Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : World will run out of Oxygen in 12 Years

[web2k6]

I found a short article about a professor who claims the "world will run out of oxygen in 12 years" due to automobiles burning fossil fuels and deforestation.

Now, I'm no expert in science and far from being a professor, so I thought I would ask around to see what the more knowledgeable users of WHT think about this.

My science a little bit rusty, but I think most of the world's oxygen comes from the oceans (~60%), and the rest from plants/trees/etc on land. I also think that the oxygen we breathe in now is very old air, millions of years old.

So if all the plants of the world are dead, and burning of fossil fuels decreases oxygen slightly, we would still have oxygen from the oceans plus the oxygen supply from the hundreds of centuries - no?

My conclusion: professor is a hippie, environmentalist nutjob.

What do you think?

[ezbnc]

Same another fruit ball dooms day believer I cannot believe colleges pay professors like this.

[Georgecooldude]

Eh. I didn't know oxygen came from the ocean...

[FluffyTigger]

The problem is oxygen rate int he atmosphere. Your lung only absorb something like 5% of the content of what's in your lung, so if the % of O2 in the atmosphere goes down then you would start having trouble breathing long before it start diminishing in large quanitites. It's kinda like that feeling of fresh air you get when you're near the ocean or in a forrest, cleaner air and marginall more O2.

Earth is self correcting though, if we start losing any resource, a lot of people in 3rd world countries will died and mother nature will correct itself to fix the problem, and we'll back to normal in a few years

[Jeff - Exceed]

Originally Posted by FluffyTigger

The problem is oxygen rate int he atmosphere. Your lung only absorb something like 5% of the content of what's in your lung, so if the % of O2 in the atmosphere goes down then you would start having trouble breathing long before it start diminishing in large quanitites. It's kinda like that feeling of fresh air you get when you're near the ocean or in a forrest, cleaner air and marginall more O2.

Earth is self correcting though, if we start losing any resource, a lot of people in 3rd world countries will died and mother nature will correct itself to fix the problem, and we'll back to normal in a few years

The body can adjust to low oxygen or high oxygen levels, runners train up in the mountains for this reason.

[FluffyTigger]

That's only at a few thousand feet where the loss is still fairly small. And the correction is the body producing more blood cell to carry additional oxygen, this is assuming you usually have fewer blood cells than your lung's capacity for absorbtion. There's a saturation point where you lung can only absorb so much O2 and it doesn't matter how many red blood cell you have.

[SniperDevil]

Photosynthetic organisms produce a vast amount of oxygen for consumers like us. As long as there are plants, the ocean, and other sources of oxygen, it is doubtful that we would run out of oxygen in thousands of years, let alone twelve. More likely is our running out of fossil fuels, but I doubt even that will happen in 75 years.

[matt2kjones]

Im sure that if this did start to happen (the oxegen levels started to get low) im sure there would be projects lauched years in advance to plant new trees etc to make sure that we never go down to a dangerously low level

But as far as im concerned.... i doubt that is true.... there is a hell of allot of trees, plants, etcc that produce oxegen...... like most stuff in the media.... its just hype that makes people worry about something that isn't really a threat

[wills17]

As Fluffy says, earth balances itself out, no matter what happens it'll fix itself eventually.. It's just one of them things. Although the way of fixing could in some cases be a massive loss of life and therefore better to get into such situations in the first place.

E.g. Global warming melting ice caps, ice caps melt, cooler water flows into seas, parts of world get much colder, some much warmer, people in LEDCs (Less economically developed countries) can't afford such protection from the environment and hence end up dying. This reduces the amount of fossil fuels used, gives forrests, trees etc more chance to grow in now unpopulated areas, CO2 in atmosphere drop again and we're back to where we started..

[Veus]

who claims the "world will run out of oxygen in 12 years"

One word...bollocks...

[Koopa]

If this really were the case, it wouldn't just be one guy claiming it

[JHServers]

We will not run out of oxygen. Deforestation can be reversed. America for example has actually had a GROWING number of acres in forest land due to the profitability of cutting sections of forest, then replanting and going to another section until the new section is ready again.

[HostPing]

The thread title made me laugh, even if there were no plants photosynthesising we would still have plentiful oxygen for many many years!

[trau]

World will run out of Oxygen in 12 Years

Well then that's good news, now we don't have to worry about global warming, ozone holes, rainforest destruction, fishery depletion, flu pandemics, asteroid collisions, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. ...

[hekwu]

Originally Posted by Koopa

If this really were the case, it wouldn't just be one guy claiming it

You did not know? It is a conspiracy. The world's leaders are keeping this data from us until they figure out what to do!

I believe this guy! We are all going to die in 12 years. Crap... and no one else believes... to crazy to be true, but this is true... listen to your heart... don't believe these people when they say we have enough.... we don't. Sad part is we don't have anyplace to hide.

Ok, not really... that guy is full of it....