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Comment by Winse | Hacker News Reader

As with most large scale changes...there are winners and losers. New species and extinctions. High CO2 is great for plants in my greenhouse...I suppose that's why it is called a greenhouse gas. Anyone longing for lower CO2 levels in our entire atmosphere is basically an anti-Canadian Agriculture bigot. Seriously though sometimes the cure is much worse than just handling the issues one at a time as we transition to a beautiful warm catastrophe/boon. Historically the planet has gone through all sorts of things before. Perhaps we should be looking more at how to successfully terraform our planet. Why are we still predicting weather when we should just be making it?

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The problem is timing: the past shifts were spread out over many thousands of years, which gave ecosystems time to adjust, and humanity has made many ecosystems less resilient with our expansion and pollution. We also have the practical problem that we have billions of people now living – it does not help someone in Africa getting unprecedented droughts to know that a farmer in Canada is seeing 20% better yields, especially since lost income means they can’t afford to import that extra food.

Similarly, the trending on peak heats means that there are places where many people live which are becoming less survivable. Theoretically India could migrate people to Siberia but the political implications of something like that are orders of magnitude worse than reducing emissions.

CO2 is actually not so nice for breathing, if you ever monitored a CO2 ppm meter indoors, where the air gets stuffy when too much CO2 from breathing accumulates. With the current trajectory, by the end of the century, opening the window won’t get you what we now consider fresh air anymore, the air will feel stuffy all the time. We already get less fresh air now than 50 years ago, where CO2 base levels were around 300 ppm, vs. 400 ppm now.

I breathe fine in my greenhouse at 800–1,000 ppm all the time...so ...meh

I feel the urge to open a window at those levels. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where that’s the base level.

you probably won't ever live in world where that's the base level: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/....

Obviously, as I won’t be alive anymore by the end of the century. I was responding to your suggestion of a “beautiful warm catastrophe/boon” due to high CO2 levels. I don’t see the boon.

It's one of the bonkers things to me that the air my parents breathed as children is measurably different from the air we breathe today. (Sort of like how boomer infants had measurable radionuclides in their teeth due to surface testing of atomic weapons, which helped convince the world to ban the practice.)

I've also heard that the total mass of the carbon we've injected into the atmosphere exceeds all the mass of our built world on the surface, which is sort of awesome to think about, but not in the good sense of the word.

Even if we solve the political and technical aspects of the problem, most of the Earth's habitable history has been at mich higher mean temperatures. Either finding ways to adapt to that, or modify it should definitely be on our todo list. Just because we don't slam ourselves directly into planet-sterilizing feedback loop, doesn't mean we aren't going to hit elevated temperatures in the future. We maybe only have half a billion years until increased irradiance kills everything, so having a parasol before then would be nice. Could get the planet another couple billion years of habitability.

> Historically the planet has gone through all sorts of things before.

Since this is thread under XKCD post: https://xkcd.com/1732/

Isn't it bit naive to exclude rate of change in this argument?

No. See "Chicxulub impact" or more recently Mount Tambora. These are two of many examples.

> Seriously though sometimes the cure is much worse than just handling the issues one at a time as we transition to a beautiful warm catastrophe/boon.

This is a disgusting attitude. I'm sure you'll be safe in Alberta while Bangladesh drowns. Your ancestors benefitted from the industrial revolution, and now you want to reap all the benefits of climate change?

I don't live in Alberta you insensitive clod, and while I said those things somewhat tongue in cheek, you can choose to be disgusted or learn to stop worrying and love the change.

And that’s it? Just sink or swim, don’t even try to mitigate anything? That’s such a wild attitude.

The world is a wild place in reality. Life isn't really fair. Sometimes seeds fall on rocks or clay and will never sprout. If you set your sights on what could go right, things might go better for you. Life isn't about what happens to you, but what you actually do about it. As an individual, I can show the world I care by being somewhat responsible in my consumption, but I can't really control the rest of the world and their choices. If I did live in Bangladesh and I knew the ocean is rising in the next 50 years, I would consider other options.

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