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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

Always worth noting that the fertilizers don't require fossil fuels, just currently use them as they are cheaper if you ignore the externalities and alternatives haven't got the scale yet.

Pro-fossil fuel types will regularly claim fossil fuels are a hard requirement for fertilizer.

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I have often read the Haber-Bosch process credited with making the population explosion and drastic decreases in hunger possible, making it one of the most impactful discoveries in human history.

What you've said is ambigious in the context of replying to my point.

Many people think Haber-Bosch requires fossil fuels as input. It doesn't.

Haber-Bosch requires hydrogen. Currently this is nearly always fossil fuel derived and the carbon parts that are not needed are dumped into the atmosphere.

Venting is not required, just cheap and neither is using hydrogen from a fossil source.

What is cheap and what is expensive in this context tho? Presumably we don't want to be using blue hydrogen forever but if the alternative is sufficiently harder to get (if i remember well hydrogen isn't exactly winning the energy war tho it's better if you're not turning it backinto electricity. It's also many orders of magnitudes away from what we'd need for current haber bosh processes) then that still puts incredible strain on the food supply. It may be that it just can't compete with the nitrogen from...chicken shit and some better agricultural approaches..

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