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A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

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Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#111

Post by rsynnott »

h2odragon wrote: post #3

People concern for "air quality" lately has me wondering how in the world humanity survived to this point, in utter ignorance of the horrid damage everything they could smell was doing to them. Perhaps we should be encased in sterile bubbles at birth, with all inputs filtered for purity and consistency. Surely that would be the best way to avoid all the dire consequences of the pollutants surrounding us.

> People concern for "air quality" lately has me wondering how in the world humanity survived to this point, in utter ignorance of the horrid damage everything they could smell was doing to them.

"Lately?" People have been worrying about air quality ever since it became clear that poor air quality was killing people (mid 19th century), and have been legislating it since then.

Now, the biggest killers have been mostly legislated out of existence in developed countries (with some exceptions around big old coal plants, which can cause serious regional problems), and attention is turning to those that just knock of a few tens of thousands of people a year, rather than the millions of yesteryear.

Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#112

Post by mariusor »

aqme28 wrote: post #41

Why is a mostly-incorrect* analysis of candles on the frontpage? Just because Carmack is saying it? *: Wattage might be the same, but the effect on air quality is different. Humans don't exhale carbon monoxide and smoke.

I agree, I am also starting to get a bit annoyed at all these posts pointing to everything Mr. Carmack says. I know who he is, I am enjoying these posts on twitter where they have their place, but let's not focus all the nitpickyness of HN on every little bit of trivia the man says.

Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#113

Post by tzs »

josefresco wrote: post #2

Text for those who don't do the bird site: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human — 80 to 100 watts, also consuming about the same amount of oxygen and producing the same amount of CO2. In an enclosed area, adding candles is about like adding people from an air quality standpoint.

> Text for those who don't do the bird site

OT: speaking of the bird site...how does it decide what to recommend in the "More Tweets" section? I'm kind of baffled by the stark differences between its recommendations on two recent visits.

Yesterday I followed a link to a Paul Graham tweet. Then I scrolled down to see what else Twitter recommended. It was full of right wing conspiracy theories, climate change denial, anti-vaccine stuff, one about Bill Gates' plan to depopulate the world, and of course something about the Jewish bankers that control the world. There was almost nothing that wasn't similar to the above.

Today I go there to view this John Carmack tweet, and what Twitter is recommending is a tweet from Joe Biden, a Greta Thunberg tweet, a tweet about the Formosan clouded leopard being declared extinct in 2014 after no sightings for 40 years but then was spotted in 2019, an Edward Snowdon tweet, a tweet from the National Park Service, various humor tweets, a tweet about a lecture on how to build GPT from scratch, and a couple about business acquisition. There were a couple of right wing political tweets (from Scott Adams and Glenn Beck) but they were mild and about Musk so I assume that's why they are there. There was also one from Andrew Tate that was a pretty good inspirational statement and did not mention Musk at all. Oh and this great but best not read if you going to sleep soon tweet "16 of the creepiest paintings ever made" [1].

Is this difference because of Twitter's inferences about the kind of people that read Paul Graham and read John Carmack? I'd guess Graham is more to the right than Carmack but from what I've seen not anywhere enough that reading Graham is any kind of signal that you would be interested in the kind of conspiracy theories and such that it was recommending yesterday.

[1] https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1615648152983572480

Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#114

Post by danans »

medstrom wrote: post #99
danans wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not incorrect, just misuse of "air quality". To ignore the the central subject of the comment - air quality - in order to call it "not incorrect" is doing quite a bit of work. > Seems main takeaway is that one candle = one human, wrt. oxygen in the room. If the numbers are right. If we can ignore air quality, what is the difference between this and the comparison between 2 60lb dogs and a human in a room? Or a…

I only said candle=human with regards to oxygen. Agree a candle is different because of byproduct gases. Strongly suspect that Carmack said "air quality" sloppily and meant specifically the oxygen aspect of it.

> Strongly suspect that Carmack said "air quality" sloppily and meant specifically the oxygen aspect of it.

Then how is his comment topical or even interesting? It sure sounds like he's wading into the indoor air quality debate that ignited (pun intended) around gas stoves in the last week. But as others have noted, he's a "great man" so his opinions, well informed or not, get broadcast.

Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#115

Post by rsynnott »

slickdork wrote: post #10
h2odragon wrote: post #3

People concern for "air quality" lately has me wondering how in the world humanity survived to this point, in utter ignorance of the horrid damage everything they could smell was doing to them. Perhaps we should be encased in sterile bubbles at birth, with all inputs filtered for purity and consistency. Surely that would be the best way to avoid all the dire consequences of the pollutants surrounding us.

h2odragon in 1890: People concern for "Germs" lately has me wondering how in the world humanity survived to this point, in utter ignorance of the horrid damage everything they could touch was doing to them. Perhaps we should wash our hands with soap, with all inputs filtered for purity and consistency. Surely that would be the best way to avoid all the dire consequences of the pollutants surrounding us.

While that works, you could also actually just keep the original text (serious legislation on air quality started in the mid to late 19th century).

Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#116

Post by ambicapter »

kijin wrote: post #68
jvm___ wrote: post #48

How bad does our bedroom air quality get? or how much CO2 do two adult humans produce in a 10x10 closed room overnight? Is it enough to push the CO2 high enough to have an effect? I've noticed I sleep better when I sleep separately from my wife. I'm the more violent sleeper, so it's not movement related, so I'm wondering if it's air quality related.

Back-of-napkin calculation using really rough estimates: The average person exhales about 1kg of CO2 per day. That's 542L per day. Let's say you produce 20% of your daily CO2 output during the night, since your metabolism is lower when you're asleep. That would be 108L per person per night, or 216L for two people. The average American bedroom is around 120-130sqft, or 11-12 square meters. Assuming a height of 8 feet,…

Is your math assuming that there was 0 CO2 in the room at the beginning of the night?

Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#117

Post by rsynnott »

melling wrote: post #7
h2odragon wrote: post #3

People concern for "air quality" lately has me wondering how in the world humanity survived to this point, in utter ignorance of the horrid damage everything they could smell was doing to them. Perhaps we should be encased in sterile bubbles at birth, with all inputs filtered for purity and consistency. Surely that would be the best way to avoid all the dire consequences of the pollutants surrounding us.

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s a recent concern. Nixon started the EPA in 1970. Historically, there have been issues with coal and air quality. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London Now that we have 8 billion people on the planet at once, even a small human footprint adds up.

And note that the Great Smog was nearly a century after the UK started passing serious air quality legislation. Things were _significantly worse_ in the 19th century; while recording of cause of death wasn't great, it's all but certain that there were worse incidents than the great smog.

Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#118

Post by Eric_WVGG »

iancmceachern wrote: post #100

Something something the matrix

… yeah so that was a thing that bothered me, "human batteries… like… even if that was possible, there's no way even billions of people could generate as much power as a handful of nuclear reactors… a more sensible idea would be if they were using our brains as CPUs in a massive network, like [spoiler] in Hyperion…"

And years later, I learned that was exactly what the earlier drafts of the script said. They changed it because the studio execs thought the audience would find the concept confusing.

Re: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human

#120

Post by yreg »

tzs wrote: post #113
josefresco wrote: post #2

Text for those who don't do the bird site: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human — 80 to 100 watts, also consuming about the same amount of oxygen and producing the same amount of CO2. In an enclosed area, adding candles is about like adding people from an air quality standpoint.

> Text for those who don't do the bird site OT: speaking of the bird site...how does it decide what to recommend in the "More Tweets" section? I'm kind of baffled by the stark differences between its recommendations on two recent visits. Yesterday I followed a link to a Paul Graham tweet. Then I scrolled down to see what else Twitter recommended. It was full of right wing conspiracy theories, climate change denial, a…

My "More tweets" section under that tweet is ~70% same as yours. Including 16 of the creepiest paintings ever made.
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