couchnaut

We're totally off topic here, so just a few clarifications: 1. Yes, I do not know what happened to Reddit and Digg. Where these sites though as clearly focused as HN? HN is clearly rotating around entrepreneurship. This means that politically (i.e. economically) is bound to oscillate around various forms capitalism ranging perhaps from socialdemocracy to neoliberalism. I'm not judging here - I'm just saying what the perceived specs are.

2. I personally detest religions and I'm allergic to cops (corrupt or not). I'm not an extreme left-wing myself but I happen to know some and I'm sure as hell that they cannot be compared to paedophiles or corrupt cops. In any case you can use some other -less extreme- examples to make your case. (Added bonus insight: Being Greek I've grown tired* of home grown right-wing official reasoning/propaganda that tries to equalize Greek neonazis with Greek left-wing and extreme left-wing parties. The way you phrased your examples is exactly the way some of the clever propaganda is constructed in Greece.)

* I also know how dangerous such propaganda is as it only serves to raise nazis poll percentages. Something that happens across all EU.

Interesting. The argument in the first paragraph: HN is getting extremely left-wing liberal

The examples in the second paragraph that are supporting the argument: cops protecting corrupt cops, the Vatican protecting pedophiles, etc

The interesting part is the (unconscious?) connection of left wings with corrupt cops and Catholic paedophiles. Wow, even right-wing propaganda in HN is on a whole different level.

PS: Don't worry - it's a site built around entrepreneurship - aka free market ideology. It cannot get extremely left-wing no matter what.

So -according to Landsea- IPCC (an international scientific organization) is moving in ways that are more political than scientific. Weird and disturbing. Weird because I'd expect such an organization to be gravitating towards big industrial nations' interests if we're to assume that they are susceptible to lobbying - not the other way around. Disturbing because if they are doing politics rather than science then we have a different kind of problem which is that the bodies of experts that we should be trusting on very complex subjects are not to be trusted and I don't know where that leaves us as a society.

I'll accept the point of not putting forward very well researched links but to my defence: 1. Climatology is far from my expertise. As is microbiology, or nuclear power or space exploration. And that's why I'm ok with paying people (from my taxes) to have an educated opinion on such matters. 2. as you probably know it's quite difficult to find who are the generally respectful scientists (remember dismissing a whole lot of them just a while ago (IPCC)). 3. I -sorry about that- thought that we're past scepticism on the subject as I have only seen that attitude only in conspiracy theorists (right or left leaning). 4. I pitted the problem as a problem that can (or at least should) be solved in the same way that humans have been improving their lives - with ingenuity and a mind for the society as a whole.

Anyway - thank you for your long and researched answer and I sincerely hope that Landsea is right because I don't believe that we're about to change anything in our ways any time soon.

Of course there was a point that this was not irreversible. That's what the notion of "tipping point" implies.

The links were selected somewhat in a haste but nevertheless you can come up with your own sources easily. Most of the "alarmists" have been warning and calling to action for decades now. For various reasons I had not read any of them for the past years which is why the irreversibility was news to me.

Most researchers say that actually IPCC is rather conservative in its views not the other way around.

First time I hear about Lomborg. Will read later.

Cannot disagree with any of the answers. Yet, it seems like this is one of the problems that has to be dealt with, no matter how hard or meaningless that may seem. Then again if I accept the inevitability of it all then not much of everyday normalcy is making any sense.

That's exactly the point (which I obviously failed to get through). The news (at least to me) is that we're past the tipping points - it is irreversible now. Plus it is not (probably) just about droughts, weird weather and rising sea levels but rather about Earth becoming like Venus.

That's a good explanation indeed. But then again that applies to almost anything of a political nature.

I'm not a climate scientist myself but the consensus seems to be that we're past a lot of tipping points already. Some even go as far as write us off altogether.

In any case the story is huge but the real weird part turned out to be the indifference of people in here. Weird -at least to me- because I thought that HN readers are mainly people that have a wider and deeper understanding of how the world works and thus (I assumed) a greater sensitivity on setting the priorities right. Meaning that probable extinction should rank higher than this or that new framework.

All in all I submitted the story three times (that's the third). This time I got most attention - 7 votes.

I rest my case.