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Comment by pphysch | Hacker News Reader

> compound and significantly accelerate the timeline

There's a misconception that the biosphere is a delicate machine that will have a catastrophic internal failure if we don't follow the maintenance bibl^H^H^H^Hmanual, which apparently some experts have access to.

In reality, it is a highly dynamic, self-repairing living organism, which we are a part of. There are at least as many negative feedback loops as positive ones. And we should act to maintain our survival, but doomsaying is not part of that. Doomsaying and fearmongering is about power.

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> it is a highly dynamic, self-repairing living organism

Organisms are self-repairing (to a certain extent) because they evolved to be so due to natural selection. The Earth as a whole and its climate are not subject to evolutionary pressure (they don’t reproduce) and thus are nothing like that.

Actually, the earth is subject to evolutionary pressure in a sense.

This is the only planet that supports life (that we know of). That's because it's natural properties endured through billions of years to support life.

It's not exactly an arms race. And it's a different, but similar mechanism. But I think the underlying principles are the same.

In this case, evolution won't look like the earth changing over time. It's more like, there are billions of potential earths out there, and over billions of years, some of them will more subtly change to support life.

So, we may destroy our earth, but that doesn't impair the ability for other earths to evolve. We just may not see it.

It’s definitely not subject to evolutionary pressure of any sort, because the earth is completely indifferent to life.

I'm not understanding, your statement reads like a non-sequitur to me. Evolution has nothing to do with life.

Evolution has nothing to do with life? What? How would you define evolution then?

Continual selection of entities which survive. For example, sand is the natural evolved substrate of beaches. Shells get ground into sand, anything heavier sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

The biosphere is composed of countless suborganisms that have become highly stable over eons of evolutionary pressure.

they are evolved to the current climate. Climate change is the sort of disruptive pressure that will wipe the slate clean and enable new creatures to evolve in the aftermath new normal (see: dinosaurs being replaced by mammals).

That the earth "will survive" is not in question. What is relevant is ensuring the survival of all the creatures that are evolved to the current status quo, which includes us and our current way of life.

Dinosaurs were replaced by a meteor (external event), not by climate mismanagement.

> Doomsaying and fearmongering is about power.

Because every warning is about power dynamics, and obviously not about things being dangerous. We should get rid of that "can cause death if ingested" cartel that's putting all of those warnings on household products while at it.

You can't tell the difference between a practical safety advisory and doomsaying about a future rapture?

You're right in that the biosphere will probably be fine.

The question is whether humanity will continue to exist within it.

What would be examples of negative feedback loops of comparable size?

Photosynthesis (carbon) cycle

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151188/a-massive-se...

From what I get, yeah, there are several projects that try to use use seaweed on the open ocean to sequester CO2. [1] The yield seems to be mediocre though [2, 3].

For all seaweed that washes up on the shore, the effect reverses: It rots and releases CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. [4]

So if it's a negative feedback loop, then a very weak one, if at all: CO2 emissions cause increased seaweed growth, but increased seaweed coverage doesn't meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas concentrations and in fact can even increase them.

[1] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/06/09/245935...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22837-2

[4] https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hcas_etd_all/113/

The carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere started off in the atmosphere until it was consumed by organisms that turned into our fossil fuels.

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