this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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I wonder if our current world has a specific smell that people from the 80s would notice
Cannabis. At least most major cities in Europe/North America I find it really common now to openly smell cannabis all hours of the day. Combination of the strains being MUCH stronger and legalization. Even just 20 years back, of course in the Haight in SF or certain parts of NYC you'd smell it, or outside clubs/bars at night. But today I walk through Downtown SF at 830am and smell it every other block. Was in the design district in NYC a few weeks back and same deal.
At my work it constantly smells like cannabis because there's a literal weed factory next door.
It's great because I just blame my weed smell on the factory.
It's common, but absolutely not omnipresent the way cigarette smoke was. Even now it's quite distinctive and noticable, even if common.
Helps that most people don't smoke a pack of joints every day.
There's more methane in the atmosphere now. It probably smells like a fart.
~~Methane needs 5-16PPM [PDF] to be detectable with human smell. Atmospheric Methane is at about 2ppm. So the vast majority of people would not notice a difference. ~~
nvm see below
methane doesn't have an odor, you linked to the data sheet of trichlorofluoromethane, a completely different molecule
The gas in your house is artificially made stinky so that people would notice leaks and blow their house up, which happened a lot back when the stinky chemicals weren't added and it was odorless
That's what I get for moving quick, thank you. I guess the overall point that methane will not make the atmosphere smell still holds
I'm hoping car exhaust takes that role.
People from the 40s would recognize the current smell of the world.
I feel like it’s probably the people from the ~1880s-1920s would know the smell of the world today