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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

For even more perspective, human breath can be easily composed of somewhere between 20,000 ppm and 40,000 ppm, and tens of thousands greater than that with enough energy expenditure. (I know this because I've actually measured this myself with research grade NDIR CO2 sensors)

441 ppm can be "a lot" depending on the gas and the expected effect. You don't want to breathe in 441 ppm of chlorine gas. But CO2 being fairly non-reactive makes 441 ppm of it relatively minuscule in contrast to the other predominant atmospheric gases. It's also nowhere near enough to cause outright catastrophe.

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441 ppm CO2 turns out to be quite close to enough to cause global catastrophe.

Eventually. But no one is going to keel over dead due to suffocation today because of global CO2 concentration, which is ‘outright’.

Pretty sure global minimum temperatures above 100F would also count as ‘outright’.

There are already places where being without a cooling method other than sweating would be fatal, at least one day of the year.

In many more places, crops are failing.

People necessarily leaving these places will need to go where other people already are.

That happened before too, and has been (at lower frequency) for all of recorded history, near as we can tell. As noted, not an outright catastrophe right now.

The discussion is about avoiding it becoming one, and relative impacts. Humanity isn’t going to be dead tomorrow because of this, but may be in more pain in a decade or two, and longer term even more so.

Regional collapses have happened. This will be the first global collapse.

If it happens, it will be much earlier than you hope, as millions, then tens of millions, then hundreds of millions force their way across borders, and fascist governments ride that into power and then start a global thermonuclear war. The refugees will only be fleeing crop failure and increasingly murderous kleptocratic government.

It is already starting. Lots of governments are flirting with dictatorship, and many have got there already. US and Brazil have drawn back a hairsbreadth from the brink, but for how long?

You might want to slow down and breath a little.

I favorited that comment. When I feel anxious about something, I’ll read it again and realize anxiety can always be worse.

Just like the people who were entering the Capitol about 20 months ago.

It is a fact that almost half the US voting population is ready and willing to vote in somebody who would arrange never to leave office. Numerous billionaires support that outcome.

I'm not saying that you're wrong (or right). There is a LOT of scary stuff going on right now, for a lot of people.

I'm just asking you to slow down a bit, and take care of how you are now.

Otherwise, you'll never get to the point of any of the other stuff mattering anyway - and likely make it a lot worse for yourself in the meantime.

Really? Thanks an amazing claim! I'm sure you can provide us some evidence to support this.

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