Category Archives: The Scary Stuff

Yesterday’s post on the environmental impact of synthetic fertilizers got so long I split this part off to post separately. One of the articles published in Science was about the effect of fertilizers once they reach the ocean, and the description I read in the Economist mentioned the stuff listed above–algae blooms, red tides and dead zones. I’d heard of each of these, but hadn’t been clear on the definitions or connections  till I poked around a bit for this post. Here’s what I found:

Dead zones in the ocean are just what they sound like—areas where nothing lives, because fertilizer has been washed to the sea, often by spring melts and floodwaters. The fertilizer doesn’t directly kill anything; instead, it causes algae blooms as oceanic plants are stimulated to sudden growth by nitrogen in the fertilizer. All fine and good—but the plants also need oxygen, and somehow they seem to be more aggressive and successful in getting it than anything else around. The result? Fish, clams, mussels, crabs, shrimp, all die. Continue reading →

You heard it here first.

All right, if you read a newspaper today or listened to the radio or did anything except stick your head in the sand (or dig in your garden all day) then you probably heard it somewhere else first, but it’s still breaking news: two articles in the prestigious journal Science suggest that nitrogen, much of it from synthetic fertilizers, is doing far more damage to our oceans, our air, and our health than has been previously recognized.

Synthetic ammonia and urea, staples of synthetic fertilizer, break down into nitrogen oxides, which are just all around bad news, environmentally speaking. When they are released into the atmosphere through microbial action, they contribute to ozone formation, which in turn causes or exacerbates a long list of respiratory problems. (Ozone is one of the key ingredients in L.A.’s notorious smog.) When nitrogen oxides descend to earth again, they do so as acid rain. When they are leached out of the ground and into waterways, they promote algae blooms, red tides and “dead zones”. When they escape the ocean back into the atmosphere again, they do so as nitrous oxides, which contribute to global warming.

The real shocker, to me at least, is how much fertilizer ends up in our waterways and how little actually gets into the plants it’s intended to boost. The US EPA page on Sustainable Landscaping has estimated that only forty to sixty percent of the fertilizer applied to lawns ends up in grass—the rest washes away. The Economist article “Dead Zones,” reporting on the new articles in Science, had an even grimmer estimate: only 10-15% of the nitrogen compounds produced as fertilizer get incorporated into food; the rest ends up in the environment.

The problem isn’t the gaseous nitrogen in the air, but anthropogenic reactive nitrogen compounds: to wit, synthetic or man-made (anthropogenic) chemicals that include nitrogen along with other elements (nitrogen compounds) that are likely to react with other chemicals, forming new compounds (reactive). And many of those new compounds are dangerous.

Reactive nitrogen, primarily nitrogen oxides, is produced whenever we burn fossil fuels and whenever synthetic fertilizers containing urea and ammonia (which means most synthetic fertilizers) start to break down, which they will do, both in air and water, unless they are taken up by plants.

The AP story was carried in the NY Times and just about everywhere, but a more thorough article ran in The Economist. The picture above came from the home page of the Woods Hole site on Harmful Algae. It shows a massive fish kill in Texas.

AND now it’s snowing, and I’ve got the shoes to prove it. That’s the mud from yesterday’s marathon session on the outside of the clogs, and the snow from today on the inside. If you’re wondering why my shoes are outside rather than inside, then you didn’t read my last post. For shame.

What’s up with your weather?

It appears that I’m not the only one seeing snow in May. Amy of High and Dry commented on my last post that snow’s only just giving way to rain for her. Of course, if you check the maps on Blotanical, you’ll find that she’s stuck herself way north in British Columbia, so what does she expect? (It looks to me as if she’s the furthest north of all on that garden forum.) (Being born there is no excuse.)

And truth to tell, snow in May, in Montana? It happens. (And I moved here on purpose, so I definitely have no excuse.)

But jodi DeLong (that’s how she writes her name folks, so take it up with her, not me) of bloomingwriter in Nova Scotia, one of the most temperate spots in Canada, started a post yesterday by asking plaintively, " Is anyone else having a May like this?" This, below a photo of flowers (primroses?) in the snow. (They look lovely.)

Even odder, a week ago or so I saw a comment by a blogger in Texas (I don’t remember who) exclaiming over their late, cold spring. Not to mention the horrific tornadoes in Missouri and Oklahoma. Aren’t they supposed to come in August?

It’s enough to make you wonder.

A guy I know here in Montana, fed up with April (and May) snow showers, claims he’s going to start a group called Montanans for global warming. He’s trying to get my goat, or course. I think I’ll join, to get his.

Of course, global warming might not "help" us anyway. That’s the weirdest thing about it, to my mind: it doesn’t just warm everything up. It plays havoc with the weather.

Melting ice in the Arctic might not only threaten polar bears, but also disrupt the Gulf Stream, the massive Atlantic current that sweeps north along North America, turns east, and flows south, warming Europe. If it’s disrupted, scientists predict colder weather in Europe.

Here in Montana, and up and down the Rockies, warmer winters mean that the pine beetle, which is killed off by the cold, is  laying waste to forests. When the trees die and decay, the carbon dioxide they’ve sequestered is released back into the atmosphere. The problem is most serious in Canada’s western province of British Columbia; so bad, it might worsen global warming. Talk about a tightening spiral: global warming leads to the death of trees, which worsens global warming. The top figure here (produced by Natural Resources Canada) shows the extent of the infestation in 2006; the bottom one (produced by Canada’s Ministry of Forest and Range) shows the situation one year later, in 2007. The unreadably tiny legend says that the gray area is "overrun."

Even closer to home–as close as my back yard–the pine beetle infestation means that bears can’t feed on the cones as they once could, so they’re more inclined to go into campgrounds and (yes) city streets. It’s very romantic to have had a mother bear and two cubs spend the night in our trees as they did a couple of autumns back, but it doesn’t bode well for bears, forests, or humans. (I was a little worried about one of my neighbors, too; more than slightly inebriated, he  wanted to shake the tree and call the bears down.)

Does anyone else see changes that might–for no one knows for sure–be caused by global warming?