Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood • Hacker News Board

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#101

Post by OutOfHere » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #70

The human body has a fairly elegant regulation mechanism for handling variance in things like CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_effect I think regular exercise can help to offset some of the effects of rising CO2 levels. Clearly not an end game solution but it's something to consider because you do have control over this one.

A rise in blood bicarbonate, even if in the normal range, particularly at the upper end of normal, is still dangerous at times. The problem is that it has an effect of diminishing extracellular potassium which leads to spikes in heart rate, risking a cardiac emergency. I have witnessed it first hand.

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#102

Post by chucksta » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:35 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #88

lapcat wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the other would very much like to take action on the issue if they had the political power. They had political power! During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, during the Clinton administration. Al Gore is a famous environmentalist... for making a movie after he was out of power. What the hell did he do for the environment when he was literally in the Oval Office, at the side of the Presiden…

>During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, during the Clinton administration The president doesn't actually control much in the USA, despite the nonsensical shit republican congresses let them get away with. Obama, Biden, and Clinton could not do anything that wasn't approved by congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat... Democrats have not really held enough powe…

There was democratic control of the presidency and congress during Biden's term

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#103

Post by fullstop » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #63

gcanyon wrote: post #5

Higher carbon dioxide makes us dumber: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7229519/ I wonder how long before in-home CO2 extraction becomes a thing.

The high school my friend's kids attend installed CO2 sensors during the pandemic as an indirect way to measure airflow. It turned out the building had been sealed extremely tightly to keep out the winter cold and because it is old, it does not have a proper HVAC system. They discovered that CO2 levels stayed around 1200 ppm throughout the entire winter, sometimes even higher. This had likely been the case for decade…

I went to a Catholic school and had to attend services. I thought that I was just bored, but I'm pretty sure that my yawning had more to do with elevated CO2 levels.

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#104

Post by lapcat » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #100

lapcat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US hegemony is dying The US just deposed the leaders of two countries, Venezuela and Iran, but ok.

> The US just deposed the leaders of two countries, Venezuela and Iran, but ok. If that's how you judge what "empires" will be left in a decade, good for you, ignorance is a bliss sometimes I suppose. Don't look at how the average person live and survives, if you want to continue that way...

> If that's how you judge what "empires" will be left in a decade, good for you

I don't make such predictions. I'm not Nostradamus, and neither are you. I don't think anyone can predict what will happen exactly in a decade. After all, who predicted this a decade ago?

> ignorance is a bliss

This insult doesn't even make sense. I'm not experiencing bliss over the situation.

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#105

Post by triceratops » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #27

ThomW wrote: post #3

"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.“

[flagged]

I'm not mad about the fuel. I'm mad about the lies.

I only paid for fuel, not lies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_deni...

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#106

Post by triceratops » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #58

indoordin0saur wrote: post #2

This actually has me just as concerned as rising temperatures. And its a pretty hard thing to argue against, no matter your politics. Elon even brought it up when he did that interview with Trump in late 2024 to convince him that we should still care about CO2 levels in the atmosphere, even if you think the threat of a changing climate is overblown. Trump really had no response.

USA (along with the rest of the western world) is a huge cumulative emitter: https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 But a distant second in per year emissions: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by... The EU, not listed here, sits between the US and India at about 3.05 billion tonnes. It's all up to China, which took over a huge chunk of the world's manufacturing. And all up to…

The cumulative emissions represent the PPM increase today. So that's a very relevant statistic. I don't know why you're ignoring it.

China also reduced their emissions last year while the US increased them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292

Stop pointing fingers. Start working.

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#107

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #99

ceejayoz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more perks than the job Constitutionally awards. It was created as a powerless placeholder role.

You're missing the point, which is that by all accounts, Al Gore was a close advisor to Bill Clinton.

And by all accounts, he pushed for action on climate change.

As it turns out, close advisors still don't get to set policy.

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#108

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

gcanyon wrote: post #5

Higher carbon dioxide makes us dumber: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7229519/ I wonder how long before in-home CO2 extraction becomes a thing.

I have friends that fell down air monitoring rabbit holes in the situation of the early 2020s and one of the things they have remained obsessed about is home CO2 levels and have active monitoring equipment and "pager alerts" and other things setup.

Home carbon capture is sort of a thing already: buy more houseplants, keep them alive and healthy.

Though the most common home interventions for now are still "open a window" and/or "run a fan to circulate the air better". I suppose it's neat that we can home automate that, if you are willing to invest in that.

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#109

Post by alexk307 » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:51 PM UTC

In the reference period 1999->2020, the instruments used by NHANES to track this data changed at least 3 times, they don't account for other changes to the general population that increase bicarbonate levels in serum (i.e. Number of obese Americans rose by ~40% in the reference period [1]). I'm not entirely convinced that using a proxy for C02 levels that can be confounded by a multitude of other health conditions that are common in the American population is a good way of going about this.

[1] https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...

Re: Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood

#110

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

chneu wrote: post #74

Reminder that an individual can cut their emissions by a staggering amount by just not eating meat/dairy. Depending on how much you consume, you can cut your emissions by 50%! Regenerative ranching is a lie and is more based in "vibes" and "energies" than science. Making beef production 0.01% more efficient then increasing consumption does not help. Meat is a "status symbol" food based in excess, grass fed beef is ju…

Reminder that corporations spent a ton of money on propaganda to make us all believe individual sacrifices can have a noticeable impact when the largest offenders are all corporate. Even if everyone reduced their personal carbon footprint by avoiding meat/dairy and the industrial cattle farms mysteriously disappeared overnight, that's still a drop in the overall greenhouse gas emission problem. Also note that "everyone" is doing a lot of work in that sentence and also means collective effort is required to make the change noticeable/effective rather than individual efforts.

Collective action is what matters. Corporate regulation is what matters. An enhanced EPA with real enforcement powers (not just fines, but the ability to shut down companies and/or outright murder them; which is also a larger debate because right now Americans generally don't believe in corporate murder and think corporations have a right to indefinitely exist) is what is necessary.

It is because of our selfishness, but also our selfishness extends to not working together in enough solidarity and instead fingerpointing at individuals to "do their part, alone, and without support systems and systemic change". That's pretty selfish, too. We need systemic change. We need support systems. We need a government that prioritizes the environment and our collective health and well-being. We need companies to understand that ethics matter as much as profits and if they cannot find profits that are ethical, including and especially in relationship to their externalities like greenhouse gas emissions, then they do not deserve to make those profits and may not deserve to continue operation as a company.