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The Earth's atmosphere has gone through a number of changes in temperature and composition over the 4.5 billion years it has been around.

From our point of view, the important change occurred when it became breathable by us (or other animals). That change almost killed everything else alive at the time since oxygen was poisonous to the first life forms on Earth.

About 3 or 4 billion years ago, a bacteria-like life form discovered photosynthesis and gave off oxygen as a poisonous waste.

This photosynthetic prokaryotic organisms that emitted O2 as a waste a precursor to what we now call blue-green alga. After more than a billion years of these bacteria-like things making oxygen, a life form evolved that was able to breath it. Soon after that, we arrived.

Now that humans are hear, there are more temperature and chemistry changes to the atmosphere due to chemical we create that become pollutants and we are working on doubling the concentration of CO2 as a waste gas from burning coal and oil.

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