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.
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. 😉