[doingtheiroming]

Reading the comments, it seems that absolutely no one is happy about this. It is either a lie, insufficient or a pointless response to a non-problem.

But it’s a clear achievement. An achievement with lots of nuance. And one that runs counter to many strongly held and arguably ideological positions on all sides of the political spectrum.

Reading responses to it here and on Twitter has been rather depressing.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's not helped that the messenger is a highly polarising source that piggybacks on the facts to a) attack the mainstream media as unpatriotic liars and b) downplay the severity of climate change that they've been actively denying, because of the success of policies they've actively fought against at every turn.

[nvm0n2]

The Spectator often makes valuable points that are hard to accept but true. One of them is that British climate efforts are pointless, it accounts for such a tiny percentage of world emissions that it could drop to zero and be a rounding error. Therefore the "success" of this policy is a mirage. Yes the UK had reduced emissions. No it won't have any effect on the climate. Both these things can be true simultaneously: the policy succeeded and failed.

[ZeroGravitas]

No, it's cynical sophistry aka bullshit.

Meanwhile, The Spectator has employed some of the worst climate deniers in british journalism, who specialize in the production of exactly that commodity.

https://www.desmog.com/james-delingpole/

> James Delingpole announced in The Spectator that he was going to “put his money where his mouth is” and invest in a fund named Cool Futures with the aim of short-selling renewable energy stocks. Delingpole describes climate change as an “outrageous scam” and says he will bet “on the Big Short principle” and call “this rigged market’s bluff.”

...

In June 2016, Joanne Nova finally published about the new fund on her own blog, asking readers to donate money to get the Cayman Island-based hedge fund started. The Cool Futures Fund Management needs at least $375,000 to get off the ground, of which it has already raised $42,530, reported Daily Kos

https://www.desmog.com/ross-clark/

> In a Spectator article titled “The true cost of renewable energy”, Clark wrote that “the price of green energy is a form of terrible segregation, where the rich will have access to light and heat, and those who need it most, the poor, will shiver in the dark”.3

https://www.desmog.com/toby-young/

> Young criticised the youth climate strike movement in a Spectator column where he claimed the protestors just wanted “a day off school”. He wrote that Greta Thunberg had been “living on another planet for the past 16 years” and concluded the article by writing: [25]

“If children really must wag their fingers at older generations for some imaginary sin, I wish they’d do it at the weekend. Better yet, they could combine it with picking up litter, which really might do something for the environment. The fact that so many students have been taken in by Greta Thunberg’s crude propaganda is an argument for raising the voting age to 21, not lowering it to 16

[nvm0n2]

The first is someone who is disagreeing with you and actually putting their money where their mouth is, which is the opposite of sophistry. You don't argue with any specific claim of his so it's impossible to know what you think is bullshit there.

The second is a good example of what I just said - hard to accept but true. If the price of energy goes up a lot then the poorest will do without, and the richest will just outbid them. He wrote that article in November 2022. A few months later the Guardian was writing that millions can't afford to heat their own homes due to high energy prices:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/08/uk-weather-m...

The third is a guy who doesn't like Greta Thunberg, the girl famous for most recently arguing that Palestine has something to do with climate change. Are you saying that anyone who thinks Thunberg is an idiot is engaged in "cynical sophistry"?

[doingtheiroming]

Don’t shoot the message.

[burkaman]

Like it or not (and I don't like it), that is the culture of this website. Positive comments are actively discouraged, and even if you want to make one they are difficult to write. To criticize you only need to find one thing wrong, but to substantively support you really need to understand the whole subject.

[s1artibartfast]

In my opinion, there has also been an eternal summer effect following the reddit protests, which manifests as 1) more anti-curious doomerism and joke comments

[alephnerd]

I feel the pandemic also changed the tone on here, though the Reddit protest definetly made things worse on here.

[bitcharmer]

I guarantee you if that was USA the comments would be much more positive. HN is as biased and indoctrinated as Reddit simply because Americans are the largest group of commenters here