Is there a chance we may run out of oxygen?

Question

I know that breathable air is made up with around 20% oxygen. I also know that plants on land and in the ocean also produce oxygen. When the world is in balance there is enough oxygen produced to make up for the oxygen used and I am sure there are other oxygen producing processes I'm not familiar with.

But the world seems to be falling out of balance. The rain forests are disappearing, the oceans are becoming more polluted and forest fires are seem to be more frequent. I have not seen any numbers on this, but is there a chance our consumption of oxygen will exceed the planets ability to produce?

? · Accepted Answer

Well... this has actually happened.

In the Devonian period, oxygen was something like 30% of the atmosphere. That's why the insects  could grow so huge; the higher oxygen content allowed their open circulatory systems to grow that large. But there were ecological changes, oxygen levels dropped, and those megabugs went extinct.

So, it's not like there's a magic level, and if O2 concentration falls below that, everything will die. The lower the 02 concentration gets, the smaller your animals are, though.

So, even if there were a case where O2 concentration fell to like 5% or something like that, lethally low for humans, it's not like all life would end. It would merely create different conditions for optimization.

Besides, considering the algal blooms in the ocean and whatever, this isn't even that likely a doomsday scenario.

Is there a chance we may run out of oxygen?

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