It actually has a lot given that they are saying IF CO2 levels goes up to a certain level at the end of the century. They are using that graph as one of the reasons for why it's likely to go up.
This is their conclusion
"We conclude that indoor CO2 levels may indeed reach levels harmful to cognition by the end of this century, and the best way to prevent this hidden consequence of climate change is to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Finally, we offer recommendations for a broad, interdisciplinary approach to improving such understanding and prediction."
That's a big if especially since one of the reasons they believe it might increase to those levels is exactly this mix of averaged measurements and year over year.
Keep in mind the IPCC models range for nothing to worry about to the world is going under.
With regards to the CO2 levels having an impact on our cognitive abilities at the end of the century thats also a lot of speculation and a lot of assumptions.
This is not science this is speculation. Interesting but so filled with assumptions and guesses and speculation about what might happen in 2100.
And if that wasn't enough they just straight out claim the have the solution which is hindering fossil fuel.
This is just activism put into research format from what I can see.
You're confusing the effects of CO2 on climate (which you might argue are not too bad if you enjoy playing russian roulette), with the concentration of CO2, which we can measure extremely accurately and for whose increase the mechanism is very well understood: We burn carbon, it ends up in the atmosphere as CO2, increasing the concentration there for a long time. We also understand the impact of CO2 on cognition very well, because we can simply run experiments.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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%?
The EPA quote clearly implies that for the US it is > 50%.
The realclimate article says: "the rise in atmospheric CO2 is entirely caused by fossil fuel burning and deforestation". So then the question is what is the ratio between those two sources. Quote here says ~10% of total is from tropical deforestation:
So ballpark figure is 90% from fossil fuels? The exact number doesn't matter for the basic argument of the paper though, as long as it is the vast majority of the source.
Just by following references in the Wikipedia about the carbon cycle I found this book chapter https://scihub.wikicn.top/https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS0070-45... that contains numbers (and error bars), alas from 1985. I'm confident that our knowledge about the carbon cycle has improved since then, given the amount of research climate change has gotten in the last thirty years.
Yes it's from 1985 and no it doesn't actually give a number either.
The fact that you can't find it and have to go to 1 article which isn't even giving you that number, should tell you that maybe you haven't gotten all the facts here.
This is exactly what started my journey from worrying about the climate to understanding it to realizing the base for all this is much much much fragile and much much much more politisized.
I spent about 20 minutes looking for that reference. I'm sure an actual climate scientist could provide you with a better reference.
Page 450 has a table. Historic CO2 concentration: 280ppm, "current" concentration 341ppm: a 21% increase. From that and the 60 * 10^15 moles C in the atmosphere in 1982 we can deduce around 50 * 10^15 moles C in 1800 in the atmosphere. That seems to be in the right ballpark of 14 * 10^15 moles of emissions from fossil fuels: not all of the carbon ends up in the atmosphere, e.g. some is dissolved in the ocean. Certainly the difference is not large enough (and doesn't have the right sign!) to support the theory that man made carbon dioxide didn't contribute the majority of the extra carbon in the atmosphere.
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.
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."
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.
> even if that was a problem which isn't even established yet.
Could you explain what isn't even established yet? So far it looks like your belief system prevents you from understanding any physics or chemistry where the results do not fit your values. You might want to look into that or maybe present a new system that explains other observations but where carbon dioxide behaves in a way that is your liking.
I had thought that something pretty undeniable was that burning fossil fuels increases the CO2 in the atmosphere. Most climate arguments are around the level of impact, if there's impact, if it's worth the cost of mitigating or how to/who should actually make a change. I've never seen a disagreement on the point of "burning fossil fuels releases co2".
Neither have i seen disagreement there. The point is that the graph is used to claim that we will get to these levels and that combustion is the reason we will reach them in 2100 and that the solution is to reduce fossil fuel combustion.
This is their conclusion
"We conclude that indoor CO2 levels may indeed reach levels harmful to cognition by the end of this century, and the best way to prevent this hidden consequence of climate change is to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Finally, we offer recommendations for a broad, interdisciplinary approach to improving such understanding and prediction."
That's a big if especially since one of the reasons they believe it might increase to those levels is exactly this mix of averaged measurements and year over year.
Keep in mind the IPCC models range for nothing to worry about to the world is going under.
With regards to the CO2 levels having an impact on our cognitive abilities at the end of the century thats also a lot of speculation and a lot of assumptions.
This is not science this is speculation. Interesting but so filled with assumptions and guesses and speculation about what might happen in 2100.
And if that wasn't enough they just straight out claim the have the solution which is hindering fossil fuel.
This is just activism put into research format from what I can see.