The short answer is ‘NO’ it doesn’t.
It doesn’t mention the fact that combusting fossil fuels requires the supply of Oxygen (O2) which it gets from our atmosphere. The carbon in the fossil fuel combines with O2 and becomes CO2 (carbon dioxide). The hydrogen (H) in the fossil fuel combines with O2 and becomes H2O (water). So, none of the O2 consumed in these reactions is available for sustaining animal life on this planet.
And, to make it worse. In the normally accepted O2 cycle, animal life takes in O2 and breathes out CO2. Plant life takes in CO2 and breathes out O2. So there is a sort of balance. BUT mankind is reducing plant life at an alarming rate with de-forestation. In doing this we are removing one of the processes that helps reverse the effect. Like the comments on heat in other pages of this site, I believe that the CO2 cycle is really much more complex than stated here and involves many more factors.
As with the other compounds and cycles, this O2 extraction is a complex situation. For example, with reference to Earth’s Atmospheric Oxygen Levels Continue Long Slide we see that the O2 concentration in the atmosphere has not appreciably dropped in the last 800,000 years. But, like the water vapour issue which has been camouflaged for some decades and has not ‘shown its hand’ until more recently (i.e. the dramatic weather pattern changes), the consumption of O2 is a factor capable of disrupting the earth’s stability which was not there until man started burning fossil fuels in enormous quantities. As per the article about the O2 concentration – we are not able to adequately explain why this large and continued consumption does not show. Maybe there is a global explosion of the O2 generating marine algae which counters the loss of O2 due to combustion – and if so, what knock on effects will this have? (Ref: The Origin of Oxygen in Earth’s Atmosphere) Maybe there is some other factor allowing the O2 concentration to be maintained. Until we know what all the processes are we must stop consuming the O2 – i.e. stop fossil fuel consumption. Or we run the risk of facing some unspecified change in nature that we don’t even know if it can be countered or reversed. Why should we keep removing such an important compound as O2? There will be a change in nature because of it.
AN ENVIRONMENT UNDER SIEGE 