[mirimir]

The paper that you cite is talking about small changes.

> Under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) RCP8.5 scenario, approximately 100Gt (gigatonnes) of O2 would be removed from the atmosphere per year until 2100, and the O2 concentration will decrease from its current level of 20.946% to 20.825%.

    2018  209460 ppm
    2100  208250 ppm

That's 15 ppm per year.

From Stolper et al. (2016) A Pleistocene ice core record of atmospheric O2 concentrations:[0]

> We present a record of Po2 reconstructed using O2/N2 ratios from ancient air trapped in ice. This record indicates that Po2 declined by 7 per mil (0.7%) over the past 800,000 years, requiring that O2 sinks were ~2% larger than sources.

That's 7000 ppm decrease over 800000 years, or 0.009 ppm per year. And so yes, atmospheric oxygen concentration is dropping lots faster now. But TFA's point that it's slow, and regulated by long-term processes, is still valid.

0) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6306/1427

[strainer]

So that's where he is getting the context for his rant >>

"So, in all practical terms, the net contribution of the Amazon ECOSYSTEM (not just the plants alone) to the world's oxygen is effectively zero."

Practically, the reason why we have oxygen in the atmosphere is plant photosynthesis over long terms. We can quibble over the net annual product of every forest and ecosystem as he has - but over geological timeframes, the plant life they contain is the reason we have any oxygen to breath. And if the amazon currently amounts to about 20% of the plant life on earth now, its not wrong to teach that it is doing 20% of the oxygen maintaining.

The fact that long term maintenance is obscured by shorter term dynamics including our modern industrial activity, does not make a lie of the understanding and respect that forests are lungs of the planet.

[eveningcoffee]

I am lately thinking that we are assigning too less value to this fact. We all need oxygen and we should have enough forests to produce it and this means that we should globally subsidize forest keeping. It is not a single country problem. It is a global problem.

[nearbuy]

1. The article explained this isn't true. Carbon dioxide is a problem. Oxygen depletion is not. Burning enough forests to decrease atmospheric oxygen by just 1% would increase CO2 by 5000%. We'd be dead long before we ran out of oxygen.

2. I'm not sure what you have in mind for "short term" vs "long term", but oxygen levels only change significantly over hundreds of millions of years.

3. Just like a stable sized forest doesn't produce any significant net oxygen, humans don't overall use up oxygen from breathing. The plants you eat (or if you're eating meat, the plants your food ate) released oxygen into the air when forming the carbohydrates and fats you eat. Your body then recombines these with an equal amount of oxygen to produce energy.

[eveningcoffee]

Of course excess CO2 is greater problem than lack of oxygen but these things are in 1 to 1 correlation - you need oxygen to burn carbon. The more you burn carbon the more oxygen you join from the environment. To get the same oxygen back you need to breakup all the carbon you burnt.

If you destroy the forest then you will reduce the capacity to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere and produce oxygen or do you disagree with this?

[nearbuy]

Then why mention oxygen? It's irrelevant. It's like advocating that people should only shoot people with non-lead bullets so the victims don't get lead poisoning.

> If you destroy the forest then you will reduce the capacity to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere and produce oxygen or do you disagree with this?

The linked article explains this isn't true. The rainforest is in equilibrium. It doesn't remove CO2 overall. It's a carbon stockpile.

If you were to burn the forest, it would release the stockpiled carbon into the atmosphere as CO2.

[shkkmo]

> over geological timeframes, the plant life they contain is the reason we have any oxygen to breath

About 1/2 of the oxygen produced is produced by Phytoplankton, which are not plants (though they are similar).

> And if the amazon currently amounts to about 20% of the plant life on earth now

The amazon accounts 16% of the photosynthesis on land.

> its not wrong to teach that it is doing 20% of the oxygen maintaining.

It is wrong. If you want to provide a nice round, reasonably accurate number you should use 10%.

> does not make a lie of the understanding and respect that forests are lungs of the planet.

Forests are important and and a significant part of the respiration of them planet, but they are less important than our oceans. Our oceans are the true lungs of the planet (edit: and they are not in great shape, atmospheric oxygen may not be an issue, but oxygenation of the ocean is more variable).

[mirimir]

Sure. But long term, the Sahara may green, and "replace" the Amazon. At this point, I'd worry more about the oceans.

[strainer]

Burning the amazon down is something to worry about. Not afforesting widely and extracting timber from the amazon ecologically so it sequesters carbon and supplies materials replacing demand for carbon intense alternatives - is tragedy.

The advice that amazons contribution is "zero", hedged under this safety-net word "effectively" is false to the understanding of geophysics and natural history. I hope the professor will clarify his language after consideration.

[mirimir]

I'm not arguing that it's not something to worry about. It certainly is something to be worrying about. But so are the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, which are arguably even more threatened.

But we should be worried about it because of the impact on global biodiversity. Not because we'll be running out of oxygen. Having ~20% oxygen in the atmosphere reflects a long-term equilibrium of biologic and non-biologic processes.

If advocates focus on the oxygen issue, adversaries can easily point to negligible changes, and argue that there's nothing to worry about.

And, as I said, to the extent that oxygen is an issue, we ought to worry even more about the oceans. They are by far the major oxygen source, and arguably more vulnerable to catastrophic collapse.