Think Greenhouse Gases Aren’t Suffocating the Earth? Talk to this Man

When Canadian scientist and YouTuber Kurtis Baute set out to showcase the destructive impact of greenhouse gases, he had planned to stay in the DIY “biodome” he built in his brother and sister-in-law’s backyard for three days. After just 15 hours, Baute had to nix his initial plan, as CO2 levels became dangerously high. He doesn’t consider this experiment a failure, however, quite the opposite. “His mission was to raise awareness about the dire threat of greenhouse gas emissions by documenting his experience on social media, and judging by the explosion of media coverage, he did just that,” Aliyah Kovner writes.

Baute constructed a 10-foot-by-10-foot cube, made out of plastic sheeting and plywood, and filled it with 200 leafy plants. He frequently monitored his blood oxygen levels and the CO2 levels in the air. Once the CO2 concentration exceeded the range of his sensors (more than 9,300 part per million (ppm) (the average global outdoor concentration is 400 ppm)), Baute opted to bow out.  “I could probably survive in the [dome] three days, but my goals is not to just ‘not die’, my goal is to end this project without having turned blue, developed brain damage, gotten heat stroke, or just generally caused lasting harm to my body,” Baute wrote, according to IFLScience.com.

Follow Baute on Twitter for post-experiment posts about his experiment, what went right, and what went wrong.