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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

We are trying to foster content-rich conversations on this forum. If you have nothing much to contribute, better abstain.

No point. People have completely lost any ability of nuanced thinking on this topic. Any doubt is immediately attacked.

Not exactly. Contributions that imply or explicitly mention martyrdom are met with suspicion, because they also imply unproductive flamewars are soon to follow.

Being stabbed with a knife could kill you.

Could.

worst case if we try to address the problem and it doesn’t come to fruition is that we improve the environment around us

worst case if we don’t address the problem and it does come to fruition is mass famine

No, worst case is that “climate change” is used as an excuse to destroy democracy and rule of law “to save the world”, because radicalised people attack anybody who even sounds like they may have any doubt. It wouldn’t be the first time a true and just cause was abused for that end.

Please cite any instances where serious climate change activists threatened democracy or the rule of law or even discussed it.

It would be completely counterproductive. One of the biggest problems with Climate Change is that it requires mass collective action, and that requires a stable and rational government or organize. Were climate change activists to promote anarchy it would be impossible for them to achieve their goals.

They do not promote anarchy, they promote totalitarian rule. Put all those 'climate change deniers' in prison, force them to eat bugs instead of meat, deny them any human rights, that kind of thing.

So when you say a "threat to rule of law" you mean too much law? That seems confusingly worded.

Once people are sufficiently radicalised, laws are not required anymore to put an “enemy” in prison (or worse).

For most young Westerners who have never known anything but rule of law, that’s probably difficult to imagine.

literally no one with power has seriously proposed anything like this — quite the opposite in fact, the previous US president suggested that windmills cause cancer

Forgive me for interrupting your attempts to refute the "Liberal Fascism" trolling...

One scenario I've heard, and has me a bit worried, is climate crisis begets a right wing reactionary environmentalism. Basically all the same nativist, anti-immigration, isolationist, anti-trade, yadda yadda, but with an "environmental" justification.

So instead of mitigating or undoing the damage, the reactionaries would be energized by protecting what we have from "the other".

Not too hard to imagine a crackdown, if scarcity leads to hunger leads to unrest.

If ecofascism triumphs over the current surge of ethnonationalism I'll still take that as a win. Doesn't seem likely though given current events and the totality of human history though.

Could you imagine that their might be a third alternative?

Oh of course, I don't think either of those scenarios will actually come to fruition.

*there

What makes you think that's the worst case outcome of climate change?

Because that's the one that actually can happen, unlike apocalyptic visions of "Earth burning", or "famine"

You think famines are unlikely? They've been the irregular default prior to the modern age; I think it will require active efforts to prevent them no matter what happens with the climate.

Climate change might actually increase amount of arable land, by millions of acres, in higher latitudes: Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Canada, etc. It will also increase total rainfall. https://phys.org/news/2018-05-climate-arable.html

Yes, it won't be seamless, but we can adjust to new conditions.

"I'd rather watch the Earth burn than let 'wokeness' ruin the ideals of free market capitalism!"

This isnt completely true. The biggest greenhouse gas CO2 is not a pollutant in any conventional sense. The gas is actually pumped into greenhouses to help plants grow faster, and helps plants grow in more arid environments, and reduces water consumption by plants.

So efforts to reduce CO2 might not bear environmental benefits beyond fighting global warming.

It's pumped into greenhouses because they have to be sealed to prevent heat from escaping. In nature plants aren't CO2 limited, typically they are either nutrient, light, or usually water limited; and the warming planet is exacerbating water distribution issues. Increasing CO2 does little to increase plant growth because the bottleneck is elsewhere.

Plants lose less water to the environment when CO2 concentrations are higher because they don't have to open their pores as much to effectively breath. That is why CO2 helps plants grow in more arid environments.

And CO2 is definitely not pumped into greenhouses to help them stay warm. CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas, and the tens of vertical feet in a greenhouse couldn't possibly trap any measurable amount of heat from heightened CO2 concentrations.

The glass of a greenhouse is responsible for the 'greenhouse' effect, not CO2.

Heat lost due to convection. Let in cold air and the greenhouse cools off.

Just to be sure I understand your point. Are you saying they CO2 in as an alternative to having the greenhouse ventilate to the atmosphere?

I guess the reason being that the plants would convert all the CO2 to O2 in the greenhouse and then suffocate without the vent or pumped CO2.

Is that the most economical way to keep the greenhouse warm enough?

There are heat exchangers which are passive devices you can attached to an intake and exhaust to reclaim heat.

Yes, exactly: https://www.dutchgreenhouses.com/en/technology/co2-enrichmen...

Burning gas in the enclosed space not only enriches the CO2, but also warms up the greenhouse even more.

You made it sound like adding CO2 was only a byproduct of an attempt to keep the greenhouse warm, not part of the intention. Yet your source says

" The supply of extra carbon dioxide is an often applied method to increase the yield of greenhouse crops."

So I'm not sure what your point is.

The point is that adding CO2 is necessary to solve a problem that greenhouses create, the enclosed plants deplete the available CO2 and stop growing. It's not applicable to the world at large.

In an open atmosphere plants aren't limited by available CO2, they are limited by sunlight, temperature, soil nutrients, or usually water availability. Adding more CO2 has little to no benefit for the plants.

"Has plant growth increased alongside rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

It turns out the answer is Yes – in a big way. A new study published in the April 6 edition of the journal Nature concludes that as emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels have increased since the start of the 20th century, plants around the world are utilizing 30 percent more carbon dioxide (CO2), spurring plant growth." - https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-...

I mean, a little, but the closed nature of the greenhouse is still the bigger problem.

1000 cubic meters of air only has something like 150 grams of carbon in it; even if your plants in question are 95% water, you're still only talking a few kilograms of plant growth before you completely exhaust the air in an enclosed space.

> In nature plants aren't CO2 limited, typically they are either nutrient, light, or usually water limited; and the warming planet is exacerbating water distribution issues

Plants actually require extra water when CO2 levels are low, such as they are currently, which is why we see so much desertification of the planet.

High CO2 levels reduce plants need for water, reducing desertification

Sorry, I should have specified improve the environment for us. Plants have been here before us and will be here after us, they'll be fine.

OTOH, increased atmospheric CO2 impairs human cognition measurably.

Increased CO2 concentrations do impare human cognition, but that is more about relatively sealed spaces with lots of people like a classroom where CO2 concentrations can be 3 times atmospheric levels or more.

From what I’ve read, there is enough fossil carbon to raise normal CO2 levels that much.

https://phys.org/news/2016-05-fossil-fuels-earth.html

I expect we don’t go near that number for many reasons, but it is worth including in the cost/benefit calculations.

Water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas, not C02.

Yes, but we can't do anything about that. So co2 is the most significant that is due to human activities.

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