Hacker News Reader

Comment by MrPapz | Hacker News Reader

We’re at a terrible crossroads. If climate scientists are right, we’re headed for unavoidable disruption. Some now say it’s already too late — all we can do is mitigate and adapt. Start local. Know your neighbors. Build resilience.

But if they’re wrong, that’s also bad news. It means our scientific institutions failed us, and the political trust placed in “studies” will collapse. The next time someone says “science says…”, society may not listen.

Either way, it’s a precarious place to be. Until then, enjoy the summer — it might be the coolest one we have left.

View on HN

> The next time someone says “science says…”, society may not listen.

We're already there. Turns out it has nothing to do with science at all, but rather propaganda and political messaging. If you just tell people science is wrong and bad then they internalize that, regardless of the state of science.

This confirms what many of us know to be true - what people believe has only a very loose tie to reality. Populist messaging is the future.

If people think "scientists can never be wrong," we have fundamentally and deeply failed to explain how science actually works. And sadly, that does seem to be the case.

Especially understanding that they are not responsible for any bold assumptions or doomsday predictions.

Academic science is more religion than actual religion.

When people say science is wrong, it often comes from a place where they forgot that the rest of the world exists, each with their own institutions, each with their own responsibility to thrive.

There is a third option that it's real but not as bad as people make out. Like in my case the fallout is more that I'm thinking of installing aircon rather than general doom.

The ecosystem, that you and I and we depend on, outside your apartment can't install an air conditioner. Instead it simply dies. Then we begin to suffer just in new and unexpected ways.

Climate change doesn't just make it a bit hotter at home - it corrodes the entire environment. Floods, fires, storms, drought, crop yields, etc.

It will make us all poorer and then it will start to kill many of us directly with heat or indirectly through secondary effects (including war). And we'll discover too late that our prosperity depends on the prosperity of each other and the environment.

No man is an island.

It's incredible to me that apparently educated people on a forum such as this are still misunderstanding the basic dangers of climate change in 2025. It makes me feel so hopeless.

> the political trust placed in “studies” will collapse.

That horse has already bolted. See eg. vaccinations and autism, efficacy of COVID vaccines, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com