We are all made of carbon

kafka420honda@lemmy.worldbanned from community to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 358 points –
37

FYI, this is a right-wing dog whistle popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's now an anti-vaxxer talking point.

If the carbon is in my body, it's not in the atmosphere where it would contribute to climate change. Checkmate, atheists

Negative, you are 65% oxygen, so in effect hot air. 18.5% is carbon, 10% is hydrogen.

Or by molecules, you are mostly water.

And by those metrics, the average vehicle exhaust from a year of driving contains as much carbon and oxygen as 300 humans.

So we're sequestering carbon.

Unfortunately, we are quite the opposite. We are CO2 generators.

The CO2 we breathe out is a rounding error compared to the emissions from our fossil fuel use. It's frankly laughable to even compare the two.

So, why do you do it then?

I didn't bring it up. The meme posted by OP did because it's a schizopost implying that the evil lizard people want to genocide the common people to preserve the climate.

Your comment was talking about the fact that humans exhale CO2 as an unfortunate fact. I agree with that in and of itself, but in the context of the post one could definitely get the idea that you're propagating the malthusian and exaggerated assumption that the meme is built on. That's how I interpreted it.

If there's no people exhaling CO2, then who would be left to enjoy the infinitessimally better state of the climate?

Well, technically, we sequester some CO2 seeing as how we're partially made from it but yeah, I was mostly joking.

Technically, we sequester zero CO2. We only consume already sequestered carbon. We do not convert even single molecule of CO2 in to carbon.

Unless we have tiny amounts photosynthesizing algie or something similar living in our hair or under your skin. But that also gets into questions of what is you exactly.

What are you talking about? Who is them? Why would anybody care about that little bit of carbon in your body when every single human "consumes" much more every day?

I’m overweight, so I wouldn’t mind

Speaking as one of “them”, yes. Yes you are.

Edit: Since people seem to think I'm saying abating climate change causes fewer children, I'm not. Communication is not my strongpoint - but I have a B.B.A in Econ with an emphasis in Sustainable Supply Chains, and a Master's in Quantitative Finance, so let me rephrase this. Countries that implement more policies to fight climate change are typically populated by people who care and are educated about climate change, who are also less likely to have more children due to the current path humanity is on.

Something vaguely related to this topic is the fact that countries with more laws designed to abate climate changing effects are also experiencing a slowdown in the rate with which they have children. Whereas many countries with relatively high birthrates generally do not have very strict climate standards. Overall levels of general education also play into this.

Tldr; Generally, the more people know about climate change, the less likely they are to have children.

Yeah and selling ice cream leads to shark attacks 🙄

Countries with a well-educated population care more about the future of the planet and well-educated people have fewer kids. There's no "climate childlessness" like you seem to be implying.

I didn't say they are experiencing these slowdowns because of abatement policies, like you said with shark attacks and ice cream. Read my edit. I think I'm being misunderstood, and I don't think I clearly communicated what I was trying to. Your second paragraph literally summarized what I was trying to convey, which I thought I did in the tldr, but I'm better at numbers and graphs than I am with words lol.