CO2 overload, detected in human blood, suggests toxic atmosphere within 50 years

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5

by OutOfHere • 6 days ago

69 90 6 days ago

link.springer.com

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

Look at your CMP (Comprehensive Metabolic Panel) blood test results. It has a test named Carbon Dioxide. This test may have a reference range of 20-32 mmol/L. Subtract your value from the max value -- that's your leftover buffer as the atmospheric CO2 rises, although serious intermittent problems are risked at a level of 31 itself. There is a more specific blood gas test that only a hospital can perform.

Fwiw, my value reliably went down after I replaced citrate mineral supplements (calcium and magnesium) with glycinate capsules.

jeffbee4• 6 days ago

Mine was 26 mmol/L yesterday, but the reference level is given as 22-29 by my lab, not 20-32.

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

In an objective sense, I actually think your noted reference level is the more correct level. I say this because I have experienced problems in the 30-32 range. Granted, we know that each lab's reference range can also vary for other reasons.

jvanderbot• 6 days ago

One interesting thing in the paper that I didn't think of, is that our breathing mechanism is tied to CO2 levels. And therefore, higher CO2 levels (not atmospheric high, but artificially high during studies), can trigger panic attacks and general stress. A slow suffocation hallucination, kind of. Even when there's still sufficient oxygen, your body doesn't "measure" oxygen!

I didn't know that!

giraffe_lady• 6 days ago

It's a factor in "shallow water blackout" a fairly common death for experienced swimmers. Caused by hyperventilating prior to a long breath hold flushing too much CO2 out of your blood, so your sense of needing to breathe is suppressed relative to your need for oxygen.

somenameforme2• 6 days ago

Yeah was going to hit on a similar point. When you hold your breath, that feeling that you need to breathe again isn't because you don't have enough oxygen, but because you have too much CO2. This is why things like hypoxia (lack of oxygen) can be so deadly in environments where it can be a thing (pilots, scuba, etc). Early onset symptoms include things like euphoria which isn't the most helpful warning from your body for 'death: imminent.'

ooboe• 5 days ago

This is the reason closed environments (e.g., space vehicles, submursibles, rebreathers) have CO2 scrubbers.

oliwarner• 6 days ago

It's also the reason people pass out and die in high-nitrogen or helium environments. Your body can still exchange out CO2 (and O2 in really high concentrations) and you just carry on until you... Stop.

A couple of refrigeration engineers died near us at a poultry processing plant after it was found that the on-site liquid nitrogen tanks had a small leak. CCTV showed them just happily working in a room without ventilation and they just died. Was all very sad.

tsoukase• 5 days ago

Correct. Depth and frequency of breathing is regulated 90% by arterial CO2 level due to a direct, potent servo feedback based on a sensor in the brain stem. The rest is due to O2 level. A fatal situation happens with low CO2 and low O2 that doesn't increase breathing. Pneumo doctors hate this and it's an absolute indication for intubation and mechanical breathing.

astro-lizard• 6 days ago

As a software engineer, what can we do to help with anthropogenic emissions? I want to know how I can use my critical thinking to protect the future for us.

thinkingkong• 6 days ago

Its not a software problem or a technical issue. At this point, it’s a social issue. Incentives are misaligned and as a result we’ll burn every last molecule of hydrocarbons to generate shareholder value.

sam_lowry_• 6 days ago

It is everyone's issue, a software engineer can write more efficient code, choose to work for the sustainable future, not for most if not all AI companies and not for blockchain companies.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 6 days ago

Become a monk. The solution is simple and not technical: Stop building and producing CO2

JMKH42• 6 days ago

Remember Jevon's Paradox: most of us instinctively look to improving efficiency. But when you do that, people just use more of the thing. Rewriting Python in Rust often won't mean less electricity used, it means your code will get run more.

For example, none of the improvements in combustion engine efficiency over the last 40 years have results in less gasoline being used, it resulted in bigger, more powerful cars and more driving of them.

Really the biggest lever is reducing human population growth and mandating renewables when they are workable, even if moderately less economically viable.

iknowstuff2• 6 days ago

prompt Mythos how to engineer a virus that spreads Alpha-gal syndrome and makes everyone on earth vegan. Instant 30% greenhouse gas reduction.

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

It's not a good idea because while one can avoid eating red meat, collagen hydrolysate is mainly obtainable only from bovine sources. Fishes are polluted. As one gets older, collagen becomes necessary for remaining healthy, and no synthetic amino acid mixture comes close in effect.

Also imagine that meat can in theory be lab grown.

BuyMyBitcoins• 6 days ago

You may just be joking, but such a thing would be a crime against humanity.

jeffbee4• 6 days ago

The same thing anyone else can do: bomb an oil refinery.

appreciatorBus• 6 days ago

Which will do nothing about demand from your fellow citizens to consumer refined oil products such as gasoline, so another refinery will be built and they will carry on as usual.

As long as it's free for individuals to pollute, we are going to demand polluting products & services without regard for the environment.

The solution is to price externalities, but your fellow citizens will vote out anyone who suggests those cuz they like polluting for free.

Collectivism will fare no better unless it's a dictatorship (which they all devolve to eventually, but putting that aside...) After the people's revolution they will demand the right to unlimited driving for $0 and stage a revolt should the vanguard elite suggest that unlimited driving for $0 might not be good thing.

bix63• 6 days ago

Build software that improves the situation. That could be monitoring that helps surface data, tools that help governments and industries manage their CO2 goals, AI systems that search for solutions that you then implement, social apps that help us manifest change, etc. This whole category is underserved because everyone just throws their hands up and says it’s unsolvable, governments problem, etc.

Edit: the only positive response in this thread and I get downvotes lmao what the hell people.

toasty2282• 6 days ago

the only positive response in this thread and I get downvotes lmao what the hell people.

Because it's not "positive", it's "techsolutionism", which at this point is basically a cult... let's keep shovelling more shit on the gigantic pile of shit and pray it gets smaller

ratelimitsteve2• 6 days ago

There are plenty of positive responses, yours got downvoted for being essentially a series tautologies. "Do something that fixes the problem" isn't advice, and "have AI do something that fixes the problem" is actually directly harmful to the end goal.

duskdozer• 6 days ago

Vote for candidates who support mitigations, contact legislators asking them to do so, at all levels of government. Live according to those policies and encourage others to do so.

WithinReason• 6 days ago

plant trees

x86a• 6 days ago

Go take a flamegraph of your most CPU-bound system and optimize the most expensive function

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

Work from home!

hinata08• 6 days ago

Software is allowing industries to be so much smarter and efficient. Even without advanced systems, a 20€ smart switch allows my personal water boiler to turn on when solar and wind are so available that power prices go low or negative (and a startup, Sobry, allows me to enjoy or suffer spot prices thanks to my smart power meter that sends hourly usage data over the grid).

If your smart switches support it (Tuya/Lidl gateways doesn't, so there is still work to do), you can get some cashback when they momentarily turn some devices on or off to help offset imbalances on the power grid without relying on gas turbines.

Software is allowing governments to provide services online, 24/7, making driving to their overly large buildings a thing of the past.

Software is changing the way companies work with their customers and suppliers. It cut business trips so much that airlines like United had to review their routes at some point.

Software allows more trains to run on each track, and improves cross border services in dense areas in Europe

Software developers who support open source initiative such as LineageOS, ChromeOS or lightweight Linux distributions allow to keep devices for longer. It is valuable when manufacturers and Microsoft would like you to buy new hardware.

YouTube tutorials and online marketplaces allow customers to fix their old stuff or to buy second hands. It makes the economy more circular than it used to

Simulators allow new generations to fly cessnas or race cars on 1000 electrical watts at home, while video games allow kids to have fun together without racing cars on open roads like you used to

My_Name• 6 days ago

I may be the only person responding that see the humour in your post.

I thought it was quite funny TBH

tomaskafka• 6 days ago

We build a software that enhances overall productivity and automating things, all of this enables us to extract natural resources faster and cheaper, thus putting out more CO2 into atmosphere.

The end state is to have a direct humanless assembly line turning Earth into cheap crap for monkeys to use once and throw away, with ginormous global GDP. Happiness for everyone.

axus• 6 days ago

Replace demand for fossil fuels by making cheaper energy sources and electric vehicles.

Politically, block the straight of Hormuz, attack oil-producing infrastructure. Trump and Zelensky and even Iran are doing us all a favor.

jandrewrogers• 6 days ago

Any effective approach to atmospheric CO2 reduction on a timescale that matters will require extremely large quantities clean energy, far beyond current generation capacity. This will be the biggest bottleneck so start there.

Given that this is known required input, we can start by expediting the building this energy infrastructure with all due haste. This would require ignoring various activists with a litany of reasons for why deploying solar/wind/nuclear/geothermal at scale is stupid/immoral/unethical.

jmclnx• 6 days ago

Should not be a surprise since we have know about CO2 Levels and fossil fuels for many decades.

The surprise is nothing was real was done. Compare what our generation did with this knowledge against the sacrifices the WW2 generation did. In WW2 many items were rationed in the US for the war effort, including gas.

We knew something had to be done to be done in the 70s, but did we sacrifice our lifestyle for the good of the world ? No, our self-centered generation pumped even more CO2 into the air and is continuing to do so. Our grandchildren will pay dearly for what we did and are doing in decades down the line.

rootusrootus• 6 days ago

I assume you mean boomers? Might time to stop blaming them, since at this point some of them are great-great-grandparents and the following generations do not seem to have shown any more appetite for changing course.

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

Biden was all about changing course. The current felon-in-charge, an established boomer, is highly deserving of blame in this regard.

JeffRosenberg• 5 days ago

at this point some of them are great-great-grandparents

And yet, insanely, they’re STILL the generation in power. Still breaking things even in their dotage.

strictnein4• 6 days ago

"Toxic atmosphere" definitely implies something that I don't seem to be finding in the actual paper. We regularly sit in environments that are 2-3x the levels of atmospheric CO2.

Also, was this paper AI written?

"There is now a considerable body of published data showing impacts at levels < 1,000ppm CO2, although the effects of exposure remain controversial."

Which is followed by this, with the very AI "For example" that seems to mostly contradict that statement?

"For example, one study found no impact of exposure to levels up to 15,000 ppm (Rodeheffer et al., 2018), however the study population was a group of highly trained US Navy submariners. Conversely, studies in young adults (Satish et al., 2012), office workers (Allen et al., 2016) and university staff/students (Snow et al., 2019) showed negative effects at CO2 levels as low as 950 ppm."

And then "Such studies are supported by assessment of CO2-induced changes in human brainwaves, measured by electroencephalography (EEG) combined with cognitive tests (reviewed in (Zhang et al., 2024)). Such studies show that exposure to CO2 between 1,000 and 2,500 ppm results in heightened brain activity."

"Such studies" ... "such studies". And these studies seem to contradict the proceeding statement even more?

dwroberts• 6 days ago

Not saying the paper isn’t AI, but “for example” is an extremely commonly used phrase that you should not be using as an AI indicator

strictnein4• 6 days ago

I get that it's common, but I just spent this week getting some patent docs ready, and was having GPT 5.5 help me with gathering some of the details. I had to remove "for example" dozens of times. So maybe it's just recency bias for me.

oytis• 6 days ago

I don't know about you, but occasionally going outside to breathe some fresh air makes a lot of difference for me

hogwasher• 6 days ago

with the very AI "For example"??????????????????

strictnein4• 6 days ago

Yeah, I'd already responded to this twice before you made your insightful comment. Again, recency bias maybe, but I spent this week removing dozens of "for example" from the output of GPT-5.5.

timr2• 6 days ago

This is such a bad paper. They take the NHANES data, average it for all participants, don’t bother controlling for things that have far more direct relevance to individual bicarbonate levels (e.g. diabetes, antacid use), and just assert that an observed correlation is causative.

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

Complications of diabetes can lower serum bicarbonate, not increase it.

In general, it is true that there are many causes of a rise in bicarbonate, but doesn't this only makes the situation more precarious?

timr2• 6 days ago

Whatbaoutism is not a valid excuse.

It’s not “whataboutism”. It’s a basic control in a paper that takes population data and asserts a causal link between a complex, personal biological variable and a global phenomenon.

There are probably dozens of factors that matter a lot more to individual blood gas levels than global average co2. At a minimum, I’d expect to see controls for obvious medical factors before taking this argument seriously.

CrzyLngPwd• 6 days ago

What are we, the powerless people, supposed to do with that as we watch super yachts, private jets, and armies bomb oil storage and gas pipelines?

My office, with the window open, surrounded by trees and in the countryside, and the nearest large town being 20 miles away, shows 422ppm CO2 pretty consistently.

IanCal• 5 days ago

People aren't powerless. They keep voting for people that do these things and/or keep giving them money to do it again and again. That's why they have money, that's why they have power, and as long as people keep rewarding them for doing it they'll keep doing it.

boplicity• 6 days ago

Anyone else ever think of somehow building an at-home carbon-removal system, for lower carbon content in the air of your living spaces? I know it's a silly idea, but one that has occurred to me from time to time.

schainks• 6 days ago

Uh, do you mean house plants?

There is also a Ted talk about taking this to an extreme, which does seem to anecdotally work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmn7tjSNyAA&pp=ygURdGVkIGthb...

cogman102• 6 days ago

House plants do reduce the amount of CO2 in your home but not by as much as you'd hope.

The most efficient system is algae, but you require a pretty massive amount of it to compensate for the amount of CO2 a single person emits.

cogman102• 6 days ago

Depends on the approach you want to take. It's possible but IDK if you'd see any sort of health benefits from simply lowering the CO2, you'd probably also want to increase the O2 content.

This is actually a crazy thing that some of the very wealthy are doing in mountain homes. They have O2 tanks setup with their homes so that when they arrive they don't experience altitude sickness.

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/snow-sports/...

strictnein4• 6 days ago

Yeah, too many homes were built without fresh air intakes into the HVAC systems. There are definitely reasons you don't want it always pulling in outside air (temp and humidity differences, for example), but it would be nice to have the option to do it once a day just to freshen things up.

moribvndvs• 5 days ago

They do make HRV and ERV, but not exactly a simple retrofit for existing houses.

somenameforme2• 6 days ago

Makes one wonder about the absurdly large number of physiological and psychological changes we've seen in people since the 70s-80s when AC started becoming completely ubiquitous. Before that time, at least in warmer climates, you'd pretty much always have a window open. In some ways we've already been running a decades long high CO2 exposure experiment.

bruckie• 5 days ago

The most practical way to do this is to ensure that your indoor air CO2 levels aren't significantly elevated over outdoor levels. One common way to do that (apart from opening windows) is to use a balanced ventilation system like an ERV or HRV. Those constantly exchange indoor air for outdoor air, and exchange a lot of the heat in the process to reduce energy losses.

Doesn't help if atmospheric CO2 levels increase to unsafe levels, though.

ratelimitsteve2• 6 days ago

my whole state right now is under an air quality advisory that is quite literally off the scale bad. breathing outdoors is currently considered "harmful to everyone" per the advisory and simply going somewhere outside your home requires an N95 mask (https://www.wtae.com/article/pennsylvania-code-purple-air-qu...).

ck2• 6 days ago

personally rooting for a gamma-ray burst within 8000 light years (which incidentally would have been traveling since the start of recorded human history)

the entire upper atmosphere would be turned to nitrogen dioxide

even the side of earth not facing the burst would have all life die very quickly because the ozone layer would just be GONE, so now all lethal ultraviolet solar radiation gets in too

solves ALL our problems

unfortunately Congress might survive a few more months in their underground bunkers but they are eventually doomed too

himata41133• 6 days ago

Humans are extremely adaptable, for example there's people who work in extreme conditions underwater, what would be considered absolutely unbearable and torture is normal. More information on saturation diving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfiHc_rh4EY

We're already slowly adapting to higher CO2 levels by sitting mostly indoors that have elevated CO2 from 500 to 800 with ranges up to 1500 (taken from my measurements at home).

Claiming that it would be toxic doesn't pass the most basic checks that humanity experience already.

UncleOxidant2• 6 days ago

There's probably a lot of genetic variation. For some it could be detrimental in 50 years, for others not so much. And for some swath in the middle it could be less than ideal.

We're already slowly adapting to higher CO2 levels by sitting mostly indoors that have elevated CO2 from 500 to 800 with ranges up to 1500 (taken from my measurements at home).

But won't that 1500 be even higher indoors as CO2 in the atmosphere increases?

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

Huh. Are you denying the upper safe level of serum bicarbonate? Just because we can tolerate 800 ppm of CO2 doesn't mean we can keep pushing it forever; there is clearly a limit. I suggest actually reading the paper.

Diving is not a 24x7 activity, and so it doesn't relate.

himata41133• 5 days ago

saturation diving IS a 24x7 activity, people often spend weeks in underwater pods. And the point I was trying to make is that the premise behind the paper doesn't hold up to scrutiny when indoors CO2 levels are already elevated like that.

breezybottom• 6 days ago

Just because they do it doesn't make such short run adaptations healthy or sustainable.

himata41133• 5 days ago

50 years wouldn't make it lethal and 100 years would be several generations of adoption is the point I was trying to make.

bottlepalm• 6 days ago

Historically levels were around 250 and now they're generally over 450. I wonder if I would feel a cognitive boost or just plain better in general if I were breathing 250. Do they sell home CO2 scrubbers? I can easily increase the CO2 in a room, but how about decreasing it?

UncleOxidant2• 6 days ago

Do they sell home CO2 scrubbers?

They're called houseplants.

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

Yes, but technically, several hundred houseplants would be required to offset the indoor carbon dioxide to lower it sufficiently. This has been studied.

the8472• 6 days ago

Those are humidifiers at best, the amount of CO2 they extract is negligible during the day and it goes negative during the night, they need to breathe too.

OutOfHere14• 6 days ago

You can form a simple CO2 scrubber by buying colorized bulk soda lime, putting it in a HEPA filter bag, and running air through it, but it's very expensive. It'll probably cost $100 a day. Also, you'll still be on the hook for maintaining good ventilation so as to remove indoor bioeffluent VOCs.

Better systems are being researched.

BizarroLand• 5 days ago

You can also buy an at home oxygen concentrator for around $125 usd and try it. Iirc it uses atomic sieves that filter out anything larger than oxygen and then releases the oxygen, so it can run for a very long time without replacement.

It's also fun to see how it affects things on fire. The weak little jet of air from the one I bought can turn an lit incense stick into a pillar of fire.

There are likely health downsides to them for otherwise healthy people so I wouldn't suggest using them frequently for breathing purposes, but they can help with short term aerobic output and exercise if you are training at the edge of your physical capability.

snowwrestler• 6 days ago

The atmosphere is the lowest possible value for your inhaled CO2. So it might be useful to think of this more in terms of impaired recovery rather than direct harm.

Imagine a healthy person with a healthy lifestyle and 8 hours of sleep every night. But every year, they are awakened 5 minutes earlier. So after 6 years they are only getting 7.5 hours of sleep every night. After 12 years, it’s only 7 hours. Will this have a health effect over time?

Obviously that example is a pretty big impairment. But the concept is what I’m getting at. Small persistent changes compound over time if there is no relief for recovery.

quantified• 6 days ago

IF valid, there could be evolutionary advantage to those capable of calm and rational action in these conditions and, if they formed enough of a tribe, they could flourish.

CO2 overload, detected in human blood, suggests toxic atmosphere within 50 years

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