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Comment by mooism2 | Hacker News Reader

> This new growth could have soaked up between 2 billion and 17 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air.

That seems like a lot of uncertainty.

I am not sure you are allowed to question climate science like that. But it does make me wonder about large tree planting projects as an approach to climate change. Although I've heard there are problems with water tables in China where they have conducted green belt strategies to limit growing deserts.

edit: [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Wall_of_China#Problems

edit2: -2 wow, anyone care to explain? Sarcasm not permitted?

Understanding the whims of karma change on HN comment are not worth pondering or worrying about, much less commenting about (which usually just ends up making things worse).

There also seems to be an over-corrective quality. As I am now on 20 points, but people can't see that (until this comment) and therefore I think some people presume I am only just back from negative and give me an upvote to pad the figures against the humourless. Strange indeed. But you are right regarding what usually happens: a complaint can often lead from burnt whiskers to a smoking crater.

Generally, sarcasm is to be avoided. It tends to downgrade the discussion and many people will down vote comments they agree with if they dislike the tone. It's often argued that this was even the original intent of voting and doing anything else is the path to Reddit.

In response to Hisoka: it looks like your "Did Google pay you to say this?" comment got your account auto-killed.

At some point, someone is going to have to put serious money into desalination plants.

Surely we've got enough places having droughts that our control over nature will have us putting up massive water pipelines around the world. They'll need redundant desalination and cleansing plants.

Anyone know what to do with all the material removed?

I get the feeling we'll need to dump it back into the ocean in a controlled way. Seem to remember that from some reading I was doing years ago. I remember the article said a good test place would be the coast of Africa so farming didn't take too much water from the Serengeti messing up the wildlife.

You don't seem to have a good understanding on the difference between what is permitted and what is discouraged.

Questioning of all science is encouraged. Blind denialism is discouraged because it is idiotic, but permitted.

Amusingly, Mr. Loudmax, you are being far more rude, and therefore deserving of a downvote, than I ever was. I believe the word "permitted" with regard to social sanction (HN votes) has a greater range of meaning than you are permitting here. And even if what you say were true, there is no blind "denialism" in my post either. In fact the sentence in question could have been written by someone on either side of the climate debate. Only a humourless po-faced person, the type on a crusade and using ridiculous words like "denialism", would downvote it.

and another uncertainty is the deforestation these Europeans then made to build their new homes on the other continent. Considering how the Buffalos almost died out they weren't that ecofriendly ..

Yes; especially given this comment on the article (by Bo Higgs):

This article gives too much coverage to the 'Politically Correct' piece of crap by this clown, Richard Nevle.

The "Little Ice Age" began long BEFORE 1492. The Pope in Rome sent Columbus a letter (after 1492) asking for Columbus to investigate, "what had happened to the Bishop of Greenland," because Rome had not had any letters from Greenland for many years. N.B. -- There were so many Catholics living in Greenland, that the Pope appointed a Bishop to live there.

The Middle Ages Warm Period had ended decades before, and could no longer sustain the European-style agrarian life-style.

Also, bear in mind that post-1500, World exploration meant required an exponential increase in wooden ships, both in number and in size. As a result, not only did population increase, but so did de-forestation. Indeed, perhaps the main export of the American Colonies was LUMBER. Even the export of tobacco,and then cotton required de-forestation. By 1608, the well-known, but un-mapped 'Northwest Passage' had frozen over to such an extent that Henry Hudson was un-able to complete his mapping. Re-forestation must have been exceedingly rapid to effect the entire Earth in such a short time.

Richard Nevle is proof of the adage that, "If the only tool you have is a Grant to prove A.G.W.(tm), then everything in the result of A.G.W.(tm)"

Reprinting a comment from another page, particularly a comment full of abuse (politically correct piece of crap? clown?), inaccuracies, and conspiracist wonderings, is not really worthy of HN.

I'll just point out the first glaring issue about the only fact that the comment even mentions: the "Little Ice Age," though somewhat ambiguously defined, is usually taken to mean the era from the mid sixteenth century to the nineteenth.

The text of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland#The_demise... implies that the Little Ice Age is taken to have started earlier in Greenland, although this is contradicted by the graph next to it.

There's actually some level of debate about whether the Little Ice Age even existed as a global event, as opposed to several coincidental regional climatic changes. So it's a bit messy (and if it didn't actually exist globally, it would suggest that the article is explaining something that never happened).

I'm not sure of whether there's any scientific consensus on it, however. NASA does suggest the Little Ice Age started in 1550, though.

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