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Comment by readflaggedcomm | Hacker News Reader

Plants like CO2.

Up to a point. But ..

"when plants take in an excess of CO2, their chemical makeup changes in a way that that’s harmful to the humans and animals that depend on them for nutrition: higher concentrations of CO2, increases the synthesis of carbohydrates like sugars and starches, and decrease the concentrations of proteins and nutrients like zinc, iron, and B-vitamins. “

https://globalhealth.washington.edu/news/2019/04/23/high-co2...

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abfcfa

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.00924...

Life on earth is definitely not in danger, it’s seen worse.

Both political stability and the lifestyles to which we are accustomed, however, are.

And the reclining political stability will make it even harder to do long term investments with no immediate pay-off. Which will probably reinforce this climate crisis.

Unfortunately it would seem we're in for a wild ride either way. Unless I've completely misunderstood the projections anything we're seeing right now is small compared to the rate of change expected in ~15 years. And (again assuming I've understood) the system has a lot of inertia so there's no way to completely prevent the changes at this point.

What happens in 15 years?

The rate of temperature change increases. Siberia thaws and releases massive amount of methane. The Gulf Stream slows down and throws a critical regulator of temperature in the Western world into disarray. (According to news reporting earlier this week, the first signs of it slowing down are starting to appear.)

Positive feedback loops are powerful things.

Either everything changes, or stays the same. That's why radical climate measures are a tough sell.

It's quite clear that things won't be staying the same. What precisely happens, however, seems to be up in the air.

I'm not a climate scientist, but some things to consider:

There was recent research showing that the Greenland ice sheet is probably not as stable as previously thought. (https://theconversation.com/ancient-leaves-preserved-under-a...) (https://www.pnas.org/content/118/13/e2021442118)

The long term stable ("permanent", hah) wind currents that cross the ocean (ie the trade winds) have significant effects on local sea levels (ie the coast line that they pass near). If those change things will get "interesting" in many places. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds) For example: (https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-amtrak-sea-level/)

I wonder if this is what the dinosaurs were thinking as the fireball in the sky got bigger and bigger. Let's ask them!

To be clear, climate change is very likely to present us humans enjoying our comfy lifestyles with extreme (from our perspective) difficulties. It is not, however, even remotely comparable to a large meteor impact.

They seem fine, some are chirping outside my window right now.

Carbon-based DNA-replicating life didn’t go anywhere though, if that’s of any comfort.

Birds are dinosaurs.

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