Haber-Bosch and Your Body

[Brandon Gwinn]

Did you know that an entire 1/3 of the Earth's population is sustained by fertilizer made out of about 100 million tons of synthetic ammonia every year from artificial nitrogen fixation out of the atmosphere by the Haber-Bosch process and that about half of the protein in your body is made from nitrogen captured by this technology of our own species. Before this in the late 1800s the world was reaching a population cap due to dwindling sources of natural nitrate-bearing fertilizer used in crop production. It could be said that we are partially man-made...What a thought.

[Diana]

And because it's human-made, it has caused and is causing problems:

The energy-intensivity of the process contributes to climate change and other environmental problems:

leaching of nitrates into ground water, rivers, ponds and lakes; expanding dead zones in coastal ocean waters, resulting from recurrent eutrophication; atmospheric deposition of nitrates and ammonia affecting natural ecosystems; higher emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), now the third most important greenhouse gas following CO2 and CH4.

The Haber–Bosch process is one of the largest contributors to a buildup of reactive nitrogen in the biosphere, causing an anthropogenic disruption to the nitrogen cycle.

Since nitrogen use efficiency is typically less than 50%, farm runoff from heavy use of fixed industrial nitrogen disrupts biological habitats.

Nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber–Bosch process. Thus, the Haber process serves as the "detonator of the population explosion", enabling the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.7 billion by November 2018.

...from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

[Brandon Gwinn]

Yeah. I agree. It's totally sad. I did some research on the numbers for fossil fuel use such as oil, natural gas, and coal with their CO2 emissions. It's insane:

Since the start of oil production, the world has produced nearly 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, each one containing 42 gallons and releasing over 800 lbs of CO2 when consumed. Around 100 trillion cubic meters of natural gas have been produced releasing over 180 billion metric tons of CO2. And I can't find an actual number for coal production, but based on what I've researched, I would estimate it at least a few hundred billion metric tons throughout history, each ton releasing about 4,400 lbs of CO2.

This all adds up to about 1.3 thousand billion metric tons of carbon dioxide overloaded into the environment from fossil fuel use since the start of human civilization- most of which occurred within the last 200 years. And it takes an awful lot of CO2 to make a metric ton. The stuff isn't heavy, but it adds up.

Before humans, there were an estimated 6 trillion trees, each one able to absorb about a ton of CO2 over a hundred year life cycle. Now there are only around 3 trillion. This means we've effectively destroyed half of planet Earth's oxygen-breathing, carbon-sequestering forests. The effects of all this can be clearly seen by the massive die-offs of our coral reefs from ocean acidification due to abnormally increased carbon absorption from the atmosphere.

With all this said, I think we should take climate change seriously. If it's true (and I really don't see how it can't be), it means  temperatures and oceans will continue to rise; wildfires, droughts, floods, and storms will continue to get worse; these problems will cascade into increased disease and famine and death and humanity as a whole will be in jeopardy.

This is such a beautiful planet. It's truly a shame what we have done. What's even more of a shame is the deep state probably has all the technology we need to fix this and turn our world into a utopia, but they hold it back to maintain their power and control.

[tadeus]

Did you know that an entire 1/3 of the Earth's population is sustained by fertilizer made out of about 100 million tons of synthetic ammonia every year from artificial nitrogen fixation out of the atmosphere by the Haber-Bosch process and that about half of the protein in your body is made from nitrogen captured by this technology of our own species. Before this in the late 1800s the world was reaching a population cap due to dwindling sources of natural nitrate-bearing fertilizer used in crop production. It could be said that we are partially man-made...What a thought.

That's maybe one of the reasons the population is reduced now ...