Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Climate is dynamic, and warmer periods have often coincided with human prosperity and thriving ecosystems. To ignore this historical context is to embrace a selective amnesia, driven by an apocalyptic agenda.
Climate alarmists treat fossil fuels as the producer of soot and environmental damage, yet the record is more complicated and quite positive. New research shows nitrogen deposition from the burning of hydrocarbons has helped to expand plant growth and the greening of large parts of the planet.
A Nutrient Hidden in Emissions
A 2026 global analysis published in Ecography examined increased vegetative greening across major ecosystems and found that one of the strongest statistical links was nitrogen deposition, greater even than changes in climate and land use. NASA’s own Earth science material lists the second-largest driver of greening as nitrogen, accounting for 9% of the effect. Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, also from the use of fossil fuels, accounts for 70% of greening, according to NASA.
While often framed as a pollutant, reactive nitrogen, released primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels, has been quietly fertilizing our planet. Although 78% of the atmosphere is made up of nitrogen, it is not in the form that many plants can use. However, nitrogen oxides released from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas act as a fertilizer that plant roots absorb and use to build proteins and chlorophyll.
Farmers pay good money for synthetic fertilizer built on exactly this chemistry. Nature, through the everyday byproducts of industrial civilization, has been delivering a diluted version of that fertilizer to forests, grasslands, and agricultural fields for more than a century.
You will not hear this from researchers who depend on alarming headlines to renew their next grant. Academic funding bodies do not reward scientists for reporting that industry has quietly fertilized half a continent’s worth of new leaf area. Instead, they reward papers that confirm a bogus crisis narrative.
Chemistry aside, much of the agricultural abundance of the modern world exists because the planet warmed out of one of the coldest periods in the last two millennia.
Warmth Feeds Us Historians call it the Little Ice Age, a 600-year cold spell that gripped much of the globe until the middle of the 19th century. Harvests failed repeatedly. Grain prices spiked. Livestock starved in barns for lack of fodder. Rivers that had never frozen in living memory turned solid enough to walk across. Regions with already short growing seasons had them grow even shorter, and famine followed.
In contrast, warmth helps big time. Not just today, but in earlier warm periods that had temperatures comparable to today’s. During the Medieval Warm Period, European vineyards crept northward into England and Norse farmers grazed cattle on pastures in Greenland that today sit locked under permafrost.
These historical precedents underscore a crucial point: Climate is dynamic, and warmer periods have often coincided with human prosperity and thriving ecosystems. To ignore this historical context is to embrace a selective amnesia, driven by an apocalyptic agenda.
Undeniable Relationship Between CO2 and Plant Growth Notwithstanding the extraordinary warmth enjoyed by Greenland’s Norse farmers 1,000 years ago, they did not have an advantage present today: elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the very molecule falsely blamed for overheating Earth. The physiological benefit of a richer CO2 atmosphere for plant life is not a fringe theory. It is established fact, confirmed by government scientists and others.
A NASA-backed study using three decades of satellite data found that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide has been the dominant driver behind a surge in global leaf area equivalent to roughly two additional continents’ worth of green cover, with NASA reporting that carbon dioxide fertilization alone accounts for the majority of that effect.
Research of crop yields show that wheat increases by 20% to 30% under elevated CO2, rice by 15% to 32%, and soybeans by up to 46%. Greenhouse operators routinely elevate CO2 levels up to 1,000 parts per million to turbocharge tomato, cucumber, and lettuce production.
These facts have largely been concealed by the climate industrial complex that relies on fear for its continuation. Bureaucracies thrive on emergency declarations. Journalists, preoccupied with their predetermined agendas, repeat the apocalyptic script because it sells. This blindness carries real costs. Developing nations face pressure to abandon the fossil fuels that could lift their people out of poverty.
The question is no longer whether fossil fuels have greened the planet. The evidence is overwhelming. Will people in power have the courage to acknowledge it as a benefit?
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.
Neither “renewables” or “non-renewables” are coherent groupings for an energy resource typology. Similarities between resources in different groupings can be strong and within group differences can be large. Most statements made in reference to generic “renewables” are either trivial or misleading.
Part I: Renewable energy as a grouping lacks coherence
This series will look in depth at the inherent and emerging flaws within the renewable/nonrenewable framework for classifying generating energy resources. It may have made sense 50 years ago to speak in terms of renewable and non-renewable resources when thinking of future energy needs and plans. That basic conceptualization helped promote change and thinking about the impact of generation resources on the environment. But we are now far removed from the 1970’s. Current calls for major changes in the electric supply system, such as Net-Zero, envision sweeping change. Broad system efforts to address environmental concerns while meeting energy needs call for a more sophisticated understanding than can be supported by a dichotomy between “renewable” and “non-renewable” resources.
Neither “renewables” or “non-renewables” are coherent groupings for an energy resource typology. Similarities between resources in different groupings can be strong and within group differences can be large. Most statements made in reference to generic “renewables” are either trivial or misleading. Policy and legislation favoring renewables over other generation resources can encourage poor resource choices and hinder good resource alternatives.
It might be expected that those who are concerned about C02 emissions, those concerned about nuclear power, and those more broadly identifying with environmental movements might take exception with this proposal. But any serious proponents of net-zero or of major energy transitions should be in favor of more clarity and increased precision when undertaking serious discussions. Many environmentalists have grave concerns with expanded hydro and biomass-based generation, for example. This series will discuss later how “non-renewable” resources might be the cleanest and greenest proposals in many instances. Furthermore, the case against burning fossil fuels is more strongly made based on current environmental concerns, not based on fears that that such resources might run out hundreds of years from now.
Instead of speaking of renewables, let’s talk about how clean resources are, how green they might be, how sustainable they might be, and how well they work for supporting the needs of consumers and the power system. Let’s not lump resources which can be expanded with those that have limited future applicability. We shouldn’t confuse resources that support the grid with those that stress the grid, and pretend they have similar potential. For example, Iceland with abundant hydro and geothermal resources does not provide a renewable model to provide guidance and support for an area rich with wind and solar resources.
Renewable is a Relationship not an Independent Characteristic of Energy Sources
The UN defines Renewable energy as “energy derived from natural sources that are replenished at a higher rate than they are consumed.” Whether something is renewable or not, then is dependent upon the relationship between replenishment and consumption. Are wooden ships “renewable”? Yes and no. Forests in Ireland and Iceland provided “renewable” timber needed for ship building, until consumption increased much faster than the tree stocks could be renewed. Ship timber went from being a renewable resource to limited resources to a tragic environmental loss in a short time frame. At one point whale oil was a viable “renewable resource” which gave light to much of the western world. While many resources are “renewable” for a time, as usage increase their use may prove to be unsustainable.
Such relationships can be observed with present renewable energy sources as well. If you overbuild or over-dispatch generation relative to some geothermal resources, they can be exhausted. Similarly, the use of hydro resources can be depleted. Many areas have “water wars” where various constituencies fight over how water resources are used by recreational, agricultural, aquaculture, navigation and energy production. Past hydro energy usage patterns are not sustainable in many regions. Biomass generation, as did shipbuilding, can lead to resource depletion as well.
What about Non-renewable Resources?
Is the problem with nuclear, natural gas and coal, as suggested by the renewable/non-renewable dichotomy, that we may one day run out of these resources? Or are the concerns better focused on their potential impacts in nearer terms?
Nuclear power is generally not considered renewable. Nuclear waste purportedly could power the US for 100 years. Economically assessable uranium might last 200 years. With breeder reactors we may be able to generate with nuclear power for billions of years. Recognizing all the resources needed to produce electrical energy, based on our current technological abilities it looks like we could generate far more energy for longer time periods with nuclear resources before facing significant resource constraints than we might with renewable resources such as wind and solar. Sustainability based arguments against nuclear power are weak. Arguments against nuclear should be based on considerations beyond whether it is renewable or not.
Now let’s look at coal. The estimates for coal availability span 50 to 500 years or more. Those who oppose the use of coal want it sharply curtailed in the near term because of its environmental impact, not because they want to have it available for future use. Those who favor use of coal generally see coal as a bridge fuel and are not wedded to coal as a fuel choice beyond the life of existing and planned coal plants. Most importantly the arguments around coal use are not around issues of sustainability of supply, but rather the impact of coal plants today. Virtually no one’s position on coal use today will change based upon their understanding of whether we have 50 years or 3 million years of coal availability remaining.
Finally let’s consider natural gas. Because it is “cleaner” than coal, many see it as an excellent fuel choice to transition away from coal. Common estimates of natural gas availability fall between 60 and 120 years. This is far more natural gas than was assumed available before the advent of horizontal fracking. Again, even at the lower ends of availability, there is plenty of natural gas availability to allow for current natural gas facilities and significant future additions. Once again. overwhelmingly concerns around natural gas focus on the impacts of current fracking efforts and CO2 contributions, not the long-term availability of natural gas.
Resource Availability
Mankind depends on many resources for energy and other needs. Most all of these resources depending on demand, may become constrained. Does it make sense to set policies that consider resource availability hundreds of years in the future? As the saying goes, “It’s hard to predict, especially about the future.” If the thinking that dominated the renewable energy debate expanded into other areas, we would look at many resources very differently than we do now. WorldWatch says we could run out of iron ore by 2070. Projections for bauxite suggest it might only last for 25 to 200 years. Scientists from the Global Phosphorous Research initiative estimates that peak phosphorous will be reached by 2030. Gold mining may be uneconomically sustainable by 2050. Supply problems for cobalt may emerge in the next decade. Tungsten sources appear to be very limited. On the other side, it appears that we may have significantly more lithium than previously anticipated.
Many will argue that human ingenuity, changes in technology, alternative ways of doing things, alternative ways to capture resources and such will forestall any severe consequences from such forecasted resource depletions. So far, we have been good at coming up with solutions to anticipated resource problems. We had a close call with nitrogen a little over 100 years ago. Nitrogen for weapons and fertilizer were dependent upon reserves of bird guano built up over ages on remote islands. The supply was precariously dwindling, threatening to bring civilization to a halt. The Haber-Bosch process developed in Germany was able to draw nitrogen from the air and produce ammonia. Nitrogen from the ammonia could then supply the world. As an additional note – the initial process was dependent on osmium, an extremely rare element as a catalyst. Other catalysts and other processes have since been discovered, such that we are no longer dependent on osmium or the Haber-Bosch process. We should also be aware that today’s solution may be tomorrow’s problem. Instead of problems relating to dwindling nitrogen availability, abundant anthropogenic nitrogen creates environmental problems by supporting cyanobacteria and resultant algae blooms.
None of the above is to argue that we should glibly and wastefully use resources, ignoring potential future consequences. But neither should we dogmatically proclaim that resource depletion is just around the corner and that present trends cannot possibly persist. We have no real idea of any resource needs 100 years in the future. As we look at various generation resources ,the question of sustainability will always bring challenges. In considering competent alternatives it will be important to be as evenhanded as possible across resource types.
Sustainability Depends on the Entire Energy Conversion Process
Wind and solar appear not as constrained as some other renewable resources might, since we get fresh quantities daily. It is important though that we look not only upon the direct energy source, but at all resources needed to produce electric energy as well as the complete life-cycle impacts including construction, transportation and support services. To capture energy from wind and solar sources, we rely on many resources that are only available in limited amounts. It is arbitrary (and incorrect) to say that we only care about the renewability of the original energy source itself, and not the resources needed to convert the energy source to electric energy. If you are going to treat all potential resources fairly, it should be considered that the construction of vast solar and wind facilities can deplete critical resources, possibly making their increased use unsustainable. Current technologies do not allow for the replenishment in the foreseeable future of all the resources needed to convert wind and solar energy to electrical energy.
One may argue that wind and solar may not always be dependent on the limited resources that they rely on today, such as rare earth metals. That eventually through currently unknown technologies, they will be able to always meet power needs. As previously discussed, this is a perfectly reasonable hope. However, if you can make that argument, a similar one for nuclear fuel is likely even more well founded. Any dichotomy that places hydro, biomass, wind and solar as sustainable power sources, but sees nuclear power as being somehow less sustainable, should be considered suspect.
Does Renewable Mean Clean or Green? Should We Quickly Retire Non-Renewable Resources?
Environmental groups have been clear for years in their opposition to most all new hydro projects. Many environmental groups strongly oppose the Biomass industry, decrying the environmental impacts of our current approaches. FERC just approved the removal of four existing hydro resources based upon their continuing impacts. Geothermal plants release CO2 and most are carefully monitored to track emissions. Even wind and solar plants are not universally clean and green, as they can have particularly adverse impacts in some environments.
Many fossil fuel plants which could effectively provide backup power are imprudently retired to hasten a transition to support higher levels of renewables. This may provide aggregate numbers which look better to some, but this can be counter-productive. When considering lifecycle impacts of generation resources, retaining old plants for emergency service can be the most environmentally smart move available. Most environmental damage has already happened. Remaining incremental fuel impacts are small compared to the benefits. Considering CO2 alone, building extensive wind and solar or adding batteries to replace the emergency power that such units might provide, may have far greater adverse environmental impacts than prolonging limited fossil fuel generation.
The Line Between Renewable and Non-Renewable is Not Clear and Will Continue to Blur
Energy resources of the future may vary considerably from today’s expectations. It is likely that many might straddle the line between what is considered renewable and non-renewable. Existing technologies already blur the line. Molten salt cores are heated with mirrors to enable solar power to better match the grid capabilities of fossil fuel-based resources. As part of the process in some applications, the “renewable” solar resource was designed to burn supplemental natural gas to make the process more efficient. So far, such plants have not worked as well in practice as in theory. But they have provided hopes to many as a future synchronous “renewable” resource. If in fact they did work as planned, it might well make a lot of sense to be able to effectively tap a lot of solar power with the addition of a little natural gas, even if such a plant was not strictly “renewable”. Without careful attention to actual impacts, future clean plants which fall short of being strictly “renewable” may face undue hurdles.
Final Note
Speaking in terms of renewables and nonrenewable generating resources generally provides more confusion than clarity. Within-group differences are large in many cases. We can’t see the future and know what alternatives might emerge and prove successful. It is, however, clearly emerging that “renewable” and “nonrenewable” are dated terms who have outlived their usefulness. The next part of this series will look at how various generating resources impact the grid. Some “renewables” provide great support for the grid, while others create challenges. Lumping them together in discussion of grid impacts creates misunderstandings and problems that will long term harm any efforts to change the grid.
Multi-institutional research team finds declining nitrogen availability in a nitrogen-rich world.
Since the mid-20th century, research and discussion have focused on the negative effects of excess nitrogen on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. However, new evidence indicates that the world is now experiencing a dual trajectory in nitrogen availability. Following years of attention to surplus nitrogen in the environment, our evolving understanding has led to new concerns about nitrogen insufficiency in areas of the world that do not receive significant inputs of nitrogen from human activities. In a new review paper, “Evidence, Causes, and Consequences of Declining Nitrogen Availability in Terrestrial Ecosystems,” in the journal Science, a multi-institutional team of researchers describes the causes of declining nitrogen availability and how it affects ecosystem function.
Over the last century, humans have more than doubled the global supply of reactive nitrogen through industrial and agricultural activities. This nitrogen becomes concentrated in streams, inland lakes, and coastal bodies of water, sometimes resulting in eutrophication, low-oxygen dead zones, and harmful algal blooms. These negative impacts of excess nitrogen have led scientists to study nitrogen as a pollutant.However, rising carbon dioxide and other global changes have increased demand for nitrogen by plants and microbes, and the research team’s newly published paper demonstrates that nitrogen availability is declining in many regions of the world, with important consequences for plant growth.
[Note the Nitrogen Deposition graph in the top diagram. It peaked in the 1980s, yet in 2023 it is being used to force farmers off their land in the Netherlands,Canada, Ireland and other nations to come]
Nitrogen is an essential element for plants and the animals that eat them. Gardens, forests, and fisheries are all more productive when they are fertilized with nitrogen. If plant nitrogen becomes less available, trees grow more slowly and their leaves are less nutritious to insects, potentially reducing growth and reproduction, not only of insects, but also the birds and bats that feed on them.
“When nitrogen is less available, every living thing holds on to the element for longer, slowing the flow of nitrogen from one organism to another through the food chain. This is why we can say that the nitrogen cycle is seizing up,” said Andrew Elmore, senior author on the paper, and a professor of landscape ecology at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center.
On top of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, rising global temperatures also affect plant and microbial processes associated with nitrogen supply and demand. Warming often improves conditions for growth, which can result in longer growing seasons, leading plant nitrogen demand to exceed the supply available in soils. Disturbances, including wildfires, can also remove nitrogen from systems and reduce availability over time.
Intercalibration of isotopic records from leaves, tree rings, and lake sediments suggests that N availability in many terrestrial ecosystems has steadily declined since the beginning of the industrial era. Reductions in N availability may affect many aspects of ecosystem functioning, including carbon sequestration and herbivore nutrition. Shaded areas indicate 80% prediction intervals; marker size is proportional to the number of measurements in each annual mean.Isotope data: (tree ring) K. K. McLauchlan et al., Sci. Rep.7, 7856 (2017); (lake sediment) G. W. Holtgrieve et al., Science334, 1545–1548 (2011); (foliar) J. M. Craine et al., Nat. Ecol. Evol.2, 1735–1744 (2018)
Our evolving understanding of the Earth system has led to new concerns about N insufficiency after years of attention to surplus N in the environment. An integrated suite of responses will be needed to simultaneously manage both of these problems. Given the potential implications of declining N availability for food webs, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem functions and services, it is important that research, management, and policy actions be taken before the consequences of declining N availability become more severe. It can be difficult to create a shared understanding of the N cycle and the many effects of N on ecosystem health and human well-being. The combination of excess N and declining N availability, in which outcomes vary widely across landscapes, adds to this challenge. Developing dialogues among diverse stakeholders—scientists, ecosystem managers, and others—will be necessary for alleviating and adapting to declining N availability in an N-rich world.
Venus is the least understood of the terrestrial planets. Despite broad similarities to the Earth in mass and size, Venus has no evidence of plate tectonics recorded on its young surface, and Venus’s atmosphere is strikingly different. Numerical experiments of long-term planetary evolution have sought to understand Venus’s thermal–tectonic history with indeterminate results.
Every once in awhile I read a news release and do a facepalm. I note that “simulations” are not “evidence” and chaos (and uncertainty) works backward in time too. – Anthony
From EurekAlert – Venus had Earth-like plate tectonics billions of years ago, study suggests
Simulations produced by a Brown-led research team offer evidence that Venus once had plate tectonics — a finding that opens the door for the possibility of early life on the planet and insights into its history.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Venus, a scorching wasteland of a planet according to scientists, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to have occurred on early Earth, a new study found. The finding sets up tantalizing scenarios regarding the possibility of early life on Venus, its evolutionary past and the history of the solar system.
Writing in Nature Astronomy, a team of scientists led by Brown University researchers describes using atmospheric data from Venus and computer modeling to show that the composition of the planet’s current atmosphere and surface pressure would only have been possible as a result of an early form of plate tectonics, a process critical to life that involves multiple continental plates pushing, pulling and sliding beneath one another.
On Earth, this process intensified over billions of years, forming new continents and mountains, and leading to chemical reactions that stabilized the planet’s surface temperature, resulting in an environment more conducive to the development of life.
Venus, on the other hand, Earth’s nearest neighbor and sister planet, went in the opposite direction and today has surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead. One explanation is that the planet has always been thought to have what’s known as a “stagnant lid,” meaning its surface has only a single plate with minimal amounts of give, movement and gasses being released into the atmosphere.
The new paper posits that this wasn’t always the case. To account for the abundance of nitrogen and carbon dioxide present in Venus’ atmosphere, the researchers conclude that Venus must have had plate tectonics sometime after the planet formed, about 4.5 billion to 3.5 billion years ago. The paper suggests that this early tectonic movement, like on Earth, would have been limited in terms of the number of plates moving and in how much they shifted. It also would have been happening on Earth and Venus simultaneously.
“One of the big picture takeaways is that we very likely had two planets at the same time in the same solar system operating in a plate tectonic regime — the same mode of tectonics that allowed for the life that we see on Earth today,” said Matt Weller, the study’s lead author who completed the work while he was a postdoctoral researcher at Brown and is now at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
This bolsters the possibility of microbial life on ancient Venus and shows that at one point the two planets — which are in the same solar neighborhood, are about the same size, and have the same mass, density and volume — were more alike than previously thought before diverging.
The work also highlights the possibility that plate tectonics on planets might just come down to timing — and therefore, so may life itself.
“We’ve so far thought about tectonic state in terms of a binary: it’s either true or it’s false, and it’s either true or false for the duration of the planet,” said study co-author Alexander Evans, an assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown. “This shows that planets may transition in and out of different tectonic states and that this may actually be fairly common. Earth may be the outlier. This also means we might have planets that transition in and out of habitability rather than just being continuously habitable.”
That concept will be important to consider as scientists look to understand nearby moons — like Jupiter’s Europa, which has shown proof of having Earth-like plate tectonics — and distant exoplanets, according to the paper.
The researchers initially started the work as a way to show that the atmospheres of far-off exoplanets can be powerful markers of their early histories, before deciding to investigate that point closer to home.
They used current data on Venus’ atmosphere as the endpoint for their models and started by assuming Venus has had a stagnant lid through its entire existence. Quickly, they were able to see that simulations recreating the planet’s current atmosphere didn’t match up with where the planet is now in terms of the amount nitrogen and carbon dioxide present in the current atmosphere and its resulting surface pressure.
The researchers then simulated what would have had to happen on the planet to get to where it is today. They eventually matched the numbers almost exactly when they accounted for limited tectonic movement early in Venus’ history followed by the stagnant lid model that exists today.
Overall, the team believes the work serves as a proof of concept regarding atmospheres and their ability to provide insights into the past.
“We’re still in this paradigm where we use the surfaces of planets to understand their history,” Evans said. “We really show for the first time that the atmosphere may actually be the best way to understand some of the very ancient history of planets that is often not preserved on the surface.”
Upcoming NASA DAVINCI missions, which will measure gasses in the Venusian atmosphere, may help solidify the study’s findings. In the meantime, the researchers plan to delve deep into a key question the paper raises: What happened to plate tectonics on Venus? The theory in the paper suggests that the planet ultimately became too hot and its atmosphere too thick, drying up the necessary ingredients for tectonic movement.
“Venus basically ran out of juice to some extent, and that put the brakes on the process,” said Daniel Ibarra, a professor in Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and co-author on the paper.
The researchers say the details of how this happened may hold important implications for Earth.
“That’s going to be the next critical step in understanding Venus, its evolution and ultimately the fate of the Earth,” Weller said. “What conditions will force us to move in a Venus-like trajectory, and what conditions could allow the Earth to remain habitable?”
The study also included Alexandria Johnson from Purdue University. It was supported by NASA’s Solar System Workings program.
After years of anticipation and hard work by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu finally is on Earth. It landed at 8:52 a.m. MDT (10:52 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, in a targeted area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.
The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Photo Credit: (NASA/Keegan Barber)
After years of anticipation and hard work by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu finally is on Earth. It landed at 8:52 a.m. MDT (10:52 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, in a targeted area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.
Within an hour and a half, the capsule was transported by helicopter to a temporary clean room set up in a hangar on the training range, where it now is connected to a continuous flow of nitrogen.
Getting the sample under a “nitrogen purge,” as scientists call it, was one of the OSIRIS-REx team’s most critical tasks today. Nitrogen is a gas that doesn’t interact with most other chemicals, and a continuous flow of it into the sample container inside the capsule will keep out earthly contaminants to leave the sample pure for scientific analyses.
The returned samples collected from Bennu will help scientists worldwide make discoveries to better understand planet formation and the origin of organics and water that led to life on Earth, as well as benefit all of humanity by learning more about potentially hazardous asteroids.
“Congratulations to the OSIRIS-REx team on a picture-perfect mission – the first American asteroid sample return in history – which will deepen our understanding of the origin of our solar system and its formation. Not to mention, Bennu is a potentially hazardous asteroid, and what we learn from the sample will help us better understand the types of asteroids that could come our way,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “With OSIRIS-REx, Psyche launch in a couple of weeks, DART’s one year anniversary, and Lucy’s first asteroid approach in November, Asteroid Autumn is in full swing. These missions prove once again that NASA does big things. Things that inspire us and unite us. Things that show nothing is beyond our reach when we work together.”
The Bennu sample – an estimated 8.8 ounces, or 250 grams – will be transported in its unopened canister by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday, Sept. 25. Curation scientists there will disassemble the canister, extract and weigh the sample, create an inventory of the rocks and dust, and, over time, distribute pieces of Bennu to scientists worldwide.
Today’s delivery of an asteroid sample – a first for the U.S. – went according to plan thanks to the massive effort of hundreds of people who remotely directed the spacecraft’s journey since it launched on Sept. 8, 2016. The team then guided it to arrival at Bennu on Dec. 3, 2018, through the search for a safe sample-collection site between 2019 and 2020, sample collection on Oct. 20, 2020, and during the return trip home starting on May 10, 2021.
“Today marks an extraordinary milestone not just for the OSIRIS-REx team but for science as a whole,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Successfully delivering samples from Bennu to Earth is a triumph of collaborative ingenuity and a testament to what we can accomplish when we unite with a common purpose. But let’s not forget – while this may feel like the end of an incredible chapter, it’s truly just the beginning of another. We now have the unprecedented opportunity to analyze these samples and delve deeper into the secrets of our solar system.”
After traveling billions of miles to Bennu and back, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft released its sample capsule toward Earth’s atmosphere at 6:42 a.m. EDT (4:42 a.m. MDT). The spacecraft was 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) from Earth’s surface at the time – about one-third the distance from Earth to the Moon.
Traveling at 27,650 mph (44,500 kph), the capsule pierced the atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. EDT (8:42 a.m. MDT), off the coast of California at an altitude of about 83 miles (133 kilometers). Within 10 minutes, it landed on the military range. Along the way, two parachutes successfully deployed to stabilize and slow the capsule down to a gentle 11 mph (18 kph) at touchdown.
“The whole team had butterflies today, but that’s the focused anticipation of a critical event by a well-prepared team,” said Rich Burns, project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “For us, this was the World Series, ninth inning, bases-loaded moment, and this team knocked it out of the park.”
Radar, infrared, and optical instruments in the air and on the ground tracked the capsule to its landing coordinates inside a 36-mile by 8.5-mile (58-kilometer by 14-kilometer) area on the range. Within several minutes, the recovery team was dispatched to the capsule’s location to inspect and retrieve it. The team found the capsule in good shape at 9:07 a.m. MDT (11:07 a.m. EDT) and then determined it was safe to approach. Within 70 minutes, they wrapped it up for safe transport to a temporary clean room on the range, where it remains under continuous supervision and a nitrogen purge.
NASA Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. The University of Arizona, Tucson leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx, including processing the sample when it arrives on Earth, will take place at NASA Johnson. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (the Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
To learn more about the asteroid sample recovery mission visit:
Farmers in the Netherlands are unhappy with government wanting to shut them down or reduce their operations, because of a supposed plague of nitrogen. The “crisis” is, however, completely model driven. First by the Curse of the Wee P, and second by Lack of Skill.
The Dutch Nitrogen Faux Crisis — Jaap Hanekamp Interview
William M Briggs and Jaap Hanekamp discuss the Dutch nitrogen “crisis.”
Farmers in the Netherlands are unhappy with government wanting to shut them down or reduce their operations, because of a supposed plague of nitrogen. The “crisis” is, however, completely model driven. First by the Curse of the Wee P, and second by Lack of Skill.
Jaap and William have been involved in this “crisis” for many years, publishing often on how much over-certainty there is and about bad models. Give a listen and find out why the government is wrong and they are right. For those who prefer reading, below is an excerpted transcript from closed captions in italics with my bolds.
How in Netherlands Nitrogen Policy Became Nature Policy
The Netherlands is famous for its Dutch cheese, not for much longer as the government sells off all of the Farms or or buys up all the farms. We’ve been working on this this topic. Our audience knows me a little bit but they don’t know you. Jaap has formal training in chemistry and he is a chemistry professor. He’s also got a PhD in Theology and teaches on that. And he and I have been working together on this so-called crisis, this fake crisis for a number of years.
So the so-called uh mediator who was once a part of the official panel to investigate the crisis, and due to some sort of bureaucratic trick, became an independent expert, today recommended that the government buy off the biggest farmers. What’s the deal with that?
Of course we have a small country with loads of agriculture so the government and house of Parliament and NGOs from the environmental side think that we should reduce our impact on ecosystems, nature in the Netherlands. That is strange, given our history. You know, it’s long been said that God created the world, and the Dutch created the Netherlands. It’s so obvious here that we engineer nature, like any other organism or creature on Earth that reorganizes nature around itself to suit itself. But we in the Netherlands were rather exuberant in that arena so we created our whole ecosystem around us in terms of of cities, in terms of agriculture. Any kind of Natural Area we might have is created in the Netherlands almost literally either intentionally or unintentionally anyway. And those places are quite nice and beautiful.
There is sort of a very strong protective streak in policy saying we should protect the natural areas we still have, and protect simply means more or less a status quo, keep it as it is which doesn’t make much sense. But the weapon of choice is nitrogen now. There is a strange thing about this because influences are from all sides, especially here groundwater, precipitation, temperature, climate and so on, and of course also nitrogen. And we chose nitrogen, so nature policy is nitrogen policy, and nitrogen policies are nature policy in the Netherlands. Which is a very odd thing to do but anyway this is what we have.
The Dutch government wants to spend 30 billion euros which is a large chunk of our budget on protecting nature via the reduction of nitrogen emissions and depositions. So that’s it.
Believing in Ecological Crisis
But why why do they believe that this crisis exists? I mean they must have had something in the expertocracy as I call it. They have Solutions in search of problems in my my estimation. They have a solution they want to meddle with certain things because of their understanding of what nature is. So they go look for a problem, and they created a lot of nitrogen other other countries are using carbon dioxide, of course the Netherlands as well, l so we’ve part of that of course.
But why this thing and after you answer why, then let’s start talking about the the research that they’re using on this and and the stuff that you and I have discovered.
Why can be answered on multiple levels. You could look from a scientific perspective, which is not really that interesting; we’re going to discuss this later. Because the problem we have nowadays everywhere is that science or scientism or exportocracy should solve everything and anything. Whether or not there’s a problem, there must be some solution to some issue because of science. That’s a huge problem in itself. Why do we think that science could actually do that, or understand it or research it, or fathom it to such an extent I would actually find solutions to to the problems that might exist or might not exist.
The other part is harder to Fathom; it has to do likely with the problem coming from the 1970s: Acid rain and the disappearance of forest. The forest dieback was originally a German issue. Der Spiegel actually brought out a huge paper with the title The Ecological Hiroshima, the idea that acid rain would obliterate within a decade every single forest in the world.
I remember that, it was sort of the the climate change catastrophe 101 basically. That acid rain story sort of disappeared from view, people didn’t talk about it anymore. But during that time of the 1970s and 80s dangers of agriculture came into view because producing ammonia and of course deposited on nature areas.
And the idea was, okay ammonia is of course a base, but it will acidify the soil and that will destroy the forest and will aid in the forest in dying off.
So that’s where it originated, say 50 years ago. But of course the whole Forest dieback disappeared and now it’s about soil acidification and loss of biodiversities. Those are the the terms that actually have survived the debacle of the acid rain Forest dieback apocalypse.
On the one hand we can very well monitor the dying of forest; you can actually observe that. Yeah it didn’t happen, not even close. So they had to move away from that theme. I still remember pictures of monuments dissolving into nothing as if this has happened overnight; algae blooms on lakes as if these were brand new; all kinds of things like that. So they had the same problems. not just in Germany yeah. And course the the famous dangers came from Eastern Europe, loads of sulfur dioxide from foundries for instance were blasted into to Forest. And sulfur dioxide is not really a healthy chemical if you if the concentration is really high. Of course most plants or humans or any other organism would really love to have sulfur dioxide blown in their face so sulfur dioxide was an issue. And that was tackled since then which is basically a good thing. You obviously shouldn’t pump stuff in the air just randomly.
But of course the story got bigger and bigger and in the end disappeared because yeah the forest just grew happily uh through all our own brouhaha about all these problems. But what remained is the idea that ammonia changes soil chemistry, changes ecosystems, changes our biodiversity and that’s a bad thing. And it just became a matter of theology almost; it became a truism. And then it seems after that truism, they went in search of evidence in the form of models.
Examining the Notion of Chemical Critical Loads
The science of nitrogen and the impact on ecosystems has been around now for the past 50 years, at the same time as the forest issue. And it never has grown out to be an adult critical discourse scientifically speaking. Now it’s just confirming what the other guy says and based on the work from some other type; so there’s no real conflict no real discussion within this discourse at all. It’s just basically doing the same old same old thing and sort of publishing stuff without really critically reflecting on the results that came out of that research.
And we’ve shown that especially when we have to discuss the critical loads issue. The idea was that beyond a certain level of deposition per area, ecosystems suffer from a certain kind of deposition, meaning the the amount of nitrogen that’s falling on the land, in precipitation or dry deposition or whatever you can imagine.
Critical loads have been devised on the idea that above a certain kind of of raining down or depositing a certain chemical, ecosystems suffer a certain amount of risk, that’s the critical loads topic that now you and I have investigated that quite thoroughly. We’ve found it to be at best wanting, that’s being very very euphemistic.
We discovered so many caveats, which are embarrassing on the one hand, on the other hand sloppy, imprecise, statistically nonsensical, experimentally badly done.
So to apply this idea of nitrogen critical loads you have to define the critical point when we’re gonna stop things. They went and did these experiments, basically they took small plots just a couple of meters square. And they would grow certain grasses or other other types of plant matter on this and they would measure all kinds of things: the rate of growth, the width of the stems, and the root penetration and so on. And if they tested a difference between something that had a higher nitrogen content than a lower nitrogen content and it gave a wee P value, well that was said to be a nitrogen critical load. But there was no consistency to what they meant by a critical load or what was actually affected or the or the range of stuff that could be affected. And they had these ridiculous numbers extrapolating from a couple of square meters to the area of the entire country
Using these kinds of things, we showed if you just take a proper accordance of the uncertainty in these measurements, the critical loads just evaporate, they have no meaning unless you were to design really good experiments . We proposed large scale experiments taking a couple of hundred square meters and doing this experiment for years and years and years.
But there’s another problem you described quite well in in our paper. Of course nitrogen instigates change in ecosystems but the question is: In what terms do you regard this as damage or bad? Sure things change, but to what extent does is change a good thing or or not?
They assumed that change of any kind was a Bad Thing. Any difference between the sort of control group and a nitrogen group was considered bad. Which is which is ridiculous because you have to have nitrogen, you can’t eliminate nitrogen. It’s absolutely like eliminating carbon dioxide. In epidemiology you can do elimination studies, for instance antioxidants intake. You can do that because you can survive antioxidants intake for a certain while. But you can’t really do an elimination study in nitrogen and plant growth no that’s not going to work.
The other great thing we found is that there’s always a background concentration in the atmosphere and how much deposited on the area you’re looking at and background is important because you want to know at the control level how much nitrogen will rain down anyway. We found that studies were taking yearly averages, sort of polls of plots of the countryside. Which of course doesn’t give us much information about anything.
So you cannot really take the control and look at the experiment. They would calculate these single numbers from a small area and apply them either to an entire region or even Countrywide. And then averaging by year. I mean as the basis of policy it’s quite absurd. Of course there are other observational studies which are much harder to do experimentally. That is observing what happens to to certain ecosystems in in areas where there’s much more nitrogen deposition than somewhere else. But it’s hard to to extrapolate precise information from these studies anyway.
So this whole critical load debate is basically devoid of any critical reflection. We were the first ones that published a paper which was critical on on anything. And of course we got no response from the community, nothing at all. There was a weak response in Dutch in an internet Forum, which was poorly written and and sort of a hand-waving response. There was no real critical reflection on that at all. And we weren’t surprised because the researchers in that Arena are not at all versed in critical discourse as we are in chemistry. In mathematics and in physics you have to be critical, you’re critical of other people as well, because that’s how the the whole discourse develops. But in this matter not so much, in this discourse none whatsoever.
Central Role of Aerius OPS Chemical Transport Model
In fact the whole nitrogen policy is reduced to two things: the critical loads we just discussed and Aerius OPS (Operational Priority Substances), which is a model. Aerius OPS is a transport model that calculates the emission or actually how much of a certain chemical is transported through the atmosphere, and where and and to what extent it deposits at some point from the source where this emission comes from.
Now you can imagine to measure and analyze deposition in the Netherlands you would have maybe a hundred thousand measuring points. Or you can measure different chemicals like ammonia which is not possible. So I always say modeling itself is not a problem, but you have to model in this case because you can’t sample a hundred thousand areas in the Netherlands and decide exactly how much were the deposits. And that still doesn’t cover the problem: Where do all these emissions come from, which is another issue altogether.
So modeling itself is not a problem but OPS areas is a problem and keep in mind both critical load and Aerius OPS are part of the nitrogen laws in the Netherlands so in order to define how much you contribute to nitrogen deposition in Netherlands you have to use areas OPS the model run by the National Institute of Health and Environment. You have to use that model to calculate your own addition to the background levels of of nitrogen deposition. So it has huge policy implications.
Now I was part of a scientific committee that had to analyze the scientific quality of areas OPS and and all the other stuff. Not critical loads by the way, we didn’t discuss very much. But here’s the thing: We never really looked under the hood in OPS, we never looked at the Machinery of OPS. We did say as a committee the calculations done per hectare were too imprecise. That’s as far as we got with our criticism of Aerius.
Then of course validation studies via FOIA requests came on the table and you were courteous enough to look at these validation studies, which by the way we didn’t get as a scientific committee, which still annoys me actually. As a good scientist, you know science needs to be transparent. That’s the a priori of any kind of scientific work. People should have put on these validation studies immediately on the table. That’s what you do; you don’t make others to have to ask for them. That’s part of questioning the science. But here that makes you a denier and so forth; you’re just supposed to accept because this is how the expertocracy works. But we did get these things and we were able to investigate how well this model performed you can explain much more than I can what were the what were the results.
We have a two-tier approach here. The first part was for our esteemed colleagues to provide the underlying data of these validations. We didn’t get that, at least not immediately; there’s a nice story to that. But the first stage of this two-tier approach was your analysis of the quality of the validation studies, and how well the model actually worked according to those studies.
Aerius OPS Model Lacks Necessary Predictive Skill
Let me explain something about this model: it stinks, it doesn’t have good predictive ability at all. I want to explain this concept called skill. I’ve explained it a million times but it never sticks in people’s minds for some reason. So we have this expert model this OPS model, with all kinds of science going it. And it makes predictions of something like SO2 or NOx concentrations of something like this in the atmosphere. Now that’s a very sophisticated model, there’s lots of code and all this kind of stuff in here.
Before you continue you do an experiment. You open a bottle of sulfur dioxide or ammonia or whatever gas can be transported through the atmosphere. You measure distances over time, or over a certain time frame you measure concentrations when you open the bottles and you afterward find certain atmospheric concentrations. And of course they diminish over time because of a convection of wind, blah blah. You have these data from these measurements which has a certain precision. But now the model subsequently needs to predict based on all this physics and chemistry and these concentrations you just measured in the experiments. So the sophisticated model is making a prediction of these numbers.
I’m just going to take the seasonal average, the location experimental average we have. I’m going to make a guess of the mean, just the average, and I’m going to pretend that average is itself a forecast. In other words for every measurement I’m going to predict the mean. Now that’s a really crude model; it’s a very simple but a useful model. In fact we use it all the time to say winter is colder than summer in the northern hemisphere because of these types of averages.
It’s a very rough and crude model, but if this OPS model itself has any weight to it, it should easily beat this mean model.
It should be more precise than just taking seasonal averages. That’s what skill is. The skill is relative performance over a supposedly weaker model. The OPS model often does not have skill against this simple mean model. It just doesn’t work. The error of the model itself increases as the concentration of the chemical (whatever we’re measuring) increases.
In other words, when these chemicals are in small amounts down and hovering around zero, the model has skill. But if you get large amounts and they become interesting, the model becomes worse and worse and worse .
So that’s one of the problems with it. The second problem is when our researcher ran the model for a farm at a particular downwind site. It’s what you’re supposed to do if you have a farm yourself so our researcher populated this farm with 400 fictional cows and then halved it to 200 cows and halved it again to 100 cows and then again to zero cows. And looked at comparing the amount of nitrogen that was deposited at this particular location according to OPS. OPS predicted the grand difference between all 400 cows and no cows at all was just under six moles per hectare per year. From 400 to 200 cows, it went down to like four or something so we’re talking about a difference of two moles per hectare per year. So now tell us as a chemist what is the difference in terms of numbering six or four or two
But of course that’s just completely fictional because there is no way I can tell the difference between four and six moles per hectare per year. I couldn’t measure it.
Though the model says as we increase the number of cows the amount deposited does increase. So based on that if I had to make a policy decision I’d say: Oh this is terrible the only way I could fix this is if I eliminated the cows or I’d cut them in half and then the number does go down. So based on that kind of reasoning therefore I should do something.
But you’re talking about a difference so small, so down into the noise you’d never be able to tell if you really reached it in reality. That’s our main criticism against this this whole policy making. It’s completely virtual, it sort of suggests a world which doesn’t exist, except in the zeros and ones in the computers. The biggest problem I have with the model is that it’s completely an imaginary reality not the world that we live in.
I couldn’t stress this enough Aerius is Central to the whole policy making. You need to use it in order to have a computation whether or not you add or subtract, increase or decrease your ammonia additions to a nature area near by. That is of course very worrying because that’s still in place. This model should be scrapped immediately because it produces bogus results as this very nice pictures shows. At least it should be tested, be investigated and then judged by independent parties.
Food Supply and Livelihoods At Risk from Nitrogen Policies
The irony of this whole situation is that the Dutch institution literally produces misinformation . We show that it’s completely misinforming about the reality of of any kind of nitrogen deposition from a certain Farm which wants to increase or decrease its number of animals.
That’s actually the case, so now where are the Netherlands going to get their food once the Farms are shut down, Of course it’s not suddenly we have less food to eat no that’s not how it works. Fortunately that’s not how agriculture markets work, happy to say.
But there is another problem which I do not understand: We have a war in Ukraine in our backyard. If War would actually be extended to other parts of Europe we have a big problem, also a big agricultural problem. So where do we get our food from? So yes of course you can you can diminish your your livestock that’s not gonna over change overnight the the the food situation. But in this particular case, this could be more worrisome in the long term.
There’s also another problem, the biggest issue now is that we invest huge amounts of money to buy out all these farmers, and we have no idea what we get back for it. More nature? Of course we know this is not going to happen because it’s a virtual world all these policy makers look at. But of course that means less income for the Netherlands and more unemployment. So it’s a lose-lose situation on all sides.
We don’t get what we want in nature, and we get less income and and food not just for us, but actually for the European Union and beyond.
People should be looking meticulously at the Netherlands, because what’s happening here is a huge top-down policy influence on a huge economic sector based on mere fantasy of apocalyptic risks related to nitrogen deposition. Because other countries like Canada, US and and other European countries are feverishly hoping the Netherlands government can pull this off. Because it’s a trick to disenfranchise huge parts of of the population in the Netherlands for no Return of Investment.
The full horror of the ‘nitrogen’ war on agriculture is becoming more apparent every day. Food supplies around the world face collapse if the use of nitrogen fertiliser is severely restricted under Net Zero requirements. It is claimed that the fertiliser is warming the Earth and causing the climate to break down, as the by-product nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere.
The full horror of the ‘nitrogen’ war on agriculture is becoming more apparent every day. Food supplies around the world face collapse if the use of nitrogen fertiliser is severely restricted under Net Zero requirements. It is claimed that the fertiliser is warming the Earth and causing the climate to break down, as the by-product nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere. In fact the entire global food supply is in danger of being trashed for the sake of what recent scientific work notes is almost unmeasurable 0.064°C warming per century.
Policies to address this non-existent crisis have already done enormous harm in Sri Lanka, where a ban on nitrogen fertiliser caused a rapid collapse in food yields, and led to the President fleeing the country in a hurry. The Canadian Government is committed to a 30% reduction in N2O levels by 2030. In the Netherlands, the Government is following European Union instructions and trying to remove farmers from the land. Any compensation paid will be tied to a restriction not to start farming again anywhere in the EU. Political discontent is growing, and there are already fears for the supply of agricultural products since the Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world.
Nitrogen is a vital component of plant metabolism which is obtained from the soil. Alas, there is not enough nitrogen in the soil to grow plants at the scale needed to feed global populations. Before the arrival of commercial nitrogen fertilisers, famine was a frequent feature of the unreliable food supply across parts of the world. Without the fertiliser, famine will resume its gruesome role, something mainstream Net Zero politicians have to address in the near future. Virtue-signalling green delusions about ‘rewilding’, bug diets and organic farming will not feed the world, probably not even a quarter of it.
A recent theoretical physics paper from four distinguished scientists said there was evidence that the amount of N2O in the atmosphere, a gas with warming properties, had never been constant over time. There have been large changes in atmospheric concentrations in inter-glacial periods like the current one. Nitrous oxide is a more powerful ‘greenhouse’ gas than carbon dioxide, but it accounts for only 0.34 parts per million (ppm), growing at only 0.00085 ppm per year. Currently CO2 is at 420 ppm, and the molecules are increasing 3,000 times faster in the atmosphere than N2O.
Like all greenhouse gases, its ability to trap heat within narrow bands of the infrared spectrum diminishes after a certain level as the gas becomes ‘saturated’. This helps explain why greenhouse gas levels have been much higher in the past without the Earth turning into an Armageddon fireball. After a certain point, any increased warming becomes logarithmic, according to the physicists, meaning it rises ever more slowly in response to additional greenhouse gases, which again provides a plausible explanation as to why temperatures have stayed within a relatively small band across the paleo record.
Every day seems to bring fresh concerns about the destruction likely to be wrought by the collectivist Net Zero project. As we have seen in recent articles, absolutist Net Zero fanatics at the Government-funded U.K. FIRES project look to a world in 2050 where Britain will lose 75% of its energy. Flying, shipping and eating beef and lamb will be banned, while bricks, concrete and glass will almost cease to exist. All the major political parties supporting the current strategy run away from facing true Net Zero reality. In the view of U.K. FIRES leader Professor Julian Allwood, the current strategy is as unrealistic as “magic beans fertilised by unicorn’s blood”.
The four physicists note that few citizens realise that the effects of N2O on the atmosphere are “negligible”. The proposed burdensome regulations on farming, ranching and dairying “will have no perceptible effect on climate, but some of them will do great harm to agricultural productivity and food supplies”. It is noted that one of the major factors behind the world’s “unprecedented” abundance of food in recent years has been the use of mineral nitrogen fertiliser. “It is not possible to maintain highly productive agriculture without nitrogen fertiliser,” they add.
One of the authors of the recent report, Professor William Happer of Princeton, recently teamed up with Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT to make clear what a disaster the world faced. Billions of people around the world faced starvation if the production of nitrogen fertiliser was banned. It would create “worldwide starvation” once half the world does not have enough to eat.
To back up their claims, the authors published the above graph. This shows clearly the “remarkable” increase in crop yields after the widespread use of nitrogen fertiliser began around 1950.
In his theoretical paper, Happer also notes some of the disasters that have occurred in the past when “ideologically-driven” government agriculture mandates “have usually led to disaster”. In the Soviet Union, a war on farmers in the 1930s led to millions dying of starvation. Folk memories of the Golodomor (hunger-murder), when millions of Ukrainians also died at the same time, “played no small part” in the present war in Ukraine.
Mandates to restrict animal numbers and fertiliser use will dramatically slash agricultural yields. To continue feeding the world, agricultural areas will have to increase and encroach on native habitats, which could have remained untouched with sensible use of fertiliser. “The result will be more environmental stress, not less,” the physicists write. When even the projected benefit is so negligible, this is a policy with nothing to commend it.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
A recent story posted at Breitbart describes the latest anti-agriculture scheme concocted by the European Commission to reduce nitrogen pollution and land impacts of farming, by buying out thousands of farmers and forcing them to stop raising livestock.
A recent story posted at Breitbart describes the latest anti-agriculture scheme concocted by the European Commission to reduce nitrogen pollution and land impacts of farming, by buying out thousands of farmers and forcing them to stop raising livestock. This is a dangerous proposal for the Netherlands, and the rest of Europe, especially as food prices are already elevated. The proposal is likely to do far more harm than good.
On Tuesday, the governing arm of the European Union officially threw its support behind plans by the Dutch government to buy out thousands of farmers from their lands in order to meet the EU’s Natura 2000 scheme to protect certain environments. The plan, which would offer farmers 120 per cent of the value of their farm, could see some 3,000 so-called “peak” emitters of nitrogen shut down.
It was unclear before this week whether the EU would permit such a scheme, as it could have potentially fallen afoul of regulations surrounding state aid or subsidies. However, Brussels said that the plans were “necessary and appropriate” as they met the broader goals of the European Green Deal.
Despite calling it “necessary and appropriate,” and dismissing economic concerns, the reality is that the Netherlands provide the majority of the meat to the European market. The green-obsessed European Commission and The Netherlands’ government have been targeting their agricultural sector for years. As Climate Realism reported in “True, Daily Signal, Climate Change Policy Harms Farmers and Food Prices,” the Dutch government already got farmers to reduce nitrogen runoff by 70 percent through a voluntary program. Then, they demanded another 50 percent reduction that will be “voluntary or else.” That is, take the buyout, or the government will seize the farm anyway.
One of the more puzzling conditions of the scheme, according to Breitbart, is that “Dutch farmers would be prohibited from moving to other countries and starting up farms abroad, meaning that their knowledge and expertise would be squandered.”
Likewise in Britain, the government is also trying to buy off farmers in order to make them stop farming via grants given for setting aside land for wilderness.
Alarmists claim that agriculture is one of the worst offenders when it comes to climate change, especially types of livestock raising, like cattle ranching. In reality, these industries have far less impact than claimed. One study, referenced by Climate Realismhere and here, found that in the United States, livestock raising was responsible for just 4 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Plant crops were responsible for 10 percent. In Europe, where far fewer cattle are raised to begin with, it’s almost certainly lower.
Another significant point that the governments of The Netherlands and Europe at large seem not to grasp is, if they are so interested in going all-organic, meaning they will not use fossil-fuel derived fertilizers, they will need animal manure fertilizers. If they get rid of all the livestock which produce that, they will be left with no way to grow very many crops at all.
As Climate Realism has covered here, here, and here, organic farming and anti-agriculture climate policies don’t help the environment and also have a terrible impact on food prices which can lead to civil unrest and starvation.
If organic farming, using animal manure fertilizers, was to replace high-input agriculture worldwide, it would lead to an increase in land use needed to produce the same yields, increasing deforestation by 8-15 percent, according to one study by the Alliance for Science. Another study conducted by Swedish researchers found that, contrary to climate alarmists’ claims, organically farmed crops actually have a larger emissions impact than conventionally farmed produce.
These anti-food policies already led to a massive upset in recent elections, where the pro-farmer party BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) won 17 of 75 seats. While popular, it appears the government of the Netherlands chose not to listen.
Farms are not a threat to the environment, or the climate. Getting rid of farms, on the other hand, is a clear and immediate threat to food security. Climate alarmists are wrong about the emissions impact of modern agriculture, and their proposed organic replacement policies have a greater impact on the environment than they understand. The only clear end of these proposals is a significant reduction of food produced. Bravo to Breitbart for keeping their eye on these developments in Europe.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.
While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”
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