Originally posted by sonhouse I guess that goes to show the efficiency of biological means of generating energy, eh.
No, it tells us nothing about the efficiency of biological energy generation.
If I am not mistaken most oxygen is produced by phytoplankton in the oceans. The change to an oxygen rich atmosphere occurred billions of years ago and I don't know how many millions of years it took.
Keep in mind also that most of the carbon we burn is coal or oil which are fossilised plants from millions of years ago. They were both produced by taking carbon out of the atmosphere and leaving the oxygen. But they had billions of year to do it, we have gone through a significant amount of both resources in just 100 years or so.
Another very big source of CO2 is the forests and soils around the world which we have changed through farming and burning. We could actually reverse global warming by changing how we farm.
Originally posted by twhitehead No, it tells us nothing about the efficiency of biological energy generation.
If I am not mistaken most oxygen is produced by phytoplankton in the oceans. The change to an oxygen rich atmosphere occurred billions of years ago and I don't know how many millions of years it took.
Keep in mind also that most of the carbon we burn is coal or oil which a ...[text shortened]... d through farming and burning. We could actually reverse global warming by changing how we farm.