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- Hacker News
- So Economist is now stating Climate Change is an issue. Where was that magazine in the 80s and 90s. Oh, the were writing how fossil fuels are still a good investment and are still the future. And I expect they stated Trump was the better choice in 2020 and 2024.
So in 2026, this magazine (and others) are reporting how +2C will be far worse than +1.5C. How about reporting stopping at +2C is a pipe dream. We are heading straight to +3C and probably +4C.
Time to start reporting on how we need to stop using fossil fuels now, not later. But even doing that really will not stop us from reaching +2.5C due to inaction by world Gov. over the last 50 years.
by jmclnx - Their infamous editorial Drowning in oil (4 March 1999) bottom-ticked the oil price.
- Counter argument from Matt Ridley:
Why the flames of Britain's wildfires have been fanned by the Green agenda as much as the weather
https://www.dailymail.com/debate/article-16017973/Britains-w...
- And what is the responsibility of the Greens in the lack of rain that causes Swiss cows to be moved back from their fields?
https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/fribourg/2026/article/secher...
And what is the responsibility of the Greens in the acidification of the oceans?
Etc, etc, etc.
by Arodex - Now do Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.
Gotta get all the both sides of climate change deniers.
by defrost - Matt Ridley the coal-mine owning climate-change denier?
I guess disasters might be his area of expertise since he once crashed a bank and led the official pro-Brexit campaign, but the other stuff seems like a conflict of interest.
by ZeroGravitas - “French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu warned the country "is going through an unprecedented fire season", with 116,085 hectares (286,852 acres) burned and 13,566 fire starts recorded since January. The minister revealed in a post on X that nine out of 10 fires "are human-caused and most arise from carelessness: a cigarette butt, a barbecue, work carried out without precaution".”by mbmbn
- Don't worry we will end up spraying the atmosphere to buy more time, and the Earth will cool, and people will believe that the problem is solved and we can just go back to burning fossil fuels.
So the fighting will continue while we keep duct taping and band aiding the problem.
by WarmWash - We collectively deserve this. The warnings came, but it was framed as "future generations will face these problems", and we collectively kicked the can down the road.
I say "collectively" because many of us don't deserve this and have wanted desperately to address it head on to try and mitigate the damage. But the scope of this problem makes individual contributions effectively meaningless.
It's not clear how bad it has to get before meaningful action takes place. But it will undoubtedly be too little, too late.
I think part of the path to try and address this is to have stories that paint a clear and simple picture of what that would look like and how it would be done. Even then, the issue has been heavily politicized to make it an us versus them problem rather than an "all of us" problem.
by pstuart - small correction: only individual contributions are meaningful. If I consume less and you consume less and many other individuals consume less there simply won't be as much demand for fossil fuels.
The only way I can understand your premise of helplessness is that it provides a convenient excuse for you not to do anything to help. Do you think companies will keep burning fuel at the exact same rate if a billion individuals dont incentivize them to?
- Any reason SpaceX cannot just build a giant solar shade at L1? This seems fairly doable on the decade timescale, plus it could do double duty as a weapon.by a34729t
- I love how you didn't even take a beat before suggesting that it be used as a weapon.by squibonpig
- I did the math out on this for fun a couple years ago. It came put surprisingly reasonable.
Taking estimates for Starship payload to Mars as the likely payload to L1, carrying to L1 enough thin reflective mylar film to block around 0.5% of light to earth would cost between $80-100 billion. Which is a lot but not nearly as much as I expected and not outside the realm of possibility.
- Consequences of inaction, as predicted, will continue until you can't live there anymore.by 1970-01-01
- bah, all is not lost.
Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt.
Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it).
It's going to get worse before it gets better sadly.
by Hasz - there are other factors at play like AMOC halting and breakdown of habitats that are codependent with other habitats. you dont get to pick and choose regions since earth is a huge interconnected system itself.
stop drinking the tech kool aid and start with degrowth.
by garte - that carbon capture tech is called tree/forest btw. if we plant trillions of trees, we win, not sure how many millions of people and years it would take. probably less than half a warby kingleopold
- Where "winning" means surviving in relative comfort until global society disintegrates into a constant state of famine and war and you run out of local resources.
> Give me...
Who's going to give you any of this in time?
by AlecSchueler - I'm not sure there are all that many winners. There are those that lose big time with some places potentially becoming uninhabitable, and those that merely have to spend a fortune on new flood prevention infrastructure, deal with massive changes to how they do agriculture and forestry in a new climate, and in the future deal with streams of climate refugees from countries on the list of even bigger losers.
Russia and Canada might end up winning from this, but for everyone else it seems like a big negative, with some silver linings
by wongarsu - This year Europe's fires are not the start. Few years ago we had very extended Australia fires, US/Canada fires, and other not so put in the spotlight fires in other countries around the world. At some point they diverged enough from normal to reach a scale that raised enough eyebrows.
And it is not just forest fires. Floods caused by extreme rainfalls, running out of letters in hurricane seasons, once in a century/millenia extreme weather events happening several times in a decade are increasingly noticeable, and they are just symptoms of bigger but harder to directly perceive global trends like that the global yearly average temperature increased a few tens of degrees or that the ocean is winning heat at a rate of 6 Hiroshima bombs per second.
by gmuslera - by postoplust
- Never seen the point of sharing a paywall article in HN... This helps.by krowek
- Using nextDNS, this page redirects me to a Russian ISP (TTK) block page for some reason and I’m nowhere near Russia (!)by vachina
- "Being better at fighting fires, though, is not enough."
Yeah, it's nowhere near enough. We need to seriously revamp how we manage forests. They must be regularly cleaned, huge fire breaks between fenced areas and roads must be created and maintained. Prescribed burns on a regular schedule. Houses cannot be too close to the trees, no matter how pretty it looks. A huge clean radius must be maintained between houses and trees and between properties. All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere.
I see none of this happening at a proper scale in my country (Portugal). So of course every summer we se huge forest fires. Lives lost, ecosystems destroyed. Next year it happens again...
It's only going to get worse.
by world2vec - > All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere.
Good luck doing any work in the winter in places like, oh say, the Rocky Mountains.
by Carrok - being good at fighting fires is part of the problem as that allows people to keep natural limited area fires from happen regularly and then eventually you get one huge fire.by raffael_de
- I think most of the fires are in manmade forests, where puffer space is nonexistent.by lofaszvanitt
- And what is you suggestion for the lack of rain everywhere?
https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/fribourg/2026/article/secher...
Making your forests "fireproof" isn't going to save you from desertification.
by Arodex - >They must be regularly cleaned
People keep reiterating this probably because Trump keeps reiterating but it just sounds ridiculous.
How do you clean forests? The debris is part of the forest, not all areas of a forest are easily accessible or feasible to transport debis out of there. A dead tree is actually an ecosystem of fungi and insects. Cleaning it may make it more fire prone as broken sticks and leaves shield the ground from the sun allowing the soil to hold on to moisture a little longer. There is plenty of room for nuance here.
I would need to listen to actual experts on this, the correct solution is probably something akin to resorting wetlands and beavers which act as fantastic self maintaining fire breaks.
However when you suggest things like this you see the actual issues pop up, local farmers protest and others using NIMBY laws to block so they get payouts.
by s_dev - There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released.
We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now, because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get worse, and worse, and worse. And save what we can. Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene? Wait until your biggest worry is food.
by palata