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The world's carbon-dioxide problem doesn't just affect the atmosphere — the gas is starting to fill our homes, schools, and offices, too.
Indoor levels of the gas are projected to climb so high, in fact, that they could cut people's ability to do complex cognitive tasks in half by the end of the century.
That prediction comes from three scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Pennsylvania, who presented their findings last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The study is still under peer review but available online in the repository Earth ArXiv.
The findings show that, if global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to rise on their current trajectory, the concentration of CO2 in the air could more than double by 2100. Based on measurements of how humans function in spaces with that much CO2, the scientists warn, we could find ourselves scoring 50% lower on measures of complex thought by the end of the century.
(Score: 2) by engblom on Tuesday February 18 2020, @08:50AM (2 children)
From reading the comments it looks like many believe plants would give enough of oxygen. Plants are not breathing in the same way a human is: they take in CO2 and then strip out the O2 part and then they use that C to GROW. Thus if you take a plant and dry out all of the water and weight it you could calculate the upper limit of how much CO2 it had been converting. The real value will be lower as a plant does not contain just carbon. You will quickly realize that the rate of converting CO2 is ridiculously small for house plants.
This is why we need big forests where big growth can happen. The small and slowly growing house plants simply do not grow fast enough to do something useful for the indoor air.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @11:09AM
It's simple. You grow bamboo!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:03PM
You also have to consider that 'high concentrations' of CO2 are also "ridiculously small." For instance take a relatively "high" concentration of CO2 of 4000ppm. That's less than 8 grams of CO2 per cubic meter of volume. And that CO2 tends to build up slowly over time.
Forests are pretty much useless as a means of combating overall CO2. They simply sequester it, and then release it as they die. For instance the California wildfires ended up releasing [nbcnews.com] about as much CO2 as is required to generate all of the electricity in California for a year. But it wasn't just because the fire - such process also happens naturally as the trees die and decay. So trees do little more than kick the can, and also put a huge responsibility on maintaining the forests since a fire can release tremendous amounts of CO2 making the cure even worse than the disease.