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The Environment / Are atmospheric oxygen levels falling?
« on: 01/06/2008 17:10:35 »
>oxygen levels must be going down and that seems more worrying to me.
Simple answer - No.
If we increased CO2 by a factor of 10 from 387ppm to 3870ppm through burning carbon to make CO2 the the oxygen level would be going down from 20.95% to 20.6%. That is a huge change in the CO2 level but the O2 change is managable - you can get a much bigger effect on oxygen available by climbing a mountain. The CO2 would reach toxic levels before the O2 reduction became a problem. Global warming is more likely to become a problem before toxic CO2 levels are reached.
Simple answer - No.
If we increased CO2 by a factor of 10 from 387ppm to 3870ppm through burning carbon to make CO2 the the oxygen level would be going down from 20.95% to 20.6%. That is a huge change in the CO2 level but the O2 change is managable - you can get a much bigger effect on oxygen available by climbing a mountain. The CO2 would reach toxic levels before the O2 reduction became a problem. Global warming is more likely to become a problem before toxic CO2 levels are reached.