[silicaroach]

When you know exactly how things will be affected, then feel free to make changes.

When you don't know exactly how things will be affected, then you shouldn't make changes.

This action was the second case and it was only done for monetary concerns. This wasn't motivated by environmental concerns, it was motivated by profit. And the profit motive is exactly what got this planet in to its climate situation.

[bamboozled]

Every time you drive a car or get in an airplane you're in the "When you don't know exactly how things will be affected" category, you're adding more Co2 to the atmosphere and thus warming the planet at a never seen before rate. We don't know exactly how things will be affected.

...but trying to reverse some of this is bad now?

From reading the article, it seems hard to say the experiment sounded negative?

[aporetics]

Read Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Under A White Sky” for a history of how best-intentioned interventions into ecologies have consistently backfired, in each case the unpredictable and far reaching complexity of the system was thrown out of balance.

I think the commenter’s admonition may have been expressing the the same lesson: its hubristic to “fix” systems with hacks like this; whereas carbon drawdown is not a hack, because it operates within the mechanism of imbalance itself.

For my part, this article had so little reporting of the complexity of ocean ecosystems and the potential dangers, not to mention how it buried the bit about how carbon intensive lye is (the same reason that makes concrete have such a huge carbon footprint) that it read like a puff piece.

[sausagefeet]

Are you making a general point or one specific to this? And is your first point (precautionary principle) connected to your second point (financial motivations)? The experiment referenced in the article is a small scale test, so it seems to me that it is following the precautionary principle. As for if the financial motivations are an issue, I don't know.

Are you just being snarky and anti-establishment or do you have a concrete criticism to make? Please make it if you do.

[macintux]

> When you don't know exactly how things will be affected, then you shouldn't make changes.

That’s an impossible standard to uphold. I don’t disagree with your overall premise, but the world is simply too complex to understand all of the ramifications of anything meaningful.

[landemva]

Nice! This is one of the most succinct explanations of why socialism always fails - too much complexity to dictate all actions.

[2devnull]

Precaution seems appropriate but aren’t we doing things we don’t understand anyway? That seems like the default. Surely we can’t roll back all of humanity, but maybe we can stand athwart history and yell “stop!” if only in hopes to slow down the stupid.

[s1artibartfast]

I don't know the exact impacts of changing our current climate trajectory, or implementing green technology, so better to stick with our current course.

[acheron]

"That sounds cool. But I bet the first comment to the article is going to be some cynical negative bullshit."

click

"Yep."

Never change HN.

[oifjsidjf]

Perhaps the issue is on your side because you don't ever even consider eg the precationary principle?

[_Algernon_]

>When you don't know exactly how things will be affected, then you shouldn't make changes.

We can hold to your standard the moment we hold to that standard for other activities, such as burning fossil fuels in the first place.