...What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
Get your ticket to that wheel in space
While there's time
The fix is in
You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky
You know we've got to win
Here at home we'll play in the city
Powered by the sun...
Donald Fagen, I.G.Y., 1982.
Currently I am working on a series of diaries on famous troll rated scientists. It's going awfully - in a fun sort of way - if you must know.
Hopefully, one day the fix will be in and I will publish them.
One of the questions I have been asking myself in this series - which I promise will be as troll ratable as Fritz Haber - is what percentage of the protein now existing on earth is attributable to industrially fixed nitrogen.
In my background research, I stumbled upon the following report:
Impact of Rising Natural Gas
The volatile and upward trend in U.S. natural gas prices from 2000-06 has led to a 17-percent decline in the Nation’s annual aggregate supply of ammonia. During the period, U.S. ammonia production declined 44 percent, while U.S. ammonia imports increased 115 percent. Also, the share of U.S.-produced ammonia in the U.S. aggregate supply of ammonia dropped from 80 to 55 percent, while the share from imports increased from 15 percent to 42 percent. Meanwhile, ammonia prices paid by farmers increased from $227 per ton in 2000 to $521 per ton in 2006, an increase of 130 percent. Natural gas is the main input used to produce ammonia.
Oh well.
In general I try, as much as possible, to rely on the primary scientific literature in producing my diaries, or at least on high quality scientific monographs and texts - but like most bloggers I do, in fact, google my way to answers.
I haven't quite gotten there yet with respect to primary scientific literature and the nitrogen question (and don't promise that I will get there), but some kind of stab at the answer will be necessary for my discussion of troll rated scientists.
Here's one google type answer to the question of how much nitrogen in proteins (and nucleic acids) on earth derives from industrial (and other human derived) sources.
World Sources of Nitrogen Fixation.
Non-biological
Industrial about 50
Combustion about 20
Lightning about 10
Total about 80
Biological
Agricultural land about 90
Forest and non-agricultural land about 50
Sea about 35
Total
about 175
Thus about 255 million metric tons of nitrogen get "fixed" each year.
It's not, by the way, clear what is "natural" fixed nitrogen from this link. For instance, what would happen to "agricultural" land if it weren't "agricultural?" When one slashes and burns rain forest for instance to make palm oil plantations in Indonesia to help Germany meet its "Renewable Portfolio Standard" using biodiesel, how does this effect the nitrogen flows, or similarly if one slashes and burns Brazilian Rainforests to further the Brazilian car culture (and maybe soon the North American car culture) how does that effect nitrogen flows?
I can't say I know the answer to that question.
Anyway.
It is also not clear what "combustion" involves. Certainly combustion in automotive and diesel cyclinders fixes nitrogen - that's what the brown stuff in smog is, fixed nitrogen. On the other hand, some nitrogen is fixed in forest fires. As for the latter, how connected are these to human culture? Suppose continental scale forests burn because of climate change induced drought or changes induced in the range of parasites like pine bark beetles? "Human induced" or not?
We can say this if this data is remotely accurate: Direct deliberate nitrogen fixation in industrial machinery now accounts for about 20% of protein on the planet, mostly powered by natural gas.
If that doesn't scare you, it should, for lots of very different and somewhat complex reasons.
What is even scarier is that the upper limit for human induced nitrogen fixation is much higher. It would seem that the upper limit (including combustion and agriculture) would be somewhere around 80%.
Um. Well...
This is a brief diary and I have little more to say about this subject for now, except to offer this somewhat wry offering: One of the notable observable effects connected with this business is the rise of the atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, sometimes called "laughing gas."
If I wasn't laughing so hard, I'd probably cry.