evilgenius wrote:Outcast_Searcher wrote:evilgenius wrote:I consider this deflection to say only that man is not capable of destabilizing the oxygen balance, by using this bar. Think about the concept, though, and imagine how man can change all of those numbers by innovating one thing or another. Plus, we have demonstrated the very real capacity to observe something going wrong and do nothing about it. We could very well watch the numbers go the wrong way and just keep watching them.
Look, it's not that we will, but that we could. What I am really saying is that we need to think about these sorts of things before we act. Otherwise, it sounds a lot like how they wanted to clear the mountains out of the way to build I-70 by using atomic bombs in the fifties. As long as it remained a statement of pride it was ok. As soon as the idea began to be taken seriously, though...
Look, I didn't say it was impossible. I implied that given the numbers:
1). It's highly unlikely.
2). That AGW is in our face and needs to be dealt with ASAP. Vs. spending lots of time and energy worrying about things that aren't close to being proven yet, and given the numbers, look like small order effects.
If plenty of good science and math shows that destabilizing the oxygen balance looks like a serious problem, THEN I'll get much more concerned about it. Just like I did with AGW as the evidence (and my understanding) grew.
I don't see why that's unreasonable, given that we can't possibly BEGIN to seriously address every potential problem we face. Hell, we aren't even very seriously addressing most of the proven and obvious and very serious problems we face.
No, but you say my ilk. Obviously, I've come across to you as some sort of conspiracy theorist or alarmist. That's not what I was doing here.
Here, I was pointing out something that ought to be obvious. There are two different sources you can get your hydrogen from. If you are always getting it from something that is not systemically tied to the source, though, you run the risk of destabilizing the oxygen balance. Yes, it sounds crazy, but so did global warming.
No, it's not something that I think is inevitable. I think that's where you misunderstand me. I'm not saying it will happen. Nor that it is necessarily probable.
I'm not predicting it. I should have been more adamant about saying that. The way I can go on, that's misleading. It's just that it's not all that hard to see the economic pressure to continue into what might be a really bad policy.
If people can make money off of it, they will. And that can drive these sorts of things. Such a practice would increase the amount of water in the world, and decrease the amount of oxygen. Every two hydrogen atoms gotten from nat gas would bind to an oxygen atom, taking it out of the system, unless, later, it too was electrolysized. But that balance relies upon human recognition and endeavor. Electrolysis doesn't take place naturally.
We would be talking about entering a new human managed world. A new sort of management that we would have to get mostly right. We can, and most probably would. I am only saying that we need to think about it or we could just go the way we always have and try out what isn't good for us well before we try out what is. Like global warming, that might not be the best path.
First, when you use electrolysis on water the Oxygen is released to the atmosphere where it is available later for burning the hydrogen back into water vapor as a closed loop cycle.
Second, all hydrocarbon fossil fuels from Methane right up to Anthracite coal is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon along with sulfur, nitrogen and lots of other trace chemical elements. From the day the first ancient blacksmith or metal smelter threw chunks of coal in with his biofuel wood/charcoal/dung that he had been using before that time the carbon and hydrogen gathered from the water and atmosphere of the ancient ecology by the photosynthesizing plants and formed into carbohydrates that over geological time periods were converted into hydrocarbons those long stored carbon and hydrogen molecules had been converted into carbon dioxide and water vapor.
In those times the locking up of ancient hydrogen and carbon into carbohydrates/hydrocarbons for geologic periods caused the oxygen in the ancient atmosphere to be increased. On geological timescales burning those fossil fuels today is technically reducing the free oxygen content by a very small amount in a reversal of that ancient sequestration. However lets think about that for a moment. In the last 250 years more or less humans have increased atmospheric CO2 from about 280 ppmv to about 420 ppmv. That is around a 33% increase in Atmospheric CO2 decreased the atmospheric oxygen content by 0.14%. It is estimated that if all fossil fuels, even the heavy residual oil in the reservoirs and the coal left behind in room and pillar underground mining atmospheric oxygen could be reduced all the way from its current 20.95% all the way down to 17% which is still well within the human survival limits.
The funny thing is we also release a lot of oxygen from things like aluminum smelting reducing bauxite from aluminum oxide to pure metal and the process of converting most other metallic ore materials from oxidized to pure.