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
Comments
la nina
KNCB Moore
I should like Sven to take the re-cycling of the cool and warm Pacific Ocean currents into account when he thinks about global warming. The naturally cool La Nina is now active in a time of warming. This current changes global weather patterns. The renewable energy
needed to cool/heat the Pacfic " is aproximately equivalent to the output of one million medium-sized 1000 megawatt power plants operatingcontinuously for a year. (Goggle research). The warm El Nino current will follow La Nina in a few years and contribute to global warming. And there is nothing man can do to control these currents. Sven, when the crowd is going one-way and ignores the mysteries of La Nina and El Nino, chances are that they are creating a bubble rather than a complete scientific analysis. More peer review of global arming and some humility is advisable in the current controversy over global
warming.
Be Brave Comrades... KNCB Moore