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Comment by crystal_revenge | Hacker News Reader

The fact that roughly half the comments here are some sort of weakly veiled climate denialism tells me it won't matter how much data we have anyway.

If members of a reasonably technical community can't accept what's happening, then there's no reasonable hope that people will ever be able to reason about our situation correctly. We are surrounded by evidence of all varieties in every direction that we are heading down a path of catastrophic climate change, and yet people contort their logic to find ways not to see it.

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I think of my experience with real world technical people, maybe 2-4% are denialists but those are also very vocal (enough to saturate a place like this). Another 4-10% are under the sway, and I think that's a fairly reasonable assumption since in Sweden the party that represent those that would vote for the current US admin manages to get about 20% of the electorate (although possibly more in the younger age groups).

It's also a reminder that this is a well known public forum at this point, and those are always targeted by propaganda (or have gotten a large enough mass that denialists have gotten a large enough foothold).

Back in 97-00 slashdot was an amazing site, just a gathering of inquisitive people posting cool stuff. Over the years it degenerated with more hateful stuff despite valiant efforts to adjust moderation causing early people to drop off, this place was amazing back in 2015 when I joined and the work done to keep it somewhat tidy after some 18 years is actually impressive, but I'm also feeling a lot of the same types of comments increase that made slashdot a less interesting place to begin with.

I’ve never met any reasonably intelligent person in real life that denied climate change, of any kind whatsoever, is happening…

There are many people who doubt whether the majority of the observed effect is directly human caused however.

Of course whether it’s human caused directly or human caused via 10 degrees of seperation matters little to future generations… but someone, somewhere, needs to actually do the work and provide credible rock solid proof for each and every step along the way.

Otherwise the latter group will keep on growing in size and influence.

The sheer amount of evidence that the effect is indeed predominantly human-caused is so vast and convincing that at this point, failure to accept it reads like closed minds repeating the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

Can you link the proof then that shows it is predominantly directly human caused?

Here https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/climate-cha...

It's been below 300 ppm for at least the last 800,000 years, had now increased to over 400 ppm in a pattern that directly maps to the industrial revolution, radiocarbon dating traces the carbon in the atmosphere to "old" carbon like that from fossil fuels, and the known sources of human emissions adequately explain the increase.

Can you link the actual proof?

An argument based on likelihoods and probabilities is not anywhere close to rock solid proof, since the credibility of the folks determining those is what’s doubted in the first place.

You are proving my point. "No true Scotsman".

That makes no sense… Proofs don’t depend on anyone’s points, by definition.

Even if aliens with no human context at all showed up, a full proof will still convince them via pure logic and deduction from basic axioms.

You don't think climate change is causes by humans?

Can you not see the second half of the comment?

I see people showing you overwhelming evidence and you denying it.

You seem very confused?

There is only 1 HN user who replied with any link whatsoever (at the time of writing this)… so literally not even multiple “people”.

Edit: If you are geniuinely experiencing some kind of vision problems, such that a second user appears to have linked some kind of evidence underneath my comment, I recommend logging off and seeking help for mental/eye issues.

This seems like the writing of a kid trying to avoid answering a question.

If you really don’t believe the other half of the comment exists…

” Of course whether it’s human caused directly or human caused via 10 degrees of seperation matters little to future generations… but someone, somewhere, needs to actually do the work and provide credible rock solid proof for each and every step along the way. Otherwise the latter group will keep on growing in size and influence.”

Someone linked you overwhelming evidence, then you asked for "proof". What is wrong with what they linked you? Why don't you believe that people cause climate change directly? What does "10 degrees of separation mean" ?

This just reads like gibberish, sorry to be so blunt. There appears to be no relation to the prior 3 comments I wrote.

You were given a link and a synopsis explanation of why there is consensus of climate change being directly man made. What is so unclear that you're claiming it's gibberish?

Nobody is going to believe you cannot see the contents of multiple prior comments.

Trying to avoid and deflect just makes you look more like a deranged troll.

This seems like you're just writing back what I've written to you, but you still won't say what's wrong with all the evidence on climate change you were given.

If you want to burn your account and get banned then go ahead, I’m not going to stop you.

What are you threatening me over exactly? Before you were saying you couldn't understand what I wrote.

All I did was ask about what someone else linked you:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44658885

Yikes…

Can you respond in a clear way and directly address what I'm asking please?

We've made a decision: we prefer to continue having this world (and all its conveniences including steak multiple times a week and flying for cheap) and lose it soon-ish than move to another one right now with less access to... stuff.

And the only way we can have it differently is with violence, which nobody wants. So we'll walk to the abyss together.

"but I worked really hard to EARN that steak. I'm not having some goddamn commie take it away from me."

"The rich declare themselves poor" - George Michael, Praying For Time, 1990.

We - depends on the definition.

If there is a structural force shifting the market places of ideas and decisions, forcing certain choices or protecting and harvesting voting blocs - it’s not “we” in the sense of personal choice.

I concede, that if we define corporations as an expression of human desires - then yes, “we” have made that decision.

We already have insane and growing wealth inequality and stagnant wage growth. The one thing that somewhat compensated for it is cheap goods, taking that away is not a winning argument in this environment. It's also a hard sell when Jeff Bezos has a wedding in Italy where dozens of private jets flew in and collectively emitted more carbon for that one wedding than all the gasoline vehicles multiple generations of my family have driven in their lifetimes.

And yet I, with my already depressed wages and kids to feed, should sacrifice steak and coach airline tickets?

I'm all for climate action, but it has to be policy level. If it's a choice between a warming world where we're solvent with some middle class prosperity, and a warming world where my wife, kids and I are broke because we went into six figures of debt replacing our ICE cars with EVs and retrofitting my house to passivhaus stanadards, I'm taking the former.

> I'm all for climate action, but it has to be policy level

Policy level climate action is the only kind that has any hope of succeeding. That or some magic technology that can suck carbon out of the air at zero cost.

China scaling up EVs, solar, and batteries is what will do it. Most humans don’t have the will or constitution to make it happen, but China will out of rational economics. The politicians making these poor climate policy decisions will be out of office eventually. Just keep grinding towards success whenever possible while the death rate keeps aging out those slowing progress down.

(EVs and PHEVs are ~50% of car sales in China 2025 H1, global light vehicle TAM is ~90M units/year, we're installing 1GW of solar every 15 hours, roughly 1TW/year etc.)

The progress on EVs, solar, and batteries has been nothing short of stunning. It has to continue, and will spread in any place where people use brains over ideology. But it won't solve everything. We don't have emissions-free alternatives for jet travel and many industrial processes. Carbon-neutral maybe, by synthesizing hydrocarbons, but not emissions-free. And we have to undo the last 100 years of damage.

Not wrong, but we're mostly locked in on the light vehicles and electrification front, the rest (as you mention) can continue to be worked towards. There is no silver bullet, just lots of work towards all the problems at once. Half of marine traffic is moving fossil fuels around the world, for example. That evaporates in the future. India and Africa will buy electrification and light vehicles from China, versus locking in a fossil fuel based economy. Everyone who needs fossil fuels is racing away from them for obvious economic and national security reasons, and everyone selling them is going to be desperate to sell them to the shrinking demand for them. There was $800B more capital invested in clean energy (~$2T) than fossil fuels globally in 2024.

To your point, the most important part is going to be how to rapidly remove the CO2 industrialization has injected into the atmosphere. This remains to be solved for at reasonable cost, but importantly, we're going to need a material amount of low carbon energy for that process.

“This is not inevitable. We have the tools, the instruments, the capacity to change course,” Guterres said. “There are reasons to be hopeful.”

https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/07/22/un-says-booming-solar...

https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-solar-wind-power-f...

https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/un-energy-transiti...

Aren’t cars just a fraction of the CO2 issue?

This whole climate thing is really humanity’s worst nightmare.

We’re insanely good at finding solutions, adapting, pulling together when under existential threat. I mean it, it will never cease to amaze me.

We’re shit at: * giving stuff up for the greater good * changing voluntarily * trusting others (countries) to sacrifice as much as yourself

Guess which qualities we need in this case?

It’s like this huge ball with an insane inertia rolling toward us while most are still thinking “ah, I guess I have time for one more appletini, then I’ll just stop that little ball”.

My only hope is we find a cheap and scalable way to pump CO2 out, but that’s really far fetched (and it would also cause us to stop all other efforts around co2 avoidance if it was ever found…).

Electricity, heat, transportation, agriculture, and construction are the largest sectors of emissions. Therefore, electrification, low carbon energy, shelter thermal efficiency, and electrification of vehicles is of paramount importance from a prioritization perspective.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Yeah. We’re talking about the burning of gas in cars. Production of electric cars is worse that production of ICE cars in terms of CO2. So, really, we’re discussing the fraction of a fraction here.

To be clear, I am still astonished and pleased at the success of EVs.

But let’s keep it in context, it’s one battle amongst many many battles.

> Yeah. We’re talking about the burning of gas in cars. Production of electric cars is worse that production of ICE cars in terms of CO2. So, really, we’re discussing the fraction of a fraction here.

This is factually inaccurate. In all cases, EVs are superior to combustion vehicles with regards to lifecylce emissions (construction + operation).

https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/no-doubt-abo...

> As electric vehicles become a bigger part of the global car fleet, a contrarian take seems to surface every few months: are electric vehicles really that clean?

> When it comes to lifecycle emissions, the answer is a resounding yes. According to a new report by BloombergNEF, in all analyzed cases, EVs have lower lifecycle emissions than gas cars. Just how much lower depends on how far they are driven, and the cleanliness of the grid where they charge.

You didn’t read the article you’re citing and you didn’t get my overall point.

To make it clear: my overall point is, the burning of gas in cars is a fraction of co2 emissions in transport, which itself is a fraction of the overall co2 emissions.

That’s my point.

Now to the detail you are mentioning (detail!), your article actually agrees with me. Production of electric cars is more co2 intensive than from ICE cars. Read it. There’s even a break even point because of this. Over their lifetime, electric cars emit less co2 though.

> Production of electric cars is more co2 intensive than from ICE cars

Collectors aside no one builds a car and doesn't drive it. Once you start driving both cars, the EV pulls ahead on emissions very quickly, which you admitted too. Repeating only that manufacture is more co2 intensive (and that's only today, it could change in the future) is a lie by omission.

I agree, it’s just not my point at all…

[flagged]

Read the guidelines of HN please, your comment is antagonising, offers zero value. The article cited in the other response actually confirms this statement is correct, just read it.

> Politely, stop peddling horseshit.

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.

The comment you're replying to would be easy to respond to with a link containing refuting evidence. We understand this topic is an important one, and one that people get passionate about. But any topic that's important deserves to be discussed with solid evidence rather than personal abuse. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines if you want to keep commenting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You're right. I offer two points in my defence. The sibling comment already had solid evidence. And I didn't think telling someone to stop lying constituted "personal abuse". I considered GP's comment a lie by omission.

But you're correct that this type of comment isn't good for the site and I'll be more mindful.

Thanks. It's fine to disagree and respond with opposing arguments, we just don't want the swipes, and the guidelines ask us to "assume good faith", even when it's hard. If others are breaking the guidelines, you can flag their comments and/or email us.

I believe the parent comment was speaking of violence as the answer, not EVs or veganism.

God, Jeff Bezos's jet is such an inane distraction that I can't believe people are still falling for this. If you're upset about Bezos's CO2 footprint, the very easy way to fix it is to tax the rich more.

And then we can use the money for EV credits, more wind farms, and other initiatives. Hell, if you're really against climate policies, we could simply burn the money and at least that could help fighting inflation.

There is one party in the US that constantly shoots down climate policies. Guess what they also do to Jeff Bezos's tax. Somehow that doesn't bother all those "climate policy skeptics" that are deeply upset about his private jet.

On the other hand especially the technical community is very quick with censoring anything new about climate-modelling. There has been a lot going on in the last 5 years, but knowledge about any of that is very low. Even Institutes like NOAA still promote models based on very old approximation formulas (Myhre et al 1998 - logarithmic approximation of radiative forcing).

Anything newer - proper line by line calculations that get rid of the approximations and take a serious look at the absorption spectrum - is nowadays essentially a taboo...

You underestimate Russia's spambots.

While ubiquitous I've lately started to ponder if we're giving them way too much credit just because some western players might have found common ground in amplifying the same messages.

I keep meaning to do a project where I try and categorise this rightward drift over time. I've only been here for about 8 years on my main account but increasingly it feels comments here reflect the ideological schism in reality reflected everywhere else. This, I suppose, shouldn't be surprising, but it felt like for a while people in general held a higher standard of evidence.

As much as I'd like to chalk that up to bots, of which I'm sure there are some small amount, I think it has more to do with the ideological roots of this space. Extremists like Yarvin and Thiel are in the DNA of this forum and its userbase. Of course I'm likely to fall afoul of the guidelines even mentioning this. On any political thread you get this strange through-the-looking-glass sensation of people inhabiting an entirely disjunct reality.

And it also appears to be wholesale for many people, you can hold the position that DEI was pointless corporate propaganda and rolling it back is harmless, or H1B visas should be ended, but also that attacks on science and vaccination are bad but most people seem to have lost that nuance.

I’m scrolling down and genuinely can’t see the comments you refer to. Which comments that express this sentiment constitute roughly half? Do you have links?

Various estimates of GDP loss from IPCC and such are iirc like 8-10%. That would catastrophically plunge us all the way to the dark ages of a few years ago. I just googled for the most alarmist estimates backed by an actual paper and the worst I could find was 12% per degree of extra warming by 2100. So, it's like going back from today to the 90ies. I mean having to listen to grunge and techno again does sound pretty catastrophic.

So let me get this straight, going back 30-ish years is a-okay when caused by climate change but going back slightly less to curb it is a problem? We haven’t reached some sort of equilibrium and will stay at the currently committed level of climate change, it’s just getting worse.

This is all so maddeningly stupid and frightening.

I found the biggest estimate from a paper as a reference for "catastrophic"/"humanity is done for"/... comments. The more likely estimates are much lower.

What do you mean by going back slightly less, in terms of measures to take?

Sure, on the merit this particular action was dumb. But on the net I think fossil fuels are for the time being a net positive and non-replacement phase out would be worse than the amount of warming it prevents, not slightly less bad; especially in the developing world.

And, because like in so many political issues, nuanced positions aren't really popular (as these we're all gonna die comments illustrate), if having to choose between two flavors of uncompromising shouting I'm going to go with the fossil fuel camp on this issue. Although I d personally prefer more of both plus carbon tax etc for the shift.

But my original comment was just trying to put catastrophising into perspective,"following the science" ;)

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