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Comment by anonymousiam | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps, but perhaps not. In the history of the Earth, CO2 levels have been significantly higher for a much longer time. (See here: https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ and note that the time-line is on a log scale.)

Worst-case projections show that at our present CO2 growth rate, things will get bad rather quickly, but keep in mind that the Earth's climate cycles have many (not well understood) self-regulation systems. Increased atmospheric CO2 may lead to explosive vegetation growth which may lead to increased carbon sequestration.

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CO2 has historically been higher, but life on earth, and ocean life in particular, was completely different that what we have today. The rate of ocean acidification is such that species do not have millennia to evolve to handle increased CO2 levels and are experiencing massive die-offs.

An extremely well-understood effect is that ocean acidification thins the shells of shellfish.

This may seem like a minor effect, but rapidly upsetting the food chain of the ocean seems like an absurdly risky experiment to run on the planet we inhabit.

So obviously the most apocalyptic predictions are wrong. Life on planet earth can and will survive this. My view is life on planet earth can survive most things we're capable of throwing at it, but the question isn't will we sterilize the planet. The questions is will it be a bad time for humans and yeah rapidly changing the composition of the ocean will be bad for humans. How bad I don't know, but pretty clearly bad

Even if all the changes that were happening were entirely natural, there's an argument to be made that we know we do well in the conditions that existed during industrialization, and that we should try to maintain the environment within those bands. If we knew the globe was heading into an ice age naturally, for example, I don't know that I'd be against trying to prevent that. I don't want mass starvation, etc.

Yeah but these levels have never changed so fast without an mass extinction.

Nobody claims it will end life on earth. It might just end life as we know it as a species given we never hunted dinosaurs.

> Increased atmospheric CO2 may lead to explosive vegetation growth which may lead to increased carbon sequestration.

To my understanding this is decently modelled in long term climate simulations. Plants won't save us and the increased absorption rate of plants with higher CO2 levels is well studied in the lab and accounted for.

Note that these are the same simulations that cannot accurately predict future climate based on past/present conditions. At present there is no model in use that can predict current conditions from past data. It's shameful that government policy makers are relying on this junk.

Perhaps not? You clearly are not well versed on climate change. To take something that is already happening and is very bad: massive yearly wildfires in California. I grew up in Washington, and NEVER had a “smoky summer”. Now it’s a yearly occurrence. It’s at best naive and at worse actively evil to be promoting this “oh it might actually be fine” narrative

> In the history of the Earth, CO2 levels have been significantly higher for a much longer time.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

That xkcd comic doesn’t seem to be showing what you seem to think it is showing.

And back when CO2 levels were higher, how many humans were around? Fortunately none.

It shows that the changes were never as fast as now and still could be dangerous if humans were there.

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