Guest “not in a billion years” by David Middleton
Earth’s Oxygen is Rapidly Running Out, Dropping Levels Will Eventually Suffocate Most Life on Planet
MARCH 03, 2021, Buzz Staff
Elon Musk may be talking about sending humans to Mars, and Bill Gates may be talking about reversing climate change – but the very air we breathe may run out soon.
/our oxygen-rich atmosphere may only last another billion years, finds a new study. Published in journal in Nature Geoscience, called “The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere,” explains that even if it won’t happen in the near future, when the change comes, it’s going to happen fairly rapidly.
[…]
News18
The article features this “representative image”…
Is “/our” a typo? Or some arcane journalistic technique? Did Buzz Staff (if that is his real name) think that “soon” and “going to happen fairly rapidly” meant the same thing?
After starting off with, “Earth’s Oxygen is Rapidly Running Out” and “the very air we breathe may run out soon”… They go on to write, “our oxygen-rich atmosphere may only last another billion years.” As a geologist, I tend to think of “soon” as thousands or maybe even a few million years. One billion years is not “soon”… The Phanerozoic Eon is only about 540-560 million years old.
Phanerozoic
Its name derives from the Ancient Greek words φανερός (phanerós), meaning visible, and ζωή (zōḗ), meaning life; since it was once believed that life began in the Cambrian, the first period of this eon. The term “Phanerozoic” was coined in 1930 by the American geologist George Halcott Chadwick (1876–1953).[5][6]
Wikipedia
I suppose the Proterozoic Ediacaran critters were alive; but they were weird and hadn’t been noticed in 1930.
“Our oxygen-rich atmosphere may only last another billion years.”
This caveat to the statement that “Earth’s oxygen is rapidly running out… the very air we breathe may run out soon” lacks context.
- Is a billion years a long or shore period of time compared to how long our atmosphere has been oxygen-rich?
- For that matter… How long has our atmosphere has been oxygen-rich?
- When did our atmosphere become oxygen-rich?
- How do you define oxygen-rich?
The “Great Oxidation Event” only took O2 from about zero-point-zero to about 0.1 bar, before it fell back to 0.001 bar. The Cambrian Explosion brought it up to 0.035 bar. The Devonian oxygenation brought it up its current partial pressure of 0.21 bar…
| Billion Years Ago | Atmospheric Oxygen (bar) |
| 0.420 | 0.210 |
| 0.560 | 0.035 |
| 1.000 | 0.001 |
“Earth’s Oxygen is Rapidly Running Out“
This will certainly take care of that wildfire thingy. The “fire window” is defined as an atmospheric oxygen content range of 13-15% to 35%. Below 13-15% fire will not ignite and above 35% fire cannot be extinguished (which would really suck!).
Oddly enough, Earth’s oxygen is running out… Just not “rapidly.”
The atmospheric oxygen level has been slowly declining over time. O2/N2 ratios from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores indicate that atmospheric oxygen has declined by 0.7% over the past 800,000 years (Stolper et al., 2018). At this rate, fire will become extinct in only 8-9 million years. Which will be good because we’ll lack the strength to start fires, much less put them out…
Not Enough Oxygen: Side Effects
Serious side effects can occur if the oxygen levels drop outside the safe zone. When oxygen concentrations drop from 19.5 to 16 percent, and you engage in physical activity, your cells fail to receive the oxygen needed to function correctly. Mental functions become impaired and respiration intermittent at oxygen concentrations that drop from 10 to 14 percent; at these levels with any amount of physical activity, the body becomes exhausted. Humans won’t survive with levels at 6 percent or lower.
Sciencing
Only about 18 million years until we get down to 6% O2…
In other news…
World Leaders Pledge To Cut Emissions By As Much As They Can Realistically Back Out Of
Tuesday 10:15AMBONN, GERMANY—Agreeing that public perception of how they were handling the climate crisis had never been more important, world leaders signed a major new accord Tuesday in which they pledged to cut carbon emissions to the extent that they could realistically back out of a few years from now.
[…]
The Onion
References
Catling, David & Kevin Zahnle. (2020). The Archean atmosphere. Science Advances. 6. eaax1420. 10.1126/sciadv.aax1420.
Glasspool, Ian & Andrew Scott. (2010). Phanerozoic atmospheric oxygen concentrations reconstructed from sedimentary charcoal. Nature Geoscience. 3. 10.1038/ngeo923.
Ozaki, K., Reinhard, C.T. The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere. Nat. Geosci. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00693-5
Rimmer, S. M., Hawkins, S. J., Scott, A. C., & Cressler, W. L. (2015). The rise of fire: Fossil charcoal in late Devonian marine shales as an indicator of expanding terrestrial ecosystems, fire, and atmospheric change. American Journal of Science, 315(8), 713-733.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2475/08.2015.01
Stolper D, Bender M, Dreyfus G, Yan Y, Higgins J. A Pleistocene ice core record of atmospheric O2 concentrations. Science. 2016;353:1427–1430. doi: 10.1126/science.aaf5445.
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If only there was some process by which living matter would convert the excess CO2 to O2. Oh well, I guess the only thing to say is “so long, and thanks for all the fish.”
Yes plants do it take carbon and release O2.
Must have been authored by Ann Oxic
Catch and release (in the fall)! Don’t have to clean it that way (just rake and leaf it by the curb). Uncle Elm(er) told me about a really big carp(on atom) s/he caught the other day. Sorry if anyone thinks this comment is a bit too fishy or woody or something…um I’m going to make like a rubber tree and burn out now.
@vuk He’s, being sarcastic and cynical 😉
I thought there was something fishy about it.
6 CO2+ 12 H2O + light–>C6H12O6 + 6 O2+ 6 H2O
I call it the Annual Green Deal and it is cost effective! Everyone plant a tree, vegie, flower, grass or hemp. We take CO2 out of the air and put O2 back in the air. Emergency averted!
The reduction of CO2 to sugars and the splitting of water to release oxygen are two distant reactions in photosynthesis. The oxygen in the air came from water split by the concentrated power of photon energy.
But what if there’s a photon shortage? The number of photons is limited. Have we reached peak photon?
Any proof for this assertion?
The Planet is infested with mouth breathers, sucking up all the oxygen and spewing co2. We must eliminate all the mouth breathers, before they kill us all.
We are certainly doomed to listen to this sort of Scientific Nonsense and Climate Propaganda, day in and day out. It alone will be enough to kill us all.
You think this is bad, check out the nu math:
What is the value of 60 ÷ 5(y-5) when y = 7.
42?
Funny . . . I get sqrt(42) . . . what went wrong?
While you touched on the reason for concern I wanted to clarify at least one result from reintroducing ambiguity and whether or not the modern interpretation was correct to be interpreted that way. Math in a computer must evaluate to only one answer.
One answer on Monday and a different one on Tuesday if one computer is talking to a different computer can result in things like missing the window on a moon shot, crashed market servers and weird things like date mismatches or security certificates going wonky.
It is actually a two-fold problem. First, at the software level, we use mathematical solutions to define and solve for real world problems. Like landing a plane on autopilot. Trigonometry is required to keep the plane from crashing into the ground. The autopilot functions requires an unambiguous answer and every programmer must use the same conventions.
Also, on some level your basic functions are hardwired into our circuit boards. If the computer at any point has any of these order of operations assumptions etched into the functions stored on the motherboard, they would clash with the programming. Mostly, NAND NOR gates are plus minus and it is or it is not, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility someone could hardwire some black box circuit with built in order of operations assumptions.
So the reason we needed to clarify the order of operations historically was not just to make sure we were not being overcharged on our taxes. We need an order of operations set of rules that forces us to land the plane safely every single time. Hence, the rules must not only be unambiguous, they have to lead to an equation that our boolean computer circuits are actually physically capable of evaluating.
If the old method led to equations that were unsolvable or actually inaccurate, this is why it would have been changed. So we could land space shuttle on the moon. If that choice was made in error, or we never actually fully evaluated the issue before we made the modern interpretation practice, then we need to go back and evaluate which choice is more accurate or if we need to make even more adjustments.
It is absolutely essential that computer programmers not only use the same conventions, but that those conventions are actually reflecting real world reality when it comes to solving math based problems.
So what you’re saying is Climate scientologists are using Google who uses the nu maths to do their sums.
No wonder the models run hot
I would have said 24.
Heavens, no! The answer is 42. The answer is always 42.
First – It is not like we walk down the street and stumble over equations. People encounter problems and then state the problem as a math equation to help them solve said problem. When they fail to correctly state the order of calculation they get wrong answers and fail to solve their problem. societies biggest problem is that Schools don’t spend enough time teaching students how to author equations from real time situations
Second – Calculators don’t determine order of operation. Operators do that. Google and android are software programs not calculators. Computer simple follow instruction. The programmer who wrote the software determines the outcome (Just like computer modelers predicting the end of days due to climate change) The software will give a correct answer based upon how the inquiry is made in the search line (statement of the problem) and how the programmer instructs it to order the calculations.
The computer answer is correct but it might not solve the problem.
The problem is in the signage: There is a division sign but no multiplication sign. Pf you add the multiplication sign 60 / 5 x (7 – 2) it looks different. If you drop the division sign it becomes a fraction. The ambiguity lies in this ‘mixed message’.
Guys (in the gender-vague sense naturally), you’re being too finicky about what is “correct”. It’s just an oppressive manifestation and thus a microaggression of white privilege on the quantitatively disadvantaged enjoying the refuge of their safe space to insist on a single right (see!, there’s the political extremism that underlies all this) answer. All answers must be regarded as equally correct outcomes (as opposed to merely providing equal opportunities to make an assessment); and as unique results are inherently unfair, all participating will deserve an accolade trophy for doing so. Indeed the very idea already makes me feel better about it, and in the end surely you realize that’s what counts today.
Go to a garden center or plant nursery, find a plant you like, buy it and start breathing.
As the sun grows more luminous, C3 plants will run out of CO2 in just 500 million years. C4 and CAM plants might survive for another 400 million years.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2013/10/23/life-on-earth-to-hit-brick-wall-in-500-million-years/amp/
Lots of stupid stuff on that interweb thingy. Like this righteously ridiculed by DM.
The great land sequestration of CO2 as coal was during the Carboniferous, which began with the evolution of large woody plants (cellulose plus lignin) and roughly ‘ended’ with the evolution of white fungi capable of digesting lignin (except locally in places like acidic anoxic peat bogs).
The great ocean sequestration of CO2 as limestones from calcareous single celled marine organisms never stopped, and never peaked. Chugs along.
The drop in CO2 toward present preindustrial levels led to the evolution of C4 from C3 plant photosynthesis about 40 mya. Mostly dryland grasses and sedges because of the indirect effect on stomata and evapotranspiration. Evidence: the Sahel is greening more than the Amazon basin.
CO2 levels apparently stabilized at the preindustrial ~280 ppm millions of years ago. I believe this is generally because of the roughly present plate tectonics configuration. For example, Antarctic moved over the south pole about 36mya and started accumulating ice, lowering sea levels and providing more impermanent terrestial sequestration in soils and vegetation.
Given present plate/ continent configurations, it is estimated that CO2 would drop below plant sustaining levels (about 150 ppm) in 1-2 million years were it not for the great limestone recycling mechanism known as plate subduction zones creating andesic volcanoes spewing CO2 and calcific ‘ash’.
Now IF tectonics were to reform a Pangea, we might be in eventual trouble because we might lack the Pacific ring of fire limestone recycling mechanism.
But that was not the premise of this really silly ‘sciency’ article.
That there white fungi is now trying to digest bats. Why can’t things just stay the way they were?
If that is not a flawed measurement but reality, I wonder where the O2 is going?
Leaking to space.
Leftists’ barometric chambers?
And forming more oxide-class minerals. Before the Great Oxygenation event, minerals like hematite (Fe2O3) were rare.
We combine it with C to CO2 – what a question 😀
Oh no! Now humans will have to sequester carbon for real – after separating the O2 from it. How could we possibly do that?
Photosynthesis ? 😀
That won’t work. We need to build forests of mechanical trees to do it.
“either the effects of increased Pleistocene erosion rates or decreased ocean temperature to explain feedbacks in the global cycles of carbon, sulfur, and O2—and the effects of both could have contributed to the observed decline in PO2.”
So either oxidization of terra or decrease in temperature which would cause more to dissolve into the oceans, or both. I am going with dissolved into the oceans. Nothing a little global warming wouldn’t fix, if only we could magically control global climate and prevent the next glacial period.
No more vegans and jogging.
How about rust i.e. iron oxide?
Middleton, this is serious, STOP making jokes,
this is a choking matter !
I thought to have respiration problem being ill, but as I read that, ok 😀
Does that mean every molecule has to be marked as a choke hazzard?
And if, after having so surely spared our descendants those imminent soaring global high temperatures (as well as returning snow to our winters) just catching their breath weren’t threatening enough with plunging oxygen levels, burning (i.e. oxidizing) logs in a romantic fireplace will be an unattainable wistful notion. At least they’ll have heating entirely powered by those unfailing wind and photovoltaic receptors of solar energy that we’re busy pioneering for them. Let’s hope that such electric means can somehow actually be built and maintained without combustion resources.
At 6,500′, elevation of my home, oxygen is 16.3%.
Looking west Pikes Peak at 14,000′ where there is daily major construction activity remodeling the peak visitor center, oxygen is only 12.3%.
There is a staffed weather station up there, too.
Guess we did not get the memo about all those harmful effects.
Either that or the “experts” are simply full of it as is becoming more obvious.
Maybe that’s a normalized or effective concentration, but the real concentration is still 21%.
I live at 8600 ft, am 64 y old, and often hike in excess of 3 mph with elevation change of up to 1000 ft. for 3 to 6 miles at a time. I am not in great shape and don’t walk every day. I don’t even get to breathing hard, and my heart rate does not go above 120 or so.
I guess I must be imagining all that.
Or do these a$$ hats not know about acclimation? Although I am sure they would prefer acclimatization since it is made from their favorite word.
Give yourself credit – you’re in good shape!
At age 74, I’ve worked on hiking trails at Mt. Rainier N. P., out of Sunrise.
The parking lot is at 6,400 feet. I can work with all the trail tools at that altitude, and have gone to about 7,000 feet doing that sort of work.
However, I have a rare blood disorder (Rouleaux formations) that makes for a low red blood count.
So while I can work at those elevations (some can’t), I do have trouble hiking with a continuous elevation gain even when the starting elevation is much lower, say 2,000 feet.
Visiting with hikers of varying abilities is a good way of recognizing our differences.
Maybe it is time to discuss issues in attached article….
https://pubsapp.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/30/i12/html/12learn.html
If you can not explain the evolution of the atmosphere, how can you even start to discuss climate…
Well, David, this is just The Long Goodbye, that’s all. Lol! I thought that was the name of a movie from way back when, I don’t remember for sure.
Given the quality of the thinking coming out of some people these days (especially “Buzz Staff,” the BHO administration – h/t to Joel O’Bryan for coming up with that term – and many so-called “climate scientists”), it appears the oxygen decline has already begun.
Well i don’t know the timescales David but i do know that when the bubbles of air were trapped in Amber the air contained 20% more oxygen than today.
Also dinosaurs had no diaphragms they didn’t need them the air was that rich, not hard to know why in the age of mega fauna.
When the asteroid that finished the dinosaurs hit and put the final nail in their coffins they were doomed any way as they were slowly dying out by getting a yard or 2 too short in hunting their prey which did develop diaphragms as the oxygen content in the air decreased over millenia.
Now all WE need to do is get rid of all the oxygen thieving leftist progressives.
Yep the oxygen concentration was higher in the Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous). It might have even been higher than 30% of the atmosphere.
So, it was getting close to the level at which a lightning strike would start a wildfire that would burn as long as it could reach fuel. Actually, I imagine that 35% isn’t a magic threshold. Fires would just burn more ferociously as the O2 content increased to, and beyond, 35%.
Yep. Smokey Bear would have been very busy in the Carboniferous… 🔥
Bird respiration is more efficient than us lowly mammals. We make up for it somewhat with a diaphragm. Were dinosaurs more like birds or us?
Can’t imagine their hearts beating that fast.
More like crocodiles, not many of the experts claim dinosaurs had diaphragms if any now.
Crocodiles are dinosaurs aren’t they.
Let me guess, a billion years?
If a super hightech space alien race had visited Earth a billion years, could it have imagined the changes that would have come to this planet in the next billion trips around its star? All they would have found is oceans filled with algae sludge and bacterial biofilms coating everything, turning CO2 to carbohydrates and water to oxygen. Volcanoes exploding and turning the atmosphere to toxic sulfur gasses.
I doubt even the most advanced race can predict the non-linearity of a future that far out.
Unless they were terraformers. Or had real fast computers.Or a long time for those computers to crunch the equations. And possibly smacked the planet with that asteroid themselves to get the whole dinosaur death thing going.
Thanks. I was just being a smartass about “rapidly”. Heck, I wouldn’t worry if it was only 100 years. Humans will either fond a solution faster or we will die. Same as for every other Fear Porn disaster.
How long do these idiots think humans have been around? Maybe a few million years and even less for modern humans. Really? A billion years? Thanks for the good news.
Dumb as a box of rocks, they are.
Not looking at the genetic possibilities you is. Or the fact our moon rotation is a bit weird. And is the orbit of a certain comet named Haley. As in, it exists it does without falling into the sun.
Run out of oxygen in a billion years? Heck, then we will need to wear 3 masks over our faces to be safe. To keep all of the…uh…nitrogen out?
So, how is it that photosynthesis is supposed to disappear? Let me guess…global ice sheets brought on by all of the global warming!
I guess they do not realize that if you have sunlight, lots of CO2 and some water you can grow plants?
soon children won’t know what plants are.
What about snow peas?
Not sure about those but snow flakes we seem to be breeding successfully.
Aha! That clever Dr. Fauxi is training us to live with less oxygen. By the time a billion years rolls by, we’ll be wearing ten thousand masks and be able to live without O2.
“Hello, my name is Buzz Staff and my preferred pronouns are /our and @xhim.”
A billion years ago the first multi-cellular organisms were just developing.
So whatever is here to see the ‘end of oxygen’ will probably be as different from us, as we are from rudimentary fungi or the simplest jellyfish.
David,
“The “Great Oxidation Event” only took O2 from about zero-point-zero to about 0.1 bar, before it fell back to 0.001 bar. The Cambrian Explosion brought it up to 0.035 bar. The Devonian oxygenation brought it up its current partial pressure of 0.21 bar…”
Didn’t the GOE have a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of oxidizing iron and other metals?
I don’t know… piecing together Precambrian geology is like putting together a 1 billion piece jigsaw puzzle with 17 pieces and no box cover to go by… 😎
Good point. Speaking of the Precambrian, I wonder when our virtue-signaling friends del norte will ban fracking in the Canadian Shield?
You know, Yoda (“Doomed we are…”) doesn’t look very worried, and neither am I. If “rapidly” is a billion years from now, I think I’m not gonna sweat it, know what I mean? Hell, if we can figure out how to create and produce a vaccine to end a pandemic in one year, we can (ya think?) figure out how to re-oxygenate our atmosphere in a billion years! Or even be colonizing solar systems thousands of light-years away from this one!
My dad said it best. Many years ago — oh, about 65 or so — when I was 8, I was reading a “Little Golden Book” about our solar system and astronomy. The last page of the book sent me running to my dad in tears, because it showed a picture of a meteor smashing into the earth and blowing it apart. To make matters worse, the text also explained that the sun could turn supernova and incinerate the entire solar system, instead. Either way, it was curtains for our beautiful world!! I was devastated.
I sobbed to my dad that we were all doomed. He said, “When did you say this was going to happen?” I wept, “a billion years from now!” Dad wiped his forehead, took a deep breath, and said, “Oh, wow!! I thought you said only a million!!”
Problem solved…
Thats a good story! And underlines a point the author hasn’t considered – what is happening to our star, in a billion years? Oxygen may be the least of our worries.
In a billion years, I won’t have any worries… 😎
You cant know that for sure…
If a billion years from now, I’m worrying about something in the afterlife… I’ll be wishing I was suffocating on Earth… 😳
If you could travel around the universe at 0.9999999999999999 the speed of light (16 9’s), your next 40 years would see almost a billion years pass in the stationary universe.
The acceleration and then deceleration from that speed would be bitch tho’.
As would be the H flux (protons).
Travel to the distant future for a fast traveling space-man/space-woman/space-it is certainly possible per Einstein’s GR. Travel to the past not so much. We are all time travelers to future right now in fact.
The arrow seems to only point in one direction.
Woody Allen had a nice skit in one of his movies where he had a fit when he misheard a teacher say ‘the sun will explode in 4 million years!’ but she had said 4 billion and then never mind. I know Allen has been cancelled and I am a bad person for remembering this, not to mention confounding Emily Litella (never mind) with Woody, but that was my first impression.
However, I am interested in 02 concentration and its effects on life. Current estimates of 02 at sea level in the Cambrian range from 10-15%. So, base camp on Everest is given at a similar level. Is this a relative measure of O2 availability or does the atmosphere stratify by molecular weight and O2 actually decreases with altitude?
Because; Calcium carbonate.
Should we now start paying taxes to prevent O2 going away in a billion years more?
If this article ever falls in the hands of the IPCC or Biden, certainly yes.
“Our oxygen-rich atmosphere may only last another billion years.”
I misread that at first, and thought read: “Our oxygen-rich atmosphere may only last another <i>million</i> years.”
Whew! Had me scared for a minute!
Sorry to do this but…
Thank you, Justice Barrett!
Barrett authors first U.S. Supreme Court ruling, a loss for environmentalists
https://www.reuters.com/article/BigStory12/idUSKBN2AW2AP
Now to celebrate !
How is allowing government secrecy on actions that can effect the entire society a good thing?
Reportedly Gina McCarthy, the then EPA chief, refused a Senate subpoena for documents purporting to support Obama’s Clean Power Plan, proclaiming that she intended to protect “our data” from “potentially hostile analysis” (think of the children’s tender feelings!). This is the same mentality as the Left’s wailing and gnashing of teeth over Trump’s proposed requirement that evidence supposedly supporting proposed EPA regulations must be made available for review and comment (something that has been law, but ignored by the agency, more or less since the inception of the EPA, as far as I understand): Shut up and do what we say, we know best what is good for you. Don’t talk back to your betters.
It would be completely different, and a much better thing, for the courts to summarily dismiss any activist’s suits that relied on unevidenced opinions expressed in documents but to allow such documents to be kept secret is just keeping the peasants’ faces down in the dust.
Before I read down to a billion years, my first comment to the author of the Nature article was going to be: What do you expect? For every atom of carbon you sequester, you sequester two atoms of oxygen.
How well does the drop in O2 match up with the drop in CO2 over the last 60 million years?
Darn, I was worried about the Sun becoming a red giant and now this?????
A billion years? That’s a relief.
I thought you said million.
The obvious solution is to increase cement production, giving the plants more CO2 so that they in turn offset the rapid loss of oxygen! Instead of building Unreliable Energy projects that confound electric grid stability without producing adequate CO2, how about if we use the extra cement to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.
Maybe we could use some of it to make cement overshoes for all the politicians who killed and bankrupted their constituents for political gain! When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!
In a million years we should have been able to solve the problem of controlled thermonuclear fusion and have sufficient energy to start calcining the vast quantities of limestone to either produce CO2 for plants, or electrolize water to produce oxygen. Another non-problem.