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Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#251

Post by avar »

dredmorbius wrote: post #241
avar wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source you're citing talks about 4.4 kg estimated per m^2 for algae in the open ocean, and notes that the maximum known rate is 9.16, so around 9 * (44/12) = 33 kg per m^2/yr converting C to CO^2, or around 11 square meters. In terms of CO^2 sequestration it doesn't seem implausible to fit a farm of that area in something the size of an apartment.. Of course the energy/water use would be insane, hopefully you cou…

Note that the article refers to both carbon and carbon dioxide fixation. CO2 weighs more than the carbon it contains, by a lot. Carbon has an atomic weight of 12, CO2 a molecular weight of 44 (12 + 2 16), or just shy 4x the mass of the carbon* component of CO2. The 4.4 kg I gave was carbon , the 16.3 kg CO2 . Your 9.16 kg refers to CO2, fixed per square meter per year, which is less than the CO2 fixation value I'd us…

I understand the difference, but perhaps I misunderstood the article. What it says (and you're correctly referring to) is:

> We will be conservative and say that our algal beds fix 2.5 kg of C per square meter per year and 2.5 kg of C works out to 9.167 kg of CO2.

But then a couple of paragraphs later:

> the maximum CO2 assimilation rate of algal beds which we will say is 9.167 kg of C per square meter per year.

I.e. they first mention a conservative "2.5 kg of C" in the context of the ocean, followed by a "maximum rate". 9 kg of carbon is around 33 kg of CO^2.

Maybe they meant "kg of CO2" in that second paragraph, it's certainly suspicious that it repeats the same 9.167 number, but why would they call that number both "conservative" and "maximum assimilation rate", hrm...

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#252

Post by soulofmischief »

mertd wrote: post #65
soulofmischief wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just... what outside smells like? What do you do about smelling people's breath in the air (??) whenever you exit your car?

A side street would see a few cars per minute. Compare that to a freeway where you are continuously surrounded by multiple cars doing high rpm.

I can imagine there is a non-trivial increase in certain gas concentrations, but smelling people's breath? That just seems ridiculous.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#253

Post by gwern »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #244
ggreer wrote: post #240

If it is, it's not due to CO2. The US Navy's submarines are run with CO2 levels varying from 300-11,300ppm.[1] The military did plenty of studies in the 60s and 70s and failed to find significant cognitive effects in environments as high as 4% CO2.[2] > Thus, CO2 at 40,000 ppm for 2 weeks did not affect performance on multiple tests of cognitive function in physically fit young airmen, a population probably not unlik…

Thanks for that info and the links! I'm curious: Did you know about this report prior to researching this particular paper's claim?

Yes. The question of CO2 and the difficulty reconciling Satish with practically all other CO2 studies has been a question of interest to ggreer & me since it was first raised on LW years ago: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/nk0/what_is_up_with_car...

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#254

Post by drivers99 »

jandrese wrote: post #123
k__ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many plants are needed to counter this?

To get an idea of what you need check out the Biodome and Biodome II projects. They were massive structures chock full of plants to sustain a small handful of people, and it wasn't enough.

Biosphere 2 you mean. Looks like they did two self-sustaining attempts there.

Bio-dome is a movie based on the premise.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#255

Post by bacon_waffle »

irrational wrote: post #134
Klathmon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I picked up a CO2 monitor a while ago myself, and the biggest surprise was having it on in the morning in our bedroom with the doors closed. It was easily over 1000ppm IIRC. Ever since then I've made sure to set my AC system to run the "house fan" for 15 minutes or so every hour at night just to circulate the air in the house, and while the numbers went down significantly, anecdotally I swear that I wake up easier in…

How does kissing affect CO2 levels? I know I've done some stupid things after kissing.

Anecdata, but since I've started wearing SCUBA gear to meetings, I haven't been kissed once. Maybe it's more about high CO2 levels leading to kissing?

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#256

Post by 83457 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #252
mertd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A side street would see a few cars per minute. Compare that to a freeway where you are continuously surrounded by multiple cars doing high rpm.

I can imagine there is a non-trivial increase in certain gas concentrations, but smelling people's breath? That just seems ridiculous.

I'm going to guess English is not your first language. Breath is also a verb. Example: "I don't want to breath in all the exhaust fumes".

It sounds like you misunderstood my original comment.

Edit: welp sometimes you learn English as your first language for the second time and today is that day for me

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#257

Post by grzm »

83457 wrote: post #256
soulofmischief wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine there is a non-trivial increase in certain gas concentrations, but smelling people's breath? That just seems ridiculous.

I'm going to guess English is not your first language. Breath is also a verb. Example: "I don't want to breath in all the exhaust fumes". It sounds like you misunderstood my original comment. Edit: welp sometimes you learn English as your first language for the second time and today is that day for me

> "Breath is also a verb."

I think the verb you're looking for is breathe. Breath is a noun.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#258

Post by soulofmischief »

83457 wrote: post #256
soulofmischief wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine there is a non-trivial increase in certain gas concentrations, but smelling people's breath? That just seems ridiculous.

I'm going to guess English is not your first language. Breath is also a verb. Example: "I don't want to breath in all the exhaust fumes". It sounds like you misunderstood my original comment. Edit: welp sometimes you learn English as your first language for the second time and today is that day for me

I'm going to guess English is not your first language.

Breath is not a verb. Breathe is. You used the wrong word and that led to my confusion. I didn't misunderstand, the comment itself was incorrect.

Try not to be so patronizing next time?

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#259

Post by kortilla »

Mistletoe wrote: post #5

I own a CO2 monitor and it is shocking how high it can get in a house with two people just existing. 800 ppm or more. Outside air is 410. In a car with air on recirculate, it was getting to >1220 ppm, a level that impairs decision making and lowers brain function. I try to drive with air on fresh from now on. I don’t doubt the air in our conference room with 20 people gets super high in CO2 as the meeting goes on, an…

You’ll be shocked to find out that’s bunk: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19863319

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#260

Post by antcas »

faceplanted wrote: post #119
wishrider wrote: post #34

When I was a student I had a little room and one time I had a co2 monitor in my room for a few days. The monitor had 3 leds, green yellow and red. While sitting in the room for three consecutive hours (at the computer) the co2 would slowly rise from green to red and after opening the window for a while it was back at green. Now the interesting part is that I felt a strong correlation between tiredness and high co2 le…

Would definitely be an interesting longitudinal study to put a sensor in a set of classrooms, some of them with a your light system to suggest opening a window, and some of them not being told about the sensor, which would just log data as a control. You could compare grades and long term success in people in those classes. Even in the short term it would be interesting to see if it affects any education metrics.

We should also pump in enough CO2 to equalize an open window room and control for CO2 level vs psychological affects of a breeze and an open window.
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