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Comment by lqdc13 | Hacker News Reader

1. It is reversible over time if people concentrated on removing CO2 from the air.

2. This is not yet known. What if Russia opens borders and lets people in as long as they stay in Siberia?

What if food supply shortage helps innovate instead or changes priorities?

3. Snobby in a way for criticizing countries that are going through their versions of industrial revolution when the West went through it already.

4. Not much action from that person. People are really bad at counting calories. I bet everyone is way off when counting their carbon footprint and they would get outraged by others when they themselves could be outputting way more.

Best thing to do in terms of carbon footprint unless you are directly working on solutions is to not have children and start working on solutions. Finger pointing and preaching doesn't help.

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1. Is there a viable technology to do this right now? Is there bound to be one within a decade?

2. That's why I said "predicted." Relocating hundreds of millions of poor people to Russia is not a solution to climate change. Look at the problems we are having now with accepting a couple million refugees from Syria. Plus, this doesn't address the flooding and economic cost. The long-term effects of climate change on humanity are overwhelmingly negative.

3. Virtually all climate change activists I know of primarily advocate reducing emissions at home (in the US for me). The goal is not to prevent other countries from industrializing, it's to prevent them from emitting CO2. This may be possible with green energy. Ultimately, the atmosphere doesn't care where the emissions come from.

4. I don't really care what supporting climate change action says about an individual person, I care about results.

> Best thing to do in terms of carbon footprint unless you are directly working on solutions is to not have children and start working on solutions. Finger pointing and preaching doesn't help.

Yes, finger pointing doesn't help. But at least in the US, we already have the technological and economic means to drastically reduce our carbon footprint. The problem is political will. We need top-down political action to force green energy – as you hint at, individuals trying to reduce their carbon footprint will never be enough. There is unfortunately no other way.

re (1.) It might not be that easy. Sure, the planet would cool down again, but

- the 1000 year ocean cycle takes time, (which is now transporting heat and carbon into the lower ocean layers)

- building up the ice sheets again takes way longer, and ice sheets are important to the albedo, thus also have an influence on climate,

- there are some points where something big might change, such as ocean current patterns changing permanently(due to changes in heat and salinity distribution), permafrost thawing and releasing huge volumes of methane, ..

It's a massive problem to undo. Right now it'd be still relatively easy, but it might not stay that way.

(We'll have to learn how to control the climate longterm anyway since another ice age would be desastrous, but it's too soon. We're still to unknowledgerable and weak.)

re: #2, see the huge instability of the permafrost in areas that are currently warming. It's not a good place to settle humans. http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/siberia-crater...

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