| This paper constitutes an overview and synthesis concerning atmospheric and oceanic oxygen and related carbon dioxide, particular attention being paid to potential regulation mechanisms on different time scales. The world atmospheric oxygen reserve is remarkably large, so that a lack of oxygen will not easily occur, whether in confined spaces or in major conurbations. On ''short'' scales, measured in hundreds or thousands of years, feedback processes with regard to oxygen regulation, solely based on atmospheric oxygen variations, would have to be so highly sensitive as to be barely conceivable Only oxygen in the oceans can vary between zero and about twice the saturation - a fact which suggests that here, at least potentially, there exist possibilities for... |
