My next bet will be about "fire burns" and "water wets", please. [1]
Show me the gas and grocery prices from July-Nov 2028, and I'll be ready to bet on the winner of next elections (assuming they happen, etc...)
That inflation was in large part a very-predictable bullwhip effect of what happened in 2020 and possibly could've been prevented by supply-side interventions in 2020, but voters were not punishing Trump for it in 2020. He lost votes for appearing generally inept in the face of a pandemic (probably nobody would do better) and in the face of police violence and protests (much of his base felt he should have been much more authoritarian from the federal level even then).
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...
https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today
they are operating under a reprieve for another couple of weeks, and then will have to re calibrate and re validate the data from another less good satelite..... "or something"*
* new scientific term
And if you look at the tick marks on the graph, it starts before 1960.
Because CO2 didn't start from zero in 1960?
I don’t know why the funding cut is being made, but this article is leaping to a conclusion.
This observatory is the first one to show CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and their analyses have been cornerstone to the climate discussion since it's inception.
Unless it's shown that the observatory is burning millions, it's nonsensical to shut it down. It's not free to set up another equivalent lab.
And locations similar to Mauna Loa are not very common, to be clear. It's not gonna be cheaper to set up an equivalent.
There are good reasons to shut down telescopes, including age, outdated technology, and deprecation.
Meteorologist have been working there since the 1960s. I'm sure you have some understanding of the conplexity of weather and the precision problems with chaotic systems.
Mauna Loa has been producing quality data since the 60s and has the means (including telescopes) to gather quality data to do quality analysis.
We didn't just strap a telescope to a building - the people in the observatory are not looking at a thermometer, a CO2 meter and then checking out asteroids by the by. Everything they do is to have quality analysis.
The works had been refined over all this time. That's why theres a telescope. Because it's pertinent.
And indeed there are good reasons to do so - many of the observatories were decommissioned starting in 2010 I believe, a long process - care to share anything that would show that's the case here?
To me this is a state of the art meteorological observatory. Unless proven otherwise, we should keep it going.
The Trump administration is cutting many worthy science projects, often for arbitrary or political reasons.
> "We have other ways to measure atmospheric CO2"
It's destroying the continuity of the world's highest-quality and longest-running dataset.
edit: Also, this CO2 observatory closure reflects the entire NOAA climate observation budget being zero'd out[1], so I don't know what where else you'd like us to look instead.
[0] https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/climate/budget-cuts-clima... ("But President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would put an end to Mauna Loa, along with three other key observatories and almost all the climate research being done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.")
Running just the CO2 meter is something that could be done remotely, without the need for a telescope, at a tiny fraction of the cost.
Mauna Loa has a telescope that studies the Sun in order to help understand better how that contributes to changing weather patterns on Earth. It is a relatively small site but very important.
The reason that telescopes are often in high up, hard to reach places is because that is the most efficient, cost-effective place for them to be.
Perhaps you should have some basic familiarity with what they do before deciding that they shouldn't be doing it. https://gml.noaa.gov/obop/mlo/programs/programs.html
It's a little shed on top of the mountain. Here's a picture: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/mauna-loa-...
Why does this seem so idiomatically ridiculous? It is not just the italics, but they do reinforce the statement.
The center of the Pacific is not interchangeable with many other places, to observe the atmosphere. Like maintaining a telescope in Seattle would be so much more practical?
I don’t know why they’re cutting it, but the article is just wildly speculating.
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/11/nx-s1-5361366/major-budget-cu...
To go from this to “being shut down exactly and entirely because it is a station that performs climate research” is not a defensible statement.
I’m not saying that it’s inconceivable that the current administration is cutting funding that affects Mauna Loa because of climate ideology; I’m saying that without evidence, you’re leaping to conclusions that may or may not be justified.
‘[Current OMB director Russ] Vought wrote in Project 2025 that NOAA should be disassembled because it is the “source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism” and said the “preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.”’
It was one of the stated goals of Project 2025, explicitly for the reasons stated, and now one of the proposers of that specific goal is in charge of executing it, and it is being executed in precisely the way outlined in the Project 2025 manifesto.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/11/white-house-plan-gu...
Okay, but if I had to make an assumption, I, and any reasonable person on Earth, would assume it's because of the extremist ideology of this administration.
They're anti-science, anti-fact, and pro-oil. Explicitly. I'm not saying this, they're bragging about it. And then things like this keep happening.
Hmm. Now if I were naive and stupid, I might say that it's just a coincidence. Luckily I am not, and I'm confident in say that yes, almost certainly the current administration and political climate has something to do with this.
The big telescopes are on Mauna Kea.
as for volcanism Supposedly it's in a rock creche on the mountain face facing away from the volcano, but you're right to be suspicious.
The 1960-present chart in the article is anything but regular, instead showing a steady rise, and doesn't appear to blip up for either the 1984 or 2022 eruptions.
From context your meaning is clear, but I think you got that idiom inverted.
Both of these points observe vastly cleaner air and provide that baseline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_eruption_of_Mauna_Loa
Mauna Kea is dormant for the last 5k years or so.
https://gml.noaa.gov/obop/mlo/programs/esrl/volcanicco2/volc...
- The entirety of the Mauna Loa observatory, which is operated by NOAA (weather guys), is being shut down;
- The vastly larger Mauna Kea observatories, hosting dozens of federal and international clients, is unrelated
So here we are, seeing heat records being broken every year and storms causing more and more damage. Everyone knew this would happen 60+ years ago, but the bribes kept the gov. kicking the can down the road.
At least by closing Mauna Loa the facts can be denied going forward.
The next kick will probably "melt" the can.
If members of a reasonably technical community can't accept what's happening, then there's no reasonable hope that people will ever be able to reason about our situation correctly. We are surrounded by evidence of all varieties in every direction that we are heading down a path of catastrophic climate change, and yet people contort their logic to find ways not to see it.
And the only way we can have it differently is with violence, which nobody wants. So we'll walk to the abyss together.
"The rich declare themselves poor" - George Michael, Praying For Time, 1990.
If there is a structural force shifting the market places of ideas and decisions, forcing certain choices or protecting and harvesting voting blocs - it’s not “we” in the sense of personal choice.
I concede, that if we define corporations as an expression of human desires - then yes, “we” have made that decision.
And yet I, with my already depressed wages and kids to feed, should sacrifice steak and coach airline tickets?
I'm all for climate action, but it has to be policy level. If it's a choice between a warming world where we're solvent with some middle class prosperity, and a warming world where my wife, kids and I are broke because we went into six figures of debt replacing our ICE cars with EVs and retrofitting my house to passivhaus stanadards, I'm taking the former.
Policy level climate action is the only kind that has any hope of succeeding. That or some magic technology that can suck carbon out of the air at zero cost.
(EVs and PHEVs are ~50% of car sales in China 2025 H1, global light vehicle TAM is ~90M units/year, we're installing 1GW of solar every 15 hours, roughly 1TW/year etc.)
To your point, the most important part is going to be how to rapidly remove the CO2 industrialization has injected into the atmosphere. This remains to be solved for at reasonable cost, but importantly, we're going to need a material amount of low carbon energy for that process.
“This is not inevitable. We have the tools, the instruments, the capacity to change course,” Guterres said. “There are reasons to be hopeful.”
https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/07/22/un-says-booming-solar...
https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-solar-wind-power-f...
https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/un-energy-transiti...
This whole climate thing is really humanity’s worst nightmare.
We’re insanely good at finding solutions, adapting, pulling together when under existential threat. I mean it, it will never cease to amaze me.
We’re shit at: * giving stuff up for the greater good * changing voluntarily * trusting others (countries) to sacrifice as much as yourself
Guess which qualities we need in this case?
It’s like this huge ball with an insane inertia rolling toward us while most are still thinking “ah, I guess I have time for one more appletini, then I’ll just stop that little ball”.
My only hope is we find a cheap and scalable way to pump CO2 out, but that’s really far fetched (and it would also cause us to stop all other efforts around co2 avoidance if it was ever found…).
To be clear, I am still astonished and pleased at the success of EVs.
But let’s keep it in context, it’s one battle amongst many many battles.
This is factually inaccurate. In all cases, EVs are superior to combustion vehicles with regards to lifecylce emissions (construction + operation).
https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/no-doubt-abo...
> As electric vehicles become a bigger part of the global car fleet, a contrarian take seems to surface every few months: are electric vehicles really that clean?
> When it comes to lifecycle emissions, the answer is a resounding yes. According to a new report by BloombergNEF, in all analyzed cases, EVs have lower lifecycle emissions than gas cars. Just how much lower depends on how far they are driven, and the cleanliness of the grid where they charge.
To make it clear: my overall point is, the burning of gas in cars is a fraction of co2 emissions in transport, which itself is a fraction of the overall co2 emissions.
That’s my point.
Now to the detail you are mentioning (detail!), your article actually agrees with me. Production of electric cars is more co2 intensive than from ICE cars. Read it. There’s even a break even point because of this. Over their lifetime, electric cars emit less co2 though.
Collectors aside no one builds a car and doesn't drive it. Once you start driving both cars, the EV pulls ahead on emissions very quickly, which you admitted too. Repeating only that manufacture is more co2 intensive (and that's only today, it could change in the future) is a lie by omission.
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.
The comment you're replying to would be easy to respond to with a link containing refuting evidence. We understand this topic is an important one, and one that people get passionate about. But any topic that's important deserves to be discussed with solid evidence rather than personal abuse. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines if you want to keep commenting here.
But you're correct that this type of comment isn't good for the site and I'll be more mindful.
And then we can use the money for EV credits, more wind farms, and other initiatives. Hell, if you're really against climate policies, we could simply burn the money and at least that could help fighting inflation.
There is one party in the US that constantly shoots down climate policies. Guess what they also do to Jeff Bezos's tax. Somehow that doesn't bother all those "climate policy skeptics" that are deeply upset about his private jet.
It's also a reminder that this is a well known public forum at this point, and those are always targeted by propaganda (or have gotten a large enough mass that denialists have gotten a large enough foothold).
Back in 97-00 slashdot was an amazing site, just a gathering of inquisitive people posting cool stuff. Over the years it degenerated with more hateful stuff despite valiant efforts to adjust moderation causing early people to drop off, this place was amazing back in 2015 when I joined and the work done to keep it somewhat tidy after some 18 years is actually impressive, but I'm also feeling a lot of the same types of comments increase that made slashdot a less interesting place to begin with.
There are many people who doubt whether the majority of the observed effect is directly human caused however.
Of course whether it’s human caused directly or human caused via 10 degrees of seperation matters little to future generations… but someone, somewhere, needs to actually do the work and provide credible rock solid proof for each and every step along the way.
Otherwise the latter group will keep on growing in size and influence.
It's been below 300 ppm for at least the last 800,000 years, had now increased to over 400 ppm in a pattern that directly maps to the industrial revolution, radiocarbon dating traces the carbon in the atmosphere to "old" carbon like that from fossil fuels, and the known sources of human emissions adequately explain the increase.
An argument based on likelihoods and probabilities is not anywhere close to rock solid proof, since the credibility of the folks determining those is what’s doubted in the first place.
Even if aliens with no human context at all showed up, a full proof will still convince them via pure logic and deduction from basic axioms.
There is only 1 HN user who replied with any link whatsoever (at the time of writing this)… so literally not even multiple “people”.
Edit: If you are geniuinely experiencing some kind of vision problems, such that a second user appears to have linked some kind of evidence underneath my comment, I recommend logging off and seeking help for mental/eye issues.
” Of course whether it’s human caused directly or human caused via 10 degrees of seperation matters little to future generations… but someone, somewhere, needs to actually do the work and provide credible rock solid proof for each and every step along the way. Otherwise the latter group will keep on growing in size and influence.”
Trying to avoid and deflect just makes you look more like a deranged troll.
All I did was ask about what someone else linked you:
This is all so maddeningly stupid and frightening.
What do you mean by going back slightly less, in terms of measures to take?
Sure, on the merit this particular action was dumb. But on the net I think fossil fuels are for the time being a net positive and non-replacement phase out would be worse than the amount of warming it prevents, not slightly less bad; especially in the developing world.
And, because like in so many political issues, nuanced positions aren't really popular (as these we're all gonna die comments illustrate), if having to choose between two flavors of uncompromising shouting I'm going to go with the fossil fuel camp on this issue. Although I d personally prefer more of both plus carbon tax etc for the shift.
But my original comment was just trying to put catastrophising into perspective,"following the science" ;)
As much as I'd like to chalk that up to bots, of which I'm sure there are some small amount, I think it has more to do with the ideological roots of this space. Extremists like Yarvin and Thiel are in the DNA of this forum and its userbase. Of course I'm likely to fall afoul of the guidelines even mentioning this. On any political thread you get this strange through-the-looking-glass sensation of people inhabiting an entirely disjunct reality.
And it also appears to be wholesale for many people, you can hold the position that DEI was pointless corporate propaganda and rolling it back is harmless, or H1B visas should be ended, but also that attacks on science and vaccination are bad but most people seem to have lost that nuance.
Anything newer - proper line by line calculations that get rid of the approximations and take a serious look at the absorption spectrum - is nowadays essentially a taboo...
BTW 'Barbarian' get a bad rap. They were in many ways more civilized than the Romans. But the Romans were really good at killing people and got to write the history.
His other coverups have not had any significant impact on his supporters. Quite a few have been enthusiastically embraced, like the Jan 6 pardons.
I don't think there's a way you can spin it.
Like those country leaders in Europe towards the middle of the last century, with the mustache, the newspapers couldn't have spun it away, y'know?
https://spacenews.com/kbr-wins-176-million-contract-to-moder...
It is not the only measurement of global CO2 source, anyway, but as a base point for long enough trend.
If it was just the Hawaii station, we could quibble over its merics (volcanic activity, etc.), but closing all four means only one thing: the US doesn't want data that tracks climate change.
If you don't track it, you don't have to do anything about it.
Assuming we survive, I can't imagine how future generations will look back on all these attempts at climate change denialism in their history books, dumbfounded by our stupidity.
Totally bogus. First off, it’s a critical dataset for tracking CO2 levels. And second, it’s just like two people huddling in a metal shipping container with a bunch of sensors on top of a mountain in Hawaii, not some kind of crazy budget.
sroussey•6mo ago
swiftcoder•6mo ago
perihelions•6mo ago
There are young PhD students who've been imprisoned for months without bail over these fictions.
moralestapia•6mo ago
dangero•6mo ago
moralestapia•6mo ago
The context should be pretty clear.
*facepalm*
perihelions•6mo ago
Here's[2] the FBI director's Twitter thread about the C. elegans researcher, for a flavor of the MAGA sociology that's driving this. [edit]: His rhetoric in the case in [3] is even less hingèd.
[0] https://detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/27...
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01958-4 ( https://archive.is/XIONv )
[2] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19322140473000796... ("This case is part of a broader effort from the FBI and our federal partners to heavily crack down on similar pathogeon [sic] smuggling operations, as the CCP works relentlessly to undermine America’s research institutions.")
[3] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19300448842845230... ("This case is a sobering reminder that the CCP is working around the clock to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate American institutions and target our food supply, which would have grave consequences... putting American lives and our economy at serious risk. Your FBI will continue working tirelessly to be on guard against it.")
moralestapia•6mo ago
>After being charged last month with trying to smuggle frog embryos into the United States, Kseniia Petrova, a Russian bioinformatician, was indicted on 25 June on additional charges by a grand jury in Boston, Massachusetts — including making a false statement to customs agents.
Well, that's ... something.
Honestly, when I first read your comment I got the impression that these students might have done something innocuous that got grossly misinterpreted (perhaps on purpose) and that's how they got in trouble ...
But the ones you showed so far did engage, quite clearly, in criminal behavior. I don't think ICE/Patel/Trump should be blamed for that.
throwawaymaths•6mo ago
it's also surprising there wasn't more scrutiny in the past. there are colonels in the PLA that have actively called for and published materials calling for agro and bio terrorism against the US, and all chinese nationals are required to debrief on return.
ceejayoz•6mo ago
> Experts doubt that the smuggled fungus could be used effectively, since the logistics, as well as physical conditions, such as temperature and humidity, for creating a widespread infection with this pathogen are not straightforward. Furthermore, this fungal infection can be prevented and/or controlled with the use of pesticides and cultural practices, like harvesting early to stop fungal growth. Having said that, if the strain that Jian and Liu brought into the U.S is a new potent variant, there is a possibility of it being an effective weapon. Nevertheless, F. graminearum has been studied in the U.S. for more than a century, and it is a common factor to treat in food safety protocols.
You'd expect the CCP to be a little better at it if that were the intention.
mikeyouse•6mo ago
mikeyouse•6mo ago
“While searching one of Liu’s cell phones, they found an article in PDF form titled “2018 Plant Pathogen Warfare under Changing Climate Conditions.” Authorities said the article specifically referenced Fusarium graminearum as “an example of a destructive disease and pathogen for crops” and is “responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.”
But the actual article is about the ‘warfare’ between plants and pathogens in a world with a changing climate as denoted by the hyphen in the title..
“Plant-Pathogen Warfare under Changing Climate Conditions”
There is great need for future research to increasingly use dynamic environmental conditions in order to fully understand the multidimensional nature of plant-pathogen interactions and produce disease-resistant crop plants that are resilient to climate change.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29787730/
throwawaymaths•6mo ago
have people gone mad?
mikeyouse•6mo ago
The more common route is you complete the paperwork, fly with it in your carry-on and declare it all at customs.
Having worked in a related field, it certainly wasn’t uncommon for scientists to skip some of the hassle and just not declare their research material. Definitely not ‘proper’ and certainly higher risk to their immigration/visa status if they were foreign nationals, but still not uncommon when the alternative is spending hours in CBP inspections before you spend hours in the normal immigration queue.
jibe•6mo ago
Not sure what the outrage is,
Chinese scholar from UM Chengxuan Han expected to plead guilty in smuggling case
"During the secondary inspection, Han made false statements that she had not sent packages to members of the UM Lab," an FBI agent wrote in the court filing. "When pressed, Han admitted that she had shipped packages to members of the UM Lab. Han initially stated to (Customs and Border Patrol) officers that the packages were plastic cups (rather than petri dishes) and a book (omitting the envelope with suspected biological materials concealed in it)."
The FBI counterintelligence case against UM scholar Yunqing Jian, 33, and her boyfriend, 34-year-old Zunyong Liu, involves allegations that Jian received money from a Chinese foundation funded largely by the Chinese government to conduct post-doctoral work. That includes research on a fungus known as Fusarium graminearum, a biological pathogen that can cause devastating diseases in crops.
Maybe these students are getting overcharged, but they were clearly caught smuggling.
dangero•6mo ago
davedx•6mo ago
edent•6mo ago
It is one of the (many) reasons they fell behind in atomic research.
TheNewsIsHere•6mo ago
The Nazis fell behind in atomic research for a variety of reasons, each with its own underpinnings. One of the most interesting in my mind was organizational failings. Although many different groups were working in this area, the regime leadership was rather disconnected and didn’t prioritize a coherent or integrated research effort. They didn’t provide much funding either. In some ways this created more room for unstructured scientific inquiry and creativity, but it also meant that no particular group could make any real progress toward usable reactors or weapons.
Contrast this with the Manhattan Project in the US (and the UK’s efforts at radar), which was supported and managed from the highest levels of government with a figurative blank check and despite immense compartmentalization also had a high degree of integration among disciplines and sites. There was one goal.
In my view this is an interesting manifestation of the foundation of the Third Reich. In Martin Davidson’s The Perfect Nazi, Davidson notes that the Nazi party was in many ways a child’s cosplay turned into a nightmare. Davidson writes that one of the key failings of the regime is that it was run by broken people who had more of an interest in catharsis than any real sense of society, advancement, or cohesion.
tialaramex•6mo ago
This apparently had significant operational consequences because if you don't know how it works all you can do when there's a fault is order spare parts. So German radar stations would be offline more often and for longer. Although Chain Home's transmitters were wildly more powerful than anything even a rich British amateur might have seen before, not to mention operating on frequencies unachievable with prior technology, the principles were familiar.
TheNewsIsHere•6mo ago
I have seen Most Secret War recommended to me by basically every physical and ebook seller I have an account with, so I guess it’s time to take one of them up on the offer. Thank you!
Any other similar insights from your readings?
mschuster91•6mo ago
IMHO, it's more than warranted to call out parallels between events back then and events happening right under our noses today [2], not to mention the increasing and worrying trend of book bans [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-man-accused-burnin...
[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-school-library-book-ban...
aipatselarom•6mo ago
It definitely adds an interesting nuance to the book burning thing.
Thanks.
flohofwoe•6mo ago
aipatselarom•6mo ago
So, it was smart and young German students that wanted to get rid of most or all of the material produced by one of the earliest institutions on the planet dealing with controversial topics like birth control, LGBT, fetishism, sadomasochism and venereal disease.
The founder and most of the researchers there were Jewish, so I wouldn't discard an antisemitic motive behind that as well.
As you say, I always bought the "dumb nazis burned books" story, but this context makes me think about the event in a much different way.
ceejayoz•6mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Mathematik
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnenerbe
IAmBroom•6mo ago
flohofwoe•6mo ago
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/online/5299/The-scientific...