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Comment by ajnin | Hacker News Reader

It probably would, but if you're implying this would absorb a lot of CO2, I don't think so, plants die and when they do they decompose and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. The conditions are not really met for a new carboniferous era right now and it took millions of years.

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No because plant levels settle at a higher equilibrium. Plants may decompose but there are more plants growing at the same time, so it still ends up being more.

Higher CO2 levels are said to have led to a "global greening", in which crop yields have gone up a lot. This is especially true in Africa, so that reduces global hunger and increases wealth. The idea that more CO2 = less life is not as simple as it's made out to be. Climate doomers ignores this type of thing because they are convinced society can't handle complexity, so have to insist that CO2 is always bad even when it's not.

https://fee.org/articles/rejoice-the-earth-is-becoming-green...

Some people can handle complexity, but I think they're in the minority. I'm not sure that tacking on "oh, but also climate change will be good in a few ways" is helpful in getting people to take action. So there are sure to be some misinformed climate activists out there who don't know about greening, but that may be a preferable situation to everyone being very informed about the nuance and therefore feeling like this is a smaller problem than it really is.

No one actually argues that CO2 is “always bad.”

The argument is that the total effect of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is net negative for most people.

Oh my.. few serious educated persons would refute the increased greening, yes, but there it stops already.

Crop yields have gone up a lot? Unfortunatly our farming has even more problems, but let's leave it at the increased greening: How much have crop yields increased by that please, any numbers? Or at least how much the increase of greening is?

Do you know our crops vs the plants that mostly benefit from this and will also thrive in the future weather conditions, that is more than the CO2 level?

Hunger in Africa has already reduced? Please wtf, any numbers?

And that this will outweigh the other bad consequences.. no comment.

Even your reference doesn't get to anything more concrete than wishful but hilarious extrapolation based on ... just opinion (vs facts of.. but I think it is not worth continiueing, right? :/ )

The link I already provided has the numbers you're asking for.

... ideally, during a carboniferous epoch, you have lots of bogs and places where plants can decompose into oil for future civilizations to enjoy... And re-release I to the atmosphere.

From what I've read that can't really happen again. In the prehistoric past, plants could die and would build up into massive layers. Over time those wound up in various geologic processes that caused them to become oil. Nowadays the Earth has plenty of microbes that will quickly decompose the plants into something that is not oil and that's the end of the process.

Until fungi discovered ligninase enzymes, when a tree fell in the forest, it just… sat there. For eons. Got covered up. Got smushed. Became coal.

Now we got these fungi chewing things all up. Thanks a lot, fungi.

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