nate_meurer

That's a good point, and good examples. I'd compare the destruction of aquifers (some of them anyway) as akin to those things.

> Water which is evaporated is also returned to the ecosystem. It falls back out as rain.

This is about as useful as saying "the water stays on Earth". The ecological damage entirely depends on the nature of the water source.

The most poignant situation is non-rechargeable aquifers. When water is extracted, the mineral structures collapse and the storage capacity is forever destroyed.

And as the other reply stated, evaporation (as from evaporative cooling) exports water out of a catchment basin so that it can't be used downstream, just as if you pumped it away.

This looks like a good review, and it definitely pertains to your effort here. Although the authors play up the positivity of their conclusions a bit (which is useful if they want to continue the research), they are also honest about the limitations of the material they cite. Many positive correlations are cited, but nearly every paragraph is laden with caveats. Here are a few pulled at random:

> However, the relationship between CO2 concentrations and upper respiratory symptoms in this study was no longer statistically significant after adjusting for the number of people in the office

> A 100 ppm increase in CO2 concentration (range, 549–1318 ppm) was positively correlated with non-specific symptoms including headache and dizziness (107 participants from 11 offices) although the correlation was not significant

> Several epidemiological studies indicate a relationship between low-level exposure to CO2 and BRSs. However, BRS is possibly influenced by other comorbid indoor pollutants, including artificial volatile organic compounds (VOCs) brought into buildings or occupant-generated pollutant

> CO2 concentration at 5000 ppm had no effect on acute health symptoms (respiratory, visual and skin-related, headache, and sensory) and performance in cognitive tests (Zhang et al., 2016).

> the relationship between low-level exposure to CO2 and the reported symptoms remain inconsistent between studies

> A relationship between low-level exposure to CO2 and BRSs is therefore very complicated to prove and strength of the evidence is very limited.

My biggest issue with all of this is that we have a ton of data from very high-CO2 environments going back decades, and still very little clear evidence of negative effects. If high CO2 concentration imposes significant cognitive costs for which the human body cannot compensate after some period of time, it seems like that signal should have become clear by now.

No, I pointed out specific flaws in those papers. You're just pretending that I'm dismissing them out of hand so you don't have to read them yourself.

Once again, the Australian study that's the source of your original assertion was very small (n=4 in each study group) and very short term (only a few hours of study time). And the paper about bicarbonate levels is a great example of data dredging, where coincident trends are implied to be causative with no further support.

I'm not saying the conclusions are wrong. They could both be right. I'm just saying that their methods are too poor to draw any useful conclusions.

> people who can't cope or perform in the high CO2 environment quit or fail

So here you are dismissing evidence out of hand by pretending not to understand it. Even if submariners are selected based on CO2 tolerance (which is silly), it wouldn't matter. The point is that the US Navy has had a large population to study for long periods of time in highly controlled environments. The same men can be examined before, during, and after exposure to very high concentrations of CO2, while other environmental variables are held constant, and the navies of multiple countries have data from many such populations over decades. That's what produces useful data, in contrast to that tiny, short Australian study you seem to be attached to.

It's an interesting article overall, but this assertion:

> Carbon dioxide is bad for cognition.

is dubious and unsupported by science. As I point out downthread, we have extensive experience with very high-CO2 environments-- at levels regularly exceeding ten or twenty times current atmospheric levels-- and as yet little good evidence of uncompensated cognitive effects.

Beyond that, modern humans live much of our lives in moderately elevated CO2 with no apparent ill effect. Without deliberate ventilation, any enclosed space like a bedroom or classroom will rapidly achieve elevated CO2 levels, often into the thousand ppm range. Again, we have lots of data, and little of it points to a practical cognitive effect.

The US Navy maintain an informal goal to keep levels on board submarines to below 8000 ppm, loosely informed by what little evidence they have of its effects on crew performance. That's twenty times the current atmospheric levels. In practice, CO2 levels often go over 10,000 ppm, which apparently still doesn't cause them much concern.

> astronauts... reported mental viscosity(brain fog) and headaches

I can think of plenty of excellent reasons the environment in the space station would lead to physiological issues. Sleep disturbance, stress, restrictions on diet and exercise, and the many severe effects of microgravity all come to mind. Again, you have to ignore humanity's extensive experience with other high-CO2 environments like submarines in order to believe that it's a significant factor compared to those other stressors.

> A definite global health concern is the increase in blood bicarbonate levels

It's hardy definite. It's another junk-science "study" out of Australia that took two epidemiological trends (bicarbonate level and mineral levels in blood over 20 years) and tried to interpret correlation as causation. You can use this kind of data-dredging to propose correlation between all kinds of unrelated trends. I'm seeing headlines blaming climate change for the obesity epidemic, for example, and you can be sure there's a junk science study behind every headline. In this case, I'm aware of no evidence from well-controlled studies (i.e., actual science) showing a causal chain from moderately elevated CO2 to physiological mineral deficiencies in real life. Again, we have lots of long-term data from high-CO2 environments like submarines. Show me some numbers.

> higher CO2 levels increase plant growth which impacts the plants mineral absorption, there are less naturally occurring micronutrients in our crops than there used to be just 20 years ago.

More questionable headline-generating studies. Yes, isolated increases in CO2 can cause carbohydrate dilution and subsequent changes in water usage and mineral uptake, but it also universally increases plant growth, and in many plants it increases production of other phytochemical nutrients. This is an extremely complex topic, and it's reductive to the point of absurdity to blame atmospheric CO2 for trends that are overwhelmingly influenced by soil depletion, water usage, and chemical fertilization.

Think about this logically: A substantial portion of our fruits and vegetables are grown in greenhouses. In the Netherlands-- the world's second-largest food exporter-- over one-fifth of produce is grown in greenhouses. Almost all modern greenhouses employ carbon dioxide enrichment, typically doubling the level of the atmosphere. If there's a brewing crisis of CO2-induced nutrient deficiency, don't you think the climate alarmists would be warning us about greenhouses? The fact that they aren't should tell you something.

It's common for people to filter on the latest fear-mongering headlines. Maybe these things are true, but "studies" like these that appear in corporate media headlines can't tell us one way or the other.

> I could not find references to concentrated CO2 treatments

It's a young field of research to be sure, but it took me about five seconds to find a bunch of recent papers. Here's the first result google gave me:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11763298/ | Effects of Carbon Dioxide Therapy on Skin Wound Healing

> Cognitive decline starts above 600 ppm according to air quality studies.

According to an older, small study of short duration (Mendell and Fisk at LBNL), the results of which are heavily disputed. Since 600 ppm isn't too much higher than the current level of 400+ ppm, this study is the one most commonly cherry-picked in order to instill fear in people that climate change is getting ready to damage our brains.

Just for comparison, the CO2 composition of exhaled breath is around 40,000 ppm (~4%), which is the reason that it's totally normal for CO2 concentrations in enclosed spaces like bedrooms and classrooms to reach several thousand ppm. CO2 levels in submarines average well over ten times atmospheric, and routinely reach well over 10,000 ppm.

In none of these situations have researchers found a clear and convincing long-term impact on cognitive performance. Short term yes, but our bodies and brains adapt. Some compensations appear incomplete, but others are possibly sufficient to incur health benefits from high CO2 concentrations. Notably, high CO2 levels cause blood vessels to dilate, increasing the flow of oxygen to tissues including the brain. There is in fact ongoing research into medical therapies using concentrated CO2.

Interest and military and take a distant third and fourth place respectively. Here are the rough proportions of the top US federal budget expenditures according to the Treasury Department:

- Healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid): 24%

- Social Security: 23%

- Net Interest on Federal Debt: 15%

- National Defense: 13%

And I'll point out that the enormous bill for the interest on debt is a pretty good reason to avoid ringing up so much debt in the first place.

Well yeah, it's still debt. It's still the unpaid balance of the cost of goods and services.

The essential purpose of a market for IOUs is to allow us to issue a lot more IOUs. This is critical to the industrial and technological development that has allowed us to stop living in the dirt. But liquid debt markets can also be weapons of mass destruction by allowing misallocation to compound into ruinous financial crises. Sort of like, oh I don't know, bloated, inefficient government entitlement programs funded by massive debt that can only be dealt with by a.) confiscating the labor and assets of the population by force, or b.) monetizing the debt and inflating it away, which is itself a backdoor tax on the same population.

My point is not that economic surpluses don't ever exist, but that the perceived surpluses that people invoke in order to defend the present welfare state are unsustainable, and that the system will inevitably collapse without a miraculous increase in economic productivity. Debt (both private and sovereign) is literally the thing that tells us whether a society is able to pay for the things it demands. That's not an accounting trick any more than plain arithmetic is.

Food and clothing are actually an argument against you here. Sure we waste a lot of both, and yet food insecurity is rare in the First World, and lack of clothing is pretty much the least significant part of poverty. Plus, government-forced redistribution reliably increases prices overall due to the increased costs of logistics and administration. There is no free lunch.

If you want to argue your point, you have to address the real fiscal burdens on modern societies, and the real drivers of debt across the West. The biggest components of government debt are medical care and pensions (including Social Security in the US). These are the things that are bankrupting us, not food and clothing.

Norway's fiscal discipline is certainly the exception that proves the rule. Britain's failure to steward the wealth of its half of the North Sea's bounty provides a good example of that rule.

If that's true, it's odd that so many social welfare programs across the western world are consuming an ever-growing share of GDP, incurring massive debt, and grinding toward insolvency and collapse. Exactly how much more of our money and labor do you want to take from us in order to continue this madness?

No, we're not. It just seems like there's excess because the costs of running social programs are being paid with runaway debt. Those bills will eventually require settling, and it will become obvious how much excess there really is.

The wealth of the "capital class", whatever that means, is dwarfed by the debt being run up by governments.

My favorite example: if you confiscated all of the wealth from all of the billionaires in the USA, it would fund the federal government for around six months. If you add state and local governments, those funds would last just weeks.

The rich don't have your money. Your government does, and they're flushing it down the toilet (and bombing Iran).

> giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia.

This only makes sense if you have no concept of "future", wherein different, less reasonable people can gain power. This should be especially obvious in Germany, where an adversarial relationship with the state can easily be had by merely criticizing it.

This isn't 1846. Mexico is our largest single trading partner. Spending our own lives and treasure to babysit an unstable nation on our Southern border is in fact the last thing the US (whoever you're asking) wants.

What do you mean by "Democrat failures"? The Democratic party doesn't believe Biden's immigration policy was a failure, and in fact the official party position seems to be that Biden didn't open the border enough. Democrat politicians have committed to more of the same, and dozens of cities and states controlled by progressives have put sanctuary policies in place that almost completely forbid immigration control of any kind.

Help me out here. Its not clear to me what the Left considers a failure.

Which of these governments do you trust? The same governments, mind you, that are working diligently to end anonymity on the Internet.

When is comes to immigration in particular, that simply isn't true. As I alluded to in my comment, Obama inherited Bush's Operation Streamline immigration regime, which was running like a Swiss watch in comparison to the mess we have now. Over the course of his two terms, Obama squandered his inheritance as the progressives encroached. By election season in 2015, the progressive model was being embraced by mainstream Democrats, and was pretty plainly admitting to open-borders aspirations. In my opinion, this more than anything handed Trump his first election victory. If there was one thing that could convince the normies that we need a border wall-- whether literal or symbolic-- it was the sudden realization that the Left was serious about open borders and unlimited immigration.

And of course, not to be outdone by Obama, Joe Biden managed to lose control of the border in a manner that has no precedent in American history, once again handing Trump an easy victory. It's like they wanted to lose another election.

To grasp how radically the Democrat party has moved left on immigration, recall that Obama and Hillary Clinton ran against each other on strict immigration enforcement. Here's my favorite Hillary quote from a 2008 campaign speech:

> "If they’ve committed a crime, deport them, no questions asked. They’re gone. If they’re working and law-abiding, we should say here are the conditions for you staying: You have to pay a stiff fine because you came here illegally, you have to pay back taxes, you have to try to learn English, and you have to wait in line."

I know the Optimus marketing wank is all sci-fi humanoids, but I wonder if the products that actually hit the market will be much simpler, not trying to compete with human arms, as you say. Does that seem likely to you?

I don't think the Obama comparison is very useful. Trump faces a vastly more difficult problem than Obama did. For most of his presidency, Obama simply continued the Operation Streamline era policies that he inherited from Bush. He didn't have to clean up after a previous administration that had completely lost control of the border, allowing somewhere between ten and forty million immigrants through. And Obama didn't have to contend with dozens of states and cities declaring themselves sanctuaries, completely off limits to meaningful immigration enforcement, even of criminal migrants.

My own state promptly made it illegal for local law enforcement to cooperate with border patrol or immigration enforcement agents in any circumstance.

So now, if we want our country to have meaningful borders, immigration enforcement has to be done the hard way, and it shouldn't be surprising that Kristi Noem's clown show is showing signs of clusterfuckery. It's actually surprising that things have gone as well as they have.

Yes the Flock coverage is a very good example.

It's because this reporting is nonsense. It comes from a health influence with "mama" in the name, always a good indicator of scientific rigor.

They say they tested for "organic fluorine", and when it predictably came back positive they crowed that the floss contains the kind of PFAS that has been loosely correlated with health effects (such as the small-molecule chemicals PFOA, PFOS, or Gen-X). But if they had any familiarity with chemistry or the products they were testing, they'd have known that what they actually found is plain old Teflon, which is the most biologically inert substance in common use, does not emit volatile PFAS, and is not (yet) under regulatory scrutiny.

Your floss is perfectly safe.

No, they tested for organic fluorine, and then acted surprised when they predictably realized that many floss products contain PTFE, widely known as Teflon, which we've already known for decades. It's not a secret, and it is in fact the only floss that I can use on my tightly arranged teeth.

PTFE is not a PFAS in the sense used in health research. Teflon is a hard, waxy plastic which is among the most inert, biologically inactive substances known. It is used everywhere from medical implants, Gore-Tex, and other clothing, teflon tape used to seal plumbing joints in your house, and many other other common uses. There is no evidence (that is, evidence from scientifically solid studies-- there are a couple poor ones), that any dental floss raises physiologic levels of PFAS.

The reason you know this reporting is bullshit is that nobody is proposing that we outlaw teflon tape in drinking water plumbing, even though it's made from the same plastic as the best floss products.

And not just genetic luck, but luck of childhood circumstances. Lots of people were given a deranged relationship to food as a child by their parents, leading in many cases to actual metabolic derangement as well.

Echoing the other reply, there is a raging scientific debate between the energy balance model and the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity and diabetes. There are large cohorts of very smart scientists on both sides of this debate.

Like the OP, I'm just pointing out that the masking requirements set out by governments and institutions at all levels were highly theatrical in nature, and I gave some concrete examples. Do you disagree? For example, the requirement by local governments to wear masks in restaurants only while standing... Do you think that had any practical "non-theatric" value?

In every public place I visited during the pandemic, the official rules stated you could leave your mask down if you were eating or drinking. This included two of the largest hospitals in Colorado. In bars and restaurants you only had to wear a mask if you were standing up, and at all other times you were allowed to eat, drink, laugh and talk unmasked. On airplanes everyone unmasked while eating meals.

If masking was truly primarily about stopping the spread of a highly contagious airborne virus, why were the rules designed and applied to allow people to spend so much time in confined spaces unmasked?

I use a lot of turmeric, and I buy it whole from an Asian grocery store. Large Asian grocers will always have whole turmeric root. It's just like any other ginger root. I chop it up and puree it in a blender, and the puree can be used anywhere you'd otherwise use the powder.