121–130 of 175 posts
I do not know what am I supposed to do with this information of questionable accuracy.
1. It's John Carmack.
2. It's "sciencey".
3. It (his assertions) seemed slightly "under informed" or vague, and I wanted to see what the HN crowd had to say given the wide array of expertise.
So happy to see it climb to the front page to see this debate pan out!
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except that candles don't just produce CO2, they produce soot and many other molecules which have been clearly associated with negative health outcomes.
I'm disappointed by the lack of a methane emissions joke
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…
The echo chamber is real. For all its potential, Twitter is no way to learn about the world. But the same goes for any web site with algorithmically served content.
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,…
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.
Almost the exact same thread and thoughts shared on the tweet are here too... Interesting stuff. I wouldn't think Twitter and HN would be so closely aligned.
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1. there were far less people with far less industry, so a lot of the problems we have didn't exist yet 2. there was, in some regions, lots of living indoors with fires and candles and sleeping with animals, because they had no other choice, and they died in their 30s or 40s at best anyway so it didn't really matter. Probably breathing soot all the time while indoors was part of the reason they died in their 30s and…
Re. point 2: I wish I had sources for this, but as I understand it, few adults have ever died in their 30s and 40s. We hear the average age was 35 in some periods of history, but I don't know how many scientists even said that, maybe it was reporters misunderstanding the point of the number, because to laymen it's a weird way of saying that "child mortality was high and disease was common". Once you were an adult and…
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> how in the world humanity survived to this point By outbreeding the fact that we also died a bunch for unknown reasons. And I think this tweet is actually a fairly calming view on things. I wouldn't hesitate to share a room with a couple extra people, so I won't worry about a few candles occasionally, because they're a nice benefit to the space. Meanwhile it's an absolute no-brainer (for me and many other people) t…
> Meanwhile it's an absolute no-brainer (for me and many other people) to avoid gas stoves, because they don't have any ambience benefits and my local power grid is quite stable. Except that all the concern around gas stoves is mostly BS. The issue with cooking is not the heat source, it's actually the fumes from cooking itself. The ONLY safe way to cook from an indoor air quality perspective is to have a properly in…
> I've confirmed this myself many times over with calibrated sensors.
This really means nothing considering that rigorous studies and metastudies [1] have been performed and the results published that demonstrate the opposite: that gas stoves result in CO and other harmful emissions that electric stoves don't, independent of what is being cooked. Those studies aren't a global conspiracy against gas stoves. If you have similarly published your data and it has been reviewed, please do share it with the world.
> The worst thing about indoor air quality in the US is that the US doesn't require external venting in kitchens by code, and it should
I agree wholeheartedly, but the problem doesn't end there. Most range hoods in single family homes are externally vented, but there is a behavioral problem, which is that most people use the kitchen hood vent as a way to exhaust smoke odors only, usually only in response to a smoke alarm going off. Even worse, after enough rounds of this, many people end up disabling the smoke alarms near their kitchen rather than taking it as an indication that there is an air quality problem.
If the only effect of these studies is to alert people to the necessity of turning on their hood vent and opening a window for makeup air every time they cook, especially on a gas stove, that's a win.
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.
It's not incorrect, just misuse of "air quality". In principle it looks like candles and humans could have a very similar effect, because both work by the process of combustion. Humans even supply fat as fuel which is similar to the candle wax. But the details differ so of course different gases could come out as a side effect. Both consume oxygen, which is certainly part of "air quality". But the lesson could've bee…
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Not sure, but I remember the comparison with a light bulb. A bit artificial but it puts unintuitive units in perspective
A lightbulb's energy consumption and heat emission don't seem intuitive to me at all.