[HN Gopher] Where Glaciers Melt, the Rivers Run Red
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       Where Glaciers Melt, the Rivers Run Red
        
       Author : Petiver
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2024-11-23 23:49 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | isoprophlex wrote:
       | https://archive.is/QO7jd
       | 
       | An aside:
       | 
       | Why bother submitting paywalled articles? Why bother upvoting
       | paywalled articles? > 95% of readers probably don't have access.
       | 
       | Not being facetious, I genuinely want to know. Do people upvote
       | without reading? Will almost everyone take the effort to throw
       | the link into a paywall buster? Do many HN readers subscribe to
       | paywalled sources?
        
         | matsemann wrote:
         | FWIW it wasn't pay walled here. I just had to press "Show full
         | article" and could read on. Perhaps it's based on geo location
         | (I'm not their market) or how much one's read them lately?
        
           | isoprophlex wrote:
           | Oh right, that actually makes a lot of sense, thanks..!
        
           | asimpletune wrote:
           | I was prompted to create a free account to keep reading.
        
             | cwassert wrote:
             | If you have to create an account or accept an EULA it is
             | not free.
        
               | valicord wrote:
               | Free as in beer
        
           | joak wrote:
           | If you google "Where Glaciers Melt, the Rivers Run Red" the
           | first hit is the nyt article, if you click on this link
           | you'll find the article non-paywalled!
           | 
           | Edit: if it doesn't work try again in a private/incognito tab
           | to make sure it's all fresh cookies
           | 
           | So depending on the http-origin header the article is
           | paywalled or not.
           | 
           | This is a trick I always use, it works for many newspapers.
        
             | nosianu wrote:
             | Nope, I still get the paywall. I noticed this for some
             | time, the trick to go "Incognito" does not work any more
             | for some sites.
             | 
             | It's not a big deal, I can use the archive link or just not
             | read it, all those articles are merely of the "mildly
             | interesting" category anyway. Not to mention that they are
             | 90+% fluff and the core message could usually be summarized
             | with a few sentences.
             | 
             | I am curious though, given that this is HN, does anyone
             | know how they are doing that paywall tracking these days?
             | It is not just NYT where the fresh incognito window no
             | longer works to get around the restriction. Washington Post
             | too, for example, at least for me.
        
               | joak wrote:
               | It's weird, I tried before posting to check if my tip was
               | working on this article, and it did.
        
         | thom wrote:
         | 99% of the time the top comment is an archive link.
        
         | bell-cot wrote:
         | For me (NYT non-subscriber, US, blocking most js), only the
         | first 4 paragraphs are visible. That's fairly common for web
         | sites to do (# of visible paragraphs varies, obviously). And
         | usually shows enough to convince me that the article is worth
         | no more of my time.
        
         | oniony wrote:
         | I share your annoyance. I've convinced that the sites
         | themselves are doing this to attract subscribers.
         | 
         | Every time anyone complains you get the backlash of "if you
         | want good journalism you have to pay for it", yet few can
         | afford to subscribe to more than one or two publications and
         | yet we have to suffer paywalled links from all of them. For me,
         | the one UK publication I pay for is enough (and that one is,
         | ironically, not even paywalled).
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | It's a distribution and friction problem.
           | 
           | We solved it for music. We need the same for journalism.
           | 
           | Microtransactions never took off, so that leaves one option:
           | journalism companies need to stop having their own websites
           | and instead publish to an aggregator (or aggregators) that
           | handle payment and monetization. Spotify or Netflix for news.
           | 
           | But perhaps that would turn them into an even lower margin
           | business with no ownership of their own audience
           | relationship. Doesn't seem like a fun business to be in.
           | 
           | Nevertheless, it's still a distribution and friction problem.
        
             | pluc wrote:
             | The model does not work. Nobody wants to subscribe to read
             | one article in a blue moon, so we "pirate" it using
             | archival sites. Piracy gave us DRM and streaming, archival
             | will give us something new eventually, when they realize it
             | doesn't work.
        
             | crooked-v wrote:
             | Apple News+ is kind of that, but has the basic issue that
             | paid articles are still stuffed with ads, which makes it
             | pretty pointless.
        
             | jjmarr wrote:
             | That already happened, except Reddit, Facebook, and Hacker
             | News don't pay for the content they aggregate. People dodge
             | paywalls in the comments, and many don't even bother to
             | read the story. What would a paid solution offer over that?
             | 
             | My cool idea would be an aggregator that charges people a
             | subscription fee to participate and read stories.
             | $100/month and extremely heavy (paid) moderation that
             | forces people to engage with the articles. The price point
             | helps get rid of anyone who is unwilling to participate
             | constructively. Revenue-sharing for commenters as well.
             | 
             | Make it the place where _real_ discussions happen. People
             | are social creatures and want to join exclusive clubs.
        
         | dredmorbius wrote:
         | Re aside: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989>
        
         | latexr wrote:
         | > Why bother submitting paywalled articles?
         | 
         | They are explicitly permitted, as long as there are
         | workarounds.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#:~:text=Are%20payw...
         | 
         | Though I wish submitters would provide the workaround (or gift
         | link) too when submitting (I try to do so). It's often someone
         | else who does it. Though in fairness I guess someone may forget
         | something is paywalled when they're paying for it and have
         | access.
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | If people just marked the title with a (paywall) it would
           | already be an improvement.
        
             | latexr wrote:
             | Sounds like that should be done automatically, like HN auto
             | adds [pdf] or [video] for certain URLs. You can suggest
             | [paywall] by emailing hn@ycombinator.com.
        
         | anjanb wrote:
         | I subscribe to 4-5 paywalled sources. Rest, I rely on others to
         | give me the archive links.
        
         | ctippett wrote:
         | Save yourself the angst and give this userscript[1] a go. It
         | adds some nice quality of life improvements for posts that link
         | to paywalled articles.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/MostlyEmre/hn-anti-paywall
        
       | matsemann wrote:
       | Just before visiting HN I read a news article about our glaciers
       | in Norway also melting. One glacier has moved back 83 meters in a
       | year, and the last ten years it's moved back 483 meters.
       | 
       | A glacier that normally melts a meter in thickness each year and
       | gains it back during winter, has melted 4 meters.
       | 
       | We've lost 20 glaciers here the last decade.
       | 
       | It's scary.
       | 
       | https://www.nrk.no/klima/breforsker-sjokkert-over-hvor-mye-i...
        
         | baq wrote:
         | The election cycle, at least in a small part a function of a
         | human's expected life span btw, is way too short for
         | governments to be incentivized to do anything about it.
         | 
         | It's going to be a wild ride for our grandchildren.
        
           | adrianN wrote:
           | It's going to be a wild ride for anyone under fifty.
        
           | shiroiushi wrote:
           | This makes me wonder if society would be improved by radical
           | life-extension therapies or technologies. Detractors
           | generally say it would result in stagnation, but at least
           | people would have a very good incentive to think long-term if
           | they knew they had a good chance of still being alive in 200
           | or 1000 years and having to deal with the long-term effects
           | of current policy.
        
             | InDubioProRubio wrote:
             | I think it would also allow "careers" to detach from
             | mistakes like papers published on the wrong side of a
             | paradigm as "junior" mistakes.
        
             | pjc50 wrote:
             | That incentivizes not so much long-term thinking as the
             | politics of the permanent stagnation bunker. You'd get a
             | caste of mortal disposable workers who live in the flood
             | plains, working for a tiny group of immortals who have
             | locked down the top positions and made themselves effective
             | rulers for life.
             | 
             | Think Japanese stagflation but for centuries. Reiwa era
             | 200.
        
             | thanksgiving wrote:
             | To play the devil's advocate, imagine if politicians (US
             | senators / House members) could live for and hold their
             | positions for a thousand years... I don't know if that is a
             | good thing.
             | 
             | Or Xi of Mainland China...
        
           | lifeinthevoid wrote:
           | Meanwhile the most popular politician in Belgium claims that
           | climate activists are overly dramatic and that we should
           | trust technology to save us. Just great.
        
             | lazide wrote:
             | Delusion is always an easier sell than hard work.
        
             | InDubioProRubio wrote:
             | Which is a inherently insane argument, to trust on the
             | exploration of a labyrinth (research) to uncover ever more
             | powerful hot potatoes, to save you from the hot potatoes
             | you already juggle with. One missed juggling motion and you
             | are stuck in a position you are unlikely to get out of
             | because the failure to juggle reveals the original tribal
             | societies inability to hold it together and propel a
             | scientific society under stress.
        
               | trueismywork wrote:
               | That has been humanity forever now though
        
             | netsharc wrote:
             | Yeah, also here I've seen commenters having faith that
             | "some technology will come along and save us!".
             | 
             | It's a different sort of "climate denial"[1].
             | 
             | OK, my faith that we're totally fucked is also based on
             | guesstimate, just in the opposite direction (it can be
             | viewed as a denial of the idea that there's something we
             | can do to rescue this extravagantly luxurious modern life).
             | 
             | [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/ju
             | n/20/...
        
               | suzzer99 wrote:
               | What is it to have no faith in humans to make shared
               | sacrifice on a global scale, but at least some hope in
               | mitigation technologies?
        
             | Wololooo wrote:
             | Fucking Bart, if that guy kicked the bucket everyone would
             | be better off...
        
             | yodsanklai wrote:
             | > we should trust technology to save us
             | 
             | I'd be curious about the actual stats, but I have the
             | feeling it's a widely shared point of view, even in
             | educated circles.
             | 
             | The alternative option which is consuming less in order to
             | pollute less is pretty unpopular.
        
               | consp wrote:
               | It might be able to but that would require getting rid of
               | cheap sources of energy and manufacturing which the deck
               | is stacked so hard against it will never happen. Before
               | humanity will do anything we have to get rid of the
               | current ruling autocracy since acting now would create
               | pain over time, acting later would create pain when most
               | people alive are dead. And maybe put the environment
               | before profits, same problem though.
        
               | throwup238 wrote:
               | I mean at this point we're likely looking at the dreaded
               | 2C scenario even if we ceased all carbon emissions and
               | regressed back to the stone age immediately, which
               | obviously isn't going to happen because I really like my
               | hot showers.
               | 
               | We've been using technology to solve our problems for
               | thousands of years. If that streak stops now, we're
               | royally fucked.
        
               | stakhanov wrote:
               | > The alternative option which is consuming less in order
               | to pollute less is pretty unpopular.
               | 
               | If you frame the problem like that, does it actually
               | surprise you that no one will act on it? One has to
               | either freeze or feel guilty of some kind of moral
               | failing about the heat one consumes?
               | 
               | You might say: No, no, the problem is not consumption,
               | it's the superfluous part of the consumption, the
               | _overconsumption_ that 's the problem. Okay, but, then,
               | who exactly stands in judgment of which part of the
               | consumption is the _overconsumption_? The same moralising
               | types who bemoan the melting of the glaciers?
               | 
               | Reminds me a bit of pre-enlightenment Europe and its
               | juxtaposition of power and catholic moralising
               | guilttripping. What's needed is a humanistic way forward,
               | a way wherein man gets to fundamentally be the hero of
               | the story.
               | 
               | If you come to me and say: Here is a way to reconfigure
               | the economy through technological, economic, and
               | political change, to make it so that one can feel good
               | about consumption again, then I will go to hell and back
               | to make that change happen. If you just tell me "consume
               | less", then don't expect me to do anything.
        
               | wiz21c wrote:
               | Ok, understood. I'm now telling you: "Here is a way to
               | reconfigure the economy through technological, economic,
               | and political change, to make it so that one can feel
               | good about consumption again, then I will go to hell and
               | back to make that change happen".
               | 
               | Just don't spend too much time in hell, we need you to
               | act here :-)
        
               | marcosdumay wrote:
               | Hum... I noticed you aren't telling the actual way.
        
               | selimthegrim wrote:
               | Name checks out
        
               | adrianN wrote:
               | The problem is that the technology is already ninety
               | percent there, but replacing energy infrastructure costs
               | money. The time of waiting for technology is long over,
               | we know what we need to build, we just have to do it.
        
               | katbyte wrote:
               | There are also a lot of peoples who's wealth comes from
               | continuing the way things are, and changing over to
               | greener technologies would mean they might end up less
               | wealthy
        
             | selimthegrim wrote:
             | Who is this so if I move to Belgium I turn the TV off when
             | they come on it?
        
             | wiz21c wrote:
             | who is the most popular ? BdW ? JLB ?
        
           | InDubioProRubio wrote:
           | We are going to be THAT generation that dropped the ball.
        
           | Ekaros wrote:
           | In general very small part of population will choose certain
           | suffering now to avoid uncertain suffering in future.
           | 
           | Actively doing enough against climate change will have very
           | real and likely significant quality of life change now. And
           | if lot of people don't think their quality of life is high
           | enough now, why would they want it to go lower. And sadly
           | rich are always insulated either way.
        
             | orwin wrote:
             | They truly won't be. global supply lines will probably be
             | the first casualties that will trigger mainstream
             | realization, and however deep your Hawaiian bunker is,
             | feeding your plumber without those will be difficult.
        
               | triceratops wrote:
               | That's probably why they want AGI and robotics.
        
               | ianburrell wrote:
               | AGI and robotics will have the worst supply situation.
               | They depend on expensive GPUs and complicated machinery
               | from across the world.
        
             | suzzer99 wrote:
             | It's not that they _know_ they 're sacrificing their
             | grandchildrens' future for their current quality of life.
             | It's that they'll believe the flimsiest arguments that
             | climate change isn't happening. Cognitive dissonance is
             | undefeated.
        
           | noelwelsh wrote:
           | Birth rates are dropping faster than predicted, which means
           | both fewer grandchildren to suffer and fewer grandchildren to
           | produce carbon. A lot of environmental issues just go away
           | with fewer people around. We'll have to adapt the current
           | ponzi scheme of government pensions but that seems a small
           | price to pay.
           | 
           | https://x.com/_alice_evans/status/1849668492951220483
        
             | baq wrote:
             | This just means less people to handle the consequences of
             | the last two decades of reckless exponential growth. It'll
             | matter for their grandchildren, maybe.
        
               | noelwelsh wrote:
               | Not quite. A big issue with global warming is we have
               | been taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into
               | the atmosphere. We have the technology to stop doing
               | that, but not the technology to capture carbon already in
               | the atmosphere. Fewer people means more vegetation that
               | will capture some of that carbon.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | While I agree this works (we have very good evidence in
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event), the
               | timescales for that to matter are two orders of magnitude
               | too long assuming we figure out the scale and genetics.
        
           | zaik wrote:
           | Enough people run for office who want to do something about
           | climate change. But a plurality of the population seems to be
           | mainly concerned with being angry about immigrants and
           | wanting lower taxes.
        
             | pastage wrote:
             | Food riots is a thing. It is hard to govern when everyone
             | is upset that it costs too much to live. To do something
             | about climate change we need to do somethings 10 times
             | worse than the pandemic for 10 years. No more visiting
             | grandma who lives 5 hours away.
        
           | fractallyte wrote:
           | These are all _natural_ cycles, noooothing to worry about...
           | :- /
           | 
           | (Sorry, sarcasm... I've had immense battles with deniers...)
        
           | keybored wrote:
           | Assuming that the government is to a large part motivated by
           | the electorate. Some governments certainly aren't (e.g. the
           | US).
        
         | MrVandemar wrote:
         | We won't save ourselves.
         | 
         | It's just not cost effective to do so.
        
         | dagurp wrote:
         | They are shrinking at an alarming rate here in Iceland as well.
         | This is causing sandstorms and possibly increased volcanic
         | activity.
        
           | noelwelsh wrote:
           | Y'all need to get some trees planted to stabilise the soil. I
           | know some people in Iceland are attempting to do that.
        
         | ponector wrote:
         | It is the end of the recent ice age, those glaciers are set to
         | melt anyway. With human contribution they melted slightly
         | faster.
        
           | propater wrote:
           | We should be at the end of the current inter-glacial,
           | temperatures should be going down, not up and glaciers should
           | be growing, not shrinking. If you are talking about the
           | Wurm/Winsconsin glaciation, it has been pretty much over for
           | 12000 years and the climate has been pretty stable since.
        
         | mooreds wrote:
         | If you are interested in a prescient look at how climate change
         | will impact geopolitics:
         | 
         | https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats...
         | 
         | The author intersperses nonfiction summaries (from 2011, so a
         | bit dated) with fictional accounts of geopolitical conflict.
         | 
         | Super scary but eye opening.
        
           | Hilift wrote:
           | A bit more recent. Soylent Green was set in the year 2022,
           | and was about how humans and climate killed the ocean as the
           | world's largest food source. In the film, they are always
           | sweating and it's 90 degrees F at night.
        
       | aodj wrote:
       | Available without paywall
       | https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/where-glaciers-melt-river...
        
       | ashoeafoot wrote:
       | So upriver ph guard station with lime? and methan flaming of
       | drones?
        
       | advael wrote:
       | Sure seems like we ought to be more aggressive about this whole
       | anthropogenic climate collapse problem
       | 
       | Like maybe problems like vast swaths of the world becoming both
       | less livable and less arable all at once is somewhat to blame for
       | all the refugee crises?
       | 
       | Not to be "political" or whatever
        
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