CO2 Significantly Degrades Human Cognition


Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition, New Harvard Study Shows

In a landmark public health finding, a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that carbon dioxide (CO2) has a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making.
For most of human evolution history, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has varied between 180 and 240 parts per million.  A few months ago the concentration in our atmosphere has passed 400 and if nothing is done, it's heading for more than 900 parts per million.
They found that, on average, a typical participant’s cognitive scores dropped 21 percent with a 400 ppm increase in CO2. Here are their astonishing findings for four of the nine cognitive functions scored in a double-blind test of the impact of elevated CO2 levels: 
co2charts_1024



Vivian Loftness — University Professor and former Head of the School of Architecture — one of the world’s leading experts on “Health, Productivity, and the Quality of the Built Environment,” says
We have to do everything we can to keep outdoor CO2 levels below 600 ppm because something serious starts happening then.
So if droughts, floods, huge swaths of land rendered uninhabitable by global warming isn't enough, it is clear that we need also to worry about the loss of mental capacity as the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere increases.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alaska Crushes Record For Hottest December

Image
Alaska crushes record for hottest December as Arctic sea ice hits record low In its hottest December ever recorded, Alaska was a stunning 15.7°F above the 20th century average. And the year ended with Arctic sea ice hitting an all-time record low. While the East Coast had a cool December and New Year’s week, Alaska baked. Last Tuesday, Anchorage hit 48°F , warmer than southern cities from Atlanta and Jacksonville to Houston and New Orleans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported this week that Alaska averaged 19.4°F for the month, topping the previous record (1985) by a whopping 2.1°F. “That’s really quite astonishing,” said Rick Thoman, the National Weather Service’s climate sciences and services manager for the Alaska region. As he explained to the Anchorage Daily News , “Usually you’re breaking those by a tenth of a degree or two-tenths of a degree.” The Arctic as a whole was so warm in December that Arctic sea ice set a new end-of-year record lo
Read more

The World My Grandchildren Will Inherit

Image
I went to a presentation at the University of Washington by Professor Raftery of the Statistics and Sociology Departments of a recent paper of his and colleagues (Alec Zimmer, Dargan M.W. Frierson, Richard Startz, and Peiran Liu) in the Journal Nature, entitled Less than 2 °C warming by 2100 unlikely   (link behind a paywall) . Their paper is a response to a need to provide a statistical forecast for global temperatures.  What the IPCC has previously provided are "scenarios" based on "expert" thinking.  Raftery has previously developed statistical methods for estimating world-wide migration patterns that has been adopted by the United Nations.  At the presentation he presented a statistical model for forecasting global temperatures. Their result is a 90% interval forecast of 2 to 4.9 degrees Centigrade with a median of 3.2 degrees. Their backtesting strongly supported the median.  He also  said " that the data suggested that future improvements in ca
Read more