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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
edit: [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Wall_of_China#Problems
edit2: -2 wow, anyone care to explain? Sarcasm not permitted?