alt Hacker NewsI don't think this is correct. The concentration of CO2 in air is about 0.04%, whereas the concentration of oxygen is 20%, so the partial pressure of oxygen is about 500x higher. This means that if, for example, 10% of the oxygen in a room spontaneously disappeared, it would be replaced about sqrt(500) = 22x faster through leaks in the room than a 10% spontaneous CO2 increase would dissipate. (This ignores a small effect due to the different density of the two gases).
So in practice the oxygen level can never drift meaningfully far from the atmospheric pressure, whereas carbon dioxide easily can because the pressures involved are so low.
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I think this is (in turn) wrong. Yes: having 500x the amount of O2 as CO2 means that a 10% drop in O2 will trigger 500x as many molecules diffusing in per second as the same drop in CO2. But, each molecule of CO2 will change the relative percentage 500x as much as a molecule of O2, so isn't it a wash?
Ok, fair points, including the sister comment, it's likely not a drop in O2 levels.
But then why can we see problems with concentration in studies of people in poorly ventilated rooms, but not replicate that when just adding CO2 to normal air? What is the CO2 that we can measure in meeting rooms actually a proxy for?