| Pemalite said: To be fair, we are a very long way from suffocation. In saying that, you don't want to cross the 2,000ppm barrier... And at 5,000ppm because we would be exposed to those levels for long duration's... Would be extremely dangerous. I.E. I am allowed to be exposed to 5,000ppm for roughly 8 hours at a time, but I am going to exhibit various physiological and psychological issues... This is enough CO2 to start affecting your bone density and create kidney calcification. CO2 is dangerous... And not harmless like the Anti-Climate change movement would like you to believe, but there isn't an immediate threat to our health for a long time, it's our grandchildren that would be suffering for our inaction though. |
Oh but I have a feeling that shit will hit the fan long before our grand children roam the earth as adults.
You are talking about CO2 and its direct effects to our health which I am not fully familiar with but I am certain these are bad as you explain. But there will be a more pressing problem with increasing concentrations of CO2 and worse with CH4 (Methane). The most pressing issue is the change in climate due to the greenhouse effect magnified by CO2 and the much more powerful CH4.
You see the warming of the global climate is going to trigger a whole bunch of positive reinforcing feedback loops which in turn will accelerate the warming which will at some point trigger a natural release of billions of tons of CH4 contained in shallow waters such as the waters of the east Siberian Arctic shelve (The so called clathrate gun) which will accelerate even more the warming of the climate due to the very powerful greenhouse methane gas released. Once these feedback loops are triggered there is no stopping them.
And that's not even mentioning the melting of the North Pole ice cap and the loss of the albedo effect which will also increase the warming of the climate. Think of the polar ice cap as a coolant for the entire polar ocean, once the ice gone, the warming will dramatically accelerate which means even more heat for the release of CH4 and so on in a self reinforcing loop that we can never control again. This one should be easy to understand. Think about yourself sitting in a chair in your garden in summer when it's very hot and sunny, imagine you're drinking a cool drink containing a bunch of ice cubes. You certainly notice how despite the sun glaring down on your drink, it remains cool for as long as the ice cubes are not fully melted. But as soon as the last ice cube is gone, the drink suddenly starts warming up. Well the same thing will happen in the Arctic ocean. The ice cap is shrinking and when it's gone and we get what scientists call a blue ocean event, the waters up there will accelerate their warming and make the release of CH4 even faster than it would without the melting of the ice cap. And that's without even mentioning the brutal changes in weather patterns, I won't get into this in detail, this post is long enough without that. Just know that there is a balance between the cold Arctic air and the warmer tropical air and once this happens, that balance will be completely shattered with serious consequences.
And all this doesn't even take into account another phenomenon that scientists call Global Dimming. Which pretty much ensures we are screwed whether we act or not. In short, global industrial activity has created a kind of umbrella which stops part of the sun shine from warming the atmosphere thanks to the release of gases and substances in the air. So if for some reason we were to stop all human activity across the globe and subsequently we'd stop releasing CO2 and other substances, in a few weeks only the air would clear and sun heat hitting the atmosphere would increase and accelerate global warming. By how much? Scientists don't agree, but what they agree upon is that it make things substantially worse on top of everything else.
And finally the worst problem that this sudden increase in heat will cause is not climate change or stronger storms, hurricanes, extreme heat and droughts causing massive fires (like we see in Australia) all these are very bad on their own. The worst will come with the crops that are the base for our food, these crops will not resist the coming changes and at some point they will collapse, at first by a few percents then more until 95% of all crops fail to grow and the entire world goes into a famine. No need for me to draw a picture of what that would mean (panic, social chaos, wars all over the globe, starvation everywhere) That's when shit really hits the fan. Can't tell you when exactly that will happen, I can only tell you that we are heading in that direction and we are accelerating towards it.
Last edited by CrazyGamer2017 - on 17 February 2020
