Editor:

Wind power, solar heating systems, geothermal heat pumps, photo-voltaics and other renewable choices are the promise of the future — not coal and not inefficient ethanol production.

In his 1990 essay, “Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere and Biosphere,” physicist Freeman Dyson makes a call to arms to begin to measure oxygen depletion: “The Pacific Ocean as a whole is already seriously depleted. It contains 50 percent of the planet’s water, but only about 40 percent of the dissolved oxygen. So long as we are not measuring the rate of depletion year by year, we have no basis for guessing how soon the asphyxiation of parts of the ocean might begin.

“The reservoir of oxygen in the atmosphere is large, but not infinite. It amounts to 1.2 million gigatons. Since eight tons of oxygen are used up for every three tons of carbon burned, and we are burning six gigatons of carbon per year (1990 before the current China), we might expect that the oxygen is being used up at the rate of about 13 parts per million per year. Thirteen parts per million should be measurable.”

“According to a study conducted by scientists from the Scripps Institute, there is less oxygen in the atmosphere today than there used to be. The ongoing study, which accumulated and interpreted data from NOAA monitoring stations all over the world, has been running from 1989 to the present. It monitored both the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the decline in oxygen. The conclusion of that 20-year study is that, as carbon dioxide (produced primarily by burning fossil fuels) accumulates in the atmosphere, available oxygen is decreasing.”

Carbon dioxide seems to be almost the total focus of attention in the climate change model as it exists today. After reviewing the results of this study and talking with Dr. Ralph Keeling (one of the lead scientists on the study), it seemed to me that the consequences of atmospheric oxygen depletion should be included in any discussion of atmospheric change.

Sven Erik Alstrom
Lawrence, Kansas