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Comment by ilikehurdles | Hacker News Reader

Forbes is a hosted blogspam platform. You pay them, they publish you, and folks permanently stuck in the 90s think they're reading something that legitimate journalists and editors were involved in. In this case, we have the pleasure of reading an anti-renewable campaigner's entirely siloed views of the impact of climate change and an argument for how everything will be ok and all the scientists are wrong.

But articles involving mis-targeted casual skepticism make us feel nice and ok with the status quo so we share them, because articles about the need to act are uncomfortable to digest.

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All of that may be true, but I think doesn't address the claims of the article.

The article says " Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ... said, “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.” " That's unscientific claim by Cortez. I think the point that exaggeration undermines your credibility is an important fact.

I believe that those of us who push a cause so hard that we lose sight of facts actually hurt the cause, because we alienate all the objective-truth-seekers.

Objective truth seekers aren't alienated by hyperbolic comments from individuals. If they were then by definition they wouldn't be objective truth seekers.

Sure they are.

Every now and then somebody says something so hyperbolic I have to ask "Am I really a democrat?"

If somebody asks do I believe in global warming I want to be able to answer "Yes" not "Yes but"

If we don't lock in the difficult to start climate mitigation efforts in 10 years, then yes, the world as we know it will locked in the opposite way for change in irreversible in our lifetime ways. For one spending to realign infrastructure will cost massive amounts, crop yields will be lower than before due to extreme weather this will be locked in in 10 years if we don't act.

I'm not sure why this comment is downvoted (at the time I started writing this) without any comments at all.

To me it presents an alternative view and interpretation on the article. Even if I don't necessarily agree with some of the sentiments and/or how opinions are phrased, they do remind me that I should read things with caution, which is probably something that even the most cautious of us need to be reminded of every now and then.

I'm not entirely sure at what point one can start downvoting but I vaguely recall that it's a privilege that's given for having been recognised for a certain amount of contribution (presumably due to points). For this reason it seems irresponsible to downvote something, without commenting, just because it doesn't match your worldview and that you are too lazy to think of it as an opportunity to at least think about why there are people thinking differently.

The post doesn't engage with the article, dismissing it as "blogspam" and claiming that the author is a "anti-renewable campaigner". It also pushes the claim that all scientists agree about the consequences of global warming, which is clearly not the case.

What I find really irritating, though, is the idea that the media should make people scared and angry and push them toward action. That seems cynical, manipulative, and will probably backfire.

I suspect it is downvoted due to tone and lack of actual informative content. The comment doesn't bother to challenge any of the assertions of the article but to attack the author and the publication. Those attacks would be much less likely to garner downvotes if informative counter points were also made.

>we have the pleasure of reading an anti-renewable campaigner's entirely siloed views of the impact of climate change and an argument for how everything will be ok and all the scientists are wrong.

The author explicitly quotes scientists and says that climate change is a problem.

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