Independent Journalist & Author
Harvesting A Climate Disaster
Both of the Farm Bills under consideration on Capitol Hill would make American agriculture’s climate problem worse, I argue in this commentary for the New York Times. Federal policy should instead help farmers prepare for climate change by adopting more of the methods of organic agriculture: shunning chemical fertilizers and the vast single crop plantings favored by the current industrial agriculture model and focusing instead on improving the fertility and water retentiveness of soil while diversifying the range of crops being grown. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/opinion/the-farm-bill-should-help-the-planet-not-just-crops.html.
8 Responses to “Harvesting A Climate Disaster”
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Have you reviewed the University of California study indicating that agriculture is a net consumer of greenhouse gasses and has a negative carbon footprint? I believe the study was done at UC Davis, published in 2010 and focused primarily on California agriculture, not sure if the study related to mid west monoculture. I heard the study presented at futurist/policy conference at U C Davis in 2011. Obviously this is not politically correct information so it probaby didn’t get much attention in popular media.
YOu might learn some actual real science before writing such non-scientific editorials.
Fact: More Greenhouse gases do actually absorb more heat energy in the wavelengths that man perceives) BUT that does NOT mean it results in global warming. IT just means that the GHGs move faster and vibrate more and return more heat to all the other compounds in the world. The CO2 etc just have more collisions that result in heat transfer. The ONLY way to cause MORE global warming is if there is MORE HEAT ENERGY COMING IN, AND it is a scientific fact that the amount of energy coming from the sun has been constant if not actually declining since the 1960s. All your editorializing is doing is making food more expensive. and starving more people. It does not result in cooling the planet. You need to look at a larger picture of the heat balance and to realize that man can NOT do anything, except adapt) to alter the balance.
John, you should take up your complaint with the US National Academy of Sciences and its counterparts in every advanced technological country on earth, as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, all of whom take quite a different view from your eccentric interpretation of physics.
I’d like to know what fertilizer you use that contains “nitrous oxide” (laughing gas). I would also like you to write me a chemical equation to explain how in the world any nitrogenous components in fertilizer can be converted biologically to nitrous oxide. Please learn a little science.
Jim Frazee, Sewell, NJ
Your sarcasm is unwarranted, Mr. Frazee. For supporting information on my assertions, please see the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s foremost scientific authority on climate matters, specifically its Fourth Assessment, published in 2007, which in chapter 2, table 2.14, documents the potency of nitrous oxide as a greenhouse gas and its role in agriculture.
No sarcasm intended. Table 2.14 of Chapter 2 in the Fourth Assessment does quantify the lifetime, radiative efficiency and GWP vs. time horizon. But I do not see anywhere in the chapter or table that the source of nitrous oxide is in fertilizer, as you suggest in your original post. Could the table be referring to industrial (non-agriculture) sources of the gas, as it does for the numerous citations for the fluorocarbons and fluorohalocarbons (of obvious industrial source). I stand by my claim that your notation that fertilizer is a source of nitrous oxide pollution is incorrect.
JimF
I stand corrected, with apologies. There is a thermal pathway for the decomposition of ammonium nitrate into nitrous oxide and water. I am not sure how much of a contributor this would be agriculturally, but since such a pathway does exist, it must be mentioned. (NH4NO3 arrow N2O + 2H2O)
JimF
Gary, I would be VERY interested in seeing this study if you can track it down for me. I’m a journalist, I care about facts, not about what is or isn’t supposedly politically correct.