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Comment by chris5745 | Hacker News Reader

Very exciting! I believe these types of approaches will be greatly beneficial in turning the tide of environmental change. However, I am curious about the long (very long) term effects of this technology.

If atmospheric CO2 becomes a resource for the production of goods that do not release the CO2 back into the environment for reuse, would there be a risk of O2 overabundance? If left unchecked it could overcorrect for global warming and usher in an ice age.

I imagine there’s a balance point for CO2 levels and finding and maintaining that balance will be what determines humankind’s success in the long (very long) term.

See, e.g., University of Maryland. "Rise Of Oxygen Caused Earth's Earliest Ice Age." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 May 2009. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507094218.htm>.

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> If left unchecked it could overcorrect for global warming and usher in an ice age.

Human society can live through, and has lived through, glacial periods, all within the current ice age. It hasn't survived through a warning period that ended an ice age. Warming is both more imminent and more dangerous.

That said, consuming CO2 without releasing O2 won't significantly increase the O2 level anyway, because the total CO2 level isn't a significant proportion of the O2 level. Depleting CO2 too far runs a bigger risk of reducing O2 by reducing plant biomass which depends on CO2 and produces O2.

In any case, any risk of reducing CO2 concentration is easily mitigated by ramping up enough fossil-fuel-based energy production to counteract the decrease. CO2 underabundance isn't a problem we have, but it's certainly a problem for which we have (without specific intent) done an excessively good job of developing, proving, and deploying infrastructure to mitigate if necessary.

Seems unlikely that overcorrection would be a problem. By the time we are there, there should be many other options, and there will be plenty of time to prepare.

Right now, it seems the big concern is the next 20-50 years.

>If left unchecked it could overcorrect for global warming and usher in an ice age.

The entire point of being able to control it is that it's not just left unchecked. We'll modify it while studying it, and then when it becomes so routine it's trivial, we'll automate it.

Re: “unchecked”: I was speaking more from an economic perspective, rather than a technical one. If there is a new CO2 sourced product with a long lifetime and the carbon does not return to the atmosphere for a long period, and it is in high global demand, it could open the door to the issues I’m trying to highlight in the original comment.

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