care about it, half are "everyone is going to be dead before your toddler goes to college unless we dismantle capitalism across the globe" and half are "humans haven't caused any warming at all and dumping trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere has zero measurable effect I bet you voted for Biden." Both are idiots, but the problem is if you're not in one of those camps, and you want to have a rational discussion about climate change, you're in such a small minority you look like the crazy one.

Even here where I'd like to think the users are generally intelligent, the thread is either jokes, apocalyptic predictions about billions of climate-migrants, or nonsense about communism.

It would be interesting to compare this trend in US politics as a whole and how it can also be applied to this specific issue (and other divisive issues like gun rights or abortion rights) if it wasn't so goddamn depressing.

If someone tells you that cigarettes are going to give you cancer the fact that you aren't dead yet isn't a good indication that they are wrong. Furthermore the climate is incredibly complex. Waiting until we are absolutely certain of the exact trajectory of our fuckery will surely result in us being too fucked to take much corrective action. Basically you are asking to much and you're wrong.

Nice strawman.

> every normal weather event

San Francisco and the PNW being covered by smoke every summer is not a normal weather event, and now it is starting on the East coast. The east and southeast is also being hit harder by hurricanes, and they are not stopping at the Gulf of Mexico any more. These are just the events people have been able to see in the US in past years and they're not normal and with ever-increasing carbon output it is undoubtedly going to get worse.

I'll take the entire northeast being covered in smoke as an "over the top" claim that just came true.

I feel like for US folks to take climate change seriously requires that climate change directly impact NYC and Washington DC so that the media and policy makers can have some lived experience.

Smoke in SF or Seattle doesn't seem to move the needle for whatever reason

I live in DC, the haze from the smoke was crazy a few days ago.

What exactly is America going to do about Canada refusing to mitigate their forests correctly?

The Australian wildfire smoke also had climatic effects on ozone when combined with Cl radicals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00700-2

Actually it is and because you decided to cover forested areas in homes that usually get burned out regularly and stop the natural fires occurring you made it WORSE.

California has ALWAYS been a dry fire ridden state. This idea that it shouldn't be getting wildfires is ridiculous.

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