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.
That's a highly political (i.e. lots of beating around the bush) resignation letter. What's his point exactly? That IPCC has vested interests in fear mongering or what? And what exactly are the good things that we can expect from climate change? In any case I believe that just the accelerating rate of catastrophic weather incidents is dismantling that argument(?). Of course there is a multitude of interests and even a market for climate change (i.e. books about it) but this doesn't mean that the problem is not there, evolving and getting worse every day. He -too- does not deny that.
About the Arctic/Antarctic ice: I guess that http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php argument 25 addresses that. Also seeing the whole system oscillating between extremes (too few ice - more ice) is not comforting or reassuring that it reaches a new balance.
PS: I'm not Suzuki's spokesperson. I didn't even know the guy till yesterday. Maybe he's overeacting and maybe not. I also note that the party is obviously full of fear mongers and shady traders of all sorts. I also note that it is not logical to dismiss the whole argument because of such people.
PS2: HN is the last place I would expect to find myself fighting against climate change skeptics.
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.
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.
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.
RT happened to have the longest and most full presentation of the interview that I could find in a minute. I originally saw this in Free Software Magazine which linked to this piece http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/sci-tech/others/rich... but it seemed too short for HN.
Now (regarding other more strong notes on this thread) - Stallman has his opinions and he supports them in a very logical way (albeit a bit too passionate). Moreover, he tries to support personal freedom, which in my books is more of an American value than anyone's else. So, trying to dump the real issue here by referring to what RT may be (according to what sounds like post modern cold war psychosis) is at least cheap propaganda.
I bet that you're quite computer literal yourself (hard to suppose otherwise since we're talking through HN) so as to be quite cautious as to how much of yourself you'll expose on the net. Unfortunately most people aren't plus they are quite good at documenting their lives (photos,videos,writings, etc) and linking in with people they know and share data and the like.
That's "tons of personal data" - it's not an absolutist firework but it's the main reason that gives FB such a high market value. AFAIK FB is considered a gold-mine in terms of highly targeted advertising and marketing that's because it hosts "tons of personal data" of high granularity and of high relevance to the real identities of the people uploading it. Otherwise wordpress for example would be considered of at least equal value with FB.
To be honest I didn't see the video but even if he said that he should be "punched" for the reasons where he bases his opinion and not the opinion itself (unless "innovation" is a divine truth that we must accept no matter what - DDT was innovative at its time but it was no good). Moreover the transcript reads:
“With software patents the US has become a dangerous place for software development, including innovative software development, because when a program is innovative, that means it has some new ideas in it. But it also has lots of well-known ideas in it. A large program combines thousands of ideas. So if you have some new ideas and you want to use them, in order to use them you have to combine them with a lot of other ideas that are well-known. And if you are not allowed to do that because those other ideas are patented, you can’t use your new idea,” not exactly hostile to innovation.
Anyway - he is Stallman and he's known for not being extra diplomatic or even smart at politics. Like you, he speaks the way he feels - point is that IMHO there is a growing problem with all the data that we - FB users - carelessly upload.
(Moreover I'm not convinced that FB has all that much to do with innovation any more but that's an entirely different conversation.)
PS: Sorry if I sounded hostile but the unabomber reference drove me mad. My bad.
PS2: this was supposed to be an answer to a comment that's not there any more - anyway.
No offense but you're implying it and my point anyway is that it's somewhat weird (if not anything worse) to draw parallels with unabomber just because Stallman said what's just obvious to anyone but Facebook addicts.
For better or worse there is a growing danger in FB regarding the tons of personal data that the same users would just never give away if it weren't for FB. He is just trying to make users aware of that. He's certainly not the first to do it and hopefully not the last. Also he said nothing that could be interpreted as innovation stopper.
The creator of Emacs and gcc is a Neo-Luddite and on the same side as unabomber?!! Apparently there is some kind of nth humor level involved here that I can't really comprehend.
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.