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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 he

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.
        ThomPete 6y ago
        So in other words. You can't give me a number, not even a ballpark number. Why do you think that is? Why isn't it important to you if it's 10% or 51% or 99%?

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.
      - ThomPete 6y ago
        So in other words. You can't give me a number, not even a ballpark number. Why do you think that is? Why isn't it important to you if it's 10% or 51% or 99%?