Well, this is amusing. But, after looking at some numbers on food production, it may simply be that CO2 is helping us grow more food. And what happens when a well fed population has more food? It eats it of course. The caveat is that correlation is not always causation, the Green Revolution (the agricultural one, not the crazy one) and Norman Borlaug had a lot to do with this too.
Source: FAO agriculture report and Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
From ScienceNordic: New theory: CO2 makes you fat
Danish researchers have announced a rather wild hypothesis: Perhaps we are getting fatter and fatter because of the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
I had to laugh at this “fact” sidebar in the article:
Researchers are wondering whether CO2 affects embryos in the womb, so the embryos develop a tendency towards obesity.
This is one of the hypotheses that will be tested if the researchers can raise funding for large-scale trials with rats.
Gosh, giant CO2 fattened people and fat rats. These might do well with the smaller climate optmized green cat-like overlords from our other crazy story this week.
Other excerpts (tinfoil hats optional):
…
CO2 makes us eat more
This discovery made it possible to develop a precise hypothesis for how CO2 makes us fatter: We breathe more CO2, which makes our blood more acidic; this affects our brain, so we want to eat more.
In 2011, together with researchers Anders Mikael Sjödin and Arne Astrup from the University of Copenhagen, Hersoug started to test the hypothesis on humans.
At the university’s Department of Human Nutrition, they placed six young men in special climate rooms, where some of them were exposed to increased amounts of CO2. After seven hours, the men were allowed to eat as much as they liked.
This little pilot study showed that the men with the greater amount of CO2 in their blood ate six percent more food than the men who had been in climate rooms with a normal amount of CO2.
“We could also see that the extra amount of CO2 caused the men’s heartbeat to rise, and this gives us an indication that CO2 affects the brain’s nerve cells – orexins in the hypothalamus – which among other functions control our appetite and the composition of our nutrient intake,” says Hersoug.
“A very small change in the activity of these nerve cells will presumably have great importance for our development of obesity or for maintaining our weight.”
Does CO2 give men beer guts?
If the researchers’ hypothesis is correct, it raises many questions.
CO2 is found in the bubbles in fizzy drinks and beer – does that have any importance for obesity?
“Of course I have considered whether CO2 has very local impacts, which could explain how beer guts develop,” says the researcher.
…
Exercise and vegetables can limit the ‘CO2 effect’
But Hersoug says the hypothesis gives us no excuse for dropping diets and exercise – on the contrary.
“We know already that a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for many diseases,” he says. “According to our theory, this may be because of the higher acidity in the blood arising from a sedentary lifestyle indoors in a CO2 concentration that is higher than it is outdoors.”
On the other hand, he says, “If you’re out running, you get your blood circulating and you can pump much of the CO2 out of your body, so our hypothesis is really further evidence that exercise is healthy. And exercise may be even more necessary in the future, when we can expect even higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.”
Hersoug adds that fruit and vegetables also reduce the blood’s pH value, so the CO2 theory is also an argument for eating more healthily.
…
Oh noes! Blood acidification – the next CO2 scourge! Breath deeply, it worked in The Andromeda Strain. Do not panic.
Read the whole thing here while you munch on a bag of buttered popcorn.
It’s well known that climate skeptics principally eat popcorn. Whether supplies at present are sufficient to get us through the next few Climategate-type episodes remains a mystery.
Readers of my book are encouraged to review it on Amazon. Everyone else should simply buy it. Thank you.
It’s official. CO2 is now the “gaseous ex machina” explanation for, well, everything.
Peak Popcorn tis the end of the world.
I hope this is a misrepresentation of the foundation of their study:
“At the university’s Department of Human Nutrition, they placed six young men in special climate rooms, where some of them were exposed to increased amounts of CO2. After seven hours, the men were allowed to eat as much as they liked.”
A sample size of 6 people, with a 6% difference in consumption means precisely nothing.
Hey, people used to think we were crazy for believing in aliens, the flat earth, witches and flying cars run on unicorn farts. Looks who’s (maniacally) laughing now!
Yours,
Syd Barrett
Funny. I always thought beer guts were a result of liver damage.
Love that “If I weighed 200 lbs. I would rip your throat out.” look on the cat…
“… increased CO2… .”
How much increased CO2?
I think we should be told.
That is definately one unamused kitty.
A study involving six males is being extrapolated to 7 billion people. That sounds reasonable.
Apart from that isn’t there a contradiction in there? They say:
Surely that means they are metabolising faster and so will need more food to replace what their body has consumed.
On the other hand, the faster metabolising means other researchers will be able to claim more CO2 causes malnutrition.
Pure social engineering tinfoil hat bunk
““Of course I have considered whether CO2 has very local impacts, which could explain how beer guts develop,” says the researcher.”
Because ALCOHOL doesn’t do anything to one’s neurons or metabolism, or signal for adipocyte maturation, right? Nor that BEER is basically liquid, alcohol laced bread with lots of calories that people drink in far too great of amounts?
Do we have to throw our ALL our knowledge on science so we can demonize CO2?
Just… palms to face…
Get on the band wagon! Just think of it – the general obesity models to be generated on computers! The attribution studies! The hockey sticks we’ll create, the CO2-obesity junkets we’ll enjoy, the international treaties we’ll sign! Imagine all the billions of dollars we’ll do in research on diets during the paleozoic era! This is it folks – if you feel like you missed your chance with CAGW, sign up now!
I’d like to see some evidence to support the claim that more CO2 in the air means more CO2 in the blood.
The body has feedback mechanisms to regulate CO2.
And here I thought it was the bacon.
CO2: Is there anything it can’t do?
Peak Popcorn. +
It’s peak CO2 that’s the problem though.
Do we have to throw our ALL our knowledge on science so we can demonize CO2?
Just… palms to face…
et mains à l’air
“We could also see that the extra amount of CO2 caused the men’s heartbeat to rise”
Heart beats faster. Which means the metabolism has increased.
These guys are surprised that the subjects with higher metabolic rates ended up eating more food?
@Algebra says:
“Funny. I always thought beer guts were a result of liver damage.”
Don’t be silly. Everybody knows beer guts and liver damage both cause beer drinking.
Is Michael Mann a cat-like optimal climate engineered overlord?
Anyone seen him with something to judge scale properly? I suspect that tree ring cross section he often appears next to is about 3 inches in diameter.
I think we can safely blame Greece’s imminent default on CO2. CO2 is also primarily responsible for Justin Bieber.
From vague memories of high school physics, I remember something about how respiration is controlled. Basically out body measures the level of CO2 in the lungs, and when it reaches a threshold point, we breath.
Seems to me that if the level of CO2 in the atmosphere were higher, this threshold level would be reached more quickly. (This is why I doubt higher CO2 in the atmosphere would result in higher CO2 in the blood)
As a result, the respiration rate will increase. More movement of the diaphram ( a pretty big muscle after all) could explain why the heart is beating a little faster.
Faster breathing, faster heart rate. Sounds like more calories getting burned.
This is GREAT, I thought everything was my fault and that I was too fat because I drink too much beer and eat too much.
So that’s why fast food joints serve carbonated drinks……….to get you to eat more.
So, when I drink Pepsi, should I belch out the excess CO2 or try to keep it in? If I belch it out, am I contributing to global warming, or just passing that which was there to begin with before the Pepsi was manufactured?
If I can keep it in, does that make me a CO2 sequestration device worthy of praise and admiration?
If I drink Diet Coke, does that counter the makes-you-fat aspects of the increased CO2?
Just wonderin’.
There must be a huge cloud of CO2 over the island of Tonga
Getting fat during times of abundance makes sense.
We need to store fat before the next iceage, after all, it’s in our genetic code … right?
They get FUNDING for such tripe?
Steve Garcia
Now you see what I’d do is compare submariners [say 6 months high CO2] to a non submariner control group in the navy and see how the weight gain differed. But that would be too cheap and simple and oh what was that word again?..’scientific’….
So if I stay in and watch the TV with the Mrs in the evening, I don’t develop a beer gut.
But if I go down the pub, I’m exposed to many more people breathing out, so the higher CO2 levels in the pub cause the beer gut.
Obvious really.
The effort to decarbonize the human body continues apace. Next, H2O. It will be incontrovertibly established that access to water increases blood volume, and hence weight. Therefore …
>Harold Ambler says:
>March 13, 2012 at 10:33 am
>It’s well known that climate skeptics principally eat popcorn. Whether supplies at present are >sufficient to get us through the next few Climategate-type episodes remains a mystery.
What in the world did sceptics use for forage before the invention of popcorn, chocolate and twinkies?
“We breathe more CO2, which makes our blood more acidic;” …… “fruit and vegetables also reduce the blood’s pH value, so the CO2 theory is also an argument for eating more healthily.”
A reduction in pH value is more acidic, so eat less fruits and vegetables. Eat more chicken and beef!
LOL, good science fiction is at least internally consistant even if there’s rather implausible premisses, these guy’s can’t even do that. So, this is bad science fiction. No Stars.
“CO2 is found in the bubbles in fizzy drinks and beer – does that have any importance for obesity?”
Yup – Every time I crack a cold one, I need a ham sandwich, pickle, and some chips to go with it!
Loooove the foil ‘Cats in the Hats’!!!!
MtK
Hey, its building a legal case against any company that generates CO2, from soft drinks to power companies as long as they have the necessary deep pockets its lawyer up time down at the commune. And if the evidence is not there then make some up, why not? Its all statistic based extrapolation and you could turn black into white with enough adjustments. Fake research is all the rage now.
Should be easy to test. People who work in horticultural greenhouses with intentionally enhanced CO2 should be the fattest in the world. I bet they aren’t.
Levels of CO2 have been known to reach 3000 ppm in homes, schools, and offices. I would be surprised if an average person could even tell the difference between being in a room with the current 0.04% CO2 and a room with, say, double that, 0.08%.
…co2 levels have not risen enough to do this
I am going to volunteer to be a subject in the experiments to determine how the CO2 in beer affects us. No rats need apply.
Who are these people and where do they come up with this craziness?
P.F. says:
“March 13, 2012 at 11:06 am
So, when I drink Pepsi, should I belch out the excess CO2 or try to keep it in? If I belch it out, am I contributing to global warming, or just passing that which was there to begin with before the Pepsi was manufactured? If I can keep it in, does that make me a CO2 sequestration device worthy of praise and admiration? ”
P.F.,
If you can keep it in, your CO2 sequestration capabilities makes you eligible for Carbon Offset Credits! Sweeeeet!!!
Re: feet2thefire
They don’t get funding for this tripe, they use this tripe to get funding.
Since they are researching a possible adverse affect of CO2 they will probably get the funding from somewhere.
Wait just a minute . . .
Is that graph showing increasing food production — indeed, not just increased production, but increased production *per capita*?
That can’t be right. Doesn’t everyone know we are running out of space, the world’s population will result in a collapse of the food supply, and all manner of apocalyptic scenes will unfold? We need someone to beat back this outrageous idea of increased food production. Where’s that genius Ehrlich and his friends when you need them?!
/sarc (for the ironically challenged)
What makes us fat is pure white and deadly. Its called FRUCTOSE.
Calories in fructose are empty so they steal ingredients from other cells in the body.
This explains why Coca Cola ‘Hellenic’ have been employing Geoffrey Boulton as a climate expert, see: http://csrreport.2010.coca-colahellenic.com/images/pages/files/download_center/cch_CSR2010.pdf
…and yes, this is a Greek branch of the company, so CO2 probably has contributed to the destruction of Europe’s economy.
I think we need to consider the possibility that rising CO2 levels are making some Danish researchers stupider.
Actually the cat is telling you to STOP EATING VEGGIES it is meat eating that makes you thin.
Like everything else about our body, it accommodates to its environment. Go to altitude, climb a mountain, be a little hypoxic in the rarified air, breath more deeply, blow off CO2, voila we have more buffering bicarbonate in our blood than needed to balance CO2. This is especially true for our slow accommodating system, our spinal fluid. Ultimately, we develop “mountain sickness.” Walk down 600 feet and sleep the night away, and our kidney has time to dump the excess bicarbonate from the blood, a couple of days later, bicarbonate leaches out of the spinal fluid, and voila, we have accommodated. People do live at 15,000 feet, work and play etc.
Add CO2 to our environment and all sorts of things happen acutely; but, just wait a few days, and our body accommodates to higher environmental CO2 concentrations by…the kidneys keeping more bicarbonate until we have re-established a balance between CO2 and its buffer bicarbonate. Voila, in a short time, we are back to what we originally were, an eating, thinking, moving machine. The US Navy has done a lot of experiments on the environments inside submarines for 6 month stints, including sustained elevation of CO2. Since space is limited in a submarine, food, fat, and function are all considered long before sending sailors in nuclear armed nuclear powered submarines for prolonged submersion cruises. Information is available for those inclined to look before they leap.
A final note: although from our present environment we inhale 400 ppm CO2, we exhale 40,000 ppm CO2. Our body seems to accommodate a very large “flux” in CO2. The CO2 we exhale has to get from the cells to the tissues, to the blood, to be pumped to the lungs to be exhaled. The buffering capacity of our body is dynamic and constantly adjusting to its… environment.
The authors seem to be extrapolating acute exposure data to long term changes in behavior; i.e., eating more. Chronic exposure data with behavioral changes requires a lot more evidence to pursued me.
Actually CO2 DOES make us fat it is all that extra sugar in the corn syrup that Coca Cola puts in your soda. CLICK
Gail Combs says:
March 13, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Actually CO2 DOES make us fat it is all that extra sugar in the corn syrup that Coca Cola puts in your soda. CLICK
========================================================
My Diet Coke has zero sugar in it !!
Oh, the legendary corpulent submarine corps.
Large amounts of H2O plus C6H12O6 or C2H5OH and CO2, definitely, probably, maybe, a cause for obesity. Especially when consumed in large amounts daily.
Can we have a moratorium on bio/medico/nutrition grads until they take statistics courses for grown-ups. It seems that most of the problem the AGW crowd has had is screwing up statistical studies. We may not know if it will be hotter or colder in the next 100 years but we sure can tell when the statistics supporting it is a load of crap. These 6 subjects (along with a few dozen more to join them) should have had their food intake individually measured daily over a period of a few weeks before going to the CO2 rooms). Off the top of my head I’d say a 6% variance among 6 people is rather a small one. The larger sample would also have determined if the numbers were significant (for example, say 75% of the CO2 crowd ate more and 80% or so of the ambient bunch ate the same as before and less than the other group).
The exercise raises blood CO2 levels so high you have to pant to get rid of it versus the CO2 you breathe, at several orders of magnitude less, affects you so severely you have to eat more paradox definitely deserves examination – I think they’re onto something here and more funding should provide an answer !
These people have become totally STUPID – if the CO2 we breathe in was at concentrations capable of affecting us more than the existing concentration in our blood (a waste from metabolic processes) our gas exchange mechanism in our lungs would be compromised, we would all be permanently gasping for breath BECAUSE our bodies rely on CO2 concentrations to provide the involuntary breathing reflex – not lack of oxygen but too high CO2 levels in our blood controls this.
Note it is only CO2 (outside of such things as tear gas etc) – the by product of metabolism – that produces this response – we do not really notice CO until we die.
Huh, and here I always thought eating too much relative to personal activity level was the reason people got fat.
Excellent advice about tinfoil hats in the form of a jolly little ditty. Here
http://www.eclectech.co.uk/mindcontrol.php
Kindest Regards
Did they research how all that extra CO2 makes it into the womb? Osmosis?
Here’s a test of hypothesis:
Because professional horticulturalists enhance the carbon dioxide concentration in their greenhouses to about 1000ppm, people who work in greenhouses should be significantly fatter than people who work in similar environments (like factories) without carbon dioxide enhancement.
Wanna bet?
Chance to vote on an ABC Australia Drum poll on the latest CSIRO CO2 figures
http://www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/polls/
Here is an even better heading:
Food Fest: CO2 contributes to over population
If there is extra food then there will be more poor people who won’t starve to death, which will contribute to over population.
Offering logical counter arguments to something this inane is a complete waste of time, but as they say in “The Godfather” or maybe GF II, “Every time i think I’m going to get out, they drag me back in”. One would assume that anyone with intelligence greater than a turnip would have noticed that almost all of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is supposedly the product of burning fossil fuels to create various forms of energy. Almost all of that energy is used in ways which significantly reduce the amount of metabolic energy humans need to expend to accomplish the necessary tasks of daily life. That is usually considered to be a good thing. Thanks to current abundant supplies of energy we can live our lives with much lower levels of physical effort than our less gifted ancestors. But even if we could magically produce that energy from zero CO2 sources, the effect on the number of ax handles across the collective human ass would be negligible.
If you really want to stay thin, go back to walking to every place to which you want to travel. If you want information, hike yourself to a library and drag a bunch of heavy reference tomes off the shelves instead of doing a search engine inquiry on the internet. Make all of your choices in life based on similar logic and you’ll never have a problem with obesity. Of course your affect on the climate will be many orders of magnitude less than that of that apocryphal butterfly whose flapping wings upset so many climate models. I strongly suspect that you would have exactly no success in recruiting other humans to join you in an impossible attempt to expand that influence.
Guess this explains my club soda gut!
Sorry to disappoint the fluffy readers here (yours truly incl.), but the high-CO2 rooms were at 8000ppm. I’m guessing that beer, popcorn, and computer usage are more significant factors than 380ppm.
For reference, the OSHA (i.e., workplace) permissable exposure limit is 5000ppm and the level immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH) is 50,000ppm. No wonder the subjects’ hearts were beating a bit faster.
For your further amusement, here’s the conflict of interest statement from the article:
“Professor Arne Astrup is salaried author for Ude & Hjemme; salaried associate editor of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; advisor or member of advisory boards for a number of food and pharmaceutical producers and so on: Communications and Scientific Advisory Board of The Global Dairy Platform, Kraft Health & Wellness Advisory Council, Glenview, Il, USA; Scientific Board member, Beer Knowledge Institute (Amsterdam); Novo, NeuroSearch, Basic Research, Pathway Genomics Corporation, La Jolla, CA, USA; and Jennie Craig, Carlsbad, CA, USA; and recipient of honoraria as speaker for a wide range of Danish and international concerns. Ownership, in accordance with the Danish University regulations, of inventions and patents where Arne Astrup is co-inventor. Arne Astrup has, from the university, been granted shares in Mobile Fitness A/S. LG Hersoug and A Sjödin declare no conflict of interest.”
geez… I thought it was the fluffy pretzels that go with the beer…
I think my son is getting taller because of increasing temperature. He is now levelling out (although these last few months he has been the tallest EVAH!). Given the flattening out of temperatures, that seems to match.
I am now hoping he does not start getting smaller ….
TG McCoy (Douglas DC) says:
March 13, 2012 at 10:39 am
Love that “If I weighed 200 lbs. I would rip your throat out.” look on the cat…
Yes there is something definitely leonine in the cat’s expression, in a pissed-off sort of way.
So it’s good to know that cakes, biscuits, jams, beer, fried food, pizzas, prepared meals with added salt and sugars, sitting down all day at work, sitting down to and from work, sitting in front of the TV and affluence are nothing to do with obesity.
Out of interest I came across the following info on biscuits:
Over 491 billion Oreo cookies have been sold since they were first introduced
Nabisco turns out 320 million pounds of snack foods annually.
It costs $72,000 if you want facts and figures on biscuits in 80 countries from Algeria to Vietnam. It’s only $900 dollars if you want just one country. http://www.euromonitor.com/biscuits
This all seems a bit similar to warm air makes it snow.
The cat is a skeptic.
Totally off topic, but as someone mentioned cat facial expressions….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/8973023/Review-of-the-year-2011-animals-feeding-and-fighting.html?image=1
As office buildings often run at 5000 ppm CO2, submarines at 8000 ppm, and rock concerts can reach 12,000 ppm CO2, it’s clear that a tiny rise in CO2 will make people eat more. It’s simple cause and effect.
After a day working in 5000 ppm CO2 people go home and eat because of the CO2 . . . or was it the work they did . . . so . . . they eat dinner because lunch was so 6–7 hours ago.
Yep, it must be the CO2.
Actually, it is the C6H12O6 + CO2 that makes you fatter.
^ CO2 = more plants = bigger cows = more cheeseburgers = bigger humans.
We needed a research study to proof this?
If this was real climate science they would have scaled the food per capita CO2 graph so the two slopes were identical.
Let’s look at the long term trends. I’ll take it from my birth year of 1974.
CO2: 328-398 ppm (Mauna Loa)
Temps: have risen ~0.5C
My weight: has gone from less than a kilo to 100 kgs. So let’s say a 100 kilo rise.
So going by the long term trend the correlation is 14 ppm / 0.1C / 20 kgs. If we extrapolate this out to 2050 we find that I will be 200 kgs!!!!
It’s worse than I thought!
Holy crap. I hope I didn’t help pay for this.
Jason says: ^ CO2 = more plants = bigger cows = more cheeseburgers = bigger humans.
bigger humans = bigger SUVs = even MORE CO2
I plotted my age against CO2…. that’s a positive correlation as well. Funding please.
How long before some asshat makes the grant inspired claim of ‘CO2 causes cancer in babies…and possibly kittens’?
The only thing CO2 level rise is responsible for is making 97% of scientists more stupider. \sarc
Gary Pearse says:
March 13, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Can we have a moratorium on bio/medico/nutrition grads until they take statistics courses for grown-ups. It seems that most of the problem the AGW crowd has had is screwing up statistical studies. We may not know if it will be hotter or colder in the next 100 years but we sure can tell when the statistics supporting it is a load of crap. These 6 subjects (along with a few dozen more to join them) should have had their food intake individually measured daily over a period of a few weeks before going to the CO2 rooms). Off the top of my head I’d say a 6% variance among 6 people is rather a small one.
________________________________________
Gary, as a chemist I considered a sample size of ten an absolute minimum and normally went for a sample size of at least 25 to 30 samples. A sample size of 6 in a Bio type experiment that isn’t as narrowly defined as those that I ran in a chemisty lab doesn’t tell you a darn thing. That is why I made the joke about the CO2 putting more sugar on the high fructose corn syrup.
This “Study” isn’t worth lining a bird cage with.
Matthew W says:
March 13, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Gail Combs says:
March 13, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Actually CO2 DOES make us fat it is all that extra sugar in the corn syrup that Coca Cola puts in your soda. CLICK
========================================================
My Diet Coke has zero sugar in it !!
=========================================================
Yes but the artifical sweetner is found to increase appetite and cause weight gain… BUMMER!
The reason seems to be the effect on insulin levels.
This BTW with a sample size of 1,550 is much more like the type of study I want to see!
Primo Levi, in his book The Periodic Table writes of the smallest amounts of carbon dioxide (and water vapor) present in the atmosphere “without which there would be no trace of life on the planet.” That’s us! The weather is nature’s delivery service of these elements to the forests, fields and gardens of the globe. The weather begins with “warm air rising” (CO2, H2O)Man’s production of CO2 , millions and millions of tons joins nature’s release of CO2 and H2O. Global warming is part of the weather, global warming is the weather, EXTREME weather, weather on the rampage, gales gone wild, weather on steroids – heat energy. Follow the energy. The science behind the weather is the transmission of heat through fluid media – convection. Heat is energy.
http://www.pbjcampaign.org/
Click on the “how much can you accomplish” link. Interesting numbers. So switching a simple steak or fish fillet for a highly-processed paste of legumes, oil, and sugar, with flavored gelled sugar water, between two slabs of processed fungus-treated ground grass seed, will help save the planet?
Logically, the most savings in carbon emissions and water and land resources would come from selecting non-farmed food. So we should all be allowed, if not mandated, to freely secure meat wherever it is naturally found. So those with rural access can hunt and fish for whatever they can get whenever they can. For the liberal elites who don’t venture out of the urbanized areas due to lack of public transportation and the limited range of their electric vehicles, start working down the excess pigeons and spare cats.
DDP says:
March 13, 2012 at 5:02 pm
How long before some asshat makes the grant inspired claim of ‘CO2 causes cancer in babies…and possibly kittens’?
The only thing CO2 level rise is responsible for is making 97% of scientists more stupider. \sarc
____________________________________________
NAHHhh
The only thing CO2 level rise is responsible for is making taxpayer wallets lighter and the wallets of the corrupt scientists, politicians and there cronies heavier MUCH heavier.
good news though since co2 will lead to runaway global warming, we will all sweat and lose weight.
the endless parade coming from these people would be laughable if it wasnt becoming national policy
So….. Weird but so cute and funny.
Joseph Bastardi says:
March 13, 2012 at 6:07 pm
good news though since co2 will lead to runaway global warming, we will all sweat and lose weight.
——————————————
Is that the water vapor dampening effect? If so, then that negative forcing will eventually stabilise positive forcings and we’ll reach equilibrium.
“Other excerpts (tinfoil hats optional):”
Yes but there are some “real” studys on the effectiveness of tinfoil hats…
http://berkeley.intel-research.net/arahimi/helmet/
No. No. No.
Correlation doesn’t mean causation. The FDA and its promotion of carbohydrates make us fat.
This is the dumbest study in the news this week. Which is quite an accomplishment after yesterday’s “racism pill.”
““According to our theory, this may be because of the higher acidity in the blood arising from a sedentary lifestyle indoors in a CO2 concentration that is higher than it is outdoors.”
And we have buffers in our blood that keep the pH at a neutral range else WE WOULD DIE.
Total moron. Total and complete. Complete and total.
Someone take away his decoder ring.
>>
Researchers are wondering whether CO2 affects embryos in the womb, so the embryos develop a tendency towards obesity.
This is one of the hypotheses that will be tested if the researchers can raise funding for large-scale trials with rats.
>>
Does CO2 reduce libido . I’m going to do extending research on screwing if I can raise sufficient funding.
Francis X. Farley says:
March 13, 2012 at 5:38 pm
The science behind the weather is the transmission of heat through fluid media – convection. Heat is energy.
————–
And don’t forget that the calculations have to be done with Kelvin units.
The average temperature of the earth is sometimes said to be about 288K. An additional 1C, or 1K (the same quantity) works out to an additional 0.3% of energy. Too many people make the mistake of working in Celsius and discard the 273.15 units below 0 Celsius.
That’s the thing about hypotheses, you only need a vaguely scientific theoretical basis for it to be valid.
Six masculine specimens flown in from Yamal no doubt?
I asked my daughter, who has been a cashier at a local popular grocery store for several years, what morbidly obese people have in their carts and she’s seen a definite trend: They select sugar-rich foods and diet soda.
That’s it. No fruits, veggies, and very little meat. Seems they wash the sugar down with the CO2-rich soda.
Ah HAH! There’s the connection–that insidious CO2 hiding in that diet soda is “wot done it”!
I have all the evidence I need to agree with this study from ScienceNordic.
/sarc
How high does the CO2 level get in a well-insulated house containing a family of four?
As best as I can tell, the study makes no attempt to measure subjects pCO2 (partial pressure of CO2 which is a measure of blood CO2 concentration) or blood pH, which according to their hypothesis would be the critical intervening variables between atmospheric CO2 concentration and regulation of orexin, ghrelin and leptin. Yes, the subjects exposed to increased CO2 did breathe a little faster (we’re not told by how much). However, this is a well established effect regulated by chemoreceptors in both the peripheral and central nervous systems. Moreover, the study yields no information as to the likely effect of a CO2 enriched environment in the longer term. Blood pH is well buffered and further regulated by renal mechanisms to deal with acidosis which might well offset the impact of what might well be a minute change in pH (indeed, we have no evidence that pH actually changed in any of the subjects). The increase in food ingested did not reach statistical significance. I’m amazed anybody bothered publishing this given the manifest flaws and gaps in the research (maybe it was a slow month for the journal at the time in question).
“The cat is a skeptic” – comment of the day.
It is also a carnivore, and as a few people have suggested, it just wishes the believers were available in mice-sized chunks.
As usual, I’m confused:
In 1975, annual C02 production was about 2000 million metric tonnes. In 2010 it was about 3000 million metric tonnes. Atmospheric C02 increases by Mauna Loa haven’t changed much since 1975, while the stuff going into the air has increased by 50%. So the planet has become THAT much more efficient at absorbing CO2?
First: I don’t believe the global C02 figures. It is in the interests of every government who supports CAGW to report the higher, rather than lower, estimates of CO2 production. The more in, the “worse” it is and shall be. I’ll bet every value is rounded up. Second, I don’t believe the world is MORE efficient at removing CO2 than before.
This is what I believe: 1) global CO2 figures are considerably lower than the warmists say or think, and 2) natural systems naturally grab and use CO2 so that it “disappears”. By that I mean biological systems and limestone buffering.
Still, as a dispute point with the warmists, one must ask: where is all the CO2? If, like the “missing” heat, it is hiding, there is another source of research funding you need to find.
So then we can expect Japan should get some Sumo Wrestling competition from China in the near-term with all these CO2 fat-babies. The next Sino-Nippon War has begun!
A very realistic simulation of what’s happening in the atmosphere – “seven hours”. / sarc
I fear you are right. We will all soon be Aliens (as in the movie).
So, extra Co2 makes as fatter while global warming makes animals shrink. There is hope after all. Shrinkgrow, that’s the ticket. 😉
Typo:
“So, extra Co2 makes us fatter…”
Great, but before the FDA starts regulating CO2, I think we need to remember that the law of diminishing returns applies here. Consumption might go up at relatively low levels of CO2, but as you approach concentrations of one million parts per million human food intake will drop to zero. So this is a self-correcting problem. Glad I could help clear that up.
I totally need to make a hat like that for my daughter’s cat tonight and post it on my facebook.
“…..At the university’s Department of Human Nutrition, they placed six young men in special climate rooms, where some of them were exposed to increased amounts of CO2. After seven hours, the men were allowed to eat as much as they liked….”
Good grief the sample size was not even SIX because some of the guys (3?) were the control! I would be ashamed to even call this an experiment.
I also wonder how much “bored out of their skulls after seven hours in a closed room” played in stimulating the appetite this “experiment”
Perhaps “Climate Change Theory” should be re-named “Climate Bowel Theory”.
After this and the racism pill report, I have now concluded that science is dead.
Mr Squid says:
March 13, 2012 at 11:01 am
That’s it then, Where do I sign up? /sarc
DaveE.
Time to nominate Anders Mikael Sjödin and Arne Astrup for the IgNobel Price…