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Comment by awestroke | Hacker News Reader

Communicating the impending doom of man-made climate change had been done in all possible shapes and forms since the 1970s. The approach does not matter, because the truth is too uncomfortable no matter how it's worded. If non-alarmist language is used, then nobody cares. If alarmist langauage is used, people like you compare scientists to flat earthers.

Don't criticise the messengers if you don't like the message.

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You're whitewashing the past eco movements. They've been alarmist since the beginning with claims that everyone would be starving by the late 70s or that the air would be unbreathable due to smog or that the global temperature would drop drastically and on and on. It was the same alarmist bullshit that got us into this mess by advocating against nuclear power.

Warning of the problem, recognizing the problem, putting real measures in place to correct the problem is exactly what LA did to reduce smog [1]. In 1952, London had a smog event so bad that it literally killed 12,000 people [2]. That is pretty alarming, and the UK enacted clean air laws. Meanwhile, in 2013 over a third of all deaths in and around Bejing were linked to pollution (unbreathable air due to smog). Alarmists warned of the destruction of the ozone layer, but where are they now? Nowhere, because significant action was taken, and the damage was reversed. Panic over acid rain? Cap and trade restrictions on SO2 and NOx in the US and EU reduced acid rain causing emissions faster and cheaper than predicted [3]. In every single case, big business fought and complained and were forced to comply.

Being alarmist about real issues is like being a fire alarm for a real fire.

[1] https://www.aqmd.gov/home/research/publications/50-years-of-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

If you use alarmist language you can rile up and entice a lot of agreeable people but rarely effective people.

So are we going to ignore the exx-lephant in the room?

This isn't just a debate between normal people and 'eco-fanatics' or whatever you want to call them. On the other side you have multi-billion dollar industries that want to maintain status quo until the rivers are on fire and have learned from the tobacco industry on how to spend millions in 'doubt-seeding' to keep making billions in profits.

I literally alluded to the fact that I could see alarmists being funded by people with interests of seeding doubts. As long as we're ignoring, there is a trillion dollar "green" industry that has just as much skin in the game mining cobalt and lithium as energy companies that pump oil or lfg. This isn't a debate between the "good guys" vs "bad guys", it's trillion of dollars being fought over to dictate how you get your energy.

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