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Comment by wartywhoa23 | Hacker News Reader

I heard in 1988 that we all must be dead by now from the ozone hole.

Good point, we should probably do the same thing with our carbon emissions that we did with the chemicals that deplete ozone. The Montreal Protocol of 1987 successfully phased out over 99% of them.

The hole is still there as far as I can tell, though. I hate it when the news cycle alerts people and then never gives out updates and closure.

It's called agendas.

The world is full of issues everyone is okay with until they are presented as apocalyptic to the public. Like seasonal flu whose annual death toll is in the range of 600-1200 thousands.

And then, as easily forgotten as soon as there's a new scarecrow on the table.

With weather prediction accuracy of 90% for 5 days, 50% for 10 days and basically that of a TRNG for longer terms, what makes you all so sure you're facing a manmade climate apocalypse (you all partook in, by the way) and not a natural harmonic in the weather fractal?

Because climate isn't weather. We don't know the temperature 12 months from now (August 2027) but we know it'll be warmer that it will be 3 months from now (November 2026).* This is common sense.

*If you live in the Northern hemisphere.

This is really embarrassing to write in public, to be frank.

Weather and climate are not the same thing, they are several orders of magnitude different in scope. This is first grader information, typically.

Predicting weather relies on metrics like wind, pressure, moisture in tight local areas, they can change hundreds of percent in that scope within 24 hours.

Predicting climate relies on information like co2 levels, ocean temperatures, or glacier melt rates. If any of those changes hundreds of percent in 24 hours the entire planet would be fucking dead instantly.

Weather prediction relies in records going back in the range of 30-70 years.

Climate prediction relies on records going back MILLIONS of years.

Comparing the two is like comparing the ripples in your bathtub to the movements of the heavenly bodies. It’s asinine.

The news that something is going better is a bit less "selling" than the news that something is going bad.

But this is hacker news, we're supposed to be elite, and so, reading news from MIT [1] : yes, the hole is still there, but it's smaller, because WE ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING.

Okay, the "something" was really "shift to cheaper stuff as we would have done anyway". But, still.

We can do stuff. And people choose to be on the side of doing stuff (or at least trying), the side of doing nothing, or the side of making the problem actually worse.

[1] https://news.mit.edu/2025/study-healing-ozone-hole-global-re...

Like a lot of climate sized issues, the ozone hole was a rate based issue, In that our rate of “hole growing” was the real problem that needed addressing immediately. And the rates have MASSIVELY improved thanks to the global CFC actions.

Current direction of rate change show that we reach zero depletion (rate of 0.0 ozone loss) by late 203x, with zero hole in late 20xx (rate of -x.x as it heals).

That’s a very considerable turnaround for damage we did over the course of 30 years.

Yes, but the news cycle only liked the topic when it could be outraged. There were no large headlines explaining how things were resolved, which is what I was complaining about.

WE FIXED THAT. We literally listened to professionals, introduced legislation and fixed it. The worst possible example you could use.

If YOU fixed that, what stops YOU from fixing this again?

Just the stupidest take you could ever have, well done.

You don't deserve downvotes for calling out obvious idiocy.

People like you.

How? By asking what stops you?

By derailing the conversation.

"WE" is an interesting word, isn't it ? The author obviously meant "humanity". Not "him and a bunch of friends".

That being said, this is hacker news, this is for the elite, and startups can disrupt everything, etc...

What can "you and a bunch of friends" do to fix the issue" ?

Because, the people "preventing" us from fixing the issue here are, basically, the whole oil and gas industry, plus the electorate. Which, interestingly, is partly... "WE".

Luckily the Montreal protocol was implemented and CFCs were banned. Something like that should be considered for more green house gasses. Maybe Paris?

And we fixed the ozone hole by taking decisive action internationally banning the worst ozone-destroying gases

This exact sentiment has been expressed and addressed ad nauseum.

Weird how something was done about that though

Pretty trivial to replace CFC with HCFC gases (which breaks down more easily in the atmosphere) compared to moving away from fossil fuels.

CFC elimination worked, but switching refrigerants is a lot easier than not burning hydrocarbons.

Glad you brought that up. Because we fixed it. Now because of ignorance, we are not fixing this. As a person without kids, its not my problem. Strange that anti-science conservatives wants us to have more children while willfully destroying their future.

> As a person without kids, its not my problem.

If you're under 50 it definitely will be your problem

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