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I don't think I am. The causality of the article is. Outdoor CO2 might be rising dramatically > dramatically rising outdoor CO2 leads to dramatically rising i

I don't think I am. The causality of the article is. Outdoor CO2 might be rising dramatically > dramatically rising outdoor CO2 leads to dramatically rising indoor CO2 > too high a concentration of indoor CO2 might have an impact on our cognitive abilities. That's not the worst part of that paper the worst part is that they then just throw in things like this: "The best way to prevent indoor CO2 levels from reaching levels harmful to cognition is through reduced fossil fuel emissions." What about better ventilation? Just like we do with a lot of other things today. But no instead they just go for the most extreme recommendation based on absolutely nothing. Keep in mind we are talking at the end of the century. I don't understand how anyone can read this and think this is quality research.

beefield 6y ago
> Outdoor CO2 might be rising dramatically > dramatically rising outdoor CO2 leads to dramatically rising indoor CO2 > too high a concentration of indoor CO2 might have an impact on our cognitive abilities. Are you really claiming there is some uncertainty whether the burning of fossil fuels will actually raise CO2 levels of the atmosphere? I have thought that the discussion is whether the rising CO2 causes global warming or not. And if we agree that burning the fossil fuels increases CO2 in atmosphere (forget the damn global warming, we are not talking about that) Do you claim that there is no reason to believe that the indoor CO2 will also rise? I hope you understand that kind of claim to be so weird that I would expect you to elaborate a bit more why you think that would not be the case. Finally, whether the increased CO2 actually has any effect on cognitive capabilities, that is of course the main topic in the discussion here. I have no further comments on that one.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  I am claiming that the research paper is not about cognitive capabilities (as that is taken for granted in the headline) but about fossil fuels effect on CO2 hence the title of the paper. "Fossil Fuel Combustion Is Driving Indoor CO2 Toward Levels Harmful to Human Cognition" If it was just about CO2 there would be no need to include fossil fuel combustion unless of course they know exactly how much CO2 is caused by fossil fuel combustion and how much is natural variation. There is no conclusion on that which is why you don't find an actual number of how much humans affect. It's one thing to talk about CO2 levels and it's affect on human cognition, even that is not conclusive as is also obvious when you read the paper. But they go way way further to conclude that if we want to avoid that we should decrease fossil fuel use. On what basis do they do that? No one knows how much is driven by humans and how much is natural Do they have any evidence that; 1) that's without consequences, 2) it's the only way to deal with increasing CO2 if if it is harmful. This is not research this is mixing together a bunch of different assumptions and using CO2 effect on cognitive abilities to talk about fossil fuel.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    It doesn't seem hard to me to get at least a good ballpark estimate on the amount of CO2 we put into the atmosphere, say in the last 50 years. We know roughly how much coal and oil and gas we've burnt so far. Calculating how much the atmospheric concentration changed from that amount is easy enough. I'm sure someone did the math and would've published a paper about it if it turned out that human activities don't account for most of the CO2 concentration change. That would be kind of a big deal.
    - ThomPete 6y ago
      yet we dont have a ballpark number that says how much is human made and how much is natural. It doesent exist even in the IPCC report. You are welcome to prove me wrong.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        I think this satisfies your desire for a "ballpark number" https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 Come on. You're just putting your head in the sand and pretending the sand is the real world.
        ThomPete 6y ago
        That talks about countries contributing relative to each other NOT relative to natural. Please point to the number. It's not there because it doesn't exist because we don't know. And let me put it like this. If you know the number send it to the nobel committee and you would be getting one.
        martinpw 6y ago
        It is pretty uncontroversial that CO2 increase in the atmosphere is almost all from human activity, and that a large part of that comes from burning fossil fuels. For example the US EPA website says: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Human activities are responsible for almost all of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 150 years. The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation. and there is a link right on that paragraph to the IPCC report. Given the current EPA director, you might expect that to have been removed if there was any controversy about it. And there are multiple lines of evidence to indicate fossil fuels are the major source, including carbon isotope ratios: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-mu... Finally, if there was any doubt about it you could be sure the oil companies would be trumpeting it.
oriolid 6y ago
Increased CO2 in outdoor air both increases the baseline CO2 in indoor air and reduces the efficiency of ventilation (because the replacement air has higher CO2 too). The math is in the paper and several other comments, but if you passed high school you should be able to derive the result yourself.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  You are missing the point. You are assuming all their assumptions are correct and apparently as the only person in the world you know how much human made emissions contribute to the total CO2 levels. As I wrote in another post. Write the Nobel Price committee if you know and you will be famous. Edit: "This is a complex problem, and our study is at the beginning. It's not just a matter of predicting global (outdoor) CO2 levels," he said. "It's going from the global background emissions, to concentrations in the urban environment, to the indoor concentrations, and finally the resulting human impact. We need even broader, interdisciplinary teams of researchers to explore this: investigating each step in our own silos will not be enough." https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200421/Atmospheric-CO2-levels-can-cause-cognitive-impairment.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200421/Atmospheric-CO2-l... If this is what you call certainty we have different standards of what is required to call something scientifically proven.
  - oriolid 6y ago
    For the problem at hand it does not really matter if the carbon dioxide in air is from combustion, or put there by wizards who want to destroy America. In my personal opinion it's a huge logical leap to assume that fossil fuel use just doesn't add to carbon dioxide in air, and regardless of other sources, this is one source we can control. Anyway, what matters is the result C = G/Q + C_out (see how it applies to all concentrations, not just carbon dioxide). Before it there is a differential equation and I know those are scary, but the steady state solution should be easy to understand. Solve for Q (ventilation) and you'll see why adding ventilation helps less and less with increased C_out.
    - ThomPete 6y ago

beefield 6y ago

> Outdoor CO2 might be rising dramatically > dramatically rising outdoor CO2 leads to dramatically rising indoor CO2 > too high a concentration of indoor CO2 might have an impact on our cognitive abilities. Are you really claiming there is some uncertainty whether the burning of fossil fuels will actually raise CO2 levels of the atmosphere? I have thought that the discussion is whether the rising CO2 causes global warming or not. And if we agree that burning the fossil fuels increases CO2 in atmosphere (forget the damn global warming, we are not talking about that) Do you claim that there is no reason to believe that the indoor CO2 will also rise? I hope you understand that kind of claim to be so weird that I would expect you to elaborate a bit more why you think that would not be the case. Finally, whether the increased CO2 actually has any effect on cognitive capabilities, that is of course the main topic in the discussion here. I have no further comments on that one.

ThomPete 6y ago
I am claiming that the research paper is not about cognitive capabilities (as that is taken for granted in the headline) but about fossil fuels effect on CO2 hence the title of the paper. "Fossil Fuel Combustion Is Driving Indoor CO2 Toward Levels Harmful to Human Cognition" If it was just about CO2 there would be no need to include fossil fuel combustion unless of course they know exactly how much CO2 is caused by fossil fuel combustion and how much is natural variation. There is no conclusion on that which is why you don't find an actual number of how much humans affect. It's one thing to talk about CO2 levels and it's affect on human cognition, even that is not conclusive as is also obvious when you read the paper. But they go way way further to conclude that if we want to avoid that we should decrease fossil fuel use. On what basis do they do that? No one knows how much is driven by humans and how much is natural Do they have any evidence that; 1) that's without consequences, 2) it's the only way to deal with increasing CO2 if if it is harmful. This is not research this is mixing together a bunch of different assumptions and using CO2 effect on cognitive abilities to talk about fossil fuel.
- adrianN 6y ago
  It doesn't seem hard to me to get at least a good ballpark estimate on the amount of CO2 we put into the atmosphere, say in the last 50 years. We know roughly how much coal and oil and gas we've burnt so far. Calculating how much the atmospheric concentration changed from that amount is easy enough. I'm sure someone did the math and would've published a paper about it if it turned out that human activities don't account for most of the CO2 concentration change. That would be kind of a big deal.
  - ThomPete 6y ago
    yet we dont have a ballpark number that says how much is human made and how much is natural. It doesent exist even in the IPCC report. You are welcome to prove me wrong.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I think this satisfies your desire for a "ballpark number" https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 Come on. You're just putting your head in the sand and pretending the sand is the real world.
      - ThomPete 6y ago
        That talks about countries contributing relative to each other NOT relative to natural. Please point to the number. It's not there because it doesn't exist because we don't know. And let me put it like this. If you know the number send it to the nobel committee and you would be getting one.
        martinpw 6y ago
        It is pretty uncontroversial that CO2 increase in the atmosphere is almost all from human activity, and that a large part of that comes from burning fossil fuels. For example the US EPA website says: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Human activities are responsible for almost all of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 150 years. The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation. and there is a link right on that paragraph to the IPCC report. Given the current EPA director, you might expect that to have been removed if there was any controversy about it. And there are multiple lines of evidence to indicate fossil fuels are the major source, including carbon isotope ratios: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-mu... Finally, if there was any doubt about it you could be sure the oil companies would be trumpeting it.

oriolid 6y ago

Increased CO2 in outdoor air both increases the baseline CO2 in indoor air and reduces the efficiency of ventilation (because the replacement air has higher CO2 too). The math is in the paper and several other comments, but if you passed high school you should be able to derive the result yourself.

ThomPete 6y ago
You are missing the point. You are assuming all their assumptions are correct and apparently as the only person in the world you know how much human made emissions contribute to the total CO2 levels. As I wrote in another post. Write the Nobel Price committee if you know and you will be famous. Edit: "This is a complex problem, and our study is at the beginning. It's not just a matter of predicting global (outdoor) CO2 levels," he said. "It's going from the global background emissions, to concentrations in the urban environment, to the indoor concentrations, and finally the resulting human impact. We need even broader, interdisciplinary teams of researchers to explore this: investigating each step in our own silos will not be enough." https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200421/Atmospheric-CO2-levels-can-cause-cognitive-impairment.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200421/Atmospheric-CO2-l... If this is what you call certainty we have different standards of what is required to call something scientifically proven.
- oriolid 6y ago
  For the problem at hand it does not really matter if the carbon dioxide in air is from combustion, or put there by wizards who want to destroy America. In my personal opinion it's a huge logical leap to assume that fossil fuel use just doesn't add to carbon dioxide in air, and regardless of other sources, this is one source we can control. Anyway, what matters is the result C = G/Q + C_out (see how it applies to all concentrations, not just carbon dioxide). Before it there is a differential equation and I know those are scary, but the steady state solution should be easy to understand. Solve for Q (ventilation) and you'll see why adding ventilation helps less and less with increased C_out.
  - ThomPete 6y ago