Comment by Gsnds | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gsnds | Hacker News Reader

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Carbon is an essential building block to life and everyone seems to be against it which seems quite alarming. Without carbon the earth would look at lot like mars, and judging by most of the polices the elite seem to be pushing, that's really what they're aiming for.

>Higher carbon-dioxide levels will be beneficial. CO2 is an essential nutrient for land-based plants. The Earth’s biosphere has also experienced a relative CO2 famine for many millennia—the recent increase in CO2 levels has thus had a measurable, positive effect on plant life. Future CO2 increases will boost agricultural productivity and improve drought resistance, thereby bolstering food security and contributing to a greener, lusher plane

http://www.co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Carbo...

I used to do this bit back when i did standup comedy a few years ago, it was about how marijuana was a gateway drug and i went on to say the real gateway drug is oxygen, because think about it, without oxygen none of us would even be here, or to even get a light. So i went on about how if we really wanted to have a war on drugs we would have to nip it in the bud, and eliminate all of the oxygen on the earth.

But it seems to me that they had already jumped the gun and thought a further step ahead of me on this one, think about it, what produces oxygen? Plants, and what do plants absorb to produce oxygen? Carbon. you eliminate the carbon, there's no oxygen. quite genius when you think about it, and you get a bunch of people who want to seem like they're a bunch of do gooders and jump on a bandwagon everyone seems like is for a just cause at first glance without spending as so much as five minutes thinking about it. and really that is a dangerous thing to do, blindly follow narratives.

and the fact that this is being pushed by a company founded by a known eugenicist who wants to reduce the population of the world, "for the greater good" and it still isn't raising eyebrows, speaks of in itself.

> Carbon is an essential building block to life and everyone seems to be against it which seems quite alarming.

Humans also require water to survive. That doesn't stop tsunamis from killing people.

You may wish to read this too. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-d...

>climate change itself. Its negative consequences—such as drought and heat stress—would likely overwhelm any direct benefits that rising CO2 might offer plant life.

Climate Change is a buzzword, without going into the whole debate, the earth has and always will go through a series of warming and cooling, it happens to all of the planets within our own solar system, and even our own sun. Like the grand solar minimum.

>Rising CO2’s effect on crops could also harm human health. “We know unequivocally that when you grow food at elevated CO2 levels in fields, it becomes less nutritious,”

Yes but glyphosate and heavy metals in the atmosphere that rains down on the soil and a steady amount of lead water hydrating the crops are just fine and dandy

>Humans also require water to survive. That doesn't stop tsunamis from killing people.

Yes, but earthquakes cause tsunamis, and what causes the earthquakes? elevated levels of Co2? No it comes from a mixture of reasons, a diminishing magnetic field in the earths atmosphere, and a constant bombardment of solar winds that pound into the magma of the earth causing it to shift around

This is the most garbled attempt to hand-wave away science that I've seen for a while.

> Climate Change is a buzzword,the earth has and always will go through a series of warming and cooling.

Wrong on it being a buzzword, correct on the Earth going through natural cycles. However you may find this video enlightening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hs4KVeiAU in terms of CO2's role with respect to other factors.

> Yes but glyphosate and heavy metals in the atmosphere that rains down on the soil and a steady amount of lead water hydrating the crops are just fine and dandy

Errr - no? Just because one thing is bad, doesn't mean that something else can also be bad.

Regarding your suggestion that earthquakes are caused by > a diminishing magnetic field in the earths atmosphere, and a constant bombardment of solar winds that pound into the magma of the earth causing it to shift around

Where are you getting this stuff? certainly not from science books. Is there a Youtube channel somewhere that you are using to inform yourself? If so, you might want to work through this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfH...

> the earth has and always will go through a series of warming and cooling

This is a devastatingly ignorant attempt to handwave away the damage.

Warming and cooling changes, prior to the widespread use of hydrocarbon fuels, have taken place over tens/hundreds of thousands of years, with very few exceptions. Civilizations and species can adapt on these timescales. They can not adapt to the changes that we have already brought about, and they will not be able to adapt to the changes that will occur within the next hundred years.

Addressing one of your points:

The earth absolutely goes through periods of warming and cooling, and has for billions of years. The issue we're encountering now is the speed of the change. Existing ecosystems can't adapt and move, like they typically do. Human societies also struggle to adapt. We unfortunately deeply depend on stability of climate - our national borders and economies and agricultural systems have a high inertia to change.

I suspect that you don't believe that current CO2 levels actually change the climate noticeably. I'd encourage you, and anyone agreeing with your comments, to spend a bit of time looking at scientific papers that may contradict that view. No politics, no bias, just the data. It doesn't hurt to read opposing views every now and then. I find it rather satisfying.

Some peer reviewed science, just for fun: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Examining%20...

Just as humans require a differently level of manure and water to plants, we are also at our best with a different level of CO2.

The optimal CO2 level isn’t even constant between plants, but at the upper end “good for plants” is the same as “makes humans 25% worse in memory speed/accuracy tests”.

I would like to see the information that backs this up, and see if it can be replicated in many controlled scenarios and not just some think thank that cherry picks data to push a narrative. If a human was left alone in a chamber pumped full of elevated levels of CO2 i could see how humans would be less cognitive, but you have to remember there would also be higher levels of oxygen, which promotes brain growth and function

Why do you think there would be extra oxygen? Atmospheric CO2 is made from atmospheric O2.

I'd agree being in a room pumped with CO₂ would significantly deteriorate cognitive functions, but I have a feeling the studies are overblown WRT climate change.

Humans have high adaptability to increased CO₂ loads (see e.g. freedivers), but adaptation takes time. The studies usually deal with temporary CO₂ increases / O₂ decreases, often in way higher concentrations like 1-10%, whereas a couple percent atmospheric CO₂ would already burn us to a crisp (figuratively).

The studies are CO2 in the 500/1000/1500 and 600/1500/2500 ppm ranges, or 0.05-0.25 percent:

https://escholarship.org/content/qt6gm6t5zc/qt6gm6t5zc.pdf?t...

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1510037

Thanks, seems I've missed a decimal. My questionable sources[1][2] mention concentrations up to 14000 ppm = 1.4% and seem to disagree whether going higher cognitive decline plateaus or it becomes harmful.

Seems there is merit for concern, though I stand by my claims of cognitive effects probably being more temporary than permanent.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DtQzYXBTwaWXbhCoS/stale-air-...

[2] https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/co2-on-the-brain-and-the...

Moving to a high carbon atmosphere COULD be a good thing. You’re right!

But in nature there is a concept of a “disturbance”. This is a hole that opens up in an ecosystem, caused by fire, famine, violence, etc. These disturbances are a necessary part of the succession of species, which itself is an important part of ecosystem health.

HOWEVER, you can’t ignore the dimension of time. There is a FREQUENCY of disturbances which becomes destructive. Too many disturbances in too short a time results in the ecosystem being set back in time, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years.

That’s the danger of climate change. Not that it happens, but that it happens too fast for ecologies to survive.

> known eugenicist who wants to reduce the population of the world

I suspect in a generation or two the fear of eugenics will be seen as quaint, because we'll all be editing our genes to improve them. I also don't see anything wrong with the idea of reducing the population, I mean, birth control is seen as a fundamental right pretty much everywhere, and every extra mouth to feed has an impact, no matter how much we refine our technology.

If the "known eugenicist" is who I think it is, then he isn't.

The general idea, as explained by the late Hans Rosling, is that if you educate people (including girls) and help them to lead better lives then they will naturally have fewer children. They do this of their own free will.

Rosling says: "only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth". [1]

If there is a very high probability that half your children will die before they grow up, then it makes sense to have twice as many children. If you expect every child to grow up and thrive, you won't do that.

This has already happened in most developed countries, with no eugenics and no eugenicists involved. Most people in the west now have fewer children than their grandparents had.

I really don't see a problem with less-developed countries enjoying exactly the same sort of progress as we've already had.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_gro...

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