[BwanaNdege]

Back when I was floating around with the “Gator Navy” (amphibious assault ships for the Marines), we’d occasionally have ‘Abandon Ship Drills’. Sometime during the drill they would announce that “The nearest friendly land bears 230 degrees, 375 miles.” (’how long can you tread water?’)

Useless information like that made you realize how really, really BIG the oceans are!

“Fragile” - seriously?

The surface area of the Earth is slightly less than 200 million square miles. If you count the atmosphere up to 2 miles (10,560’) as easily breathable, that gives you about 400 million cubic miles of ‘fragile atmosphere’.

That works out to be 7,359,897,600 cubic feet of atmosphere for every person on Earth if we assume 8 Billion people.

Take care of the air & water & soil? Sure! But ‘fragile’?

Really?!?

[Steve_Seattle]

"Useless information like that made you realize how really, really BIG the oceans are!"

There's a globe of the world at my mother's house, and while looking at the globe I've had the same thought, usually with regards to CO2. I think, there are enormous areas of the earth - the oceans and huge areas of uninhabited or sparsely populated land - where there is virtually NO human CO2 input into the atmosphere.