Hacker News Reader

Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

Media doesn't report good things that happen in the environment. From 2013-2019, they hammered constantly on how the Great Barrier Reef was dying. But, not a peep when they found that it is healthiest its ever been in recent history: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/parts-australia...

No wonder the trust in media has fallen to the lowest. Reuters/AP are informative as a root source, but I have stopped trusting environmentalist doom-and-gloom stories from MSM.

Environment is going to get far worse though. Germany is busy burning the shittiest form of coal as its primary fuel (35%): Lignite coal with 1/5th water content. It is the worse than burning literally anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

Again, thanks to the utterly idiotic emotionally-driven environmentalists that are going to make the planet worse ironically. We need to stop giving them fodder and look to the tech/engineering community for solutions.

View on HN

Regarding the Great Barrier Reef, it's not as simple as you're saying: https://theconversation.com/record-coral-cover-doesnt-necess...

Maybe, why is this source trustworthy, I have no idea. There are probably many examples of improvement in the environment that goes unreported.

I used to trust climate science. That trust is being eroded for me. Just the other day, someone reported that kids are gaining weight due to climate change. The reason? They can’t go out and play when it’s 2 deg C hotter. Come on.

I despise climate catastrophization by the media.

Media reporting on climate change is often dramatically wrong, whether it takes the slant of “everything is terrible” or “things are actually great”.

Go read how the IPCC reports are authored, you’ll hopefully develop some faith about the accuracy of what is in them. Then go read the summaries for policy makers to get an idea of what they say. You’ll see that most of what both sides are saying is in there is not what is in there.

I'm active in my community advocating for greater transit and modeshare and our transit advocacy network is much better at trumpeting good news than the MSM and many Twitter doomers for a simple reason: nobody will give us more funding until we tell them how $X was spent on initiative Y which led to great outcome Z. It's our job to tell everyone how this little bike lane in this neighborhood decreased car trips and increased safety. The MSM faces no existential risk when it trumpets bad news all day, but we have to convince our neighbors that the money they're spending or the traffic blockage they're facing as new infrastructure is built is worthwhile.

As far as I know the barrier reef is already dead because we emitted enough GHG to force sufficiently high water temperatures that the reef can't survive. It's only a matter of a couple of decades before the temperatures catch up with our emissions.

Wouldn’t environmentalists be opposed to coal as well? Or is it simply that they favor it over nuclear power? I’m not particularly well acquainted with German green parties’ policies.

They are. But when they’ve cornered themselves into freezing this winter, lignite coal it is.

Not sure I follow, even if coal were used for heating in Germany. Would the country be in a better environmental situation overall without the activists? I don’t doubt there’s some level of energy hypocrisy currently going on in Europe, but I don’t see how environmentalists have exacerbated the current crisis. Are you referring to their opposition to nuclear energy?

Yea because if it weren't for these people, Germany would have invested in Nuclear or secure better natural gas than from Russia (Algeria?). Nord Stream 1 was hastily negotiated with the devil. Devil then invaded Crimea to secure the oil fields. Then 8 years later, they did it again with Nord Stream 2! The devil used it as a leverage to take big chunks of Ukraine. Trump warned them (as much as I loathe the guy, he was right, unsophisticatedly but eerily accurate): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O24rulfjA8U

Environmentalists also invested in Solar energy in Germany. It has to be the dumbest idea ever, solar power in Germany is like 10% as efficient as Western USA. It is one of the worst places in Europe to stick solar panels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

In general, Environmentalists do not understand the difference between gardening and farming. It's the Greta crowd that's going to lead this world towards mass starvation of humans. They have no solutions, only blind clueless activism.

> The devil used it as a leverage to take big chunks of Ukraine

Tried, but then they got back-up in the form of European and US weapon shipments that are trouncing the Russian's poorly trained forces and equipment - or, that's what the diverse media in my neck of the wood is saying. Russia doesn't seem to be winning or gaining though.

Trump is siding with the Russians and rejected military / financial aid to the Ukraine because they refused to find dirt on Biden or whatever it was about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_scandal

Homes are not heated with nuclear power or lignite, they are heated with gas.

Gas is at risk of cut off this winter. Electric heating will be the primary source if that happens.

> In late June, after Russia reduced supplies by 60%, Berlin triggered the second stage of its national gas emergency plan — one step away from gas rationing.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/07/18/a...

Electrical heating is impossible. There is neither sufficient generation, nor sufficient grid capacity, so matter how many of the nuclear plants we had we keep running. Even in a mostly-nuclear grid like France's you just don't have the spare capacity lying around to replace fossil fuels for heating in a year.

Heating homes with conventional electric heatpumps is a pipe dream but underground heat pumps which are getting more common can be really efficient no?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com