It reminds me of a popular misconception about Earth and our atmosphere and climate.
A lot of the people who advocate for the environment believe that reduction in trees will jeopardize our oxygen and that we’ll run out of breathable air at some point.
The problem is actually that trees capture and hold carbon, the danger to the environment is almost strictly just the release of excess carbon.
If we lost every last tree and phytoplankton bloom in the world, we would still have enough breathable oxygen to last potentially millions of years.
Where are you getting this millions of years number? Seems really unrealistic considering millions of humans live at altitude and have barely enough oxygen in the air as it is
I rechecked, I will revise it, there are some huge variables and nobody can really agree. It would likely be anywhere between thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, but I have seen some people confidently state that if we’re not running industry and most sea life dies rapidly that it could potentially be millions of years but the carbon cycle is wildly complicated so it’s still a pretty hard idea to calculate.
It reminds me of a popular misconception about Earth and our atmosphere and climate.
A lot of the people who advocate for the environment believe that reduction in trees will jeopardize our oxygen and that we’ll run out of breathable air at some point.
The problem is actually that trees capture and hold carbon, the danger to the environment is almost strictly just the release of excess carbon.
If we lost every last tree and phytoplankton bloom in the world, we would still have enough breathable oxygen to last potentially millions of years.
That seems off
Where are you getting this millions of years number? Seems really unrealistic considering millions of humans live at altitude and have barely enough oxygen in the air as it is
I rechecked, I will revise it, there are some huge variables and nobody can really agree. It would likely be anywhere between thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, but I have seen some people confidently state that if we’re not running industry and most sea life dies rapidly that it could potentially be millions of years but the carbon cycle is wildly complicated so it’s still a pretty hard idea to calculate.
This exchange talks a lot about how different variables can wildly swing the results. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/46125/how-long-could-earths-oxygen-supply-last-if-no-new-oxygen-were-produced