Nitrous Oxide – A forgotten greenhouse gas | Hacker News Reader

Nitrous Oxide – A forgotten greenhouse gas

bbc.com

126 pointsmidnightcity76 comments

Also interesting to note: the heavy use of nitrogen fertiliser is also one of the reasons for the biodiversity crisis. Which according to some is a problem just as serious as the climate crisis, but is much less reported on in global media. Basic principle for the operation: plants which thrive well on nitrogen (think fast-growing grasses, nettles, ...) get an advantage over other plants (typically slower growing long-living flowering plants) because the fertiliser doesn't simply stay in the location where it gets applied. More uniform vegetation then produces the typical chain reaction (simplified): less insects, less food for birds, less birds, ... So tackling the problem mentioned in the article could have a positive influence both on climate and biodiversity.

It is also worth shouting out the fact that healthy biospheres sequester carbon..

Only when growing. Stable biosphere is carbon neutral.

Not so. Stable biospheres continuously deposit carbon in the soil.

You just repeated your assertion from the prior comment.

Maybe you’re right, but introducing additional data, information, or argument is more helpful to the discussion than just saying “Yuh-huh”

I honestly thought this was so established as to be obvious. I was mistaken, so, sorry. Here's a link that talks about how plants deposit carbon into the soil:

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/685/237929

The key line would be this, from a cursory reading:

"Long-term (millennia) C sequestration can be achieved when C from aboveground biomass transfers to the roots and enters the pool of SOC or SIC (hereafter SC, for soil C)."

Obviously there's more context, but this is why old growth forests are huge carbon sinks: because they have undergone the process of sequestering carbon into the soil uninterrupted for such a long time.

Again, apologies for taking the above for granted. Maybe it is less well known than I thought.

Thanks. I’ll have a read this weekend. I am among the people who assumed that over a hundred year period the overwhelming majority of carbon taken into plants was released back as CO2 through consumption, combustion, and decomposition (and that very little was permanently deposited into the soil).

Thanks for the link, I'll look at it too. I'm also in the group of people who assumed almost everything the plants sequester gets quickly recovered by other plants and organisms, and is part of the growth-sequester/decompose-release cycle.

Remember the post-decomposition "soil" is extremely carbon rich.

Similar logic applies to the case when we would use laser robots to get rid of weeds. It's artificial selection. Are you suggesting we should stop fighting weeds/insects to get better crops?

Those robots at least stop at the boundary of the field, unlike fertilizer and pesticides, that run off to the surrounding environment.

Such robots are mostly on a prototype stage, and not applied widely in agriculture today, so they are a possible problem of tomorrow rather than a present problem. Fertilizer run off is very much a present problem.

Also, the robots will typically replace a combination of herbicides and manual labor. It is not like farmers let the weed grow freely today. As such they may be an improvement over current practices.

It's hard to imagine what kind of evolutionary paths would be available to avoid robot weed killers? All I can think of is mimicking the crop that has been planted in the field.

an evolutionary arms-race will follow resulting in conscient weed-killer robots

Mimicry is a very prevalent evolutionary phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimicry

They will evolve these [0] and it will be fascinating.

[0] https://iotsecurity.engin.umich.edu/physical-adversarial-exa...

We should use far less land for growing crops. One of the primary means for accomplishing this is reducing meat consumption. Meat requires a lot of crops to feed livestock (+ a lot of water), while only contributing a small portion of the calories.

Less meat means less land for crops, which means less fertilizer use or fewer fields with laser robots ;).

maybe you have never heard of agricultural run-off? You might want to read up on i.e. 'dead zones'.

Here is an interesting article from 2018 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6371/eaam7240 Short form " Ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, partly due to Rising nutrient loads"

Longer quote: "Over the past 50 years ... Open-ocean oxygen-minimum zones (OMZs) have expanded by an area about the size of the European Union ... and the volume of water completely devoid of oxygen (anoxic) has more than quadrupled over the same period ... "Agricultural production has greatly increased ..., resulting in a 10-fold increase in global fertilizer use over the same period (47). Nitrogen discharges from rivers to coastal waters increased by 43% in just 30 years from 1970 to 2000 (48), "

Yes because there is no point in having huge yield now if the soil is dead in a few decades. We need to get over the "fighting" framing (i.e. short-term oversimplified industrial vision with 0 concern regarding sustainability).

Not really sure what you're hinting at, but yes using robots instead of herbicides would be a step forward. Robots can be programmed to not leak out into surrounding nature.

And actually yes maintaining a variety of weeds/bush around crops has been shown to be beneficial in certain circumstances: more insects attract more predators of all kinds and as such can create an ecosystem which lead to less plagues on the crops. Not gonna work for insanely large monocultures, but tossing away the idea is also not needed.

"Not gonna work for insanely large monocultures"

Those in combination with pesticides and insecticides are the main theat to diversity.

From the point of an ecosystem, those fields are desserts, cutting of different systems, so most species cannot travel and connect, which is something they need to.

> Robots can be programmed to not leak out into surrounding nature.

I don't think you can "program" a robot to avoid loosing micro-particles of its shell, or to prevent leaky/self-flammable batteries. Also i'm pretty sure the manufacture of the robot would incur processes that are much more devastating to the environment, eg. extracting and refining materials.

All in all, i agree with your point that chemical fertilizers and mechanized monocultures are slowly turning our soils into a desert, but i don't think "robots" are the future of many things.

Maybe some forms of eco-friendly robots can have a future in an eco-friendly society although i doubt it. But for that you'd need to build robots from widely-available and very recyclable materials, which is the opposite direction that the industry has taken by introducing over a hundred rare earths and metals in most electronics products.

Let's just say i have conflicted feelings about solarpunk: my gut tells me "cool" but my brain tells me "this is how we destroy nature". Although i do note some segments of the solarpunk community are more low-tech and would laugh at the idea of using robots for agriculture.

Heh, didn't know solarpunk was a thing. Anyway: materials etc are definitely a valid concern, but even in a worst case scenario I'm not sure a complete cost-benefit analysis would turn out negative for such robot. I looked around a bit (because robots in agriculture are a thing already) but couldn't find such numbers. But considering one robot could tackle many acres for many years (hopefully), compared with the kilograms of herbicides/pesticides used otherwise, it's just hard to guess which way the scale would tip.

You described the problem well, but missed another part of the problem, which is that mechanized monoculture usually turns over the soil, destructing the humus in the process, which is home to all sorts of micro-organic life and helps prevent the soil from turning into a desert (as we see happening now across the world where mechanized/chemical monocultures have been around for decades).

At least that's my understanding from the little i read about permaculture, but i have no specific knowledge of that field so please correct me if something is off.

Yes, I just wanted to briefly highlight one specific problem (fertilizer), but indeed there are many more problems leading to the biodiversity crisis; soil turning being just another piece of the puzzle.

And the way it gets typcially used in agro-industry does in turn have even more negative consequences then what you mention (which as far as I'm aware is correct); erosion for instance is getting a serious problem in some places. Combined with heavy sustained percipation in areas which don't usually see that (also as a result of climate change) it can lead to the complete topsoil just flooding away. And then more fertilizer is needed to make the land useful again, while the part which flooded away is fertlizing/polluting downstream areas. And so on, and so on. There's quite a lot of these chains/cycles all contrbuting to, in the most pessimistic view, a man-made complete downgrade of the whole planet.

It may be forgotten in some parts of the world, but certainly not in the Netherlands. Primarily because of the effects of nitrogen deposition on the environment and ammonia/methane in particular. There is basically a stop on building and expansion of agriculture as well as a reduction of the maximum speed on highways.

Came here to say this.. Yeah the Netherlands has it really bad. The speed limits aren't a huge thing IMO but the building restriction has made the house prices astronomical :(

It's good to see this start to be part of the discussion.

To remind everyone; we're headed for a global calamity of unprecedented scale. We need to change our approach with regards to our life support system (i.e. the eco ecosystem) and how much damage we're doing to it.

Nature is resilient, very much so. Biological processes are resilient to an incredible degree. This has allowed humanity to do astonishingly destructive things without too many repercussions. Resilience has hidden most of the damage we've caused. But we're pushing it to the breaking point and pushing ever harder every year.

Human systems are not resilient. They are optimized for "efficiency". We've seen what disruptions even a relative harmless virus like Covid19 can do the the global economy.

People need to take these issues seriously and things need to change.

The most concerning source of nitrous oxide isn't even mentioned in the article and that's the thawing of the permafrost.

Thawing permafrost is releasing massive amounts of CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide, and the thawing permafrost is locked into a positive feedback loop, the warmer it gets the more the permafrost thaws, the more greenhouse gases get released, causing it to get warmer.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/06/harvard-chemi...

Positive feedback loops keep running until they exhaust their energy source, which in this case is locked up greenhouse gases in the frozen permafrost. The permafrost sequesters about double the amount of greenhouse gases that is currently in the atmosphere. 24% of the landmass of the northern hemisphere is permafrost, and it's also the areas of the world that are warming the fastest.

Let's also not talk about phytoplankton populations, which account for 50-80% of all the oxygen in the atmosphere, their population is declining due to ocean warming and acidification. When that population crashes, it will not only impact the oxygen levels in the atmosphere, but phytoplankton are the basis for the entire marine food chain, which 40% of all humans rely on for their main source of protein.

Melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, warming oceans, acidification of the oceans, phytoplankton population decline, these are all positive feedback loops that have started due to human's releasing greenhouse gases. In 10-15 years the thawing permafrost will be outputting about the same amount of greenhouse gases as humans output, it won't be the same mix of chemicals, but it will have the same impact on warming.

Unless someone invents a technology that can capture and sequester abut 45 Billion metric tonnes per year of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere the positive feedback loops will keep chugging along. Unfortunately we only have until the phytoplankton population crashes to invent the greenhouse gases capture and sequestor technology, because once that population crashes and the associated oxygen they create crash, life on the surface of the earth for creatures that need oxygen will become untenable.

> which account for 50-80% of all the oxygen in the atmosphere >When that population crashes, it will not only impact the oxygen levels in the atmosphere

Why is this?

Wait til they learn about nitrogen trifluoride and silicon hexafluoride.

Wait till they learn about methane.

It is respectable 100 times more potent than CO2 and it is produced naturally in vast quantities in thawing permafrost.

It is ironic that the biggest producer of greenhouse gasses will soon be Siberia.

At least methane has a very short life in the atmosphere. N2O and these other gases last hundreds of years before breaking down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions

Quote: They conclude that "release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time"

See... there is a big bomb right over there. Methane might be 10 times less potent and it might be decaying couple of times faster, but there are many orders of magnitude more of it.

That's only partly true, since methane in the atmosphere decomposes into CO2. The methane itself causes a short powerful greenhouse effect, then decays into another long-term greenhouse gas.

SF6 doesn't even break down in the stratosphere. You have to get up to the mesosphere. Estimated atmospheric lifetime is 3200 years, GWP over 23000.

N2O is about x10 worse per unit over 100 years: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...

N2O is produced by people and we have choice to turn that production off or at least limit it.

We can't control production of methane anymore.

We can greatly reduce production of methane, even if not eliminate it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions

Have you understood what I wrote?

Methane is being emitted in a natural process from thawing permafrost. There are vast quantities of organic matter that has been frozen for thousands of years and is now starting getting eaten by bacteria that produce methane.

All human-made emissions pale in comparison to natural process.

There is no way to turn it off unless you can build a giant AC unit over entire arctic or maybe you can dig entire siberian soil and send it to Mars.

> There is no way to turn it off unless you can build a giant AC unit over entire arctic or maybe you can dig entire siberian soil and send it to Mars.

Not realistic but you could dig part of the soil and put it somewhere sealed, and periodically compress the methane and store it into something.

Do you realise how big Siberia is?

Partially, which is why I said "not realistic" at the beginning of my post. I think that my solution is a bit better of a solution than a giant AC over Siberia or sending that soil into space, but all three are not realistic.

Do you realize neither his or mine were presented as serious ideas.

It is called sarcasm.

1. That’s not what you wrote in the comment I first replied to

2. My link also contradicts your new claim that artificial CH4 pales in comparison to natural process from thawing permafrost (if ‘natural’ is even what we wish to call it when it’s only melting because of anthropogenic climate change)

I think you meant to say sulfur hexafluoride, not silicon hexafluoride. SF6 is the most potent known greenhouse gas.

SiF6 is an ion of hexafluorosilicic acid and its salts (the hexafluorosilicates).

Sulfur hexafluoride, sorry it was late. Mistyped.

That's actually pretty interesting. That's been used in almost every agricultural land... Regenerative agriculture may save us from mayhem. We're heading towards extinction if we don't adapt

I agree. Although I'd put it like this:

We're racing towards extinction and almost everyone tries to put the pedal to the metal because it benefits them just enough in the short run.

Classic tragedy of the commons!

Not me! I drive a Tesla.

Unless you find food made without fertilizer that result in NOX emissions then the Tesla won't help with this particular problem.

Just like going from combustion engines to electric vehicles will require major infrastructure changes, as will going from modern industrial farming practices to climate neutral ones require large changes in the way we produce, consume and think about food. You're not just going to be able to tell farmers to stop using fertilizers without a viable alternative.

and I'm sure you also charge that Tesla using only 100% carbon-neutral sources.

Your case would be rather stronger if you didn't drive at all. And ate only vegetables from local fields farmed organically. And never took hot showers. And powered all of your electronics exclusively through wind and solar. And never connected to any servers or over network links that were not sustainably powered.

You seem to be radically underestimating the scale of the problem. Being fortunate enough to be in the set rich enough to afford a luxury electric car absolves you from nothing.

How did you produce your wealth that let you buy your Tesla? Accounting for that, is your ecological footprint still smaller than that of a working class person driving a 1995 Honda Civic?

I'm going to assume that was supposed to be sarcasm and it is a) going over people's head and b) being willfully misinterpreted because it hits too close to home.

I thought it's too obvious for a /s. Oh well

Never underestimate people's vanity.

And if humans doesn't go extinct, the loss of biodiversity created after eons of evolution is a tragedy who put our species to shame. We need to stop worrying only about humanity.

I wonder if the loss of biodiversity during the anthropocene will lead to a post-anthropocenic explosion once humans (which might be the biggest evolutionary constraint at the moment) are gone. If that happens it will be a shame for humans to miss it...

Humans have certainly destroyed a lot of ecosystems, like a volcanic eruption or meteor impact would. So wild nature would recover from that, reclaiming corn fields etc.

But humans have also transported life around, destroying diversity of ecosystems. That's a different kind of change. I guess it's similar to continent configuration changes, like Pangaea or so.

Is this actually forgotten in science or is just not part of the political discussion?

I.e. is it included in the models that scientists use to predict global warming?

They are. Unfortunately it's difficult to explain scientific details to a largely uninformed public.

N2O is included in climate models (e.g [0]), partly (as noted in this article) because it is an effective GHG. It is also important for ozone chemistry and understanding ozone depletion [1].

[0] - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019JD03...

[1] - https://science.sciencemag.org/content/326/5949/123

I'm not a climate expert but already heard of this concern. It is well known in the scientific community, for more reasons than just gas emissions actually. The current techniques destroy many elements from the soil, making it very poor, which in turns increases the need for fertilizer, and leads to less biodiversity and more pollution.

The IPCC is explaining in details the impact of N2O, since the 90s [1]. The IPCC is also providing synthesis to stakeholders, but I didn't check what are their stance on N2O in these summaries.

I would say it's more absent from political discussion, which is only half true. If you promote organic agriculture (which is already subsidized in many countries), you're de facto inciting farmers to reduce the use of fertilizers, leading to less N2O emissions.

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_wg_I_19...

I thought the usual unit on the usual plots is "equivalent CO2 tons", which includes non-CO2 contributions.

I had the same thought, but the article clarifies that the problem is in policy:

> But despite its important contribution to climate change, N2O emissions have largely been ignored in climate policies.

Augmenta.ag fixes that They use machine vision & hyperapectral cameras to estimate nitrogen on the leaves and accordingly spread more, less or no fertilizer.

These are the kind of companies where it's easy to see it's net positive. It's not trying to sell something that spends more resources, instead it reduces resource usage.

Given the resources needed to construct, maintain and operate such machines, i wouldn't be so sure

Interesting approach. Currently pairing soil testing with tissue testing is cost effective tool to put a value on the fertility growers apply to their fields. We need this movement towards efficient nutrient management to continue to adapt and/or add tools to address eutrophication of our watersheds due to point source runoff. Better nutrient management also brings a positive effect to growers agronomics.

A good reason why meat is not sustainable since it requires so much agri surface.

Cut down meat, cut down surface.

Forgotten? We used to huff that stuff all the time as teenagers.

I just huffed some for a few hours straight on Wednesday afternoon. It's a godsend for those of us with dental anxiety.

The submitter, midnightcity, has a rather peculiar news submission history.

Well observed! I wonder if he's posting them as soon as they appear on the news sites. Quite an efficient way of harvesting karma. Unlike your post (or my response to it, I suspect).

It's just my way of working. I use the pomodoro technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique.

Then I take a break, have a look at the list of alerts of new articles, and read / post whatever I find interesting. Then another block of work. It's effective for me, although it might not work for everyone.

I'm curious - what's your motivation?

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