3 ms·

I would expect any effect of atmospheric CO2 concentration on a person's carbohydrate intake to be totally dominated by food preference / availability / choice

by svara 9y ago

I would expect any effect of atmospheric CO2 concentration on a person's carbohydrate intake to be totally dominated by food preference / availability / choice and by selective breeding of plants used for food. That's my main gripe with the article, too. It's really interesting biologically, but it doesn't really talk about the effect size. The influence of selective breeding is even mentioned in the article, but without explaining the relative influences.

Infernal 9y ago
> The data we have, which look at how plants would respond to the kind of CO2 concentrations we may see in our lifetimes, show these important minerals drop by 8 percent, on average. The same conditions have been shown to drive down the protein content of C3 crops, in some cases significantly, with wheat and rice dropping 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively. I had the same gripe. 6%-8% change doesn't quite seem insignificant, but this is under CO2 concentrations that "we may see in our lifetime". So how much more CO2 were these plants exposed to than the controls, and how strong is that "may"?
turk184 9y ago
The mistake in the article is that a mathematician whose hobby is biology found out what may be a cool phenomenon involving algae and then suddenly the whole thing segues into a sermon about every living thing on earth being at risk. That's not how science works! Furthermore, I re-iterate that if CO2 is the problem, then humanity needs to scrub it from the atmosphere using technology because the only other solution is to do away with say, 4 billion people or more. The endless framing of the problem serves no purpose whatsoever--either it's a problem and we're all endangered and need to fix it or we don't really know if it's a problem but it's a great political tool to enslave large populations. Take your pick.

3 ms·

I would expect any effect of atmospheric CO2 concentration on a person's carbohydrate intake to be totally dominated by food preference / availability / choice

by svara 9y ago

Infernal 9y ago
> The data we have, which look at how plants would respond to the kind of CO2 concentrations we may see in our lifetimes, show these important minerals drop by 8 percent, on average. The same conditions have been shown to drive down the protein content of C3 crops, in some cases significantly, with wheat and rice dropping 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively. I had the same gripe. 6%-8% change doesn't quite seem insignificant, but this is under CO2 concentrations that "we may see in our lifetime". So how much more CO2 were these plants exposed to than the controls, and how strong is that "may"?
turk184 9y ago
The mistake in the article is that a mathematician whose hobby is biology found out what may be a cool phenomenon involving algae and then suddenly the whole thing segues into a sermon about every living thing on earth being at risk. That's not how science works! Furthermore, I re-iterate that if CO2 is the problem, then humanity needs to scrub it from the atmosphere using technology because the only other solution is to do away with say, 4 billion people or more. The endless framing of the problem serves no purpose whatsoever--either it's a problem and we're all endangered and need to fix it or we don't really know if it's a problem but it's a great political tool to enslave large populations. Take your pick.