"John Hall" wrote in message
...
| In article
| ,
| Neo writes:
| If the CO2 in the atmosphere is building (for what ever reason, don't
| want to get all political here), therefore Carbon is bonding to Oxygen
| at a ratio 1:2. so surely the O2 levels of the atmosphere will be
| falling at the same rate? Should we not be overly worried about
| reducing O2 rather than increasing CO2?
|
| No, because the amounts in the atmosphere are so different. The
| atmosphere is 20% oxygen, but IIRC well under a tenth of one per cent
| carbon dioxide.
|
| Does anyone here know of any research and/or results for this
| happenning?
|
| Any change in the oxygen level would be "lost in the noise". Even a
| doubling of CO2 would have a negligible effect on the amount of oxygen.
|
| Add the fact that de-forestation is happening (so we are told...again
| not wanting to be all political), then any O2 is not being adequately
| replaced...this would only compound the problem.
|
| I suppose long-term that might be a problem.
| ...
|

Long enough term that would indeed be a problem. Our neighbouring planets
in our solar system have atmospheres consisting largely of carbon dioxide.
One (Mars) also has a surface consisting largely of rust (iron oxide).

Oxygen is a very reactive gas, and so the composition of our atmosphere is
unstable. Without the good efforts of plants, all the oxygen in the
atmosphere would over a period of time combine either with carbon or
something else (silicon to make sand or iron to make the rust which give
certain rocks that red colour) and no free oxygen would be left. The fact
that there is so little carbon dioxide in comparison to free oxygen shows
just how efficient our green friends are.

So if any alien spacecraft is approaching and they have a spectrograph on
board, they will know long before they get here that Earth is a living
planet, because otherwise they would not be able to detect the spectrum of
so much free oxygen in our atmosphere.
--
- Yokel -

"Yokel" posts via a spam-trap account which is not read.