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.
It’s a shame they don’t teach photosynthesis in schools any more
“This will certainly take care of that wildfire thingy.”
LOL, always good for a laugh
It may only be circumstantial, but I think this is good proof that the academic world is already suffering from a lack of oxygen.
Doomed we are if people like this are teaching mathematics, and at a university level at that!
Al Geb-ra is a foreign language to the Left.
Why do you believe the expression, as shown, is without ambiguity?
The way it is written, gives effective bracketing of 5(7-5)
It means 5 lots of (7-5)
No ambiguity at all.
So, all the calculators that say otherwise are just wrong?
Forget the explicit rules about the order of operations?
5(7-5) is nothing more than a short hand for 5 * (7-5). Since division and multiplication are the same level, they are performed left to right. No ambiguity at all.
Any “ambiguity” is coming from assumptions rather than reading exactly what is written. For math, you should read exactly what it there, don’t make assumptions.
This is written as 60 / 5 (7 – 5), which if written out without the “shorthand” of leaving off the symbol, becomes (as you said) 60 / 5 * (7 – 5)
So basic order of operations: parenthesis first:
60 / 5 * (7 – 5)
60 / 5 * 2
Then, multiplication and division, same precedence. Items of the same precedence proceed left to right:
60 / 5 * 2
12 * 2
24
No ambiguity if you don’t make assumptions. There is no explicit grouping of 5(7-2), so I wouldn’t assume any.
(if anyone disagrees with what I’m saying, please tell me where I am wrong)
I suppose if basic left-right logic is not mandatory, then this would be ambiguous. Still, it seems to me that the formula is 60 divided by the product of 5 times 7-5 (maybe there should be a couple more parentheses, but really …). I am not mathematical, I admit, and long division by hand is increasingly mysterious, but I’m not supporting 24. You cannot divide 60 by any whole number and get 24.
60 divided by 5 equals 12.
12 times (7-5) equals 12 times 2 equals 24.
I’m not positive, but my memory seems to indicate that it took about a billion years for pre-oxygenic cells to evolve into oxyphylic life and well under half that to evolve to take advantage of increasing atmospheric oxygen.
Does this mean that those who fear the depletion of oxygen repudiate evolution? 😛
How dare they.
If you want to know whether you should be afraid of climate change or not–ask a 500-million-year-surviving bivalve, not some upstart biped that hasn’t made it to a quarter of a million yet, and that sticks its head in the sand ostrich-like at the slightest thought that tomorrow may not be exactly the same as today, and you might have to adapt to some change.
https://www.britannica.com/animal/lingulid
(Yes, I know that Lingula also ‘sticks its head in the sand’, but not with its butt way up in the air for nature to kick at.)
And come to think of it, we shouldn’t laugh at ostriches either; they seem to have survived about 100 times the length of climate-change-time that hand-wringing humans have managed so far.
What a snivelling, whining Goldilocks species humans have become–except that NOTHING is just right anymore, despite all the invented technology that a Cambrian brachiopod could only dream about. Think of it–for over 500 million years that brach has been born, lived and ate, reproduced and died, over and over, but is still here today. In just 200,000 years humans have got so they can’t even figure out what gender they are.
In a survival bet, put your money on the Lingula; I don’t think humans are here for long. Too stupid.
Maybe just too social. My tribe, right or wrong.
Wallace Broecker’s 1970 Science Mag essay/analysis on this subject, now 50 years old, is still the unassailable bright light that the climate scammers no doubt want to CANCEL.
Man’s Oxygen Reserves – Claims that this important resource is in danger of serious depletion are at all valid. – Wallace S. Broecker. Professor of Earth Science. Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Columbia University, NY.
Science 26 Jun 1970:
Vol. 168, Issue 3939, pp. 1537-1538
DOI: 10.1126/science.168.3939.1537
The other point to make to put a lie to this the reason the O2/N2 ratios have been declining over 800,000 years is exactly because the plant food, CO2, has also been in decline over that time frame. Now that the CO2 levels are recovering (thank you Exxon-Mobil), the O2 levels are also recovering as primary productivity increasees, as measured by satellites that the Earth is greening,
David, If you want the full pdf of that Broecker Scimag article I can send it to you via email. I think you can see my email address as a moderator/author/editor at WUWT.
Joel,
Quick correction for Broecker article title: “are not at all valid” instead of “are at all valid”.
A billion years from now, March 4th will fall on a Sunday. Problem solved and no further action required.
Panic much?
Or the theme song for “Super Chicken” also works.
https://youtu.be/FKss2pBYQ6Y
Wait’ll they find out our sun will become a red giant and engulf the Earth after the oxygen runs out.
After that, the galaxy known as Andromeda will collide with the Earth’s Milky Way galaxy.
Or maybe they’ll see the benefit of burning all of those complex carbon, hydrogen, oxygen molecules to reduce limestone into lime and letting plants turn the CO₂ into C and O₂?
Nah, too logical for the left.
Darn!!! I had plans for the weekend a billion and one years from now.
I’m curious about the absolute air pressure over the ages. Any proxies that can tell us?
IFAIK, no proxies can tell us that. Unfortunately.
Clearly Mars lost most of its atmospnhere to solar wind ablation and its low gravity. But a lot of Mars oxygen is now in the form of iron oxides (red color) and perchlorate, which both are very abundant on Mars.
But how much atmosphere (gas pressure) Earth lost, but also gained by oyxgen from water, is very uncertain. This is because estimates of how much water Earth started with and how much is now subducted into the mantle and hydrated into minerals have huge error bars. Also the amount of water-derived oxygen now incorporated into iron oxides and deeply buried over the last 2 billion years has wide error bars (large uncertainty). Uncertainties are so large in any estimates, they could be anywhere.
Now I’m really worried
Just when some dumb-ass says something that I think cannot be topped for dumb-assery, a double dumb-ass comes along and says something even dumber. When the sun turns into a red giant in “about” a billion years, the entire atmosphere will be blown into intergalactic space. The fact that the oxygen will be running out about then, won’t matter one whit.
Completely aside from any issues regarding why the O2 levels may be declining in both ocean and atmosphere – probably not the same processes but interlinked, and what those levels in the ocean might mean for our food supply both in terms of the process and the result, there is that 18 million year window issue.
While the issue itself should be alarming in terms of watching the effect we have on our own planet -because yes, too high is as bad as too low and breaking apart the water to access the elemental oxygen is sort of counterproductive, 18 million years on the too low side simply means we as individuals probably will not die as a result of atmospheric O2 deprivation.Maybe. Sort of depends on if that declining process is accelerating and might have some sort of tipping point of its own.
That said, this planet has a projected life span of at least another 500 million years before solar aging threatens to alter the temperature and light levels. Not only might our descendants appreciate being able to breathe, but so might whatever shares the planet with them. Dolphins, whales, hybridized sentient cat people descended from snow leopards.
Although, given we cannot save ourselves from our own environmental irresponsibility, I assume the people being sarcastic about the concern are oblivious to the fact those presupposed sentient beings who do not exist yet might actually be more important to some people than their sarcastic butts. Probably cuter too.
And many ordinary people will believe that’s a terrible new ‘problem’, caused by humans.
I had an Archaeology Professor try to tell me once that we were going to run out of O2 if the Amazon was deforested. If a Humanities faux ‘science-guy’ thinks that, you can imagine what the regular person will swallow, with very little prodding.
A billion years…..
All right,I’ll run the old Goon Show joke again-
“And suddenly (dramatic music)……nothing happened.
But it happened……….very suddenly!”
-The sadly missed Spike Milligan.
I would think that running out of enough CO2 would be the more dangerous proposition. As far as O2 is concerned we are in luck. Next to the city where I live is a virtually limitless deposit of hydrogen hydroxide from which O2 can be extracted by electrolysis. The hydrogen hydroxide is almost in pure form and is in a liquid state that is easy to transport and to deal with. The real problem is what to do with the leftover H2. I would think in less than 500,000 years mankind will be able to develop fusion power plant technology that will run on ordinary hydrogen creating enough electrical energy for the electrolysis and converting the left over hydrogen to helium which will not react to the O2 in the air. The city where I live in is also blessed with mineral ores that are oxygen rich and could provide another source for O2. The problem is essentially solved.
Just reading the graph: 2.8 billion years ago carbon dioxide at 20 times current level, i.e. 8000 to 10000 ppm. Since all our fossil fuels derive from that CO2 we have an upper limit to the quantity of carbon locked up in them. We also have an upper limit to the amount of oxygen that could have come from CO2 by photosynthesis. It falls at least a factor 10 short (oxygen currently at 0.2; CO2 at its peak at 0.02).
Question. How do we know CO2 was so low before 2.4 billion years? Actual measurement or an hypothesis (like: before then all CO2 was requested in carbonates)? And how do we know the Nitrogen content when Ammonia appears missing from the picture.
I am confident that we can invent a technology to extract oxygen from the plentiful aluminum, iron, and copper ores, or from the massive deposits of carbonates. Perhaps we should explore a redox reaction to make the elemental metal and carbon dioxide, and then we can convert the carbon dioxide back into oxygen, maybe by using sunlight. We do have some time to develop such a system.
I feel like I will be missing out on something.
The image of the masked bicyclist is representative of both weapons-grade Stupid and the resultant oxygen-deprivation. Masks have become the modern-day equivalent of a talisman.
From the dim bulbs at the journal Nature Geoscience, according to the above article: “our oxygen-rich atmosphere may only last another billion years”.
Tell you what, get back to me in a million years (0.1% of that timespan) and let me know if that prediction is still on track, OK?
This sort of headline is intended to frighten the uninformed and misinformed, who won’t really pay any attention to the details or the timeline, and will just start screaming about how we need to “do something” before “everybody dies”.
Years back I was being warned there would be too much oxygen in a few hundred million years. After oxygen rises to 35%, of more, spontaneous fires will erupt and we’ll all be incinerated.
Not to worry, the supposed increases in wildfires in Europe, Australia, the Brazilian rain forests, and the western states in America (just to mention of few grabbing recent headlines) are sure to regulate any rises in atmospheric oxygen concentration.
A billion years. Good thing we have electoral term limits.