There's another problem facing the industry. It's the flip side of carbon dioxide production, oxygen depletion, and it's been completely overlooked by the greens and the scientific community. 26 billion tons of oxygen are removed every year from the atmosphere by the oxidation of fossil fuels. This is a net loss, with no input from photosynthetic activity due to the world-wide deforestation. This atmospheric oxygen loss is currently being measured by Dr. Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institution in La Jolla.
Because of this oxygen loss, the atmosphere has become thinner. More solar radiation is getting through at higher elevations and higher latitudes, resulting in melting mountain glaciers and melting poles. Ozone is an allotrope of oxygen, so along with the oxygen loss comes and ozone loss that fluctuates with the onset of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Continued fossil fuel oxidations will lead inexorably to expanding ozone holes around the world, making even more tree-huggers upset.
Exacerbating this loss is the worldwide deforestation, thereby removing plant biomass from the biosphere with the concomitant loss of photosynthetic activity, the Earth's only source of oxygen, which makes all motile life possible. We are fooling with Mother Nature in a way that is far more deleterious than carbon dioxide production, and everyone is unaware of it.
Jon F. Freeman
President
SUCRON Inc.
Clinton, La.
