[HN Gopher] Nitrogen fertilizer shortage threatens to cut global...
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Nitrogen fertilizer shortage threatens to cut global crop yields -
CF Industries
Author : mensetmanusman
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-11-06 13:09 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| jtdev wrote:
| The climate change lunatics are accidentally engineering a mass
| famine event.
| coffeemig wrote:
| Perhaps not. Maxerickson pointed out production could be
| shifted away from meat to legumes in the event of serious
| shortages. Seems right in line with climate goals.
| jtdev wrote:
| Good luck growing legumes on the acreage currently used for
| beef production... you can hardly walk much less tractor
| incredible expanses of this land. Beef cattle very
| efficiently convert the grasses on these lands into healthy,
| nutritious food for humans.
|
| It's terrifying to realize how many of the people trying to
| influence food production have little if any practical
| knowledge of how farming actually works. People are going to
| starve to death en mass if your ilk have your way.
| coffeemig wrote:
| >your ilk
|
| I didn't say I was excited about it. But, the way things
| have been going lately, it wouldn't be a surprise.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Something like 3/4 of the world's soya production goes into
| animal feed and plenty of it into cattle feed
| woodruffw wrote:
| Does any country in the developed world produce any
| significant share of its beef from grassland grazing? The
| US certainly doesn't.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Do you have any data for this? The only source[0] I have
| been able to find easily with numbers says about 30% of
| beef is non-factory farmed.
|
| For every other meat type, it's overwhelmingly factory
| farmed (98%+).
|
| 0: https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-
| estima...
| [deleted]
| underscore_ku wrote:
| climate change itself is a mass famine event...
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I wonder if turning natural gas into fertilizer actually has a
| net decrease in CO2 from helping plants consume CO2?
| goda90 wrote:
| It's still introducing trapped carbon from underground back
| into the atmosphere. And most plants we fertilize are very
| quickly converted back into CO2 from being eaten by
| animals(including ourselves).
| h2odragon wrote:
| Let's say someone who was able, and able to keep it quiet, was
| ordering the production of large amounts of new explosives...
| would that make a noticeable dent in the raw nitrates markets?
| margalabargala wrote:
| China and Russia are both reducing the amount of nitrate they
| export to address worries over food insecurity.
|
| If what you suggest were happening, it would not be noticeable
| one way or the other given the effects of the above.
| JamisonM wrote:
| It would be an absolutely negligible quantity compared to
| agricultural use.
|
| There is nothing mysterious going on here, natural gas ramped
| down and is ramping up too late to meet the demand and as it is
| challenging to store it is very vulnerable to
| production/consumption mismatches.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| Most crops are drowning in nitrogen and lacking in other trace
| nutrients. There is an attitude about soil health that you can
| just drown the plants in the fundamentals and they'll thrive, but
| soil science is advancing rapidly and the state of the art in
| soil testing is changing dramatically.
|
| Check out this episode of Asymmetry with Ian Hunter to get a
| sense of what's happening at the cutting edge of agroecology:
| https://overcast.fm/+Ld7nKIGYo
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| Weird time to impose import tariffs then. https://gro-
| intelligence.com/insights/articles/us-corn-growe...
|
| What exactly is going on, predictable rise of prices after
| imposing tariffs or the actual shortage?
| maxerickson wrote:
| If the figures in https://www.farmprogress.com/figuring-corn-
| fertilizer-costs are still reasonable, current prices would put
| corn fertilization costs at about $120 an acre.
|
| With 200 bushels per acre and corn futures at about $5, it's a
| noticeable percentage of the price of corn, but at least it isn't
| apocalyptic.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I hope it is apocalyptic. We shouldn't be growing so much poor
| quality subsidies. GMO corn, soybeans, and wheat are extremely
| poor quality, overproduced, bad for health and artificially
| abundant, so they destroy a lot of the crops, and sell it
| overseas to prevent the market from crashing due to supply as
| it naturally would. They did this with milk so farmers would
| make more money if they resold milk on the market. The results
| of subsidies is extremely detrimental to the environment.
|
| https://time.com/4530659/farmers-dump-milk-glut-surplus/
|
| >American farmers have purposefully poured out more than 43
| million gallons' worth of milk due to an excessively abundant
| supply of the dairy product in the county.
| ineedasername wrote:
| What makes GMO crops bad for health?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| GMOs are not interently bad, but the US crops are less
| nutritionally dense and have worst effects on health.
| They're bred to be hardy and easy to transport, not for
| taste, nutrition or quality, mostly just volume and
| resistance to disease and pesticides.
| redisman wrote:
| Won't the non GMO crops be selectively bred for the same
| qualities?
|
| BigAgri is never going to sell their farms back to the
| families and start selling Organic Heirlooom Beets to the
| factory farms for feed. GMO is just a diversion
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| >> but at least it isn't apocalyptic.
|
| Maybe not to us in the first world, but that absolutely will
| have global ramifications and could cause further upheaval
| elsewhere.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Billionaire (AU$27B+) and former CEO of Fortescue Metals Groups
| Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest was recently in the news here in
| Australia with plants to build ammonia plants here in Tasmania
| and Queensland.
|
| Tasmania has a lot of hydro electricity, but Hydro Tasmania
| claimed not to have any surplus supply to power the proposed
| plant because it's all presently being used by mineral processors
| Nyrstar and Temco.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-13/what-would-twiggy-for...
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-11/queensland-hydrogen-t...
| nikkinana wrote:
| Glad Bill Gates owns all the farmland now.
| acd wrote:
| We need to rethink how we plant and sustain agriculture over long
| term. Ie a shift from mono crop fertiziler to sustainable multi
| crop robotic weed control.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| This is an advantage of smaller-scale organic growing
| operations: the nitrogen gets recycled. Yes, it means we'd need
| more people involved in agriculture again, but there are
| benefits for the climate and for resilience. India has been
| showing the way here with high rice yields using organic
| methods.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > This is an advantage of smaller-scale organic growing
| operations: the nitrogen gets recycled. Yes, it means we'd
| need more people involved in agriculture again
|
| A lot of Gen Z, and many younger millennials are completely
| disgusted with Society and would leap at opting out for a
| period of time or for good. I think we should as a Society
| should offset and subsidize this cohort with cheap loans on
| land, seed, and equipment for sustainable, organic, and
| regenerative farms as a viable way to take on climate change.
|
| As a person who did it as well (mid-millennial) for a period
| of my adult life it taught me so much and to be honest it
| paid dividends in just about every industry I've ever worked
| in: Automotive, Tech, Ag, Health Sciences. And it enriched my
| life in ways I'm still only finding out as I grow older.
|
| > India has been showing the way here with high rice yields
| using organic methods.
|
| While I think India is going through some (much needed)
| progress with it's recent protests against introducing
| cheaper alternatives that undercut the farmers in unfair
| pricing wars, India is seriously one of the worst examples of
| Ag practices.
|
| Whether it was the the wide-use of BT cotton seed and
| dependence on Monsanto inputs that led to wide spread misery
| and suicide, or the horrible generational debt system(s).
| It's hard to think how Vandana Shiva's vision of food
| sovereignty could ever take hold when the Indian political
| class is intent on upholding the caste system by
| marginalizing the people who grows their food.
| [deleted]
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I recently found out what the "AIM for Climate" initiative is
| from the US State Department press release, regarding COP26. The
| solution proposed by America apparently is "climate ready crops"
| aka "genetically modified crops from Monsanto etc"
|
| I am honestly disgusted with the repetitive greed from western
| corporate interests on this Industrial AG topic. I do not trust
| one word of this news item, to start.
| is_true wrote:
| Almost every crop is genetically modified, we have been doing
| it for thousands of years
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes for some reason people don't like when we expedite the
| process.
| Haemm0r wrote:
| .. or killing the ability of the plants of reproducing
| itself for profit.
| ahevia wrote:
| Climate Ready crops could also be crops genetically engineered
| (not genetically modified, there is a distinction) to be more
| resilient towards a warmer world or specific threats of a
| region. Look at SCUBA Rice as an example of rice more resistant
| flooding. We risk drier climates & an increase in heatwaves to
| threaten our food supply.
|
| Industrial AG is a problem though. Sadly Monsanto will no doubt
| take advantage of this initiative. There are other regenerative
| ag techniques that would make our farms more climate resilient
| but they require large upfront capital costs and policy
| incentives aren't there yet in the US. these practices are also
| a good solution to reduce our reliance on nitrogen fertilizer
| ineedasername wrote:
| What's the distinction between modified and engineered?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is the shortage basically about finding raw materials for the
| Haber process? Are there any other industrial processes they use
| for fertilizer?
| lazyjones wrote:
| European farmers would like to use manure more, but idiotic EU
| policies (changed in 2019) are preventing it. So typical...
| phtrivier wrote:
| Which policies ?
| noefingway wrote:
| current prices can be see here:
| https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/gx_gr210.txt
|
| in Maryland where I farm, there has been a surplus of chicken
| litter on the eastern shore. Good for farmers there, but moving
| it around is expensive. I get litter from an egg operation near
| Gettysburg. It used to be free but now is $10/ton. I just bought
| 5 truck loads (120 tons), cost me $700 per load. I expect that
| price to go up. On-road diesel just hit $4.00/gal in our area
| which puts off-road prices over $3.00/gal. Input costs are
| getting to the point where there is no net profit in raising a
| crop.
| JamisonM wrote:
| But you are also experiencing the best commodity prices of your
| lifetime, right?
|
| For me personally up in the Canadian prairies if wheat stays at
| $12 a bushel it is just not a big deal if urea is $1100/mt,
| even at 8 or 9 dollars a bushel an average crop will be much
| more profitable than a few seasons ago.
| posnet wrote:
| If you are interested in the history of nitrogen fertilizer
| production, The Alchemy of Air [0] is excellent.
|
| The biggest revelation being that the same process that now fuels
| all modern agriculture was driven by demand for explosives in
| post WW1 Germany.
|
| [0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/73464/the-
| alchemy-o...
| smileysteve wrote:
| More Composting would be a solution to this.
|
| My coffee habit and bokashi of food waste should create
| significant soil for my spring planters.
| gruez wrote:
| In your case it's only viable because you can use it
| domestically with very little processing (or processing done
| with free labor). I suspect doing it on an industrial scale
| will quickly see costs rise for transportation and processing.
| A sibling comment says that corn fertilization costs $120/acre.
| Even at double the cost, I doubt the whole pipeline of
| collection to industrial composting, can be anywhere
| competitive.
| bluegas wrote:
| For a long term assessment of our predicament , Tom Murphy's book
| 'Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet' is a must read:
| https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m
| Robotbeat wrote:
| What bothers me in articles like this is that no one mentions
| that ammonia is not produced with natural gas. It's produced with
| HYDROGEN.
|
| The cheapest source of hydrogen is usually steam reforming of
| natural gas. (But this wasn't the case until about 1950 when
| steam reforming became cheap and widespread. Before that, cheap
| hydroelectricity-produced green hydrogen was common for nitrogen
| fertilizer production.)
|
| Not mentioning this means that the average person who reads the
| news (including the typical politician and HN reader) has the
| mistaken notion that fossil fuels are essential for making
| fertilizer.
|
| My 2cents: Two consequences (which kind of go in opposite
| directions) of this are:
|
| 1) You really think we need to push hydrogen cars right now when
| we're not even producing a significant amount of green hydrogen
| for fertilizer? Unlike the electric grid (which is 40% clean
| already in the US), almost no hydrogen for ammonia is made with
| clean electricity.
|
| 2) This should provide impetus for locally produced green
| hydrogen efforts as food security, insulation from fossil fuel
| price swings. (Blue hydrogen doesn't have that advantage since
| it's still fossil fuel based and is worse in other ways.)
| malfist wrote:
| > which is 40% clean already in the US
|
| Can you define that statement a bit more? What do you mean by
| clean?
|
| If you're going off of the industry terms, that 40% includes
| natural gas, and is probably mostly natural gas. Which means
| cracking natural gas into hydrogen isn't any more or less
| polluting.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Many argue that we need to end our dependence on chemical
| fertilizers and farm in a biodynamic way.
|
| https://youtu.be/1BH0NkN6zHs
| xxpor wrote:
| And many people are dumb. The Haber process is one of the
| greatest inventions in the history of mankind. A majority of
| people alive today can directly trace their very existence to
| the food production yield increases from artificial
| fertilizer. It's estimated that 50% of the nitrogen in the
| average human comes from the Haber process.
|
| Now I'm not going to try to pretend there are absolutely no
| downsides. Runoff from fields is a huge issue. But when you
| advocate for large scale returns to "natural" farming, you're
| taking a position that leads directly to ecofacism and
| genocide though famine. Or at least a radical restructuring
| of the global economy where much greater sections of land and
| the labor force would be required to be farmers.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think you will find if you watch the video I linked that
| Jean Martin Fortier is anything but dumb.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| >the mistaken notion that fossil fuels are essential for making
| fertilizer
|
| I think the correct statement is that fossil fuels are _the
| cheapest way_ of making fertilizer, and that any other (known)
| way is currently much more expensive. Therefore raising the
| price of fossil fuels _does_ raise the price of fertilizer.
| This is pretty incontrovertible.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| No, we use hydrogen to make ammonia. That hydrogen is grey
| hydrogen from fossil fuels usually, but the actual Haber
| process does not use any hydrocarbons. Using hydrogen to make
| ammonia is therefore not a new process. It literally IS the
| process we use today.
|
| An analogy would be an article on hydrogen fuel cell cars
| that never once used the word "hydrogen" in it.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| In the case of the plant pictured in the article, the
| hydrogen is produced on site from methane. So, at least in
| that case, from the factory perspective, it is a methane
| in, ammonia + CO2 out. [1] I don't know how common it is
| for factories to do both processes at the same site, but
| that would explain why the article frames it that way.
|
| But beyond that, I think the parent comment is just saying
| that the price of the hydrogen plays a big role in the
| availability and price of fertilizer. Even with the current
| increases in price, it is not profitable to manufacture
| ammonia using green hydrogen at current market prices.
|
| [1] https://www.cffertilisers.co.uk/about-us/how-our-
| fertiliser-...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| From the factory perspective, 1 Joule of hydrogen
| produces more ammonia than 1 Joule of natural gas AND you
| get to avoid the steam reforming equipment, saving
| capital & maintenance cost.
|
| And in Europe, at the moment natural gas prices are so
| high that green hydrogen is now competitive. BUT that's
| beside the point.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I really think you are trying to obfuscate the issue here.
|
| We "usually" make the hydrogen from fossil fuels because
| this is by far the cheapest way to make it, so if we raise
| the price of fossil fuels, the fertilizer becomes more
| expensive. And man, you are twisting and turning in order
| to obscure this fact.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| No, I'm not. Again, by not mentioning that ammonia is
| made from hydrogen (and not mentioning that ammonia is by
| far the largest use of hydrogen today and also that
| almost all hydrogen is made with fossil fuels now but not
| historically), we are obfuscating multiple things. It
| seems implied that ammonia based fertilizers actually
| need hydrocarbons in particular (which isn't true
| historically, technically, or in the future, BUT you'll
| have many Degrowther types argue we have to use fossil
| fuels for fertilizer) AND it makes it easy to exaggerate
| the benefit of hydrogen cars (or the "hydrogen economy")
| because it becomes unclear that hydrogen is actually by
| far made from fossil fuels. It's not a simple
| consequence.
|
| (Finally, green hydrogen is currently competitive with
| grey and blue hydrogen in Europe due to high gas prices
| at the moment, but that's totally beside the point.)
|
| https://think.ing.com/articles/hold-1of4-high-gas-prices-
| tri...
| [deleted]
| acoard wrote:
| I'm new to this so asking earnestly, but:
|
| >That hydrogen is grey hydrogen from fossil fuels usually,
| but the actual Haber process does not use any hydrocarbons.
| Using hydrogen to make ammonia is therefore not a new
| process. It literally IS the process we use today.
|
| It seems like this grey hydrogen still ultimately comes
| from fossil fuels. It might be further up the chain, so to
| speak, but it's still dependant on them. No? So doesn't the
| statement that raising fossil fuel prices raise fertilizer
| prices true then?
| vkou wrote:
| > Therefore raising the price of fossil fuels does raise the
| price of fertilizer.
|
| Yes, but how much does this impact the total retail cost of
| the food we eat? Would it be a difference of 2%, or a
| difference of 200%?
|
| That's the only number I (as someone who eats food) care
| about.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Good question. 3kg of hydrogen makes about 17kg of ammonia.
| One bushel of corn requires about 0.8 pounds of ammonia.
|
| A bushel of corn weighs about 56 pounds and a pound of corn
| has about 1566 kilocalories.
|
| Grey hydrogen is about $2/kg (more in Europe right now,
| about $5/kg not counting CO2 tax), and green hydrogen is
| about $3-6/kg, depending on your electricity costs.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Ok, but most fertilizer production uses natural gas to supply
| the hydrogen and fossil fuels of one sort or another to bring
| everything up to temperature. So, why should this article go
| out and say, 'well theoretically we could obtain hydrogen some
| other way...'.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's not "theoretical." It's literally how we used to make
| hydrogen for ammonia.
|
| And all I'm asking is to mention this uses hydrogen so people
| aren't confused.
| namibj wrote:
| Haber-Bosch is slightly exothermic. The turbomachinery for
| doing the pressure-swing product condensing in the loop might
| have too high losses to get by without external power supply,
| though.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Electricity is a pretty great way to power turbomachinery.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| 3) It is fine with a slightly uneven production of hydrogen as
| it only means you have to build up a buffer of it for sustained
| usage. This means it is ideal for hydrogen produced by wind and
| solar power.
| hinkley wrote:
| We need green hydrogen for steel production as well, if we want
| to get that carbon footprint down.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I have an odd, and possibly naive, question. Why wouldn't it be
| easier ( and cheaper ) to produce hydrogen from water rather
| than natural gas?
| bbojan wrote:
| Hydrogen is bound in both compounds - you need to expand
| energy to extract it.
|
| As in our oxidizing atmosphere natural gas is a source of
| (chemical) energy, you can burn it to provide the energy
| needed to extract the hydrogen. This is the steam reforming
| reaction.
|
| Since water is not a source of energy, you need to add
| (expensive) electrical energy in order to extract the
| hydrogen. This is the electrolysis reaction.
| RobertoG wrote:
| I was reading the other day about these guys:
|
| https://www.nitricity.co/
|
| "Renewable on-site nitrogen fertilizer production"
|
| Maybe some people here could find their process interesting.
| epistasis wrote:
| Yes, this is interesting because it's not the haber process!
|
| Very exciting stuff, and drastically changing the
| transportation costs gives them a good niche so they can
| build a foothold without having to go toe-to-toe with the
| existing natural gas derived Haber process, which has the
| benefit of already being highly optimized.
| kvgr wrote:
| We need to build the freaking nuclear plants and make hydrogen
| as an energy storage when not in peak.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _Not mentioning this means that the average person who reads
| the news (including the typical politician and HN reader) has
| the mistaken notion that fossil fuels are essential for making
| fertilizer._
|
| But it's true - currently this is how fertilizer is made. Maybe
| there will be a large scale source of hydrogen in the future,
| but currently it comes from fossil fuels.
|
| You don't need to worry about politicians getting incorrect
| knowledge from the news, they get that knowledge directly from
| industry.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| > _Maybe there will be a large scale source of hydrogen in
| the future, but currently it comes from fossil fuels._
|
| No, see, this is again the misunderstanding I'm talking
| about. Ammonia is made with hydrogen, period. The "large
| scale source of hydrogen" exists today. It is steam reforming
| of natural gas, and before that it was electrolysis of water.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| This is the misunderstanding I'm talking about: "steam
| reforming of natural gas", is the same as "fossil fuels".
| If you're going to rely on some future development where
| the hydrogen doesn't come from fossil fuels, then you can
| also declare that gasoline and diesel are not fossil fuels
| since non-fossil fuel sources exist for both.
| cma wrote:
| But we need to keep all our hydro power for green crypto for
| ElonFlokiDoge token, not squander it on food.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Electrolytic hydrogen production scales poorly. Cost aside, the
| additional electricity required to replace methane-derived
| hydrogen is completely infeasible for the foreseeable future.
|
| Just because we can produce almost any chemistry with
| electricity does not imply that we have remotely enough spare
| power generation capacity to make it feasible. Too many
| proposals for green industrial chemistry implicitly assume that
| we have several terawatts of green power generation just lying
| around, which is manifestly not the case nor are we likely to
| have that kind of extra capacity on any timeframe that matters.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| I'm not certain that is actually correct. The biggest steel
| maker here in Sweden is in early stages of replacing coal
| with hydrogen in their new production chains they are
| building, based on wind power. The really good part is that
| it is a consumption of electricity that is pretty resilient
| against varying production volumes, which make it pretty
| ideal for renewables.
|
| The same logic could very well work with fertilizer.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Of course it's not correct. I have no idea why people speak
| so confidently about electrolysis not being "scalable"
| when, in fact, that used to be pretty much the primary way
| of making hydrogen for ammonia.
|
| Also, the US used to double electricity generation every
| decade. If something needs a bit more electricity, there's
| no "scaling" argument why we can't just produce more
| electricity. It costs money, of course, but there's no part
| of it that isn't "scalable."
| ben_w wrote:
| Does it scale poorly for any reason other than current
| availability of electricity?
|
| The growth of PV has been pretty close to exponential since
| '92, with the current (nameplate) capacity estimated to be
| just short of 1 terawatt and a doubling time of 2.2 years, so
| I think we _will_ have a few terawatts on a relevant
| timescale.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It actually scales extremely well. Based on DoE studies
| I've read, Hydrogen electrolysis systems that are larger
| tend to have lower specific capital costs and usually
| operate at higher efficiency than smaller plants. We also
| used to double electricity production every decade before
| demand for electricity plateaued. Sometimes people just say
| things on the Internet that are wrong.
| erhk wrote:
| Power grids regularly go negative couldn't there be money
| made from chemical production on hot and windy days
| Scoundreller wrote:
| For some unknown reason, transmission/distribution pricing
| is often fixed, even though peak users are directly
| culpable for the costs of upgrades.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| Is there a way to make money out of this crisis? Say buying corn
| future or even fertilizer future? I don't understand derivatives
| and future market very well but simply buying fertilizer company
| stocks do not sound like a good idea since most investors look
| earning (EPS) and projected guidance which with increased price
| hike do not look promising.
| ramchip wrote:
| By the time it's widely reported on by Reuters, it's a bit late
| to buy futures :)
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/sponsored/fertilizer-prices-...
|
| > Prices are rising so quickly that, by early October
| fertilizer futures at CME Group were witnessing prices hit and
| exceed pre-financial crisis 2008 levels.
| bluegas wrote:
| A must read for an assessment of our predicament is "Energy and
| Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet' by physicist Tom Murphy of
| UCSD https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I wonder if his has moved any green ammonia plans forward.
| There's been a rash of announcements recently but they mostly
| refer to plants phasing in over the next few years. High and
| volatile gas prices is a really strong driver of moves to
| renewables generally as the predictability of renewable
| generation reduces the finance risk and so brings costs down.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the global economy so inter-dependent that it's scary. We have a
| cascading failure that could now create famine, which would
| result in a feedback loop that makes everything even worse. All
| of this basically stems from a few weeks of true hard lockdown.
|
| will be interesting to see how governments handle the balance of
| efficiency vs redundancy in the future
| libertine wrote:
| I have a growing feeling that the dream of globalization is
| becoming a nightmare: shortage of natural resources, the
| difference in buy-power, the rize of global monopolies that are
| unstoppable... it's creating a greater gap and establishing
| even greater power dynamics.
|
| I don't discard the benefits as well, like economic growth,
| ease of travel, etc... but I start to wonder if it's balanced
| at all.
| sofixa wrote:
| > All of this basically stems from a few weeks of true hard
| lockdown.
|
| I'm sorry, but that's just bullshit. The best comparison
| scenario we have is Sweden, which closely resembles it's
| neighbors in terms of temperature, society, households. They
| didn't do any lockdowns, just recommended people not to gather
| too much; Denmark, Norway and Finland all went through multiple
| lockdowns. The economic downturn seen in Sweden is comparable
| to the one in its neighbours, even without stringent
| restrictions.
|
| Brazil also didn't do any lockdowns and their economy
| indicators are far from great.
|
| Pandemics impact us regardless of our opinions.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think the fundamental problem is that legislation preventing
| cartels and "guilds" in the base industry, making top of the
| chain industry where the money is at, where the niche company
| more or less has monopoly by the nature of being niche or by
| controlling distribution/marketplace.
|
| So base industry is put out of business in e.g. Europe and
| North America and stays in protectionist countries, making them
| overly dependent on foreign industry.
|
| Greater custom duty should probably solve some of the unstable
| base industry situation.
| frazbin wrote:
| So the problem is that it's the not the 15th century, and the
| solution is mercantilism? Color me skeptical.
|
| Now in the 20th century there were these things called
| 'unions' for a while..
| rightbyte wrote:
| You don't have to go all in Hanseatic. Just have high
| enough customs that local industries can compete with
| industries that e.g. take advantage of child labor
| (clothing) or industries in areas that lack environmental
| protection laws/costs.
|
| Also, open price fixing could be legalized to move bargain
| power to manufacturing of base products.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Famine would be a choice though, not an inevitable consequence
| of fertilizer availability. Crops can be shifted to legumes,
| and away from livestock production, we spend a lot of calories
| on preference these days.
| coffeemig wrote:
| Maybe that's the play to transition western consumers off of
| meat diets. Gotta happen someday soon, right?
| [deleted]
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| No. Don't underestimate how radical and unpopular dropping
| meat is with the more level-headed parts of the country.
|
| One can admit the existence of Climate Change while
| thinking the proposed solutions are too far and just power-
| hungry bunk.
| coffeemig wrote:
| I'm not saying I'm excited about it. I've seen other
| policies go through lately that make level-headed people
| tear their hair out.
| jtdev wrote:
| You clearly know very little about agriculture. Beef cattle
| actually graze many hundreds of thousands of acres of land
| that could not realistically be converted to legume
| production.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Corn can be converted, and it's not like finishing of
| livestock consumes zero corn and soy.
|
| Also, what's with the insulting tone?
| tomrod wrote:
| I agree, grandparent comment is pretty brash while also
| being substantively wrong.
|
| Most of our meat in the US comes from factory farms.
|
| > 70.4 percent of cows, 98.3 percent of pigs, 99.8
| percent of turkeys, 98.2 percent of egg-laying hens, and
| over 99.9 percent of chickens raised for meat come from
| factory farms.
|
| https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-
| farms/
|
| This said, the range that beef cattle occasionally graze
| could be reclaimed, but not necessarily for legume
| production.
|
| Legumes: https://gilmour.com/planting-zones-hardiness-map
|
| Beef: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-
| and-biolog...
|
| There is overlap, but no where close to 100%.
| tomrod wrote:
| Factory farmed meat processes aren't open range.
| notfromhere wrote:
| Grazed cattle doesn't need fertilizer
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Two weeks to slow the spread... that didn't really do much and
| has just caused cascading problems that have caused innumerable
| other health effects.
|
| For example, imagine many lower class families eating less
| healthy because food is more expensive. Or smoking more to
| reduce stress. Lockdowns look a lot less effective when
| external damage is considered at this point.
| acgourley wrote:
| While not good, this might be a boon for biotech such as that
| from https://www.pivotbio.com/ which can help plans fix their own
| nitrogen.
| rp1 wrote:
| I wonder if there will really be a long-term shortage. It's a lot
| easier to ship tons of fertilizer vs. shipping natural gas. How
| much additional capacity is there in the U.S.?
| AJ007 wrote:
| Eventually there will be zero natural gas - either it will all
| be used up, or it will banned - so I think the answer is yes?
| [deleted]
| rp1 wrote:
| That's totally unrelated to this article.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| There's plenty of potential nitrogen fertilizer available. We
| just need to recycle it from sewage treatment plants.
| newsclues wrote:
| And filter out the pharmaceuticals from the sewage
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I suspect most of the pharmaceuticals in sewage have a pretty
| short half life in that environment. Maybe the biggest
| problem would be the antibiotics that could impact beneficial
| bacteria in the soils. Not sure how long those survive in a
| composting situation where the temperatures get up to 170F.
| convolvatron wrote:
| my father was in sewage treatment - at least then, and
| according to him, metals were really the problem.
| freshpots wrote:
| Very little recovery is possible unless we separate urine
| streams at their source. Once mixed with the rest of the
| wastewater very little N is recoverable as has to go through
| the process and gets recovered in the sludge stage as struvite,
| etc. Phosphorus, OTOH, is more recoverable per unit.
|
| Take a look at (PDF on Google): Nitrogen Recovery from
| Wastewater: Possibilities, Competition with Other Resources,
| and Adaptation Pathways
|
| Jan Peter van der Hoek 1,2,* , Rogier Duijff 1 and Otto
| Reinstra 2
|
| The most promising mature technologies that can be incorporated
| into existing wastewater treatment plants include struvite
| precipitation, the treatment of digester reject water by air
| stripping, vacuum membrane filtration, hydrophobic membrane
| filtration, and treatment of air from thermal sludge drying,
| resulting respectively in 1.1%, 24%, 75%, 75%, and 2.1%
| nitrogen recovery for the specific case wastewater treatment
| plant Amsterdam-West.
|
| The effects on sustainability were limited. Higher nitrogen
| recovery (60%) could be realized by separate urine collection,
| but this requires a completely new infrastructure for
| wastewater collection and treatment.
| pstuart wrote:
| Perhaps making pissoires as a public service and fertilizer
| recycler.
| ineedasername wrote:
| If they pay for shipping I'll send them my contributions
| directly.
| t3rabytes wrote:
| Grass seed has also seen wild shortages + price increases this
| year, mostly due to droughts hitting the northwest and driving
| yields incredibly low this year.
| [deleted]
| option_greek wrote:
| May be depending on Natural gas for everything in the name of
| climate change fighting isn't such a good goal. Now not only is
| coal not fully out, nuclear is dead/dying and solar, wind
| unreliable or unplanned for interms of integration into the grid
| and support of peak load.
|
| Overall a perfect showcase of why activism in a lot of things end
| up hurting more than helping. And of course all this before
| whether we know or care how 'green' the renewables are in the
| first place as the equipment it self needs to be
| manufactured/mined/produced. Its the recycling debacle all over
| again.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Or maybe it's we've been warning about this for 50+ years now
| and the fruit is coming to bear.
|
| I'm not sure if it's what you meant, but your post just reeks
| of "Lets keep doing the things we always did because it was so
| much better then", while discounting the massive amounts of
| damage we were doing then.
| mc32 wrote:
| On the other hand, poster has a point, if it weren't for the
| likes of Jane Fonda and company who take up a cause without
| understanding it just for political points, leads us to where
| we are now. There is no reason we could not be where France
| is in terms of nuclear power.
|
| This is on those activists who blindly followed anti-nuke
| dogmatism. Thanks guys and gals.
|
| This is why the public should by and large disregard opinions
| by celebrities who have no expertise in what they are
| advocating.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| What is your opinion of Bill Nye? He's been anti-nuke since
| BNtSG.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Definitely a hero for getting a generation of kids into
| science with the science guy, but if anti-nuke then
| definitely wrong about nuclear, and his newer stuff is
| kind of weird and less interesting.
| [deleted]
| jsilence wrote:
| Wondering where we would stand if we had dumped all the
| funding and subsidies that went into nuclear fission and
| fusion research and into coal subsidies into solar panels.
|
| Guessing dependency on oil and gas would be much much lower
| which also frees up a large chunk of the military budget.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Democratization of resources also reduces the chance of
| war.
|
| A fair amount the second world war can be told purely in
| attempts to control access to fuel:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_campaign_of_World_War
| _II
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| I think the engineering and decision making at Three Mile
| Island had a much bigger impact on the current state of
| nuclear power in the US than Jane Fonda.
| mc32 wrote:
| Only because Jane Fonda used it as a tool to promote her
| anti-nuke activism. The atmospheric release was
| insignificant but she scared Americans away from nuclear-
| generated power.
|
| She could have used her activism to promote better
| processes for example, or incremental improvements rather
| than kill the industry.
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| Within 12 days of the movie Jane Fonda made about nuclear
| power, the biggest accident in the USA occurred. Within
| 10 years, we had Chernobyl.
|
| Blaming the lack of nuclear power on a celebrity for her
| activism and not the fact that decision makers saw the
| results of real catastrophic failure seems wrong. Sure,
| Jane Fonda didn't help nuclear energy. But we should have
| started by never letting any of the major nuclear
| failures happen. If we can't do that, we should work on
| solving that problem and not blaming critics.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| We probably get a Chernobyl worth of premature deaths
| every year from hydrocarbon-fired power plants that would
| otherwise have been replaced by nuclear plants. Only
| nobody cares because it doesn't look all cool and
| dramatic and scary on the news.
|
| Fonda et al. have blood on their hands, albeit invisible
| blood. The best kind, I guess.
| throw0101a wrote:
| And in the meantime we continued to use fossil fuels.
|
| TMI had little to no impact on the environment and
| public.
|
| Chernobyl was the result of a corrupt political system
| which skimped on safety (e.g., no containment
| building/vessel) because of costs--something that isn't
| present in any developed country.
|
| That leaves Fukushima.
|
| I'll take the low odds of maybe one incident in 60+ years
| of industry over the certainty of climate change. And I
| say this as someone who lives 50km from a nuclear power
| plant.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If the impact of the coal industry wasn't so gradual but
| was released in a sudden event every 10-20 years, we
| would outlaw coal mining, with prison times for anyone
| who burns it. But with the impact being diffuse in time
| and space, we don't really mind. It's the same effect as
| nobody caring that deaths from car crashes in the US
| increased by 3000 people between 2019 and 2020, but kill
| 3000 people at once and it's a tragedy that will be
| remembered for decades.
|
| Our skewed perception of threats is maybe one of the most
| destructive psychological quirks of humanity. It makes
| fighting gradual events like climate change or disease
| outbreaks incredibly difficult.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Corruption is still a big problem all over the world, if
| that was the cause then you're arguing against more
| nuclear buildout.
| belorn wrote:
| We should make nuclear safer and learn from the accidents
| that have occured in the past, but at the same time we
| have to accept some risk of we are to generate power. If
| we build a hydroelectric dam, we know there is a risk of
| overflow, cracking and flooding. That is just a fact
| dealing with the extreme amount of energy stored in water
| that is elevated.
|
| We should make sure that maintenance is handled with the
| understanding of the human lives depending on it, and
| managers and politicians need to respect the powerful
| natural forces of both water and nuclear bonds. That
| said, stopping to use either in favor of fossil fuels is
| bad for the planet and bad for the people living on it.
| Living near a nuclear plants or downstream of a
| hydroelectric power plants is preferable compared to
| living near a fossil fueled power plants, and its the
| role of advocates, learned people and politicians to
| inform the public of this fact.
|
| Critics should be held to blame for misleading the
| population, just as politicians should be when they chose
| to build fossil fueled power plants in favor of safer
| technologies.
| JamisonM wrote:
| I would say that characterizing the supply/demand mismatch
| caused by a once in a century pandemic as a showcase of why
| activism is often bad is not a very well considered
| perspective.
|
| 6 months from now if fertilizer prices are essentially normal
| and food supplies are just fine will you reconsider this view?
| sdoering wrote:
| You make a lot of bold statements. Care to provide some
| sources?
|
| Your sentiment, without providing sources actually sounds a lot
| like the talking points of lobby groups fighting against the
| increased usage of renewable energy.
|
| Just one example to counter your "arguments" is the there are
| currently 50 nuclear reactors Being under construction world
| wide. With nuclear energy capacity increasing [1].
|
| So care to provide some facts?
|
| [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-
| fu...
| bin_bash wrote:
| Funny you're the one accusing someone of making misleading
| claims with a statement like that.
|
| 50 reactors for the world is not a lot. We're clearly losing
| more reactors in the US than we're gaining.
|
| You say "capacity" is increasing, but is the percentage?
| sdoering wrote:
| I just provided one source against a string of claims right
| out of the playbook from the conservative anti global
| warming lobby.
|
| If this makes me a "funny" one, I gladly am. I don't like
| dealing with people throwing out unsubstantiated claims or
| dismissing others with ad hominems.
|
| Btw. you could just provide a counter argument (I would be
| open to that in a empirical discussion) but you chose to do
| a counter question showing you actually have no interest in
| rational, fact based discussion culture.
|
| To quote numbers:
|
| Between 2013 and 2025, 14 nuclear plants are slated to shut
| down. As of July 2018, there are 99 operational plants in
| the country.[1]
|
| I wasn't able to quickly find the number of reactors that
| compromise said plants.
|
| But from a purely nationalistic perspective you are right.
| The US actually looses reactors. But I stated World wide
| numbers. I don't care about the US loosing reactors. I was
| looking at it from a global perspective and just providing
| one counter point to someone stating unsubstantiated stuff.
|
| Btw. themain reason for the US not building new reactors in
| the same amount they are shutting down others seems to be
| economic, though. Other sources of energy are nowadays way
| cheaper to produce and atomic seems to have lost the status
| of cash cow for the industry. [1]
|
| [1]: https://theconversation.com/the-demise-of-us-nuclear-
| power-i...
| gruez wrote:
| >Just one example to counter your "arguments" is the there
| are currently 50 nuclear reactors Being under construction
| world wide. With nuclear energy capacity increasing [1].
|
| nuclear capacity increasing doesn't necessarily contradict
| the parent's claim that "nuclear is dead/dying". Nuclear
| power can be growing in absolute terms, but be falling in
| relative terms.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > activism in a lot of things end up hurting more than helping
|
| And where would the CO2 levels be if there had been no
| activism?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Maybe lower, if you included anti-nuclear activism.
| drran wrote:
| Yep. Few more Chornobyls, and CO2 level will plummet back
| to 200ppm then.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There weren't any more Chernobyls, though. Getting rid of
| nuclear technology because RMBK reactors were badly
| designed makes about as much sense as getting rid of
| civilian jet planes because early British Comets fell out
| of the sky with many casualties. There is no progress
| without problems.
|
| What happend since then? Fukushima, and Fukushima killed
| fewer people than a highway car pile-up.
| drran wrote:
| Radiation poisoning has a long tail, so it hard to
| calculate how many were killed by cancer and for how
| long. It doesn't mean that we easily discard long-term
| safety when talking about nuclear power.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| No one rational wants to discard long-term nuclear
| safety, much less easily...
|
| My worry is that we have swung collectively towards the
| very opposite, towards a demand for unrealistical level
| of one hundred per cent safety, unparalleled in any other
| modern activity (flights, medicine, construction,
| food...)
| drran wrote:
| I have no car, I don't fly on planes, I don't want to
| have a nuclear station near to me.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Try living by a coal plant or an oil refinery. My lungs
| and I would take a nuclear plant in my own backyard over
| a coal plant down the road any day.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That is fine as long as you are willing to submit to a
| democratic process in the end.
|
| Choosing your mode of transport is completely up to you
| as an individual, but power infrastructure is a common
| good and individual people should not be able to veto
| projects.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > I have no car, I don't fly on planes, I don't want to
| have a nuclear station near to me.
|
| Even though you don't fly, a plane can still fall on you.
|
| Wait! Hear me out -- in the entire history of the
| country, there have been a total of _13 fatalities_ as a
| result of accidents in nuclear plants in the U.S.[1],
| whereas aircraft falling from the sky killed:
|
| * 23 people in Wichita when a B-52 stratofortress crashed
| into their homes in 1965 [2]
|
| * 22 people died (including 12 children) when an F-86
| Sabre crashed into a car and then slammed into an ice
| cream parlor in Sacramento in 1972 [3]
|
| * 15 died when a DC-9 collided with a Piper mid-air and
| then slammed into a residential neighborhood in Cerritos,
| CA in 1986 [5]
|
| * 13 died in 1967 in New Orleans when a DC-8 crashed into
| a private homes and a motel [6]
|
| * 12 died in Evansville, Indiana when a C-130 crashed
| into the parking lot of JoJo's restaurant in 1992 [7]
|
| * 10 people in an office building in Chicago in 1920 (but
| that was a dirigible)[8]
|
| * 9 people on a freeway in Georgia 1977[9]
|
| * 9 people in their homes in Chicago in 1959[10]
|
| * 8 people in their homes in New Orleans in 1982[11]
|
| * 7 people in their homes in New Jersey in 1972[12]
|
| * 7 people in their homes in San Diego in 1978[13]
|
| * 6 people in homes or parks in New York in 1960[14]
|
| * 6 people in Miami in 1960 [15]
|
| * 5 people in their homes in Queens in 2001 [16]
|
| * 5 people in their homes in Minneapolis in 1956 [17]
|
| * 4 people in an apartment building in New Jersey [18]
|
| * 4 people on a bridge in D.C. in 1982 [19]
|
| * 4 people in their homes in San Diego in 2008 [20]
|
| * 4 people in their homes in Yorba Linda in 2019 [21]
|
| * 3 people in a church in the San Fernando Valley in 1957
| [22]
|
| * 3 people in their homes in North Hollywood in 1962 [23]
|
| * 3 people (two decapitated by helicopter blades and one
| crushed by aforementioned helicopter) in Hollywood in
| 1982 [24]
|
| * 3 people who were attending a flight safety conference
| died when a cessna crashed into the conference building
| in Wichita in 2014 [25]
|
| * 3 people in their homes in Gaithersburg, Maryland in
| 2014 [26]
|
| * 2 people in a house in Minneapolist in 1950 [27]
|
| * 2 people in their house died when a 737 crashed into a
| residential neighborhood in 1972 [28]
|
| * 2 people in a trailer park died when a DC-10 crashed
| into them in 1979 [29]
|
| * 2 people in car died when an MD-82 crashed into them in
| Michigan in 1987 [30]
|
| * 2 people killed when a prop plane crashed into their
| home in New Jersey in 2013 [31]
|
| And many, many other examples. So you see, not only is
| nuclear power safer than flying, it's much safer than
| _being on the ground_ as well!
|
| Sources:
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_acciden
| ts_in_t...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_USAF_KC-135_Wichit
| a_crash
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Sacramento_Canadai
| r_Sabre...
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeromexico_Flight_498#A
| ccident...
|
| [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines#Acciden
| ts_and_...
|
| [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evansville_Regional_Air
| port#Ma...
|
| [8]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingfoot_Air_Express_crash
|
| [9]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Airways_Flight_242
|
| [10] https://aviation-
| safety.net/database/record.php?id=19591124-...
|
| [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_759
|
| [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flig
| ht_6780
|
| [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airl
| ines_Fli...
|
| [14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_New_York_mid-
| air_collisio...
|
| [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominicana_de_Aviacion
| #Acciden...
|
| [16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flig
| ht_587
|
| [17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_accid
| ents_and...
|
| [18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flig
| ht_101
|
| [19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Florida_Flight_90
|
| [20]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_San_Diego_F/A-18_crash
|
| [21] https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/221520
|
| [22]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_San_Diego_F/A-18_crash
|
| [23]
| https://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?db=DOT-
| AIR...
|
| [24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Zone_accident
|
| [25]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Wichita_King_Air_crash
|
| [26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_Phenom_100#Inc
| idents_a...
|
| [27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Orient_Airli
| nes_Flig...
|
| [28]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_553
|
| [29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flig
| ht_191
|
| [30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Fli
| ght_255
|
| [31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweed_New_Haven_Airpor
| t#Accide...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is a good data point, thank you for your work.
| deschutes wrote:
| You just want the fruits of all that stuff.
| Enviromoralists are the worst. Have some goop sir.
| [deleted]
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| The recycling movement was green washing from the petro
| chemical industry to shift responsibility of trash from the
| industry to individuals. It was a failure _by design_ and never
| meant to create a closed loop of production and consumption
| [0].
|
| You are correct by pointing out the intermittency of some
| renewable sources of energy. These are constraints of the
| technology that have engineering solutions.
|
| I don't think activists are to blame for what we see. They are
| a convenient scapegoat. Think about who would benefit from
| having us all sit quietly at home waiting for our leadership to
| make the right decisions for us.
|
| [0]
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/drilled/id1439735906?i...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Natural gas being expensive is exactly what you need if you
| want people to replace it.
|
| There is no reason fertilizers can't be made with unreliable
| solar and wind and carbon capture.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > There is no reason fertilizers can't be made with
| unreliable solar and wind and carbon capture.
|
| Yes there is. It's not just a matter of needing to use
| energy, natural gas itself it part of the process for making
| fertilizer.
|
| "Nitrogen is a key component of most synthetic fertilizers.
| It is made by combining the nitrogen in the air with hydrogen
| in methane to produce ammonia (NH3). The ammonia is then used
| to create other forms of nitrogen including ammonium nitrate
| and urea (ammonia + CO2).
|
| Natural gas is used to provide the methane and a heat source
| for the process."
|
| You can't just replace that process with 'solar and wind'.
|
| I actually didn't realize this myself until I started reading
| Countdown by Alan Weisman recently, about overpopulation,
| where he went over this process because it's the only reason
| why we're able to support and feed so many people today, is
| because we discovered this process for creating synthetic
| fertilizer and we're making so much of it today.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| You didn't even read what you quoted!
|
| The Haber Process for making nitrogen fertilizer uses
| HYDROGEN as the feedstock for making ammonia, NOT methane!
| Natural gas steam reforming is just the cheapest source of
| hydrogen (usually), but before about 1950, we used
| electricity (usually from cheap renewables like hydro) to
| make hydrogen for ammonia. Easy peasy with wind and solar!
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| There is a reason we don't often use electrolysis for
| hydrogen production -- it scales poorly and is expensive.
| Scaling that up several orders of magnitude is not a
| realistic option.
|
| This is true of most electrolytic industrial chemistry,
| for example the hydroxides used in many carbon capture
| schemes. What works for the small-scale needs of today
| for industrial chemistry are not intrinsically scalable.
| In software terms, industrial chemistry is not
| "embarrassingly parallel" for reasons that are not
| immediately obvious to the layman, so scaling is hard.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That's simply not true. Electrolysis scales JUST fine
| (the process for making aluminum is much the same
| although occurs at often higher temperature, and we used
| to use electrolysis for ammonia's hydrogen). We just
| don't do it because steam reforming is usually cheaper.
| Simple as that.
| epistasis wrote:
| The largest project I know of for this so far is 100MW of
| hydrogen electrolyzers in Spain:
|
| https://www.iberdrola.com/about-us/lines-
| business/flagship-p...
|
| We will be seeing a lot more of these in the future. By
| making fertilizer out of air, water, and sun, a lot of
| places could gain more independence too.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Yeah I just read a couple other articles and you're
| right. I was about to delete my post actually, when I saw
| you responded to it.
|
| It does seem like most places don't currently have the
| infrastructure in place to do proper green hydrogen
| though, since only 0.1 percent of hydrogen produced as of
| Jan 2021 could be considered green hydrogen.[1]
|
| So I don't think it's quite as 'easy peasy' as you're
| suggesting, probably a lot of money has to be invested
| and infrastructure has to be built to support it, but
| sure, I'm all for doing that.
|
| [1]: https://ohvec.org/the-myth-of-green-hydrogen/
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Like most climate change things, it is relatively easy-
| peasy from a technical standpoint (as the other commenter
| noted, this is how we used to do it in the olden days).
|
| It's just hard to build a thriving business around that
| when your competitor can dump CO2 into the atmosphere for
| free and leave someone else to pick up the tab.
|
| Once the competitor starts using his profits to buy
| politicians and fake scientists it gets really
| complicated, but making lots of fertilizer with renewable
| energy is not only technically easy, it's actually one of
| the things that will help the uptake of renewable energy
| globally.
| chemengds wrote:
| The methane is reformed into hydrogen and CO2. We could use
| solar and wind to power electrolysers that just produce
| hydrogen instead.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Methane is the _chemical_ feedstock for making fertilizer,
| being the primary source of hydrogen in large-scale
| industrial chemistry. There are no economical substitutes at
| scale. You can 't replace it with unreliable electricity
| because it is not being primarily used as an energy source.
|
| If methane becomes expensive, many ordinary things you might
| not expect will also become expensive. It is not helpful to
| naively make policy while oblivious to the consequences.
| [deleted]
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Banning sales of gas heaters, stoves, etc in homes would help
| I think. Maybe part of 1T spending should be ripping out
| leaking methane pipes feeding to almost every home.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > There is no reason fertilizers can't be made with
| unreliable solar and wind and carbon capture.
|
| Or you know... just using grazing ruminants like we have for
| 1000s of years.
| lindseymysse wrote:
| It is a very American perspective that allows anyone trying to
| change anything to be blamed.
|
| I personally blame the status quo, and think that if fewer
| people had stayed home and let things be we would be a far
| better position.
|
| Your politics say sit at home and let the world end -- I have
| never and will never do that. I'm an activist in every part of
| my life.
| option_greek wrote:
| I understand the sentiment. But problem is every new
| generation thinks they are the only revolutionaries to have
| suddenly discovered activism. For previous to previous
| generation it was about stopping wars and killing nuclear
| power. For the current generation (Greta T) it is climate
| change and inaction by politicians. Next generation it will
| be something else. It's like every one below 30 thinks they
| are the only ones who were ever below 30.
|
| Meanwhile neither the wars have stopped nor did the climate
| change. It is easy to say that is because no one is doing
| enough and everyone should be an activist. But then if
| everyone is continuously doing activisty thingies, they are
| not even expounding the same ideas or even worried about the
| same things. The result is meaningless placard holding
| protests and pulling in a million directions. It's difficult
| to take anyone to take the climate activists seriously when
| on one hand they say we are heading towards catastrophe and
| at the same time say Eww to nuclear.
| [deleted]
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > It's difficult to take anyone to take the climate
| activists seriously when on one hand they say we are
| heading towards catastrophe and at the same time say Eww to
| nuclear.
|
| I think for some of us, it's less about 'eww' and more
| about how foolish is it have near active fault lines or
| below sea level (like Fukushima, SONGS, Dablo Canyon
| etc...) where they KNEW it was an issue but did nothing
| about it. I've lived through the cluster** that was SONGS
| refurbishment, and eventual decommissioning, it's not
| something I'd want anyone to have to go through and it was
| only possible an unmonitored effluence event (typical for
| that time in 2011) that coincided with the Fukushima
| disaster.
|
| I've come around the idea that I'm less anti-nuclear and
| more anti-20th Century Nuclear and it's headlong methods
| that was backed by GE and it's American Century at all
| costs type of thinking. Because for years we've been told
| Thorium reactors were the stopgap between Fusion which was
| always 'just around the corner' by Nuclear proponents,
| while many anti-nuclear people (like myself) were helping
| install PV, smart meters and volunteering where ever
| possible to decentralize the power grid in order to avoid
| what has happened in the last 2-3 years in CA with it's
| repeated outages due to climate change.
|
| I've lived in an anti-nuclear border town in Germany along
| Alsace, where the roofs are covered in state subsidized PV
| (it's where I got my first experience with installing it)
| which is still a net importer of French electricity so I'm
| well aware of the hypocrisy in some of these cases; what
| I'm afraid is that with agencies like the NRC and it's poor
| storage solutions (pay to bury in NV, until they refuse and
| we have leave it on site in decommissioned plants) it's
| more a repulsion towards the lack of insight when it comes
| to regulating and maintaining these plants.
|
| Just Solar alone is a larger part of the energy market
| share than nuclear from SONGS and DC combined in CA at it's
| peak [0], and they are having to turn off production
| (foolish decision) due to having a larger supply than
| demand. What I think is needed is an entire paradigm shift
| as to what and how to utilize the energy sources we do
| have, and consider Nuclear an option of last resort due to
| the heavy costs, time, and resources it requires. But it
| should be an option where coal, gas, or other harmful
| sources are being used and cannot be recaptured. CA is not
| one of these places given it's wide array of solar, wind
| and hopefully soon wave energy like in Scotalnd.
|
| 0: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/sol
| ar/c...
| lindseymysse wrote:
| Or we could live less energy dense lives, take the bus,
| grow more vegetarian food closer to our homes (food
| gardens, no suburban lawns!) quit building homes in places
| that are hostile to humans, etc etc etc.
|
| Nuclear Energy powered electric cars only cuts emissions by
| about 50%, we need a lot more than that. You have an easy
| solution to a complex problem -- you're as bad as any
| activist you're bad mouthing now.
| akeck wrote:
| There are ways to grow good yields without tons of fertilizer.
| See Gabe Brown et al [1].
|
| [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I didn't watch the entire 2h30 video but it looks like one of
| the typical "perma-culture" ideas. I think these ideas have
| merit but there are some points I have issue with.
|
| Usually, the forest is used as an example. Forests are indeed
| highly "optimized" and full of life, but they are also mostly
| closed systems. What is produced by the forest is consumed by
| the forest. We don't want a closed system, we want a system we
| can tap into and feed our million-people cities. I don't know
| what such a thing will look like, but most likely not a forest.
|
| The other, more specific issue is about nitrogen. Half of the
| nitrogen in our body comes from artificial fertilizers,
| extracted from atmospheric nitrogen using the Haber-Bosch
| process. If we stop using artificial fertilizers, how are we
| going to get that nitrogen?
|
| We are almost 8 billion and counting. We are stretching the
| limits of what nature is capable of. And I refuse solutions
| that involve limiting population (i.e. genocide), or make our
| life miserable. Can perma-cluture (or similar ideas) achieve
| that? I like the idea of a more integrated system (less
| monoculture), how to do it with reasonable manpower is an open
| question though, but I also think that artificial fertilizers
| are a necessity at that point.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Isn't a lot of that nitrogen that goes through our bodies
| just dumped into sewers? It seems like a lot of that nitrogen
| could be reclaimed.
| strait wrote:
| Composting a humanure mix in sealed enclosures with a
| regulated exhaust would produce relatively high nitrogen
| compost. Deliver this locally to growing crops in a just-
| in-time manner for less nitrogen loss. However, it's hard
| to see this happening on any meaningful scale, with regard
| to the current trajectory of modern civilization,
| especially in the cities.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| India has been doing quite well with organic methods for
| growing rice that produce very competitive yields [1]. Yes,
| it is more labor intensive, but from a climate-change
| perspective and a resilience perspective (much less
| dependence on petrochemicals) it has some big advantages.
|
| > If we stop using artificial fertilizers, how are we going
| to get that nitrogen?
|
| Many legume crops are able to capture their own nitrogen from
| the atmosphere by using bacterial symbionts. Crop rotations
| with legume crops are one way we already take advantage of
| this. Genetic engineering could allow more types of crops to
| form symbiotic relationships with these bacteria.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-
| development/2014/may/13/m...
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > And I refuse solutions that involve limiting population
| (i.e. genocide),
|
| What's your limit on population growth? When we all have one
| square meter of space? Is that when it should stop? I'm
| really curious to know where you draw the line.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| > I refuse solutions that involve limiting population (i.e.
| genocide), or make our life miserable
|
| We are between a rock (these kinds of extreme solutions) and
| a hard place (allowing current trends to continue because
| there are no clear solutions which can be counted on due to
| corruption/greed/short-term-thinking, which aren't going
| away).
|
| I see no way around anticipating increasing chaos for the
| foreseeable future. If you care about the long term health of
| yourself and your community/family, you should probably be
| looking for a region with plentiful local resources and
| inhospitable terrain.
| thedmstdmstdmst wrote:
| Genocide, miserable lives, or do nothing. If you care about
| yourself, your community / family... you should move away
| from your community?
| convolvatron wrote:
| you can certainly refuse to accept attempts to reduce
| population growth without equating it to genocide. they are
| clearly different both practically and morally.
| ramshanker wrote:
| Ahh, well one of the large fertiliser plant coming online soon in
| India.
|
| https://www.rfcl.co.in/
|
| Disclosure: My company has 26% stake in this.
| jtdev wrote:
| Uhhhh... India doesn't have a great track record on executing
| these types of projects.
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