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 | This page in a nutshell: All the oxygen we breathe, and that other animals breathe, the oxygen burned by wildfires and used up by industrial processes, is daily replaced by trees, bushes and algae. And this so that the total amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere stays at about 21%. Who or what controls this? More evidence for God? or some kind of long-lived corporeal being(s)? maybe even a highly advanced form of artificial intelligence? by "Mother Nature"? How on Earth is this regulated??? |
In the atmosphere of Earth, dry air contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.[Note 1] Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level, and 0.4% over the entire atmosphere. The oxygen we breathe is thanks mostly to the green algae and the blue-green algae in our oceans, which provide about 70% of the free oxygen produced on Earth, and the rest, or about 30% of the oxygen produced, comes to us from trees and other land plants.
We need to look into the care of these awesome, amazing plants! Many of them are pollenizers, as well, which means they are the basis of most of the food we eat. What if something came along, some sort of virus or other, that is lethal to these plants – what if they were wiped out? Where would that leave us? The air we breathe would become very thin as oxygen levels dropped. This is not meant to alarm you, because as far as is known there is no immediate and major threat to our air givers. I still must ask the "what if" question, though, because if we lose the green and blue-green algae, we're toast.
One interesting thing about the oxygen in the air we breathe is that the level is balanced, perfectly balanced. When you think about that, consider the billions and billions of living things that consume oxygen each and every day, then think about the many, many living things that make and emit oxygen everyday. The amount of oxygen made and emitted into the atmosphere everyday exactly matches the amount of oxygen consumed everyday. Exactly. The 20.95% of oxygen in the air does not change, does not waver. The creation vs. consumption of oxygen is balanced.
Our world consumes a lot of oxygen! If my math is correct, at present it's about 100,000 tons of oxygen per minute and slowly rising. Most of the oxygen is consumed by the combustion of fossil fuels and industrial activities (1st place), with smaller amounts consumed by wildfires (2nd place) and animal respiration (3rd place). With all that, our precious plants are able to produce just enough oxygen to maintain the 20.95% figure. So one must ask, "How is that figure regulated? Who regulates it?" It would take an advanced technology to ensure that plants produce the same amount of oxygen as is globally consumed.
I've seen so little written about this "natural" phenomenon. Don't you wonder how it's possible for there to be "just enough" oxygen manufactured as there is oxygen consumed? This is a coincidence of magnitude ∞ ! This is one strong piece of evidence for a warden in charge of this Earthly prison we inhabit.
- ^ Cox, Arthur N., ed. (2000), Allen's Astrophysical Quantities (Fourth ed.), AIP Press, pp. 258–259, ISBN 0-387-98746-0, which rounds N2 and O2 to four significant digits without affecting the total because 0.004% was removed from N2 and added to O2. It includes 20 constituents.
- ^ Haynes, H. M., ed. (2016–2017), CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (97th ed.), CRC Press, p. 14-3, ISBN 978-1-4987-5428-6, which cites Allen's Astrophysical Quantities but includes only ten of its largest constituents.
- ^ "Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide", Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, NOAA, 2019, retrieved 2019-05-31
- ^ "Trends in Atmospheric Methane", Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, NOAA, 2019, retrieved 2019-05-31
- ^ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1976), U.S. Standard Atmosphere, 1976 (PDF), p. 3
- ^ Allen, C. W. (1976), Astrophysical Quantities (Third ed.), Athlone Press, p. 119, ISBN 0-485-11150-0
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