Nitrogen fertilizer is bad stuff — and not just because it could blow up your town

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/climate-energy/nitrogen-fertilizer-is-bad-stuff-and-not-just-because-it-could-blow-up-your-town/

?w=470&h=313

Officials in Texas continue to investigate the cause of the explosion last week at West Fertilizer that killed 15 people and injured 200. The explosion, which could be felt up to 50 miles away, obliterated the facility and destroyed houses. It was fueled by a massive stockpile of nitrogen fertilizer — up to 270 tons of ammonium nitrate, a solid fertilizer that comes in the form of a powder or pellets, and over 50,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia gas.

But while the explosion last week was spectacular and tragic, the lives lost there and the pain the community of West, Texas, is suffering offer a window into a much larger battle concerning the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers on American farmland.

In 1909, when German chemist Fritz Haber demonstrated a process that synthesized ammonia, the main component in what was to be known as synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, it was considered a miracle. He pulled the stuff from the air, no less! He and another German scientist, Carl Bosch, who figured out how to produce ammonia at an industrial scale, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

In the century since, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has displaced the traditional techniques farmers used to increase soil fertility like cover cropping and livestock manure. (Tom Philpott at Mother Jones has an in-depth look at the history of nitrogen fertilizer’s development and use.) Today, U.S. farmers apply over 11 million tons of nitrogen fertilizers to farm fields every year, mostly in the form of ammonium nitrate. The widespread use of the substance is considered part of the so-called Green Revolution, which radically increased the amount food we could grow.

[bloomington-lib]

1. The bad news can be overwhelming sometimes

[wtmusic]

2. It takes first-world blinders to see nitrogen fixation (Haber process) as anything but a miracle.

It's responsible for feeding 1/3 of the world and has significantly reduced world hunger, as a percentage of population.



Most of the world's agriculture happens on stony, barren fields without access to livestock manure (take a look at some of the farmers' comments to Philpott on Mother Jones).

[NickB79]

4. It is what made it possible to grow our population to 7+ billion

Which I and many others here don't consider a miracle at all, but a slow-moving disaster on a global scale.

[wtmusic]

5. Actually sex is what made it possible.

IMO, starvation as a tool for population control is another first-world-with-blinders-type outlook.

[NickB79]

7. So how have the other population controls worked out?

Oh, that's right, they haven't, at all. We MIGHT level off at 8-10 billion people by 2050, if the current demographic predictions are correct (and that's making a shit-ton of bad assumptions about reliable food and fuel supplies in the face of fossil declines and global warming), but by then we'll have been in overshoot for so long and depleted the planet's natural resources so completely, that the crash will be mind-boggling.

I agree that it sucks, but food supply constraints are the only consistently reliable way any organism's population has been constrained for long periods of time. We like to imagine humans are different than other species on this planet because we can think and reason, but so far we haven't shown that to be true.

[wtmusic]

9. Wrong.

"The most significant population control system is China's one-child policy, in which, with various exceptions, having more than one child is discouraged. Unauthorized births are punished by fines, although there have also been allegations of illegal forced abortions and forced sterilization.

The Chinese government introduced the policy in 1978 to alleviate the social and environmental problems of China. According to government officials, the policy has helped prevent 400 million births."

Your Malthusian idea of starving people to limit population, in practice, has the opposite effect:

"It is generally accepted that overpopulation is aggravated by poverty and gender inequality with consequent unavailability, and lack of knowledge, of contraception."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_control

Malthus had some very influential ideas, which many seem to consider common sense. Problem is, they were essays based on his own hypotheses with zero data and they were, well, wrong.

[NickB79]

10. In 1978, China had 950 million people

Today, they have 1.35 BILLION: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China

So, even with the most draconian government-enforced population controls ever implemented by a society that I have ever read of, their population grew by 400 million people in 40 years. Their policies only slowed the growth rate, rather than stabilizing it.

On the other hand, global human populations remained fairly stable for long periods of time when food supplies, war and disease were the primary limiting factors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#History

[wtmusic]

11. The effect of China's program was one out of every two births was prevented.

By any measure, that's wildly successful.

"It is well known that as incomes rise, fertility falls, due largely to the increased opportunity cost of women’s time. The causality between fertility and growth runs in both directions. China’s rapid economic growth since about 1980 has also been attributed in part to its lower fertility rate."

http://acaneretuedutr.weebly.com/uploads/9/0/1/5/.../todaro_case_study_6.pdf

Thanks for the link, but you can provide quotes that justify your conclusions. I'm not going to hunt for them in your references - that's your job.

[NickB79]

12. Yes, it has been wildly successful

It's just fallen far, far short of what we need at this point to save our asses from the fire we're building around us as we burn our way through a planet's worth of natural resources.

I would note that the ONLY time that China's population has actually declined in the past century was due to the Great Chinese Famine, when starvation swept the nation: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/chinas-great-shame.html?_r=0

An analogy would be to point out that renewable energy growth has been wildly successful over the past decade, but CO2 levels still continue to climb and the planet still continues to warm up. Too little, too late.

[wtmusic]

13. You would be willing to let members of your family starve to support this goal

or it would just be members of other people's families?

[NickB79]

14. An appeal to emotion fallacy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion

What I'm willing or not willing to do to keep my own family alive doesn't change the fact that we've blown through sustainable population limits on this planet, and are now reaping the ecological consequences of it.

[wtmusic]

15. No, it isn't.

"I agree that it sucks, but food supply constraints are the only consistently reliable way any organism's population has been constrained for long periods of time."

You're very gung ho about letting starvation save the planet unless it's your loved ones who have to do the starving. No fallacy, just hypocrisy.

[pscot]

16. That's unfair

Acknowleding the reality of a situation is not the same as advocacy.

[wtmusic]

18. Let's ask Nick.

Either he supports feeding people who are hungry - in which case nitrogen fixation is a miracle - or he doesn't. Not a lot of room in between.

Which begs the question - who deserves to eat? And since we're writing off 30 million people/year, should we not at least euthanize them on humanitarian grounds?

Let's cut to the chase.

[pscot]

19. The thing is, Supply constraints may not be negotiable

In a warming world, with uncertain weather, and entrenched interests, widespread food scarcity becomes inceasingly probable. We're over grazing. Nobody's rooting for famine. At some level it's a moral issue, but as a phenomenon, it's not constrained by morality.

[CreekDog]

8. so you're saying there is no environmental damage from nitrogen pollution?

[wet.hen88]

3. nitrogen is not "green"

Whoever thought the whole nitrogen thing up was in it for the money. The run-offs great for algae bloom. Excess nitrogen distorts plants...they grow quickly! and weakly. Having been in the business of plant cultivation and maintenance, I see this even on a small scale. You can read many articles about farming organic produce in the correct way, but these folks have a hard time paying their bills. Even co-op extension agents are trying to teach traditional renewable farming. Try to convince Big AG? No way! and we eat what they grow...what else is there?

[roody]

6. Meanwhile we send all our urine down the drain. eom

[ConcernedCanuk]

21. I get it.

.
.
.

Not wanting to dive into the unknown world of store-bought fertilizers, I educated myself on many articles regarding natural fertilizers.

Heck, farmers have known for millenniums the benefits of urine in crop growing,

though somehow the "smart" humans mind closed unless it was cattle urine and dung mixed with straw . . .

HUMANURE - Google it.

Water-wise? - a 20% mixture of urine with water is beneficial.

Want proof?

I got my own personal experience by doing just that.

Visit my thread from years ago . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x10250

Only store bought "fertilizer" was the potting soil to transplant the seedlings into larger biodegradable pots.

CC

[Yo_Mama]

17. Unless you like starvation, it's wonderful stuff n/t

[wet.hen88]

20. national geographic article

Latest issue of National Geographic highlights the good bad and ugly about nitrogen fertilizer...excellent...check it out.