The Science Of Oxygen by Karl Loren
The air we breathe is more or less 20 percent oxygen and 80 percent nitrogen. There are very tiny traces of other elements, but less than one percent total. The components of that "less than 1%" are, however, vital to understand and vital for our health. These "other" components are so tiny that instead of listing them in "percentage" terms, they are usually referred to as "ppm," or "parts per million." If you have one million parts of air, and ONE of those parts is, for instance, carbon dioxide, then you could say that carbon dioxide is "1 ppm." It would probably be confusing to say 0.0001%. Many people wouldn't even know how to speak that term, vocally.
Carbon Dioxide happens to be extremely important to life on the planet -- since no plant could grow without taking carbon dioxide IN. The plants, in turn, "breathe out" oxygen. That is the cycle of life. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. Animals, and man, breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. But the amount of carbon dioxide in the "air" is tiny -- measured in "parts per million." The picture on the left is a measuring device for carbon dioxide, used in farming applications. It is a simple piece of science that plants use carbon dioxide rather like humans use oxygen. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide, and cannot grow without it -- also, they generally prosper when they have MORE carbon dioxide, just as humans prosper when the get "extra" oxygen." Click on the picture to jump to a full description of this measuring device. How many parts per million are involved? Well, 170 PPM of carbon dioxide was, for thousands of years, plenty to keep the cycle of life going on the planet -- there was enough carbon dioxide in the air to keep millions of square miles of green stuff growing. The amount of carbon dioxide has now increased to more than 300 PPM! That is considered an astounding increase by weather scientists -- and it is THIS number which gives rise to tremendous political disputes, using phrases such as "global warming" and motivating "Green Parties" around the planet to advocate cutting back on the use of energy, often appearing to suggest we all revert to some primitive and presumably happy life style. The data presented above is the subject of an electronic study aide -- this is a free service from this web site. Click on the image to the left and you can jump to the Vibrant Life Electronic Study Aide specifically to a Study Aide on the material presented above.
In the early centuries, if the carbon dioxide would increase for any reason, the plants went wild with joy, ate it all up, and grew fast and big. That might happen because some year, or period of years might have warm, good growing weather, while other years had poor growing conditions. Currently, however, with the CO2 amount increasing dramatically, there was a puzzle -- scientists have been puzzled about this. There has been an increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and normally we would expect the plant life to flourish. This turns out STILL to be true in simple "controlled situations:"
Note that "within" a greenhouse there is undoubtedly soil nutrients that are often missing from soil "out in the open." The amount of carbon dioxide in the air around the planet, generally, has been increasing steadily over a period of many years. This should bring about a lush and rapid growth of plants. It doesn't! Why? The truth about this is not "politically correct." The real reason for the lack of use of this rich resource is lack of proper minerals in the soil, and absence of a special "soil organism" that helps convert minerals (rocks) into a form that the roots of plants can absorb. These organisms used to abound in nature, but the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and over-use of the land has so depleted the soil of minerals, particularly trace minerals, that our food supply is not only, itself, devoid of many of these health-giving minerals, but the plants just don't grow. Plants which are starved for minerals are much more prone to plant diseases, insect damage and even fire. This is not a new discovery by Karl Loren, but the news is so outside the main stream of accepted reality that few people have heard this news.
There have been very dramatic changes in the composition of the very air we breathe over these many years. It was not always the way it is now! How would you discover whether or not there was more, or less, oxygen in the air in some distant past? Or, more or less carbon dioxide? Well, there are ice-bergs, and layers of ice in the polar areas where the "dating" technique suggests that the ice is more than 400,000 years old. When that ice was formed it was common for bubbles of air to get captured in some space -- a space that was then covered over, like a door closing. That space may then have been buried in many thousands of feet of ice -- so that it was preserved for all these long years. Now, it would not be difficult to drill down to the ice that was created 400,000 years ago, take a sample, carefully open up that bubble of captured air and measure the amount of oxygen or other tiny components in THAT air! Fascinating. This has been done.
How much has the air changed, based on these very scientific measurements?
I could go on, and quote dozens or even hundreds of studies. Usually these studies are written in such gobbly-gook language that you wouldn't understand them. But, with a bit of effort you can come to the conclusion that while the percentage of oxygen in the air we breathe today compared to what man was breathing some hundreds of years ago is quite steady. However, the amount of carbon dioxide is clearly changing -- dramatically. This change in CO2 has spawned what is almost entirely a "political" debate -- since if the CO2 buildup is CAUSED by burning of fossil fuels, AND is harmful, then we should, possibly, reduce use of fossil fuels -- the very political claim made by numerous "green parties." If, as I suggest is true, the increase in CO2 is a problem relating to the depletion of minerals in the soil, then the "solution" is very different. There are some fairly reasonable pieces of research done on this subject, including the following:
I would like to "leave" the subject of how the atmosphere of our planet is being polluted by carbon dioxide. The change is undeniable. The effects are not nearly so well known. I suggest to you that when the carbon dioxide in the air INCREASES, it is not healthy for your body, and that you suffer, then, from the equivalent of a decrease in OXYGEN in the air you breathe. The percentage of oxygen may be about the same, but you need MORE oxygen when you are breathing in a much larger amount of carbon dioxide. To repeat the true science, man "breathes out" carbon dioxide and "breathes in" oxygen. If his "breathing in" process includes roughly double the amount of carbon dioxide as our ancestors (or only 200 years ago) did, that could explain a great deal of the change in degenerative diseases that exist now, in great abundance compared to their almost complete non-existence 200 years ago. Whether YOU, or "WE" can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air we breathe is a good question, but mostly it is a question for nations and the planet. If there is a way that you can handle this shortage of "good air" on a personal level, that should be of interest. That is what this web site is all about! Where does the oxygen come from -- and how have these sources failed to keep up the supply of oxygen in our air? If you look back at the origin of oxygen, on planet earth, there is not much agreement:
Fortunately, for today's health problems, we don't have to go back to the ancient history of earth for useful data. We can look at the earth right now, and see where the oxygen comes from.
The Science Of Oxygen certainly needs to include a large coverage of the subject of the atmosphere.
The Science Of Oxygen gets into some deep subjects when you really want to understand WHY Oxygen is so vital, and yet, in other forms, so deadly. That area of study actually involves understanding some atomic physics. I've been studying atomic physics for 20 years -- it has not easy since I had no formal school training. But, it IS the type of research I do best -- relying on my IQ and curiosity to take me into various subjects, and my communication skills to understand the student so well that my courses are successful in their teaching mission. Click on the image to go to my special web site where all my electronic courses are administered. This course is free and you can "test the waters." See how much you can learn with ease.
This article originally published at: http://www.oxygentimerelease.com/A/ScienceOxygen/index.htm |