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this cycle is naturally regulated by the speed at which bacteria can change one compound into another, and by the amount of bacteria available in the soil.
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The dawning of the Industrial Revolution heralded a major change that greatly affected the nitrogen balance. Large-scale burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil released high levels of nitrogen oxides (including nitrous oxide or N2O) as fumes.
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There are two main things that these nitrogen compounds affect: the environment and human health. When nitrous oxide (N2O) reaches the stratosphere it helps destroy the ozone layer, resulting in higher levels of UV radiation and increasing the risk of skin cancer and cataracts. Ironically, when N2O is nearer to the Earth’s surface it can actually make ozone, which can become smog on a still and sunny day.
. . .
But the problems extend further. The overuse of fertilisers on fields and of nitrogen compounds in animal feed leads to nitrogen leaching into streams and rivers.
. . .
Finally, nitrogen oxides contribute to global warming. Although the concentration of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere is considerably lower than that of carbon dioxide, the global warming potential of nitrous oxide is over 300 times greater.
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__________________ “God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players, (ie everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
Gaiman & Prattchet.
One correction, N2O does not participate in tropospheric smog production to any appreciable degree but nitrogen in the form of NOx does.
The impact of terra preta on N2O production would be very interesting to know. I'll see what (if anything) I can find. But not today... Too much on the slate.
I found it far from great. It misleads by selective use of history and science, apparently for instrumental reasons.
For example the use of nitrogen compounds for both agricultural and military purposes is quite ancient and has had large effects on geopolitics. And, they were synthesized from non-fossil fuel stocks by the Birkeland-Eyde process before the Haber-Bosch process was discovered. Haber-Bosch became dominant because methane was cheap, and that may not always be true.
The article falsely implies that the harms caused are curable with a few petty regulations. They are not. The cited regulations are what naive advocates do to comfort themselves and feel virtuous, but have no useful effects on the problems cited as justification for the regulations.
The article takes a tedious "environmental scold" stance, modified slightly to tout technological approaches but still clinging to the tired old regulatory framework. This approach is ineffective as well an intellectually unsatisfying.
The use of nitrates will not only continue, it will increase in future. Production methods will owe more to Birkeland-Eyde than Haber-Bosch, and will be part of a broad technological evolution affecting energy generation and storage as well as agricultural methods. With sufficient clean energy, production of nitrates requires no fossil fuels.
For example they can be made with wind or hydro generated electricity. The Birkeland-Eyde process was originally used by Norsk Hydro as a way to benefit from abundant hydro electricity generated in remote locations not connected to a power grid.
A similar dynamic now exists for hydrogen, for instance using geothermal power in remote locations. Hydrogen and nitrogen are intimately related. It is the hydrogen from methane that is used by Haber-Bosch in ammonia synthesis, and any source of hydrogen can serve as feedstock for such a process. With energy, water and air we can make mineral nitrogen compounds just as bacteria do.
Nitrogen compounds are not inherently harmful, they are the stuff of life. Like water, they can be helpful or harmful depending on amount, timing and initial conditions. As with water we need to become more sophisticated about use in order to reduce costs and mitigate harms. This is relevant for this forum since the condition of soil, which generally tends to repel NO3-, is an initial conditiomn that can be amended to reduce leaching and improve CEC.
An article that told a more correct history and spoke of true problems, opportunities and directions for technological evolution would be better.
Good post! To keep the world going we are going to need every idea from all sides of the enviornmental debate. One idea that I have had in regards to Terra Preta is to use the binding/adsorbtion properties of carbon to hold nutrients until needed by plants via cation exchange. Do you think this would work with nitrogen/nitrogen compounds? I ask because you seem to have some extensive base knowledge about nitrogen compounds and how they are made and used.
One of the intreging properties of Terra Preta soils are their ability to prevent leaching and to some degree microbial outgassing of CH4 and N2O. How they do this is still unknown due to all the variables that are part of Terra Preta but I envision us using Terra Preta as a delivery system to put selected nutrients into the soil and hold them there. Also using charcoal/carbon properties of holding nutrients and increasing microbial activity may cycle nutrients into stable soil orgain matter (humus), which is another way to store nutrients in the soil until needed by plant uptake.
If the early claims that char holds nitrates in micropores with some combination of mechanical and electrostatic forces, and releases it in response to plant root enzyme exudates, are verified by further research then the scenarios you draw are valid.
Char would not only be a delivery mechanism for nutrients, it would capture and hold those that come from all sources, such as rain or mineralization of organic nitrogen by bacteria. Once added to soil it will permanently change soil characteristics for the better.
The results of the study showed that when compared with gasoline and diesel, ethanol and biodisel from corn and soybean rotations reduced greenhouse gas emissions by almost 40 percent, reed canarygrass by 85 percent.
Greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by about 115 percent for switchgrass and hybrid poplar.
Both switchgrass and hybrid poplar offset the largest amounts of fossil fuels reduced emissions compared to other biofuel crops and offset two times as much fossil fuels if they are used for electricity generation via biomass gasification.
Study results showed that nitrogen (N2O) emission resulting from production of the biofuel crops is the largest greenhouse gas source, while displaced fossil is the largest greenhouse gas sink followed by soil carbon sequestration.
__________________ “God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players, (ie everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
Gaiman & Prattchet.
Tim Flannery mentioned this at the IAI Conference.
He said the Arctic sea ice has not even frozen this year (winter) according to Norwegian fly-overs..
He also said the Greenland ice sheet is moving, setting of many earthquakes (Richter 5-5.5)
Quote:
One report noted there was less Arctic sea ice in April than had ever been recorded that month since satellite imagery of the northern ocean began in 1979. Another found that the melting of the Arctic ice cap is proceeding faster than anyone expected.
That second finding -- announced jointly by scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the National Center for Atmospheric Research -- concludes that all the summer Arctic sea ice should disappear "about 30 years" sooner than mainstream climate models earlier predicted.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, widely regarded as the gold standard for such projections, had estimated that summer sea ice in the Arctic probably declined at a rate of 2.5 percent a decade from 1953 to 2006. At that rate, the IPCC said, the summer ice cap would disappear sometime between 2050 and next century.
That estimate reflected the average of 18 separate IPCC climate scenarios, the most pessimistic of which placed the rate of ice shrinkage at 5.4 percent a decade.
But newly available data, "blending early aircraft and ship reports with more recent satellite measurements," show that the September ice actually declined at a rate of about 7.8 percent per decade from 1953 to 2006, the ice data center reported in a press statement.
"Because of this disparity, the shrinking of summertime ice is about 30 years ahead of the climate model projections," said NSIDC scientist and co-author Ted Scambos.
__________________ “God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players, (ie everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
Gaiman & Prattchet.
c. You’ll have to log in to post a topic (like the subject line of an email message) or a comment. If you don’t remember your password you’ll have to check the box to get a new one. The TP site gets hammered by the spammers so we have to use the login feature.
c. You’ll have to log in to post a topic (like the subject line of an email message) or a comment. If you don’t remember your password you’ll have to check the box to get a new one. The TP site gets hammered by the spammers so we have to use the login feature.
A comment (summary?) from Lorenzo
Quote:
Okay, most articles about biochar written by Lehmann, Steiner, Van Zwieten, Hansen, Mingxin Guo, or Woolf, put biochar into the very explicit context of climate change.
It is seen as a strategy to reduce N2O, CH4 and CO2 emissions, to sequester C, to scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere, to reduce mineral fertiliser use or make it more efficient, and to reduce deforestation in the tropics as well as to displace fossil fuels by syngas obtained from pyrolysing biomass.
I mean, can you get any more involved in climate change mitigation?
Last edited by Michaelangelica; 06-08-2008 at 09:21 PM.
The thing I love most about terra preta is that in producing it we can also produce energy. I believe it is a system that can make our future possible.
Astronomical instruments needed to answer crucial questions, such as the search for Earth-like planets or the way the Universe expands, have come a step closer with the first demonstration at the telescope of a new calibration system for precise spectrographs. The method uses a Nobel Prize-winning technology called a 'laser frequency comb', and is published in this week's issue of Science. Read » | 0 comments
Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers. The result is an autonomous helicopter than can perform a complete airshow of complex tricks on its own. Read » | 0 comments
Re: Terra preta- global Warming- Global cooling. 
