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Comment by ed25519FUUU | Hacker News Reader

If only we could invent some kind of living organisms which consume CO2 and emit oxygen! (Sorry, it’s a little snarky!)

I’m all seriousness, earth seems to find a balance when it goes through these types of events. Whether we’ll make it through the ride is to be seen.

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The sarcasm is fine, but I have no sense of whether or not the point is even valid. Do you have any back of the napkin maths to illustrate how effective covering the Earth’s land masses in trees would be, even if we could terraform all the big deserts? Planting a load of trees is at least actionable, but I wonder if it’s also futile.

Phytoplankton is what makes oxygen from CO2. Trees actually do not add much. IMO we should bioengineer phytoplankton to allow it to grow faster, so our oceans will just turn more CO2 into O2 and solve that issue.

... and in the process destabilize every other ecosystem in the ocean? I think that's a dangerous direction to go into without further insights into what kind unintended consequences there might be.

Well, the carboniferous era would disagree with you :)

I still have no sense of how feasible or efficacious that might be.

> Trees actually do not add much

Keywords: Plumes; Oceanography.

You are right, Earth does have mechanisms through which it regulates the CO2 and tries to bring it back to "balance". But it is important to note that these mechanics (e.g. increased in weathering) take 10s-100s of thousands of years to take effect.

There are faster, more responsive mechanism that actually saved us from most of the problem for past decades. CO2 gets dissolved in ocean water very efficiently causing acidification and getting into other reactions.

Unfortunately, it seems oceans are loosing their ability to buffer CO2 and this may cause sharper increase in atmospheric CO2.

The earth doesn’t “regulate” CO2. CO2 levels have been much higher in the past. There are natural process which just happen to capture or release CO2, but there is no “right” level of CO2.

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