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Is CO2 emissions a large issue in global warming? When I was a little kid, I was wondering why having a greenhouse effect was bad for plants since we put them i

Is CO2 emissions a large issue in global warming? When I was a little kid, I was wondering why having a greenhouse effect was bad for plants since we put them in greenhouses. I've been convinced by years that people smarter than me thought it was bad and I wasn't smart enough to understand. Freeman Dyson changed my mind when I saw his interviews, detailing how CO2 has gone up a lot but it hasn't greatly increased the temperature, how it's good for vegetation growth and diversity, and how the climate models are just fluid dynamics and they don't show the full picture. I've heard of a lot of FUD on it but what he says makes sense to me. I don't see a reason to worry about it when there are bigger issues, ocean acidification is a much larger world worry. None of the lower carbon emission agreements are binding either, which shows how seriously they take it. Elites simply want to use it as a control for slowing developing countries under the guise of "saving the world". We've changed the environment with buildings, cities, America used to have skies blackened by passenger pigeons so you could shoot a shotgun randomly at the sky and kill a bunch, turtles used to roam freely until the great depression caused everyone to eat them. Mao told everyone to kill the birds until their crops were devastated by insects and they had to import them back. This is not doomsday. The fossils we use for fuel used to live in a much more diverse and warm climate.

tunesmith 6y ago
What's good for plants in greenhouses is not necessarily good for humans.
- Waterfall 6y ago
  What is bad about it for people? Do we not live in diverse climates already?
ben_w 6y ago
Roughly one third of the CO2 you breathe wasn’t in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution. Atmospheric CO2 is absorbed into the oceans, acidifying it. Even though you are correct that we put plants into greenhouses and it is good for them, most of the stuff we care about isn’t plants. As one example, enough CO2 will noticeably harm your intellect, and there is enough unburned carbon in the world to make us all dull-minded. Changing the global average temperature by “1 degree” may not sound like much, but it’s enough to bleach corals and shift agriculture patterns. Even 4.5 degrees Celsius may not seem like much, but it is the difference between an ice age and a warm period, and we’re already in a warm period. The ice age had ~200 ppm CO2, the preindustrial level was ~280, today is ~420 ppm.
- Waterfall 6y ago
  The answer to that problem was already solved then: plant a billion trees or something to that degree and there will be no excess carbon. >As one example, enough CO2 will noticeably harm your intellect, and there is enough unburned carbon in the world to make us all dull-minded. Has IQ been going down due to that? Is that theoretical? Seems like improper breathing is a larger issue, and people in cities with worst local air have higher IQs than those in rural areas. Seems at best a non factor.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > The answer to that problem was already solved then: plant a billion trees or something to that degree and there will be no excess carbon. I’m glad we agree there is a problem. Although a mere “billion” trees is well short of the scale of the solution. Solving CO2 with carbon offsetting is part of the general model of “carbon credits“ and “carbon trading”, which can only work with a government-and-trade-agreement-mandated minimum carbon price. That’s fine by me. Anything is, so long as it works and works “soon-ish” rather than “eventually”. I am optimistic about the technology, I am pessimistic about the politics. > Has IQ been going down due to that? Is that theoretical? It is directly measurable in situations where CO2 is higher than wilderness levels. The study I’ve seen had three specific tested CO2 concentrations, which were roughly comparable to various modern-life scenarios such as city center offices or wearing full-face motorcycle helmets. > Seems like improper breathing is a larger issue, and people in cities with worst local air have higher IQs than those in rural areas. Seems at best a non factor. The CO2 level inside cities are indeed higher. As are the CO2 level inside sealed offices inside a city. These higher levels have a demonstrable, repeatably testable, negative impact on reasoning skills. I have seen no prior claim of correlation between location and IQ, however I have seen a claim that city dwellers walk faster which turned out to be because cities attract young, skilled, ambitious people. Therefore, you would need to show causation not just correlation — especially as there are repeated demonstrations that CO2 impairs cognitive function, and that’s hardly the only pollutant one should expect to be more common in a city. Note that burning all the known carbon fuel reserves would raise CO2 levels in the wilderness to higher levels than currently found in city center offices whose windows have been closed all week. Also note that resource consumption has historically been exponential, so this is a larger problem going forward than you might expect looking backwards.

tunesmith 6y ago

What's good for plants in greenhouses is not necessarily good for humans.

Waterfall 6y ago
What is bad about it for people? Do we not live in diverse climates already?

ben_w 6y ago

Roughly one third of the CO2 you breathe wasn’t in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution. Atmospheric CO2 is absorbed into the oceans, acidifying it. Even though you are correct that we put plants into greenhouses and it is good for them, most of the stuff we care about isn’t plants. As one example, enough CO2 will noticeably harm your intellect, and there is enough unburned carbon in the world to make us all dull-minded. Changing the global average temperature by “1 degree” may not sound like much, but it’s enough to bleach corals and shift agriculture patterns. Even 4.5 degrees Celsius may not seem like much, but it is the difference between an ice age and a warm period, and we’re already in a warm period. The ice age had ~200 ppm CO2, the preindustrial level was ~280, today is ~420 ppm.

Waterfall 6y ago
The answer to that problem was already solved then: plant a billion trees or something to that degree and there will be no excess carbon. >As one example, enough CO2 will noticeably harm your intellect, and there is enough unburned carbon in the world to make us all dull-minded. Has IQ been going down due to that? Is that theoretical? Seems like improper breathing is a larger issue, and people in cities with worst local air have higher IQs than those in rural areas. Seems at best a non factor.
- ben_w 6y ago
  > The answer to that problem was already solved then: plant a billion trees or something to that degree and there will be no excess carbon. I’m glad we agree there is a problem. Although a mere “billion” trees is well short of the scale of the solution. Solving CO2 with carbon offsetting is part of the general model of “carbon credits“ and “carbon trading”, which can only work with a government-and-trade-agreement-mandated minimum carbon price. That’s fine by me. Anything is, so long as it works and works “soon-ish” rather than “eventually”. I am optimistic about the technology, I am pessimistic about the politics. > Has IQ been going down due to that? Is that theoretical? It is directly measurable in situations where CO2 is higher than wilderness levels. The study I’ve seen had three specific tested CO2 concentrations, which were roughly comparable to various modern-life scenarios such as city center offices or wearing full-face motorcycle helmets. > Seems like improper breathing is a larger issue, and people in cities with worst local air have higher IQs than those in rural areas. Seems at best a non factor. The CO2 level inside cities are indeed higher. As are the CO2 level inside sealed offices inside a city. These higher levels have a demonstrable, repeatably testable, negative impact on reasoning skills. I have seen no prior claim of correlation between location and IQ, however I have seen a claim that city dwellers walk faster which turned out to be because cities attract young, skilled, ambitious people. Therefore, you would need to show causation not just correlation — especially as there are repeated demonstrations that CO2 impairs cognitive function, and that’s hardly the only pollutant one should expect to be more common in a city. Note that burning all the known carbon fuel reserves would raise CO2 levels in the wilderness to higher levels than currently found in city center offices whose windows have been closed all week. Also note that resource consumption has historically been exponential, so this is a larger problem going forward than you might expect looking backwards.